When Cate Farrall invited me to be a
co-author of this new blog, I asked myself the question: Why should I invest
time and energy into the subject of Relationship Management just when Matthew
Dixon and Brent Adamson in their book “Challenger Sale” make a convincing case
that Relationship Builders are not top performers particular in complex sales,
my primary focus of interest? The answer is: Because I have read the book and
this is what I took from it:
How Challengers
Use Relationship Management
There are numerous hints throughout the text that
Challengers need to build and maintain relationships to be the top performers
they are. They actually need better understanding how networks operate than
Relationship Builders. Challengers are not satisfied with having relationships.
They actively use knowledge about their contacts to hold the right
conversations to eventually get purchasing decisions from their customers.
Challengers’ consider knowledge about their
contacts as working capital. They know that they continuously need to invest
time and effort in order to learn more about their existing contacts. They are motivated
to get to know the right things about new contacts to keep this relationship
capital productive.
How to build
and keep relationship capital productive
In a nutshell, this is what Mastering
Relationship Management means to me. I hope this blog will help us to enrich
our understanding about
–
Relationship Intelligence which is answering
questions such as:
o
What we need to understand about contacts
o
What new relationships we need to build
And
–
Influence Management which is to know
o
Who can help us build the necess ary new relations
o
Who can help us to convey the right message
to the right person
I am looking forward to rich discussions
about these topics which I consider essential for success not only in Sales, my
primary focus, but also other domains Cate mentioned in her inaugural post.
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