Читать книгу The B2B Executive Playbook - Sean Geehan - Страница 18

When B2B leaders have a major decision to make, especially regarding risk-laden issues such as fundamental changes in business models, core capabilities, or product/service portfolios, they typically bring together internal players who can provide insight and perspective. But how often do these same leaders include their company’s executive customers in their deliberations? These are the customers who hold the fate of the company in their hands, and they drive the markets on which B2B companies depend. These are the customers who vote with their dollars about the viability and relevance of innovation, and the B2B companies with whom they will do business. When you think of executive customers in these terms, the only real surprise is that any B2B leader would leave them out of important decisions.

That is why the first step in The B2B Executive Playbook is to engage executive customers and connect them to the leadership team of your company. The most effective way to accomplish this is to create a market collective that is composed of the key decision makers in the most important companies in your customer base. Because this market collective is a vital source of alignment and information for the leadership team of any B2B company, this is the foundational element of The B2B Executive Playbook—it is the element that provides the engine and initial trajectory of SPPG.

Market Collective

A group of decision makers or executive customers drawn from a B2B company’s key accounts in terms of strategic importance and revenue contribution.

When done correctly, the creation of a market collective, and its systematic connection to the leadership team of your company, becomes the basis on which decisions are made regarding strategy, business model innovation, planning, marketing, innovation and development, acquisitions, and sales and service. This step in the Playbook addresses a multitude of common problems that plague decision making within B2B companies, including:

 An overly intense focus on internal considerations or end users

 Reactive versus proactive strategic thinking

 Risk aversion and resistance to change

 A poor grasp of the marketplace and other externalities, including globalization, niche competition, and technological change

 Internal conflict and lack of support within the leadership team

The Engage step is the first step in the process of addressing and fixing these and many related issues. This step is discussed in detail in Chapter 4.