Restart Growth ft. Keith Pigues

Welcome everybody to Sales Globe's Rethink Sales Roundtable. And we're excited to have you here on Friday as we always do. And we're going to be talking with Keith Peguise today from Luminous Strategies and with me is Michelle Seeger.

Hello everyone and hey Keith, it's great to have you back.

Good to be back. Good to be back. Great to see your smiling faces.

Thank you. Good to see yours as well.

So a little bit of background on who we are for everybody that's joining Sales Globe is a data driven creative problem solving firm for sales. And so what that means is basically we solve really tough sales problems around the areas of sales strategy, sales organization design, go to market, account planning, sales compensation, quotas. And so we love to solve tough problems that haven't been solved before. Written a few books, most recently about book called quotas design thinking to solve your biggest sales challenge. Wrote what your CEO needs to know about sales compensation, the innovative sale and essential account planning. So we're going to dive in a little bit on account planning today. So we're real excited, as I said Michelle, to have Keith Peguise joining us. We're going to go a little further than we did last week and get into understanding value proposition and how to work with your strategic accounts. And then in some later sessions we're going to go deeper into some of those areas. But today we're going to kind of do a flyover on some of the big, big areas that are considerations around strategic account planning in the new environment, in the new economy.

That's right. So thanks everyone for being here today with us. As we said, we're going a little bit deeper on what we were talking about last week and you guys had some questions for us. So this is all about the future of sales. We've got this post Covid environment and one of the things that we know is that a lot of things aren't changing a whole lot anytime soon. So we're predicting, when you go back to our predictions that second half of the year is when we expect some things will start getting some semblance of normalcy. But we know it's all new and very different. So what are the big questions that we have? Big questions that are coming from our clients are how do we sell in this new environment and how do we look at our landscape? And that is exactly what we are going to be talking about today. So the big question, this goes to number 11 in our predictions, strategic account planning. We believe it will become more important and more intentional and that is going to be the focus of what we're going to be talking to Mark and Keith about today.

Yep.

So we've got 25 of these, as you mentioned, Michelle. So we're kind of picking some of these selections that are going to be really important for people to dive into. So let's take a look at a few of the components and. And Keith, last week we talked about some of the big predictions and we talked about the idea of creating differential value proposition. But we're going to get into it a little bit in more detail today and I just want to give a quick overview on what we're looking at here. And this is what we call aspirational account planning because everybody, you know, they talk about account planning and the first thing you hear is groans.

Right, right.

You're like, account planning. I've got to do that again this year. Maybe I can pull out the one I had last year and just kind of update the number.

I was talking by the deadline.

Yeah. Talking to a guy, I think it was yesterday, and he said, oh yeah, we have one from 2018. We've updated a little bit, but we just never really look at it. So nobody likes to do strategic account planning. So the idea behind aspirational account planning, and we'll get into this in a few minutes, is you're really getting your big ideas out there, starting with understanding the customer and understanding your value proposition. So some of the big areas that we look at here and you can see up, up behind us are understanding for your customers what your beliefs and your insights are about the customer. And then going to the customer and understanding how they value you and value partners like you and what their aspirations are, what their think of C level goals, what their C level goals are related to the business that you do with them. So that there's this customer interface point. We'll come back to that in a couple of minutes. And then we get into this point of getting aspirational. I see point C there, getting aspirational. So how do we come up with the big ideas? And then we look at investments. D. So what are we going to put into the account in order to be able to help them to grow the account? We get into E, then how do we propose our aspirations going back to the customer and then finally we get to F, which is how do we develop our account plan and then working with a customer to move it ahead. Now the funny thing, Keith, Michelle, is so often what we see with our clients is they do A, they understand their insights and beliefs they know what they think they might do a little bit of D about what are we going to invest and then they jump to F. They do the account plan. So they miss a lot of these really important steps. So those are some of the things that we want to delve into today.

Which might get them an F. Get.

Them an F.

Mark, you did a good job of framing out what the process is going to look like. And this is going to really be the basis of our conversation today. So how do we go from F to A?

