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Service Chains – Introduction

This is the first blog in a series on the topic of Service Chains.

Service ChainsSM are a key building block to becoming less opportunistic and more deliberate in your go-to-market approach.

Let’s examine what we mean by the term Service ChainSM.

Service ChainsSM comprise a pre-defined set of sales activities and projects that collectively deliver your solution and value proposition in a manner that facilitates the buyer’s journey to understand, evaluate, and implement new ideas.

The fundamental premise of the Service ChainSM is disaggregation of the big purchase decision (i.e., buying the total solution) into smaller decisions scoped and sized to match the buyer’s position in their purchasing journey – the buyer’s investment grows as the understanding, credibility, and value achieved or achievable increases.

Service ChainsSM are the primary method to formalize the topics and ideas from the Portfolio into executable “how to play” offerings designed for differentiation, intimacy, and/or pull through.  Specifically, Service ChainsSM:

  • Formalize the deliverables of the client engagements and use those deliverables to build credibility and intimacy
  • Create a predictable stream of work that pulls through major revenue sources
  • Reduce the overall sales investment and the risk – for both you and the buyer
  • Provide the basis for account plans, communication plans, and executive interactions
  • Support demand creation by aligning to the way that an executive makes a buying decision
  • Allow selling higher into the organization to executives who set budgets and direction, rather than those who manage budgets – i.e., executives who are above the “Line of SafetySM”

By way of analogy, most successful marriages are not proposed after simply viewing an on-line profile or from a mutual friend’s gushing description of a potential mate.  The couple starts with coffee, drinks, or dinner where they learn a little bit about each other.  If either party is unsatisfied with the interaction, either can bow out of future interactions without having made a significant investment or commitment.  If both parties remain interested, they continue dating and exploring their potential synergy followed by an engagement period.  Bowing out at these later stages means more time and investment was “lost,” but both parties made informed decisions along the way.  Finally comes the marriage based on this mutual exploration and interaction that built trust and understanding of each other’s unique strengths, and weaknesses, foibles and virtues – and synergies as a couple.  Both enter the marriage fully informed, fully committed, and in a relationship built around their unique personalities.  Service Chains deliberately provide a first date, a “going steady” phase, an engagement period, and only after that, a marriage – a process intentionally designed to glean mutual understanding, develop credibility, and tailor the relationship – starting from obtaining the first meeting through conducting sales meetings and guiding the client through a series of tollgates or decisions that consummate in the product(s) or service(s) that constitutes the traditional view of an offer (the marriage).

The graphic below shows the fundamental structure of a Service Chain and its relationship to executive buying decisions.

In our next post, we will explore the different components of a Service ChainSM.

To read the next blog in this series, click here.

Written by: Doug Long

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About the Author: Doug Long is a Partner with McMann & Ransford and has more than 26 years of experience in consulting across various industries, topics, and client challenges. Prior firms include Deloitte and GE. He currently leads our Healthcare Practice.

 

 

Leading with Ideas – The Starting Point for True Intimacy

This is the first blog in a series on the topic of Leading with Ideas.

At the heart of True IntimacySM is being a valued advisor to your clients on important opportunities and challenges to their business. Often conversations that could or should be about these opportunities and challenges are really about how to better use your products and get more bang for the buck in your relationship; these are valuable issues but not True intimacySM discussions. Ideas provide the kernel of change in your relationship from “pushing products” to discussing and advising on valuable business opportunities.

By using “Idea,” we are emphasizing the shift away from a direct linkage to your products and services to the outcomes tied to these valuable opportunities and a point of view on what is involved in realizing those outcomes.  Merriam-Webster’s first definition of “idea” has three parts that capture this shift well:

  1. Idea:
    -a transcendent entity that is a real pattern of which existing things are imperfect representations
    -a standard of perfection: ideal
    -a plan for action: design

In other words, they provide:

  1. A framework in which to view and guide action on the opportunity or challenge
  2. A point of view on what success looks like
  3. An actionable path forward to the desired outcomes

Using Ideas as the focal point of discussions with clients immediately changes the dialog, and therefore, the relationship, because:

  • They focus the discussion on the Idea – not the sales representative’s (or consultant’s) skills, not the company or current relationship, but the Idea.
  • They enable a more consultative conversation – discussing the merits of the Idea in a particular environment, thereby allowing you to demonstrate experience, expertise, and insight while uncovering the executive buyer’s thinking without asking the dreaded and amorphous “what keeps you up at night” questions.
  • They align with the way real decisions are made – instead of working against the process.

Much as you want to elevate your solution delivery to True SolutionsSM, you want to elevate your sales discussions by increasing both value and intimacy as shown below:

 

We’ll explore the facets of Ideas in more detail in future posts, but let’s close with what makes a good Idea:

  • A focus upon seizing an opportunity for a company – be it business growth or protection, increasing revenue, cutting costs, etc.
  • Not wishful thinking, but rather a challenge to see the business differently.
  • Easy to summarize and to express in a few minutes.
  • Actionable, understandable,and straight-forward to evaluate for applicability

And the best ideas have a “wow factor.”

To read the next blog in the series, click here.

Written by: Anthony Paluska

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About the Author: Anthony Paluska is a Partner at McMann & Ransford with experience helping organizations overcome commoditization by developing stronger, more intimate, relationships with their customers. He has leveraged his management consulting, problem solving, and change management skills to support 15+ Fortune 1000 organizations, across a multitude of industries.

