“Let them know you want an hour of their time to find out where they’re focused because you want to make sure your solution is optimized to give them the support they need.” – Warwick Brown in today’s Tip 638
How do you reconnect with your client’s priorities?
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes from Warwick Brown, Founder of Account Manager Tips. Here he is:
Warwick Brown: Look, I know it, there’s a lot going on right now. And also kind of a lot of nothing too. I mean, you may have clients who are busier than others in holding patterns and many that are struggling, and all of this can quickly lead to you being disconnected from your client’s objectives as they pivot their business to respond. And once you lose touch with those, well, you run the risk of drifting apart and somebody else sweeping in to solve the problems you didn’t know were there. Oh, wait, I want that.
Hi. I’m Warwick Brown, Founder of Account Manager Tips and host at the Camp Club, a private learning community helping busy account managers get results. Now in today’s Daily Sales Tips, I’m going to share a simple 10 step conversation Kickstarter that will help you reconnect with your client’s priorities.
So quickly drop your client a note, let them know you want an hour of their time to find out where they’re focused because you want to make sure your solution is optimized to give them the support they need. Then you can guide them through this 10 step framework.
Step one. Big picture. What does your client want to achieve in the next 3, 6, 12 months?
Step two. Problems. What are your client’s top issues?
Step three is business outcome. What kind of impact will it make if to their business? If you achieve these goals.
Step four is metrics. Have they got a target? How are they measuring reporting or managing progress?
Step five is stakeholders. Who’s directly affected by the problems? Is there any noise that they want to go away?
Step six is who, and this is who isn’t directly affected, but could make things easier for them. Quite often, they’re not the same people.
Solutions. Step seven. What have they done so far to address these issues? What were the results? You may also want to bounce around some new ideas or potential solutions. You know, if time allows.
Step eight is constraints. What is or may prevent them from solving these problems? What are the obstacles?
Step nine is activities. Talk about how you might solve these things. Thinking about long-term as well as quick wins, you’ll get into the detail later. The point here is just to set the stage for future conversations and deeper dives.
And then finally, step ten is next steps. Is the immediate actions, you’ll both take the first things you and your client will do after the meeting. And that’s it simple and effective.
Now I know 10 steps is a lot to remember, so don’t worry. I’ve got you covered. Take out the show notes where you can download a fillable strategic conversation, starter PDF template, and you can even fill this out together with your client on a zoom call, or you could draw it up on a virtual whiteboard like a mirror, any questions you can find me at Accountmanager.tips on the social media platform of your choice at Warwick Brown or hit me up with a connection request over on LinkedIn that is often out until next time. Bye.
Scott Ingram: To find links to all of the additional resources Warwick just mentioned, just click over to DailySales.Tips/638 and I think you’ll really appreciate the way that he broke down these 10 steps visually. Again, DailySales.Tips/638 for all of that.