Wrestle Back Control in the Age of the Customer
As organizations continue to look for an edge, increasingly they are looking at the customer buyer journey to figure out how they can better anticipate and manage this journey. Given the shifts in how customers make decisions, involve stakeholder groups, and transact, sales and marketing teams need to continually ask themselves “how can we deliver engage customers to deliver revenue growth”.
While we are in the “Age of the Customer,” some organizations are wrestling back control of the buying process through customer experience, data, and insight. Engaging customers in a powerful experience and leading them down a path to purchase has proven to be a winning approach.
It starts with understanding the buyer journey, customer needs and how they buy. Most organizations have done some work here but most B2B companies are not totally grounded in this change…and it is changing fast. Mapping the buyer journey, understanding how different customers engage, and ensuring that you are applying resources to the right areas are critical for success.
What can make this easier for organizations (but what is often overlooked) is that there has never been more data on the customer. Creating a clear profile through this data, understanding not just the needs of the customer but the path they want to take, is critical to moving this from theoretical to practical.
Winning buyers in the information-rich digital world now requires marketing and sales to better understand customer needs and how they buy. The ability to turn this data into customer insight — and insight into effective and distinctive customer experiences — is key to achieving exceptional results.
Companies who are looking to get this right are asking questions like…
- What is the impact of these new trends on buyers and how are organizations adapting?
- Why is it more important to focus on creating exceptional customer experiences in this age and how do you prioritize the right experiences to create?
- How can marketing and sales employ data and analytics to reinvent customer experiences and to manage the buyer journey?
We believe that sales and marketing must focus knowledge, energy, and process on the entire customer life cycle, to better win, retain and grow accounts. Organizations who get this right see significant benefit while others can be left behind by the changes in their customers.
