Best and easy way of Account Mining

The exceprts are from the mailer sent by one of the GMs. Nice one. Target audience is the PMs facing customer and senior, middle management. Pasted as it is , removing the company references.
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Team: I know that we continue to put our best efforts to mine existing accounts but at times we get so engrossed in our day to day transactions that we loose focus on this important aspect. Collectively we can grow fast as a team and inorder for each one of us in the account to have the same understanding, rigour, passion and drive, the email below uses few analogies to drive the points and helps sink-in the aspects on account growth and management more easily.

A print out of this sticked on to the desk of each one of us will help bring back our focus on a daily basis :

Surround Sound : We need to keep looking for opportunities (surround sound) at client site. Some of the basic surround sounds that we can look for are : which other groups within the account we do not have the presence yet, which are the other custom/legacy systems that can be replaced by our products/modules, are there any new geographies where the customer has presence and we can leverage the current project work, who is supporting the current environment and how can we get involved there, what will be the support plan post go-live, who is the competition in the account and what are they working on, what are their weaknesses and when can we pitch in to weed them out and the list of surround sound can go on and on.

Inside Sound (CompanyEcho System) : Often we hear from our customers that many of the things they saw in the first corporate presentation remained as a presentation. I guess in our day to day rut we do not take the wipro echo system to the customer unless specifically asked for (and at times even delay after asking). So while listening to the surround sound we should take the inside sound to the customer even before they ask for. It could mean reaching out and networking with other groups within our company to showcase broader expertise/facilitate fulfillment of requirements in non-eas areas, it could mean doing a no-obligation offerings/knowledge sharing presentation by our Center of Excellence team, it could mean inviting the BSG group for educating the customer on our strenghts on doing strategy (basically driving the point that we are beyond technical), it could mean inviting the Quality team to do an audit with customer involvement, it could mean doing a cross culture training with the customer, it could mean doing a webinar with help of company strategic marketing team with senior management of wipro and senior management of client alongwith analyst groups and the list of inside sound can go on and on.

Tapping without Mapping : Converting an opportunity to an order requires buy-in of multiple stakeholders in the client organization starting from the group who needs it to the group who funds it to the group who actually implements the system with us. Unless we maintain the mapping at all levels, all our tapping for new business will not yield positive results. We should get the right people from within the company (inside sound) to meet the right people at customer (surround sound) and keep the sounds going on a ongoing basis.

Business and IT : Study shows that millions of dollars spent on the best written code gets unused because of lack of involvement from business. Irrespective of whether the business is more powerful or IT in the client organization, we should ensure that we have established the right connections in business from day one.

Do Lunch or Become Lunch : "The family that eats together lives together" is a very old saying and if we extend this beyond our families we have actually seen that the team that eats together (atleast once a month) with the customer lives together :-) On a serious note if we do not build the relationship (have lunch) and just stay technical, we will become lunch for the competition. This also calls for changing our lifestyle to a large extent on relishing local cuisines and not eating Indian food (sambar rice) all the time, exploring new restaurants, reading non-technical books, listening to local music/podcasts, watching movies, going to concerts/operas, following local sports (baseball in USA, Ice hockey in Finland etc...) and infact even trying some local sports like skiing, snorkling etc, reading local newspaper and not always be glued to indiatimes.com....all this is required to make each lunch meeting a memorable one for you as well as the customer and help build relationship beyond work.

Do share with me any other analogies that trigger in your mind that will help all of us remind us on a daily basis to succeed.