Problem: Baseless claims of being a market-driven company are substantiated by the lack of existing buyer alignment disciplines
In a recent State of Market-Driven Adoption Executive Poll conducted by SCAI, 83% of respondents claimed to be a “Market-Driven” company. However, many responses highlight inconsistencies in their claims:
- When asked to substantiate what “market-driven” means to them, most executives responded by citing activities with their “customers,” not prospects or evaluators;
- 57% have invested into sales process training, yet half believe that its only benefit was to provide a process for the salesforce;
- 83% have not invested into product management framework training necessary to include buyer validation (e.g., personas, demand, perception, needs, problems) into product development; Surrogates full
- 57% irregularly conduct win/loss analysis and 28% don’t conduct it at all;
- 43% are just beginning the process. The Prophet full
These results maintain that one of two possibilities exist: 1.) Companies have fallen prey to unsubstantiated “me to” claims in order to be perceived as equal to their competitors who are performing market-based research; 2.) Executives are confused about how to create a cross-organizational market-driven culture. The answer is that both are true. Dwindled budgets have forced organizations to take shortcuts and it is easier to claim something than it is to prove it. The problem is that products, services and solutions will not keep up with market demand if diagnosis of sales positioning, perception of company / solution differentiation, and reality of the vendor’s “buyer need/vendor solution” equation is not monitored, measured and improved. Moreover, ignoring market-based perception and measurement disciplines will only invalidate any claim to “market-driven” to potential buyers and will be used by competitors as an edge or advantage.
Who is in Charge?
The top two responses by market-driven companies were split between the CEO and CMO (28% each) as to who was in charge of cross-organizational market-driven initiatives. 14% say the President is in charge and another 14% claim that no one is in charge of market-driven initiatives. When asked who is in charge of sales, marketing and product management, 57% said the CEO and 29% say the President, while 14% claim the COO. In order to be successful, the reality is that market-driven responsibilities must be shared and job-based performance must be paid upon its successful execution. Furthermore, market-driven processes should be driven by the CMO and monitored (and funded) by the CEO.
“Voice” of the Buyer
43% of executive respondents claim that the sales organization is currently the “voice” of the buyer, but 29% believe that they should be. More commonly, 43% say that product marketing is the “voice” of the buyer and 43% believe that they should be. Finally, 14% say that marketing communications is the “voice” of the buyer, but that executives should be. Historically, sales organizations have held the distinction of being the “voice” of the buyer. However, “market-driven” companies will relinquish this distinction to product marketing for cross-organizational initiatives to maintain buyer alignment. In the absence of product marketing personnel, product management should be the “voice” of the buyer. Some larger organizations have enabled the Business Development function with understanding the buyer, yet the most new-age companies have created a liaison individual, called the Sales Enablement Officer, to ensure that buyer alignment is achieved and maintained.
Fox in the Hen House
71% of responding executives claim that their only sales performance diagnosis is represented by a CRM housing sales-facing data. Yet, the only diagnosis that is updated into these systems is the one-word reason that an opportunity was won or lost - no “actionable” data on buyer behavior. Usually, the responsibility is that of the sales representative and the reason given is price, product or lateness to the opportunity. This is not valuable or unbiased data. As Einstein said, “The significant problems we have can not be resolved by the same level of thinking with which created it.”
Also, a CRM is a cross-organizational means of maintaining data on a customer, but is not effective with sales-facing prospect knowledge or as a diagnostic tool. Likewise, a sales forecasting management (SFM) tool functions only as a sales process monitor and a closure projection tool. Finally, to be a “market-drive” company a post-decision interview (win/loss analysis) process is necessary to gather evaluator-based knowledge. As such, this content requires the use of a non-CRM, non-SFM, easy application exchange in order to input, maintain, retrieve and evaluate sales cycle performance, competitive positioning and other sales-facing content.
Cross-Organizational Adoption
71% of executives claim that their cross-organizational efforts to understand their buyer “needs work” and another 14% are “somewhat satisfied.” This trend simply points to the nascent or fledgling efforts underway in most organizations to understand their buyer. Furthermore, there is an industry void of cross-organizational models that instills an iterative process that continually validates, monitors and quantifies the buyer’s perception, needs, problems and processes.
What is a “Market-Driven” Company?
A “market-driven” company is a company that measures and continually aligns its evaluator, customer and prospect needs, problems, processes and perception with its own development, positioning, sales processes and solutions. The buyer-based disciplines must include an iterative process to quantitatively measure improvement in all four areas. As such, a company can not be a “market-driven” company unless it maps buyer knowledge extraction initiatives to development, positioning (competitive and messaging), processes (sales cycle) and solutions (products and services).
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