Part 4 - Everything is downstream from culture

Context

For the sake of continuity, let’s review the agwella Business Development Funnel (See Part 3). For those who become aware of your “Who”, “What” and “Why” (see Part 2) and look for more information, you need credible insight that is specific to a sub-industry and/or persona.  This can mean clear articulation of specific and relevant use cases.  It can include high level recorded demos, explanatory videos, etc. 

Once prospects become aware and informed, you need to spur interest with customer success stories (if you have them).  Ideally, these are customer stories to which your prospect can relate, as well as demonstrations, or proof exercises that are tailored for the interested party. 

Finally, it’s time to complete the process of motivating your prospect to do what you believe (or at least hope) is the best thing for them – select your company and offering.  The key discrete deliverable for this is a proposal.  But all may be for naught if every previous interaction is not conducted with the end goal of motivation in mind.

Since everything starts with (meaning nothing happens without) the “aware” phase in the Funnel, let’s focus in on two key points.

First - Everything Is Downstream from Culture

Every customer or prospect interaction is a precious opportunity.

You probably have a “customer success” executive and even a whole department. Maybe you also have a chief customer officer. Of course, these folks have their own “swim lanes” and that’s where customer success happens, right? Legal, accounts receivable, support, sales, business development, implementation, education, engineering, product management, and so on, all have their own distinct swim lanes and metrics. Of course, there needs to be some division of duties and specialization, as well as a path for escalation.

But here is the problem.

“Customer success” is not a department.

There is no division of duties when it comes to motivating a customer to commit to you, initially and every single day.

Job 1 is to create a culture, starting with — no, not starting with sales — starting with product management and software development or engineering, but throughout and across your entire enterprise, where the overriding goal is the success of your customer.

(How to create that culture is a separate topic, but it does not consist of adding customers as a “core value” on your website.)

This does not mean the customer is always “right”, but that you are always trying to deliver their success.

The reason is simple. Your whole business is about motivating the customer to do what you honestly believe is the right thing for them. If your business is about something else, I don’t know what to say. Maybe it’s time to go get that ice cream cone or something, if you have read my previous posts.

One company (not a software firm) I know has a core value or goal to be the trusted first choice. That is spot-on.

So, aside from all of the obvious messaging tools (e-mail, blog, white paper, webinar, etc.), and the software applications that can help you manage delivery of those tools, this is one of the two key elements that startups (and many software businesses) are completely missing. Obviously, if you don’t have this as your culture, you are, to some degree, just “spitting into the wind.”

And you can’t really focus on customer success so you can be the trusted first choice unless you are solid on, and everyone has embraced, your “Who”, “What”, and “Why”.

Everyone has the job of customer success through delivering value and of motivating the customer to pay for the value you deliver, now and in the future.

A miss on any interaction will hurt you now and pay negative dividends down the line.

That is the first point.

Second - The “Easy” Part

I’ll talk specifically about maximizing every business development and sales interaction in the next, and final, post in this 5-part series. But remember, this second point won’t really work (long term, at least) unless you nail the first point.