How ClearObject grew its customer base by eliminating its sales department
What 2020 taught us all is how to be resilient, how to be empathetic, and how to adapt to change. While it may not have always felt so, in these ways, 2020 was an inspiring year.
When faced with a new challenge, the best organizations respond with bold new ideas. That’s how businesses thrive in the face of adversity and how the most successful companies not only cope with each new challenge but grow stronger as a result.
Our data analytics business at ClearObject had growth plans, and while we were having some success, it was clear that the additional economic uncertainty of a global pandemic was going to limit our ability to establish new customers. We needed to take a new approach and to reach new customers, we needed to be bold.
With this in mind, we decided it was time to put our faith in our approach, to stop thinking about growth in terms of selling, and instead focus on solving.
We retrained and retooled our business development and sales staff and established a single Customer Success Team. We empowered our customer advocates to invest in understanding each customer, each business challenge, and each solution. Through customer workshops, proof of concept engagements, and a great deal of virtual collaboration, we have accelerated our ability to generate customer value and help our customers be more successful.
Helping customers take advantage of the latest data analytics, machine learning, and AI capabilities requires a deep understanding of their business, their challenges, and their constraints. In reality, it has never been a transactional sales engagement. The best customer results are achieved when we take a collaborative partnership approach. Leveraging the customer’s own domain knowledge with our own unique blend of structured design thinking, agile development, and tangible value generation.
That’s why at the heart of our Customer Success approach is a simple but powerful concept. Empathy. Through empathy, we place ourselves in the position of our customers. By walking in the customer’s shoes, we are better placed to help solve their business challenges.
Traditional sales reviews or account strategy meetings usually focus on internal metrics and KPIs that indicate near-term trends. Customer metrics such as satisfaction and engagement, solution adoption, and return on investment, ensure that we maintain an empathetic mindset, which will allow us to develop valuable, long-term, strategic relationships with our customers.
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