The power of service

Service doesn’t have to be selfless. In fact, service gives us the opportunity to validate our own expertise by creating genuine value for others.

Are you in the service business? Turns out that most of us are. A World Bank study showed that in high-income countries, services represent 66% of GDP compared with only 35% in low-income countries. In Australia, services employ more than 8.6 million people, representing 76% of all employment nationally.

Service underpins every interaction we have with another human being. To work in service of others is to build cities, make things happen and change lives. As a purpose statement for the world of work, this is a pretty compelling one.

A recent study by the American Psychological Association, which surveyed more than 1200 full and part-time workers aged 18 or older, found that 51% of workers stayed in their current job because it “gives them the opportunity to make a difference”.

The difference we make to others isn’t always visible, but it can be profound.

For example, this time last year my family and I were in Charleston, South Carolina.

Charleston is built below sea level. Unfortunately, our visit coincided with hurricane season, and on the last day of our stay the downtown area had flooded. It was a Saturday, and we needed to get to the car hire place by lunchtime or we would be stuck for the next two days. Uber had called it quits, and a taxi stalled on its way to get to us. After a fraught couple of hours, we were lucky to be offered a ride by the front desk manager at the hotel who had just finished his shift.

As we gratefully unloaded our bags at the car hire place in the pouring rain, the rental manager gave us a choice of two completely unfamiliar cars we could choose to take. In our frazzled state, we were ill equipped to make any kind of choice.

As our lizard brains tried to switch off ‘fight or flight’ mode to take in what he was saying, my partner asked him: "Which one would you choose?"

The manager didn’t hesitate. "The Kia Soul" he said. "It's newer, higher and will give you more clearance if you hit any flooding on the way to Georgia."

Sold. Emboldened by his confidence, we made it out of South Carolina - and into Savannah, Georgia - successfully navigating several flooded roads.

The real power of service is for the service provider. When customers value your expertise, it validates why you do what you do, and has the potential to turn routine, margin and painful work into aspirational work that serves your purpose on the planet.

It’s not always easy to be in service. But it’s worthwhile when you have a day like this; a day when you get to use your expertise, and this really helps someone.

I hope you have that kind of day today.

Why it’s good to be an underdog

If you want to win, you must be dominant, all-powerful and able to effortlessly crush your opponent, right? Well, not always. It turns out that there's a very special place in our hearts for winners who don't have those qualities, and who struggle valiantly against the odds. 

"The dam is broken.....the 62-year drought is over….". So declared the television commentator two minutes before the siren sounded on the 2016 Grand Final last Saturday, when the Western Bulldogs kicked the final goal that gave them an unbeatable lead over match favourites, the Sydney Swans. 

Dogs by name, and underdogs by nature, the Western Bulldogs hadn't won a premiership since 1954. They had already pulled of a coup just by making it to the Grand Final.

Though widely considered unlikely to win, the Bulldogs fought their way to a 22-point victory.

With it came the cheers and tears of thousands of people – including many, like me, who aren't even football fans. Why were we so affected by their win?

Some of the most famous movies of all time tell the real-life stories of underdogs who triumphed over adversity, including Rocky (inspired by the story of Chuck Wepner), 8 Mile, Erin Brockovich and my personal favourite, Eddie the Eagle. We see our own hopes and dreams reflected in their epic struggles.

Seeing others at a disadvantage also tends to ignite our sense of fairness and justice. This means that supporting the underdog is one way that we can confront and reduce inequality.

In fact, even suggesting that a team or person is the underdog makes us more likely to support them. In study published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, researchers asked 71 participants to imagine that two teams — one ranked higher than the other — were going to compete in an Olympic swimming event. In all scenarios, the participants said they would prefer to see the lower-ranked team prevail over the higher-ranked one, even if that higher-ranked team had been the underdog in a previous scenario.

We also relate better to underdogs, seeing them as more “real”, or more authentic. In another study, psychology professor Joseph Vandello from the University of Florida asked students to watch a basketball game in which they were told that one team was the favorite. After watching the footage, the viewers characterised the underdog team as having less “intelligence” and “talent,” but more “hustle” and “heart”. Again, this pattern was consistent even when the scenario was flipped so that the other team was framed as the underdog. The viewers simply liked the people who were losing more than they liked the winners.

What does this mean for you and your team?

If you’re already the underdogs, take heart.

In his book David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants, Malcolm Gladwell says that bigger is only better up to a point.

Gladwell identifies 7 characteristics of the "winning little guy", including an honourable reputation; doing everything in in person; determination; empathy; teamwork; and being both passionate and likeable.

To me, this also provides an excellent summary of the qualities of every winning bid team I have ever worked with, no matter how large or small.

But if you’re not the underdogs, take this as a warning.  

If your team already feels like they are the sure-fire winners, and they are in any way arrogant or entitled about this, you may have a problem on your hands.

Just like a Grand Final, one thing is for sure in a competitive pitch - it isn't over until it's over.

The culture you want for your pitch team is one where the prevailing conversation is about what we can do for the customer, not what's in it for us.

