By Ken Rosen
[If needed, see our Performance Portfolio intro…and each sector has one descriptive post] 
I was raised on the unwieldy acronym: NHUSSS–“Nothing Happens Until Somebody Sells Something.” For today, the key phrase is “nothing happens.” Whether you are a for-profit, government agency, or non-profit, until you engage the outside world, you are only a dream…or a hobby. You’ve got to sell, partner, promote, borrow, spend, deliver, evaluate needs…and more. You’ve got to engage.

Sector 4—external focus/short to medium term—begs you to evaluate the range, style, and techniques of your external engagement. It drives the question: “What are all my touch points with the outside world? Are they optimized for my organization and my ability to serve my audiences?” Examples include:

  • Define key selling points: what really matters to my audiences?
  • Deliver campaigns to customers and influences: what vehicles and ongoing actions match my audiences’ attention patterns?
  • Build your ecosystem of channels and partners: who succeeds when I succeed?
  • Refine your customer contact: from sales and service to satisfaction tracking and social media, what interactions surprise and delight?
  • Create and tune a trusted supply chain: Do rules of engagement help…or block employee productivity with bureaucracy?
  • Establish funding relationships: how do I provide for cash flow needs when I’m not desperate?

Sure, some elements of Sector 4 are obvious…yet some are not. With revenue of nearly $40 billion, it’s easy to imagine Cisco Systems’ external engagement dominated by F500 basics: sales and service plus care and feeding of the channel and Wall Street. But Cisco realizes a hidden danger of innovation: if today’s offering cannot be replaced by a competitor, do customers buy because they want to…or because they have no choice? That is, can a customer you count on be an unhappy captive, ready to jump ship the moment a viable alternative exists? Cisco asks this question—regularly. Cisco Product Managers (at least the good ones) know when they have loyal fans and when they have captive hostages. This deep external engagement directly feeds long-term planning.

Differentiation in Sector 4 comes from creativity, re-evaluation…and joy. Creativity means tuning your engagement to the special needs of your organization and audiences. Re-evaluation means realizing yesterday’s engagement may no long do the trick (remember expensive direct mail campaigns capable of drawing 10% response rates?). And joy…well joy in Sector 4 means ensuring your Sector 4 leaders truly relish engaging with the world. Some people don’t…and that’s fine. But they are not Sector 4 leaders. Find the people who are downright giddy after learning something new about what a customer or influencer cares about and you’ll be on the right track.

Takeaways

  • Audit your external touch points…all of them…in a real list you can share.
  • Treat the audit as a starting point: what’s working? What isn’t? (Hint: if you are not sure, just ask the outside party.)
  • For every touch point, ask “What’s the goal of each interaction—a mere exchange of money and information…or another cobblestone building a path to a long-term relationship?
  • Do your touch-point leaders enjoy, and even revel in, the benefits a great exchange brings?