In our last posts we discussed when and how to use the Inquire Game to drive complex B2B buying decisions. Today I’m going to provide a real world example for using an Amazon-style narrative as a base, the experience for the customer, and how it drove a strategic sales cycle in a very short time.
The Situation
My customer was confronted with multiple unforeseen supply chain disruptions resulting in significant loss of production. The shortage of parts and components was not caused by the customer’s direct suppliers, but by suppliers on lower levels of the supply chain. So there were several layers of customer-supplier relationships between my customer and the supplier disrupting the supply chain.
In my customer’s industry the tier-1 suppliers don’t disclose their supply chain to their customers as it is a major source of competitiveness (other than in for e.g. the aerospace and healthcare industry where supply chain transparency is enforced by regulation). As a result, my customer got caught by the lack of supply only when their direct supplier escalated it leaving them with little to no room for mitigation.
The Inquiry Game Begins
Due to the urgency of the issue my customer jumped right into exploring potential solutions and invited us to participate without starting a Formal Buying Process. I proposed to base this exploration on an Amazon-style narrative we jointly developed in weekly sprints. The customer accepted the proposal and we kicked off the process with a document containing the initial titles of the sections we needed to work on.
Amazon narratives usually start with the section “Purpose” describing the goal of the document, its target audience, and intended outcome. Here we already encountered our first interesting discussion: What was the purpose of the document we set out to write? To whom would it ultimately go? What was the decision we wanted to achieve?
In the next section we jointly described the situation as the customer and we understood it. The resulting discussion unearthed a number of different perceptions on the customer’s side. Agreeing on one common text describing the situation allowed all involved parties to start the Inquiry Process from the same point and also allowed stakeholders getting involved at a later stage to quickly and completely understand the problem we planned to tackle.
The Initial Version of the Solution is Drafted and Validated
Based on the well understood situation my team started to draft a technical solution and synchronized it with Technical Buyers on the customer’s side. We proposed to build a proof-of-Concept (PoC) within a 6-week period and the customer committed to contribute own resources and even one of their direct suppliers from their Sounding Board.
The PoC was built in time and the result presented to the entire project team. It successfully demonstrated to communicate supply shortage signals across the extended supply chain without disclosing its instances beyond the direct customer-supplier relationship. As a result, the PoC was presented to the Economic Buyer, an Executive Board Member who approved continuing the process.
The Extended Version of the Solution is Drafted and Validated
With support from the Economic Buyer we jointly decided to extend the initial version of the PoC and also expand the validation by involving a supplier of the already participating direct supplier into the project to validate the multi-tier setup of the solution.
Again, the PoC was built within 6 weeks and presented to the stakeholders followed by the presentation to several Members of the Executive Board. With this broad support from the top of the organization the Economic Buyer decided to establish a project team to build out the solution for production with our offering as the underlying platform.
The Outcome
The process produced a validated PoC within just months of the start of the discussion. In writing the narrative the appropriate stakeholders were identified and included. All participants had real-time access to the actual version of the narrative and could comment on it whenever they wanted. As a result the weekly sprint reviews took just 30 minutes and the process maintained a high momentum.
The quality of the resulting narrative convinced the Economic Buyer that a practicable solution to the problem was found with its risk and reward clearly understood allowing them to make a strategic decision within 9 months of the start of the process.
Benefits for Strategic Sales Cycles
Sustained Project Momentum
One of the key features of Amazon-style narratives is that they have to stand on their own which means they need to contain all information required to make a decision. This allows new stakeholders joining the process to get up to speed quickly without having to ask the team any questions. In our case the team grew from half a dozen members into dozens spanning multiple organizations. Nevertheless, the process kept flowing and didn’t get dragged out.
Level of Innovation
The next learning was the degree of innovation the team achieved as we introduced technologies the customer had never been exposed to before. The narrative format forced us to communicate all the data that was required in a way its relevance for the project became immediately clear also to readers unfamiliar with the topic.
Trust
The Inquiry Process built trust with our customer and their supplier in the solution and that it wasn’t motivated by us trying to sell our offering, but driven by mutual benefit with a long-term perspective instead.
Decision Making Speed
Getting to a decision on the Executive Board level within just months demonstrates the value of the Inquiry Process and the power of the narrative as the communication platform. The weekly sprints combined with online content development significantly shortened and accelerated the process.
Conclusion
The Inquire Game drives strategic decisions faster and with less effort compared to the Advocacy Game by demonstrating mutual interest for all involved parties.
Using an Amazon-Style narrative as the communication tool drives common understanding, promotes innovation, and ensures risks and obstacles are recognized.
The process and the tool in combination generate trust between all involved parties and provide the base for the execution of a long-term, ambitious undertaking.
Comments