How to boost business against competitors

How to boost business against competitors

How to boost business against competitors via “Professional Personal Relationship”

Approaches destructing corporate creativity

In most companies people have detailed descriptions of tasks in their roles and are inflexible due to limitations via process boundaries even in mid and top management levels. In some organizations it goes so far that the company spends high budgets and human resources to establish separate process organizations and to define processes for each role, task and activity. This approach may have some logical reasons but destroys the creativity and productivity of high performing talents in the one hand and it leads to loose of business opportunities if the processes are too strict. In this type of organizations either the high performers will leave the company or they will be stamped as process incompliant employees. Especially large organizations suffer from a strict process orientation. Therefore, it is the great challenge to balance between process orientation vs human creativity & customer centricity. Nevertheless, in each sales related and sales depending organization the customer centricity plays an enormous role instead of processes. Besides of the digital tools to identify the customer needs and creating individualized offers it is more than important to have customer oriented employees and customer centric culture. There is one single major effect processes and digital tools like AI cannot cover: human beings.

Why we need PPR

If you look at successful organizations and the disrupters they have at least one thing in common. Acting according the human behaviors, human needs and solving certain problems. A main basic instrument to be successful and above the market average is the effective use of the very clear knowledge of the customer needs and behaviors. To get this it is not enough to use IT tools which can only track the virtual life of humans which is depending on each user’s IT usage (smartphone, e-commerce, google usage and social media activity) what doesn’t cover the whole life cycle and can be easily manipulated by the users. Nearby all industries have huge sales organizations which becomes very important in this aspect. In nearby most sales organizations there are the similar management biases. One of these is the strictly numerical KPI focus and the definition of KPIs and sales account management role definitions and restricted CRM.

What is missing; PPR/Professional Personal Relationship as real business booster

Human beings are social and emotional species. They need to have a personal touch no matter of ethnicity and culture. That’s why it is crucial to have a solid and authentic professional personal relationship with your business partners, colleagues and customers. PPR is the balanced combination of a professional and personal relationship with your business partners. The literature separates both strictly but the combined hybrid form of a relationship is vital in today’s global marketplace. The ones who have established PPR will be significantly more successful than the other market players. Especially in volatile market situations and high competitive environment the impact will be much higher. The advantages of PPR are not only having a better access to your customer and getting better deals and contracts. Moreover, you get better insights of end customers behavior, market changes and can adapt your expectations better and more simultaneously. This can lead you to adapt your production, logistics and supply chain management in a more efficient way (more relevant for SMEs) and saves your company costs. Don’t forget that your business partners or customers are not responsible or obliged to give you data and information. You get the information depending on your relationship and access to your customers. Particularly “off the record” information can be life saving for companies. A good PPR helps you also to have successful product launches and product or assortment changes.

How to establish a successful PPR

Simply said you need to be close to your customers and business partners. Away from a general perspective; here we need to differentiate the approach between B2B partners and B2C end customers. Most of the information about B2C / end customers you can also get via your B2B partners. In a B2B environment you need to get your partner away from sitting in opposite fronts of a desk to a side to side talk.

Key value rules to win your business partners

· Authenticity: Be always honest and show openness to your customers never hide any relevant information and don’t give any expectations which even to 1% might not be fulfilled.

· Familiarize: You have to do some of the meetings –not the contract signing- in more casual locations instead of in meeting rooms without a business dress code. If you don’t do this, you will never be able to establish your PPR. Further you should definitely invite your partners regularly to one to one lunch / dinner in a casual atmosphere. Depending on the openness of your business partner (most likely possible) you should know his hobbys, family, important days (birthday, wedding day etc) and congratulate them authentically (definitely not standard email, call them etc). Make your customers only personalized gifts (as long as it fits your company`s compliance guidelines) to show them you treat them special. To be able to do this you need to know them.

· Honor: To get this done you need to start to make small gestures and favors your business partner didn’t expect from the contract. This can be giving them a goodwill incentive if they missed their sales targets by i.e. 0.2%. Than you should celebrate your success together with your partners in a familiar atmosphere and honor them by giving them the feeling of part of your company success. Another important way is giving your business partners awards, if there is no one than simply create one.

· Trust: Show yourself very relaxed even in conflict situations and convince your business partner that you see them as a long term partner. Show them always understanding and show your view as part of the solution and that you don’t see them as only a sell & buy customer from a transactional view. You need to give them the feeling they are not only an account of your portfolio and you care about them.

· Communicate: Introduce your business customers to your company management and give a brief about them they will feel appreciated. Most important part of your role in the ppr is: listen to them and let them speak and let them like you (everybody loves to talk and loves the ones who listens). That means invest enough time to the social part of your relationship. The most information people give you in a casual atmosphere instead of in claustrophobic meeting rooms. Never forget that a relationship goes in both ways and serve them also with necessary information and non-confidential information like upcoming strategies and products of your company in advance. Furthermore, have short whatsapp conversations on weekly basis with them.

· Keep: Even if you finished the contract or lost the customer keep your relations in a certain level. Especially in industrial production and tourism industry the sales people tend to forget their former business partners or customers very easily.

This all means companies need to give the sales teams enough room (time and resources) to be able to manage a healthy balance between PPR and KPIs. Sometimes your sales teams don’t make the sales targets in short run and you can’t see the results in some deadline related financial reports. This doesn’t mean by far the value of human relationship investment can be ignored. 

There are many companies in different industries they even unbelievably ignore the customer’s feedbacks and have a low impact of customer feedbacks in their product development. There are automotive companies who don’t follow up the potential customer′s missed calls to their dealers due to a lack of relevant IT. There is even in some organizations no connection between customer feedback department / after sales (CRM) and the product development departments. This will lead to a big organizational fail in long period. In times of conscious consumers and easy access to alternatives it is certainly a self-suicide of large organizations. These type of deaf companies will either be acquired by others or might totally vanish from the economy with the next disruption they will miss.

https://www.kemalgecer.com/post/design-a-stunning-blog