So how can you get your team to think and behave like underdogs, and harness the extra energy and empathy that comes along with it? Here are five values and behaviours to encourage. 

1. Ask more questions. Underdogs assume less, read the briefing thoroughly, and carefully flag any issues and concerns.
2. Speak with humility. Underdogs don't assume they already know everything, and they treat the opportunity (and the customer) with respect.
3. Work harder. Underdogs are in early, stay late, and put in the hard yards when they need to. They don’t leave the work to someone else. 
4. Work as a team. Underdogs don't blame each other when things get difficult, and adversity will bring them even closer together, rather than pulling them apart.
5. Express thanks and gratitude. Underdogs are excited just to be on the journey, and aren't solely focused on the destination or the win.

Would your proposal get a standing ovation?

When we're pitching something new to a customer, our main task is to convince them that will be better off with us than they would be without us. This means transporting them to a brighter, bolder future that they never knew existed; something that too many proposals simply fail to do.

Recently, I saw the stage show Velvet, a disco mash-up featuring burlesque, circus performers and one of Australia’s most enduring pop stars, Marcia Hines.

In the real world, the show ran 90 minutes. In the Velvet world, this felt like only 90 seconds. It was that good.

From the opening bars of the disco classic If You Could Read My Mind to Craig Read’s exuberant, pink and yellow lycra-clad hula-hoop act set to the thumping beat of Shake Your Groove Thing, Velvet was like being transported straight to Studio 54 circa 1974. By the end of the show, DJ Joe Accaria had every single person in the Malthouse Theatre on their feet clapping, cheering and dancing to Earth, Wind and Fire's September – one of my favourite songs of all time. As a pitch for the life-changing power of disco, you’ll never see anything better.

When was the last time you could honestly say that a pitch or proposal you worked on got that kind of reaction - from you, from your team, or from the customer?

Instead of offering a tantalising glimpse into a better future, many proposals feel like a slow descent into purgatory.

Something important gets lost in the translation between the vision in our heads and the words that come out on paper. That’s a real shame, because the picture in your head is often a lot more enticing and transformative than the pitch on the page.

A study of 418 executive-level buyers at companies with more than 100 employees by Forrester Research found that 74% of buyers chose vendors who have worked with them to turn a vision into a clear path to value, compared to those who simply respond to a request.

Next time you’re working on an important pitch or proposal, picture a magical place – the place that you know exists – and take your customers there, instead. Then they’ll be clapping and cheering; at least, on the inside.

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant specialising in business that is won through competitive bids and tenders. Her clients have won and retained hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business with many of Australia’s largest corporate and government buyers. Re-Engage is my training and coaching program for organisations with multiple major accounts. It will give your people the framework, skills, and confidence to lead contract renewals with your existing customers. Email info@robynhaydon.com or call 03 9557 4585 to find out more.

What’s in it for me?

When you're the incumbent supplier seeking to retain a customer or contract, big-noting yourself is almost impossible. The customer has experienced how you work, heard about everything you’ve already done (good and bad) and seen you warts and all. Good performance is just an expectation; it’s what you are being paid for. The customer isn’t going to give you a gold star for meeting your KPIs. That’s why relying on your track record when it comes to competing for business you already have is never a successful strategy for incumbents.

Culturally, at least here in Australia, our aversion to other people big-noting their achievements begins early. This year, my son started Year Four, and he and his friends have been learning all about leadership. This culminated in each of the kids campaigning for a junior school leadership position, like Sports Leader, Arts Leader, Environment Leader, Social Responsibility Leader or membership of Student Representative Council.

On the day the kids had to make their pitch to each other, I asked my son how it had gone. His first reaction was one of disdain. "Some people are just show-offs," he said, clearly unimpressed by students who had spent most of their time telling the kids about their own achievements. I asked if there were any pitches he had liked. He told me about a few who had outlined their plans to make things better for others, through imaginative fundraising campaigns, looking after the school grounds, and the inevitable vote-grabber; campaigning for TVs and cushions in the boys’ restrooms. (Apparently, “the girls have them”.)

What’s in it for me? Every buyer (or voter) asks this question, whether they already know and work with us, or not.

When you're pitching again for business you already have, resist the urge to talk only about what you’ve already done, or risk sounding like a know-it-all that no one wants to vote for. Spend at least half of your time outlining your plan to build the customer’s future; this immediately switches the focus from pitching to helping, and you’ll find it comes as a relief both to you and to your audience.

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant specialising in business that is won through competitive bids and tenders. Her clients have won and retained hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business with many of Australia’s largest corporate and government buyers. Re-Engage is my training and coaching program for organisations with multiple major accounts. It will give your people the framework, skills, and confidence to lead contract renewals with your existing customers. Email info@robynhaydon.com or call 03 9557 4585 to find out more.

Five ways to give your clients’ customers an outstanding service experience

The people who engage and pay you (your clients) might be different to the people you provide a service to (the client’s customers).

Acting as an extension of the client’s business is different to acting for yourself.

