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INTRODUCTION

Back in the day, I was the head coach of the University of Dayton’s men’s water polo team. It was a young program, and in my first few years as coach, we consistently posted losing seasons. Actually, we got slaughtered. I’ll never forget the televised match against the nationally ranked University of Kentucky team, in particular. By half-time, Kentucky led 14-0, which means they scored 14 goals since each is only worth one point. Kentucky’s coach then played his B team the entire second half, and we still ended up losing 24-3. Ouch!

I accepted our losses because I understood it would take some time to develop the program. But I really didn’t expect to fare so poorly because I had followed the conventional wisdom of water polo success: recruit big, fast swimmers and teach them how to play the game. This strategy seemed to work for other teams; it had to work for ours. So, I stayed the course and recruited even bigger and faster players and swam them even more…that’s right, nobody was going to beat us down the pool. And, we continued losing.

After a couple of seasons, we headed to Southern California, the Mecca of water polo, seeking to prove we could hold our own against the best of the best. We played top-ranked Pepperdine and lost 14-1. In fact, we lost every one of the seven games we played on that humbling road trip. It was obvious we just weren’t improving or even close to being competitive at a national level. I finally realized I just did not have the right formula for success. For us to be great, I needed a completely new approach.

I decided to become a better student of the game to see if there were important elements or attributes of winning water polo our team was missing or didn’t understand. In my study, I learned that size and speed were not nearly as important as conventional wisdom dictated. Instead, other aspects of the game had larger impacts on the final score, including field position, minimizing your turnovers and capitalizing on those of your opponents, and understanding how to adjust your play to the refereeing. With this insight, I developed a new game plan and playbook, and enlisted experts in the sport, including the icon of U.S. water polo, five-time Olympic coach Monte Nitzkowski, to review and critique it.

After a few years of developing the team under the new strategy, we qualified for our first Collegiate National Championship tournament in 1994, and for three more over the next four years. In each tournament, we arrived with a group of players whose combined water polo experience was significantly dwarfed by each of our potential opponents, including long-time powerhouses Michigan, Florida, Texas, Michigan State, UC—Riverside, Arizona, Cal Poly, and the US Military Academy at West Point. On paper, we were clearly out-matched in terms of size, speed, and experience, but with preparation and a solid playbook, over the last five years of coaching, the Dayton team posted an enviable record of 112-6 and clinched the National Championship Title in 1995, the University of Dayton’s first national sports title in 15 years. Having the right game plan and playbook clearly delivered sustainable, predictable, and successful results.

Over the past 25 years of working with business-to-business (B2B) companies, I have often felt like I was reliving my unsuccessful early days as a water polo coach. As the always quotable Yogi Berra said, it was “déjà vu all over again.” The B2B company leaders, like the Dayton players and coaching staff, were smart, committed, passionate, and knowledgeable about their respective industries, but they often lacked insight into the true key fundamentals of the game they were playing.

Instead, they have developed their strategies based on conventional wisdom about business success that is often not applicable to B2B companies. I have seen this approach yield unpredictable and typically disappointing results. The 24-3 loss to Kentucky still stuck in my mind is their failed product launch, botched marketing campaign, misguided acquisition, or other equally ineffective strategy or tactic.

B2B leaders need the same thing I needed as a head coach at Dayton. They need a fresh look at the fundamentals of the game and a new playbook. I wrote this book to provide both. With the invaluable assistance and insight of my colleagues at the Geehan Group, along with a select group of our firm’s clients and other market-leading B2B firms, I developed the The B2B Executive Playbook specifically to help B2B leaders, whether they are responsible for an entire company, a business unit, or a function, such as finance, sales, R&D, marketing, strategy, or customer service.

Why Just B2B?

Two of the best, most influential, and closely studied business books written are Jim Collins’s Good to Great and David Thomson’s Blueprint to a Billion. Both offer extremely valuable insight into how companies become wildly successful. Nonetheless, these and many other good business books don’t distinguish between B2C (business-to-consumer) and B2B companies. In fact, of the 11 companies profiled in Good to Great, only one is a pure B2B company. Granted, some business issues can be similarly addressed in both types of companies. (Every leader should read Good to Great on “getting the right people on the bus” and Blueprint for advice on management-team structure). But in other critical areas, B2C and B2B companies require vastly different approaches, and these areas are major factors in B2B success on which I will focus.

