Читать книгу Never Say Sell - Tom McMakin - Страница 31

Susie's challenge is not proving PIE can do the job. She has the best-case study possible: an internal history of doing the work. As she thinks about all the ways PIE could help different buyers within Thomson Reuters, she understands one of the key complexities of her challenge: Thomson Reuters is not one person and it does not represent a single cross-selling opportunity. Thomson Reuters is a collection of professionals who, together, provide critical just-in-time information to legal, corporate, and business customers, helping them keep track of regulatory, tax, transaction, compliance, and news-driven changes. To anthropomorphize this large and complex group by assuming it acts like a single person who “knows” Susie's work – and presents a single opportunity for cross-selling – would be a mistake.

At best, a dozen or so people there know what Susie is doing and that she and her team are delivering excellent work. With a headcount of 25,000 people, most employees have never met each other, much less heard of Susie Krueger. Thomson Reuters, of course, is not an anomaly. Most corporations resemble a brand umbrella spread over a spider web of practices, industrial foci, and geographies, cobbled together over many years of organic growth and acquisition.

So, what are the distinct opportunities for growth within Thomson Reuters that Susie can and should consider? After interviewing rainmakers at accounting, law, engineering, IT, marketing, and consulting firms, both large and small, we've learned that experts who focus on growth of existing clients think about opportunities in six distinct ways. Each of these opportunities carries with it great promise, as well as unique challenges requiring different tactics and skillsets to successfully execute.

 MORE: Doing more of the same work you are already doing with the same buyer in a client company

 EXPAND: Doing different work (within your existing service lines) with the same buyer

 EXTEND: Doing more of the same work you are already doing with a different buyer in the organization

 REACH: Doing different work (within our existing services lines) with a different buyer in the organization

 EVOLVE: Doing new work (that our firm hasn't done before) with the same buyer

 INNOVATE: Doing new work (that our firm hasn't done before) with a different buyer in the organization

We're consultants, so naturally we wanted to give pithy names to each of these opportunities, and we wanted a diagram to show how they all relate. To us, the Diamond of Opportunity looks like this:

The easiest way to help a client is continuing to do more of what you've proven you can already do, with the buyer who already knows you can do it. This kind of work (MORE) is the base of the diamond. At the peak (INNOVATE) you find the most challenging kinds of opportunities – finding a way to help someone different in the organization (with whom you've never worked) doing a type of work that is new to you and your firm. In these instances, the bar for earning both trust and credibility is extremely high, making these projects tough to win. Between these poles are four other distinct opportunities to help clients; each requires a mix of skills needed to introduce your additional capabilities to clients and establish relationships with new buyers.