Buyers, The People We Need to Know

"By analyzing all the data we had collected, we had identified other pockets of issues that we could help with. Others in the company had had a pretty good idea that these were problems, but we provided facts. On the last page of our presentation, we listed four or five issues and what we thought could be done about them. It was clear that we could help fix them because of the power of the information that we had. It was pretty clear that management wanted our help.
"By then, I knew a lot of people in charge of the operations in question, and so I went to them and told them what we had found, too. By this time, the issues were on the senior management agenda, so I was giving these people the gift of information. I could ask what they planned to do about the problems. By then, people were aware of the relationships we had at high levels.
"We worked on only some of these issues, because they weren't all of the same importance. I want to stay on important issues and never want to give the impression that we are strip-mining a client."
I have shortened this story a good deal to retain the focus on buyers. If you review it, you will find that they include the head of customer service, the COO, the CEO, and the heads of several business units. There are almost certainly others not mentioned. The deep relationship that the consultant has with the company is really, of course, the sum of these relationships. The relationships were essential to cross-selling.

The Whole of Your Relationships at an Account is Worth More than the Sum of the Parts

Our research into cross-selling shows that if you have many relationships at a client, the sum is worth more than the whole of the parts. This is because the more people you talk with in an account, the more combinations and permutations of information you can make. The combinations allow you to draw inferences of value to the client and to cross-selling.The number of combinations and permutations of information you can make grows geometrically as the number of people you talk to in an account increases. Someone who talks with 50 people in an account is in a position to draw a lot more inferences than someone who talks to only two.

The value of talking with many people in an account is shown by the case of Alan Weyl, a partner at CSC Consulting, when he was working for a large telecommunications equipment manufacturer. During the course of the work, Weyl and his team talked with many people in many parts of the organization. Two midlevel engineers in two different divisions described problems their divisions were having managing order fulfillment and inventories. They needed to lower costs and improve service to key customers in some specific ways. No one in the company seemed to be aware that the two divisions were facing identical problems. This insight led to a major sale for CSC. If Weyl and his team hadn't met with so many people in the organization, they wouldn't have been able to gain the insight that showed them how to provide their client with huge value.
Talking with many people in an account provides consistent, if more mundane, value by giving you information that makes all your conversations at the company easier. You can often give information you get from A to B and vice versa.

One professional, who developed many accounts over a long career, used the information he got from his contacts in an account in the way just described. He kept a list of everyone he knew at each account in a little notebook. When he had a meeting at an account, he would arrive early and stop in to make brief visits on other people he knew at the site. I once spoke to a young colleague of his who accompanied him on such a visit. The colleague noted in amazement, "By the third meeting, John was passing on information that he hadn't known when he walked in the door." John wasn't passing on anything secret. He just realized that communications are imperfect in large organizations. He was helping people by improving information flows. Knowing many people in an account makes it easier to provide value in all of the conversations you have there.
That knowing a lot of people in an account helps you get business is an easy concept. Getting to know them takes a lot of hard work and some ingenuity. Later chapters will provide guidance on how to meet the people you want to know. This one focuses on whom you need to know and the nature of the relationships that you must have.

First, Dance with the One Who Brought You

Relationships can only be developed one at a time, starting with your sponsor for your first project. You have to dance with the person who brought you, whether or not this is the person you want to spend the rest of your life with. Again and again, the people we interviewed reiterated how essential it is to prove yourself to the person who gives you that first key assignment. You must show this person that you do quality work and that you care about his or her personal success.

Dennis Sullivan, CEO of the consulting firm Robert E. Nolan & Company, says: "We want our sponsor to see that he or she is important to us. Sometimes the sponsor is a vice president, and they are used to larger firms coming in and wanting to meet their boss or somebody else. If I am managing the account, I will be in every two weeks not only to discuss the project but also to provide additional value and to demonstrate industry knowledge by showing what other companies are doing. That way we deepen the relationship with the key decision-maker on our project. Of course, there are other people we want to get to know, but we don't rush to get to meet them. Step one is to demonstrate early success on the project you were hired for to the person who hired you." You must have patience to cross-sell. You must take care of the people who hired you and the people you are assigned to work with before you make a deliberate effort to sell to a lot of others.

Look for Sponsors and People Who Are Predisposed to be Helpful

A sponsor is someone who wants you to get hired. You should always be looking for sponsors. Again and again, the people we interviewed mentioned the importance of sponsors: "I wouldn't have stuck to [the long pursuit of an account] if I hadn't trusted that Ken was on our side and would try to get us something." "After that, I knew we had a sponsor and would get more work."

