Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1078362
36 SMT007 MAGAZINE I FEBRUARY 2019 with a company, I aim to answer these ques- tions: "What are they good at? Who are their best customers? Why are they good with those customers? Why do they like those customers?" Then, develop the ideal customer pro- file, which includes technology among other things. The next step identifies who fits that ideal customer profile; from there, you develop target accounts and account plans. The impor- tance of those steps is that you're not doing it alone. You're making sure the whole organiza- tion and management team is behind it. Everybody agrees to go after the same kinds of customers: "We're targeting these types of customers because they have the right amount and type of business and the right attitude that we want." From there, I make spreadsheets and capture all of the steps. So, if you pic - ture this chart on a wall, you have customers on the left and can see the movement. People start saying, "I get it—the basic step is to contact the customer— but what's the next step?" The next step is progress to providing a quote, and then win the order. It's all about having a system. Matties: Yes, you have to have the system and the discipline to hold your team to utilizing that system because if they start circumventing the system, then you have nowhere to go for improvement because you don't know what's going on. Beaulieu: An example to prove your point is by circumventing the system by going off the ac- count list and throwing out the system. Then, four months later, you're chasing a whole fleet of customers who aren't even what the com- pany signed up for. Along the way, you have to make those decisions because you need every- body in agreement, and the only way to track that is with a system. I like the word discipline because we're all scatterbrained. You need a path, or you're not going to do it. Matties: Yes, and the system needs to be visible as well because if it's invisible, then you and your colleagues don't know where it is. My be- lief is to make your work as visible as possible. Nolan Johnson: Methods and discipline go to- gether. One of the things that affects teams and organizations is when they start falling off of their assigned methods. Usually, it's because there's either some- thing about the offi- cial methods that are punishing, or there's a reason that falling off seems to be more ef- fective. It takes some digging to get down to that, but those are two things that tend to hap- pen when you fall off of your processes and methods. Dan, what have you seen over the past few years that may be methods that used to work, but don't anymore? Beaulieu: Like Barry was saying, you have to set the stage. You have to know what you're going after. Years ago, you would buy a direc- tory or get a disc and start calling. You checked out the Federal identification codes (FICs) and started "dialing for dollars." That doesn't work anymore. If people do not know who is call- ing them, then no one's going to pick up the phone. It's an intrusion on the customer's time. It's very black and white, and that method just doesn't work anymore. That's why you have to do touch marketing, and as Barry liked to call it, magnetic marketing. The other thing that doesn't work anymore is "winging it." Every step of the way has to be coordinated and synchronized; you don't just wing it anymore. If you get an appoint- ment, you better know what you want to get out of that face-to-face conversation. Chances are you're not going to make one order, but in-