No matter how much commercial sense it makes on paper, giving over any part of their business to a supplier to manage – especially when it involves their customers – will make your clients nervous at best. At worst, it can make them feel like they’re being operated on without an anaesthetic.

Recently, the Commonwealth Bank’s insurance arm, CommInsure, has been the focus of a Fairfax Media/Four Corners investigation which alleges that CommInsure has pressured doctors to alter or delete medical records and opinions so it can avoid paying claims. CommInsure covers nearly 3 million people through its contracts to offer life and total permanent disability policies to members of nine industry and two public sector super funds. Since the investigation, several of these funds have publicly demanded assurances from CommInsure regarding the treatment of their members, and it has been reported that CommInsure risks the loss of contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars as a result.

“Your customer is my customer.” It’s an easy thing to say, but not so easy to get right. Here are five ways to deliver exemplary service to your clients’ customers, and to make sure that your good intentions in doing so are always on show.

1. Survey customers frequently, and provide honest feedback to the client about what they say about you.
2. Commit to improving your service, follow through and explain what you did and why you did it.
3. When contemplating a course of action with an individual customer, ask: "is this what our client would want us to do?"
4. Get out in front of problems. Own up, show up, and fix it up - fast.
5. Provide a narrative stream of good news in your regular performance reports. This will counteract any negative news, which often gets a disproportionate amount of airtime (and shouting).

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant specialising in business that is won through competitive bids and tenders. Her clients have won and retained hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business with many of Australia’s largest corporate and government buyers. Re-Engage is my training and coaching program for organisations with multiple major accounts. It will give your people the framework, skills, and confidence to lead contract renewals with your existing customers. Email info@robynhaydon.com or call 03 9557 4585 to find out more.

The problem with “customer obsession”

Management guru Peter Drucker once said that the purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer. Whether a business is for-profit or not-for-profit, we need customers to invest in us, to choose us, to buy from us, and to keep doing so over time.

For most organisations, the first step in this journey – customer focus – simply means to observe what the customer does, to serve their needs, and to put their satisfaction above everything else.

So far, so good. But customer focus is a bit like bird-watching; it’s a one-way activity.

Progressive organisations realised that we needed to do more than this, so we became customer-centric. Essentially, this means putting the customer at the heart of the decisions we make; understanding how they come into contact with us; and how our internal processes help (or hinder) our relationship. This evolution has largely been a positive one, and for many is still underway.

Now, however, I'm starting to see another change in the way that we talk about customers – customer obsession. This, however, is not a change for the better.

When we are obsessed with something, it’s usually because it is something we cannot have. The term 'obsession' is associated with repetitive negative thinking – fear, compulsion and addiction – and behaviours like stalking and harassment. That doesn’t sound fun or desirable. It sounds like something that will get you a date with a magistrate.

Why then, are commentators starting to tell us we need a “customer obsession”?

What's really going on here is that suppliers feel as though we have lost our power in relationship to customers. But this is not true. Any time we have something that someone wants, we have power too. What our customers really have is choice. And so do we.

We can choose to think in terms of customer engagement, not customer obsession. Instead of coming from a place of fear, engagement comes from a place of conviction and belief; that we can help our customers build their future. And that’s a change for the better.

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant specialising in business that is won through competitive bids and tenders. Her clients have won and retained hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business with many of Australia’s largest corporate and government buyers. Re-Engage is my training and coaching program for organisations with multiple major accounts. It will give your people the framework, skills, and confidence to lead contract renewals with your existing customers. Email info@robynhaydon.com or call 03 9557 4585 to find out more.

What do customers really want?

What do customers really want? It’s a tantalising question, and the central mission of business development. Get it right, every time, and you'll have more business than you know what to do with.

But like the Holy Grail, the answer to this question can be frustratingly elusive. There are many reasons why this is the case. Here are just a few of them:

Personal differences. Like you and I, customers are complex beings. They don't all want the same thing. It doesn't matter if they have the same problems, are in the same industry, or work for the same company.

Changing priorities. Even the exact same buyer may want one thing one day, but something else the next.

Invisible forces. We can never possibly hope to know everything there is to know about another human being. We can't see everything that's going on inside their world or their head.

People have tried many things to overcome these problems; asking customers what they want, poring over a customer’s mission and vision statements, and telling them what other customers have done in similar situations. Some of this can be useful, to a point. But it is not without its problems. 

For example, have you ever bought a present for a friend who admired something in a shop window, only to find that when you give it to them, six months later, they have no recollection of it and it’s pretty clear that they don’t really want it?

Market research can be a bit like this. It turns out that market research (asking customers what they want) is a poor predictor of what they will actually buy. According to AcuPoll, as many as 95% of new products introduced each year fail. Time Magazine lists the top 3 product failures of all time as the Ford Edsell (1957), which cost $2.9 billion in today’s terms; the Hewlett Touch Pad (2011), which was discontinued almost immediately at a cost of $885m in assets and $755m in wind-down costs; and Crystal Pepsi (1992). All were backed by expensive market research and extensive marketing campaigns.

