Building Customer Intimacy*
1.5 or 2--Day Business Leaders Workshop


This hands-on workshop takes business leaders away from their day-to-day duties, immersing them for a concentrated period in candid, team-building interchanges around a customer intimacy agenda.  Workshop leader Dr. Fred Wiersema draws out participants to articulate precisely what it will take to build mutual trust, generate stronger customer impact, and create traction with innovative solutions.  The workshop's emphasis is on calibrating leadership mindsets and initiating effective actions, rather than on analytical tools and techniques. 


Target audience
The workshop is targeted at senior managers in businesses that rely on extended relations with key customers.  That includes B-to-B companies, service-intensive firms, and technology-driven businesses.  Fred works with Fortune-500 corporations and their business units, as well as with selected smaller companies.


Workshop summary
To astute leaders, the mandate of the marketplace is clear -- to conceive and deliver distinctive products and services that solidify and expand their business with key customers.  Said differently, astute leaders strive to be pivotal to their clients' success.

The challenge is to translate the leaders' mandate into clear directions that their entire organization -- not just frontline employees -- can and will act on, in good times as well as tough ones.  That is why the workshop highlights four dimensions of leadership to build organization-wide momentum for customer intimacy:

1.  Creating shared aspirations -- the rallying cry and a sense of urgency.
2.  Staying in synch with customers -- getting to know them rationally and viscerally.
3.  Executing with discipline -- sharpening your practices and processes.
4.  Shaping the culture -- what we want to be known and recognized for.


Format
To facilitate interaction and rich discussions, the optimum workshop size is 25 to 45 participants.  The workshop format can accommodate a larger number of people, but with an inevitable drop-off in terms of 'airtime' per participant.


Customization
Each workshop is tailored to fit the client's situation and participant mix.  In preparation, the workshop leader acquaints himself with the client's business context, incorporating input from selected execs and/or customers. 


Outcomes
With its strong action bias, this workshop aims to set into motion a range of follow-on activities.  The intent is for participants to convert insight into practice.  In other words, this is a program with "legs."

Commonly, the workshop spurs leaders to enhance their customer-listening routines, and to get their organizations to explore actions that can be taken to manage customer churn.  Another high-impact follow-through is the pursuit of projects with selected stretch customers, aimed to strengthen key relationships and explore innovative commercial opportunities.

In adverse times, the focus shifts to more immediate actions that can be set in motion to generate impact.



* Contact Fred if current business conditions call for an accelerated, condensed version of this workshop, or to talk about alternative ways to tackle specific needs.