Turn the Picture Upside Down to Transform your Account Planning

Repetitive Tales of the very much Expected won’t work in our new World of Change

My early sales career was spent selling Apple products to local printing firms. It was a great wave to ride but I remained frustrated at my failure to convince the biggest printer on my patch of the benefits of theMacs’ amazing graphical user interface or the wondrous apps that would surely transform their business. I diligently followed my calling plan and sat in front of the owner every six weeks to replay my pitch and point him to Apple’s trade press advertising for that week which he duly studied with his loupe.

He refused to ‘Think different’.

I made no progress until I shared my frustration with myFather in Law. He was a customer of the printers and asked ‘Why would they care? Pretty much everyone there will retire in the next few years.’ This left. me confronting the fact that I had been wasting my time. The owner didn’t want to transform his business; he wanted to transform his retirement. I stopped pitching my cool and contemporary ‘sizzle’ against their lifetime of trade skills and, with the help of my Finance Director, focused on understanding how the owner planned to maximise the sale value of the business and fund his retirement.

The new line of thinking was a revelation. My objective didn’t change but my understanding of the customer and subsequent approach to the new challenge did. After failing to sell a box I was now selling numerous boxes, applications and services the owner used to build value in his printing business by winning new customers, selling new design services and employing younger, cheaper, labour. The business was able to present itself as vibrant and at the vanguard of an industry in transformation while the printers themselves carried on exactly as they had before.

I was now looking at the customer in a new way … “upside down”.

Salespeople and account managers are programmed to demonstrate confidently they understand the business of their customers. They are unlikely to volunteer gaps in their knowledge and will strongly resist the idea that today’s insights are tomorrow’s sand trap. I was no different. Now is the moment to actively challenge everything you think you understand about your customer.

Look at the Customer Upside down

One creative way to think differently about a customer is to use a method for learning how to draw from the book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards.

The principle of Betty’s teaching is that learning to draw is tough because when we look at an object or a scene our brains default to labelling everything we see based on a catalogue of previously acquired information and make any new information fit the same, familiar, pattern, typically guided by analytic or sequential thinking driven by the left side of the brain.

So, a beginners’ drawing of an apple, a figure or a house recalls existing images, shapes and relative proportions rather than what is actually in front of us. This ignores key factors such as perspective, light, shadow and the relationship between different subjects. We need the right side of the brain to apply visual, spatial or perceptual filters and gain a clear understanding of the story the picture is telling and creatively challenge different interpretations before acting on the most productive response.

Betty’s teaching sees students literally turn a subject upside down before starting to draw, in order to more faithfully recreate an image, before returning their finished work to the correct position. This takes practice but the result is a consistent ability to create work without bias, preconceived errors or omissions.

Here are 4 high impact topics to apply some ‘right side’ of the brain filters to help negate blind spots, bias and assumptions and re-imagine a customer account plan.

Set Breakthrough goals

The point here is to challenge formulaic thinking and behaviour. Unpick the target that is always last year’s number plus 15%; raise the heat on any account lead who cannot make personal introductions to everyone on the C suite or brief on the details of the last earnings call; ask questions of any sales leader or CEO who has not spoken to their most important accounts in the last 3 months. These are examples of common behavioural and data gaps that allow comfort zones to be tolerated.

Rethink goals that are either unrealistic or underwhelming and test for thought processes that amplify comfort zones. In his excellent book ‘The Barcelona Way’, Damien Hughes studies the factors that make FC Barcelona such an enduring global footballing success story and, among the many lessons the book explores, he unlocks the need to re-invent constantly a common sense of purpose in order to avoid key actors drifting in to personal or corporate comfort zones. He also cites Barry Gibbons, former head of Burger King, who is credited with the line ‘Comfort zones represent the opposite kind of thinking to that which moved Michelangelo to paint the Sistene Chapel ceiling rather than the floor’. We might not be selling burgers but it’s a great line.

Communicate New things in New ways to stand out

Buyers are jaded and tired. There are more sellers placing more calls, sending more emails and posting more claims of excellence which have the effect of reducing the available oxygen for everyone. Sellers need to adapt and find new ways to communicate, new reasons to collaborate and different conversations to engage with. This could look like decisions about video platforms, revamped messaging or targeted skills training such as, for example, active listening or the art of storytelling. Even the most seasoned salespeople will agree that while they may have been trained in these topics, they have never been trained in times like these.

Leaders should also be paying attention to the quality of thinking and collaboration that binds sales teams with product and marketing.Are their goals and objectives aligned? Do they understand what each other’s success looks like? Do they have a shared plan? Even the most diligent and optimistic management team will be wrestling with current market challenges and most likely have torn up the original plan.

Communications should reinforce credibility; show (or remind) the customer how you consistently achieve results for them and demonstrate they can rely on you to deliver measurable and applicable value —all the time being careful to ensure the customer knows what that means in their own language!

Align the Plan with the Customer’s Strategy

Identify the biggest problems the customer has to solve; obstacles they must address, commitments or obligations they must meet, opportunities to exploit or mistakes they must rectify. Use this to imagine the customers’ internal business case for taking action including ideas for how you would test and validate your assumptions. This could be developed into a role play of the presentation your sponsors would give to their boss — how would that go? How do you contribute for shared benefit?

McKinsey published an article in April describing the impact of Covid on spending habits, digital adoption, remote communications and the relationship between buyers and sellers.Strategies will now be well established and customers will be clearer where they are willing and able to spend money. That’s a lot of change in a short period of time and the account strategy must keep pace and remain aligned.

Today, account plans must focus on building messages of ‘help’ rather than ‘pitch’ and use the moment to become distinctive in the eyes of the customer by uncovering the impact of change on spending, process, digital adoption and their people. The opportunity to build a revenue story will naturally follow and the opportunity to solve customer problems will emerge.

Be Easy to Trade with

Customers value relationships with suppliers who are easy to deal with which makes an account review a great opportunity to improve processes and become easier to trade with. Many companies will learn how to operate with fewer staff and look to suppliers to ensure any supply chain friction is minimised and requires fewer hands.

This could also include an evaluation of skills and knowledge across the team; topics where competency gaps risk sales and account. teams being seen by the customer as ‘commercial admin’ rather than useful problem solvers. Consider an amnesty and refresh of collateral, messaging, references and use cases to show an up to date understanding of customer challenges and relevant application of ideas.

Margin notes…

The challenges we all face highlight the need to understand our customer’s business, extend the relationship base and find new ways to communicate the value and impact we bring. Failure to do this risks hungry competitors finding credibility gaps and attacking the relationship. It is worth the effort to challenge the account plan, and the mind set and behaviours behind it, to inspect and secure the footholds, extend relationships into new areas and search for new problems to solve. There is no ‘business as usual’ anymore.

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