Step 1: Determine the Entry Point
,You begin your account penetration that leverages creating demand by identifying the right point of entry, that is, which business unit or functional area you should focus on within an account. It’s about knowing what doors to knock on as your initial penetration point. To sort this out, you take four factors into consideration:
These factors work in concert to help you quickly and objectively determine where to start the process of displacing a competitor from a potentially important account. Let’s look at each one in detail.
Now, let’s look at each of these steps through the lens of an example. Suppose that there is a major bank in your territory that you have not been able to penetrate. Your immediate task objective is to determine the right entry point, so you begin by launching your intel-gathering effort. It becomes clear before long that one of three business units could be your target: wholesale banking, community banking, or wealth management.
Political Connectivity
You then focus on the first entry point factor, political connectivity. Heading up each of the business units is a Senior Vice President (SVP) who reports to the bank’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO). As it turns out, the SVP of Wholesale is not in the Enterprise Power Base. Although he’s very senior and well respected, he is also close to retirement. The head of community banking, however, is powerful and definitely part of the Enterprise Power Base, whose Fox is the CEO. The problem there is that you have found out that he is an Opponent when it comes to your company—bad news, indeed! At the same time, your intel suggests that the SVP of Wealth Management may be accessible, but her political strength is questionable. Although it is not what you would like it to be, the best Fox-to-Fox connectivity seems to reside within community banking.
Business Significance
Fortunately, the second factor in determining where to focus—business significance—is more straightforward. Wholesale banking, which centers on other banks and large corporations, is down in both revenue and margin, whereas wealth management has done well, largely due to its transaction fee business model. But the growth play is clearly in community banking, particularly from a margin point of view. As such, you decide that the business significance thumbs up needs to go to community banking.
Business Impact
Business impact will always be business unit specific, so you are now ready to make an assessment of impact potential. Appropriately, your intel gathering focuses on community banking in order to build a much deeper understanding of that business.
After conducting the detailed research, making a few calls, and exercising one or two social network connections, you’re getting a clearer picture of how to provide Unexpected Value. Customer checks are processed manually at the branch level. You know from experience that if the bank were to employ check imaging technology, they could potentially reduce labor by probably one full-time employee (FTE) per branch. After doing the math for the total number of branches, it appears that your solution could save the bank the equivalent of their entire telecommunications budget—and that doesn’t even take into account the positive effect on customer satisfaction and retention. Equally exciting is the option of freeing up customer service personnel to focus on selling new services to existing clients, as this is becoming a priority in the community banking unit. But perhaps best of all is the fact that the bank has no idea that all this is possible, which means that this is your opportunity to move well up the Sales Value Chain to provide Unexpected Value. Although the cost savings or refocusing of personnel would not be a home run, it would certainly get you to second base—another vote for community banking as your entry point.
Supplier Return
The last step is to address supplier return. You have experience with this type of solution and know that little to no discounting is required for the deal to be profitable. Certainly, you’ll have to provide a proof of concept exercise during which you will set up a test installation within a few branches to demonstrate the approach and assess the business impact. But if history repeats itself, that should go well. As such, another check mark goes next to community banking to be your target.
18.226.159.33