From Listening to Leading. Customer-Centric Strategic Planning

From Diana Jennings, Director of Global Experiences at IBISWorld

When I first started in a client-facing role, I received a piece of advice that has stuck with me ever since: “Listen more than you speak.” 

While it is important to enter client conversations with a clear plan to add value, you must also bring a willingness to truly listen. By occasionally setting aside my own agenda, I found it easier to understand the customer’s real needs. Although I’m no longer on the phone with customers daily, I still believe that listening to your customers is critical to any business function, particularly strategic planning. 

Being a customer-first organization is not just a catchy slogan, it's a strategic imperative. At its core, customer-centric strategic planning means aligning your business's goals, products and services with your customers’ evolving needs and expectations. Yet customer centricity goes beyond just implementing their feedback – it’s about deeply understanding their pain points, preferences and aspirations, and using that knowledge to drive every decision you make.

Over the years, customer centricity has evolved from a buzzword to a fundamental part of strategic planning. Initially, it was about addressing customer complaints and providing good service. These days, it has morphed into a comprehensive approach that shapes entire business models and drives innovation. However, this shift hasn’t been without its challenges. Some companies still struggle to integrate genuine customer feedback into their strategies, often focusing too much on internal processes or short-term gains.

The key to successful strategic planning lies in achieving synergy between industry research and customer insights. By combining these two sources of information, businesses can develop a more holistic view of their industry and customers, leading to more informed decisions and better outcomes.

What is customer centricity?

A customer-centric business approach prioritizes customers’ needs and preferences at every stage of their interaction with the company and within the business’s internal processes. It means designing products and experiences that aim to not only meet but also exceed customer expectations. 

The purpose of customer centricity is to build long-term relationships that foster loyalty and advocacy. When customers feel valued and understood, they’re more likely to stick around, recommend your products or services and contribute to your business’s growth.

Some of the most successful businesses in recent years are known for taking a customer-centric approach, resulting in a loyal customer base, high customer satisfaction, a competitive edge and, ultimately, revenue growth. However, a key aspect of customer centricity is continuous listening. Customer expectations can change swiftly, making it critical to consistently monitor satisfaction metrics and be prepared to pivot when needed.  

How to center the customer in business strategy

Creating a customer-centric strategy involves understanding both macro trends across your business’s industry and direct customer feedback. By combining this data, businesses can develop products, services and experiences that truly resonate with their customers. Here is how to effectively use industry research and customer feedback to create a customer-centric strategy:

Gather industry data

Begin with a thorough analysis of the industry and market landscape. Starting at this macro level helps to understand the broader trends and competitive dynamics within your industry and adjacent industries up and down the supply chain. Is there a product or service with a growing or declining market size? Does that growth or decline present an opportunity or risk to your business? What are the most successful companies in your space doing? This industry-level research will provide the context needed to frame your customer-centric strategies effectively. 

Start tracking customer-centric metrics

Every business leader has their own set of performance metrics at the forefront of their minds when they consider long-term strategic plans. However, there are foundational customer satisfaction metrics that every business should monitor to effectively measure their customers' sentiment.

These include Net Promoter Scores (NPSs), Customer Satisfaction Scores and, if applicable, customer retention or renewal rate. Having a read on metrics like NPS and monitoring fluctuations in these scores can provide early indicators of any underlying problems across your customer base that warrant further investigation. 

Gather customer feedback

Depending on what stage your business is at, this step will likely require the most effort. Start by conducting interviews with new, existing and former customers and run quantitative surveys to gauge their experience with your organization, your organization’s support network and, of course, your product or service itself.

Structuring your customer interviews to be more open-ended typically returns the best results, so listen actively and document their needs, pain points and suggestions. You can combine these qualitative interviews with more structured surveys to collect feedback from more customers.

Analyze the data

Gather all the available data you have on your customers, including satisfaction metrics, qualitative and quantitative feedback and any other customer data you may have. Depending on your business, this could include support desk tickets, usage trends, user behavior trends and revenue performance metrics like renewal and churn rates.

Once you have aggregated all your data, you’ll be able to leverage data analytics to gain deeper insights into customer behavior and preferences. Use this data to identify patterns, trends and correlations that can inform your strategy. 

