LC External Relations A How-to Guide
External Relations Process Guide Contents
Overview Job Description
ER Learning Materials CRM
Branding and Communication Alumni Management
Planning & Tracking ER Goals Talent Management Plan
The Product Portfolio Recruitment 101
Selling AIESEC & The Sales Process
What is External Relations?
Empowering sustainable sources of revenue for our entities Building positioning and credibility of the organization Enabling exciting life-changing AIESEC experiences
ER is possibly the most challenging and rewarding area in AIESEC. More than 10,000 members’ worldwide, convincing business executives, brainstorming, implementing sales & marketing strategies, networking, servicing and building a great network of contacts, while mastering one of the most valuable abilities in the job-market: sales. However, you don`t work alone. Aligned approach is crucial, especially with TM, F, Comms & X. An outstanding ER leader knows how to orchestrate such rich mix of backgrounds to perform at the highest level.
Vice President of External Relations Job Description Role Overall The VP ER is responsible for the external connections of the local committee. Leading the ER team (including planning and tracking of responsibilities) is his/her main responsibility, as well as ensuring the contacts and partnerships in the regional economy, the financial supporters included. Working in the Executive board also belongs to the important and interesting role of ER.
Accountable to EB, ERNST, MCVP ER
Background required
Selling experiences
Basic Knowledge in press work
Team management
Time management
Self-management
Basic Knowledge of the Exchange Processes
Knowledge of ER manual
Competencies required Old GCM
New GCM
Personal Effectiveness
Global Mind-set
Stakeholder Focus
Proactive learning
Commitment to Results
Entrepreneurial Outlook
Effective communication
Social Responsibility
Innovation
Emotional Intelligence
Activities and Measures of Success These are the activities that will be tracked:
Activities description (Responsibilities)
Measures of Success
ER team management (setting agenda and chairing
Positive feedback of the team
meetings,
Effective team meetings
development talks, evaluation and feedback)
Members meeting deadlines
Sustaining current partnerships and establishing new
numbers of:
goal
setting
&
tracking,
personal
ones
enablers and supporters
Delivering and coordinating delivery on
Learning partners
partnership agreements
Retention rate of partners /partner
Re-signing and strengthening current
satisfaction
partnerships
Amount of revenue
Signing new partnerships for LC
Meetings
Interaction possibilities between members and partners
Product portfolio management
Concepts of new products
Development of new products according to LC needs
Number of Sold and delivered products
and realities
Number of re-selling to a company
Company meetings with positive results
Numbers of TNs (together with VPICX)
Updated
Redesign of current products
Implementation of a new product-based partner structure
Coordination of Selling Processes
documentation
of
company
meetings and contacts
Ensure Quality of Selling Activities
Coordination of Alumni Work
Support selling-related projects
Regular selling education offers
Track meetings before & afterwards
Regularly contact to & meetings with Alumni
Support
of
Alumni
strategic advices
through
contacts
&
Fundraising
raised need office & training material
Ensure External Marketing Material
updated Product catalogue
regular Newsletter every two-three months
regular articles in local press and student-
Manage External Positioning
related magazines
regular reports in relevant Newsletters
acquisition of presentation possibilities
attendance to relevant networking events
Knowledge Management of ER
Quality & quantity of ER knowledge in the LC
Transition to next VPER
Knowledge level of next VPICX
Communication
Take part in relevant conferences
Regular
/
Representation
on
a
Regional and National level
Local,
communication
within
the
VP-
Network your region
Work in the Executive Board
Communication with MCVPER and/or ERNST
Sharing GCP- products
Give constructive input in Executive Board Meetings
Work towards EB Goals
Competencies, skills and knowledge developed These are the competencies and skills that can be developed while performing the job: Competencies
Awareness of Others Commitment to Results Developing Others Effective Communication Flexible Thinking Inclusiveness Innovation Personal Effectiveness Resilience Self-Awareness Stakeholder Focus
Skills
Leadership Delegation Motivation Time- & Self-management Team management Organizational Skills Efficient & effective management Planning & Prioritizing Delegation Selling skills Presentation
ER Learning Materials This section will give you some useful resources that you can use when learning how to sell AIESEC. If you are new to the organization, be sure check out these files. List of questions This document contains a list of questions you can ask during your meeting to get a better understanding of the company. Don't forget that we aim to have the company talking for 80% of the time and based on what they tell us, we will provide a customized solution! Download (From Belgium)
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) The CRM System is used in order to manage our Customer Relationship Processes. It consists of an online platform for which each entity has a unique login and password, which gives them access to their list of organizations on which the entity has a contact right. In addition to this there is the Common Pool, which collects all companies that are not part of an entities list. An entity can only contact a company if it is on their list and the MC is the only entity that can move companies from one list to another or to/from the common pool. The online platform/Google Doc should list the companies that have been contacted and the different stages of the partnership process they are currently at.
