Extending initial contacts and establishing the dialogue In early middle game, you have four goals: (1) to position yourself as a viable supplier to the customer; (2) to build close relationships with key people in the customer’s organization, including purchasing and supply chain directors; (3) to establish an ongoing dialogue with those key people; and (4) to gain alignment on their needs and your value to them. This relationship-building phase is like a dance between two partners who have just met each other. The first moves are tentative and awkward as you get to know each other and become aware of the other person’s movements and rhythm. If your customer has been dancing with others, and you dance the same old dance everyone else has, then your customer will recognize the dance and fall into an easy pattern, but you will be no different from the other fourteen partners your customer has been dancing with. Howard Schatz, who has specialized in photographing dancers, once observed that what made a dance unique was the dancers’ willingness to venture beyond formula: “I told each dancer that when it was easy, it had probably been done before, probably many times. I explained that only when it was so hard that it was nearly impossible were we perhaps close to getting something unique and extraordinary.”⁴ Less-gifted dancers merely execute the moves they’ve learned. Their dances are predictable, uninspired, and forgettable. When two dancers are truly dancing with each other, they are dancing a dance that is unique to them.
So it is in early middle game business development. You can follow the well-established routines in making sales calls, presenting your products, leaving your brochures, and offering discounts. Or you can do some things that make you and your company memorable and unique. Early middle game includes the following types of activities—and each has many opportunities for behavioral differentiation:
Extending initial contacts and establishing the dialogue
Developing and executing tactical account management plans
Gathering more information on the customer and exploring how he or she uses your types of products and services
Providing information on your company
Gathering intelligence on your competitors’ activities
Determining how the customer is wired—and building a zippered network accordingly
Building time share and mind share
Building chemistry with the customer’s key people
Becoming a trusted advisor to customers
Understanding and managing the political environment
Testing and valuing your differentiators
Consulting with the customer on opportunities and threats
Note that these activities should occur before a specific business opportunity arises. The fact that you do them will behaviorally differentiate you from your competitors who don’t, but the way you do these things can also create behavioral differentiation. If you conduct opening and early middle game well, you can establish a powerful, preferential position with the customer before any business opportunities surface, and your competitors who were doing business as usual will be left in the dust.