Chart the customer experience

Begin by mapping out your business’s customer journey stages and the key touchpoints within it. By identifying how customers interact with your organization, from their initial discovery to purchasing, using and retaining your product or service, you can demystify the journey and shed light on how customers really engage with your business to determine potential pain points. 

Understanding where customers encounter the most friction allows you to address these issues effectively. For instance, if you’ve identified that prospective customers struggle to discover and learn about your offerings, it’s time to involve sales and marketing. On the other hand, if customers use your product once but don’t become repeat users, it might indicate a gap in product-market fit or the support they receive from customer success teams. As a strategic leader, assigning ownership to these problems ensures they’re tackled head-on, paving the way for a truly customer-centric approach.

Create customer personas

Develop detailed customer personas to represent the distinct segments of your customer base. Creating these personas will allow you to identify each group’s specific needs and preferences so you can tailor your strategies effectively. These personas should include firmographic data, their goals when using your product or service, typical behaviors, pain points and challenges they face.

Once you’ve developed these personas, you can start segmenting your customer data and satisfaction metrics to help your teams prioritize where to focus. Is your NPS dropping for one persona specifically? Are you overserving or underserving one persona in a particular touchpoint across the customer journey? Having these personas mapped out will provide a comprehensive understanding of your customers that you can consistently reference when building products or enhancements and prioritizing long-term strategies. 

Cultivate a culture of customer centricity

This stage is about fostering a customer-centric culture at your organization, and the first step to that is communicating what your customers are feeling and why with stakeholders across your business to help them stay connected to customer needs. The customer must be considered in all areas of your business and at every level to really achieve customer centricity, not just within your client services and customer experience teams! Product, marketing, operations and even developer teams must be connected to customer problems and understand what’s important to your user base to make decisions centered on the customer.

The most successful companies do this by establishing a brand promise or even a set of principles that serves as a commitment to what their customers can expect when they interact with the company and, ultimately, the experience they’ll receive. Your brand promise should be based on what’s most important to your customers and can serve as the north star that internal teams and stakeholders look to when making decisions.  

Embed the customer as a pillar of your strategy

To truly keep the customer at the heart of your business strategy, it’s essential to make customer insights a cornerstone of your planning and prioritization process. This means constantly reviewing feedback and making strategic decisions around product development, marketing, sales and customer support priorities with these findings in mind.

A key aspect of this is ensuring it’s a continuous, dynamic process. Establish regular review cycles where your teams assess the latest customer feedback and industry trends to adjust your strategies accordingly. Establishing an ongoing process ensures your strategies remain aligned with evolving customer needs and preferences. This approach not only keeps your business focused on its customers, but also positions you to anticipate and meet customer needs proactively, driving long-term success.

Common obstacles and how to overcome them

Implementing a customer-centric strategy can be challenging. By understanding and addressing these common obstacles, businesses can navigate the process more effectively and ensure a smoother transition to a customer-centric approach.

Siloed Departments

Break down silos by implementing regular meetings and shared goals that emphasize customer-centric outcomes and foster cross-departmental collaboration. Encourage knowledge sharing and ensure that customer insights are accessible to all departments, not just customer-facing staff.

Resistance to Change

Address resistance by clearly communicating the benefits of a customer-centric approach and providing training and resources to help employees understand and embrace new processes. Highlighting success stories and quick wins will build momentum and demonstrate the value of customer centricity to those that’re still unsure.

Data Overload

Implement advanced analytics tools to sift through large volumes of data and extract meaningful insights. Focus on key metrics that directly impact customer satisfaction and business performance to simplify data reporting and make it accessible and actionable for all stakeholders.

Limited Resources

Prioritize customer-centric initiatives that offer the largest impact while leveraging technology and automation to optimize resource allocation. Collaborate with external partners or consultants to gain expertise and scale efforts efficiently without overburdening internal teams.

Final thoughts

The journey toward true customer centricity is continuous. It demands constant monitoring, evaluation and iteration. However, the rewards – loyal customers, sustainable growth and a competitive edge – make it a journey worth undertaking. By combining industry research with customer insights, businesses can create strategies that are not only effective but also resilient in the face of change.

Next time you find yourself in a meeting discussing long-term priorities or your business's strategic goals, strive to be the voice in the room advocating for your customer. Are we considering the customer here? Does this plan align with our customers' expectations? If we can all commit to making the customer the guiding star of our strategic plans, we’ll remain agile, relevant and dedicated to exceeding their expectations.

