LAMP A methodology for our time

You know all those companies that talk customer centricity and "putting our customers first" ? Well how many of them really mean it ? One way to tell is to ask them abou the nature of their account planning. Because in reality what I find when I ask that question is that their ACCOUNT plans are defined by a target number handed down from on high, and then the hapless account manager has to figure out a plan on how to flog them enough stuff to meet the number .. where's the customer centricity in that ?

The reality is that many business absolutely do not put their customers first.For many its about creating the goods and services, producing them in a cost efficient way and then selling them at the customers. Marketing and manufacturing driven companies are often like this. BUT how sustainable is this in the 21st century ?

Customers have greater knowledge courtesy of the information age, and now demand more, they demand an extra shot, skinny grande latte with a dusting of cinamon ! They want to define the spec of their individual PC or create customer coloured / designed Nikes. One size increasing will not fit all. That why all products and service are incresing subject to the forces of commoditisaion customers and consumers need to percieve real added value to pay anything but the lowest price, and their expecations of what tailored added value looks like are growing rapidly .

What that means for businesses is that you have to be really willing to be truely customer centric, start with deep understanding of what the customer needs and be willing and able to flex to meet and excede that requirement.

Large Account Management process or LAMP or gold sheeting, is the Miller Heiman methodolgy for managing business critical relationships ... this programme can transform businesses. Well excuted, it facilitates businesses being truely customer centric,uniquely differented and secure, but there is a catch. For it to do what it says on the tin it needs to be approached not as a sales initiativebut as business change. And that has implications potentially across a whole business for structures, remunation policies, people resource and focus ... are you really ready to change and if not are you really ready for the consequences of not doing so?

CRM & Miller Heiman

CRM has had a bad name in the past and had a very bad reputation amongst sales people. Why?
Too many businesses have put the cart before the horse !
You absolutely need to define what you want a sales team to be doing before you tell them how to do it. You need to define best practice for your organisation. You need a robust sales methodology like Miller Heiman. A good methodology will define What you need people to be doing to have world class business development or relationship management functions, delivering world class results for your business.
It's a bit like giving people PowerPoint and expecting that in itself to make them a great presenter. It can surely help but only if you know WHAT to do with it, only if you have acquired some fundamental knowledge and skills in presenting.

75% of the average CRM system's data comes from the sales team. The 2 great barriers to CRM adoption by sales people are complexity and rework.

Sales people don't have time for complexity, they should be out there with customers. What they have to input has to be pragmatic and clearly helpful to them in achieving a result, progressing a deal, or improving a realtionship. The Miller Heiman 1-sheet-summary system is the most pragmatic and user friendly of all methodologies and that means it gets used.

Re-work is an anathema to sales people, typing information into a CRM system, and again in to a PDA and again into a methodology document is just not feasible or realistic, so something often the whole system gets ignored. Miller Heiman's Sales Access Manager software allows for easy integration of the 1-page sheets into almost all CRM's so avoiding the demon re-work.

Given this it's easy to understand that it's only organisations that successfully implement both CRM and a good methodology like Miller Heiman that see significant returns on investment.

Real sales people hate process

Real sales people hate process ! Of course they do! Do you really want to employ a sales person who actually likes spending time in the office filling out forms ? Of course not, BUT this is exactly why they do needs process, A good process is some way to keep sales people focussed, rigorous and disciplined applying the science part of sales that we don't much like as opposed to the "art" at which most of us sales folk are good at. It keep us honest. But that's the joy of the MH processes they are pragmatic. They are of sales people for sales people, so the processes are based on the assumption that if you ask sales people to create a war and peace style plan it'll get done once (in the training room) and probably never again! A detailed yet managable one pager is the level we can cope with and find acceptable !