Is your Customer facing team as efficient as a Formula 1 pit crew team?

Drive to survive. The race to customer advocates and the importance other teams play in the overall success is huge.?Do you work as a cohesive team just like F1 pit crews? It takes the pit crews less than 3 seconds to change 4 tires on the F1 race cars. What can you do in 3 seconds? I will come back to that.

I honestly think that F1 teams have a lot to teach us in the B2B Tech space. Especially those of us that need to collaborate and partner with other teams.?In any given Formula 1 racing team there are hundreds of team members and maybe even 1000 team members involved. There is the team owner/CEO, the Driver, the Team Principal, Engineers, Analysts, Mechanics, Media, and trainers and everyone in the factory. Very similar to an org chart at a tech company. In tech there is the generic org chart with the CEO, Head of Sales, Head of Support, Head of Developers/Engineers, Sales reps, Customer Success and Marketing.

So why am I making this comparison? Well one I just binged the latest season of the Formula 1 Race show on Netflix. Obsessed and a total fan of F1 since starting the series last year and plan to watch every race each Sunday this season! And two I truly believe they work as a well oiled (see what I did there) company.

So image the race season. You have various cities to go to, learn about the track, test out the track, qualify with a good result, and then win the race at that track. Much like a new customer journey. Customer Success needs to onboard and welcome that new customer. Implementation occurs next and then it’s go live for the "race." Your first opportunity to create an advocate. What is the first big win they have? How can you bottle that up and spotlight your user as a winner and hero? Customer Marketing steps in to capture the experience from the customer, starting with onboarding, and also asking what future goals they have while they are all jazzed up with a successful onboard and quick win.

Customer Success and Customer Marketing need to have a close relationship in this scenario to understand when the customer is ready to share their story and to ensure they are set up for success and when given the opportunity share their story. Customer Success can get ahead of Customer stories and insights by always listening for golden nuggets, bubbling those up to Customer Marketing. Simple as sharing a zoom recording or making a warm intro email. Various opportunities.

No matter what place the team comes in on the race it is irrelevant because it’s the process from start to finish that is important. Getting to the finish line first does not always mean you will have the best advocate.?There may have been some bumps along the way or crashes. Understanding upfront from Sales why the customer bought leads to a positive handoff to Customer Success. Then the successful onboard and feedback from CS to Customer Marketing is KEY! There is that team work again. All leading to RockStar advocates. And I truly believe that my analogy is tied to the repeatable process at each race at each city. Each customer is a new city and a new race.

The teamwork is needed to get the job done.?Win that race. Get that customer story. Make your customer a RockStar. Win the world championship.

You need the support team to ensure resources are there for tech help. This would be the pit crew and mechanics.

• The car is your product?
• The customer is the driver #teammax #teamredbull?

We all have a desire to win just like a formula race car driver. Winner or loser there are always insights and advice to be shared.

Once you have a great car and a great driver and a great team you want to repeat this at every race and every city. Being customer led and buildings up your advocates make it easy come renewal or contract renewal time.

Put yourself in the seat of the car like your customer and ensure your product does what it’s supposed and find the opportunities on how your product more importantly can make your customers RockStars.

So what can you do in 3 seconds? Send that follow up email to your customer? Thank a customer for sharing their voice? Post a customer story on social? You may or may not be able to do it this quickly but the thought process in taking the step to do it can occur in 3 seconds. And remember you need a team tied into your strategy and your program to be successful. Partner with Customer Success if you are in Customer Marketing. Partner with Customer Marketing if you are in Customer Success. I promise it will pay of in the end.