How Smarketing® Aligns With Customer Centricity

Recently, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr Linden Brown who is the Chairman and Co-founder of Market Culture, an organization with offices in the U.S. and in Australia that focuses on measuring and delivering customer centricity into organizations.

I asked Linden on his perspectives when applying his customer centricity model to the sales and marketing functions.

Transcript 

Length: 06 minutes, 40 seconds (06:40)

Peter: Hello! My guest today is Dr. Linden Brown, who is the Chairman and Co-founder of Market Culture, with offices both in the U.S. and in Australia, focusing on bringing customer centricity into organisations.
Welcome Dr. Linden Brown! 

Dr. Brown: Thanks very much Peter!

Peter: Now, Linden, I sent you a copy of my research report where we look into 185 B2B organisations. And we reviewed the relationship between their customer centricity in terms of their sales and marketing teams and the financial success of the organisation. What did you think of that research?

Dr. Brown: Peter I think it was a very good piece of research. In one, it’s really needed because marketing and sales really are the front end of all organisations. And if any group needs to be customer-centric it is those groups, and they need to work together to do that. And I think your research actually found that when sales and marketing groups really collaborate and work together it does generate improved business and financial performance.

When sales and marketing groups really work together it does generate improved business and financial performance.

Peter: Yes. In fact, there are two criteria. One was that there is a combined head of sales and marketing together, and not two individual executives who then report to the CEO. And the other one was that organisations that perform better financially by far and away had more customer centricity in terms of their sales and marketing interactions. Now, you have a methodology to assess an organisation’s market centricity, and I think it is eight criteria by that which you do that?

Dr. Brown: That’s right.

Peter: Now, when organisations take their measurement to basically baseline where they are at in their customer centricity, where do they usually apply it first ,once they know where they stand?

Dr. Brown: Look, I think that the application that we like to try it first is the senior leadership because the senior leadership really has, and should have, a view on culture in the organisation and we are finding now that if you want to engage the senior leadership you can start by talking about culture.

Peter: Right.

Dr. Brown: It’s a top of the mind issue for most organisations around the world. And so, start with the senior marketing and sales people, but also bring in heads of other factions so that the leadership team has a similar mindset as to what you actually found really important in the collaboration between sales and marketing for business performance. So I think start there.

Peter: Ok, so bring in the senior leadership team, then let it percolate through the organisation so that you have the top aligned and agreed, and then it’s more consistent when implementing the change.

Dr. Brown: I think that is very important because the senior leadership really set the tone on what is expected behavior in the business and what is the expected relationship that all individuals and department should have to customers. So the walk, the talk, the role modeling is fundamental. That will then enable you to really start to embed that sort of thinking and behavior deep down in the organisation, and particularly deep down in marketing and sales.

Peter: Ok. So speaking of marketing and sales, do you find that that by their very nature they are customer-focused, or at least they should be ?And so do you find that is a good place to start when you want to look to bringing an organisation towards customer centricity?

Dr. Brown: It is a good place to start. And I’ll give you an example, and it’s the Bank of New Zealand. There the head of marketing, and also covering I think sales, is being involved in developing a customer-centric approach, particularly around digital marketing and selling. So that has been very, very successful for them and has acted as a sort of percolator for other groups, you know, within the bank to take a customer-centric role. Now I think what has helped with that particular group was that the CEO of the bank and the senior leadership were on board with that, and they had a similar mindset.

Peter: Ok. Does it also help with finance? I mean if sales and marketing do a better job then it should mean more sales and better profits, and then that can fund other roll-outs of the method and the implementation of the Market Culture methodology? 

Dr. Brown: It does. It does. And I think the thing that marketing and sales need to do is they need to let the CFO, the head of the finance function, know what sort of impact we are having when we are retaining customers. When we are getting on average higher revenue per customer, and when customers become advocates. What’s the dollar value involved in that? What’s the gross rate that comes out of that, and they can measure that.

Peter: And you help them to measure that?

Dr. Brown: We do help them to measure that. We give them a methodology and a guideline to measure the lifetime value of customers and other metrics, which really link into the profit impacts of customer centricity.

We give them a methodology to measure the lifetime value of customers and other metrics, which really link into the profit impacts of customer centricity.

Peter: Well, it is always good to have the CFO on board, isn’t it?

Dr. Brown: Very, very good. Because, you know, that person is an advocate. That is going to really galvanise the rest of the business.

Peter: Yes. And of course the marketing people will be happier if they get more budget allocated to them because people can actually see how tangibly it improves the bottom line, the top line and the bottom line. 

Dr. Brown: Exactly.

Peter: So what recommendations would you give to a client who is contemplating becoming more customer-centric?

Dr. Brown: Well, I think the starting point is to make sure that the mindset of the senior leadership is around customer centricity and what it actually means.

Peter: So that there is a willingness to start with?

Dr. Brown: Well, there is often a need for education, I mean, we might think that all senior leadership really understands this, but typically many don’t. And, you know, that mindset might be something like they found in Air New Zealand where they moved the mindset from “We fly planes” to “We fly people”.

Peter: Right.

Dr. Brown: And that, you know, that becomes then the basis for transformation. So I think starting there and then going to measurement. I think customer centricity measurement is so important because it creates tangibility, it creates focus, it creates targets and goals that you can actually work toward.

I think customer centricity measurement is so important because it creates tangibility, it creates focus, it creates targets and goals that you can actually work toward.

Peter: There is this old saying that you can’t manage what you can’t measure, so it makes perfect sense to maybe baseline the status quo and then, you have something that you can improve on.

Dr. Brown: Exactly. 

Peter: Yeah. That makes total sense to me. Thank you Dr. Linden Browne, and nice talking to you today! 

Dr. Brown: Great pleasure. Thank you!

Thank you for reading this post

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About Peter Strohkorb

Peter Strohkorb is CEO at Peter Strohkorb Consulting International with offices in Australia and the USA. He is a global specialist in customer centricity and sales & marketing collaboration, which he calls Smarketing®.

Peter is also a published Author, an international corporate corporate Speaker, and an Executive Coach and Mentor, as well as an Executive MBA Guest Lecturer at the prestigious Sydney Business School.

Peter is available for enquiries for consulting, coaching or speaking assignments.

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