Posts Tagged ‘customer experience’

Open Letter to Buyer-Centric Organizations

December 20th, 2011

The last two posts, an “Open Letter to CMOs” and an “Open Letter to Buyers” have triggered a large number of pretty intense conversations about the frustrations that you’re feeling today around the disruptive impact social media is having on your markets.  It’s disruptive, not because of the technology, but because of the impact it’s having on your relationships with your buyers, their perceptions of your organization and their desire to want to begin or continue to do business with you.  The fear and the uncertainty that you’ve shared with me is not knowing what impact this disruption will ultimately have on your company’s reputation, revenue, market share, the quantity and quality of the relationships with your buyers, if you were to just continue down the same path you’re on today.

Continue reading “Open Letter to Buyer-Centric Organizations” »

Recent Social Executive Council Post: Open Letter to Buyers

November 7th, 2011

Recent Social Executive Council Post: Open Letter to BuyersWe owe you a mea culpa…. We’ve been seller driven, not buyer driven. We’ve focused on selling you what we think you need (what we sell) versus helping you make better decisions.  We haven’t helped you make the business case for why this is a significant problem.  We’ve automated our marketing systems to better reach you, but never asked if or what you’re interested in.  We’ve treated you as a company, not as a group of individuals with different needs, perspectives, and roles.  We don’t know what a “day in your life” looks like to give us context as to why you don’t have the time to sit through our “canned” presentation, educate us on your business, and sift through all of our market claims.

Continue reading “Recent Social Executive Council Post: Open Letter to Buyers” »

Recent Social Executive Council Post: Open Letter to CMO’s

September 9th, 2011

It has been awhile since I wrote my last open letter to the SEC, but my goal with these is to summarize important trends that I see consistently across the executive members within the group in a way that helps highlight major strategic challenges. Continue reading “Recent Social Executive Council Post: Open Letter to CMO’s” »

Social Media is Raising the Bar on Enterprise Relationships

January 4th, 2011

I admit it. I have used the phrase “Relationship with the Brand” at one point in my career. I am now officially classified as a recovering “brand” guy.

 But, then again I have also used Customer Relationship Management to describe a customer relationship with the same seriousness. I have also come to the revelation that CRM really stands for customer record management.  I am also now officially classified as a recovering “CRM” guy too.

 If I keep this up, I won’t have many corporate friends left.

 In all seriousness, the state of the technology is improving and we are seeing the impact of social media on the corporate view of “customer relationships”. If you ask almost any senior executive about the importance of customer relationships, or any enterprise relationships, you will get an absolute affirmative. All of them would agree that relationships make the difference in business, but they would be challenged to express how relationships have a direct tangible benefit.

Continue reading “Social Media is Raising the Bar on Enterprise Relationships” »

Three Stages of Social Maturity

November 16th, 2010

We have had a series of meetings that highlight the need for those of us in the industry to provide context as to where companies are in the social maturity curve. For companies that are on the cutting edge, this is an easy conversation as they are comfortable with ambiguity and the speed of change.  For others, the experience is different.  Through our conversations,  we’ve  identified the Three Stages of Social Maturity:

Continue reading “Three Stages of Social Maturity” »