VALKRE | Value Creation

Give Customers Access To Their Scorecard

Over the past couple weeks, I've shared with you two stores about how some of our customers are finding practical ways with Render to get their organizations to be more customer centric. Here's the continuation in that series....

If you're an account manager, you probably live and breathe the daily management of critical customer-facing initiatives. Which means you probably have to collaborate not only cross-functionally in your organization but also with your customers. As such, we don't have to tell you that internal account plans are not optimal to create the accountability, visibility and alignment on initiative execution.

In order to assure customer engagement with key/strategic accounts, some companies are using Render to achieve success by providing their customers self-service access to a list of the top programs, deals, issues, innovations their customers care about. When customers can access content they care about, it has a way of driving more customer centric behavior internally.

Here is a quick and easy path to getting this done:

Replace the Presentation With a Scorecard. Every time you meet with customers, replace the mentality of pitching with an attitude of "here's the update." This should be a simple table with columns for Initiative Name, Owner, Promised Completion Date, Expected Completion Date, Status and Latest News. That's it. Show it to the customer (even if its blank) and say I'd like to operate around this simple list. Using the list will simplify customer meeting prep for you and create a simpler experience for customers to engage and collaborate. You can always back up this list with supplemental materials and details.

Put the Scorecard in a Place Your Customers Can Access. There are numerous tools out there to establish self-service access to information. You can use Sharepoint, DropBox or many other secure file sharing utilities, but of course, we think our web portal is the best.

Ask Your Customers How You Can Help Them Make More Money. With a simple, blank table that is accessible to customers, it is time to fill it in. Start by asking the customer how you can help make them more money. Write those things down with a status of Not Approved. Show customers you have listened and documented such that there is accountability to consider and responsiveness to the customer's request.

Add Existing Work, Critical Issues and Big Deals. While decisions are being made on customer requests, add ongoing efforts to the scorecard. Often times there are disparate lists of critical issues, programs being executed, or upcoming deals floating around emails and spreadsheets in the organization. Consolidate them and pick the most important. Then confirm with the customer whether those things should be on the scorecard.

Establish Dates and Owners. As initiatives in the scorecard are approved, first establish expectations on target dates and internal owners. Putting this info on the scorecard establishes accountability internally to get things done for the customer on time. This is the first act that will begin driving an organization to become more customer-centric.

Establish Critical Mass. While the above actions are effective for a few accounts, real change will being when critical mass is achieved. The numbers vary based on your organization, but companies using Render see dramatic change in their organizations when scorecards are established for the top 10 accounts…and that change will benefit the rest of the key accounts. Critical mass gives an organization the sense that these initiatives are real data now that needs to be managed and discussed and accountability to execute on behalf of customer is real.

Establish Management Reviews. With critical mass, you can add these scorecards into existing management processes, ranging from internal account reviews to cross-functional meetings to review 'At Risk' items across all accounts. The point is that these processes are easier to establish with data and customer expectations in place. If you make these scorecards a part of how you work, ultimately it will directly improve the customer centricity of an organization.

Those points are just a quick rundown on the steps to take in giving customers access to your initiative scorecard for greater engagement. If you want to learn more about the details of getting it done, send us a message below and we'll be happy to show you how it works in Render.

Customer Centric Hack: Require Customer Feedback

Last week I wrote about how one of our customers is using Render to make their organization more customer centric. Continuing that thread, this week I wanted to share a story about how some companies are "thinking from the right."

It doesn't need to be said that listening to customers is a good idea. But can you honestly say that you're taking action against a customer's feedback? Companies using Render take a more productive approach to feedback. From a linear process perspective, they think from the right: They establish the decision or plan that requires customer feedback, then collect feedback under that context. In that way, the feedback will be used, decisions will be smarter, and plans more successful.

Here is a quick outline of how some of our customers get this done:

Declare the Value Proposition You Are Trying to Improve. Not product or service. Value proposition. By starting here, it is clearer what you are trying to sell more of to a specific type of customer under a defined competitive context. This can be for a deal, product, service, or customer. Declare to your organization that the purpose of upcoming decisions and planning sessions is to improve the value proposition and that, before anything is done, customer feedback on that value prop will be collected and incorporated into the process.

