As organizations step up to meeting the demands of sophisticated customers, we see increased emphasis on partnership and collaboration across the marketing, sales and service “ecosystem.”
At the 2016 Chief Sales Executive Forum, a cross-functional panel of executives shared their ideas on how to activate such partnerships. Sylvia Escobar, vice president and general manager of American field operations at Agilent Technologies; Tom Davis, chief marketing officer at Forbes Media; Bill Griffin, executive vice president of field operations at Aspen Technology; and Christina Kosmowski, SVP, revenue lifecycle management & customer service at Salesforce offered the following key points:
- Transform Sellers Into Trusted Advisors: Understand the audience. Think from the customer’s perspective first, and figure out how to help them be successful.
- Invest in Partnerships: Bring new people to the planning table. Build new processes. Invest time to extract and leverage different (and valuable) perspectives. Create mutually beneficial “service contracts” between functions to more consistently achieve joint business goals.
- Create an Innovation Culture: Frame a new story that aligns with the business mission. Recognize and reward innovative ideas that help achieve this mission. Don’t forget the role social media can play in harvesting such ideas.
- Encourage Collaboration: Blend teams and create a community to bring different talent and perspectives together.
The illustration below from graphic recorder Kelly Kingman illustrates the panel presentation in a most innovative way. Enjoy!
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