Branding & Communication
OUR BRAND A Brand is more than a name or a logo – is our promise, a contract with every stakeholder we are dealing with. A brand cannot be created based on artificial definitions, but from the ideological concept of our organization. To ensure continued brand health we must never assume that our brand means the same to others as it does to us. Therefore, an external perspective of our brand is important, developing communication to help others understand what our brand stands for and listening to hear what others have to say about our brand. Underneath you will find some resources on how to talk about the AIESEC Brand and which visual guidelines you must follow in your external positioning. GLOBAL | 1213 | BRAND, MARKETING AND PR WEBINAR SERIES As a sales member it is important that you understand the Brand Experience in order to structure your AIESEC speech to whatever type of stakeholder, in your case, the companies and partners. Underneath you will find more information on how to use this tool. Download
Alumni Management
As a sales member, it is import for us to do as much warm contacting as possible. For this your alumni are your main stakeholders; these people have been in AIESEC, they know our products, they know what the organization stands for and more important, they usually have big networks on which you can capitalize. In order for the network to stay effective, AIESEC in your entity should have a National Alumni Database. If you currently don’t track your Alumni we have provided some documents for you to understand how to track Alumni. (From Belgium) ALUMNI DATABASE TEMPLATE Use this template to track your alumni! Download WIZIQ ALUMNI CLASSES Watch the Alumni Education Class here View class ALUMNI DATABASE POWERPOINT Explanation on how to use the alumni database. PowerPoint was used in the alumni WizIQ Class. Download
Planning and Tracking of your ER Goals
Planning is a definitely most crucial in the ER department as this can be a major source of revenue for your local chapter. Therefore it is necessary to have realistic, yet challenging goal setting in your department. Underneath you will find more input on what you should keep in mind when planning your ER goals. If you need any help in doing so, please contact the MCVP ER, your coach or the NST. ER PLANNING CYCLE 1 - Strategies and initiatives – define which markets you are willing to target and which initiatives you are launching to increase the ER culture and results in your LC. 2 - Define measurable goal – think about the number of exchanges you are willing to realize. Plan them out on a timeline and calculate backwards from TNs realized to TNs raised, taking into account the time needed between each status (see below). 3 - Set key performance indicators – based on the number of TNs raised, now calculate backwards to respectively the number of companies visited, called and researched, taking into account the ER ratios (see below).
4 - Draw up a budget – based on your goals you can draw up a budget in cooperation with your LCVP F. Preferably you take into account some scenario’s based on the percentage of goal realization (for example ideal scenario = 100% goal realization and a medium scenario is 65% of goal realization). 5 - Talent planning – the last step of the process is to plan the number of members you will need to achieve your goals.
