3. Michele Martin
ī¤ 5 years HR/recruitment for
2 Fortune 500 companies
ī¤ 20 years in WFD
ī¤ 17 years as small business
owner using consultative
selling strategies
5. Background/Context
ī¤ Builds from April workshops on consultative/relationship
selling
ī¤ Recognize youâre already building partnerships.
ī¤ Open a dialogue about how we can engage in more
strategic, long-term relationship building to deepen
partnerships.
ī¤ **Think about how this info applies to building
partnerships with others in the system.
6. Agenda
ī¤ What does a âthriving partnershipâ with business look
like?
ī¤ Stages of EngagementâFrom âHow do you do?â to
âLetâs Partner!â
ī¤ Ideal Partner Profiles
ī¤ Offers and Engagement Strategies
ī¤ Information
ī¤ Meetings
ī¤ Events
ī¤ Customer Learning
8. If you want to build a long-term,
successful enterprise, you canât
focus on âclosing the sale.â
You have to focus on opening the
relationship.
17. At Your Table
ī¤ When you think of a âthriving partnership
with businessââwhat does that look like?
ī¤ How would your businesses describe it?
(How do you know?)
ī¤ What are the key characteristics of a
thriving partnership?
19. The Hourglass
ī¤ Way to look at entire
customer experience.
ī¤ Different messages, types
of information and levels of
contact for each stage.
ī¤ We must be strategic for
each phase.
21. Phase 1: KNOW
ī¤ First impressions count!
ī¤ How do customers find out about you? Are you capturing
your leads so you can follow up?
ī¤ How inviting/welcoming are your interactions, website,
materials, etc.?
22. Phase 2: LIKE
ī¤ Do you seem to âgetâ their issues, needs, etc.?
ī¤ Do your interactions seem customized/personalized to
their problems?
ī¤ Have you overcome any initial negative perceptions
they may have about working with a government
agency?
23. Phase 3: TRUST
ī¤ Just because they like you doesnât mean they TRUST you!
ī¤ Are you knowledgeable and credible?
ī¤ Do you ask questions that make them think and that help
them develop insights?
ī¤ Do you connect to their aspirations, as well as their
challenges?
ī¤ Do you provide them with resources, information,
connections, materials, etc. that add valueâwhether or
not they are related to your services?
24. Phase 4: TRY
ī¤ What could they âsampleâ to entice them to actually
buy?
ī¤ What can we do that minimizes their investments of time
and/or their perceived risks?
25. Phase 5:
ī¤ When theyâre ready to participateâpost on Job
Gateway, participate in a Job Fair, work on a
recruitment event, work on a committee, etc.
ī¤ Expectations are everything! What expectations are you
setting? What are their expectations?
ī¤ How are you DELIVERING on your promises and
DELIGHTING customers with the experience?
ī¤ Every aspect of the process will influence their opinionâ
can either move you forward or 3 steps back.
26. Phase 6: REPEAT
ī¤ Use the same services?
ī¤ Use new services (cross-selling)?
ī¤ Engage in new activities?
ī¤ How are you engaging with customers to uncover new
needs and respond?
ī¤ How are you continuing to engage with them to connect
to relevant resources, information and peopleâeven
when they arenât currently âbuyingâ from you?
27. Phase 7: REFER
ī¤ How do you make it easy for them to advocate and
refer?
ī¤ How are you engaging them so well they are willing to
invest time in planning/co-creating with you?
28. Reflection
ī¤ What opportunities do you see in these
phases for us to improve our partnerships
with business?
ī¤ How can we use these phases to think
more strategically about our interactions
and partnership-building with business?
30. Some Key Elements
ī¤ Broad DescriptionâIndustry, Role in Company
ī¤ Key Quotes
ī¤ Unique Goals, Problems and âHot Buttonsâ
ī¤ Hesitations and Objections
ī¤ Best ways to engage
ī¤ How do these ideal customers find you?
ī¤ What keeps them coming back?
ī¤ What do they look for in a partnership?
32. Ideally. . .
ī¤ Done with WIB/CareerLink staff as an OVERALL strategy.
ī¤ Shared with everyone.
ī¤ Reviewed/revised on ongoing basis:
ī¤ Same customers?
ī¤ Where are the new markets?
33. Who are your âIdeal Partners?â
ī¤ Customer Profile+
ī¤ Why do they partner with you? Why do you partner with
them?
ī¤ What are the win/winsâespecially from their
perspective?
43. 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?
44.
45. What makes information useful?
ī¤ Relevant to key challenges, problems and aspirations
ī¤ Timely, accurate and reflects âreal-lifeâ conditions.
ī¤ Assists in thinking through an issue and/or making
decisions
ī¤ Piques curiosity and learning
ī¤ Provides insight
ī¤ Provided in preferred format(s) and according to stage
of engagement
46.
47. Some Examples
ī¤ âLink Round-Upsâ
ī¤ Targeted e-newsletters
ī¤ E-guides
ī¤ Infographics
ī¤ Webinars
ī¤ Podcasts/v-casts
ī¤ Social media
48. At Your Table
ī¤ How does the information you provide help a business
customer:
ī¤ Solve a problem or challenge?
ī¤ Achieve their aspirations (personally and professionally)?
ī¤ Develop insight into their situations and into the future?
ī¤ Learn something new and relevant?
ī¤ Become more successful?
ī¤ How are you synthesizing and repackaging data to
provide insights to business?
ī¤ How are you ensuring that information is relevant, timely
useable, and in your customersâ preferred formats?
51. Should we have a meeting?
ī¤ Is there a need to share information?
ī¤ Does the information to be shared require
dialogue?