One useful way to figure out what customers really want is to watch what they do, not what they say.

Yesterday, The Age reported that Spotless Group lost a 31-year contract at Suncorp Stadium to the much smaller O'Brien Group (which employs 6,000 people to Spotless' 30,000) as part of an international tender. Suncorp said that the winning O'Brien bid "best met all key criteria" and described them as innovators, with a bid that included a plan to redevelop Suncorp's 70 bars and restaurants. It can be inferred from this that Suncorp valued the winner’s investment of time and thinking about how to revamp their hospitality suites and overall customer experience.

What are your customers spending their time on? Their energy? Their money?  This tells you what they are valuing right now, and give you clues as to how to frame your own offer. 

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant specialising in business that is won through competitive bids and tenders. Her clients have won and retained hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business with many of Australia’s largest corporate and government buyers. Had a tough year? Missed out on business you really wanted? Let’s make sure 2016 is different. The Pole Position program will position you to win the opportunities on your radar for next year. Email info@robynhaydon.com or call 03 9557 4585 to find out more.

How to avoid becoming a commodity

Buyers don’t commoditise suppliers. We do that to ourselves, by not giving them the criteria to make a better choice.

Warren Buffet once said that “price is what you pay, value is what you get”. While it’s a simple idea on the surface, there’s a lot to this concept of value.

Price is easy to understand, which is probably why we default to it so often. “Value” is much harder.  Value is both a subjective and objective concept. It exists in tangible and intangible form.

Value is like a snowflake – no two people see value in exactly the same way.

What creates value for me probably won’t represent value for you. That’s because we have different hopes, dreams, goals and problems to solve.

Acccording to the Harvard Business Review, value in business markets is the worth in monetary terms of the technical, economic, service, and social benefits a (business) customer receives in exchange for the price it pays for (your) market offering. The HBR authors, James C. Anderson and James A. Narus, point out that these same customers are increasingly looking to their purchasing or procurement departments as a way to increase profits, and therefore will pressure suppliers to reduce prices. (No surprises there).

So, they argue, if we are to have any hope of getting our customers to think about total costs rather than simply the cost of acquisition, it’s essential to have an accurate understanding of what our customers value now, and would value in the future. 

Because of this, I reckon the way we run new business pursuits is completely wrong. We wait until customers tell us what they want, and then, like everyone else, try to give it to them – for the lowest price. And all the while, we know there is a better solution for the customer – if only we could crack the commercial value that will make them sit up and take notice.

A recent study on sales execution trends by Qvidian found that only 63% of salespeople actually make their targets, with pursuits ending in “no decision” the major reason for the shortfall. While four in 10 salespeople thought that an “inability to effectively communicate value” might be behind their lack of success, only half of them also chose this as a skill they needed to work on.

Understanding what customers truly value is the only way to combat price pressure, and to avoid becoming a commodity.

There is thought and work involved – certainly more than sitting and waiting for a tender to cross your desk – but it’s the most worthwhile work you will ever do.

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant specialising in business that is won through competitive bids and tenders. Her clients have won and retained hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business with many of Australia’s largest corporate and government buyers. Had a tough year? Missed out on business you really wanted? Let’s make sure 2016 is different. The Pole Position program will position you to win the opportunities on your radar for next year. Email info@robynhaydon.com or call 03 9557 4585 to find out more.

How to build customers into raving fans

“How likely is it that you would recommend our company/product/service to a friend or colleague?”

If you’ve ever been asked this single question (and given a scale of 1-10 to respond) you’ve participated in the Net Promoter Score, a measure of customer loyalty used by many businesses.

If you respond with a score of 9 or 10, you’re a “Promoter” – and a valuable asset to that business. Promoters are the most likely to buy more, stay longer, and refer other potential customers.

Fred Reichheld, who created the Net Promoter system and is also author of The Loyalty Effect, found that most corporations lose 50% of their customers every 5 years, 50% of employees in 4 years, and 50% of investors in less than one year.

In a bid to address these scary numbers, the Net Promoter Score is a simple, point-in-time measure that can track fluctuations in the customer experience while there is still time to influence any decline.

Even more importantly, polling customers this way helps to identify your most valuable assets – the loyal customers who love you, support you and are prepared to sell you to others.

We all have important customer relationships that need some love and attention to build the Promoter effect.

Come along to How To Retain Your Most Important Contracts and Customers on November 24 in Melbourne and discover creative ways to nurture your most important assets.

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant who helps helps service-based businesses that compete through bids and tenders to articulate the value in what they do, command a price premium, and build an offer that buyers can’t refuse. Don’t let others dictate how far and how fast your business can grow – take your power back! Email robyn@robynhaydon.com to request the white paper for the Beyond Ticking Boxes program.

Three ways to create curiosity in customers and prospects

We all like to buy low, and sell high; to make a good investment and do a good deal. But investing in potential comes with risk, which big companies and government, in particular, aren’t too keen on. Their risk-averse behaviour is what coined the old adage, "No-one ever got fired by hiring IBM"; in other words, that it is safer to hire a firm with a proven track record, even if it does prove more costly (both in dollars and lost potential for innovation) to do so.