Right, let's start above A. So Keith, we talked earlier about the idea of you have to decide who you're going to focus on first for accounts before we just go off and we start doing account planning. So let's talk a bit about that. How do you make that selection in terms of which ones you want to focus on, especially in a Covid and post Covid environment where we've got certain sectors that are doing well and certain accounts that maybe we're a better fit with where we want to make those kind of investments.

Yeah, Mark, you're absolutely right. And I love the prediction. Right. That account planning will be more become more important and intentional. And it's for just the reason that you mentioned. Because when you think about organizations that have major accounts or key accounts, the reason that they have those accounts is because they believe that those accounts represent a significant opportunity for growth. And so they have a high concentration of their sales and some limited number of accounts that are really important to them. And those are counts where you have to win or you can't lose from a senior level management perspective. But when you start thinking about those accounts, it helps to take a step back and say, you know what, as I look at our business, I look at the verticals that we serve or the markets that we serve, which of those markets or verticals represent the greatest growth opportunities, growth challenges for us. So for example, if you're a company that sells products and or services and you're serving the retail vertical or market, things are a little bit different for you today than they were last year. This time that doesn't mean that there is an opportunity, but that means that the opportunity may be very different. And I think in our last session we talked about one of our clients that actually sales ingredients into apparel that's sold through by apparel manufacturers into retail or direct to consumer. Well, guess what? They've amped up the direct to consumer online and they've really been challenged in trying to determine how they continue to grow, where they're selling through brick and mortar establishments, their value proposition needed to change. Right. So understanding that on the other hand, if you are selling your products and or services into an industry or a vertical that has to do with building maintenance or cleaning, let me tell you, as organizations prepare to bring their people back to open up the economy, they got to get that right so that their people and or their customers feel comfortable, feel safe coming back into that environment. In some cases, there's some new regulations. So their business is growing off the chain. Right. But what they're looking for is something very different than they looked for a year ago. So you're right. You first have to figure out kind of above this, where are the greatest growth opportunities and challenges now within those in retail or in cleaning or that type of sector? Where do we have to win or lose with specific customers?

Yep. And we've seen some of that in information data, Michelle.

Data that we've.

We've seen with purchasing patterns across industries. And we can tell, we've looked at this in prior sessions and we'll have some upcoming ones with Jim Swift where we go deeper into that. But we can tell which industries are hotter. Right. So to your point, Keith, certain retail is doing better than other retail.

Well, and I think the other point there is. So how you're getting that information is probably not from the same sources you used in 2019, call it. So what we're encouraging people to do is explore where the opportunities are, but not by exploring through the same ways and methods that that you did maybe a couple years ago. Right. We talk about history being history. So there is information out there, but you need to think about, companies need to think about is the information they're leveraging today still relevant and are they even looking at the right data points anymore?

Right, right, right. Okay.

So you gotta do your homework ahead of time.

Right.

Then you're picking, you're making your top picks where you're gonna make investments. And then we say, okay, we need to look at how we're gonna develop a strategy for this account. Again, Covid post Covid. One of the first steps is understanding your insight, the information you have, and your beliefs about the account. And Keith, I know you do this as well, which is kind of getting it out on the table, our point of view before we talk to the customer. And I was talking to a client a couple days ago about exactly this and the themes that came up with their customer. It's one of their top five customers, which is in the hundreds of millions of dollars. So it's a big customer is. Well, we're always reactive. We're always responding to RFPs that are then bringing down our prices because we have to stay competitive. We're putting out fires, we're doing operational things. We're not having the conversations about a roadmap forward, but wow, you know, I think they actually would be receptive, those kind of conversations, but we just can't catch our breath. And the other, the other word that came up with them was resentment. So we feel resentful of the, of the customer because they, every time they come back to us, they want bigger cuts on prices. So we're just playing. We're in this spiral with them. And so you have that setting and they're going, but we really want to be able to do more with them. We just got to get out of this tailspin here.

