Engaging Business as Your Partner

Engaging Business As Your PartnerMichele Martin, The Bamboo Project, Inc.

Let’s Connect!

Name/Organization/Role

“What made you say ‘yes’ to attending this session?”

Michele Martin

5 years HR/recruitment for 2 Fortune 500 companies

20 years in WFD

17 years as small business owner using consultative selling strategies

Website

www.michelemmartin.com/consultative_selling Username: pwda Password: pawork

All slides and handouts

Follow-up resources/information for implementation

Background/Context

Builds from April workshops on consultative/relationship selling

Recognize you’re already building partnerships.

Open a dialogue about how we can engage in more strategic, long-term relationship building to deepen partnerships.

**Think about how this info applies to building partnerships with others in the system.

Agenda

What does a “thriving partnership” with business look like?

Stages of Engagement—From “How do you do?” to “Let’s Partner!”

Ideal Partner Profiles

Offers and Engagement Strategies Information Meetings Events Customer Learning

Business as Partner

If you want to build a long-term, successful enterprise, you can’t focus on “closing the sale.”

You have to focus on opening the relationship.

Start with the WIIFM

Customer Experience

Help Them Make Good Decisions

Ask the Right Questions

Become Trusted Colleague

Engagement=Mind AND Heart!

At Your Table

When you think of a “thriving partnership with business”—what does that look like?

How would your businesses describe it? (How do you know?)

What are the key characteristics of a thriving partnership?

Stages of EngagementFrom “Who Are You?” to “I’ll Do Anything for You!”

The Hourglass

Way to look at entire customer experience.

Different messages, types of information and levels of contact for each stage.

We must be strategic for each phase.

Success=Continued Engagement

Phase 1: KNOW

First impressions count!

How do customers find out about you? Are you capturing your leads so you can follow up?

How inviting/welcoming are your interactions, website, materials, etc.?

Phase 2: LIKE

Do you seem to “get” their issues, needs, etc.?

Do your interactions seem customized/personalized to their problems?

Have you overcome any initial negative perceptions they may have about working with a government agency?

Phase 3: TRUST

Just because they like you doesn’t mean they TRUST you!

Are you knowledgeable and credible?

Do you ask questions that make them think and that help them develop insights?

Do you connect to their aspirations, as well as their challenges?

Do you provide them with resources, information, connections, materials, etc. that add value—whether or not they are related to your services?

Phase 4: TRY

What could they “sample” to entice them to actually buy?

What can we do that minimizes their investments of time and/or their perceived risks?

Phase 5:

When they’re ready to participate—post on Job Gateway, participate in a Job Fair, work on a recruitment event, work on a committee, etc.

Expectations are everything! What expectations are you setting? What are their expectations?

How are you DELIVERING on your promises and DELIGHTING customers with the experience?

Every aspect of the process will influence their opinion—can either move you forward or 3 steps back.

Phase 6: REPEAT

Use the same services?

Use new services (cross-selling)?

Engage in new activities?

How are you engaging with customers to uncover new needs and respond?

How are you continuing to engage with them to connect to relevant resources, information and people—even when they aren’t currently “buying” from you?

Phase 7: REFER

How do you make it easy for them to advocate and refer?

How are you engaging them so well they are willing to invest time in planning/co-creating with you?

Reflection

What opportunities do you see in these phases for us to improve our partnerships with business?

How can we use these phases to think more strategically about our interactions and partnership-building with business?

Ideal Customer ProfilesWho Should We Partner With?

Some Key Elements Broad Description—Industry, Role in Company

Key Quotes

Unique Goals, Problems and “Hot Buttons”

Hesitations and Objections

Best ways to engage

How do these ideal customers find you?

What keeps them coming back?

What do they look for in a partnership?

Rachel Recruiter

Ideally. . .

Done with WIB/CareerLink staff as an OVERALL strategy.

Shared with everyone.

Reviewed/revised on ongoing basis: Same customers? Where are the new markets?

Who are your “Ideal Partners?”

Customer Profile+

Why do they partner with you? Why do you partner with them?

What are the win/wins—especially from their perspective?

Customer OffersWhere Can We Bring Value?

The Offer Has to MATTER to Them!

Information

Connections

Intermediary

Convener

From Hero to Host

How do we deliver value in these areas to deepen partnerships?

Information Strategies

We have lots of data. But does it really inform? And is it the information that helps business partners make more informed decisions about their businesses?

What makes information useful?

Relevant to key challenges, problems and aspirations

Timely, accurate and reflects “real-life” conditions.

Assists in thinking through an issue and/or making decisions

Piques curiosity and learning

Provides insight

Provided in preferred format(s) and according to stage of engagement

Some Examples

“Link Round-Ups”

Targeted e-newsletters

E-guides

Infographics

Webinars

Podcasts/v-casts

Social media

At Your Table How does the information you provide help a business

customer: Solve a problem or challenge? Achieve their aspirations (personally and professionally)? Develop insight into their situations and into the future? Learn something new and relevant? Become more successful?

