~~The Introduction: An Introduction to Introductions, or Rob Fishman and the Fishman’s Fisherman Approach to Account Management~~
Rob is based out of Long Island, New York and has been in the Sandler network for about 10 years. He works with his partner Rich Isaac. They’re about an hour outside of New York City. Rob takes us through the behaviors associated with account planning and territory management using the acronym’s that are important to his system in remaining sticky with his clients.
Rob’s advice and his nurturing tone helps prospects become comfortable and clients become referral generating machines. Using his account management suggestions and his technical approach to business engagements we should find ourselves in a more comfortable position heading into the new year.
~~The Conceptual: Seeing Account Management as an Engine, or What Metaphors Lead to Success?~~
Rob sees account planning as a four-cylinder engine. Whether you’re a small business owner or an independent sales person you need to look at the accounts we’re monitoring, and we use the acronym KARE.
K—or keep accounts is the lifeblood of our business. These are customers that love us and stick around for years and might refer us as well.
A—is the attain category. It’s selling new into new. It’s a new customer, a prospect. Someone we need to get in front of and identify.
R—is the retention category. Have we lost a customer? How do we re-engage them for the purpose of doing business again? What’s the strategy that we use to recapture and retain relationships?
E—is the expand category. This is the lowest hanging fruit. An off-sell or cross sell opportunity with the relationship we create. What strategies are we putting into place to offer other things?
These are the four cylinders of business. Keeping, Attaining, Recapturing, and Expanding. How do we allocate time to manage these accounts using these four categories?
The key is to do a gut check and put clients into buckets and do a rating on a scale of 1-10 of each of these categories. We want to overlay the concepts to see that Keep and Expand is dealing with farming, and Attain and Recapture is a hunting mindset. We might have some people who need to improve their hunting mindset, while there might be others who are more practiced in the farming mindset and need to improve that as well. We need to evaluate where we’re strong and look for ways that we can leverage that. If we are going to work at peak efficiency, then we need to know what steps we need to take to streamline a process in an area we aren’t as strong in.
Too often those of us in direct sales will focus efforts in things that are comfortable and will avoid doing things outside of our comfort zones. If we like hunting, we might not do a good job maintaining relationships. If that’s the case, we need to be more disciplined in going back and do work to maintain the relationships we create. So how do we manage getting out of our comfort zone?
A filter over this conversation is the Behavior-Attitude-Technique triangle. Somehow, we hit a rut every once in a while, and it starts to affect us between the airs. If the majority of our thoughts are self-limiting then we need to stem the tide of the head trash, we create. We need to go to behavior first and think about things that would be more effective in helping us retain a good attitude. So, the question is what are the behaviors we need to do on a small incremental basis that will get us there. So what steps do we need to take on our own KARE that we need to develop to create a plan on incremental behaviors to improve our success?
So, once we’ve got a plan of behaviors we need to figure out how we work on what’s happening between the ears and rehash the attitudes that have caused a turn negatively in our self-belief or self-concept. The conversation of behavioral and the mindset of a good attitude is part of the equation for success. On top of this we need to develop a technique—so what are the traits and tendencies of a successful account and what have we done on our side to create and maintain an ideal client profile? What we want is a clearly defined written plan with the behaviors necessary defined and the attitudes that we need those behaviors to be successful and what techniques we need in order to successfully execute what we do.
After we’ve built our strategy we need to put together the traits and tendencies of our successful clients. What we need to do is get very efficient about how we describe the traits and tendencies in all categories that we’re dealing with. If the case is that we’re not getting in front of enough people, then what is the process you go through to get the message out there? Aside from the cold-calls, what is the plan and how well do we communicate and describe who our ideal client is? What type of business is it? What are challenges that they may be facing which might drive them to talk to us? What are their emotional, compelling reasons to change?
How well do we communicate with real accuracy so that people say, yeah, I get that. Very often the work that we do in the referrals process leads to business, but most people don’t do a good job with referrals. Most people put the monkey on the back of the client and the person may not have given any thought about it. This puts us in concern of becoming a pest because we just assume that individuals may think about names we’ve asked for and they might not have. The key is streamlining the process so that we don’t reinvent the wheel every single time. If you’ve got a system, you know where you are, and every system is tweaked and fixed as we learn about how performing it in a better way. The system doesn’t fail, we fail the system.