Yeah, well, you know, boy, you touched on a number of things, Mark, there that I think are pretty interesting and electric. Right. But what that makes me think about, though, is this whole notion of customer value management. Right. And then I'll delve into the account specific. But sometimes people don't recognize what's going on above the fray of activities that you described. Right. What's really going on is both parties, you and the customer. Right. Your company and the customer are trying to manage this. The value that's created in this relationship. I mean, that's really what's happening. Right? Right. You provide products and services. Your organization has specific capabilities. Right. And you provide those things. Right. To the customer. The customer uses them for some purpose, and then the customer has some economic or financial impact or result that they achieve. Right. So the question is, hey, when I think about the things that I provided to that customer that enable them to have the financial result that they have, how much of that uniquely came from me that they couldn't get elsewhere? Right. So you might say, for example, we believe that because of our supply chain and our ability to turn around orders really quickly, like six hours versus our competitor, that takes three days. We believe that that helps our customers sell more because they get the ingredient, if you will, from us, they can then have their products ready to sell faster in the marketplace. They don't risk losing sales because they're out of stock, because they didn't have a supplier who could get product to them. Well, that would be what we would consider to be, you know, an insight or belief we have about the differential value that we provide in terms of our supply chain capability. Right. But what's important there is to understand not only what it is, why you think what you do is really different. Right. And the impact that it has on the customer's key performance indicator. Right. Might be lead time performance, for example. Right. And then how that KPI translates directly into a financial impact, like they were able to sell 10% more last quarter of these products because we were able to get our ingredients to them in six hours, where everyone else was able to do it in two days. We have a direct impact on the value that they were able to capture in the marketplace. Right.

So then let's talk about just the practicalities here.

Right.

How do you do this?

A little deeper on that one.

So, yes, you've got your account team. Are we getting everybody together? We're doing some brainstorming around what we think, or is there. What kind of structure do we use for that kind of conversation to make sure that we get good information out? Because a couple of things you brought up, Keith, were about understanding the value.

Right.

So that says, well, we're going to try to quantify that in some way. But what's a good way to have these kind of conversations internally so they're productive? And then, so it also equips us for step B, which is going out and talking to the customer and having, you know, a very logical conversation to test our assumptions.

Yeah, well, this is probably one of the most fun parts of the. So we're going to have fun, Right. One of the most fun parts of the process for our team. Right. So the first thing that we do is say, okay, who are the people who really understand this account and understand what your organization does to deliver value and whether it's marketing, sales, supply chain, customer service, account management, tech service, customer success. Who are the people? And so we put that group of people together. Typically it's about five or so people, and we send them all a survey. That's how we start. And we get their individual perspectives on what they believe the company's doing to deliver differential value to this customer that they can't get elsewhere. The reason we do that is to prevent groupthink. And it's amazing because sometimes what we found is that that thought that came from a customer service manager who's there day to day, you know, toe to toe in the heat of the battle, actually understands why what you're doing from a customer service perspective is so valuable and how you're keeping that customer afloat. Right. Where other people in the organization may not really even understand that. So we start with those surveys. We then take that information and we have one on one discussions, our team follows up with each of those people to really unpack it. Right. And what we're doing is trying to figure out what do you do that's really different versus what the competitor might be doing and then how often has it occurred? Right. What's the impact? What metrics are your customers using to determine whether this is helping them or not? Right. And then we take all those individual inputs from the members of the account team and we put it together, we consolidate it to give you a view. And let me tell that process sometimes requires hard hats and bulletproof vests, because when you get the people together internally who are actually on the same team managing account, they have wildly different views about what's really most valuable. And sometimes they think in stove pipes and they think functionally, but they never really think about the fact that the customer is looking at it as a whole. Right. So we then develop that, what we call your hypothesis of your differential value. And that's a fun process. And our clients learn a lot about themselves in the process, as you can imagine.

I would suspect not only do they learn a lot about themselves, but you're getting a lot more voices heard because of you. Now, I thought this survey is a really good idea. I don't want to miss the point that if you've got senior leaders in a room, let's say, or the person who owns a multinational account and you've got a customer service rep who may or may not feel, depending on the personality. Right. That their voice can, can be equally heard, yet you're going to probably hear some really interesting, valuable information that you wouldn't have gotten through the group. Think. And you know, my, my instinct would be bring everybody together in a room. And I understand why that isn't necessarily your starting point. That's, that's pretty practical advice. So now you got this hypothesis, which I'm assuming you haven't quantified yet. What's the next step?

