When
you ask Key Account Managers (KAMs) to show you the relationships they have in
their account, they most likely will show you some form of organization chart.
Sophisticated KAMs have annotated those graphs with additional information
about the people involved. Usually showing this information is accompanied with
the remark: “It is a bit out of date, but I just did not have the time to
update it yet. Things are changing so fast in this organization”. A sustainable
up-to-date view of your relations in a complex account starts with having a
more granular view of the data elements you need to describe your relations
allowing for more flexible faster updates.
The skeleton is the
structure
Most
organization charts, I have seen from KAMs, essentially describe hierarchical
relationships between people. Yet, at the origin, organization charts describe
hierarchical relations between job roles (and not people). As people tend to
change roles faster than the structural organization of job roles changes, if
you have not made a distinction between the person and the job role, obviously
updating your organizational chart is going to take a bit of effort.
Furthermore
the hierarchical organization chart is just one element which helps you to
understand how your customer’s organization works. It is comparable with a
human skeleton giving the body a structure. But a skeleton doesn’t usually move
on its own (except in horror movies).
The muscles are the
power
In
real life, the body needs muscles to move.
The
analogue in an organization is the power the person has in a certain role. We
all know that this power is not necessarily dependant on the hierarchical
position of the role. To understand how an organization works, you somehow have
to add the power component to your chart describing your relations in your
customer organization. In a more
sophisticated scenario, you would also find information about the motivations
and the source of the power of the person filling a certain role.
The nervous system
carries information
Muscles
and skeleton are both necessary but not sufficient for a body to move. Muscles
need to be triggered by nerves.
In
organizations, the analogue to nerves is conduits of information. In theory,
this information flow should follow the hierarchical connections. In reality,
information flow is actually governed by informal connections between the
people working together. However, knowing that a certain relationship exists is
not enough. For effective influence management, the quality of this relation
must be known. Firstly, it is important to determine if it is an amicable or
adversarial relationship. Secondly, you
need to determine the degree of strength of the feelings.
The senses show you
the outside world
As
a KAM, you want to influence the customer organization to eventually select
your offering for solving a particular problem. To use again the analogy of the
human body, you need to stimulate the senses so the nerves in turn direct the
muscles which then move the body into a certain direction. Your ability to stimulate the senses of an
organization depends on four things:
–
The quality of the relation you have with
influential people in the customer organization
–
The attitude these influential people have
towards your solution
–
Knowing how to deliver a message so it is
heard
–
The roles people have in a buying center
(additional to their hierarchical position)
With
exception of the last element, these distinctions are often omitted and can
lead to serious misinterpretations of a situation and thus derail a deal.
Conclusion
Effective
systems for capturing relationship intelligence should thus distinguish as a minimum
the following data elements:
–
Hierarchical relations between roles
–
People filling these roles
–
Informal power of the people in their roles
–
Informal connections between people (strength
and quality)
–
Quality of your connection to influential
people
–
Formal roles in a buying center
differentiated by opportunity
–
Attitude of the influential people towards
your solution per opportunity
The
ease with which you can present these elements in an up to date form obviously
also depends on the choice of graphical representation.
For
complex organizations, there is also a need for a tool that allows for easy
updating and automatic drawing of the graphic representation.
But
these are topics meriting future own blog posts. For now you have already a
check list which will help you to understand whether you track the right data for
your relationship intelligence to be useful for defining influence management
strategies.
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