IMPORTANT – notice that the number of sales members you have is the last step of the process and not the first one as some people often incorrectly suggest. Based on your plans you will draw up a talent plan and then it is your task together with the LCVP TM to ensure you have the right number of people with the right set of skills in your team. HOW TO PLAN In order to plan your goals and KPI’s in a proper way, you will have to take some ratios into account. Please read through the ratios underneath to understand where they come from. Then have a look at the attached file to understand how to end up with the right number of calls, visits, etc that you need to do to ensure you achieve your goals. Planning tool ER - Download The importance of breaking down your goals to the number of companies researched and called is that you will be able to track yourself and your members in a better way. Instead of facing yourself with a discrepancy of 2 TNs realized at one day, you will be able to notice these setbacks months beforehand when the number of calls doesn’t meet the target. This still gives you enough time to adapt your strategies and push your team to perform before it is too late. ER EFFICIENCY RATIOS These ratios give you the number of sales calls and visits you will need to do before arriving to raising your TN. Even though your local ratios might be slightly different, please adjust yours accordingly to meet your reality. If you face difficulties
meeting
the
ratios,
please
contact
the
MC
for
help
in
increasing
your
efficiency.
3 calls = 1 company visit 10 visits = 1 TN raised REALIZATION RATIOS These ratios give you an insight in the time it takes to change the TN status between two stages. It is important to take these ratios into account during planning as it will give you an understanding of when your sales peeks should be. By sales peeks we mean the weeks that you and your team are focused on ER selling and are doing your calls and meetings. Raise-to-match ratio = 3 weeks Match-to-realization ratio = 4-6 weeks
Talent Management Plan After you have planned all your goals, you can start calculating how many members you will need in your sales team. Do notice that when applying the goals mentioned above, you might end up with a high number of calls. It is important to realize that you do not have to do all these calls by yourself! Actually there is an easy way of calculating the number of sales members you need in the team; Step 1 - Calculate the time needed to serve 1 company 5min call research + 5min call + 20min research + 1 hour meeting = 1h30min 1.5h = 1 Company, 1h = 0.67 Company Step 2 - Calculate the number of members needed to achieve goals
M = members needed G = TN goal (in realizations) SR = success ratio (= nr of calls for one TN, in our case SR=30) AW = number of active weeks per year H = number of hours a members is active during AW SD = service degree (= nr of companies services in one hour) If you need any help planning your goals, please approach the MC or the NST.
The Product Portfolio PROUDCT CATEGORIES We can quite nicely categorise our corporate product portfolio into a number of areas: Human Resource Solutions; CSR Solutions and Youth Marketing. I’ll explain them in more detail. Human Resource Solutions This is when companies use AIESEC to fulfil their HR requirements within their organisation. We can offer them either involvement in the Global Internship Programme; this is getting international talent to work for them, (sold and delivered by our ICX departments). CSR Solutions We are a developmental organisation and so whilst we should always brand ourselves as being so, we can also offer for corporate partners to engage in development through us. This could revolve around sponsorship of our leadership development programmes in terms of sponsoring delegates places at conferences or it could revolve around sponsoring our community development programmes, whether it be sponsoring students to travel abroad on the GCDP to have impact elsewhere; or sponsoring local NGOs to take interns on the GCDP.
Youth Marketing Anyone looking to engage young people as either customers or employees will often look to market to the whole demographic in a certain way. If you’re looking for more info on the following theory I recommend reading Crossing the Chasm by Moore, Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell or The Purple Cow by Seth Godin. Basically they believe that the best way to engage a market is by engaging the most active influencers within the market. These people will then go on to influence the rest of the market in line with the message you want to give. AIESEC offers a huge amount of opportunities for companies here. They can speak to people who have proven capabilities in influencing others: being able to motivate a group of students to forego a weekend of parties in order to travel to a conference to develop their abilities or opportunities is a great example of this. We can therefore offer companies to engage by either using our membership as a pool for effective Youth Insight in product development or marketing. In addition of course, companies who see students as being their target market can also benefit from engaging with AIESEC as a means of Business 2 Consumer (B2C) Marketing. THE ENGAGEMENT CHANNELS Now that we’ve ascertained why we can deliver values to companies, and in what ways we need to codify the way in which we can deliver the value. This in essence is the engagement channels. Just be very clear about that when setting your own LC strategy, if you want to focus on innovating in new product areas cool, but results might be a bit more precarious. I would therefore recommend those LCs which need to use ER as a supporting function for raising finance to focus on the Development Leadership Days (DLDs) or LC Skills Session Sponsorship as their primary portfolio. These are therefore the engagement channels explained below.