Write Down Your Value Proposition. This step may sound academic, but the value proposition establishes a baseline on which to improve and provides the topic of customer conversations. So if you don't have a clear, crisp articulation of what your offering is and how it benefits the customer, then you should start writing. 

Identify the Customers Whose Voice Will be Impactful. You are talking to customers in order to inform a decision, not just to talk for the sake of conversation. Think critically about the customer with whom to speak and who to include in that discussion. They should be people who benefit from your value proposition and heavily influence buying decisions.

Use Your Value Proposition as Basis of Discussion with Customer. Customers care about how they are better off with your value proposition versus other alternatives. It should not be a secret, so use it as the basis of discussion with your customers. If you wrote down your value proposition, now ask the customer what they agree with and where does it need to be improved. Customers will use their own understanding of the challenges they face and the goals of their business to inform their answers.

Summarize Customer Discussions into Themes. Gather all the customer feedback and create three lists about your value proposition: (1) what customers value most today, (2) what needs to be fixed, and (3) what are their new ideas to consider investing behind. Analyzing these insights will ensure that you don't kill investment in areas of value and that you allocate resources to areas to which customers will respond.

Hold Yourself Accountable on Which Themes Make the Plan vs. Ones that Don't. Take each list and create a decision scorecard that specifies what steps you will take as a result of the feedback. If the decision is something that customers might not like, then describe your logic behind that decision. Saying no is better than no decision at all, because, besides needing to address growth challenges, your customers wants to know you were actually listening.

Follow Up with Customers to Show How They Impacted the Decision Making. For each customer that took the time to provide feedback, report back to them on next steps. You will be more confident in your decisions, customers will be more engaged in the outcomes of your decisions, and your organization will work on the things customers care about.

 

Stay tuned for my next post, which will describe how the most customer centric companies are collaborating with their customers on initiative execution. In the meantime, if you have your own customer feedback stories to share, we would love to hear how effective those are for you.

Convert Your Product Catalog into a Value Proposition Catalog

How many 50 page catalogs have you flipped through, filled with 1-page product descriptions focused on features that are expensive to create and are rarely updated? Probably more than you can count, and probably more than you cared to read through because the information truly wasn't useful. Even worse, why don't any of those offering documents sell the outcomes and benefits for a customer?

I'm currently working with a company, helping them take a customer-back perspective and organize what makes their offering great according to outcomes by customer segment and competitive situation. The intent is to provide a more useful 'catalog' that will have real impact on a customer's buying decision.

Here are the seven core activities you can do to make your offering catalog more customer centric:

Align on what customers buy, not what you sell. This nuance can kill customer engagement right from the start. Do customers want to buy a partner or a specific product? Maybe both? For example, a contractor using your products is more likely looking for a business partner. A railroad is probably looking for a product or service to improve their operation. Understand this and take an inventory.

Align on the competitive situations you find. For each of the things customers buy, identify relevant competitive situations. Competitors could be another company, a product substitute, customers doing it themselves, customers not doing anything, or upgrading from a specific solution. There could be one or more contexts to consider.

Align on the customer segments you serve. For each of the things customers buy, identify the relevant customer segments that matter to your business. Start simple and use a segmentation scheme that is already well known to your organization

Create a distinct list of your value propositions. A good value proposition will encompass those first three dimensions: what customers want to buy, competitive context, and customer segment. How many do you have? List them all out and start with the ones most critical to growing your business.

Define differentiated value propositions that connect product features to customer outcomes. For each value proposition, don't simply document a pithy elevator pitch. Instead, articulate a series of value stories that connect differentiating features to the people who care about it at the customer and to the outcome they should expect. You may end up with more than a few of these value stories. Rank them based on value to the customer, given the competitive context and customer segment. Bonus points for quantifying the value customers should expect for one or more of the value stories.

Complete the Marketing Strategy. Now it's time to bring in the rest of the marketing 101 information. What is the market size? Who are the competitors? What positioning? Branding considerations? Pricing / profitability? This information will be easier to communicate by starting with a value proposition rather than just the product.

Connect to the organization. Establish this work as a dynamic source of record for the organization. Sales, marketing communications, product management should all know where to access the most up-to-date information on the value proposition. You can't force people to become more customer centric but their use of the same common data on outcomes will push them in the right direction.

 

The above is just a quick outline for achieving a better product catalog that resonates with customers. If you want to learn more about the details, send us a message below and we'll be happy to share more of our experiences.