What If You Don’t Know How To Deliver On Your Corporate Success Goals?

Part I – Tackling CX in the Modern World: Defining Success

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Success is a personal term that often gets misinterpreted by external forces.  I think UCLA Basketball Coach John Wooden describes it best in one of my all-time favorite TedTalks that, “Success is doing something to the best of your ability.”  The literal definition of success from Cambridge Dictionary is, “the achieving of desired results, or someone or something that achieves positive results.”  One could conclude that these definitions conflict, as the goal in any sport, is to win the game; so, what happens if you do your best and still lose the game?   Wooden would argue that a team should not hang their heads when they lose a game as long as they did their best.   He said boosters (and sports bookies) may have a different opinion, but if the team did all they were capable of, then they achieve success.  The sports boosters of course have their own definition of success and they don’t match with the team.  The key take-away here is the importance of how success gets clearly defined for the relevant parties involved.  A shared definition of success is the first and most important step that helps outline the strategy for your program and provides you with the mechanism to track the successes of your corporate goals.

Consulting 101…

If you took Business Consulting 101, then you’ve learned to ask your audience the proverbial question, “What does success mean to you?”  Although I believe this is a question that should be asked and asked often; it should be asked broadly across the organization as well.  Most adept leaders in the room can answer this question in their sleep.  However, responses to subsequent questions progressively get harder when the topic switches to, “how do you see yourself getting there,” especially as it relates to our modern world.  Let me give you an example:

The Success Goal: Today’s CEO’s Response to the Success Question: 

“Success to me is having the ability to fulfill my customer’s need to…. 

1. purchase a [insert your product] that
2. satisfies their functional needs
3. and maybe aesthetic needs
4. within their means
5. that delights the customer; 
6. yet optimizes revenues for our business.  
7. Additionally, to have the ability to retain customers
8. who are repeat customers and to
9. achieve growth
10. with innovative products in the process.

Most of us have accepted that selling in today’s market has gotten more complex and competitive.  Although, many of the same sales rules may apply to selling today; the process is different.  Word-of-mouth or referrals are extremely relevant today; however, things have just gone way more digital and the process has become extremely faster.

Let’s re-examine that CEO’s story above with a plausible example:

• A high school graduate needs a decent ride to get him to and from his college classes in the Fall. 
• He knows little about car maintenance so he will need to figure out a way to have the car regularly serviced. 
• The CEO of the dealer wants to not only sell the student the car but also have the opportunity to up-sell and cross-sell additional products by bundling in different services and maintenance plans. 
• The student is very digital and prefers an app on his phone that will check the diagnostics in the car to let him know when the car may need to be serviced and provide him with reminders. 
• The car dealer needs to think of new ways to provide these services and bundle these types of packages for their broad customer base.

If the dealer can deliver beyond the basic functional needs and deliver on these additional services, it delights the customer and provides continued revenue stream to the dealer.  The dealer hopes that in taking care and knowing its customer, they can provide future and relevant offers to the customer and create a life-long customer who continue to use their services, purchase more cars from them in the future, and provide plenty of referrals. 

So HOW should the business go about addressing these specific goals and requirements? (CONTINUED IN PART TWO.)

This post and this blog are solely the personal opinion of the author.