Relationship Marketing and Customer Contacts

15 Lessons Learned and Tips For Improving Customer Contacts No matter how comprehensive your methodology for managing customer contacts is, once you get in front of the customer anything can happen. That is why, in addition to the tools and approaches we recommend for guiding customer contacts, we have provided the list below of lessons learned from our own encounters. They were compiled by Bob Kelly, a business development and capture consultant with 21 years as a U.S. Naval Aviator and Projects Officer and 17 years as a business developer for Lockheed Martin. 
The items on the list are not in any particular order or grouped, categorized, or converted into precise steps. And yet they can be just as important for achieving successful customer contacts as the steps in your process.
Treat every “scheduled” customer contact as valuable time that you may never get again. Plan each aspect of the contact from body language to what you hope to walk away with. Know what you want to get out of the contact. Know what you want the customer to get out of the contact --- make it worth their while. Act sincere and respectful at all times regardless of how you’re received. Show up prepared with primary and back-up methods of presenting your information. Be ready for the unexpected – whether it’s hand cramps from taking lots of notes on critical information or complete customer silence that could be described as deafening. Educate the customer – if you tell them something they don’t already know, solve an issue they have, or help them avoid a future problem, their confidence in you, your company, and your products will grow. Listen well and give the customer your full attention regardless of what they want to talk about – if the conversation strays, find an opening to nudge the dialogue back on course. Develop messages to the customer to improve your position regarding the opportunity at hand, and to build long-term customer relationships. Learn as much as you can about their expectations and preferences. Keep track of action items, especially those that require follow-up. Anticipate potential outcomes and be prepared with responses. A “Thank You” note for the use of customer time is usually appropriate. In case of an “unscheduled” encounter with a customer, each member of your Capture Team should have at the ready an “Elevator Speech” – information that can be presented in the time it takes an elevator to go to the next floor.

34 Things To Ask Your Customer Before RFP Release Before an RFP is released, there’s a lot of information to gather to ensure that your pursuit of the business is successful. This information or intelligence gathering effort is usually a team effort with many people contributing in a variety of ways. As we all know, a cost-effective way to gather information is to place telephone calls to customer points of contact to make direct inquiries on specific topics, to set up meetings, or to follow up on meeting action items. When you plan these calls, always have intelligence gathering as a primary or secondary objective. With that in mind, what should you ask the customer when you’ve got them on the phone?
About Contacts And Decision Makers
How are customer names spelled? What are their correct titles and office codes? Who will influence the source selection? (Users, Individual Requirement Stakeholders, Source Selection Authority, members of the Source Selection Evaluation Board, Program Manager, Contracting Officer, etc.) About The Program
What does the program plan need to achieve? Are there specific program objectives? What does the customer intend to buy? What type of work will be performed? Where will the work be performed? Are there small business “set-aside” requirements? About The Requirements
What are the customer’s exact needs? What requirements have been identified? (Technical/Technology, Management, Security, Key Personnel, Cost/Price, Past Performance, Teaming, Use of Government Labs/ Facilities, Security, etc.) What is the most meaningful in terms of value to the customer? What are the customer’s “must haves”? (Hot Buttons, priorities, immediate needs, overriding issues, etc.) About The Evaluation
What evaluation criteria have been developed? How will low cost/price be evaluated? About The Budget
Who is funding the program? When will the program receive funding and what profile will it have? About The Schedule
What’s the schedule look like? (very near-term, until award) Are there any important dates to keep in mind? (Industry Day(s), bidders conference, draft/final RFP, questions about the draft/final RFP, proposal delivery, award, Contract Readiness Review, etc.) About The Contract
Is there an approximate contract value and period of performance? (one year, base year plus option years) What type of contract is planned? (firm fixed price, cost plus award fee, etc.) Is it a single award or multiple awards? Is this a Master Contract? (also called Indefinite Delivery/ Indefinite Quantity (ID/IQ); blanket, period or panel contract; task order or basic ordering agreements; or Government Wide Acquisition Contracts (GWACs)) About The Deliverables
Is there a list of deliverables? Has a Contract Data Requirements List (CDRL) been developed? About Their Buying Procedures
How should the procurement process be described? How will the procurement be managed? What is the stage of process development? What similar products/services were acquired recently? (agency, value, award date, etc.) Other Things To Ask
Will the topic of Organizational Conflict Of Interest (OCI) be addressed in the RFP? Will an OCI Plan be required? Should a Security Management Plan be prepared? Will Government Compliance Training be required? If an incumbent is present, are there any performance issues? Intelligence gathering to strengthen your pursuit of business can be divided into several types and can serve a multitude of purposes.   When combined with Readiness Reviews from the CapturePlanning.com MustWin Process, you can make these questions a measurable part of how you prepare to win an opportunity before the RFP is released.