In the pages ahead, you won’t read about the strategies of Apple Computer or Coca-Cola or Starbucks or Disney. I know these are the companies everyone points to when they talk about business success, but they operate in the B2C realm of retailers, such as Lowe’s, Kroger, and McDonalds, and consumer-package-goods manufacturers, such as PepsiCo, Procter & Gamble, and Kellogg. This world is not the same as the B2B world. Although their examples can be useful in some ways, too often what makes these B2C companies soar will stall or even stop B2B companies.

Take marketing, for example. Marketing is very different in the B2B and B2C sectors. Unlike B2C companies, B2B companies don’t win customers with a Super Bowl ad, or a big following on Twitter, or a guest spot on Oprah. Nor will a celebrity spokesperson like Brett Favre, Snoop Dogg, or that cute little green gecko drive B2B success. Unfortunately, however, a significant number of well-meaning B2B executives try to apply B2C marketing strategies such as these in their companies, often with poor, and sometimes even disastrous, results.

Are You Using the Wrong Playbook?

The symptoms or pains felt by a B2B company following the wrong playbook are not new or necessarily unique. In fact, many are the same age-old business problems felt by many types of organizations. They just might be feeling new or heightened in your company due to lightning-fast changes in technology, shifts in global forces, the emergence of radically transformational business models, or other industry disruptions. These and other realities of the business environment have simply raised the risk of using the wrong playbook and are accelerating the need for adaptive change. B2B leaders know very well there is less room for error than ever before.

To know if you and your company might be using the wrong playbook, ask if:

 Your company has lost or is at risk of losing its top customers

 Margins are threatened or eroding

 New products are falling short of their revenue, margin, or market-share targets

 The relationships with the real decision makers at your most important customers are poorly developed

 Your strategic planning process is unproductive or frustrating

 Branding and marketing initiatives have fallen flat

 Your senior executive team disagrees on how to move the company forward

 Your organization confuses activities with results

These are just some of the problems that frustrate and confound many executives in B2B companies. But I’ve often found they aren’t the real issues; they are merely symptoms of a deeper problem which is the widespread misconception that all business pains can be successfully resolved with generic business cures. As a result, B2B executives take the lessons they learn from the B2C world, whether from experience or education, and attempt to apply them to their B2B company. As most discover, this approach simply fails.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that success in the B2B arena is not an overly complex undertaking. And, in almost every instance, the playbook of proven B2B strategies costs less to develop and execute than you might think—and will generate significant and measurable returns. That’s the promise I’m making in this book: You can yield market-leading results while simplifying your tactics, reducing the number and cost of activities, leveraging your time and resources, and achieving greater clarity and focus.

B2B’s Ultimate Weapon

The core element in The B2B Executive Playbook—and the ultimate strategic weapon in the B2B arsenal—is the engagement, collaboration, and advocacy of your customer decision makers. I know you’ve heard this before, but I’m not talking about the end-users of the products and services your company sells, or the buyers in the purchasing department. I’m talking about the handful of executives and influencers within your most valuable customer companies who ultimately determine your success help you achieve sustainable, predictable, profitable growth (SPPG).

If your company is like most B2B companies, it relegates its relationships with these key executive customers to the sales or marketing function. As a result, executive customers either get treated like sales prospects or get bombarded with marketing materials and event invitations they don’t have time to read, let alone act upon. They don’t find value in these interactions—just as you don’t when your customers treat you in this same way. Naturally, they put up barriers to access. So now, in the time-honored tradition of treating symptoms rather than root causes, you can find a growing shelf of sales and marketing books on how to “break into” the C-suites of prospective customer companies.

You don’t need to “break into” the C-suite to reach your executive customers. In fact, the true decision makers will happily come to you…if you make a place for them at the right level of your organization and engage them in strategic discussions which offer their companies real business value. This is exactly what happened for $3.3 billion Noida, India-based HCL. Up to 2008, HCL had no systemic way of interacting with the decision makers from their customers (CIOs). HCL’s Americas President Shami Khorana shares, “This platform has allowed us to have an exchange of ideas with the true decision makers from our major clients to gain ‘collective feedback.’ This has ultimately contributed to our sales growth and the value of the services we provide.” When you engage executives in a relevant way, it not only gives you ongoing access, but they are actually enthusiastic supporters. Khorana added, “These are real executives with both business acumen and extensive domain knowledge. This combination has delivered an incredible level of thought, insight, and guidance.” Since launching their program, HCL hasn’t lost one of their “top 80” clients involved in these programs. These clients collectively represent more than $2 billion of the $3.3 billion in total sales.

So, if and when you do decide to move forward, you will quickly discover that this small group of executive customers has the power to consistently and successfully:

 Drive alignment of your leadership team, and ultimately your entire organization with the market by developing a clear and focused strategy.

