Announcing Availablity of New One-Day Workshop – Strategic Account Snapshot™
Strategic Account Planning Simplified!
Strategic Account Snapshot is a one-day, fast-paced interactive workshop that represents the next generation in account planning for enterprise sales organizations. It focuses on helping professional salespeople and account teams develop an Account Plan Snapshot for their strategic or major accounts.
Every element of this planning process has passed the No Wasted Motion test.
The workshop is supported by a robust Strategic Account Snapshot Software Tool that is distributed to account team leaders in advance of the workshop so that selected elements of the account plan can be completed before the account team arrives at the workshop.
Who Should Attend
Professional salespeople, account teams – both core and extended members – and relationship managers who need to effectively leverage the creation of an account plan for their strategic account.
What You Will Learn
In just one intensive day, sales teams will have accomplished the following…
- Developed and revised an Account Plan Snapshot for one of their strategic accounts
- Identified and verified new revenue growth opportunities – comprised of both known (existing) opportunities and unqualified new opportunities
- Identified influential client executives within the strategic account, who have played key roles in previous major buying decisions
- Built a Relationship Map that aligns key client executives with members of the core and extended team (as well as business partners)
- Created a realistic action plan for the next 60-90 days that focuses on the top sales opportunities within the account
Take a Closer Look at the Strategic Account Snapshot workshop!
Download our one-page Sales Flyer for a high-level overview of the Strategic Account Snapshot workshop.
Or take an in-depth look at the workshop details, including workshop objectives, module content and more information about the Software Tool, as well as other support materials that accompany the workshop, with our Design Document.
Workshop Bonus: Software Tool and Resource Guide
The workshop content is supported by the Software Tool, created and developed using Visual Basic within Excel. The Tool is extremely visual, easy to use and dramatically depicts various components of an account plan. Workshop participants come to the workshop having used a portion of the Tool for their pre-work assignment. Participants receive full access to the Tool with a password that is distributed in the workshop.
The Resource Guide is also made available to participants in advance of the workshop. The Guide is an extensive compendium of Internet sites and tools for client research that salespeople can use to do a more effective job in researching their clients.
To learn more about how this exciting new workshop and the accompanying tools can benefit you and your sales organization, call (404) 256-1801 in the United States or send an email to steveb@sellxl.com.
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New Article Just Published
Steve Bistritz has just co-authored (with Karen Jackson) a new article entitled: Selling to Executives: How to Stop Losing and Keep Winning! that was published in the most recent edition of the Journal of Selling & Major Account Management.
The article discusses the four reasons that professional salespeople lose deals. Those four reasons are:
- Lack of relationships at the executive level
- Client is unconvinced of the service provider's level of commitment and/or credentials
- No clear strategies exist to effectively address the executive's risk sensitivity
- Inability to effectively articulate a compelling value proposition that accelerates the client's goals, objectives or aspirations
For a copy of the article - send an email to steveb@sellxl.com and he will send you a PDF of the article.
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What Workshop Attendees Are Saying Lately About SellXL and SOS Workshops
Here are some quotes from recent workshop attendees:
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I will now use the SOS Tool for all opportunities. I think it is very robust, straightforward and easy to use. It sparks terrific thinking. I especially like the Influence Map!
- Attendee of an SOS Workshop - February 2008
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The content and design of the SellXL materials was perfect and they will be used extensively as we now implement the process in our field sales organization. The workshop delivery was flawless and it clearly surpassed my expectations in many ways including content, applicability and engagement.
- From a sales executive in a SellXL workshop - March 2008
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This was an excellent workshop, well-worth the time spent and the facilitator did an incredible job. We received great examples from real-life and the experience was extremely compelling!
- Attendee of an SOS Workshop - September 2008
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I'll now perform more research before each key executive call; I'll also know and learn more about the people and the organizations we do business with and hold my team more accountable on preparation.
- From a sales manager in a SellXL Workshop - March 2008
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I'll use the SOS Tool provided to help develop a strategy for selling. I'll also be more strategic in how I pursue new opportunities through the use of this process.
- Attendee of an SOS Workshop - October, 2008
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Book Review
Who Says Elephants Can't Dance?
By Louis V. Gerstner, Jr.
Book Review by Steve Bistritz
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If Louis V. Gerstner's book Who Says Elephants Can't Dance? gets one point across, it is that nobody but an outsider like Gerstner could have saved IBM from crumbling. From the very first page, he never lets us forget that's exactly what he was for the nearly ten years he spent as CEO of IBM.
Lou Gerstner was IBM's first CEO to come from outside the company. All previous CEOs were true-blue IBMers who typically started their career with the company and rose through the ranks to become CEO. Gerstner's predecessor, John Akers for example, began his career as an IBM salesperson and proceeded through a variety of sales positions before becoming CEO.