Source: https://www.ibisworld.com/blog/customer-centric-strategic-planning/99/1127/

1. Know and Focus on Your Target: If you are familiar with the 80/20 Rule, you know that the majority of your revenue comes from about 20% of your clients. Spend time defining their profile and determining how to find and reach more of them. You may have several profiles; for example, we work with both banks and insurance firms. In my outbound sales efforts, however, I must focus and put on one of my profile hats. If I am looking to increase my outbound lead generation with banks, I need to think about where bank CEOs spend time, what they read, their biggest problems, and what my message to them will be. LinkedIn, Google, associations, and competitors are all great resources to help you refine your prospect approach. This is not a one-time event; you should always be gathering industry information about your target.
   
   
2. Do Your Research: Think about all the irrelevant emails you receive and dedicate yourself to not being one of those senders. There is a place for mass emails, but here, I’m speaking of one-to-one outbound lead generation. Once you've determined that a particular company is worthy of outreach, find out everything you can about them. If you have a resource like HubSpot, you can see other connections within the company. If you utilize ZoomInfo, you can pull down contact information and even org charts to help customize your outbound sales efforts.
   
   
3. Customize Your Outreach: We are not big proponents of systematic emails – you will have a greater chance of being noticed if you customize your email or call with something you know is on your prospect’s mind. I do outbound calling for bank and insurance associations, and every single time, before I reach out, I visit their websites to see what’s new and what events they are working on. It takes time, but it makes my message more relevant. If you are working within an industry, you can use information you’ve learned from one company for another. I religiously read our industry newsletters and competitors’ marketing messages to my target as it helps me be smarter and more relevant with my outbound sales outreach.
   
   
4. Don’t Expect a Response: We all know that our increasingly virtual world has increased the likelihood of being ignored. Yesterday I sent out 11 custom email outreaches and heard back from 1. Today, I will follow up with all 11 and send out 11 more. In a couple of weeks, I will reach out again, further refining my message. Some prospects never respond, which may mean they are not a prospect, or at least not right now. Your outbound sales strategy must include being resilient and persistent. Let’s face it – you have to prove your way in the door, find a connection, and give a compelling reason for that person to engage with you. Don’t expect a response, but be thrilled if you get one, and…
   
   
5. Respond Quickly and Efficiently: This might go without saying, but your level of enthusiasm and timeliness in responding is critical. Don’t overwhelm the prospect with everything you have. Answer their questions and offer one additional helpful suggestion – what has worked for others is always a good idea. This is a conversation, not a sales pitch, so focus on how to help. If helping your prospect solve a problem is always your goal, your outbound sales strategy will be effective.
   
   
6. Be Excellent with the Details: Try to minimize the back-and-forth communication by anticipating what the prospect will need. Make it as easy as possible for them once they are engaged. Be the resource that makes them think, "Wow, that was a great experience, and I got what I needed." Deliver what you promise, and remember the adage: don’t overpromise and underdeliver. Give them more than they asked for.
   
   
7. Don’t Forget to Thank Them, Follow Up, and Build the Relationship: This may seem obvious, but think of your outbound lead generation strategy as a pipeline to others. Thank them, ask for feedback, and see if you can help in any other way. If you feel confident they were pleased, ask for a testimonial, a Google review, or an introduction to another company. If a salesperson truly understands your business, provides an excellent solution, and is easy and efficient to work with, wouldn’t you want to help them grow their business?

Creating a winning sales pitch that gets a decision 100% of the time is all about the qualifying process that salespeople follow. They certainly must have uncovered a compelling or multiple compelling reasons to take action from the prospect. There has to be pain or what we call severe mental anguish over something that is either a problem that exists today or a problem that will exist if action isn’t taken. Or there is an opportunity that has to be leveraged. That problem or opportunity has been monetized. The salesperson must also have identified that the prospect has the capacity to invest and has shared the decision-making process. The salesperson must have a solution that meets their specific terms and conditions. All of that contributes to creating a winning sales pitch, prior to presenting.

