Aligning Sales, Marketing and Product Teams Around Your Customer
It seems amazing to me that in today’s environment we still have to say “the customer needs to be at the centre” of what we do as a business, yet I still have these conversations on a regular basis.
Structure Your Team Together Around Your Customer
One of the ways to do this is by structuring your teams and setting metrics which support this. This was even a theme of the presentation from Grant Osborne & Aubrey Donovan of Parallelo at the recent Tech Marketers Conference. They talked about how they had brought product, sales & marketing teams together around the principle of the customer at the centre.
"Put your customer at the centre of your world”
In simple terms, making the customer the focal point of a company’s efforts means we will sell more! This is because we have products and services that meet a real customer need.
Customers are happy to pay for our products & will pay a premium for them
We build loyalty, keeping customers longer through increased engagement & customer satisfaction
We differentiate ourselves from competitors
We decrease our costs by having a whole company that is aligned and not wasting time and effort pushing products and services which aren’t right
It’s one of those things that we all ‘know’ - of course we have the customer at the centre of what we do - doh! Yet, we seem to have forgotten, got distracted, or found it hard.
Who is Your Hero?
If you are talking about your product or service, or your company in your marketing you have made yourself the hero! Next time you are visiting the website of another company you’ll see those who focus on customers and those who focus on themselves.
For a simple summary of putting the customer at the heart of your messaging, I can recommend Donald Miller’s Storybrand book - there’s a short summary video here on how to make your customer the hero of your messaging
What do I mean by, the customer needs to be at the ‘centre’ of your world?
The customer needs to be at the centre of our product development - no matter how beautiful your code is, or how amazing your product feature is, neither should be developed if your target customers don’t really care about it, or if they aren’t willing to pay (at all, or more) for it.
Ask yourself:
Is our product team developing products and delivering features that our customers and prospects value and are willing to pay for?
How often do they test product priorities and specific features directly with customers?
Are they looking for affirmation of something that’s planned and on the roadmap, or to get a deep understanding of what our customers' real challenges and issues are?
The customer needs to be at the centre of our marketing - we need to speak to them in ways that they relate to, about issues they care about and in the places they are.
Ask yourself:
Do our marketing messages talk about the issues our customers face and get our customers thinking “Yes! That’s exactly how I feel”?
How much of our messaging talks about what we do and our products features, screaming “Buy my amazing thing.”
The customer needs to be at the centre of our sales activity - customers won’t buy if we are talking to them at the wrong time (asking them to buy when they have only just logged on to see what you do), or with the wrong message that doesn’t engage with their challenges.
Ask yourself:
Do sales bring valuable customer insights and feedback to the rest of the team? If not, why not?
What is the journey a prospect might take to engage with and buy from us?
Are we talking to them about the right thing at the right time, or are we asking to get ‘married on the first date’?!
10 Steps to Aligning Your Team Around Your Customer
If you don’t have a team that is all aligned around your customer, here are ten easy steps to get started:
Create one team - either formally bring sales, product and marketing together, or create a ‘virtual’ team
Don’t assume knowledge. Get each team to run a ‘101’ introduction of their area of expertise
Articulate what you are trying to achieve and why: what does GREAT look like?
Agree on a shared set of metrics
Review ideal customer personas together. Stress-test your thinking around the assumptions you have made. Test with your customers and prospects, involving people from across sales, product and marketing teams
Review your customer journey - how do customers really come to you, why, what assumptions are we making, and how does the feedback loop work for ongoing product / service developments?
Create a single calendar to get everyone on the same page regarding when products are being developed and launched, key sales activity and support, and what marketing activity is being planned. Come together and review this on a regular basis
Add a checkbox prompt within existing systems and processes that asks which customer pain-point is this for?
Invite people from other teams to your review sessions
Create a shared internal communication to share your insights and learnings across the wider team
I have used all of these ten steps outlined in this article. By putting the customer at the centre of your work, I guarantee you will see true benefits, including increased sales, customer loyalty and cost reduction.