The centre
Client-Centricity
The Perception Advantage
The business arranged around what the client is trying to achieve rather than around what suits us to sell. It reaches into mindset, process, policy, what gets measured, and the products themselves. It covers the five principles that govern how buyers decide, the difference between the Business Outcomes an organisation needs and the Personal Motivators of the person who has to sign, and what buyers now expect before they will give anyone their time.
Clients do not act on what is objectively true. They act on what they perceive, and they buy the outcome they believe they will get. A problem can be serious and go unbought because nobody inside the client’s business perceives it as urgent enough. That is why it sits at the centre. Every other element either shapes perception or is wasted.
When it is strong
The client sits at the centre of the business. Our processes, our policies, what we measure, and the products and services themselves are all shaped by what clients are trying to achieve. It holds because of the culture, not because anybody is enforcing it. We anticipate for them, we name the Unseen Issues and Untapped Opportunities before they do, and we treat their problems as ours. We know how clients see us because we seek their feedback, and it carries as much weight as the revenue. When what suits us conflicts with what a client reasonably needs, their need comes first.
When it is weak
We sell what we make, and the business is arranged around what suits us. A client explains their situation to one of our people, then has to explain it again to the next one, because nothing gets passed on. Nobody owns the client’s experience of us. What we count as looking after clients is knowing our products and being professional.
Client management activities
Demand Generation
The Lifeblood of Sustainable Growth
How a business creates qualified opportunities instead of waiting for them. Who you target and why, the Ideal Client Profile and the buyer personas under it, messaging that opens on a change in the client’s business rather than on what you sell, the persistence to follow up past the point most sellers stop, and the discipline that keeps it happening every week.
Closing skills are worth nothing without something to close. Most teams prospect hardest when the Funnel is empty and barely at all when it is full, which is what makes revenue move in cycles rather than trends. The distance between what you know your value to be and what a prospect perceives it to be is the Value Perception Chasm, and crossing it is the work.
When it is strong
The engine runs without anyone pushing it. Change decides who we contact and when. With existing clients we see it in their business. With new ones we go and find the companies where it has just happened. Either way we arrive while the Issue is live rather than when our quarter is ending. We lead with an Unseen Issue, an Unrealised Value or an Untapped Opportunity, and we often name it before the client has. That puts us in the conversation before it becomes a competition. We test different groups, read what comes back, and move the effort to where it works.
When it is weak
New business turns up. We do not go out and create it. When someone needs an opportunity, they call people they already know. Two or three people go out and find new business, and they carry everyone else. What those people do is in their heads. It has never been written down, so nobody has learned it from them.
Client management activities
Opportunity Management
The Science of Selling Strategically
Deciding how to win a particular deal before deciding what to do about it. Position, meaning where you actually stand. People, meaning who shapes the decision, what part each plays and what each is judging. Plan, meaning the actions that follow from the first two. It also covers where you are strong, where you are exposed, and what you do about both.
In a complex sale with three or more decision makers, one failure shows up more than any other. The team goes from spotting the opportunity straight into activity, book the meeting, build the deck, get the demonstration in, with no strategy in between. Doing the tactics brilliantly does not rescue a deal that is strategically wrong, and when you lose there is nothing written down that could have been checked.
When it is strong
The strategy comes before we engage, and we revisit it as the picture changes. We know our strengths and vulnerabilities in every pursuit, and we act on both, using our strengths to mitigate our vulnerabilities. We shape how the client sees the Issue, which gets us in early enough to influence how the decision gets made rather than reacting to one that has already been formed. Whether we win or lose, we know why, and we take what we learn into the next pursuit.
When it is weak
We have no framework for working out how to win an opportunity. Whatever strategy we do have is one person’s opinion, and it stays in their head. In practice it is a list of tactics, not a strategy. An opportunity appears and we go straight to doing things. Book the meeting, build the deck, get the demonstration in. We think the opportunity is won in the room on the day, by whoever performs best.