 Leverage the time and effort of your leadership team, as well as company resources.

 Deliver sustainable, predictable, profitable growth, which I will demonstrate is the true aim for any company.

I will also show how by rebalancing discretionary investments, your efforts will yield a measurable ROI on B2B specific initiatives. Imagine what that would do for your company—and your career.

I understand that this may sound like hyperbole, but I hope you’ll bear with me and read on. In the pages ahead, you will see how a wide variety of B2B companies have achieved all of these benefits. Their annual revenues range from under $50 million, such as at Intesource, Inc., a boutique provider of cutting-edge procurement services and solutions, to more than $40 billion, such as at Oracle, the broad-based enterprise computing giant. The highlighted companies hail from a wide variety of industries around the globe, including information technology, health care, publishing, broadcasting, banking, legal, and foodservice equipment, among others. Furthermore, their customers include a veritable Who’s Who of global business. I sought permission to include these real-life examples to prove not only are the three benefits attainable, but also that any kind of B2B company can attain them.

Coming Attractions

Before we begin, I’d like to give you an overview of the book’s contents.

Chapter 1: Setting the Stage is a brief introduction to the outcome that all B2B companies should be focused on and striving towards: sustainable, predictable, profitable growth (SPPG). As the acronym SPPG suggests, each of those words is equally important. In fact, if any one of them is missing, B2B success will be fleeting at best. It’s worth noting that SPPG is as important in the B2C sector as in the B2B sector. The difference between the two is how SPPG is achieved.

Chapter 2: A Different Game explores the primary differentiating factors between the B2B and B2C worlds. This chapter explains how three indisputable realities about customers define the B2B world and control the fate of the companies that operate within it.

Chapter 3: Six Benefits, Four Steps explores the core benefits of engaging your company’s executive customers. It also introduces the four steps in The B2B Executive Playbook which can generate SPPG. Each of the steps is detailed in the four chapters that follow.

Chapter 4: Engage describes the first step on the path to SPPG. It explains how to assemble and connect your company with a market collective—that is, a select group of the key executive customers in your market. This chapter discusses how to leverage executive customers to gain a view of their industries and key markets through their eyes, as well as how to work with them to brainstorm and validate new ideas. This level of engagement increases their loyalty to your company, as opposed to the people in your company with whom they usually work.

Chapter 5: Plan describes how the market collective can build consensus among the members of your leadership team and help ensure that your strategy is properly aligned to the needs and direction of the market. It shows how the engagement of executive customers adds direction, clarity, and confidence to the strategic planning process. This chapter also reveals how your leadership team can raise the effectiveness of its M&A deals, boost new product success, rethink business models, and develop more powerful marketing, service, and sales programs.

Chapter 6: Collaborate examines how to use individual executive customer relationships to unleash innovation and build your business. It shows how leading B2B companies are driving innovation by collaborating and co-designing the next generation of offerings with executive customers. Executive customers are the most reliable sources of input throughout all the phases of the development process, including ideation, validation, testing, and adoption. They not only assure the success of new products and services by ensuring they are properly aligned with the market, they are also the best and most enthusiastic customers for these solutions.

Chapter 7: Grow unveils the final step on the path to SPPG. It shows how executive customers can become your best marketers and salespeople. This chapter describes a variety of ways in which they can act as powerful advocates to accelerate your sales cycle, enhance your margins, and build your corporate reputation, brand equity, or reposition your firm.

Chapter 8: Implementing the Playbook and Chapter 9: Avoiding the Four Pitfalls contain hard-won knowledge from the companies who have adopted and implemented executive customer programs. Chapter 8 describes what companies can expect as they implement executive customer programs and the roles that various members of the B2B leadership team should play to ensure success. Chapter 9 describes the most common implementation pitfalls, in the hope that they can be avoided in the future.

Your Success Starts Here

Executive customer programs are powerful strategic tools with applications that range far beyond sales and marketing. When they are sponsored and supported by the entire leadership team, they can transform the performance of B2B companies, enabling them to operate more effectively in the short-term, and more importantly, grow and profit in the long-term. Executive customer programs can drive internal and market alignment, unleash successful innovation, and differentiate you from your competitors. They leverage executive time and resources, allowing company leaders to address strategic issues and avoid getting caught up in company politics, day-to-day problems, and tactical activities. Finally, executive customer programs can help you generate sustainable, predictable, profitable growth—which, in the end, is the only metric that really matters in corporate and career success.