|
|
|
|
|
Comments or Suggestions?
|
|
|
|
|
|
Share this Article
|
|
|
By Robert B. Miller and Stephen E. Heiman with Tad Tuleja
© 1991 by Miller Heiman, Inc. All rights reserved by permission of Warner Books, Inc.
Does your company needs a systematic approach, beyond spot-checking obvious problems, to manage large accounts?
A couple of years ago, we were seated around a client’s conference table conducting an executive briefing for senior management. We had just run a series of programs for this company’s major account managers. Because long-range commitment to our clients is a watchword at Miller Heiman, we had requested the briefing for two reasons: to get their feedback on our programs and to explain to their senior management where we felt they were vulnerable to the competition.
We were puzzled about how their company’s single largest account was being managed. It was in the hands of a manager we’ll call George, who seemed to have every shred of data relating to it locked up inside his head. Judging from sales figures, he was very capable. But the fact that nobody but George knew crucial aspects of what was happening in the account made us uneasy. It suggested that the management wasn’t managing; they couldn’t possibly have a handle on even short-term objectives in the account – not to mention long-term goals – if George was treating this piece of business like his private turf.
Obviously the senior managers were uneasy too. No sooner had we made the observation than the conference table became deathly quiet. Then throats cleared. Chairs shifted. Pencils tapped.
After about a minute of general embarrassment, one of us broke the silence. “I don’t know what we said, but I feel like we just laughed at a wake. What’s going on?”
The senior manager present, an executive vice president, gave us a straight answer. “You didn’t say anything you shouldn’t have. In fact, you’ve done exactly what I hoped you would do. You’ve forced us to look in the mirror, and I guess we don’t like what we see.”
“George is the highest-paid guy on the sales force. But everybody here at one point or another has felt he’s holding us hostage with that account. We did $45 million with them last year – 13 percent of our sales – and yet the account seems to be stagnating. Given the match between our services and their needs, revenues are nowhere near what they could be. And none of us really knows why.”
With this comment, the floodgates flew open. There were six other executives at the briefing, and every one had strong opinions about George’s account.
“George has retired on the job,” snapped one operations vice president.
“Retired, hell!” responded another executive. “He pulls down six figures a year, and we consider him a problem?”
“Sure he’s good, but he’s too much off on his own. We’re trusting him to sell our services with no questions asked about how. It leaves too much up to chance.”
“That’s true,” the executive vice president agreed. “We see George as a kind of loose cannon. I can’t tell you how many nights I wake up at three A.M., sweating about our vulnerability there. The bottom line, I’m afraid, is that we just don’t understand what’s going on.”
This doleful admission proved to be painfully accurate. The company soon found out just how painful.
Among the many things the managers “just didn’t understand” was how George felt about the situation. If they had talked to him instead of guessing, they would have discovered that he was uneasy too. In fact, he was a lot more than uneasy; he was isolated, irritated, and so uncomfortable that he had begun to consider offers from other firms. About four weeks after that meeting, he accepted one.
By that point he had been “out of the loop” for so long that nobody could talk him into staying, and so management found itself in the infuriating – and painful – position of grumbling as he sashayed out the door.
And the major account he’d been handling?
Well, because decision-makers in the customer’s organization knew nobody in the client’s organization but George, they had felt as isolated as he did. Rather than suffer a potentially disruptive period of transition with an unknown new manager, they opted to follow George to his new company. And our client was smacked with realization that stagnation was the least of its worries. Almost overnight the problem shifted from a vague uncertainty about what was going on to the certain desperation of a man who was drowning – in $45 million of lost revenue.
What Went Wrong?
Every company has salespeople like George: excellent account managers who become isolated in their own companies and end up going over the side. How can this common problem be prevented? How can a company keep its often brilliant, often testy, revenue leaders from becoming, in the executive vice president’s term, “loose cannons”?
Today’s “people-centered” management theorists would have an obvious answer: There should have been better communication between Loose Cannon George and the company “bridge.” If he had felt involved, he wouldn’t have left.
True. But that obvious answer wasn’t the whole story. When our client asked for our assessment of the episode, we said that the problem cut deeper than lack of communication. It was that senior management – delighted with George’s $45 million yearly haul – didn’t even realize it had a disaster brewing until its isolated star had defected. As long as he kept raking in the revenues, no one ever thought to look beyond the current quarter, to see how this large account was being managed, or mismanaged, for the future.
Why? Why would a group of competent managers blind themselves to potential danger? They certainly sensed that something was wrong – all their comments in the executive briefing indicated as much. Why didn’t they find out what it was?
“Communication breakdown” is a description, not an explanation, of the problem. The reason that communications broke down – indeed, the reason they were doomed to break down – is that this company, like many otherwise well-managed companies, lacked a consistent methodology, or process, for handling large account information. The company needed a systematic approach to those accounts that went way beyond spot-checking of obvious problems, and that included sales and general management in long-term planning.
Because it lacked such a process, the company was bound to run into trouble. It wasn’t that the disgruntled executives in the briefing room were consciously excluding George from their Large Account strategy – any more than he was consciously excluding them. No one had a strategy to begin with. And there was no format for including everyone in devising one. Our original suspicion had been correct: No one was really managing this account. Instead, as the British would put it, they were “muddling through” day after day – until they found themselves in a muddle.
Miller Heiman sales training programs have been proven effective at helping companies increase revenue, shorten sales cycles, improve forecast accuracy, and build long-term relationships with customers.
Printer-friendly version
|
|
|
|