Sponsors are a subset of a large category of people, those predisposed to be helpful. It is always worth the effort to develop a relationship with someone who is predisposed this way. Almost anyone who is predisposed to be helpful is worth knowing, regardless of his or her position. Not everyone is. Their titles are almost irrelevant. They will give you good information and advice. Often, they will help you get to other people you need to meet.
In one case, an operations consultant made friends with an advertising vice president at an insurance company. Even though his firm was unlikely to work with the client's advertising department, the consultant developed the relationship, realizing that the man was predisposed to be helpful. This vice president introduced the consultant to several people at the company whom the consultant later did business with.

Seek Introductions to Cross-Functional Buyers

Cross-functional buyers are people who deal with broad business problems that will require a variety of disciplines to solve. Such problems include a merger that will require many services to implement and integrate. It might be the entry into a new line of business or some other complex issue. For consultants, cross-functional buyers often include chief executives, chief operating officers, presidents, business unit heads, and a few others.
If a cross-functional buyer is not the person who hired you for your initial project, the chances are that you have started out your relationship working with people below the cross-functional level. If so, moving to that level can risk giving the impression of going over your current contact's head. If you are blocked from contacting cross-functional buyers, look for bridges.

Look for Bridges

"Bridges" is a term devised by Dennis Sullivan to describe people who work in many parts of an account and so are in a position to introduce you to people in different vertical business units. Bridges often work in staff functions, like human resources or information technology. In the story with which this chapter began, the consultant used her contacts in the customer service department to gain introductions to several business unit heads. People from staff functions that you work with regularly at your client are most likely to serve as bridges, but bridges can include anyone who is politically savvy and has influence.

Build Relationships with Functional Buyers

Often you ultimately sell your service to a functional buyer, the person in charge of a specific narrow area. A benefits redesign project may be sold to the Benefits Manager, an upgrade of a warehouse to a Manager of Distribution, a software improvement to a manager in the Information Technology Department. When making such a sale, you need the functional buyer on your side.

Even when selling the mix of services needed to solve a large, complex problem to a cross-functional buyer, it helps to have the support of the functional specialists. If they don't like you, they can resist your getting hired. Senior executives know that fixing a problem will be much easier if the people responsible for an area approve of the professional hired to help solve it. That approval often weighs heavily in their choice of professional. As the ex-CEO of a large corporation once told a group of professionals, "I was happy to make introductions for you guys, because I knew how good you were. But once I introduced you to the people in my organization, I was reluctant to push you on them. I wanted the people who worked for me to make their own decisions."

Get to the Right Level of Buyer for the Service You Wish to Sell

Once you know that a client needs a service you offer, your job is to get to the person or people who can hire you. This can require you to move either up or down in the client organization, depending on the nature of the need.
This is what Bob Borsch of PwC Consulting did when a partner brought him in to meet with the CFO at one of his accounts. The CFO was looking for ways to cut costs. Borsch soon realized that the CFO could not serve as an effective sponsor for the project by himself. He dealt with this concern directly: "I extracted an agreement from the CFO that I would get a series of meetings with the top-level executives or I wouldn't do the [initial project]. I said that in order to get the costs out of the business and to have the money that was saved redeployed into the right places, the executive group had to be engaged. What we could do would depend on how much they wanted to do, where they wanted to go and where they were going to get the money to do it. I forced the right expectations and drove the transaction to the right level immediately. It is far too late to do that after you have been working with the client for a while."

But don't assume that you always need to sell at the top levels of the client organization. Borsch was dealing with an issue that needed executive committee attention. That isn't always the case. As one accountant put it, "It depends on what you are selling. Some things are bought by buyers in the middle of the organization. High-end buyers need to deal with things that are Earth-shattering." If the issue you have surfaced isn't Earth-shattering, you had best be prepared to sell at midlevels in the client company.
And there is a lot of good work authorized at lower levels. One firm spent almost two years with little luck in trying to develop relationships with the top officers at a large financial institution it had targeted. These officers already had relationships with other professionals and weren't interested in getting to know more. When the firm refocused on getting business from middle management, it quickly made progress. Within a year, it was doing $5,000,000 worth of work in the account and was working in a number of departments. With that size of relationship, the account team leaders had something to go back to the top officers with to talk about.

Catch Rising Stars

A rising star is a capable young person on the way up in his or her organization. Identify these people and start developing relationships with them now. Once they reach positions of power, all your competitors will be seeking a relationship with them. The professional who knew them early in their careers before they were in a position to buy and who bothered to develop a relationship will have an advantage at getting business. As these people's careers develop, they can often take you with them to other parts of their organizations or to new and interesting kinds of work.
For example, a young consultant assigned to manage a project at an apparel manufacturer recognized that his counterpart from the client organization was also capable and ambitious. He decided to keep in touch with them. Over the next 20 years both rose through the ranks until they ran their respective firms. It would be hard for another consultant to displace this one now.
Of course, you have to find ways to meet buyers, first to get to know them and then to develop the relationship. That is done at events, the subject of the next chapter.