Why your internal business structure matters

No, I’m not talking about tax structures and business formation. How you set up the inside of your business matters a lot for your ability to achieve future success. Well, what do I mean by that?

How you structure the departments within your business will determine who they are in contact with every day, and thus, what influences they have on a consistent basis. If you create the right internal environment, then there will be a collaboration between business departments, and they will gain consistent insights and awareness that might otherwise have not been possible.?

Here are a few of the most important departments in need of collaboration and seeing the other sides’ perspectives:

Sales + Marketing

How often do the sales materials not reflect what the company’s differentiating factor is? Or better yet, the marketing isn’t speaking to the points that the sales team has consistently found their converted clients care about!?

In order to be successful, the team responsible for converting “potentials” to “purchasers” needs to have the tools they need to maximize their success. At the same time, the marketing team needs to be in tune with what matters most to the market they are pursuing. Getting these two in sync can pay big dividends for companies.??

Customer Service + Everyone

What is not working and why? What are the expectations of the customer, and what customer experience do your customers need to feel valued? These are the golden question that everyone within the company should know.?

The more departments understand what is wrong with the product or service, the more efficient the solutions process will be. A product might be breaking due to the materials procurement selected, not necessarily the manufacturing process. Customers could be complaining about a service because their expectations were not in line with what the company was able to provide as a result of out-of-tune marketing or sales departments.?

The best path to a joyful customer experience begins with everyone understanding the complaints, customer journey, and solutions needed.?

Product + Feedback

In order to be successful in today’s business climate, businesses must be agile in what they are doing and responsive in how they are doing it. Each business must make changes that continue to meet customer needs, and explore how they can maximize the reasons why their product or service falls into a “have to have” instead of a “might be nice to have” customer category. This requires being knowledgeable of all of the directions the product or service can be taken and being able to have those responsible for making any such changes happen to care enough to prioritize those items over the usual laundry list of desires that all businesses have.?

A great example of what it looks like when those responsible for developing services understand what is most important to the customer is Zoom. Prior to the beginning of the pandemic, Zoom was already poised to be a market leader because their internal product and development teams received constant feedback that the circular virality of their product (how much customers referred their product to co-workers or scheduled meetings with non-users, which then exposed them to the platform) had a lot to do with how easy their platform was to use for non-members.?

While competitors like BlueJeans and Microsoft Teams required lengthy or involved installs, Zoom created a browser-based tool that made it simple for non-members to get on a Zoom with a couple of clicks. Their product team understood that ease-of-use was a large determining factor for their intelligent but not tech-savvy audience, and were able to prioritize building that feedback into the product.??

It is important to note here that in order to be agile, the team creating the product or service your business sells needs to hear from your customers early and often. They need to know exactly what target customers of all backgrounds think, and be so knowledgeable of the conversations that they have daydreams where customers walk up to them and tell them what they want.?

When your teams responsible for developing the product understand the customers as much as those who answer the calls, the chances of success are going to be a lot higher for you, regardless of what industry you’re in.??

If you have questions about how to best structure your company for success, shoot me a message or come visit us at the Better Business Bureau of Greater Kansas City.