Client management activities
Client Engagement
You Are the Differentiator
Everything that happens in front of a client. Knowing the difference between a sales meeting and a relationship meeting and preparing each with intent. Discovery that gets past the stated need to the Issue behind it and what that Issue is costing. Bringing a point of view rather than answers. Articulating what makes you different so it answers what the client is weighing up. Storytelling, negotiation, and ending with a commitment rather than an agreement to send something.
Where products look alike, the seller is the difference. Buyers rank understanding their business at the top of what they want, and most meetings still open with the product. The meeting is won in the preparation, which is the part that gets dropped when the week is busy, and a client can tell within minutes which kind of meeting they are in.
When it is strong
The seller is what makes us different. In our preparation we focus on the value we are going to deliver for the client, and on how we want them to see us differently afterwards. Then we find out whether it worked. We lead with an Unseen Issue, an Unrealised Value or an Untapped Opportunity, so the client gets something out of the conversation whether they buy from us or not. The way we engage is our long-term differentiation.
When it is weak
Our meetings are largely built around product presentations. There is little or no preparation, and what there is goes into what we want to say rather than what the client needs. The seller arrives with a fixed product mindset and spends the meeting explaining why the client should buy it. How well anyone questions, listens or explains value varies enormously from person to person.
Client management activities
Relationship Management
Protect and Grow Your Client Relationships
Three objectives. Create differentiation that lasts, find the next opportunity before the client has recognised it, and get in front of the buying process rather than behind it. It works by breaking a large account into the parts the client actually buys in, then applying three things to each. Position, meaning where you stand and with whom. Revenue, meaning what the opportunity is really worth. Strategy, meaning what you are going to do about it.
A satisfied client is not a secure one. Clients of fifteen years cut their spend and move work to a competitor while the account team is still describing the relationship as strong. Service metrics and a good golf day are not a position. How the client sees you is the position, and if you have never asked them, you are guessing.
When it is strong
There is a coherent strategy for the relationship, agreed and shared, and everyone around the account works from it. We know how the client sees us because we get their feedback, and the gap between that and how we want to be seen is where the work starts. We are strategic about how we close that gap rather than hoping it improves. We often anticipate our clients' needs and opportunities before they have seen them themselves, so we help shape their thinking rather than responding to requests. That puts us early in their buying process rather than late, which is how we create long-term differentiation.
When it is weak
There is little or no strategic thinking. The relationship runs on personalities, and connectivity is low — often one of our people talking to one or two of theirs. So everything rests on that person and what they do with the account, which is a dangerous place to be. There may be an account planning form somewhere, filled in once and never looked at again. We sell what we have always sold, to the person we have always sold it to. In a lot of cases the client treats us transactionally, while the seller talks about it as a relationship.
Sales leadership activities
Mindset
The Foundation of Sales Success
How the team thinks, which decides what they do when the conversation gets uncomfortable. Moving people to the point where they both understand the method and apply it unwatched. The resistance every change meets and the order it arrives in. And the five shifts that separate people who perform consistently from people who perform occasionally.
This is the knowing and doing gap. A team can recite the value proposition, the qualification criteria and the discovery framework, and still default to product and price the moment they are in front of a client. Training makes people aware. Nothing moves until how they think changes, and this element sets the ceiling on the other eight.
When it is strong
People know the method works and can explain how and why, which means they can adapt it sensibly and teach it to somebody else. They are honest about their own opportunities, even when the honest answer is unwelcome. They judge a week by what it produced rather than by what got done. They go into client meetings with a point of view about how the client’s business runs, not just answers to the client’s questions. They deliberately shape how the client sees them, and they earn it through the value they bring, not by being liked. And they treat the way they sell as something to think with, not a script to follow.
When it is weak
People do not know what they do not know, and some are confidently doing the wrong thing. Optimism is treated as an assessment. Being busy is treated as achievement. We respond to what clients ask for and call it service. Being liked is what we think trust is built on. There is no method, so there is nothing to be rigid or flexible about. A few people perform brilliantly and nobody can explain how, so they get treated as naturals rather than as something the rest could learn.