A salesperson’s ability to create winning sales pitches can be evaluated by checking their close ratio closely and understanding what contributed to the wins and losses. Salespeople and their managers must identify the choke points in their qualifying process. What are they hearing from the prospect at the pitch? What are their objections to buying? What are they ‘thinking over’? How often are they losing to the incumbent, not talking to the decision maker, or facing a money objection at presentation time?

To close 100% of qualified buyers, salespeople must also have the right attitude about the presentation. Attitudes are driven by beliefs. If they don’t believe that they must uncover all of these issues prior to pitching, then they will not gain a decision, and if they do win it, it will mostly be luck, which is not a winning sales strategy.

Salespeople should start preparing for their winning presentation as they are qualifying the prospect. That’s right, preparing starts at the very beginning of creating a winning sales pitch. Too often, salespeople make one of three assumption mistakes when it comes to presenting a solution:

1. They make assumptions that because they have extra features and benefits in their solution, the prospect will want them even if those come at an additional cost.
2. Assumptions are made about price—salespeople too often assume that every prospect will make a decision based on price. We know that is not the case. Or worse, that the price is not important to discuss prior to presentation.
3. They assume that prospects will be honest and not share their ‘stuff’ with the incumbent. How often have they lost a deal because the other company lowered the price of their offering to match theirs?

How often do salespeople lose sales to the incumbent? In many cases, salespeople are not creating a new sale; they are gaining market share by taking business from the competitor. That means that virtually 100% of the time, they are in competition. They must find out more about that relationship and the prospect’s willingness and capabilities to end that relationship.

They must ask questions like:

• When you told your current advisor you were going out to shop around, what did they say?
• When you told your current advisor that you were unhappy and were going to find someone else to work with, what did they do?

Understanding this in advance helps a salesperson better prepare for their presentation to get a decision. Dealing with it before the pitch will help eliminate the “I need to talk to my current provider” objection at the time of close.

Money is always a factor. Unfortunately, many salespeople fail to approach this part of the discussion, either because they are uncomfortable talking about money, don’t know how to ask, or don’t believe it is relevant to their type of sales. Insurance brokers are notorious for believing they don’t have to ask about budget because the prospect is already paying premiums. But when they get copies of policies and do a risk assessment, the premiums are ‘blacked out’ in the policy. Why? Because the prospect is playing the price game to leverage the current relationship.

Here is a recommended approach to set up a winning sales pitch with the prospect:

• I will present a solution to solve those problems we discussed today.
• I will provide a solution that meets your specs and fits within the terms and conditions, including budget.
• I will be in a position to answer all of your questions.
• When I’m finished, I will ask you three questions:

1. Do you feel like I understand your business and what you are trying to accomplish?
2. Do you believe that I can help you accomplish your goals?
3. Do you want my help?

• When I ask that last question, you will be in a position to say yes or no. Either one is okay. I’d rather hear yes, but no is okay. What objections do you have to that process?

This is when the rubber meets the road, and the salesperson finds out if, in fact, they have a 100% qualified prospect!

• What are you doing to keep your clients happy and satisfied?
• Are they telling others about your business?
• Is your organization providing an excellent consumer experience for your clients?
• Are you getting to know the wants, needs, and pain points of your customers each and every single day?
• Are you under-promising and over-delivering results?

Now, can you think of a place where you go, wait in a long line, spend a lot of money, and yet can’t wait to tell others how great your experience was? Well, that could describe a number of places, but the frame of reference I want to use today is the Disney experience. Disney has been successful for years by building advocates for their brand.

No one would argue with the success that Disney has had in exceeding expectations and creating loyal advocates. In his book, Inside the Magic Kingdom, author Tom Connellan explains the seven keys to Disney’s success and how they work to create a dazzling experience for all of their guests. As you read the book, you can only imagine what goes into building and sustaining that kind of relationship with your customers.

In order to achieve “dazzling,” you must have a process that is consistent and predictable. People need to know what they can depend on when they trust you with their business. In other words, it’s not a once-in-a-while thing; it is just the way you do things, every day.

Keep in mind that it does not have to be the same thing for all of your clients. The way you support your top 20% should be different from how you support your bottom 20%.

But, at the heart of it all, everyone gets the basics. However, if you want to retain and increase sales within your organization and stand out from the competition, your organization must be willing to impress, dazzle, and treat your advocates like members of your family. It may sound drastic to some, but there is a reason that some companies truly stand out in a crowded market.

It’s the little things that matter in business.