How To Tell Whether The Customer Likes You Or Not Consider these three scenarios:
Your project manager says that the customer likes you and that there haven’t been any complaints lately. Your business development manager says you should bid an opportunity because “the contracting officer said we should bid,” and is going to send you the RFP. An executive at your company wants to bid an opportunity because he used to play golf with an executive at the customer. Does the customer really like you? Do you have a competitive advantage? Should you bid?
The only honest answer is “I don’t know.” There is as much reason to disregard each situation above as there is to accept it. Project managers don’t want to say that the customer doesn’t like them. Business developers tend to want to bid every opportunity they find. And as for executives… well let’s just say that having played golf with someone who may not even be involved in the procurement probably does not translate into an advantage.
Something else you need to consider is that a great relationship with one person at the customer does not necessarily translate into any influence over the procurement selection. Is that person involved? Who else is involved? Does the customer have an internal consensus regarding what to procure or are there many opinions and/or power struggles going on? Does it matter (and will it impact the evaluation) if one person at the customer says they like you?
So how can you tell when the customer likes you and when that translates into a competitive advantage?
For winning business through proposals, it all comes down to whether your relationship with the customer gives you an information advantage.
If you have a great relationship with the customer, but you don’t understand their needs any better than anyone else does, then unless that person gets to make the selection, your relationship doesn't matter. A great relationship with a customer that doesn't provide the information you need is not a competitive advantage. On the other hand, even if your relationship with the customer is limited, if it translates into an understanding of their needs that exceeds what’s in the RFP and gives you an advantage over your competitors, that matters a lot.
So ask the project manager above about the customer's preferences, how they make trade-offs, issues they face, trends, etc. If they can’t have a discussion with the customer and come back enlightened, then your bid won’t be more insightful than anyone else’s bid. Ask the business developer above what the contracting officer told you that they didn’t tell everyone else. Ask the executive above the same questions you asked the project manager.
In the off-the-shelf process documents we sell, we've built the entire pre-RFP intelligence gathering process around getting answers to questions that provide the information you need to prepare a winning proposal. Whether the customer “likes” you or not isn’t one of the considerations. Either you get the information you need or you don't.
Information is vital to writing a winning proposal. Does the customer want a centralized or decentralized approach? Do they want to empower their field offices or control them? Do they see technology as a way to mitigate risk or a source of risk? Do they want to reduce staff or protect staff? Are they more concerned with short term or long term issues? Do they want a solution that is specialized and stands alone, or do they want something that's fully integrated? Do they want you to directly manage the project/staff, or do they want to directly manage the project/staff themselves?
Questions like these are usually not answered in the RFP. And yet they are vital for proposing the right offering, describing it in the right context, and knowing which benefits to emphasize. Guess wrong and you lose.
If the customer likes you, you’ll be able to discuss these subjects, get the answers you need, and gain the insight that will enable you to write the winning proposal. This is especially true when writing government proposals.  After the RFP is released, the rules may not let them speak to you at all, and if they do they may have to say the same thing to everyone else.  But if they like you, they will talk to you before the RFP is released.  And if they really, really like you, they may even stretch the rules and talk to you after the RFP is released.
This only works if you bother to ask the right questions. A major reason we structured the pre-RFP portion of the process the way we did was because of how often companies arrive at RFP release unprepared. If you're counting on the customer liking you and are unprepared, without the answers to the questions you need, then instead of trying to win a competition, you're looking for a gift from someone you know less well than you think you do.
So forget about whether the customer likes you and focus on getting the information you need to write the winning proposal. You can measure your likelihood of winning by your ability to get that information. In fact, in our process documentation, we show you how to turn the pre-RFP process into a metrics and measurements system that really can quantify and predict the likelihood of your ability to win.