When it comes to territory we need to understand how good of a job we do when planning an executable plan when we go into our control and execution of a sales process of a territory. We should understand how well we create relationships with people we’re in touch with.
An important piece about establishing a relationship in the beginning. In the keep accounts and expand accounts there is generally a good relationship, but with retain and recapture, we might not do as good of a job as seeing how vulnerable we are with relationships we’ve got. We need to regularly do SWAT analyses. All of these are parts of the process to maximize the four cylinders of the business engine that we wish to see function. Apart from looking at the low hanging fruit, there’s probably not one simple place we need to work on, rather we need to take stock of our business. Where it is coming from and understand if the majority of our business is in keeping accounts or prospecting new business. If we can do this, then we can realize where we need to bolster our effort and strengthen where we are. It would be a mistake to prioritize our efforts toward an area we’re failing, but the importance is to create and maintain an awareness of the place where our business comes from.
~~The Technical: Activating the Conceptual, or How Roleplays Show us What We Need from our Intentions~~
Rob demonstrates some of his suggestions in some roleplays with us. The low hanging fruit in many businesses come from referrals, rather than put pressure on the person you’re asking for a referral from, you should practice your techniques for your referrals.
R: So, Jim, I appreciate you meeting me for lunch today and I don’t know if I get the opportunity to sit with you and thank you for all the opportunity for us to work together. By the way how long have we been working together?
J: Five years.
R: Five years? Believe that. Time flies. As a matter of fact, if it wasn’t for Joan, we probably wouldn’t be sitting here talking. So Jim what would you say out of the past five years what would have been the single most important thing we’ve helped you with?
J: Well it was not what I was expecting when I signed up with Sandler. I thought it would be increased sales, but the biggest benefit has been saved time.
R: Sure, got it, and I was thinking on the way over here if it wasn’t for Joan we wouldn’t have had the chance to work together, but there are so many people out there who it wouldn’t be for someone else they wouldn’t have this opportunity. So I guess, one my way over, I was thinking who is it you know and who is it you care about that you think might be open to a conversation with me? If you remember when we first got working together, I asked if you’d be okay down the road where I might sit and suggest we do some brainstorming to think about people that could use the same help as with you. Do you remember that?
J: I do recall that conversation and of course I’m always scouting for opportunities for you and if I ever come across someone I sure would refer you.
R: Let’s do this and certainly we can parse this for another time, but remind me, aren’t you an avid golfer?
J: Mhm.
R: Maybe there’s someone who you play with, who works under the tyranny of the urgent, who are always busy?
J: Someone comes to mind, John, he owns a small trailer manufacturing company.
R: What made you pick him?
J: He’s chaotic.
R: Aren’t we all? And obviously I wouldn’t want to presume he’s right for us, but what is it you would say about the work we’ve done with you to him?
J: I guess I would say if you’re looking to stabilize and expand the accounts you’re working with Sandler gives you the soft tools that help you be more relational. I don’t know?
R: That’s great, and I like to use acronyms, do you mind if I give you some advice and use an acronym with you?
J: Please.
R: So, let’s take a step back, the acronym is SODAR. And if you think about this and you’re talking to John and he mentions to you he’s so busy, someone whose more tactical than strategic, then S is for the situation. Share your own story, similar business owner, whose had time and energy management issues. O is for opportunity. I was introduced to Rob. D is for Decision, I made a decision to spend five minutes on the phone with Rob. A is for action. So, I decided to meet with Rob and take action. And the result which is R is that I engaged him, and it’s made a profound impact. Would you be okay with using that to speak with him?
J: No, that sounds great. I appreciate that framework. I wondered and wasn’t sure how I would go about that.
Rob is nurturing and takes the pressure away, while being courageous and being specific enough to give me a playbook that I can take a referral through to help them pick up the phone and call him. A mistake we might make is suggesting an hour or two to meet, but we teach prospecting. If we’re making a dial we haven’t earned the right for a 30-minute conversation, but what executive would not invest five minutes of their time exploring something that may help them?
