Grow Your Client Base Today, Building Alignment and Accountability
When you think about building alignment in your organization, what pops into mind?
Alignment between your vital goals and activities? Alignment between what gets measured and the results you’re getting? Alignment between leadership and the rest of your organization’s staff?
No doubt about it, all aspects of these key areas of focus need and demand alignment if you want to consistently drive success.
And yet when coaching MAP clients in our executive workshops or through our MAP Management System™, we often find organizations overlooking an important aspect in successful alignment between the customer and all the decisions you’re making on behalf of them. So how do you do that today, building and sustaining that crucial connection, alignment and lifeline for your organization? Take these strategic steps:
- Keep your customers in the crosshairs of decision making. Make a culture-wide commitment to fully grasp the responsibility to make customer-centric decisions that drive extraordinary customer service and loyalty. Fun fact: Over the years, we’ve found that for many companies, 20 percent of their clients/customers drive 80 percent of the profits. So really get to know and build relationships with this core customer base, putting them front and center when business decisions are made.
- Make customer feedback easy and convenient for the audiences you serve. Customer feedback, whether in person or via surveys and other research tools, is how you’re going to really grasp what customers think, want and need. But if in any way you make it tough for them to share their thoughts, they’re not going to do it. And if they’re not going to do it, they’ll never really have that “seat at the table,” which supports your goal of putting and keeping customers at the forefront of decision making. Different audiences have different preferences, so do your research and figure out how to reach them, particularly those audiences who are driving profits.
- Honor the customer through results-oriented action and communication. Building and sustaining alignment between your business and that client/customer base depends on your ability to take action around the goals you’ve set, thanks to that vital feedback. Fail to take action and you’ll quickly lose credibility. What’s more, consistently fail to take action and you’ll lose your customers for life.
No organization is perfect and you’ll sometimes set goals and take action that may miss the mark, but odds are you’ll set the right course if you’re staying connected to your customers, listening and responding in a timely way. And as you do so, don’t forget to communicate what you’re doing—promoting the strategies you’re following, reinforcing your commitment and, above all, how you’re truly keeping them in those vital crosshairs of decision making.
Put that vital focus on your client base, building organizational alignment and breakthrough results. Contact MAP today to learn the proven, sustainable strategies today.