3 Goals For Building Customer Relationships And 5 Ways To Do It You may have heard the phrase “winning the battle and losing the war.” Did you know it has relevance in business development? Well, it does when business developers focus only on winning the next contract — winning the battle — and give little consideration to winning many more contracts with the same customer. On the other hand, experienced developers focus on building lasting customer relationships to provide a solid foundation from which they can win both the battles and the war against the competition.
Lasting customer relationships allow us to gain insight into and to shape their wants and needs, to mold their expectations, and to influence their requirements. Such relationships permit us to help them understand the benefits, features and advantages of acquiring our solutions and using our capabilities. By interfacing with the customer early and often in the pursuit of business, we can support the customer in building a long-term answer to their needs. Plus, we improve our competitive position along the way by learning more about what they really want and by convincing them that we’re working on their behalf.
When building customer relationships, there are three goals to keep in mind:
Create your relationship based on trust and dependability. Deal with your customer equitably and ethically. Always deliver what you promise the customer. Become their “Go To” team. Work with them as much as possible. Frequent customer assistance will grow your value to them. Of course, be mindful of any impacts that you might have on their schedules. Continually refine your understanding of their requirements. Integrating and verifying what you can gather about customer wants and needs will cause you to identify both the root causes of their actions and their real needs. Gather what you can about their problems/issues; what they truly value; and what pre-dispositions they might have in how they do their work and what they want to acquire. As you go about achieving your goals, strive to appreciate how the customer views the acquisition process under their management. Here are five ways to gain that appreciation and build relationships:
Listen, Listen, Listen. If you’re intent on selling your company, your product or yourself, you may not hear what your customer has to say.  If you let them, your customers will tell you how to win against your competition. Make inquiries in an interested/inquisitive way demonstrating that you’re focused on helping them to achieve their objectives and to get what they truly wish to acquire. Take the time to uncover their real “hot buttons”, or the things that keep them awake at night. Not all customer wants and needs become readily apparent early in a relationship. Frequent customer interactions are urged as part of Goal 2 above. During these interactions, always present yourself or your team as well-informed and educated on the topic being discussed. By doing this, you’ll increase the chances that the customer will view you as having placed their needs at the top of your “To Do” list. Extend your customer understanding into several levels of detail. Knowing the details of what steps the customer goes through to make their purchases may have a significant impact on the success of your business pursuit. Understanding who the actual proponents of the proposed program are could make your customer contact efforts efficient and cost-effective. Studying the funding source for the acquisition might allow you to uncover follow-on opportunities or the potential for transitioning a proposed one-year contact into a multi-year procurement. Pursuing good customer relationships will increase your competitive position. We urge you to employ the goals and ways suggested above, and to look at them as starting points. If you achieve these goals and then go beyond them to develop your customer relationships, you will continue to come out on top of the business competitions you enter. Good luck!

Four Ways to Extend Your Contacts Beyond The Procurement Office The number one reason to identify the program staff and build a relationship before the need becomes a procurement is that all your contacts after that point will be with the Contracting Officer or a representative. At that point you will only get the information that the contracting office chooses to release, and it will be the same information all your competitors have. Potentially even worse, the procurement staff may not understand the technology or needs driving the procurement and thus not be able to help you understand them. Once a procurement officer is involved, you have far fewer options to learn about the opportunity.
So how do you still get good, juicy intelligence? It turns out that there are ways that are fair and legal. That's important, because you don't want to cross the line and get yourself into trouble. Trying to talk directly to government program staff about the procurement is a good way to cross that line. To keep yourself out of trouble, the place to start is to make sure that you've actually tried to establish a relationship with the contracting office and have gathered all the intelligence you can from them. For example, you might ask them:
Whether their procurement policies and procedures are posted on a website so you can study up If they will permit site visits and/or an industry day where you (and everyone else) can have access to the program staff Who the incumbent is and whether they will release a list of interested bidders What kind of problems they experienced on the current contact (or in the past) If a copy of the previous contract is available with or without a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request If the customer has any other documents (designs, plans, policies, procedures) that are relevant and could be made available However, you're probably not going to get the juicy stuff from the procurement office. To do that, you need to talk to someone who knows about the subject matter, but who isn't directly involved with the procurement. This might include staff:
Who worked for the specific customer organization but who have retired or been transferred. These may be hard to find, but can be extremely valuable. Obviously, the more time that passes, the more stale their information will be. But they can often help you zero in on exactly how procurement decisions are made and what the customer looks for. Who work for your competitors and have experience at the customer. These can also be hard to identify. But they often love to talk about what they do. It's human nature. You might also want to try recruiting them. The best way to find out everything they know is to hire them before you start writing the proposal, instead of waiting until after submission and after you find out whether you've won. If that's too risky for you, another option is to make an offer that's contingent on whether you win. You may be surprised at what your competitors' staff will tell you if they think they're being recruited. If you don't know their names, sometimes you can post ads or hold a job fair and they'll come to you. Who work for other parts of the government, but who work with the office you are trying to market. They are not involved with the procurement, but may know about your customer's mission, culture, problems, and preferences. Who work for contractors in other areas. Since you're not competing against them (at least at the moment), they might be more willing to share what they know. None of these options are as good as talking to the relevant government program staff directly, but they're better than just reading about the customer and their needs in an RFP (Request For Proposal). They may not know details about the statement of work, but they might help you to learn about the customer's mission, culture, and preferences. You might even be able to hire them as consultants, either just to spend a few hours telling you what they know or even a few days helping you to write the proposal.

