Leaders, teams and customers get out of sync
Let’s consider a few things…
Fuzzy picture of customer success
To market successfully to your customers, you need a clear picture of their reality: their values, opinions, aspirations and challenges. When you truly know your customers, the products or services you develop will fit so perfectly that they will seemingly sell themselves.
Despite your best intentions, your hard-won customer understanding can get fuzzy or forgotten.
Your marketing and sales team is running at a breakneck pace to cover a multitude of responsibilities. It’s all to easy to get trapped in dealing with what needs to get done each day and lose touch with what matters most to customers.
A lack of customer understanding can blind you in costly ways.
When you feel a sense of separation from your customers and question your assumptions about what they need, a sense of instability and uncertainty creeps into your team. The resulting slowdown in your decision-making can distract you, causing you to miss opportunities and hand your competitors easy wins. Instead, let any sign of instability serve as your cue to rethink and re-energize your customer engagement.
Internal silos
Knowledge of your customers is of paramount importance, but it is only part of the equation.
You and your team must also engage and align with internal customers. Sales, Service, Research and Development and other peers all play a role in the discovery, development and delivery of new and better solutions, products and experiences.
Silos within your organization create internal gaps in knowledge and alignment.
A key internal barrier to successful solution design, development and delivery are internal silos that commonly exist within organizations. It is critical to break down silos to build buy-in and alignment with internal customers (aka the team).
Your lack of alignment results in inefficiencies and a poorly functioning team.
It’s almost impossible for your team to perform at a high level if the members are not all aligned on the priorities that matter to customers and the organization. Clarity and buy-in from the whole team is essential to execute successfully.
Your Big Challenge involves two key elements (and opportunities!)
- Deep understanding of your customers – How well do you know your customers?
- Alignment with your internal team – How aligned is your team around the key customer and organizational priorities?
Big Challenges…it’s what we do.
We are driven by the challenge of bringing you, your team and customers onto the same strategic page.