Sales leadership activities
Funnel Management
Qualify, Diagnose, Coach
Using the Funnel to find out what is wrong rather than to report what happened. Qualification, deciding honestly which opportunities deserve the time. The four measures of Funnel health, being quantity, quality, balance and velocity. The shapes a Funnel takes and what each one tells you. And the reviews that turn all of that into a small number of committed actions.
Every Funnel leaks. Some of it is deliberate, through qualification. The rest is breakdown. Hundreds of opportunities at the top and a trickle at the bottom is not a closing problem, and treating it as one is how organisations buy closing skills to fix something that went wrong at the start.
When it is strong
The Funnel tells us what is wrong rather than what happened. We read its shape, and the shape shows us where the challenge is. Too much sitting at the top stage, too much stalled in the middle stage, too much stuck at the close stage. We read it seller by seller, so two sellers who look the same on paper get different coaching, because their challenges are different. Opportunities that are not worth the investment get qualified out early and handed back to marketing. Qualifying an opportunity out is treated as good judgement, not as giving up.
When it is weak
We do not know what we do not know. There are no agreed stages, so an opportunity moves through steps nobody has defined and nobody can see. Each seller decides for themselves where an opportunity has got to and what it is worth. Opportunities get into the CRM only when someone remembers, and many never get in at all. So it is impossible to get a true picture of what the Funnel is worth or what state it is in.
Sales leadership activities
Forecasting
The Science Behind Accurate Revenue Forecasts
Predicting revenue accurately enough that the business can plan with it. Where you sit today, from guesswork through to prediction that can be relied on. Building the view three ways, from the Funnel, from categories, and from what happened at this point in previous years. And the discipline that an opportunity only moves on evidence of what the client has actually done.
The pattern is familiar. Confident at the start of the quarter, quietly revised twice, indefensible by the board meeting. It is rarely a systems problem. It is what happens when a forecast is built on what sellers believe rather than on what clients have committed to, and when being accurate and below target costs a person more than being wrong and optimistic.
When it is strong
We get it right between 85 and 95 per cent of the time. We build the forecast three ways. From the opportunities themselves, from what clients have actually committed to, and from what usually happens by this point in the year. When the three agree, we are confident. When they disagree, we go and find out why. We give leadership a range rather than one number, and we tell them how much to trust it. We back the person who flags a risk early, and we say so in front of the team.
When it is weak
There is no process. The forecast is built from what people feel about their opportunities and how well they know the client. The question in the review is when do you think it will close, and the answer is an opinion. There are no stage definitions and no probabilities based on what has actually happened before, so there is nothing to check an opinion against.
Sales leadership activities
Coaching
The Multiplier Effect for Sales Excellence
Developing the seller rather than reviewing the deal. The conditions that make honest feedback possible. What is worth coaching and what is not. The five moments where it pays, before a meeting, after it, on an opportunity, on the Funnel and on skills. The three conversations of correction, development and recognition. And the prepare, act and reflect discipline that turns isolated conversations into capability.
Training raises awareness. Coaching is what changes behaviour, and without it the money spent on training leaves with the enthusiasm. Most organisations spend their coaching on the people in trouble or on their best. The largest return sits in the middle sixty per cent, who are capable and inconsistent, and who are the biggest group in the business.
When it is strong
Coaching is prepared, delivered, and reviewed afterwards, and the review never gets skipped. Leaders spend real time observing, without stepping in to take over. Our best people ask to be observed, because they know nobody can see their own habits, and the behaviours behind someone’s success only become visible to an observer. The time goes into the large middle group who are capable and inconsistent. We test for agreement and commitment. And when somebody does something well, the leader names the behaviour and says how it drove the result, in the moment rather than at a later review, so it lands.
When it is weak
Coaching happens rarely, and when it does it depends on whether the leader has time or is in the mood. The conversation is about numbers and activity rather than about how somebody thinks and how their competence is developing. When feedback comes, it is about the person rather than the behaviour. Somebody gets told they have lost their drive, instead of being asked why their prospecting has dropped off this month.