Are you a strategic partner to your clients?

When this question comes up it is usually directed to the sales team, who might give the response that they are close to their clients because they have known the client and its employees for many years. Alternatively, the response is that they are ordering from us, so I guess we know them well.

Does it matter how close you are to your clients if they are ordering from you anyway?

Getting orders does not mean there is a strategic patnership

In long term B2B client / supplier relations it is very rare for those relationships to be short term. A buying / selling relationship that has multiple purchases over a long period of time will have trust and openness in addition to competitiveness

It matters if you are in a competitive market space where there is more than one supplier of the product or service to the same client base.

Organizations will often maintain relationships with multiple suppliers in a market space to manage risk and maintain good relations in their supply base. They will in almost all cases however direct their attention, resources, and strategic developments towards those that they feel are the most trusting, reliable, and easiest to work with.

Being aware of this and ensuring that an organization is actively working to be close to its strategic clients is a key element of strategic account management in B2B environments.

Getting closer to your client should not be defined purely by how far up the leadership chain you are getting (although that helps). It is also about how entrenched you are with their teams and how advanced you are in their strategy cycle. If you are in their circle of trust, you are more likely to be at the table when they are looking at their strategy.

How close are you to your clients today?

There are several tools available to evaluate where you sit within your client’s circle of trust and, having determined where you sit, how you can progress purposefully from where you are to where you want to be.

To begin with, and in a simple format, have a think about the discussions in your quarterly review sessions with the senior leadership of your client. Not so much the data presented in those discussions, but where the ensuing conversations are focused and where the most enthusiasm and engagement is from the senior leaders.

In those sessions, what are you discussing? We are not referring here to what is spelled out on your PowerPoint slides, but what are the topics that drive the majority of the interactions and the discussion, especially those that start with a comment or question from your client.

Is the conversation about your commercial offer, your pricing, your service performance? You are probably leaning more towards being a transactional supplier, perhaps a solid and reliable pair of hands that is willing to jump in if their main strategic supplier lets them down.

Is it about the market trends, what their own end market is doing? Is it about their strategy and their corporate goals? Is it about your own corporate strategy, your sustainability challenges and how those challenges might align with theirs? Are they asking you about any legislation changes that may impact the industry? Are they referring to that industry body session you were both at a few months earlier and what has progressed since? Those topics of discussion suggest that you are closer to a strategic partner than maintaining a more transactional relationship.

You can quickly get a pulse check like this to determine how close you are to a client according to where the passion expressed in the senior discussions are centered, both the topics that get the most attention from the senior leadership and the depth of the questioning put to you.

This is high level but an example of how you can conduct a check on where you are in the relationship with your valued clients, what might be holding you back, and what options are available to put you at the front of the line.

Determining where you are in the strategic relationship map

There are more structured and reliable methods that help build a structure to show where you are in the client buying relationship, where you are in their circle of trust and how close they might be to other suppliers compared to you. We can help you with that process from creation through to interpreting the results and determining next steps. Reach out here for a discussion. From that data it is possible to set the goal, the steps needed and the shape of success.

If you are already in the confidential product development discussions with your client then you are already in the right spot, in that case your focus should be on retaining that position and not becoming complacent. That requires a similar depth of evaluation but with a different structure and timeline.

Julian Cass

September 2023

This blog post represents thoughts based upon our observations and experiences. It is written to be thought provoking and not intended to be acted upon directly. If you would like to discuss your specific scenario or would like to know more about how our margin management deep dive program can support your goals & strategy contact us here