I had a fascinating conversation withGerald Vanderpuyetoday. He shared what many of us would think as the Nightmare To End All Nightmares.
He was working a huge deal, it was important to the company’s ability to make their numbers for the quarter. Deals like that get a lot of visibility all the way to top management, so as expected, top management in his company wanted to do a deal review. He updated his deal strategy, sent it to all the key managers to prepare for a discussion during the review of what he was doing to win the deal. In the process he made one of those “Mistakes.” You know the kind I’m talking about, you inadvertently copy a customer on a piece of communication that was intended to be purely internal.
Yes, he did it–he accidentally copied his key customer on his strategy to win the deal. I’m sure, immediately after sending the email and realizing the customer was on the distribution list, his whole life (or at least his prospects for this deal) flashed before his eyes.
He was horrified, his managers were horrified.
But the customer had a completely different reaction, the customer actually called Gerald, thanking him for the document. His comment was the plan helped him crystallize what they were trying to do in their buying process!
As Gerald shared his story, I had this huge “Aha!” moment. I thought, “How brilliant, what if we actually started sharing our Deal Strategies/Plans with our customers ?” (Or call plans or account plans for that matter) What if we made them part of our planning process? The corollary to this would be that we would become part of their Buying Strategy/Planning Process.