ī¤ Do we need to meet to make a decision?
52. Who Should Be There?
ī¤ Has information or knowledge to share
ī¤ Has decision-making authority
ī¤ Vital to the issue at hand
53. If They Arenât Attending. . .
ī¤ This is feedback!!
ī¤ What do they need to make meetings
something they WANT to attend?
54.
55. Welcoming
ī¤ Invitation
ī¤ Invite curiosity with questions
ī¤ Personalized
ī¤ Provide advance materials that reduce threat and invite
contribution
ī¤ Welcoming space
ī¤ Greeting at the door
ī¤ Presence--2-minute âclean slateâ drill
ī¤ How do you make new people feel welcome?
56. Inviting Topics
ī¤ âWe surveyed your needs and identified your top two
priorities. In this meeting, we want to explore what it
would mean for us to be âbest in classâ in these two
areas and identify the most important next steps we can
take to meet these expectations.â
ī¤ âIn our region, businesses with 20 or fewer employees
make up 40% of business. In this meeting, we want to
explore the question: âWhat are your greatest challenges
to thriving as a business and how can we help you
address those challenges?ââ
57. Connecting
ī¤ âWhy did you say yes to this meeting?â
ī¤ âWhen it comes to the purpose of this meeting, what do
you care about and why?â
ī¤ âWhat question or concern do you bring to the meeting
that needs to be addressed?â
ī¤ What are your hopes/fears for this meeting?
ī¤ âWhat strengths or gifts do you bring to this meeting?â
58. Discovering
ī¤ Create shared view of reality and environment for
learning
ī¤ How do other people understand the situation?
ī¤ Whatâs the birdâs eye view? Whatâs the view on the ground?
ī¤ Make sense of that reality
ī¤ Neither flee from nor prematurely resolve that reality.
ī¤ Present info (<20 minutes) and then ask:
ī¤ What did you hear?
ī¤ What do you want to learn more about?
59. Elicit Peopleâs Dreams
ī¤ What do people REALLY care about?
ī¤ Talk about the future as if it were the present.
ī¤ Use the artsâengaging the 5 senses creates new visions
that donât emerge otherwise.
ī¤ Take a breakâGallery walks, Walk & Talks
60. Deciding
ī¤ Who will make the decision?
ī¤ How will the decision be made?
ī¤ What will be decided?
61. Attend to the End
ī¤ How you end creates the platform for the next stage.
ī¤ 3-Part Ending
ī¤ Summarize discussion and decisions made
ī¤ Roadmap to whatâs next
ī¤ Time to reflect on the meeting experience
62. Reflecting
ī¤ Did we do the work we needed to in this meeting?
ī¤ Was this time well-spent? If so, what worked? What
didnât?
ī¤ What do we need to do to make sure that our next
meeting is time well-spent?
ī¤ Whom would you like to recognize for their contributions
to this meeting?
ī¤ What accomplishments would you like to celebrate?
63. Discussion
ī¤ What questions does this open up for you about
how you currently structure your meetings?
ī¤ How could you use the âmeeting canoeâ to
build relationships and deepen your
partnerships?
65. Think about. . .
ī¤ How can we help people build their connections and
relationships?
ī¤ How can we help them develop insight and plan for the
future?
ī¤ How can we share learning?
ī¤ How can we enable collective action?
ī¤ How could we partner with business to offer these?
66. Asking More Powerful Questions
ī¤ What gives life to our partnerships?
ī¤ What would it look like if our region was thriving for
everyone?
ī¤ What areas of impact would bring the most positive
change to our community?
ī¤ How can we cultivate innovation in our community?
ī¤ How can we cultivate entrepreneurship in our
community?
ī¤ What trends are shaping our community and how can
we respond, rather than react?
76. At Your Tables
ī¤ Which of these event ideas intrigues you?
ī¤ How could you use these event ideas to
deepen relationships and build partnerships in
your area?
ī¤ How could you partner with business to offer
these events?
78. Strategic Business Intelligence
ī¤ Working with quantitative and
qualitative information to identify and
respond to customer needs/gaps, look
for new opportunities and operate more
effectively and efficiently.
79. How do we go deeper than
âcustomer satisfactionâ?
85. What are we learning about. . .
ī¤ Individual customers? Industries? Across industries?
ī¤ Current needs/aspirations?
ī¤ Emerging needs/aspirations?
ī¤ Business issues beyond workforce issues:
ī¤ Technology?
ī¤ Economic trends?
ī¤ Business processes?
86. Regular Conversations About. . .
ī¤ What are we learning?
ī¤ What does this tell us about:
ī¤ Changes to customer profile(s) or focus on new markets?
ī¤ Issues with stages of engagement?
ī¤ Issues with execution?
ī¤ Need for new connections?
ī¤ New opportunities?
87. Share Information with. . .
ī¤ WIB/CareerLink staff
ī¤ Partners
ī¤ Customers!
ī¤ âHereâs what weâre learning from our customersâ
ī¤ âThis is what weâre hearing from healthcare providersâ
ī¤ âWe asked and you responded!â
88. Keys to Long-Term Partnerships
ī¤ Focus on deepening relationships, over time.
ī¤ Focus on âneedfindingâ and aspiration
identification--from customer perspective.
ī¤ Focus on providing ongoing value based on
customer needs and aspirations.
ī¤ Focus on ways to connect, deepen insights,
innovate and create alignment.
89. Skills We Need to Grow
ī¤ Content Curation and Sense-making
ī¤ Creative questioning
ī¤ Creative meeting facilitation
ī¤ Strategic convening
ī¤ Design Thinking