The Art is in Collaboration

Winged Victory. Venus de Milo.?“Liberty Leading the People.” Maybe a?sphinx?or two.?

I wish I could tell you about my up-close encounters?with the treasures of the Louvre, but I saw none of these.?I was young, and the Louvre was about to close, and we rushed straight to – you guessed it – the Mona Lisa.

Nothing wrong with meeting?da Vinci’s mysterious lady, of course. But I’ve?always regretted?not truly?experiencing?the Louvre and what lessons and stories it reveals.?

Ever notice that same pattern in our lives??In our rush to reach?a?predetermined destination, we?bypass?opportunity and?miss a world of enlightenment.?

I see it too often in?the?sales universe. “show me the output report,” prospects say, and sales obliges. We operate with hyper efficiency as we race?through discovery?to?produce?our Mona Lisa?output PDF,?but skip the more illuminating process of collaborating to find and create value.

I was recently talking to my friend Tamas Hevizi about the power of co-creating value with customers. He shared an insight that it is in the collaboration where the customer story comes to life.?

As the great writers?and painters?of history know, the most powerful?stories and images?are woven from?the threads of?character, setting, and conflict. Who are these people? Where are they in life? What is blocking them from getting what they want or need??With every detail developed and revealed, the?tale?becomes more compelling and real.?

A PDF report does not?propel people, story-driven collaboration does.?Its hard, however, to resist the allure of a fancy output report in favor of more deliberate discovery with our customers. Even when collaboration comes easy, if left unstructured, it can feel like directionless meandering?through the Louvre.

Ecosystems’ purpose-built cloud digital platform was designed to tackle this problem with prescriptive guided intelligence on how buyers and sellers optimally collaborate.?In studying the usage patterns in our Ecosystems SaaS platform and analyzing them against CRM "closed won" opportunities, we see a direct correlation between higher activation levels of prescribed buyer-seller collaboration and overall higher supplier win rates.

Happy to share more details with you as guided collaboration with customers can create Louvre-worthy works of art.