Welcome back, and we're here to continue our conversation with Teresa Allen on the Growth Workshop Podcast. Jonny?
Working in a B to C firm for 10 years as a sales director, I think, and this is no thought of the organization minister, in case they're listening. But I don't think I sat in a brand conversation. And aren't we the brand in businesses? Am I not stepping out after, after working, someone goes, what do you do for a job? And you talk about that. I'm curious about one thing. I was going to spin this up a little bit. I'm going to ask each to answer with sort of one
response. We talked about alignment, which is, let's be honest, we found it quite hard, right as a group, which is interesting. I'm sure other other businesses find that clearly hard as well. But if we had to summarize each of us. What is that one problem of why the functions don't align? What would be the one thing that you would come across as an I'll
start so I think logic and emotion kicks in quite a lot. So logically, if we had a population of 100 people and said, Look, would it be, would it be sensible to align these functions and align the funnel and the brand and all of that. Yes, people are far more weighted towards emotion, and therefore, my opinion is the problem stems from the people function. That's that that's creating, or meant to be creating, that alignment, because we're so emotionally
driven on our upper and personal gains. That's where, I think, summary of the problem of misalignment in those functions.
Yeah, I totally agree. I think it is. It does come back to to people. I mean, it comes back to communication, ultimately, and I think it also comes down to shared goals or lack of you know, people are incentivized, especially sales, to do what they need to do, and they're compensated and motivated in that way. Marketing don't have that customer success
due to a certain extent, but the measurements different. So until that changes, people are going to keep showing up for work and doing what's going to pay the bills and get them to go on a nice, swanky holiday.
Sounds like a cop out, but that was I was going to go with the with the holiday piece. No, I was going to go with the goals piece as well. I think quite often, even worse than alignment. We've actually got misalignment. You know, sales incentivized to win, perhaps wouldn't work at all costs, not always right, but wouldn't work at all costs. CS incentivized to retain. So we're trying to retain a customer that was mis sold. I think, like, that's a key thing, and I but
actually, I would maybe say to sort of help support that. And I think one of the things is this is the conflicting priorities as you carry on up through the thread. I think if you're just aligning at the CEO, it's gone too far. And I think, like, that's probably the thing that to sort of take that, I guess, that metrics and that goals and objectives thing just that one step further. And if everyone feels aligned to that customer centric outcome, I think that goes a long way.
I mean, the journey we've been on today's I mean, I'm a massive advocate of aligning this function. I've seen it work really badly, and the and the impact, I've seen it work okay, and it's got better. And I'm and I'm a consultant now with you two as well, and we're trying, but it's still hard. We know that there are aspirations to align those functions. There are issues, as we've just summarized there and spoken
about. But if we were to put a framework together, what would be the framework, Teresa, that you think would be valuable for people who are listening, that they could start to maybe sketch out and start to use anything you would use when trying to align those functions?
So we created, along with yourselves, a seven P's framework that helps work through this and bring unity across all the three functions. So starting with priorities, which essentially looks at the potential externally in the market opportunities. So is there a market there, where's the drive coming from? Who else is playing there? Do we have a right to play which ultimately kind of sets us up for success, or makes us realize that we're probably in the wrong pace and
need to go somewhere else. Funny enough, gets looked over quite a lot, and everyone just keeps running. And secondly, it's then bringing that plan together. So once we've got an understanding of the customer, the need, the competitors, how do we bring our go to market plan together and then comes from that
positioning? So do we have the right message to the right audience to deliver at the right time, and are we consistent across that journey that we talked about earlier to make sure that we're all showing up and giving the prospect to a customer the a consistent experience? Once we've got that in place, we then move internally to have a look at the people. So do we have the right people with the right capabilities in the right roles, and what do they need to be
upskilled? Do we get need to outsource or get new talent in to enable our go to market strategy to happen? Then we look at processes. So what's the interconnection between all of the three different functions? What's the handoff? What's the role? Just simply defining the roles, and then the process between it. And how do we create those feedback loops that we can ultimately optimize on the insights that we're learning from each one of those along the journey to feed it back to the
top and make sure that the plan is still correct, right? And then we move to. Platforms, do we have the right tech in place? And is the tech connected up? I mean, often we see, we know the CRM, it's not utilized properly. People aren't putting things in the right time, in the right way. We can't pull out the right reports. Marketing is as has a has a different CRM to sales,
it's not connected up. So that that's a huge challenge. It's a whole project in itself, and then underpinning all of that is performance, which ultimately is what we're all aspiring to get right, right. So are have we set those unified KPIs? Are we able to measure them correctly, and how is then that feeding back into that continuous loop to make sure all of those pieces are working well together?
So the priorities, planning, which is really important as we talk about proposition. And then we've got the people, process and platforms, platform enablement, performance being the seventh P putting together, that's the alignment buckets. And then what at the output is, is the performance tracking through inputs and outputs, and then that holistic element of pulling together the teams, and as we spoke about before, putting together, that people function to deliver against it?
Yeah, absolutely. But that has to be done all together. It can't be done the separate rooms and then come together and they will. We've got a plan. We've got a plan. It's, it's a singular plan with everybody really kind of getting behind it and having clarity of their role within it.
What are the expected outcomes of a biz for a business and individuals, if they were to sort of nail the alignment. Like, what? What are the outcomes for people in the business? Like, if we were to get those six, seven P's nailed, what would be it?
For me, it's imagining the opposite, where it's not aligned, and everybody pulling the amount of wasted effort and the amount of wasted energy and the amount of dropped balls and dropped customers, yeah, that is a result of not having that. And I think if you look at your business initiative, and assume that you lose, you know, 25 to 40% in that but that's your opportunity. So for me, that's where that comes from, because it's pulling that kind of
efficiency. And then there's boosters, because at the front end, you're doing more sophisticated market sizing that you talked about there Teresa, in terms of that work at the top, that is just is so critical to team everything else up. So yeah, I think that those are probably the two things for me. What about you?
Well, you know, there's loads of research out there that shows that if you can align all of these functions, you're going to have better results. So who doesn't want kind of twice as much revenue, like, literally, can can do that or and who doesn't want profit that can be increased by 2.4 times. I mean, it's no brainer. And I think, you know, that's, that's the basis of kind of why we've created this framework. Is in the world where there's constant disruption and constant
transformation. And, you know, people coming in, left, right and center, and customers changing and control what you can control internally and get that working really well. And actually you can have much more of a predictable and better performing performance, essentially.
And I was going to look at it from a personal perspective, right? And I think back at being on client side or working a consultancy like I have done for the last five years, the hardest part is collaborating with other departments. I think if that, if that comes together, actually, I could probably do more of less. I could enjoy my time outside of work. I can enjoy my time with my family, with friends, you
too. But the important part is actually, for personally, I think I could get more done with what the time I've got.
But you'll also enjoy work more too, because there'll be less tension, more fun.
More fun. Bring the fun back to CSC, fantastic. I think that's a really great place to finish, as we think about the outcomes, right? And we think from the from the audience's perspective, listen. And thank you, as always, to everybody who's dialed in or tuned in to listen today. But if you're not thinking in this way in your business, clearly you need to, and I think that soon feels like the message and and thinking about joining all of those areas together and how
that can really impact your your performance. So Teresa, it's been fantastic to see you again, and thank you so much for joining us on the growth workshop podcast today. On behalf of Jonny and I, we really enjoyed it.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Thank you, Teresa.