DLDs WHAT IT IS… Developing Leaders Days are full day events hosted by a local committee to deliver soft skills in leadership to university students. Of note, a DLD is not just for AIESEC members but for the wider university community as well. After this, the DLD is entirely an event of your choosing. The idea behind them is that they indeed stay open to interpretation by Local Committees. You should therefore be looking at creating a bespoke service for the corporates looking to attend and this can be done in a number of ways. HOW TO MESSAGE IT… The DLD should be messaged as: “A bespoke on campus event with a pre-selected group of students of a demographic of your choice. The event should deliver a level of Leadership Development to the students attending.”
WHO TO SPEAK TO… If sold for the value proposition of HR solutions, speak to the Graduate Recruitment Manager in organisations. If you are approaching a large multinational they will likely have a Graduate Recruitment or Campus Engagement representative responsible for your area. Speak to these guys. If sold for the value proposition of Youth Insight, first off, make sure you’re speaking to someone who will benefit in some way from that youth insight. Then you will be looking to speak to an R&D or Marketing Manager in the organisation.
LC Skills Session Sponsorship WHAT IT IS… LC Skills Sessions should be delivered in all the LCs anyway as a function of member education and in essence providing the members with valuable skill development. The idea is that these revolve around building elements of the Global Competency Model. These competencies to be built in the membership include:
Global Mind-set
Emotional Intelligence
Entrepreneurial Outlook
Proactive Learning
Social Responsibility
Corporate partners have a similar interest in building and being branded alongside these competencies and also want to ultimately gain access to the students. Therefore, we can approach corporates to either sponsor particular skills sessions, or sponsor and deliver them. We take care of all the logistics and give them a room with eager students in it… simple. To think about… Make it bigger:
We can also invite an LC’s AIESEC subscribers or signup lists along to these skills sessions. This
would deliver an aspect of leadership development to a wider selection of people; will actively help member or EP pipeline in the committee and will give the corporates more students to interact with. Make it easier:
We could pre-prepare a number of sessions that partners can deliver making the whole product an
easier investment in terms of human capital for them. Make it rounder:
By giving companies the right to engage virtually with students at your campus before, during and
after the event you can offer a very rounded engagement tailored to the companies’ objectives. HOW TO MESSAGE IT… The Skills Sessions should be messaged as: “A weekly event giving companies the chance to engage with a number of motivated and keen students around competency development.”
WHO TO SPEAK TO… Similarly to DLDs If sold for the value proposition of HR solutions, speak to the Graduate Recruitment Manager in organisations. If you are approaching a large multinational they will likely have a Graduate Recruitment or Campus Engagement representative responsible for your area. Speak to these guys.
Local Partnerships WHAT IT IS… By packaging a number of the above products together you can ultimately offer a better engagement platform for the companies with students on your campus. What you can include:
LC Skills Sessions
Local Recruitment Sponsorship
General Branding (website, Facebook, e-mail signatures, print literature, merchandise etc.)
DLDs
Virtual Marketing (inclusion in e-mails sent to the student population).
This is really a product you can play with. Find out what it is the company needs, what they find it hard to get, package a product proposal to fill the gap and message it to them. HOW TO MESSAGE IT… The Partnerships should be messaged as: “Through sustained investment in the local committee, in both time and money, our members develop at a much greater rate than the rest of the academic population, giving your company the chance to actively invest in the people you would look to employ before even having actually done so.” WHO TO SPEAK TO… Similarly to DLDs and Skills Sessions If sold for the value proposition of HR solutions, speak to the Graduate Recruitment Manager in organisations. If you are approaching a large multinational they will likely have a Graduate Recruitment or Campus Engagement representative responsible for your area. Speak to these guys.
1
1
Recruitment 101
AIESEC is not in the recruitment industry – instead, the recruitment industry is our client. AIESEC for external
organisations would on the whole be classed as a talent bank.
