Are you truly customer-centric or just pretending?

In the intricate world of subscription-based businesses, especially those operating in the SaaS and cloud realms, there stands a truth universally acknowledged – the customer is king, and churn is kryptonite. Yet, becoming genuinely customer-centric is a challenge many B2B companies wrestle with. The question stays put: how do we bridge the gap?

Silos: The silent killers of customer centricity

Both my experiences at technology industry titans and my current engagements as an independent advisor, reveal a consistent pattern. The larger the organization, the more pronounced the existence of stifling silos among all the customer engagement stakeholders – marketing, sales, e-commerce, customer service, and more.

It even appears within startups and mid-sized companies. If you’re aiming to get your CEO or business unit leader on board for change and send more funds to your CX effort, targeting the alignment of sales and marketing is a strategic starting point as business leaders readily invest first in the quest for growth.

The promise of account-based marketing (ABM)

A leap toward true customer alignment lies in the tiered account-based marketing (ABM) strategy: 1:1, 1:Few, and 1:Many. This nuanced approach enables sales and marketing to modulate their effort and investment based on the depth of engagement, and the personalization intensity to tailor interactions relevantly and consistently across the customer journey – both for the BUY and OWN parts of this infinite loop.

But here's the challenge: how do you sift through the deluge of data and intricate behavioral analysis to fulfill customers' demands of hyper-personalized real-time interactions? This is where artificial intelligence (AI) steps in.

The AI revolution in B2B sales and marketing

During my tenures at Salesforce and Oracle as a Vice President of Marketing, AI was a budding promise on the horizon. We’d use machine learning to score leads and cleanse data at best. Today, with the advent of generative AI, its capabilities are game-changers in the realm of B2B sales and marketing alignment:

• Extract: AI uncovers hidden gems, drawing crucial insights from vast data lakes.
• Summarize: With incredible efficiency, AI distills colossal amounts of data into clear, actionable summaries, elucidating past customer interactions.
• Suggest: The days of information hunting are numbered. AI offers proactive suggestions, optimizing processes and pathways.
• Improve: Using historical interactions as a blueprint, AI refines future engagements, ensuring increasing relevance.
• Analyze: Armed with AI, leaders can make data-driven decisions with precision, particularly in refining customer experience (CX).
• Delight: AI's knack for formulating coherent responses to unique customer queries elevates customer satisfaction, ensuring consistent resonance throughout the journey. And you can now do this at scale effortlessly.

Crafting the B2ME experience

By harnessing AI, businesses can truly curate a B2ME experience—a series of hyper-personalized, real-time interactions across all omnichannel touchpoints. The focus shifts to strategically retaining, developing, and acquiring the right accounts, establishing a foundation for unparalleled customer experiences. The horizon beckons with the integration of customer success and business development teams—an amalgamation poised to deliver fascinating transformations.

Conclusion: The dance of alignment

The technological landscape has evolved since my Salesforce and Oracle days, but the challenge remains: forging genuine, impactful customer relationships and strengthening them over time.

Now, with the arsenal of AI tools and insights, companies stand better equipped to master the intricate tango of B2B sales and marketing alignment. It's time to harness this potential, envisioning a future where every interaction, whatever the ‘phygital’ channel, is marked by understanding, innovation, and genuine care.

As we embark on this journey of harnessing AI, ABM, and more for genuine customer centricity thriving in the age of the customer, the path forward promises more insights, strategies, and success stories. Stay tuned as we delve deeper into transforming B2B sales and marketing alignment in our upcoming pieces.

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