Yeah, so then we get the team together and we quantify so. Absolutely, because you can say here are the things that we do and this is how we do it different. What the real question is, how does it impact the customer's key performance indicator? Because that's what the customer cares about. And then how does that translate into either a cost reduction that that customer received, say, in the last year doing business with us because of our lead time performance, or what is the revenue increase. Right. That this customer received from us during the last year that they couldn't get if they were doing business with Our next best competitor. That's ultimately it. It's about what we call differential value in dollars and cents. And I tell you, when we do this with organizations, typically this is a new thing for them because they've thought about features and benefits. They may even calculate an ROI with the customer. Those are good and they're appropriate. But in this instance, what you really need to know is, how did I move the financial performance impact, the financial performance of my customer during this period that's attributed to us and what we do versus what's available from our competitors.

So you're going to have to have a view into the customer to really be able to see those things, because some of that financial performance, you may not. Maybe you don't have visibility on that. If you have kind of an operational view, you may not see some of those things that are really important to the customer. So that in itself could require some investigation just to understand what those performance indicators are.

Absolutely. And given that we have a wealth of experience working with lots of clients across lots of industries, we engage with our clients in that process. So we work together to do that. And some of those calculations or formulas we can bring because we've done similar work elsewhere. But in some cases, the information is available, but it comes from unlikely sources within our clients. And sometimes those people, those voices, Michelle, have not been included in the process before. But then getting to that quantification is really important. And sometimes we just have to make assumptions, right? There's some things we might not know because we're not in the customer shoes, but we can make really good assumptions. And that's okay because we're going to test them later in the process.

So then we're going to the customer step B, and we're sitting down, we're talking with them about what they think. So we've done our prep work here to understand what we think. We're talking about what they think. One of the questions that comes up a lot, Keith, is who should we talk to at the customer? Because it may be that some of the people that we work with in operations or in R and D or in procurement may not be the right people to answer those questions. And so when we look at this, we're looking at differential value, as you describe. We're also looking at aspirations, meaning where do you want to go as a business? Because what we want to do in the steps that follow is we want to link onto the big growth initiatives that that customer has. So how do you pick the right people at the customer and not End up just going to the people that you work with normally if those aren't all the right people.

Yeah, that's a great question, Mark. And the first question that we want to answer is, are we delivering the differential value to you customer that we believe we are? Right, that's the first question. And so the people that you need to talk to are the people who are best informed about that, meaning the people in the customer who own the P and L or the cost center that you believe you're impacting financially. Right. So we talked about growing sales. Right. Accelerating sales growth because of our lead time performance. Well, who's the person in the customer organization who wins or loses, you know, with their bonus or maybe even keeping their job. Right. Based on our ability to help them or not? Well, in this instance, it might be the sales leader, right? It might be the sales leader of the business. We call those people beneficiaries of value. Right. So for each of those, if you will, differential value attributes, we talked about supply chain lead time performance. It might be product quality, for example. It could be your technical service. Right. But for each of those, we want to understand who is that highest ranking person in the organization that directly receives the value beneficiary of value for that attribute. And we get that whole group together to have a group discussion about those items. I'll give you an example of how this really came to into play with one of our clients. This was a client that sold chemicals, lots of them, to lots of big companies, lots of major accounts, and their chemical product is used in this instance to help manufacture tissue. And they have a pretty unique chemical. And it really helps to create the softness of the tissue. For one of the world's largest tissue manufacturers, the reason that consumers buy more of this tissue and are willing to spend more to buy this tissue is because of the softness. That's what consumers care about. However, our client sells these truckloads and tanker loads of chemicals and they're using the manufacturing process, Right. So we ask them, who's the beneficiary of value? And the account team's like, ooh, ooh, ooh. You know, like Arnold Horseshack. Ooh, ooh, ooh. Right. It's manufacturing. It's the VP of manufacturing. And we go, let's think about this a little bit further. Actually, the value that you deliver with your chemicals that provides this incredible softness for tissues that results in your customer continually increasing market share, selling more and selling it at a premium price in the retail marketplace. Right. The person who really benefits from that is probably the general manager of the business or the product manager or the chief marketing officer. And in those cases, they say, well, those are people we never met. We don't talk to those people. And we said, what an opportunity. So you want to talk to the beneficiary of value because they can give you the answer. VP of manufacturing can't really tell you much about sales performance from your chemist.