The need to mitigate a customer’s risk aversion is one reason why, when trying to sell a customer on something new, we will almost always revert to our past achievements as justification.

Tender request documents issued by buyers also exaggerate the importance of credentials, by giving us points for explaining our experience in similar work.

But this isn't what customers are really buying. Solid credentials may be the price of entry to a competition, but what customers are really interested in is what is coming next.

In To Sell is Human, Dan Pink suggests that we are more likely to buy into something or someone "with potential" - that is, yet to reach their peak. Among other research, he cites a test of two Facebook ads for a comedian, Kevin Shea. The first ad said Shea "could be the next big thing", while the second described him as "the next big thing." The first ad, hinting at Shea's potential, generated far more click-throughs and likes than the second.

Curiosity creates possibility. Here are three ways to create curiosity about your potential, with the aim of expanding the conversations you’re having with customers or prospects.

1. Describe new developments in your field.
2. Talk about something you're tinkering with, or a pilot program you are trialling.

Disclose some of the new thinking you and your team are developing, and explain how this might offer new and improved ways to deliver results.

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant who helps helps service-based businesses that compete through bids and tenders to articulate the value in what they do, command a price premium, and build an offer that buyers can’t refuse. Don’t let others dictate how far and how fast your business can grow – take your power back! Email robyn@robynhaydon.com to request the white paper for the Beyond Ticking Boxes program.

How to “game” change

There are two types of change – change that is imposed externally, and the change we choose to make ourselves. Both can be difficult, but only one is inevitable.

In business, we have change imposed on us all the time. Company restructures, legislative change and compulsory competitive tenders are all examples of externally imposed change. This kind of change can shake us up in unpleasant ways and make us feel exposed and vulnerable.

The opposite of change is inertia. In physics, an “inert” object continues in its existing state, unless that state is changed by an external force. In other words, when something pushes us, we have no choice but to go with it.

Self-imposed change, however, requires US to do the pushing. This makes it elusive and harder to achieve – even when it is essential.

Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey, authors of Immunity to Change, found that desire and motivation aren't enough on their own to create change, and that change remains maddeningly elusive even when it's literally a matter of life or death. For example, they note that even when doctors tell heart patients they will die if they don't change their habits, only one in seven will be able to follow through and make the change successfully.

Inertia can trap us into under-performing, even when we think we are working hard and doing the right thing.

In Who Moved My Cheese? - one of the world’s best-selling change management books - Spencer Johnson suggests that most of us spend far too much time looking after our “existing cheese” (what we have now) and not going in search of “new cheese” (what we could have, if we only got off our butts and went looking for it). “Movement in a new direction helps find new cheese,” concludes Johnson.  “Life moves on, and so should we.”

The most successful suppliers know they need to overcome inertia to avoid being left behind. They aren’t content with just doing what the customer or contract says they should do, and are always looking for ways to add more value. In contrast, others – who have more of a “set and forget” mentality – don’t realise that they are setting them up to lose.

The good news is that you get to decide today which one you are going to be.

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant who helps helps service-based businesses that compete through bids and tenders to articulate the value in what they do, command a price premium, and build an offer that buyers can’t refuse. Don’t let others dictate how far and how fast your business can grow – take your power back! Email robyn@robynhaydon.com to request the white paper for the Beyond Ticking Boxes program.

The gift that just stopped giving

In an environment where business is subject to competitive tender, giving and receiving gifts and hospitality is fraught with problems. It’s a fine line from appreciation to bribery, and it just got even finer. 

Last week The Age newspaper ran a story investigating gifts, benefits, and hospitality offered to buyers in Victoria’s Government-owned water corporations.

According to the Auditor General, there had been a 40% increase in gifts and hospitality to water corporations in a single year. Staff at City West Water received more than $90,000 over a two-year period, and at Southeast Water it was almost $70,000 over five years.

While the water corporations apparently refused to release their gifts registers at the time of the Auditor General's report, and details only emerged following a freedom of information request by the newspaper, it was not good news for suppliers. 

The Age article mentioned at least a dozen suppliers by name alongside the gifts they had given to their customers, including $5,542 for a conference in Florida, $3,700 for conference tickets in San Francisco, $500 in shopping vouchers and gifts cards and large amounts spent on Australian Open tennis tickets, AFL Grand Final tickets, and many other types of hospitality.

Due to concerns about the appearance of impropriety, independent auditor RSM Bird Cameron was asked to investigate. In this case, they found no correlation between the gifts, benefits, and hospitality offered and the results of tenders.

However, Victoria's water minister has now asked all of Victoria’s 19 water corporations to review and update their policies so that any gift or hospitality worth $100 or more is declared and approval sought before it is accepted. Introducing a new culture around gifts and hospitality is going to be one of the first tasks of the new boards at all water corporations from October.

