Many mid-market executives believe Marketing owns customer intimacy. Can this be true, considering that Marketing’s main focus is generating demand? Will Marketing have time and talent to get close to customers? To be sure, many functions have significant customer interactions. For example, Sales when selling and Finance when managing receivables; and each function interprets customer data through its own lens, leading to diverging actions.
Only the CEO can bring about a unified view of the customer. Therefore, the CEO must serve as the advocate to ensure ongoing company-wide customer intimacy efforts.
Remember to plan to overcome resistance or other inherent challenges. For example, a company operating in strong silos will need to become somewhat collaborative. Or if your company isn’t very forward leaning, this also will need to be addressed.
Here are 3 recommendations for moving ahead:
If you’re in a B2B business and looking for ways to increase customer intimacy, consider implementing a customer advisory board program and funding a senior customer advocacy position.
Getting closer to your customers is more important than ever and should be championed by the CEO. Charter a cross-functional team to run your customer intimacy program and publish frequent updates to all employees to engage everyone. Consider a customer advisory board or senior customer advocate position to create opportunities to hear directly from your customers.
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