Items related to Winning with Customers: A Playbook for B2B
Synopsis
Do Your Customers Make More Money Doing Business With You?
Knowing the answer can help you build measurable and valuable customer relationships, outperform the competition, and unlock profitable growth.
Companies are blind to opportunities for profitable customer relationships without a deep understanding of how they create customer value relative to competitors. With a rigorous and measurable understanding of how customers make more money today and in the future with you, combined with supporting plans and tools to align the entire organization for success, a company can win and win big. Winning with Customers offers a step-by-step playbook to help companies develop this capability for themselves, act on it, build a culture around it and sustain it over time. The playbook includes case studies, interviews, and tools from leading B2B companies who have demonstrated success. Written by recognized business thought leaders and practitioners, this book will guide you to profitable growth. The book also serves as a launch point into a community of like-minded executives that includes a companion website which offers exercises, access to thought leaders, and other tools help you win with customers.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author
D. KEITH PIGUES is a recognized leader of strategic growth and marketing, developing new growth strategies and marketing capabilities, creating valuable brands, building effective global marketing teams, and increasing profitable revenue growth through strategy and marketing excellence. He is Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at Ply Gem, Inc., responsible for corporate branding, marketing, strategic planning, and international expansion. He has held senior marketing positions with CEMEX, RR Donnelley, and ADP, as well as sales positions with IBM and Hewlett-Packard. Read more about Keith at dkeithpigues.com.
JERRY D. ALDERMAN, a recognized business science thought leader, is coauthor of Beyond Six Sigma (Wiley). He has written numerous white papers, is a frequent speaker on achieving profitable growth through customer value creation, and has led and developed his innovative approach to building corporate competitive advantage through using and executing on unique, deep customer insights. He is founder and CEO of Valkre Solutions, Inc., a product and services company that develops capability with business-to-business (B2B) companies to use deep customer understanding to build and execute customer-driven operating plans. His company has developed these solutions with great partners, including Owens Corning, Kimberly-Clark, Turtle Wax, RR Donnelley, and more. To find out more about Jerry and Valkre go to valkre.com.
From the Back Cover
Winning with Customers
A Playbook For B2B
"This book captures the invaluable lessons learned from a nearly decade-long journey focused on perfecting the business science of creating value for customers in the so-called business-to-business (B2B) segment of commerce. Keith and Jerry have clearly arrived at an important destination. Not only has the customer value creation (CVC) science been significantly advanced, it has been proven by real-world application in numerous B2B settings."
From the Introduction, Glenn Dalhart, retired partner, Ernst & Young management consulting
Providing deep insight into the discoveries that can help you win with your customers and, ultimately, increase the value of your business, Winning with Customers introduces you to proven ideas for helping your organization accelerate profitable growth. Sharing real experiences from real companies that have delivered significant results using the authors' "Winning with Customers" approach, this effective guide reveals a wealth of practical information to help you put their winning formula to work in your organization.
Filled with case studies, examples, and workable tips, this easy-to-use handbook includes everything your corporation needs to succeed, including:
- Hands-on advice on what winning with customers means and the measures that really work
- Guidance for moving you from anecdotes and gut feelings to sound metrics for success
- The resources you need to collect your customers' perspectives on the value you create for them
- Step-by-step customer plans that can be executed by the organization, understood by the sales force, and communicated easily to customers
- An accompanying web site (winningwithcustomers.com) packed with online exercises, a community forum, additional case studies, and more
Practical, useful, and readable, the tools and tactics in Winning with Customers will help your business create impactful changes that generate a sustainable competitive advantage in the process.
"Now" is always the right time to kick off a Winning with Customers effort in your organization. You now have the playbook to get started.
From the Inside Flap
"This book captures the invaluable lessons learned from a nearly decade-long journey focused on perfecting the business science of creating value for customers in the so-called business-to-business (B2B) segment of commerce. Keith and Jerry have clearly arrived at an important destination. Not only has the customer value creation (CVC) science been significantly advanced, it has been proven by real-world application in numerous B2B settings."