So you want to talk to those people with, what if those people see you, meaning your client? What if those people see you as more of an input to the process? And they go, well, I don't really need to talk to them because that's not something that concerns me. Right. How do you convince the chief revenue officer or how do you convince the person who might not normally talk to your client that, hey, this conversation's really important?

Yeah, that's important. And that's a great question. First of all, what we do is we help our clients to understand this is not about a sales call. So let's wipe. There's a time for a sales call. This is not it. This is a time to have a partnership discussion with your client about two things. What you are doing today to deliver differential value to them and what they would like you to do tomorrow to deliver even more to help them win. And when we're talking about major accounts or global key accounts, it's about how we take the partnership, whatever state that partnership is in today, to the next level so that we can work together to do things that are mutually beneficial for both parties. And that's the way we position it. And it works like a charm, because if you are a major supplier to an organization, they want to have that conversation with you about how you can help them get more value today and in the future. So, Mark, that's how we get. In fact, we have scripts that we provide for, typically the account manager or the executive and our client, who's going to be reaching out to extend those invitations with very specific things to say, how to say them, to ensure that it doesn't sound like a sales call, which is not intended to be at all.

I'm guessing that you are also learning a little bit about your own business. So I'm. I'm thinking that differentiated value that maybe you didn't even know can come up, and vice versa, maybe something that you thought was extremely relevant is not even in the top priority of your customer.

You're absolutely right, Michelle. We've seen it all. And so having that customer validation discussion with those beneficiaries of value, Mark, is so important. And what makes it different is we don't go in saying, what's keeping you up at night? What are your pain points? Again, not knocking those processes. I think they're fine in the right type of situation. But what we're trying to do here is really demonstrate to the customer that we understand your business. We've taken the time to understand your business, what you're trying to accomplish, your key performance indicators, the financial results. And we have a perspective of how we think we contribute to that, but it's just a perspective, and we'd love to hear if our perspective matches yours. So, yes, sometimes we hear absolutely right. That particular thing you think you're doing. Lead time performance, you're spot on. And in fact, your calculation of the amount of money incremental sales we were able to make last year, actually, it's about half of the value that we were able to get last year. So you're a little conservative in your estimates. And we go, tell us why. Well, let me tell you why. In some instances, it's. You know what, I understand why you believe that your customer service is differential, but obviously you have not dealt with your customer service representatives the way we have, because we are not finding at all that that's differential. In fact, what we would like you to know is you're lagging the market place there. Let me tell you the problems we have with your customer service, and let me tell you what your competitors are doing that you should be thinking about. All right? And so not only do you get customer insight, you also get really valuable competitive intelligence to help you understand what things you might need to change or add. And all of that results in you walking away with a clear view of, here's the customer's perspective of the differential value proposition. What it is, what's different or not, what key performance indicators it actually impacts or not. And what financial impact it has delivered to the customer during that period of time versus what we thought. And let me tell you, we have an immediate kind of debrief meeting with all of the members of our client team who attend. We invite our client teams to attend the interview. Selected members, they can't talk. I know some of them, like, give us a hard time. They want to inject, interject. No, they take notes. They really are listening those cues to understand differential value and the insights, but. And they're waiting to get it all out. So when we're done, we go to an undisclosed location with only the members of the client account team, and we let Them turn loose and they realize they. Man, we learned some things we thought we knew that we really didn't know, or we thought our products were the bomb. I mean, we thought we had the best products. And we Learned today that 3 years ago we did. And here's what's happened in the marketplace with competition in the last three years, which is why now our products are considered to be a commodity. And we thought service wasn't a big deal. And now we've learned today that our customer service or our supply chain performance really wins the day. Wow. We've got to change what we do now.

So then you have that information, right? So you've done your homework. And I want to talk for a second about step C, which is getting aspirational.

