This is the first blog in a series on the topic of Account Management. You may be wondering, “Why a series of blogs?”. The answer to this question is simple: Account Management is seemingly a straightforward topic yet time and again, we see Account Management being a misunderstood and/or sub-optimized business ...

As we work with embedded Professional Services (PS) organizations seeking to better play their strategic role in differentiation, pull-through, intimacy, and growth for the entire company, many wrestle with how to meet their near-term financial commitments to the business while transforming to this more impactful, strategic role.  For most organizations, ...

Roughly 70% of all strategic alliances fail.  For most companies, the concept of a strategic alliance makes sense and seems simple, so why do they consistently get it wrong? While partnership may sound straightforward, companies often commit four mistakes in selecting and executing alliances: They choose the wrong partners with misaligned ...

In 18 years of commercial experience both as a consulting leader and sales executive, the typical response to “how did it go?” is “We had a good meeting.”  Early in my career, I thought this was good news: we gave a great presentation or demo, everyone was engaged, they asked ...

Talent Development & Customer Intimacy As I stated in my last post, talent is always important and is one of the key drivers of building and sustaining customer intimacy. Your people will constantly be generating new Ideas, then taking those Ideas to your customers and delivering on the promises made. In addition, ...

Many of our historically product-focused clients are shifting their organizational and operational focus to address buyers’ needs in their key markets. Talent is always important but is particularly critical as businesses move to these customer intimacy-based models that require a deep understanding of the market needs. A transformation to an intimacy-based ...

    Products and Services Inevitably Commoditize. Companies Don’t Have To. Dean McMann and Mark Slotnik share how to manage account issues to build the relationship with the customer and enhance the overall customer experience.

  B2B companies often struggle to deliver outstanding customer experience (CX). In a B2B environment, customer interactions are typically complex: fragmented across participants with dispersed decision-making and no unified visibility of the customer’s needs. Fostering intimacy and driving customer satisfaction requires companies to focus on the customer’s end-to-end journey. Elevating the ...