The Value Proposition A value proposition is the statement you would be able to take to a prospective partner to show the value to their company in doing business with you. Quite simply the value proposition for you: “Focused engagement with the highest quality single group of students on campus for your talent pipeline requirements.”
The Explanation… TWO RECRUITMENT MODELS Any recruiters will split potential recruitment marketing into two frames, both with the view to brand themselves as an: ‘employer of choice’ with graduates. Mass Employer Branding Here, the recruiting firms aim to be exposed to as much of the student population with the message that they are the best employer to work for. This is done through generic advertising, attendance at careers fairs, publications in top 100 guides, posting on jobs boards etc. We fulfil this area of branding through activities that reach out to the wider student population: (e.g. e-mail newsletter, recruitment partners, general branding partners etc.) Focused Employer Branding Here, recruiters look to reduce costs by focusing directly on those that would like to and are able to work at their company. In addition, they would like to avoid spending money marketing to people who wouldn’t like to, or be able to work at their company. This is normally done through either graduate headhunting, interactions with student societies, insight days etc. If you had guessed it, AIESEC having moved away from mass employer branding, now offers predominantly focused employer branding in the majority of circumstances. The model below should explain why this is valuable for our partners, and therefore, valuable for AIESEC.
The Graduate Recruitment Model The model below shows the recruitment process that any student will go through in order to being accepted into the graduate program for a company. All of the arrows (‹- and
-›) show leakage from the system, i.e. students who don’t
end up working at the company. Things to bear in mind are the fact that each additional step in the system costs more, making the whole recruitment system quite costly indeed.
The Domain The Entire Student Population
The Sub-Domain Those interested in working for “The company”
Application Competency Testing, etc
Students reject the company These students will leave the process of their own accord
Assessment Centres
Interview Round 1
Interview Round 2
Offer
Company rejects the student These students will leave the process at the request of the company
Acceptance
Year 1
Year 2
Fully Integrated
This is therefore interesting when identifying just exactly what the people you are selling to would have in mind. Any Graduate Recruitment Manager will be performance measured on how small the grey domain to the left is (this means the job and how it is messaged is good), how large the grey domain to the right is (this means the quality of applicants is higher) and how much the whole process costs per graduate ‘Fully Integrated’, (Cost per Hire, CpH).
Our LC Recruitment Model
The Domain The Entire Student Population
The Sub-Domain Those interested in working for “The company” Students reject AIESEC These students decide AIESEC isn’t for them
Interest Forms
Applications
Assessment Centres
AIESEC rejects students We decide these people don’t have the right attitude/compet encies to be in AIESEC
Members
AIESEC Members By providing these members with an Experiential Leadership Development they become are equipped with very valuable assets that all organisations are in dire need of: theoretical knowledge & practical experience When a company sponsors an element of your LC activities they are effectively paying for: your selection process & the investment in member development This should therefore highlight the value in Focused Employer Branding
AIESEC Subscribers/Signup Lists By tracking effectively everyone who leaks from our membership pipeline: those who decide to leave and those who we reject we can re-engage with them at a later date. For example, these people can become valuable pipeline for the following programs/events: DLDs Skills Programs (e.g. 5 skills or 1-off skills sessions) OGX Further member recruitment Companies also see the value in accessing this group as it offers them Mass Employer Branding
EXPLAINED‌ Now a key thing to do would be to overlay your LC recruitment model on top of the standard graduate recruitment model. The result is the fact that we duplicate a lot of the process graduate recruiters does in order to find the highest quality or highest potential students. This automatically becomes a selling point, and one that we can very easily quantify when in a selling position. Sales Point 1 For example, should aim to gain around 1000 interest signatures during their recruitment drive. They will then go on to have around 100 people apply, of which say 70 will then be invited to assessment centres. Of those 70, only around 25 are finally selected. And so, when you are selling to a potential sponsor for employer branding, you are not simply selling 30 members in your LC, but are selling 30 of the very best members as filtered from 1000 potential members. In terms, of pricing, think of the cost to a company of being able to talk with 1,000 students on your campus. It would cost around $180 to have an HR intern on site in a campus. Say they could talk to one person every 5 minutes, (fairly ambitious); they would require 10 and a half days to talk to 1,000 students, ($1,890). Now ask them to filter application forms and run an assessment centre for 70 students. I think we’re starting to cost more than you would at first charge to interact with these students. Sales Point 2 The 30 members in the Local Committee then undergo an intense experience based learning program. This sets AIESEC members above their peers by giving them the theoretical knowledge learnt through university with the practical experience of actively learning key workplace competencies through their AIESEC activities. This added knowledge obviously makes an AIESEC member a greater valued potential employee than someone without. You have now separated your society from what most other societies deliver their members. Sales Point 3 Although the sponsor will only be able to engage directly with the members of the LC, there is no reason why they cannot engage virtually with the AIESEC Subscribers/Signup Lists an LC has. This is either a way to bolster an existing package or a way to create a whole new product to offer potential sponsors in addition. For example, you could charge companies looking to recruit from your university for being referenced in the LC Newsletter to even having an exclusive mail shot (called a Solus) sent to try and push their graduate employment agenda.
