“I’ll come. But I don’t need any more trophies. I’ve got a room full of them.”
I overheard one of our customers say that in the mid-nineties. He was joking. But it stuck with me.
At the time UK telecoms was being opened up almost from scratch. More than a hundred cable franchises had been awarded and the operators could now sell telephone services as well as television. Telecoms licences were handed out so freely that it felt as if anybody who was anybody could get one.
Companies poured in from North America: Nynex from New York, United Artists, Vidéotron, Bell Cablemedia, TeleWest and LCL, which was owned by SaskTel.
CTI was doing systems integration for those operators, and all of COLT’s work in the City. We were turning over around £500,000 a month. The companies competing for the same customers’ attention were Nortel, GEC and Nokia.
Bottomless budgets
The big manufacturers had a well-worn way of looking after customers. They ran golf days. Championship courses, lavish hospitality and a short talk about the business over dinner. Their budgets seemed bottomless.
We couldn’t match that. So we competed in a different way and started with the man who had a room full of trophies.
A department store
Not long after, I was walking through a department store and passed a display of Waterford crystal. Glasses, candleholders, bowls. It was more reasonably priced than I expected and there was plenty to choose from.
I thought of my mother. She was Irish and she cherished her Waterford. None of us children were allowed anywhere near it.
That would be the prize.
Smaller and more often
We ran our golf days differently. Good courses but not championship ones. Less formal and more relaxed.
There were ten or twelve guests, usually two from each company. We held the days more often so that every guest felt properly looked after. Each one cost us about a fifth of what the big players spent.
We also started with the people below director level, the ones working with us day to day.
And there were no trophies. Everybody won something. Every guest went home with a piece of Waterford crystal.
The kitchen table
When they got home, they gave the crystal to their wives. The wives were very impressed.
So the next time a golf invitation came in and they asked at home whether they could go, the answer was often: not that one. You need to go to CTI’s.
Word travelled upwards too. Directors heard about our days from their own people and started asking to come.
Who you play with
The crystal got people through the door. How we arranged the groups is what turned the day into business.
Each group of three or four had one of our own people in it. We split the customers up so that an established customer played alongside a newer one, or one we wanted to win.
That meant the most persuasive voice on the course wasn’t ours. It was a peer from another operator, facing the same network build and the same pressures, talking about what it was like to work with us.
No pitch we could make would have carried that weight.
What it taught me
We never outspent Nortel, GEC or Nokia. We changed what the contest was about.
Their guests all had the same room full of trophies. The clue was there for anyone who was listening.
And the decision about which golf day to go to wasn’t made on the course. It was made at home, by someone who was never on the guest list.
Within five years CTI was turning over more than £2.5 million a month. The golf days were only one part of how we got there.
But for a fifth of the money we ended up running the golf days everyone wanted to be at. All because of some Waterford crystal that went home to the kitchen table.
Field Note
The person who decides is often not the one you invited. And the most convincing voice in the room is rarely yours.
Try This
Think about the last customer you entertained, met or pitched. Who else had a say in what they decided?
Ask your customers what they are tired of being given. That is where your competitors are spending money you do not need to spend.
Invite one happy customer to meet a prospect with you and then let them do the talking.
If you have no customers yet, ask someone who has seen your work, a former colleague or a supplier, to make the introduction instead.