An Executive Sponsor Program is a Sales & Marketing strategy which involves identifying and connecting the most senior decision maker within your client’s organization with a similar ranking executive with common business interests in your own organization, to develop a deeper relationship between the two individuals, thereby increasing the joint business value generated through the partnership.
Sounds easy right? Just a basic relationship building exercise? A no-brainer for all you social connectors out there? Then why hasn’t every corporation formalized this executive-to-executive match-making process? It’s like matching APPLES to AP
PLES! Seriously try this – sit down with a big pile of APPLES and see how far you get in 5 minutes! Then imagine what this is like with humans, people have different dimensions to their personalities, they’re located in different geographies, and possess issues and opportunities which you can not see yet… “so how do you like those APPLES” (borrowing a quote from the film Goodwill Hunting)?
The concept of this site is to share the best practices I’ve evolved throughout my sales consulting career designing Key Account Strategies for many organizations. These Key Account Strategies have always included an Executive Sponsor Program component – because these are often the lowest hanging fruit for increasing wallet share in any B2B customer relationship.
Oh and you should know that when I get lazy I use the term ESP for Executive Sponsor Program or Executive Relationship Program – so look out for it when you read on… Next I’ll tell you how to get started on a thriving Executive Sponsor Program.
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NEWS: 
We just released the latest version of “Managing Executive Sponsor Programs: Strategy & Implementation Pack” its currently in Version 6.1. Published Jan 23rd 2011. Please click on the above link to learn about the most complete guide and set of tools to create and manage an executive sponsor program.