Aligning your sales and marketing teams is just the beginning. Organizational alignment is a goal that is often sought after but less often achieved. However, in pursuing this goal, we often overlook a crucial member of the revenue organization: the client success team. This team, responsible for many buyer interactions, plays a pivotal role in aligning not just the organization but being a primary pillar of orchestrating the entire client lifecycle.
Recently, I have noticed many organizations shifting from “sales” to “revenue” (e.g., chief revenue officer versus chief sales officer, revenue operations versus sales operations, revenue enablement versus sales operations). And supporting the full client lifecycle is even more critical as this shift occurs. Organizational alignment, with the client success team at its core, allows your organization to work more efficiently together and serve your buyers better.
How Organizational Alignment (and RevOps) Affects the Organization
Organizational alignment is highly sought after, but why? What are the benefits of and the risks of not achieving it? What do revenue operations (RevOps) have to do with it? There are many reasons why you should strive for aligned teams and many things that are at stake if you do not. Here are a few:
- Misaligned organizations suffer. When your organization is misaligned — or you have not aligned your teams with the client success team — your organization will suffer on multiple fronts. Misaligned organizations struggle to grow and increase profits. As teams do not talk or collaborate, different departments are following different guides — at the buyers’ expense. A study from Forrester showed that organizations that included RevOps grew their revenue around three times faster than organizations that did not include RevOps. Furthermore, their study also found that public organizations with RevOps had 71% higher stock performance.
- Aligned organizations see improvements. To name a few, aligned organizations see improved team communication and efficiency, increased revenue performance and improved client experience. The conversations are richer as there are more touchpoints across the client lifecycle, and those touchpoints are more coordinated as well.
- Value is elevated for the client. When client-facing teams are all working in unison, the client receives more value at a quicker pace. the client receives is larger and more rapidly gained. For example, marketing and sales teams share valuable insights with clients, leading to compelling value propositions that the client success team and your solution desire to offer.
The seamless flow of information with the client and across the entire organization manifests in more value for the client.
Highly aligned and successful organizations typically have two things in common: the presence of RevOps and the inclusion of client success teams. This is why it is important for you to include and align client success teams with your other teams. Achieving organizational alignment will help your organization flourish and help your buyers in an otherwise tumultuous journey.
Supporting the Full Client Lifecycle
If your goal is to Seek to Serve™, the client should be at the center of everything an organization does. Many organizations that have aligned their sales process with the buying journey have not actually done so. Instead, they have implemented a sales process that their sales teams want rather than one that is in sync with the buying journey and the buyer. If you aim to ease buyer pains, the client success team is vital to your organization’s success.
So, how can you align your sales, marketing and client success teams to serve your buyers best?
- Communication amongst teams. Organizational alignment is all about communication. Ideally, all of your teams will work together and help each other. With the addition of the client success team, they must communicate with your sales and marketing team. In fact, the more the teams operate as one “voice to the customer” and “voice of the customer,” the more the business can scale.
- Meeting with the client. One of the main functions of a client success team is to speak directly to clients. While many sales professionals believe a deal is done once they reach an agreement with the buyer, it is important for you to reach out to the buyer and ensure that they are receiving the value from your solution that you promised. Knowing who is involved in these meetings and cross-selling to buyers is essential. Examples of this could include quarterly business reviews (QBRs) and status calls.
- Listening to your buyers. When your client success teams speak with your buyers, it is important to gain insights from their meetings. These insights should be included in your solution strategy, marketing efforts and road maps. Client-facing teams (marketing, sales, client success) who are not offering transparent feedback into the solution teams hamper the entire organization, as the pros and cons of the solution are not multiplied or addressed, respectively.
Organizational Alignment in Action
At Mereo, we are honored to assist many different organizations with their journeys to serve their buyers. If you are interested in learning more about what we do especially if you are interested in learning how we assisted a client who needed help with organizational alignment — please look at Nextworld’s client testimonial.