The corporate world is always innovating the way in which relationships with consumers should be viewed. Every now and then, terms and strategies emerge with the aim of guiding this entire ecosystem of supply and demand towards current times. It was then that, in the era of the customer (and their experience), a new concept gained prominence: customer success.
In this post, we will discuss how centralization of operations and process optimization are intrinsically linked to the success of its customers.
What you will see in this post:
How does marketing and sales alignment impact customer success?
How to promote alignment between the three departments?
Revenue Ops and Customer Success:
Good reading!
How does marketing and sales alignment impact customer success?
Much is said about the importance of alignment between marketing and sales teams, but, after all, what are the benefits of having these two departments working in total synergy and how does this impact customer success?
The truth is that both teams already have a common objective, therefore, investing in courses and training so that everyone can work together, in order to achieve this objective, is a good strategy, especially to encourage teamwork between these teams. departments.
But even so, the focus always ends up being directed towards just this perspective, that of aligning the marketing and sales departments. And how is the customer success department?
Once CS Ops is left out of the equation, the efforts of the marketing and sales teams become less significant. Situations are common in which the sales team ends up closing a deal with a customer without the ideal fit, resulting in a unique sale and a customer who, most likely, will not return.
This leads to too much effort in making sales that has little impact on your results and your company's revenue generation. Because trying to promote sales to customers who do not fit with your proposal is a practice that can prove to be more expensive than it appears, and its impact can be felt in the time and resources invested in these low-quality sales.
We've all heard the old saying “the customer always comes first”, but if your company is not willing to make investments and, perhaps, commit part of its revenue in the short term, in order to have greater returns with more qualified customers in the long term deadline, then your Customer Success team is only acting in a palliative manner. And this is not the fault of any specific department, but of everyone!
Remember that your customers' success is your success too, and the closer your customer is to your brand or company, the more fruits you can reap from this relationship. Something that goes in line with what we mentioned previously, in which a customer simply closes a sale and you never have any contact with them again.
Don't just make sales, make new regular customers who can count on your products and services. This is the key to sustainable and consistent growth for your business.
SEE TOO:
- What is Revenue Operations (RevOps) and how does it work?
- Discover the 8 stages of the sales process and how to carry them out;
- RevOps, Sales Ops, CS Ops, DevOps: understand the differences!
How to promote alignment between the three departments?
Firstly, for the alignment between departments to be the best possible, it is essential to define who will be leading the teams and how results will be measured from that point forward.
Ideally, the leaders of all departments involved, such as sales, marketing and customer success, always report to the same person in charge.
The person responsible in question can be a COO, CRO or any other director in the company, but for your choice to be more assertive regarding the decision of this person responsible for the entire operation to align the teams, it is extremely important that he is responsible for the company's revenue. company and that has a perspective that truly recognizes the benefits of Customer Success.
Once you can count on a single person responsible for the three teams and who has these characteristics, creating strategies that unify the efforts of the marketing, sales and customer success teams will become possible.
It is also important to highlight that leadership will have to keep an eye on the data that the customer success team presents regarding customers that are already part of their portfolio, as this will highlight the most problematic customers or those that are already causing some damage to their company, in addition to determining where to focus on the best sales or customer qualification strategies.
Revenue Ops and Customer Success
An incredibly powerful tool when it comes to centralizing operations and processes is the Revenue Ops, as it is through this innovative concept that you can simplify many of your internal tasks.
In this way, the feasibility of strategies that require faster responses and that, consequently, impact the results collected by the customer success team in a positive way, which will result in more efficient processes and enable much more reliable solutions for your company and your customers.
Below, we will describe some of the main RevOps practices that can promote a much more dynamic alignment between the three departments and also enhance your results and your company's revenue generation.
Strategic planning
The first step of RevOps is to promote the integration and complete alignment of all teams, in this case, marketing, sales and customer success, defining metrics and based on their KPIs to guide all planning from that point on.
Based on this information and using strategies that truly integrate all teams, it will be easier to identify possible bottlenecks in your operations and correct them before they cause any more serious damage to your performance or results.
Lead qualification
Qualifying your leads is essential so that the integration between the three departments is the best possible.
Especially in the case of companies with a more extensive contact base, qualifying leads in detail is essential to speed up their passage through your sales funnel and enable the purchasing decision to be accelerated.
In these cases, implement the use of qualification software. This will be your best option when it comes to processing all this information and converting it into much more reliable data that provides your teams with everything they need to increase productivity.
Performance Monitoring
Analyzing metrics and your sales KPIs is essential so that your planning can be applied efficiently and cohesively.
Making use of data analysis based on solid indicators is the key so that everyone, whether departments or managers, can see which points need to be improved, in addition to highlighting what is working in their strategy.
Integrated sales tools
One of the main tools that will enable complete integration between the three departments is the implementation of a CRM platform, which allows the centralization of all your company's processes within a single space.
Another important point is the support of the devOps team to find and develop intelligent solutions to enable your leads’ journey through your sales funnel to be as dynamic as possible, resulting in time and productivity gains for all teams.
Summary:Alignment between the marketing, sales and customer success teams is not just limited to generating revenue, as it has to do with qualifying customers and deploying resources for the right strategies, with the aim of promoting much more sustainable growth. and consistency of your company.
Knowing the importance of alignment between these three departments, also take the opportunity to discover how to optimize your relationship strategies with your customers.
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