If gifts and entertaining have always taken the lion’s share of your marketing budget, it’s time to re-think your strategy. While modest gifts and hospitality, will always have a role to play in showing appreciation to customers, what they really value is what’s inside your head.

Business development is still all about relationships, the way those relationships are transacted have fundamentally changed. We’ve moved from a time when people and personal relationships had a lot of power, to one where it’s ideas and innovation that are driving the customer relationship.

Invest in continually bringing your customers insights into how they can compete better, do business better, or move closer to their goals. That is truly the best gift you can give them.

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant who helps helps service-based businesses that compete through bids and tenders to articulate the value in what they do, command a price premium, and build an offer that buyers can’t refuse. Don’t let others dictate how far and how fast your business can grow – take your power back! Email robyn@robynhaydon.com to request the white paper for the Beyond Ticking Boxes program.

Could you fall victim to the Recency Effect?

Human beings have pretty selective memories. It turns out that we judge much of our life experience not on the totality, the average, or a glance back over the highlights, but on the basis of the last few minutes.

Have you ever walked into a customer’s office expecting to make a presentation about performance over the last month or quarter, and spent the whole meeting talking about last week’s non-delivery or a stuff-up that happened yesterday instead?

Welcome to the Recency Effect, which tells us that the most recently presented items or experiences will most likely be remembered best.

In Change Anything, a New York Times bestseller about the science of personal success, the authors conclude that much of what we feel about our daily relationships stems from only a few moments that overwhelmingly colour our perception.

The book relates a study by Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, who asked colonoscopy patients to rate their level of discomfort during an unanaesthetised procedure. (Australians, give thanks that we don’t do things that way here. Ouch).

Not surprisingly, none of the test subjects gave glowing reports of their colonoscopy, but the comfort levels they reported had almost nothing to do with the total amount of pain that they felt during the awkward and uncomfortable procedure.

The only thing that mattered was how painful it was right at the end.

What do colonoscopies have in common with contract or service delivery? Maybe more than you think. For a customer, giving over control of part of their business to a supplier, it really CAN feel like being operated on without an anaesthetic.

Your job is to make whatever you do for them as pain-free as possible. And no matter how well you’re doing generally, take extra care for at least three months before you need to compete again.

This will make sure that one or two mistakes don’t derail your good work forever.

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant who helps helps service-based businesses that compete through bids and tenders to articulate the value in what they do, command a price premium, and build an offer that buyers can’t refuse. Don’t let others dictate how far and how fast your business can grow – take your power back! Email robyn@robynhaydon.com to request the white paper for the Beyond Ticking Boxes program.

What Choppergate can teach us about customer expectations

Choppergate is a timely reminder that no matter how well documented and well-understood our work practices may be to us, customers could have very different ideas about what’s acceptable.

Recently the Federal Government in Australia was rocked by an expenses scandal known as “Choppergate”. While scrutiny over the spending of taxpayer money is nothing new, Choppergate has uncovered a systemic mismatch between what the voting public thinks is an acceptable use of public money and the internal policies and practices of the government that is spending it.

If you’re not in Australia, have been living in the outback or doing a digital detox for the last couple of weeks, here’s what has been happening:

• Federal Parliament Speaker Bronwyn Bishop, a member of the governing Liberal Party, has been condemned for spending an excessive amount of money on charter flights, the most contentious of which involved flying the 100km between Melbourne and Geelong to attend a party fund-raising event.
• While this was not considered official business, and the money has been repaid, other examples of Bishop’s prolific use of charter flights do apparently fall within the “rules”.
• According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Bishop spent $139,196.01 on charter flights while a junior minister from January ‘98 to December ‘01, almost seven times the amount spent by Tony Abbott (now Prime Minster) and Joe Hockey (now Federal Treasurer).

The Choppergate scandal has inspired hundreds of memes on social media, including my personal favourite:

(Source: http://mobile.news.com.au/national/politics/internet-skewers-bronwyn-bishop-over-choppergate-scandal/story)

Within important contracts and customer relationships, we have a set of external KPIs and contract conditions that we need to adhere to. Outside this, though, exist a whole raft of internal work practices and policies that may conflict with or contradict the intention of our customer agreements (whether they’re formalised or not). For example, I once worked with an organisation that had a small contract with a large government body and was seeking to win a bigger slice of their (substantial) business. However, despite their good work in meeting KPIs they were getting resistance from the customer that the management team couldn’t explain.

While unpacking their work practices, we discovered that their contract delivery team was sending 100 emails a week to the customer’s organisation – all of which required an answer. It’s no wonder the customer was getting frustrated, and management was getting stonewalled when they tried to ask for the new business they felt should be a natural consequence of their good performance.

What’s normal practice for us may come as a shock to customers, and could be the hidden barrier that stands in the way of doing more and better business together. Want to know if you’re vulnerable, and how to fix it? Join me at How To Retain Your Most Important Contracts and Customers in Melbourne on August 6 – I’d love to have you there. 