Here are 4 strategies for retaining and creating loyal advocates for your organization:

1. You have to find out what they want. How do you do this? Ask! Give them a list of things to choose from with the option to add things that might not be on the list.
2. Next, prioritize critical areas. The key here is to find out what they won’t tell you. How many times have you left a restaurant after you told your server everything was fine when they asked? Some of your clients may do the same thing.
3. Identify performance levels and find out where they are setting the bar; don’t assume you know.
4. Negotiate expectations. Now is the time to deal with anything you are not willing to agree to. Sometimes we say “yes” because we think it’s a deal-breaker; just ask and then decide. If it is outside your process, then you are better served to move on because, unfortunately, it will always be a struggle and they will never become an advocate anyway.

A footnote to the above: I am assuming that you already have a strong knowledge base and industry acumen of the goals and challenges of the business you are working with. The only way to exceed your customer’s expectations is to know what they actually are, not what you think they are. Start by having that conversation first, and soon you will have them coming back for more and telling their friends. This understanding of client expectations is one of the most powerful customer retention strategies in sales.

Article by the late, great Walt Gerano, Sales Development Expert

It is irrefutable that most salespeople feel pressure when it comes to giving the actual presentation—the show. But there are specific steps they can take, with the help of managers, to prepare more fully, which will help them present with confidence. So, here is the secret to effective sales proposals: present only to fully qualified prospects. To clarify, the definition of a fully qualified prospect is:

• They have shared specific, compelling issues that they must address.
• They have the capacity to invest the appropriate amount of time, money, and resources.
• They have provided clarity on the decision-making process.
• The salesperson can deliver exactly what the prospect needs to solve their problem.

The parameters above are stages of a milestone-centric sales process. When followed, they prevent a salesperson from rushing from the first base (uncovering compelling reasons) to the proposal stage. If they haven’t uncovered issues related to time, money, and resources during the discovery process, these will come up at presentation time and are likely to create a delay in decision-making.

Here is another secret for helping your salespeople make effective sales proposals. Secret #2 is to take a look at their closing ratios. Why? So that you can help them identify choke points in their qualifying process. To help them discover these choke points, review what happened at the time of presentation on recent calls. What did they hear from their prospect, exactly? What were the objections to buying? If they said they wanted to think it over, what were they going to think about? How often is your salesperson losing to the incumbent, not talking to the decision maker, or facing a money objection? This is the role of an effective sales leader: to help their salespeople uncover their choke points and address those earlier in the sales process. If you can help them do that, they will be well on their way to creating and delivering more effective sales presentations and closing more business.

Here’s a tool for salespeople and their managers to use to help determine if they have enough information to truly create and deliver effective sales proposals:

As this scorecard indicates, a salesperson actually starts preparing for their presentation as they are qualifying the prospect. Effective sales proposals start at the very beginning of the process.

Next, they must prepare their solution based on what the prospect needs vs. what they currently have. If a salesperson is trying to match what someone else is doing, they are already second. They need to do a much more masterful job of uncovering exactly what features, benefits, terms, coverages, and service plans their prospect truly needs to eliminate risks in their business or maximize opportunities. When your salesperson does this, they are in a better position to present EXACTLY what the prospect asked for and needs. This scorecard can help with that.

The final secret to helping your team with effective sales proposals is in the setup. To set up the presentation meeting for a decision, a salesperson should review everything that’s been discussed and what they are prepared to do. Here is a sample discussion:

• Joe and Mary, this is what I think I heard today—they should repeat everything they heard—and then ask, “Did I get that right?” Good.

• Here’s what I will be prepared to do during my presentation:

  • I will present a solution to solve the problems we discussed today.
  • I will provide a solution that meets your specs and fits within the terms and conditions, including the budget.
  • I will be in a position to answer all of your questions.

• When I’m finished, I will ask you three questions:

  • Do you feel like I understand your business and what you are trying to accomplish?
  • Do you believe I can help you accomplish your goals?
  • Do you want my help?

• When I ask that last question, you will be in a position to say yes or no. Either one is okay. I’d rather hear yes, but no is okay. What objections do you have to that process?

To review, the secret to more effective sales proposals is for salespeople to fully qualify the prospect from the very beginning and to set up the proposal so that a decision will be made—yes or no. No more secrets!