Selling AIESEC & The Sales Process
In the separate PowerPoint you will find a brief presentation on Communication Basics and how to sell AIESEC starting from the Brand Experience. This presentation shows you how to structure your AIESEC talk to whomever you are addressing yourself, being new members, students, your parents, the university or in our case... our partners. Please ask your LCVP ER or a member of the national committee to educate you on the organizational understanding
in
order
for
you
to
know
how
to
convince
companies
from
partnering
with
AIESEC!
As you can see, AIESEC has many aspects and therefore also offers different products to companies. Many products and many stakeholders equal different messages to different people!
The Sales Process
The sales process above is one that all sales will abide by in some way. It may be that currently areas of it aren’t done, and this might in turn explain why your sales flow is slow, or why you drop sales you could otherwise have secured. The key would be to Invest Early in carrying out the Market Prospecting process efficiently so that there isn’t wasted time in talking to everyone about everything. It then makes the rest of the sales process so much easier.
Prospecting DEFINITION:
The search for potential customers or buyers.
The art of prospecting does not mean, at least for the sake of this guide and sales process, talking to a company. Instead, it simply means identifying the right company to talk to given the value proposition you would like to talk to them. An area I think we fall down in our sales process would come down placing undue care in this area of the process. We seem to think that the following logic holds true: DESIRE:
To sell a product.
Talk to company
>
tell company about AIESEC
>
sell AIESEC things
I would contend that this is why we tend to be unsuccessful and probably the reason why most new members in ICX or ER around the world only get this abstracted activity of cold calling from which to develop them. What’s required instead is a thorough knowledge of:
the products we have in our portfolios;
the value propositions they have and;
the industries in our environment and the challenges they’re facing.
I really do believe once we have all three that the task ahead will be fairly simple. If you don’t have the knowledge of the first two, re-read your product portfolios and their value propositions for a bit of insight, or better yet, create/identify them yourselves.
PROSPECTING FOR HR SOLUTIONS…
Enough Capacity to Engage on Campus
High Turnover of HR (Graduate Recruitment Programme)
Decision Makers We can Reach
If we take our HR Solutions portfolio as an example. We can use the tool above to identify companies that would be good to target. In order for them to either be interested, or be a good client for selling access to domestic students they should have:
High turnover of HR: It’s not worth talking to organisations that may have a requirement to employ graduates, but would like to do so through direct recruitment rather than through creating an engagement process from which they cans select. Look for those with a graduate recruitment programme. (Maybe Direct Recruitment/Hire is a market we could move into though…)
Enough capacity to engage on campus: The companies we talk to need to have enough human capacity to be able to come to our events and profile their companies. We have a lot of leads becoming <DEAD> simply because our contact can’t find the right resource to come to our events. This is one of the biggest challenges we’ll face.