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant who helps helps service-based businesses that compete through bids and tenders to articulate the value in what they do, command a price premium, and build an offer that buyers can’t refuse. Don’t let others dictate how far and how fast your business can grow – take your power back! Email robyn@robynhaydon.com to request the white paper for the Beyond Ticking Boxes program.

Take your power back!

For those of us old enough to remember, the golden age of selling in business-to-business markets was at least 20 or 30 years ago.  Back then, business was done on a handshake, relationships were king and suppliers had a lot of power. If you were running a business or doing any selling back then, you probably felt like you were in control.

Fast forward to today, and business of any size and scale is done through bids and tenders, procurement is king, and suppliers don’t seem to know what to do any more.

The world of sales has fundamentally changed. But some of us are still selling like it’s 1985, Wham is at the top of the charts and we are jamming out “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” on the Sony Walkman wearing our Choose Life t-shirts and fluoro cut-off gloves.

OK, maybe that was just me, but you get the picture. It’s chaos, it’s not pretty (truly) and it’s not working. Something has to change.

What’s really going on here is that we feel like we have lost our power.

It’s fair to say that not everything we’d like to control is within our control. We can’t control how customers buy. We can’t control what competitors do and say. And we can’t control how we feel about any of these things. But we can control how we exercise our CHOICE. And we can choose to think more broadly, to feel differently and to act despite our fears and challenges.

I reckon it’s an exciting time to be in business. Our world is full of possibility and potential. But this is underpinned by rapid and unrelenting change that brings many challenges.

Customers have these challenges too. So we’ve moved from a time where people and personal relationships had a lot of power, to one where ideas and innovation are the primary currency that drives customer relationships.

According to a recent study by TEC (The Executive Connection), a global network of company CEOs, the five issues keeping CEOs up at night are talent management and the need for cultural fit; the role of technology in re-shaping existing business models and creating new opportunities; the globalisation of markets; embedding an innovation mindset; and the perennial need to make good decisions. (Read the full report here) 

Do you have a solution for one of these? Prospects and customers want to hear about it.  

It’s time to take your power back, show them what they don’t know (but should) and build your customer’s future. This is what creates real and lasting customer partnerships.

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant specialising in business won through formal bids, tenders and proposals. She is the author of two books on proposals and sales, including Winning Again: a retention game plan for your most important contracts and customers. Read more about it here.

Five signals that your customer relationship is running out of road

Customer relationships aren’t just about people anymore. We are moving away from an environment where personal relationships had a lot of power, to one where ideas and innovation are the primary currency that drives customer relationships.

 When I speak to senior people who are in charge of important customer relationships, there are two things they always tell me. The first is that they’re doing a good job. The second is that they have a “good relationship” with the customer.

Last week, I wrote about the risk of being a one-hit wonder; a supplier that isn’t invited back for a second contract term. Sure, you might think, that could happen – but never to me.

 So let’s dig a little bit deeper. How can we define a “good” customer relationship? What does it really look like? How do you know if you have one, or not?

 A good customer relationship is one where both parties are receiving equal benefit, and have equal interest in continuing. Here are five signals that your customer relationship may not be as good as you think it is, and is in fact at risk of running out of road:

 1.     You set regular performance review meetings with the customer, but they keep pushing them out or cancelling.

2.     Your service delivery plan looks exactly the same as the day the contract started.

3.     You're hitting all your targets or key performance indicators (KPIs) easily.

4.     You hear that competitors are in there pitching new ideas.

5.     There are changes coming up in the customer's business that you don’t know about, haven't thought about, or haven't developed a strategy to help them with.

These risks are easily avoided if you have a plan. You can call this anything you like; a retention plan, a growth plan, or a client service plan. I call it a “Ready to Re-compete” Plan.

What's important is that you actually HAVE a plan for change, and that you're not just delivering on the baseline of what the contract and the customer originally asked you to do. 

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant specialising in business won through formal bids, tenders and proposals. She is the author of two books on proposals and sales, including Winning Again: a retention game plan for your most important contracts and customers. Read more about it here.

Is your new idea meaningful for your customer?

Customers aren’t always rational in the way they buy things. Before we get too excited about our new, innovative offering, it is important to think first about the customer’s goals, pressing problems and their appetite for change.

Meaningful innovation resonates with your customer’s goals and solves one or more of their big, gnarly problems – particularly problems that no one else has been able to solve yet. New ideas that focus on opportunity creation can also be useful, but are harder to sell, unless you have a growth-minded customer and the potential of a big payoff or return.

The father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, suggests: “We will do more to avoid pain than to gain pleasure.” Most people are therefore much more motivated to resolve an issue that is keeping them up at night than they are to take a risk on a bright shiny opportunity that may or may not be better than their current reality.

For example, my family gave up its old ‘fatback’ analogue television only a month before the digital television switchover. We even took this 60kg TV with us to our new (two storey) place, where it was installed upstairs. Not long after, we found out that the analogue signal in our area was about to be switched off forever, rendering the TV useless. So we had to hire the removalists back to lug it down the stairs and take it away again!