―From the Introduction, Glenn Dalhart, retired partner, Ernst & Young management consulting
Providing deep insight into the discoveries that can help you win with your customers and, ultimately, increase the value of your business, Winning with Customers introduces you to proven ideas for helping your organization accelerate profitable growth. Sharing real experiences from real companies that have delivered significant results using the authors' "Winning with Customers" approach, this effective guide reveals a wealth of practical information to help you put their winning formula to work in your organization.
Filled with case studies, examples, and workable tips, this easy-to-use handbook includes everything your corporation needs to succeed, including:
- Hands-on advice on what winning with customers means and the measures that really work
- Guidance for moving you from anecdotes and gut feelings to sound metrics for success
- The resources you need to collect your customers' perspectives on the value you create for them
- Step-by-step customer plans that can be executed by the organization, understood by the sales force, and communicated easily to customers
- An accompanying web site (winningwithcustomers.com) packed with online exercises, a community forum, additional case studies, and more
Practical, useful, and readable, the tools and tactics in Winning with Customers will help your business create impactful changes that generate a sustainable competitive advantage in the process.
"Now" is always the right time to kick off a Winning with Customers effort in your organization. You now have the playbook to get started.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Winning with Customers
A Playbook for B2BBy D. Keith Pigues Jerry D. Alderman Karel Czanderna Owens CorningJohn Wiley & Sons
Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, LtdAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-470-54799-1
Chapter One
Why We Lose
We show up every day and do the things we believe are necessary to run the business, grow profits, and increase the value of the company. We create demand for products, manufacture these products, sell the products to customers, deliver service to provide a good customer experience, develop additional products and services, and measure and report the results of our efforts to interested parties. We take actions and make investments that we believe will generate acceptable profit today and grow profit in the future.
Sometimes we achieve the sales and profit goals and sometimes we do not. There are many variables and moving parts in every business that contribute to the results—some we control and others are completely out of our control. All too often, we do not have a good handle on whether the actions and investments we pursue actually work and can be repeated.
The efforts to reduce production or manufacturing costs, by their very nature, are easier to manage, measure, and repeat. We typically have control of most of these costs and they are more easily identified and quantified. The systems used to reduce these costs and predict future cost reductions are proven and readily available thanks to Six Sigma, Lean Manufacturing, and other cost management systems.
Conversely, the actions and investments undertaken to provide customers what they value most—value propositions that contribute to their profits—are not as easy to manage, measure, or repeat. Identifying the specific components of the value proposition that contribute most to customer value and profits is difficult because it requires an in-depth knowledge of the customer's business. The relative impact of the value proposition versus that of competitors is more difficult to quantify and measure. Your value proposition has a direct impact on customer profits and represents the best opportunity to gain and maintain a true competitive advantage. Systems to manage these actions are not proven or readily available, making success difficult to repeat. This is where we focus the attention of this book.
Why? It is because of the absence of a rigorous business management system to tackle the challenges described above. Without such a business management system, organizations lack the ability to consistently and predictably create more value for customers. This results in being outmaneuvered by competitors and losing in the marketplace. Yes, we lose more than we would like.
After reading this chapter you will be able to:
• Understand why this books matters to you and your organization
• Understand what it means to Lose with Customers
• Define the six reasons Why We Lose
• Understand how this book, its authors and its partners can help you Win
Six Reasons Why We Lose
There are six reasons why companies lose.
Why We Lose
1. We don't understand the customer's perspective.
2. There is not enough quantitative rigor.
3. Data collected never finds its way into planning or execution.
4. We rely on individual surveys versus a continuous process.
5. The organization is not aligned or involved.
6. There is no systematic playbook.
We Lose Because We Don't Understand the Customer's Perspective
Before you react, let us elaborate on what we mean by losing. When our customers do not make more money doing business with us versus our competitors, we lose. If we do not know where we stand relative to our competitors in generating profits for our customers, we lose. If our organization lacks the ability to stay on top of customers' ever-changing needs and adjust our investments and actions customer-by-customer to beat competitors, we lose.
We lose potential profits from these customers and in some cases we lose the customers. If we do not maximize profit and profit growth from customers period after period, we lose out on opportunities to create more value for our stakeholders—we may lose our jobs. These are real losses with real impact on us and our business.
Why does this happen? Why do we lose? Well, we believe there are several contributing factors. However, the single greatest reason we lose is because we do not truly understand the customer's perspective of how to grow their profits. While this is a bold statement, it is not one that we make without significant proof from our experience and the experience of others with deep knowledge in this area.