Customer Intimacy: A Step by Step Approach to Getting Started

Building Customer Intimacy with the market and leveraging those relationships as a mechanism to grow share-of-wallet at your existing accounts and open doors at new accounts requires more than just new sales approaches and good relationships.  Truly realizing a Customer Intimacy strategy as a competitive advantage takes a commitment to a new way to do business – not just a new way to engage the market.  As a result, getting started is often challenging, especially if you are not the CEO or the executive with authority to directly move the organizational strategy.

 

The first step to embarking on this evolution is making the case for change to obtain the necessary buy-in both up and down organization to lay the foundation for a successful model shift.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We believe this occurs in three steps:

  1. Determine whereyour company is in the journey,
  2. Identify your next specific stepsin the journey, and
  3. Motivatethe organization to take action.

All three steps are critical and the effort to accomplish them should not be minimized. The following sections explore each of these steps and introduce some key best practices for how they might be best achieved.

Step 1: Where Are You on the Customer Intimacy Journey?
Of course, you must understand where you are in the journey before you begin to motivate the organization.  As you know, and we have experienced, companies have been struggling with commoditization for a long time, but not all find themselves in the same place on the journey to overcoming the challenges it causes. Some organizations find themselves in the ‘Form’ stage and have not yet experimented with any of the Customer Intimacy concepts, while most have taken tentative steps even if they do not fully understand the journey.

The following are a few simple questions to assist in assessing your progress on the journey. The point of these questions is to help you understand the scope of the transformation.

  • Have we undertaken the effort to determine if the Intimacy/Indispensability Business Model is the appropriate model for the evolution of our company?
  • Are we (as a team) interested in the future state model and do we have consensus on a shared-vision going forward?
  • Do we know what the journey requires to be successful?
  • Do we understand and are we are willing to undertake the effort (resources, time, commitment) required?
  • Have we established a competent professional services function/capability?
  • Is the services group growing at a sustainable, expected level?
  • Are your services pulling through enough product revenue or do the functions operate independently?
  • Are we focused on the right industry segments and sub-segments?
  • Have we developed key insights to the level to drive Ideas or Service Chains™?
  • Are we implementing some form of solution selling and has it impacted the business in a significant way?
  • Is our product “pull-through” strategy predictable and repeatable?
  • Are we working in a single integrated business model that the entire business understands and is bought in to?

Step 2: Where do we go from here?
This step is much more difficult than determining where you are in the journey as it requires to think about the future state of your business differently, rather than reflect on the current state challenges. Remember, the outcome of this step will be used to motivate the company to take action – therefore it must be specific, actionable, and important enough to capture the attention of the organization.

Examples of next steps include:

  • Evaluating and deciding upon potential move to the Customer Intimacy™model
  • Trying to build different customer relationships in key markets
  • Designing solutions that leverage our services group to pull-through product, software or additional services
  • Determining the segments that are most important to long-term business success and should be focused on with this approach
  • Developing detailed plans for the “Form” phase of the effort
  • Embarking on pilot – in a few key sub-segments, with a few key accounts, or using a few new integrated, Idea-based offers
    • Leveraging pilot milestones for educating the rest of the organization
    • Determining post pilot next stage roll out – verticals, markets, etc.
  • Integrating the sales force into new business model
  • Reorganizing the go-to-market business units to be market-back rather than organized by your product lines or offering

Step 3: How do we motivate action and “make it stick”? 
Let’s assume you have a clear objective – for the next phase of your company’s journey – and you want to get the organization on board.  The change–champion is either the key executive with the authority to take action or more commonly, someone who cannot act alone and must influence the organization to take an interest in the idea.

The champion may be a key executive but not necessarily the one with the authority to make the decision, or she might be the staff executive that sees the organization more broadly and knows what must be done.

In the case that the champion is not the executive empowered to act alone – the process of getting the organization moving comes in stages:

1. The Viral Stage – This is educational and interactive.  Others you respect must begin to share your views.  This can be accomplished by getting them into the discussion – reading what’s being said about the Journey and its benefits, or conducting knowledge-sharing events.
2. The Pro-Draft Stage – This is about getting the executive audience – usually the few key executives that can affect the organization into the discussion and turned on to your point-of-view. This is accomplished by getting them into discussion and educating them about what you all are thinking, then commissioning a quick “what would it look like” benefits analysis.  By asking them to let you undertake the initial steps (identified in step 2) you are gaining an understanding of their motivation.
3. The Organizational Support Stage – Engage a broader audience – spread the discussion liberally throughout the broader organization, sharing details, future state vision, immediate next steps, and interim successes. This can be done in many ways, depending on the organization’s communication style (e.g., discussion boards, newsletters, blogs). This stage makes the effort more real and prepares the organization for action.
4. The Strategy Design Stage – Get the key executives to entertain a proposal of drafting a strategy, planning document on the benefits, risks, etc. of the idea. The specifics of the document must align with the way your company examines opportunities.
5. The Executive Focus Stage – get the executive team focused on the idea in an in-depth way. The best approach is to get them away for a couple of days – to first fully understand the idea of Customer Intimacy as a business model, then present your findings, then do a working session selecting where to pilot the concept.  This provides the executive team with a detailed understanding and the work session allows them to shape the pilot, which helps secure buy-in.
6. The Proceed to Pilot Stage – Close stage 5 with the direct proposal for how your organization will pilot this model – budget, time-frame, goals, etc.

Written by: Anthony Paluska

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About the Author: Anthony Paluska is a Partner at McMann & Ransford with experience helping organizations overcome commoditization by developing stronger, more intimate, relationships with their customers. He has leveraged his management consulting, problem solving, and change management skills to support 15+ Fortune 1000 organizations, across a multitude of industries.