As it turned out, my family wasn’t really that interested in buying a new TV to watch all the extra channels offered by digital TV (the bright shiny opportunity). We didn’t change over our old TV set until we were faced with the prospect of a black screen (big gnarly problem).

Before you rush out to talk to a customer about your bright, shiny offering, remember that while customers do expect innovation from their incumbent suppliers, no one wants change simply for the sake of change. 

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Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant specialising in business won through formal bids, tenders and proposals. She is the author of two books on proposals and sales, including Winning Again: a retention game plan for your most important contracts and customers.

Incumbency + innovation = guaranteed return on investment

Are you pursuing new ideas SPECIFICALLY to benefit your major customers?

If you are in a service business that is accustomed to getting paid for things before it will even contemplate doing them, chances are, you might not be.

Typically, we pitch for a contract and do the work later. The contract defines the scope and the performance measures, and everyone’s attention is focused on meeting these. In this environment, the thought of positioning new ideas and investing cash without a “guaranteed return” is often difficult for business development leaders get their heads around.

However, no matter how good your performance is, the biggest risk of losing a customer or contract is to do no more than focus on the day-to-day.

In my book Winning Again, procurement expert Neil Hubbard sums up the buyer’s perspective beautifully. “Don't wait until it's time to do a tender”, he says. “As soon as you're awarded the contract, your time starts. Be very conscious that in three years’ time, your contract will come up. Start working on innovation that will bring cost savings or benefits to our business and start telling us what you're going to do now.”

When you’re innovating in a way that is designed to help a major customer grow their business or to do business better, you ARE guaranteed a return: a better reputation and relationship with the customer that will help you to win again.

And there is another benefit too. When you start to think this way, you’ll find there are many people working in your business who would love to have an opportunity to do more for your major customers – provided that the leadership culture will support them.

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant specialising in business won through formal bids, tenders and proposals. She is the author of two books on proposals and sales, including Winning Again: a retention game plan for your most important contracts and customers. Read more about it here.

Go wide for new ideas

When it comes to developing new ideas that will be meaningful to your most important customers, breakthrough insights can come from anywhere. Some evolve by thinking more laterally about what’s right in front of us. But others come from educating ourselves in ideas and disciplines that are outside our core area of expertise, our industry, or our life experience.

For example, one of the ways Steve Jobs came up with new ideas was to maintain a lifelong interest in learning and new experiences. While in college, Jobs took a course in calligraphy, which at the time had no practical application to his work. What he experienced came to life later in the Macintosh computer, the first of its kind to prioritise typeface, fonts and calligraphy.

When considering your team’s professional development needs, try to think more broadly than technical training that further entrenches the status quo. Technical training is an important way to keep staff qualifications up-to-date, but mostly maintains the baseline and isn’t the best way to deliver new thinking – especially when all your competitors are doing the same programs.

So help your team to learn more laterally. They can learn leadership from an explorer who has spent time leading a team in Antarctica, or learn better ways to relate to colleagues and customers by talking to a social worker who helps people navigate very complex personal or family issues.

Innovating in a long-term business relationship is fascinating and inspiring, but it’s also time consuming and difficult. New projects take time to deliver results and give us tangible evidence to talk to the customer about. Going wide for new ideas helps keep the fun in the game for your team, and ensure that innovation actually happens.

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant specialising in business won through formal bids, tenders and proposals. She is the author of two books on proposals and sales, including Winning Again: a retention game plan for your most important contracts and customers. Read more here. 

Help your most important customers to build their future

Identifying how we can solve a customer’s big gnarly problems forces us to think beyond our own self-interest. In doing so, we are engaging in an activity that is highly correlated with long-term customer partnerships: delivering meaningful innovation.

When you deliver complex services, and do so through long-term contracts, what you are striving for is just as important to the customer as where you are today. After all, they are buying where you’ll be in three years’ time (or more). And if you’ve already been working together for a while, your customer will probably also need help to navigate problems in their business or market that didn’t exist at the start of your working relationship. As procurement expert Adel Salman pointed out when we spoke for my new book, Winning Again: “suppliers need to put forward a solution that addresses what we are becoming, not what we were in the past when you initially secured the business.”

You are the expert, and the customer expects you to be able to build a picture of how their future will look if they continue to work with you. However, innovating with the customer in mind is different to innovating for yourself. Here, you are acting as a ‘tastemaker’ – an expert who knows what the customer wants before they do.

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Vogue’s Anna Wintour and Apple’s Steve Jobs are all tastemakers who became famous for their innovations. In a long-term customer partnership, the role of a tastemaker is to innovate AND collaborate. You’re still the expert, but the process you follow is more like taking a friend to your favourite restaurant and guiding them through the menu. To do this without straining the friendship requires consideration of their preferences, and compassion for their point of view, and of course the conviction that your expertise will guide them towards a good result.

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant specialising in business won through formal bids, tenders and proposals. She is the author of two books on proposals and sales, including Winning Again: a retention game plan for your most important contracts and customers http://www.winningwords.com.au/winning-again/