How are you synthesizing and repackaging data to provide insights to business?

How are you ensuring that information is relevant, timely useable, and in your customers’ preferred formats?

Making Meetings More Engaging

Should we have a meeting?

Is there a need to share information?

Does the information to be shared require dialogue?

Do we need to meet to make a decision?

Who Should Be There?

Has information or knowledge to share

Has decision-making authority

Vital to the issue at hand

If They Aren’t Attending. . .

This is feedback!!

What do they need to make meetings something they WANT to attend?

Welcoming

Invitation Invite curiosity with questions Personalized Provide advance materials that reduce threat and invite

contribution

Welcoming space

Greeting at the door

Presence--2-minute “clean slate” drill

How do you make new people feel welcome?

Inviting Topics

“We surveyed your needs and identified your top two priorities. In this meeting, we want to explore what it would mean for us to be “best in class” in these two areas and identify the most important next steps we can take to meet these expectations.”

“In our region, businesses with 20 or fewer employees make up 40% of business. In this meeting, we want to explore the question: ‘What are your greatest challenges to thriving as a business and how can we help you address those challenges?’”

Connecting

“Why did you say yes to this meeting?”

“When it comes to the purpose of this meeting, what do you care about and why?”

“What question or concern do you bring to the meeting that needs to be addressed?”

What are your hopes/fears for this meeting?

“What strengths or gifts do you bring to this meeting?”

Discovering

Create shared view of reality and environment for learning How do other people understand the situation? What’s the bird’s eye view? What’s the view on the ground?

Make sense of that reality

Neither flee from nor prematurely resolve that reality.

Present info (<20 minutes) and then ask: What did you hear? What do you want to learn more about?

Elicit People’s Dreams What do people REALLY care about?

Talk about the future as if it were the present.

Use the arts—engaging the 5 senses creates new visions that don’t emerge otherwise.

Take a break—Gallery walks, Walk & Talks

Deciding

Who will make the decision?

How will the decision be made?

What will be decided?

Attend to the End

How you end creates the platform for the next stage.

3-Part Ending Summarize discussion and decisions made Roadmap to what’s next Time to reflect on the meeting experience

Reflecting

Did we do the work we needed to in this meeting?

Was this time well-spent? If so, what worked? What didn’t?

What do we need to do to make sure that our next meeting is time well-spent?

Whom would you like to recognize for their contributions to this meeting?

What accomplishments would you like to celebrate?

Discussion

What questions does this open up for you about how you currently structure your meetings?

How could you use the “meeting canoe” to build relationships and deepen your partnerships?

Engaging Events and Activities

Think about. . .

How can we help people build their connections and relationships?

How can we help them develop insight and plan for the future?

How can we share learning?

How can we enable collective action?

How could we partner with business to offer these?

Asking More Powerful Questions What gives life to our partnerships?

What would it look like if our region was thriving for everyone?

What areas of impact would bring the most positive change to our community?

How can we cultivate innovation in our community?

How can we cultivate entrepreneurship in our community?

What trends are shaping our community and how can we respond, rather than react?

Video Meetings and Panels

Strategic Convening

Knowledge Cafe

Visualizing the Future

Q-Storming

Appreciative Interviews

Scenario Planning

Open Innovation Events

Startup Weekend

At Your Tables

Which of these event ideas intrigues you?

How could you use these event ideas to deepen relationships and build partnerships in your area?

How could you partner with business to offer these events?

Learning from Customers

Strategic Business Intelligence

Working with quantitative and qualitative information to identify and respond to customer needs/gaps, look for new opportunities and operate more effectively and efficiently.

How do we go deeper than “customer satisfaction”?

Consultative Interviews

Ideal Customer Profiling

Learning Events

Design Thinking

Look for Surprises and Insights!

What are we learning about. . .

Individual customers? Industries? Across industries?

Current needs/aspirations?

Emerging needs/aspirations?

Business issues beyond workforce issues: Technology? Economic trends? Business processes?

Regular Conversations About. . .

What are we learning?

What does this tell us about: Changes to customer profile(s) or focus on new markets? Issues with stages of engagement? Issues with execution? Need for new connections? New opportunities?

Share Information with. . .

WIB/CareerLink staff

Partners

Customers! “Here’s what we’re learning from our customers” “This is what we’re hearing from healthcare providers” “We asked and you responded!”

Keys to Long-Term Partnerships

Focus on deepening relationships, over time.

Focus on “needfinding” and aspiration identification--from customer perspective.

Focus on providing ongoing value based on customer needs and aspirations.

Focus on ways to connect, deepen insights, innovate and create alignment.

Skills We Need to Grow

Content Curation and Sense-making

Creative questioning

Creative meeting facilitation

Strategic convening

Design Thinking

What Are Your Take Aways?

What is ONE thing you will do?