So that's the question I was going to ask you. I was going to say, okay, now, Mark, how do we turn this into something?

Because this is the game changer for a lot of our culture clients, is when we don't get incremental, we don't say, okay, well, we're going to go back and just do what the customer told us about. What we do is we go back and we get aspirational. We start thinking much further ahead about what we can do, and we talk about getting aspirational. We worked on this book, as, you know, Essential Account Planning, and that was one of the big learnings from the work that we did. And then also from some of the research in the book was that made a difference for clients that did this. And so what it means is that they're not just looking at, okay, what do we need to do to get to our goal over the next year or so? But what is the thing that we can do that's gonna be a total game changer for the account? So we look ahead three years, we look ahead five years with the information that we have from having those conversations with the customer. And we talk about what kind of things would totally change the relationship for the better, what kind of things would make us invaluable to the customer. And one of the tests here is that it makes you uncomfortable to think that we could get to that level, we could get to that revenue level with the customer over three to five years. You get uncomfortable, so, you know, you're kind of pushing the thinking. But what we want to look at is we want to look at the customer story in light of all the information that we have. So what that means is, how did they get to where they are? How did we get there with them?

And.

And Then we want to look at what we think of as the solution vision, which is what would great look like. So some of the points you're bringing up, Keith, about what we could do for that customer and then how could we partner with them to do that? So the aspiration sessions that we have are taking that information and getting our team to think beyond the goal and getting them to think much further out. And so when you think further out like that, then you can set a trajectory so you'll know, okay, well, in order to get there, we've got to take these steps. So that's been one of the big game changers we've seen. Instead of just going back and doing the account plan is getting into these kind of thinking processes, these design sessions.

It takes you beyond just the number, doesn't it? So it's. If I look at your diagram, I see here a quota. And what we're doing is we're getting way beyond the quota. Right. We're kind of getting over here to aspirational. That leads into increased revenue. But it's because you've set goals with the client right around what it is that they're trying to solve for where they want to go. And it'll end up what you believe is a win for both. And I think Keith might have something to say about that, first of all.

Absolutely. I mean, and in fact, this is one of the areas that I think is probably most valuable and sometimes even transformational in terms of how organizations think about crafting growth strategies with their key accounts. Because sometimes the thinking is so short term and close in and there's not a lot of creativity. There is no real aspirational thinking or there's no aspirational thinking with the customer. And so let me connect back to what I talked about with the customer value management that has two components, customer value creation and then customer value capture. Technically, we only really get to participate in capturing value through increased sales and pricing, et cetera, with customers, to the extent that we've helped to create some value with that customer that they give us credit for through our value proposition or our differential value proposition. So the first thing we have to think about is how then do we get the right people from the customer engaged in a discussion, a collaborative discussion about where they're going, not what we want to sell, not what number we want to hit, not what growth would be great for us, but what are they trying to accomplish. So I talked about that customer validation interview, the second part of that discussion, after we've validated if you will. Today's value proposition. We then use something we call the checkbook question. So we say to our clients, customer, they're giving you their checkbook today, and you have an opportunity to write checks, to invest in the supplier. Right, in the supplier company, but on your behalf. So as you think about your growth over the next one, three, five years, where would you like them to invest to serve you better, to help you achieve your growth goals and objectives? Novel idea, right? Right. But that doesn't happen enough. And so what we understand there is that you need some additional people in that discussion which you mentioned earlier, Mark. So not just the people who understand what you're doing today, today's value proposition, but you need people from the customer who, who are focused on their growth. It might be people in strategic planning, it might be people in R and D. Right. Et cetera, et cetera. And so we invite those people as well to the discussion and we ask them, where would you invest in this supplier to help you achieve these goals? Now, what that does for our client is it really widens the aperture, right. Of the things that you might be considering to provide to help that customer achieve that goal, it may be existing products and services, it may be new products and services. It may be new capabilities that you need to develop in your organization to serve them. It may even identify acquisition opportunities. Right? And so, yeah, it really widens the view and allows you to understand what you could do. And then we go through a process of prioritizing and weighting those. So you walk away not only understanding the list of things, but you also understand which of those things is most valuable potentially to the customer so you can focus on the right place.

