“Your existing customers create a long term plan that helps solve your clients’ business problems and positions you as the obvious supplier of choice and works towards that holy grail of trusted advisor.” – Warwick Brown in today’s Tip 86
How do you do your capture planning?
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Warwick Brown on LinkedIn
AccountManager.Tips
Capture planning eBook
Google Sheets Capture Plan template
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. Warwick is the Founder at Account Manager Tips and helps organizations deliver account growth by empowering key account management with the tools and mindset to succeed. Warwick is an incredible account manager in his own right and knows what it means to deliver value as you’re about to hear. Here’s Warwick:
Warwick Brown: This podcast comes with a word of warning. I’m about to share with you some scary, some frightening statistics. I’ll give you a chance to catch a breath and then let me get right into it. So last GAC insight surveyed have a 900 businesses globally and 57% said new business was their priority even though 70% of their revenue came from existing customers. Okay? Then 65% of those same businesses admitted they had no confidence in their ability to penetrate, cross-sell, upsell, or expand relationships with existing customers. So you probably see where I’m going with this. Let me give you one more statistic. Orain group survey found an average of 28% of sounds. Bids with existing customers were lost to competitors. So your client is at very high risk of leaving if it ever gets to an RFP situation. So let me wrap this up for you and then we can start panicking.
So even though existing business is way more profitable than new business, most companies don’t know how to grow existing accounts. And when it comes to an RFP situation, they don’t know how to win them. He was scared as I am. So this is my daily sales tip is to focus on what’s right under your nose. Your existing customers create a longterm plan that helps solve your clients’ business problems and positions you as the obvious supplier of choice and works towards that holy grail of trusted advisor. So how do you do this? Capture planning, sometimes called pursuit planning, Opportunity Planning, strategy to win, you know, a rose by any other name, a common practice to win new business, but often overlooked when it comes to keeping existing business. So here’s a simple capture plan structure that you can adapt to make your own. There’s no right or wrong. Just focus on the things that you don’t know the answer to and take it from there. The best plan really is the one that works for you. You want to grab a summary, you know some customer insights include key interactions, relationship history, and past performance so you can understand where you are today and how you got there. Think about your client’s most important requirements. What does your client want to achieve? You know, what are their pain points? Go beyond the obvious. Don’t just look at what your client already knows. Think about how you can highlight opportunities to them and solutions to them that they don’t know and then rank them in order of importance. I think about the metrics that matter. It’s important that you position your renewal and your partnership with a clear return on investment in terms of you know how your client understands them. What are the key performance indicators that matter to your client? How can you use real data to measure value and communicate a return on investment? Create an influence and map. What’s the decision-making process? Who are the decision makers? Who are the influences that attractors, you know, the champions are ones that are going to sell for you even when you’re not there. Make a plan to improve engagement and you know, convert those detractors to support it and grow your network of influencers. Have a look at competitor analysis. You know how your competitors placed in the market. How do they score against the most important requirements? Better, worse, where are the gaps? And even if you don’t think your competitors have a foot in the door, you’re probably wrong. So still give this some thought, you know, do a SWOT. Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats. What successes have you achieved that preview a great business partner? What concerns might your client had about your ability to help them achieve their goals? What does your client love about your solution? But don’t they love? Think about all that. Start to collect stories and evidence of the success of your partnership. Over the time you’ve been working with your clients, you’re going to want to refer back to those when it comes time to preparing and presenting your value proposition. So start today with that. Don’t wait until your clients is what have you done for me lately? And then you have to go scramble for some insights and then as you get closer to your contract end date and you’re starting to think about submitting a preemptive proposal to avoid bids and they’re going to market, you want to start to think about pricing to win. You know, your timelines, who you need on your team to help you when and how and when you’re managed, the proposal submission and all that sort of stuff. So lots to think about. So you can see how if you start to build your capture plan early on and you start to think about all these various elements as your partnership progressors with your client, you’re going to be in such a stronger position when it comes time to renew and your partnership and be so well aligned and so opposition that it’s going to be, you know, a no brainer when it comes to renewing. So listen, there’s no time to lose. Show those existing customers some love and get capture planning. Now I’m going to say now, I mean right out head on over to the Daily Sales Tip website where I have a Google sheets template which has a full capture plan. Therefore you as well as an exclusive video or walkthrough that I’ve prepared just for daily sales tips. Listeners, hope you’ve enjoyed this, good luck. Go get those customers and go keep them.
Scott Ingram: So when I said Warwick knew how to create value I wasn’t kidding. In addition to this audio tip he has created a treasure trove of resources to go with it. If you jump over to DailySales.Tips/86 you’ll find his capture planning eBook, which is a nice little 10-page guide. Then he’s also created a capture planning template that is super thorough, along with a video walkthrough. This stuff is gold and Warwick has created it all for you at no cost. Then when you’re doing visiting DailySales.Tips you can jump over to AccountManager.Tips and see more greatness from Warwick including his Ultimate Guide to Strategic Account Planning.
Then check in tomorrow for a short clip from my latest Sales Success Stories interview with Craig Nishizaki.