Identifying Customer Contacts When trying to figure out how to contact a new customer prospect, you start with two problems:
How do you make contact at all? How do you get to the right person(s)? You also start with several ways to solve them:
Published points of contact. While these may not be the right person, they give you a place to start. And if you are careful in your online searches, you might be able to find a point of contact who is a good place to start. Networking. Who do you know that might know someone relevant? Can they make an introduction or referral? Events. Conferences and other events may provide you with an opportunity to network and meet a relevant point of contact. You don’t want to become a stalker, but a little outreach may be called for. Social networks. Can you find a relevant point of contact on LinkedIn or another social network? B2B contact lists. You can often purchase access to contact information that will give you a starting point. Database and catalog publishers like Carroll Publishing, Input, FedSources, Hoovers, and InfoUSA are examples. One you find a place to start, you need to navigate to the right person(s). There are several approaches you can take to get there.
 
Understanding the Customer’s Organization
It helps when the customer publishes their organization chart. You can often see where your current points of contact are and where you need to get to. But an organization chart doesn’t tell you how an organization really functions. So use your starting point to help you better understand how the customer’s organization really works. When the customer doesn’t publish their organization chart, you should ask them about it when you make contact. With each person you talk to, you can collect more information until you can draw their organization chart.
As you talk to different people within the customer’s organization, you will probably identify multiple points of contact. It can be very helpful to have multiple points of contact because each may have a different role and perspective within the buying process. For example, you may identify one or more procurement specialists at the customer. You should also try to identify the program staff or end users who have the actual requirement. You may need to talk to both the procurement staff and the program staff to get a complete understanding of the organization’s needs and what it will take for them to become a customer.
 
Identifying the Decision Maker(s)
Often the person who has the need is not the person who has decision authority over whether or what to purchase. Sometimes you make contact with someone who has a need and a lot of interest, only the lead goes nowhere because they can’t affect a purchase. That is why making contact with the actual decision maker(s) can be important. The problem with this is that in some organizations it can be very difficult to identify the decision makers, even for those inside the organization. And when you do identify them, you often have to get past a gatekeeper in order to make contact.
To identify the decision makers, consider:
The organization’s structure and ranking of staff. Often a person’s rank within an organization determines their level of authority and ability to make procurement decisions. The culture at the organization. For example, in a consensus driven environment, there might not be a single decision maker, or the decision maker might require input from multiple parties. Influencers. Even in organizations with specific decision makers, there are often key people who have significant influence over or contributions to decision making. Functions and roles. Sometimes instead of rank, what matters most is the role a person plays within an organization. Policies and procedures. Organizations usually have set policies and procedures when it comes to procurement. Discovering what they are should be a priority. It can also tell you who the decision makers are.  
Horizontal and Vertical Strategies
When you are navigating a customer’s organization, you can use horizontal or vertical strategies.
Horizontal strategies involve working through peers, partners, or even competitors to identify people on the same working level in the organization. Vertical strategies involve working up and down the rank structure of the organization. One way to navigate vertically is to move up or down the ladder one rung at a time, by using your point of contact at the current level to identify the point of contact at the next level. Another approach is to go straight to the desired level. People are often unnecessarily intimidated by going straight to a high level in an organization. If what you have to say is relevant and useful to the person you wish to contact, then it’s appropriate to make contact, regardless of the level. You just need to make sure they see it that way. Which approach to take depends on the organization you are trying to navigate. Most often you will employ both strategies.