So you took that investment step D and you kind of flipped it upside down and you said, okay, it's not just about where we're going to make investments for the customer. We're asking the customer to tell us where we should make investments for them.

Bingo. Yeah. Amazing. When that happens, you actually can have a partnership, mutually beneficial partnership. Now, by the way, some of those items that the customer wants you to focus on may be things that you're not capable of doing, nor do you desire to develop those or acquire those capabilities. Or they may be things that you can't make money at. Right. Or you're not good at. And so it's important to conclude this discussion with a return back to the customer to say, we heard you. Here are the things we're going to do to fix the things that are not working well today. Here's what we're going to do to continue those things that are delivering a lot of value. And as far as the future is concerned, you gave us a list of 10 things. Here are the three that we think are mutually beneficial that will be really valuable for you, where we have capabilities and we also can make money. And let us tell you these others why we're not going to do that. And sometimes organizations don't really want to say no, or they don't want to explain why not. But this is about a relationship. And I think customers, particularly your executives and your customers, really appreciate you saying, hey, I really thank you for giving us the opportunity to consider these three or four things that are important to you. We're not good at that. We could maybe point you to some other people who are good at that. We're not good at that. Or we've taken a hard look at this. We can't make money at this. Maybe there's somebody else out there who can do this and can make money and it would be a better partner.

For you, you know, in flipping that around just a little bit. This is reminding me of. We did a survey with customer global customers, and we were asking them similar questions, right, on behalf of a client. And the thing that was crazy is that what came back was they did not want them to continue to invest. And this happened to be, interestingly enough, a communications tool like what we're on now, virtual communications. They said, stop giving us these additional features and benefits. Would you please just make your core product best in class? Now, that was really hard for the product team that had all these new features and benefits they were coming out with to the benefit of their clients that are saying, stop already. I'm reminded of a couple of. I'm reminded of a couple of personal stories being on with that client too, when we experienced what their clients probably did. But anyways, that's really. It's a great perspective, isn't it, to get that feedback and help it drive the investments that you're going to make. So we discussed a little bit about how you're proposing those aspirations to the right.

So along the way, you're having these conversations with the customer about what you can do. Or it can be an event where you say, okay, we're going to figure out what we're going to do for investments. We're going to come back to the customer and we're going to tell them what we, we think we could do for them and get their feedback. And these steps, whether you're having them along the way or these conversations along the way, or it's an event where you come back and you propose these things back. It's leading us then to eventually develop the account plan which most, as we said before, everybody usually just jumps to the account plan. So we've done all this work that maybe none of our competitors have done because we've done. We've really connected and worked tightly with the customer. And then we get to the account plan and everybody thinks, okay, well, you know, current situation and past performance and what our goals are and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And everybody, everybody. Keith, as you know, when you talk about account plans, the first thing they do after they sigh is they recite the table of contents of an account plan and they tell you, I know what it all, what it is. Right. So we're finally back there. But we've done so much homework that it's actually different because we've done it with the customer. By the time we get to designing the plan, the account plan, absolutely.

The first thing that we've done is we've. No, go ahead.

Oh, I was just going to say, I think that's what makes it become this living document. Then instead of that which is on a shelf. What were you going to say, Keith?

And it's customer centric. Sometimes account plans aren't customer centric. Right. They're company centric. Right.

Yeah.

But if we place, if we take all the insights and the intelligence that we've just discussed that we've gathered throughout the process with confidence. Right. Because we've gotten validation from the customer. Right. We've had the right people, the beneficiaries of value, the people who are focused on their growth strategy. We've gotten this input and we validated from the right people. Now, the count plan is pretty simple. Question is, what's the aspiration? We know now what the aspiration is because we learned that where they're trying to go, why they're trying to go, what's in it for them. We understand the two or three things that we could do in collaboration with them that would help both parties to reach this common aspiration, mutually beneficial win together. Likewise, we understand the things that we need to do with the current products and services and capabilities to continue what's working and to solve the problems where we need to deliver more value today, where we are not doing so well versus competition. Right?

