In many major companies, there has been a number of new positions created in the last decade to try and accommodate the changes in the strategic and competitive environment.
Among them has been the ‘Chief Revenue Officer’ (CRO)
In some cases, this reflects the need for increased collaboration and sometimes convergence of marketing and sales. In others, it is just the fashion, the latest management fad.
This seems to be particularly the case in businesses where another of those-acronym driven fads has evolved, ABM, (Account Based Marketing)
The barriers to the integration of Marketing and Sales are high, deeply set into the functional status quo of most organisations, and resistant to change. However, the emergence of digital tools has accelerated the trend, and the recent Covid challenges have been a catalyst for further and quicker evolution than would otherwise have been the case.
For years I have been advocating ‘Alignment’ of marketing and sales to the needs of specific customers, and ways to achieve that outcome.
Removing the Marketing and Sales labels has proved to be useful to the integration. The emerging combined function recognises that the responsibility of each is simply Revenue Generation, or ‘RevGen’
The first substantial consulting assignment I had, well over 20 years ago introduced my client, a domestically owned multinational supplier of ingredients to the food industry, to Strategic Key Account Management. (Try the acronym, always got a chuckle)
We went through a process of identifying the specific needs of key customers, and tailored our marketing and sales effort, to the expressed and often jointly uncovered needs of customers, with whom we engaged in the process.
Those workshops and subsequent implementation efforts are as relevant now as they were 20 years ago, probably more so. It has just been renamed Revenue Generation.
SKAM required that the marketing and sales personnel collaborated and engaged customers at decision making levels to identify how my client could add value to their customers businesses. The core assumption was that only by doing one or more of the following, could we be successful.
- Assisting our customers to increase their sales,
- Actively reducing their costs or
- Increasing their productivity.
We set ourselves the task of identifying how we could achieve at least one of those three things, preferably two, and focussed our efforts on delivering those outcomes.
Predictably, it was a successful initiative. Customers loved the collaboration. Inventory levels reduced, as customer service levels and responsiveness increased, generating increased trading profits.
I had a coffee with one of the managers from that business, now a very senior bloke in a multinational organisation a couple of weeks ago, during which he told me that he still uses the three-part test, and insists his team use it. The longevity of the idea, and the impact it has had is gratifying!
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