CROs Must Think Customer-First Today: Here Is How
The pandemic changed the CRO’s role. Besides monitoring sales, they must also consider customer success. Tom Dziersk, CRO, IntelePeer, discusses how developing a customer-first mindset is instrumental in revenue generation and how CROs can embrace the paradigm shift.
It is evident how impactful COVID-19 was on the sales process — one year was a decade worth of acceleration, utterly transforming the chief revenue officer’s (CRO) role. Although the core responsibilities, such as overseeing and aligning teams that affect revenue generation, remained unchanged, how an organization maximizes profitability evolved substantially. Today, a customer-first mindset, which leverages the latest technology trends and advances (like automation), is instrumental in supporting financial growth. Whether an organization sells business to business (B2B) or business to customer (B2C), CROs must keep the customer top of mind, continuously finding ways to deliver positive experiences and satisfy their new needs.
See More: Could a Voice of Customer Program be the Ultimate CRO Hack?
The Challenges Facing the Modern CRO
Perhaps the most challenging change brought on by the pandemic was the transformation of B2B selling, with interactions between salespeople and their potential customers happening mostly over Zoom or other video conferencing platforms. In the past, sales representatives would fly to meet a customer in person, which would entail having dinner together, followed by an all-day meeting. Today, that process is a condensed one-hour interaction via a video conferencing platform. Unsurprisingly, developing relationships and building friendships over Zoom is challenging. Effectively, COVID-19 took a relationship-orientated procedure and transformed it into a very impersonal one. In the last year, companies have witnessed their sales cycles compress significantly. As a result, sales teams shifted their strategies to over-emphasize product capabilities versus the overall customer relationship.
CROs that were strictly relationship-centric with rich functionality or strong ROI are struggling in this new world. For example, imagine giving a sales presentation to 30 people on a Zoom call; everyone has their cameras off and will not even use chat — it is no different than demonstrating into a black box. Those CROs that have found success switched from focusing on relationship-building to delivering a rapid value proposition for the customer, allowing them to quickly understand the product or solution and make an immediate decision. The faster and more concisely a sales team can articulate the value for the customer, the more successful they will be. However, this shift has commoditized companies into features and functions, as opposed to more genuine relationships birthed from hours of back-and-forth conversations, which inevitably must get addressed.
Customer-first Mindset: Understanding What Is Important to the Customer
Traditionally, sales teams, during their in-person meetings, would discuss a product or solution’s features and capabilities and then transition to the ROI. Today, the order must get reversed — ROI needs to come first, including rapid time to reward or value. There is limited time to capture the customer’s attention and ample competition waiting to sell a similar service. CROs should approach meetings from the customer’s perspective; what is most important to the customer? How does this product or service solve their problem or satisfy a need? Likewise, a CRO must work to eliminate risk from the customer’s decision. Allowing them to make smaller, short-term commitments rather than longer, expensive ones increases the likelihood of a sale. Then, after securing the deal and minimizing risk, a CRO and their teams can slowly expand on the product or service’s value through upselling.
Another customer-centric strategy is to actively schedule smaller group Zoom, WebX, Microsoft Teams, etc., meetings. Although it may feel awkward trying to build a relationship over Zoom, fitting in as many one-on-one meets is key to building trust with prospects. CROs should not only rely on large group meetings; too many leaders cut corners and forget about all the little yet impactful interactions they would have if they were on site. Nevertheless, virtual meetings have benefits, such as allowing more individuals to participate and eliminating travel fees. Moreover, it is becoming more common for sales to return to on-site meetings; however, it is unlikely trends will return to pre-pandemic levels.
Embracing the Paradigm Shift and Leveraging New Technology for B2C Selling
CROs and sales teams need to embrace and adapt accordingly to the paradigm shift and not fight it. While the pendulum will swing back, tendencies, habits, and attitudes will be nothing like before. Customers, especially younger generations, have become technologically savvy, preferring digital channels and self-service conveniences. Millennials and Generation Z, for example, favor the ease of texting or chatting with automated AI assistants and are less inclined to voice-to-voice human interactions than the previous generations. It is, therefore, the responsibility of today’s CRO to provide all teams connected to revenue with the necessary tools, technology and resources to deliver customer-first interactions. One thing technology CROs must educate their staff on is automation and its ability to optimize the customer experience. Financial growth will follow by empowering the customer experience with plenty of opportunities for self-service via chatbots or virtual agents.
See More: CRO – What Is Conversion Rate Optimization and Why Is It Important?
What Does the Future Hold for the CRO Position?
A CRO is only as successful as the team they recruit and foster. Stellar CROs can separate themselves by building departments of people with strong negotiating skills and the propensity to sell in fast, limited and sometimes demanding (20 plus black screens in a Zoom meeting) environments. Unfortunately, sales will never be like it was and many will struggle acclimating to these new settings and requirements. Thus, the future CRO must proactively train and support their staff to meet the customer’s ever-evolving needs.
As a CRO, how are you embracing the paradigm shift to increase revenues? Let us know on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
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