Yep.

Then we have what we need for the account plan long term and short term. Right. And then the rest is mechanics. Right. I mean, it really is so, so.

A fascinating thing happened here in this conversation, which is nowhere in the conversation did we talk about what's in the account plan. We did not talk about the components. We did not talk about table of contents. We did not talk about an account planning tool. I was talking with a client recently where they said, we thought you were going to talk about a tool. Yeah, like, no, it's about how you think and how you, how you get customer centric. So then, Keith, I want to transition to the last point, which is how do we then move ahead with the customer to make these things happen? Because that's one of the other big complaints we hear about account planning is we, we do the account plan and then it goes away and then we never actually do any of the stuff that we said we're going to do because we get caught back up into the same cycle. So how do we actually make this successful moving ahead to work for the customer?

Well, one of the things that we found that is most effective with our clients is when you can actually get the executives in your organization and the executives in the customer organization align on the same agenda, mutually beneficial with a common understanding of who's doing what, and you hold one another accountable. Well, if you just follow the process we've walked through, you've created that agenda. Right. You've created an agenda now for what some call the top to top discussions. Right? It's like, okay, here are the things that we're doing together today that are working, that's helping the customer to make more money. Here are the things that we've identified that are eroding value, that need to be fixed. And here's what you said you're going to do about it and when. And here's the impact it's going to have. Okay, We've now also agreed on this short list of things that is going to help us reach our aspiration that are also beneficial for you. What's our team? What are our key milestones? How are we tracking it over time? And so now you can have those update meetings, right, with the account plan, if you will, as the framework. But it just helps you to have the right conversation, the right key milestones, metrics and updates. So you work together in a partnership, which is ultimately what you want to do.

And then how often should we be coming back and reviewing this with the client, reviewing this internally, how do we make sure we keep on track?

You talked about milestones at least annually for the entire plan because things could change. But then if you take components of it, you develop the milestones that are relevant for that component of the plan. So, for example, if the client says, we really want to enter a new. The customer says, we want to enter a new market. Our growth strategy is about entering a new market. We think that your capabilities and your products and services can help us really enter that new market and win. We want to enter that market in 18 months. Okay, back up from the 18 months. Right. What are the key things that we need to measure and monitor and work on together to ensure that we are ready to enter that market in 18 months and achieve a success that we thought. Right. As an example.

Awesome.

Yeah, that's great.

So I think this is a super overview of the aspirational account planning process. And I think for anybody watching, anybody that sees a recording of this, I think it's a really great primer in terms of how to think about it.

Right.

And we haven't gone deep in any of these areas yet. We're going to do that on some subsequent sessions on account planning. But, Keith, thanks for the insight on this. I think this is really valuable. It's really useful.

It's been fun, too. Yeah, thanks so much. It's been good. 1.

And we are going to, as I said, be hitting account planning further as we get into the quotas, too, Mark. And we're going to talk about quotas, right?

Yeah.

And some of the big considerations and changes behind quotas, you know, and we'll talk about quotas in regard to the account plan as well, because sometimes we can use account planning to help inform our quotas. But then kind of the psychology of how do you not get into the trap of knowing that your account plan is going to be used to set your goal? Right. So how do we make sure people are actually, you know, providing really great, valuable information without fear of. Of, you know, getting hit with a bigger retribution. Retribution.

Goal retribution.

Don't induce the sandbagging. Right, right.

We will be getting into that, I believe, in our next session that's happening in two weeks. But more on that, we'll be sending something out around that. So.

So if you have questions, feel free to reach out to us at Sales Globe, or you can reach out to Keith at Luminous Strategies. And then we'll be letting you know about upcoming roundtables as well that you can join us on. And you can also just contact us@infoalesglobe.com if you have questions or, as we said at the outset, Michelle, tough sales challenges.

Yep.

So we encourage you to reach out to us. But thank you, everybody, for joining us.

Thanks so much, Keith. Thank you for your time. You've been generous with your time. We appreciate it. And we want to wish all of you a great weekend. Everybody, have a wonderful weekend.

Yeah, have a great weekend. Thank you guys again.

Bye.

Okay, bye.