Explore how successful companies align marketing, sales and customer success at every stage of the customer journey.

This is the third part of a three-part series on the success elements of growth.

Part 1  Part 2

I am fortunate enough to have many conversations with CMOs, but not every time does one bring a smile to my face; this one did. Why? Because this CMO clearly understood the mandate for him and his team — engage the customer at every stage of the journey and, in so doing, generate revenue for the organization.

Over the last two months, I have written the first two parts of a three-part series on the success elements of growth. If you need to get caught up, part one can be found here and part two here.

These overriding principles about organizational growth from the previous parts of the series will also inform this article.

• The goal of marketing is to drive corporate growth and they must take a leadership position.
• There is no easy button to sustainable growth.
• Technology is not a growth strategy.
• Marketing, sales and customer success must be unified in the approach and share a common understanding of the customer.

I am also including the Growth Maturity Index^TM (GMI) we developed at Digital Exhaust as I’ll be discussing the remaining three growth elements in this article.

This is not to say that they have not done the work to define their ideal customer. Rather, they have done the work to develop the insights but do not apply them meaningfully, so they are valueless.

Referring to one of the abovementioned principles, your technology is not a growth strategy. It can only enable your strategy. While virtually every organization I speak to has technology, very few have it fine-tuned to support their end-to-end customer engagement strategy. Always remember strategy first, technology second.

As the GMI shows, the most mature organizations are using AI and machine learning (ML) to continually optimize their customer engagement and deliver insights to marketing, sales and customer support.

This week, we experienced this type of optimization supporting the sales process. Using AI, we could share cognitive insights on a prospective customer that informed the sales conversation and subsequent follow-up.

This enables sales along with the delivery of a great experience to the prospect via personalization. Invest in your customer data if you are looking at ways to impact corporate growth. It is a treasure trove of insight.

That started a conversation among all involved about their sources, lack of insight and how they could not truly measure performance, leaving them operating blindly. The truth is, this organization is hardly the exception. 

• They have not aligned on what they want to measure.
• They have not defined how these metrics will help drive improvement.
• Different departments pull from different sources leading to contradictions.
• They have disparate systems.

To use old or inaccurate data is not just useless; it is a detriment to the business. The most mature organizations:

• Put a high value on growth measurement.
• Rely on real-time insight to inform their decisions.
• Continually mature their approach to sustainable growth.

Use the GMI here to guide your assessment and bring marketing, sales and customer support together to chart your path to maturity and start the process. Like any transformation, there will be bumps in the road. Do not let that derail you. Above all, don’t let getting started be the thing that stops you.

Originally published on MarTech.org – August 17, 2023.