I found this book fascinating because I worked for IBM for more than 27 years and was working for IBM in 1993 when Gerstner became CEO. I can recall the executive search that was conducted at the time and the numerous names that were rumored as possible candidates for that position - candidates like Jack Welch of GE, Larry Bossidy of Allied Signal, George Fisher of Motorola, and even John Sculley of Apple Computer. All of those names had one thing in common - they were heads of technical firms and Gerstner was CEO of RJR Nabisco - not exactly from a technical background!
But the timing was good. Gerstner was looking for an exit from RJR Nabisco, and after months of courting with the search committee, Gerstner took over as chairman and CEO of IBM on April 1, 1993.
The book is interesting, even for longtime IBM employees and followers, because it is Gerstner's own story. He was a virtual recluse when it came to interviews and public appearances - he doesn't try to hide his disdain for the media - so the book offers a rare opportunity to hear his point of view.
The answers to the question of how Gerstner saved IBM, as well as the major business decisions he made, are generally known. What is less understood is how he managed to change a culture that he generously describes as "inbred and ingrown."
For Gerstner, the first order of business was making the company solvent. Under his guidance, IBM cut billions in expenses (partly through massive layoffs) and raised cash by selling assets. Gerstner says that few people even understood how perilously close the firm was to running out of money.
Gerstner's focus on cutting expenses was implemented by a new CFO that Gerstner brought on board. Jerome York had been CFO at Chrysler Corporation and was hired by Gerstner to begin implementing cost-cutting measures across IBM. I don't really feel that Gerstner gives York enough credit for the work he did in bringing IBM's expenses in line. It was one of the most important actions taken to revitalize IBM.
Gerstner also put the brakes on a plan, which was already well under way when he became IBM's CEO, to break up the company into 14 separate operating units. Gerstner characterizes this as "the most important decision I ever made -not just at IBM, but in my entire business career."
Early on, he decided that the whole of IBM was greater than the sum of its parts. But its many parts were far-flung and operated independently, with little accountability. Rather than work together as a team, divisions competed against each other both internally and in the field. He writes that management "presided rather than acted," and the entire company was dangerously preoccupied with itself rather than customers.
Gerstner tells a story in the book about how top-level management meetings were conducted in IBM and how he changed the approach. The standard format for any important internal IBM meeting at the time was a presentation process using overhead projectors and graphics on transparencies that IBMers called - and no one remembers why - "foils." During his first meeting with his direct reports, Gerstner relates a story about an executive who was on his second foil when he stepped to the table, and as politely as he could, switched off the projector and simply said to the executive: "Let's just talk about your business unit."
That Gerstner had no emotional attachment to lengthy development cycles for products ultimately worked in IBM's favor. Gerstner writes that his colleagues were "unwilling or unable to accept" that certain products represented a "resounding defeat" that, despite their technical superiority, "were draining tens of millions of dollars, absorbing huge chunks of senior management's time, and making a mockery of our image."
But Who Says Elephants Can't Dance? is about IBM, not Lou Gerstner. So readers get no real sense of the person behind the executive who says he simply hates to lose. But there are some tidbits that humanize his rather one-dimensional portrayal of himself, like his doing away with IBM's no-alcohol policy and abolishing the firm's mandatory dress code.
One of the most important conclusions that Gerstner came to was that "the tasks our clients were asking us to take on were spreading beyond the domain of the CIO - places were IBM salespeople had not, in general, ventured and where we lacked strong client relationships." To address that, Gerstner put in place a strong focus on enhancing relationships with client executives, and he himself became the model for creating relationships with CXO-level executives of IBM's key customers. That's an important lesson for all of us - and it comes through strongly in this book!
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About Steve Bistritz
 Steve Bistritz is founder and president of Learning Solutions International, an Atlanta-based sales training and consulting company that helps professional salespeople do a better job of creating, maintaining and leveraging relationships with senior-level client executives.
Steve also has a powerful opportunity management workshop offering that has been described as “the next generation in opportunity management”.
Steve is available as a speaker for sales meetings and client conferences around the globe. He speaks on a variety of topics including the following:
- Selling at the Executive Level
- Establishing Credibility with Client Executives and Becoming a Trusted Advisor
- Developing Alignment with Key Client Executives
- Effectively Assessing Sales Opportunities
Click here to see video clips of Steve delivering his presentation on Selling at the Executive Level.
You can contact Steve by calling him in Atlanta (eastern time zone in the US) at (404) 256-1801 or sending him an email using steveb@sellxl.com
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Happy Holidays and Best Wishes for the New Year!
Steve Bistritz
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