Dr. Debbie Qaqish, Chief Strategy Officer of The Pedowitz Group, recently wrapped up workshop #2 of her three-part interactive digital workshop series on how marketers can lead the shift to customer centricity. In the first workshop attendees began to outline their strategic plan to operationalize this shift. During the second workshop, Debbie led the attendees through “How to Operationalize Strategy, People and Process”.
Debbie started the conversation by asking the question: “are your marketing goals and efforts tightly aligned to company goals for Customer Centricity?”. She then went through if it is the marketing teams’ job or the company’s job to catch up on aligning to become Customer Centric throughout the company.
At the Pedowitz Group, we’ve identified six major controls to help marketers operationalize customer centricity: strategy, content, people, process, technology, and results. You will use every one of these six controls to set your own unique path and pace for transforming marketing from product-centric to customer-centric. We call these controls the Revenue Marketing 6 (or RM6) and use them as the key drivers to help marketers become customer-centric, while also meeting their business goals. In this workshop, we focused on the controls strategy, people and process.
Most people see where they ARE and then see where they WANT to be, but they do not know how to get where they want to go. The RM6 serves as the mechanism for operationalizing your Revenue Marketing Journey and addressing the challenges of digital transformation, revenue accountability, and customer centricity. The Revenue Marketing Journey model serves as your GPS.
Company Strategy – Debbie
The Strategy Control relates to the larger strategy of your company, the state of readiness for change and the degree of sales and marketing alignment.
A common barrier to sales and marketing alignment could be that sales is acting as a gatekeeper to customers. There is then a limited perception of what marketing can and should be doing around customer centricity. But the alignment can be accelerated by both departments working together to connect to the customer.
Key capabilities within this control include:
- Business Alignment
- Organizational Readiness
- Operational Readiness
- Leadership Effectiveness
- Sales and Marketing Alignment
A key question to ask when thinking about company strategy: What elements of Company Strategy might impact the effectiveness of your Customer-Centricity initiative?
People
The People Control addresses people in marketing, people aligned to marketing and the organizational structure around people.
A big part of people would be stakeholder alignment. Stakeholder Alignment is the capability of aligning and building collaboration with all key stakeholders who are affected by customer centricity. Barriers for stakeholder alignment could be, but not limited to, not having external stakeholder relationships. An accelerator could be a clear vision, path, communication, and collaboration skills.
Key capabilities within this control include:
- Resource Planning
- Talent Acquisition
- Talent Management (people in marketing)
- Stakeholder Alignment (people aligned to marketing)
- Organizational Structure (around people)
Key question to ask when thinking about people: What elements of People might impact the effectiveness of your Customer-Centricity initiative?
Process
In nearly every transformation effort, Process is the first Control to be evaluated and addressed.
According to Debbie, data is very important in 2019. Data Management is the capability that includes the development, execution, and supervision of plans, policies, programs and practices that control, protect, deliver and enhance the value of data for improved revenue marketing performance. Many marketing teams still do not have access to data. Barriers for data management are, but not limited to, access to data as well as no control over data input. An accelerator for data management is to create a data governance council based on customer insights and your conversations should begin with data.
There are five key capabilities in process:
- Demand Management
- Program Management
- Campaign Management
- Best Practice Management
- Data Management
Key Question to Ask: What elements of Process might impact the effectiveness of your Customer-Centricity initiative?
Dr. Qaqish closed the workshop with a list of homework items for attendees to take their strategy into action in preparation for the next session on Tuesday, March 12th.