Challenge
Honeywell International, a diversified technology and manufacturing leader, engaged Executive Conversation to strengthen team skills at differentiating their Defense and Space solutions on value rather than price. Honeywell’s Defense and Space division enjoys an established relationship with customers and understands who the key decision makers are. However, to sell new or more products to existing customers, the company recognized the need to communicate a powerful story intrinsically and strategically differentiating its solutions from the competition in a meaningful and measurable way. Gaining perspective on how investment decisions are made in the Defense sector and the metrics appropriate for measuring the operational improvement delivered by Honeywell solutions were identified as essential learning objectives. Additional success criteria for the initiative included linking Honeywell’s value message to customer organizational initiatives and more effectively engaging uniformed and civilian leadership.
Solution
Through a collaborative process with Honeywell leadership, we developed a customized version of our Executive Focused Selling for Public Sector Sales workshop to meet the company’s objectives. Led by a Consulting Executive with a noteworthy career in public service leadership, the highly interactive session modeled a buyer’s side perspective on the unique operational drivers and political aspects of decision-making in the public sector.
A Business Translation tool, developed for the Defense industry to enable team members to express product features and benefits in terms of customer operational value, was integrated into the session catalyzing participant’s ability to articulate the value of Honeywell solutions in customer-centric language. A series of ten workshops were delivered over the course of several months to teams selling into the Defense sector in the United States, United Kingdom and Singapore.
Results
The workshop was assessed as being of highest value, not only for successfully accomplishing each of the initiative’s objectives, but also for uncovering a number of new opportunities identified by participants during the process. Participants cited increased confidence in credibly linking Honeywell’s value to the service mandates and goals most important to senior public officials and in presenting executive proposals that credibly demonstrate an understanding of the customer.