CEO, are you aware that thousands, if not millions, of your company dollars are being wasted?
Today, your company suffers millions of dollars in waste from a single, simple source: a lack of integration between function groups such as product development, customer operations, marketing, sales, and corporate communications.
Most of the work or people involved in these five broad function groups interact with your prospects and customers every day. This is where the rubber of your investments and efforts meets the path of purchasing decisions.
To the extent that all of these interactions do not work together to form and accumulate a single, common value proposition that constantly develops and cements preference over competing products in the minds and hearts of your prospects and customers, in that measure there will be waste. . Systemic residues.
And as long as there isn’t someone in the company who is responsible for all functions of the company that can directly influence revenue, this systemic source of waste will continue.
You are thinking. I already do this. I am already that someone. No. That someone you can’t be you. You are responsible for much more than this. As the CEO, you are primarily responsible for increasing the value of your company’s shares. The value of your company’s stock is primarily determined by market analysts who cover the product category your company is in. And while the likelihood that your company will continue to grow revenue in the future contributes to their assessment, there is another important factor they consider in judging your company’s future profitability.
Market analysts’ recommendations regarding your company’s share price are determined primarily by their judgment of the likelihood that your company can secure earnings increases on a sustainable basis. And earnings are not determined solely by income. Earnings are determined by both revenue and expenses, that is, the costs incurred by your company. Therefore, to do your job well, you need to focus on costs as well as revenue.
Aside from costs, revenue is the single most important determinant of your company’s profits for years to come. But right now, no function in your company is responsible for revenue. Right now, there are at least five functions in your company that directly influence customer perception of the relative value of your offerings versus those of your competitors. And most of these functions aren’t even responsible for your company’s revenue.
Currently, Sales is responsible for revenue, while the other four functions are believed to be responsible for other deliverables, such as “making the best products”, solving customer problems, facilitating product access and competitiveness, and build the most favorable image for the company. You can surely see that this is not enough to integrate all functions that directly influence revenue, to work together optimally.
We recommend that you institute a new function in your company with the mandate to oversee and integrate all of these functions to work together and put an end to any loss of perceived value resulting from the inconsistent perception residue that each of those functions leaves in the company. customers mind. And we recommend calling this new role – Director of Revenue.
Accountable to you for growing your company’s revenue for years to come, the CRO will be forced to ensure that all functions involved in generating revenue work together consistently and seamlessly. drawbacks, and this will at least minimally reduce the likelihood that functions that directly interact with customers, and therefore influence revenue, may be working at cross purposes with each other.
To ensure that your new CRO can perform well from the start, it’s also helpful to consider that all functions that directly influence revenue have a second functional impact: namely, the inherent communication function that builds and builds up to become the perceived value of your offerings in the minds of current and potential customers.
To perform this new built-in role well, your new CRO needs to understand two things:
1. The perceptual residual generated by all company functions that interact with existing or potential customers is the main driver of their preference for your offers and determines your revenue.
2. You have to reorganize your revenue by maximizing efforts according to your sources, that is, according to the income obtained through existing customers, and the income obtained by converting the customers of your competitors.
Such a reorganization of revenue streams will allow you to ensure that the brand communications impact of the above five business-facing functions are integrated in a customer-facing manner that optimizes customers’ perception of value of your offerings. customers and prospects, and maximizes your preference for them.
Go ahead, be an innovative pioneer. Get or develop a chief revenue officer for your company, if only so you can stop worrying about all that waste your existing structure is sucking up your own performance as CEO.