Some suppliers have extended account teams of hundreds of people working at all levels across key multi-national or global customers. If you could harness their collective wisdom, what amazing insights could you glean, and how could you use that to maximise your competitive advantage?
Some twenty years ago I was leading such a team in a major UK bank. I incentivised them to be our eyes and ears on the ground, enabling us to capture invaluable insights that resulted in us winning the battle to be sole supplier when they rationalised from four suppliers to one.
Without these insights, your core account team is working with limited line-of-sight as to what is really going on, making their account strategy and the supporting account plan potentially narrow and flawed.
So, the question is, how well are you harnessing the collective wisdom of the extended account team, and if not , why not?