Decision makers we can reach: In order for us to sell we need to be able to realistically be able to speak to the decision makers. This is the objective of the Venn diagram which often tells me more which prospect to focus on and which not to. For example, I wouldn’t focus on a company whose Grad Recruitment Office was regional and based in Brussels. Between two hot prospects in London, I would focus on the one which had the best alumni there. (see more along this line in the next section.)
Being able to conduct this prospecting research doesn’t just allow us to make sure we’re talking to the right people about the right thing, but it allows us to focus our attention to the leads we think will pay off best. We only have 1 year in our positions, we need to make the most of it and make sure we don’t waste time following dead prospects.
Contact Identified There are two things to think about when identifying contacts within an organisation you’ve highlighted using the prospecting ideas/tools above:
Who will make the decision on the offer I make and;
Do I have any friendly entry points to the company?
WHO WILL MAKE THE DECISION ON THE OFFER I MAKE?
The diagram shows a generic structure for a company. Paying particular attention to the HR function. You can see at each stage of the operations who would be most relevant for us to talk to, and thus narrow down who we want to talk to. It’s important to have an understanding (even if it’s brief) of the structures of the companies we want to approach so that we can ask to speak to the right people. With this in mind, with a student engagement package we could approach the Graduate Recruitment Manager, the Talent Acquisition Director, the CHRO or the CEO. It is obviously harder to get a meeting with those higher up the hierarchy and so might not be an effective use of time unless we’re trying to take a product to them which we don’t think the people below would have the vision to understand the benefits. For local student engagement products such as DLDs, Skills Sessions etc it’s going to be the best use of our time to speak to Campus Engagement Managers (these are normally regional in the large companies we would look to prospect).
DO I HAVE ANY FRIENDLY ENTRY POINTS TO THE COMPANY? It’s best to have an entry point in the form of a contact that understands the company, how they work, key strategies, structures etc and that can put is in touch with the best person to pitch to. Luckily, AIESEC has 1,000,000 alumni around the globe. AIESEC alumni are normally hugely supportive in helping us approach their companies and simply a request for help in doing so normally returns a positive result. They can then put us in touch with the right person, or if that is them, can sign off themselves. LinkedIn is a hugely fantastic resource in finding these contacts. Build up your LinkedIn profile and the best thing is, that network will travel with you once you leave the organisation,
The Sales Process The call you would be making doesn’t now seem so cold any more. Now that you know why to make contact, who to make contact to and with what help: it should be pretty easy actually getting face time with the person involved. This is the fun part. There’s a huge amount of resources online for taking along to sales meetings which explain all our products. This consists of:
Sample presentations;
Sales literature and
Sample proposals.
A note on using sales materials is that they should entirely be a support, rather than a guide or a crutch. Don’t rely on the sales materials but rather use them to illustrate key points you would make or simplify what could otherwise come across as complicated structures / processes. They can also be good as a leave-behind but probably not as something to send before you get there.
Account Management THE PARTNERSHIP AGREEMENT As soon as you have a verbal agreement, create a partnership agreement and have it signed by the company representative. It’s hugely important not to skip this step, as it will ensure you can chase up the money should they not pay straight away. In addition, it allows you to be absolutely clear with the partner on what needs to be delivered by both parties. NOTE: The sample partnership agreement should be used only as a guide for creating your own.
INVOICING As soon as the partnership agreement is signed, the partnership is effectively active. This means that straight away you can send the invoice and collect some hard earned financial support for your LC. ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT Effective account management will revolve around having an open and value added environment with your contact at the company. This in turn will mean that you should always aim to deliver what you say you will, when you say you will. There are sample LC ER Planner & Tracker documents available to download on myaiesec.net to help keep track of your partnerships. RE-SIGNING CONTRACTS A huge amount of time should be spent ensuring that your partners are kept engaged. This will in turn mean that come the end of your term, you will be able to hold a transition meeting with the partner and your successor, opening a conversation for engagement in the following academic year. This of course will depend on whether the partnership has been managed well to date and so itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a good idea to build a two or three year sales strategy with different partners in mind, isolating when to sell them what so you can upsell year on year and thus develop a mature and mutual partnership.