First a personal story: I recall a strategic planning meeting with fellow members of the management team in a former company. We were going through the traditional process of strategic planning—identifying the key strategic growth issues and developing supporting strategies to pursue. A heated debate ensued about what customers really need, how much value they would receive if we met their needs, and how much money we could make in the process. The debate was great—we were wrestling with the key issues that would determine our success.
Each member of the team had an opinion supported by great anecdotes from customer visits and input from the sales organization. It was striking that each member of the team had a different opinion about the relative value of the various customer needs. There appeared to be no way to reach consensus and select the most important areas of customer needs to address. So I asked the question: "Do we really know what customers value from their perspective and do we have data to help us understand quantitatively how valuable these needs are to the customer?"
After a prolonged period of deafening silence, one of the team members mumbled: "Of course we don't." We had come to the recognition that we clearly did not understand how we could help customers grow their businesses. What followed is, unfortunately, something that we and many others have experienced. The leader of the business, in an effort to meet the timeline to complete the strategic plan to present to corporate, stated in a decisive voice, "Let's stop debating what customers need and get back to running the business."
Need we say more? This is an all-too-common occurrence in many B2B companies. There is a lack of understanding of the customer perspective and the value it brings. Yet we just move on and "get back to running the business" without having the fuel to run the business better—the customers' perspective. This behavior results in decision after decision about priorities, actions, and investments built on anecdotes, opinions, and gut feelings. This begs the question: "How do we maximize profits without incorporating the customer perspective in all we do?" We believe it is impossible.
To amplify the challenge we have personally experienced, here are the views of a few additional thought leaders and professionals.
"The profitable growth challenges of B2B companies will not be fully addressed until a true, unfiltered and quantitative understanding of customer's needs replaces the anecdotal and qualitative information that drives decision making in many organizations today." —Ralph Oliva, Executive Director of the Institute for the Study of Business Markets (ISBM)
"When organizations move from over-reliance on discrete market research as the primary means to introduce customer input into the planning process, in favor of a more systematic approach to capture and include the customer perspective at the center of the planning process, management decisions will become truly customer centric and yield better results." —Patrick Farrey, Executive Director, Business Marketing Association
"Even companies with the most effective strategic account management and sales organizations are challenged to systematically capture customer input and use it to align the entire organization to deliver winning value propositions. This continues to be an area of great opportunity to create and sustain competitive advantage in the marketplace." —Bernard Quancard, CEO Strategic Account Management Association
"There were multiple definitions of `winning' with our customers prior to Customer Discovery. Those definitions typically evolved on a customer-by-customer basis with an underlying theme of `We grow and prosper only when our customers grow and prosper.' It all sounds great until you get into the metrics and attempt to understand if in fact growing and prospering is really taking place with a customer. The metrics typically had a disproportionate amount of Owens Corning's business metrics and not much, if any at all, customer-focused metrics. Said another way, I am not sure we had a good grasp on translating what we were doing into how it impacted the customer. We didn't have a good understanding or visibility to what it meant to their business ... but we typically had a great understanding of what it meant to our business, our goals and our sales plans." —Chad Fenbert, Director of Sales, Owens Corning
"We were spending so much energy trying to get the most out of the marketing investments we were making, that we really hadn't invested the time and energy to decide if we were making the right decisions." —Christian Nolte, Director of Strategic Marketing, Owens Corning
So we are not alone! Ensuring you include the customer perspective in the management of your business is not a "nice to have"; it is a "must have." And you know what? There is no easy button for incorporating the customer view into the fabric of your business. It is a journey and an ongoing commitment to build capability within your organization at a pace that out flanks your competitors. Throughout the book, we will share the latest tools, practices, and techniques we have used to improve business performance by incorporating the customer's point of view into the management of business.
We Lose Because There Is Not Enough Quantitative Rigor
Existing methods of measuring what customers' value and the impact these things have on their profits are not quantitative or rigorous enough. It is difficult to use outside-in customer perspectives unless you have some idea of the potential for improving business performance in dollars and cents. Being able to communicate within your organization what customers want in terms of profit dollar potential tends to get more attention than a litany of qualitative concepts.
