Once in a Lifetime

A situation like what we are experiencing right now comes along once in a lifetime. Probably even less than that. 

Just to be clear, when I say “situation” I mean everything we have experienced in 2020. We are in the middle of a global pandemic. In response, many people around the world (who can) have been asked to work from home (if they weren’t furloughed or fired) — and I think we’ve all found that working from home sounds great until you’re forced to do it for months. As a direct result of COVID-19, we are also in the middle of an economic recession. And closely related to both the pandemic and the economic crisis, we are experiencing a new, broad-based awakening for racial and social justice in the United States. 

Any one of these realities alone would be enough to shake our collective confidence. But all three together (pandemic + recession + social change)? Well that’s enough to cause everyone to question everything.

And that’s what truly makes this a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Putting the Pieces Back Together

Before you take offense at my last statement, think about what I’m saying. If we get to tear everything down and build it up again in ways that are more simple, effective, and fair, isn’t that a tremendous opportunity? 

Each of us is constantly pursuing positive change on personal, family, professional, and social levels. But so often, mundane matters get in the way of substantive and sustainable change. “Business as usual” — whether in our homes or in the workplace or in the world — has always been the biggest obstacle to real change.

Well there ain’t no more business as usual. So what are we going to do with this opportunity?

Customer Experience

In moments of great uncertainty (and this moment tops the charts!), we get a lot of questions at The Starr Conspiracy about how to press forward with sales and marketing. The fact that we have to ask ourselves these questions each time there is a new crisis shows how behind we are as an industry when it comes to adopting a “Customer Experience” or CX mindset.

Most of us in Work Tech have been caught in The Surrogation Snare. (I don’t recommend a lot of articles or business books — so believe me, when I do it’s because I truly believe it's worth reading.) In short, surrogation is when strategy is mentally replaced with metrics. We all start with a strategy that is partially abstract. We create metrics to sharpen the strategy and measure whether we're making progress against it. But over time, we tend to focus more on the metrics until they completely replace the strategy.

In sales and marketing, that looks a lot like letting our CRM reports run our company. In other words, we start to care more about inquiries, MQLs, SQLs, and closed contracts than we do the strategy that sales and marketing achievement is supposed to support. When disaster strikes (like a global pandemic or major civil unrest), we wring our hands as we watch our “numbers” go down while we contemplate our “response” to the “situation.” The fact of the matter, is that when our companies have a strong Customer Experience vision that unites every major function of the business behind a single purpose, the answers reveal themselves.

Companies with a strong vision for CX know what to do when the SHTF:

1. Speak up. Respond to the situation and let the world know what contribution you’re making to help solve the problem. Don’t be like CrossFit Founder, Gregg Glassman, who said nothing about George Floyd in the days following his murder (despite multiple calls for a statement from his franchise owners), and then said something totally stupid and racist when he finally did speak up. Both parts are wrong. Silence is wrong. Saying stupid stuff is wrong.
2. Shut up until you do something. Once you’ve made your company’s position clear, don’t keep preaching without taking action. With a strong CX orientation, everyone in the company can spring into action knowing what their role is in keeping the commitments you’ve made to your customers and the broader community. Marketing shouldn’t send out a statement without a team of people in multiple departments ready to make good on your promises. You can say more when you’ve done more. And both are important. But words without action is false advertising (which is not a great CX moment).
3. Deliver on your CX. How you deliver on your CX can change with changing circumstances, as long as you stay true to who you are and how you can help your customers. In stable times, it’s fine to “work the pipeline” with a mix of marketing activities and sales outreach. But when circumstances change, you have to change your approach. Start by asking yourself how you can deliver on your CX during these challenging times. Hint: It’s probably not by cramming product demos down people’s throats. But it’s also not by going silent and turning everything off. Your sales and marketing people are the most visible ambassadors for CX (especially when it comes to non-customers who need solutions). Accept the fact that your “numbers” are going to go down, and that you might even need to change them. A few companies I know have thrown out their sales and marketing scorecards and are counting the number of interactions and conversations they are having rather than the number of stage conversions they are driving. That’s because in these interactions and conversations, they are trying to deliver on their CX by helping people rather than solely focusing on hitting sales and marketing goals. Check out Aduro’s Work Readiness Handbook as an example. We actually used it at The Starr Conspiracy to create our own plan for reopening the office.

Back to the Big Picture

So back to the big picture. There is no better time to do some soul searching around your CX vision than right now. Inevitably, this should lead to some tough conversations about how you can sew a single thread of purpose through your employee experience, brand experience, marketing experience, sales experience, product experience, and support experience.

Every single person in the company should know what they can do to help deliver on the Customer Experience directly from their role. 

It’s not the job of sales and marketing to drive leads and close deals. It’s the job of sales and marketing to create great moments and experiences that cause people to bond emotionally with your brand. The way we do that has to change based on the circumstances we face at any given moment. Sure, sometimes lead generation and demos are king. But most of the time, they really aren’t. They end up being the byproduct of a more cohesive and sophisticated CX strategy. 

And if now isn’t a good time to rethink sales and marketing in the greater context of Customer Experience, when is?