Which Waze to Go? How to Improve Customer Acquisition and Retention, Part III

Abstract

Part III explains why companies should be rebooting their customer acquisition and retention strategies to converge Sales, Marketing and Technology around the customer.  

5 min read | By Justin Perry

What to Expect: 

SECTION 1 

Moving Forward Means Finding a Consensus 

It means that the reasons why customer acquisition strategies definitely fail start with the inability to measure. It also means that the ability to measure requires complete consensus on what is important for the organization and why.

This is where we need to restart our organizational Waze app.  Most companies interdepartmental goals may align but the silo mentality makes it incredibly difficult to assemble the integrated mosaic.  

“What to measure?”

I’ll take a moment to remind the readers here that we are tabling the people problem component of this.  I’ve seen Sales, Marketing + IT organizations work in complete harmony and I’ve seen others treat each other with the kindness and consideration of Alexander Hamilton + Aaron Burr.

In order to measure, companies need to internally align on what to measure.  Rebooting the way departments look at a problem, free of jaded perspectives based on history is a start.  


Technology Fuels Internal Collaboration 

This is why SMARTech Convergence begins and ends with the customer. The customer (specifically the satisfied customer) is the singularity that should bind all departments in a company.  The customer, and what is right for the customer should remove any internal politics and function as a rallying point for every company to restart their internal Waze app.

The path to SMARTech Convergence requires a series of steps that lead logically to one another.  It forces the company’s business goals to drive specificity within sales goals which in turn makes the job of marketers more focused.  It drives the focus towards acquiring specific types of customers that align with the goals of the business and places importance on actual tactics only when the end goal is clear.

Once Sales + Marketing are aligned, IT supports that alignment + measurement through technology.  IT has to make the right technology choices and deploy the platforms in a way they can serve the business. Only then can your company begin to eliminate data silos, uncover pitfalls in the current customer acquisition strategy and change course as necessary.

Sales + Marketing need to collaborate. Technology must be positioned to enable this collaboration.

SECTION 2 

SMARTech Convergence + Customer Acquisition

How is it going to help?

It provides a map. It’s impossible to decide which way to go without knowing the destination. That’s why adopting SMARTech Convergence starts with identifying the exact type of customer that you want to attract. Then, with the help of IT, Sales and Marketing have the ability to understand how each lead behaves in the sales funnel.

It helps find the best route. By adopting SMARTech Convergence, you can identify with specificity, and in real time, the areas where your customer acquisition is most successful and the areas where it’s least successful.
You can then build out a route, a customer acquisition strategy, based off of these insights. This approach ensures your marketing dollars are spent more effectively and with a smaller chance of loss.

It provides early warning signs. It’s easier to turn the Titanic five degrees, twenty miles away from the iceberg than it is to turn the Titanic ninety degrees, five seconds before it crashes into the iceberg (just ask Kathy Bates).

Implementing SMARTech Convergence creates a feedback system. Your company has a smart navigation that enables it to “foresee” future roadblocks (or icebergs) and receive instant alerts whenever a tactic isn’t delivering results. This way companies can correct course long before disaster strikes.

It helps calculate CPA and returns. Being able to look outside of their data silo, the Head of Sales, the Head of Marketing, the CEO, the CFO are all able to understand what types of customers are within the target market and how many of them the company can potentially reach. Then, the true cost of acquiring these customers can be calculated. SMARTech Convergence makes realistic customer acquisition goals possible.

SECTION 3

SMARTech Convergence helps navigate the marketplace

In any business; the people entrusted to guide the business are often the farthest removed from the day to day execution of the tactics in the business.  In today’s marketplace where costs to market and acquire customers are outpacing budgets it is more crucial than ever for management teams to have a framework that unifies efforts + streamlines business insight.

Just like a smartphone app uses maps, traffic information and accident alerts to maintain the fastest route to your destination, SMARTech Convergence uses customer insight, integrated reporting and internal consensus to keep your organization on the fastest and most cost-effective route to acquiring the right type of customers. All of that said; SMARTech Convergence exists to empower people to make intuitive decisions on how best to refine, expand, contract, invest or divest in strategies.


Never Ask "Are We There Yet?" Again 

In eliminating the Platform, Process and Data problems- the People problem should be far less of a concern. However; none of this is possible if the actual business decisions or strategic consensus amongst Sales, Marketing, IT and the Executive team are compromised or non existent.

If you restart Waze, it recalibrates itself immediately because the application depends on a logic system, data, a connection to changing data and a proprietary methodology to use that data in the most efficient “waze” possible.

Rebooting your perspective on Customer Acquisition + Retention challenges gives a company a chance to put the process, platforms and data in place to reconfigure the path to satisfied customers in a crowded and competitive marketplace.  Companies that do this and adopt SMARTech Convergence will never have to pull over and ask for directions or ask “are we there yet?” ever again.

What's Next?

Bring SMARTech Convergence to Life 

SmarTech Convergence unlocks real customer insights, integrated reporting and internal consensus to keep your organization on the fastest, most cost-effective route to success. 
 
Free Discovery Session