Moderator: Keeping your clients confidential is a pretty bold and respectable move…Why does TNG do it?
Dan: It’s a great question and one that comes up often during initial conversations with our prospective customers. We find that customers are more curious as to the reasoning vs. questioning the legitimacy. We treat each engagement with a customer as if it were a legal proceeding. We find that our ideal customers really appreciate how sensitive we treat our collaboration with their company and their most senior stakeholders/leaders. From a logistical standpoint, some customers reach out to us when they are trying to commercially mediate what appears to be a potential legal situation with an external vendor. 95% of the time, we can handle the situation via commercial negotiation. If the situation does require any sort of legal support or litigation, our team is ready to quickly support and collaborate with our customer’s legal team based on our strict confidentiality and document handling standards. Moderator: Did your background in the FBI contribute to your decision on this approach? Dan: {Laughing} Yes, I think it probably did. There were two things that I was taught immediately upon entering my FBI career: 1) Before you make any questionable decision, think about how the outcome of your decision would look on CNN the next morning and 2) Classified information is best protected on a compartmented, need-to-know basis. While our entire team doesn’t come from an Intelligence Community background, everyone is provided training on the importance of confidentiality and the proper procedures for protecting client confidential materials. I can confidently say, without a doubt, that our customer data and processes are more secure than most multinational law firms. Moderator: When you have prospective clients looking to speak with references, aren’t you afraid of losing potential business if you’re not willing to share your client portfolio? Dan: You know the business owner in me honestly thinks about this a lot. From an actual data standpoint, we know that if a prospective customer chooses not to work with us, it’s primarily due to cost and not caused from the lack of reference calls. Another fact that we’ve proven over the years is that 3 out of 4 clients request repeat or ongoing support so any lost opportunity from this topic is naturally superseded with our repeat customer business. That’s how I would prefer it anyway as taking on a new customer brings its own inherent risks…it’s a two-way street. Moderator: How do you make clients feel comfortable working with you if they aren’t able to speak with references? Dan: My answer on this is simple: Everyone has friends. Do you honestly think any salesperson, no matter what industry, is going to refer you to a client that has had a sub-optimal experience? I am a Strategic Sourcing Expert and so is the rest of the Service Delivery Team…When we worked for large companies, we often were told to ask for references. However, whenever we received reference contact information, we rarely called them to validate. This reference gathering process is an old school purchasing process for process sake, and we find our best customers find more trust in the fact that we were ranked as the 2nd fastest growing company in Minnesota by Inc Magazine. Moderator: What are some other benefits that might not be apparently obvious of keeping clients confidential? Dan: Excellent question...This is a passionate topic of mine of which I could honestly discuss for an hour. In the interest of brevity, a few of the top benefits include: Ease of Contracting – No Publication Most of our clients are very large multinational organizations. The Marketing and Legal departments inside of these companies are naturally very protective and risk adverse (for good reason) of their name brand, logo, etc. Since our customer contracts don’t include any language regarding “publication,” it eliminates unnecessary administrative burden, and legal review cycles, on both sides of the transaction. TNG Client Protection Most of our clients request that TNG be a covert silent advisor in the background (instead of a overt legal agent of the company). This means that the supplier in which our customer is negotiating with should never have knowledge of our involvement. By keeping all clients confidential, we eliminate any risk of the supplier to discover later. Deter Sales Snooping Without going into too much detail here, just know that large software companies have an incredible amount of financial resources. They employ individuals to be assigned, or even sit in, your organization to learn everything there is to know about your company in the interest of upselling their products and services. This also includes learning as much as they can about what companies are using external advisors to benchmark rates, processes, etc. Ready to explore joining the TNG family? Contact us today to set-up a client intake assessment where we identify your cost savings opportunity for free! ------------------------------------------------------------------ Explore other TNG Featured Articles, Follow The Negotiator Guru on LinkedIn, Follow Dan Kelly on LinkedIn and Twitter. Learn more about What We Do. © Dan Kelly and Kelly Consulting Group, LLC. dba "The Negotiator Guru", 2020. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. |
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