CHAPTER 27


Client²

This book has focused on lots of different ways to achieve and sustain competitive advantage by means of winning or keeping an initial piece of enterprise business. Now it’s time to focus on the growth potential that is the hallmark of enterprise accounts. It’s time to think about gaining a competitive advantage by treating each enterprise client as a market unto itself.

Bloom Where You’re Planted

Enterprise accounts are deep and wide with connections and touch points across a vast ecosystem of opportunity.

As mentioned above, each enterprise client is a marketplace in and of itself, deserving similar focus and energy to that which you devote to your territory marketplace. The Client² process enables you to grow these enterprise client marketplaces by following a logical and growth-oriented framework. This is what is meant when salespeople are told, “Bloom where you’re planted.” An enterprise account presents many opportunities for growth, within and beyond the initial engagement. Of course, you want to win as many of those opportunities as possible.

Let’s say you’ve just won the business and your initial engagement is kicking off. At the start of an enterprise business relationship, the focus is always on delivery excellence, and rightfully so. At the same time, this very focus on service excellence presents great opportunities to sell more.

These great opportunities are the focus of the Client² Tool’s five key areas: organic growth, partnerships and alliances, family tree, alumni, and customer’s customer.

Organic growth is the first focus area and the one that selling organizations are most likely to focus on, at least to some degree. This involves the extension and/or the renewal of the current business and also expansion into other groups, divisions, or departments of the enterprise client. The focus should also be on identifying client teams and needs that other products and services in your portfolio can address. So this first part of Client² is all about going deep and wide with the client and across your offerings portfolio. When you think about organic growth, think about:

•   Project renewal/extension

•   Project expansion

•   Other client areas

•   Other client locations

•   Your other products and services

Partnerships and alliances is the next part of the model. An enterprise account will expose you to business, channel, and alliance partners whose relationships with your firm can lead to significant new opportunities within and beyond the current client. Treat these partner organizations like clients and get to know them well—their business models, their offerings, their culture, and so on. Understanding partnerships and alliances leads to collaboration—which leads to business. These relationships, of course, demand some analysis and discretion. Think before you act. When you think about partnerships and alliances, think about:

•   Partners as “marketplaces”

•   Partners’ needs and pains

•   Joint selling

•   Joint delivery

•   “Live” deals

•   Relationships at executive levels

Family tree, the next element of Client², is a slice of the enterprise “pie” too often ignored or overlooked. The quality work that you do in serving the client should add warmth and some level of receptivity with other members of the client’s family as well. Seeking your client’s advocacy and referral is a natural thing when it comes to subsidiaries, sister companies, the parent company, holding company partners, consortium members, and so on. Make sure you consider and research them all. Some companies with no obvious connection operate under the same corporate umbrella: GEICO and Dairy Queen, for instance, are both owned by Berkshire-Hathaway. There are no guarantees, of course, but blood is thicker than water. Working the client’s family tree can and does pay off. When you think about this part of the Client² model, think about:

•   Sister companies

•   Subsidiaries

•   Parents

•   Client’s business partners

•   Industry/trade groups

The alumni category is all about following individual client contacts to new firms if they leave the client organization and being creative and innovative in so doing. You should also work backwards by seeking client referrals into their former employers, where their opinion may still carry weight. Alumni of your client organization who predated your involvement may still give great credence to partners chosen by their previous employer. With discretion, reviewing a client contact’s LinkedIn network can unearth great opportunities to seek connections into new firms where you could win business. Don’t forget alumni of business partners as well. As previously mentioned, good sense, respect, and due diligence should prevail here. When you think about this part of the Client² model, think about:

•   Client alumni in prospect firms

•   Partner alumni in prospect firms

•   Client contacts in prospect firms

•   Client alumni as hires or subcontractors

That brings us to the final Client² focus area, the customer’s customer. In working with an enterprise client, you will often be exposed to their actual customers. These people are likely to be involved with you, as your delivery work may deliver direct value to them—in what is known as a “connected benefit.” Relationships arising in this category can be fruitful opportunities for enterprise selling—but be very careful. You must always carry yourself professionally. Especially in this area, use discretion, and be aware that client concurrence prior to any contact is absolutely critical. Include professional organizations and trade boards in this category because they, too, are close to the client you serve and often deliver referrals that are equally close to your key contacts. When you think about this part of the Client² model, think about:

•   Client’s customers with whom you have become familiar

•   “Connected benefit” sources

A True Story

A national commercial real estate management firm—we’ll call them Servacast Company—has a standard practice of viewing every client as a marketplace unto itself. In other words, they have built a clear process for seeking new business opportunities as offshoots from business that they have already won. A great enterprise success story comes from their Atlanta office. There, they won the local office business of a regional janitorial services firm, and they leased them 4,200 square feet of space in nearby Dunwoody. In working with this local client, Servacast worked the process they always follow in seeking organic growth. They identified that the client was part of a larger operation—a regional janitorial services firm headquartered in Charlotte with seven offices in the southeast. The Dunwoody client was quite pleased with Servacast’s service and provided an entree into a discussion with the corporate headquarters in Charlotte.

Servacast ultimately won the business for all seven regional operational offices, leasing each of them new offices.

It gets better. As part of the Servacast process of viewing each client as a marketplace, they worked the family tree concept and identified that the Charlotte headquarters was a subsidiary of a $1.2 billion firm with companies providing temporary contract services not only in the janitorial space but also in food services, paralegal, and event management. As Charlotte was also quite happy with the service provided to them by Servacast, the contact there facilitated an introduction to the corporate parent. Ultimately an agreement was reached and was signed for Servacast to serve all 48 North American locations of the corporate parent in the four different verticals that they serve.

Now Is the Time

There really is no better time to win business than after you’ve won business. Client² provides the guidance to help identify many new opportunity areas. It is not an event—it’s a mind-set. To enter that mind-set, just ask yourself a simple question, “What have I done today to grow this client?”