Let’s Get Specific About Value – From Jobs to Strategy
Jobs, Roles, Teams, Processes, Initiatives, Strategy
In the first Let’s Get Specific article, I outlined how to describe value to customers in terms of results, outcomes and impact. Being specific like this and avoiding Generalised B2B Speak is hard work, particularly for startups with few customers, so this article will cover a step-by-step approach which we’ve found makes it a little easier.
Capturing Customer Specifics
To avoid generalisations, we need to capture customer specifics. Our approach to this is straightforward: with every customer engagement, we seek to learn about how our offering helps from the short list in the graphic above. The elements are arranged in a hierarchy, with jobs at the bottom and the scheme both serves as a journey, building up from the bottom, and as a reminder of set of possible connections.
The approach works best when applied to Sales, Product, Marketing and Customer Success teams.
We typically start with the humble job but are always on the hunt for more – at the level of the role, the team, and the processes that drive the business. Each level builds on the previous one. Some offerings will go further, making a meaningful difference to current initiatives and strategy.
Tasks vs Jobs
Product and engineering teams work at a task level, but for Sales, Marketing and CS, we need to group them into meaningful jobs. As an example, ‘doing my expenses’ is a job comprised of three tasks: gathering the expenses for the period; scanning them and creating a claim.
The logic behind this is simple – we want to work at a ‘day in the life of’ level of our customers where we can have a meaningful conversation about the contrast between the customer’s work with and without our offering.
Critical Mass and Connections
If there is a critical mass at any level, it will take you to the next one in the hierarchy. For example, if we are making a difference to enough jobs in a role, we can talk meaningfully at a role level and so on.
However, there are also connections between levels. For example, an Account Based Marketing Application, is used by a Marketing Operations Manager. The application makes a significant enough difference to the work of the MOPs manager that we can talk about its effect at a role level.
However, one of the features of the ABM app is that it automates the production of account timelines. These show the Sales and Marketing touchpoints that lead to both closed/won and closed/lost deals. Prior to automation, these were produced manually in tiny quantities.
With automation and higher volumes, patterns emerge from the touchpoints that inform which combinations increase closed/won deals. This is exciting to Sales and Marketing, who adopt the timelines as a central part of the collaborative Sales and Marketing process being developed. As a result, the company’s win rate increases. This finally realises the long-overdue promise of Account Based Marketing, an initiative deployed by the CMO as part of the company’s strategy to improve the return on Sales and Marketing investment.
Roles Revisited: Process, Initiatives and Strategy
The example above shows that when we are seeking to capture the difference we make at a role level, we should include the owners of processes, sponsors of initiatives and authors of strategy as they are direct beneficiaries, and usually senior individuals.
Wrap Up
In conclusion, capturing customer specifics is essential to demonstrating value without falling into generic B2B language. It’s challenging work, but starting small, working step by step, and engaging the entire revenue team with a simple graphic make it far more achievable.