Its strange isn't it. You take some of the biggest Clients you are dealing with, you put your best people on them, you have great products and services that you know they should be buying......and yet all this love and attention seems to result in mediocre growth and often lower margins than your standard accounts.
What's happening - I've heard all sorts of excuses. "The market is really tough - the big boys expect lower prices" "You have to live with their procurement processes - they kill...

When you are about to meet a key Client at some crunch point in a pursuit or sales campaign, and you've sat down and thought through all your key messages, and how you would answer critical questions, have you ever had the experience of saying 'I hope they don't ask us......'
....and then you go to the meeting and somehow the question you most feared arising is the one they always ask. What happened? Why did they zero in on the one topic you hoped they wouldn't raise? And why did we do so...

One of the most insightful books I ever read was Stephen R Covey's "The Third Alternative" In it Stephen points out how so much our scripting in life comes from a two alternative paradigm. You win, I lose, I'm right, you're wrong, my point of view is right, yours wrong, getting my idea accepted over yours is important to me, Competition not collaboration.
This permeates our life and in many areas shows a tendency to strengthen - look at our political system or that of the US where...

By Kevin Vaughan-Smith, MD of Haylin Associates and Stuart Maister, Chief Storyteller, Strategic Narrative.
Over the years many clients have told us the same thing: we struggle to move away from a transactional relationship with our key accounts. We end up bidding for projects, competing on price, struggling to differentiate.
We’re launching a new programme to help tackle this. Read on to find out more.
Clients say: we would love to be seen as true partners, trusted and consulted as part of a...