It is quite amazing how important and even risky decisions are made to invest in new markets, new products, new services, more sales people, and so on without a quantitative understanding of how these investments impact customers' profits.
Let's be honest, what would happen if a business case was presented to the executive team for a plant expansion with only qualitative support, such as "Our largest customer thinks this is a good idea" or "We feel comfortable it will reduce costs and improve our competitive position." Oh, and I love this one: "The customer will walk and we'll lose all of their business if we don't do it." In most cases, the proposal would be dismissed without a quantitative and more substantive estimate of the operational and financial impact on the company.
However, business cases are presented and approved to invest significant sums in revenue-generating programs or other improvements to the company's value proposition with the equivalent qualitative support. Even if there is a quantitative assessment of the financial impact on the company, it is not accompanied by a quantitative assessment of the impact on the customers' operations and profits.
How is it possible to develop a sound assessment of the value that will be captured by the company without first assessing the value that will be created for the customer? A quantitative measure of the value that will be created from the investment is a prerequisite to assessing the value that can be captured in the form of sales and profits. A quantitative measure of the value created for customers is not often completed. As a result, we make estimates and develop business cases that are more risky and do not deliver the expected results in the marketplace. We lose because we do not use enough quantitative rigor.
We Lose Because the Organization Is Not Aligned or Involved
These companies do not have the functions of their organizations really vested in using an outside-in customer perspective to improve their decision making. The responsibility for collecting and making use of the outside-in customer information is far too silo'd within a functional area, either sales or marketing.
As a result, other critical parts of the organization do not provide input into the process and do not buy in. When the new offerings are developed and ready for launch, these groups become onlookers rather than participants. Execution is doomed from the start when this happens. When the uninvolved groups are coerced or forced into participation, there is not a clear understanding on how they specifically contribute to delivering the value to customers.
Creating and delivering value to customers is a team sport! Getting the team on the same page seems a simple enough concept but the reality of day-to-day business is that it is not so easy to accomplish. We will talk about how to get this done.
We Lose Because the Data Collected Never Finds Its Way into Planning or Execution
This is almost a universal problem. In this case, companies may have some form of outside-in customer information but fail to use the information in their planning processes. In our years of doing this work, we have found a miniscule number of examples where customers who provided feedback would say their feedback was heard and resulted in change.
It is commonplace to have the marketing or market research organization conduct research to assess customer growth opportunities. Yet, the results of the research are not often used to shape the development of customer offerings or the growth strategy of the company. Thus, the information and valuable customer knowledge gained through the research is wasted.
Many organizations seem to be on autopilot, using the same anecdotal or historical view of customer needs to drive planning and execution. The research is reviewed and then is stored on a favorite hard drive or flash drive, yet operations, sales, marketing, customer service, R&D, and other functions do not change priorities consistent with the findings from customers. Customers continue to be dissatisfied with the relative value we bring to bear on their business versus competitors. The new learning or insight is not acted on and we lose opportunities for innovation in the way we serve customers and help them succeed, while also losing the opportunity to generate more profit for the business.
All of the successes and failures we have been a part of during our journey have hinged on execution. No surprise. It is such a complex road between successfully understanding what your customer really values through to executing on the insights and knowledge gained. To the comments we made earlier, it seems like we get all excited, figure out what really matters to the customer, and then come back to the farm where you get a big dose of "Okay, that's great but let's get back to running the business." Using outside-in customer information must become part of how you do work and not something extra. We'll talk more about this in the chapters ahead.
We Lose Because of Reliance on Individual Surveys versus a Continuous Process
Surveys work better to determine how a company is doing in deploying its inside-out approach to business rather than serving as a source of outside-in data. If we intend to augment the management of our business with an outside-in customer perspective, then we must find a continuous process that can be improved as our organization learns and grows.
There is a lack of continuity in developing an understanding of customers' needs and how they change over time. This approach hinders the organization's ability to develop a knowledge base of the key drivers of value in the customer's business. It also limits the ability of the organization to anticipate or predict the outcome of situations faced previously.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Winning with Customersby D. Keith Pigues Jerry D. Alderman Karel Czanderna Owens Corning Copyright © 2010 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Excerpted by permission of John Wiley & Sons. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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