Marketing Role in Creating Distinctive Business Value

The Figure below illustrates what the best marketing organizations are doing. Focusing on  the right side, we can see some of the critical roles that Marketing needs to play for the success of the customercentric journey and what we have been exploring in this article.  

Customization and personalization are key to gaining more market share and decreasing “switchability.” Customers no longer choose an offering because everyone “has one.” Instead, the conversation needs to be steered towards how a product or service has been made or adapted just for them. This has been true for a while now in B2C – we can custom-build our car online, choose every specification on our laptop, etc. – and it is increasingly becoming the  expectation in B2B. All is focused on personalization. While SAMs are focused on the personalized engagement/overall relationship (market drivers, strategic goals, careabouts), both SAMs and Marketing need to be focused on crafting personalized solutions. Together, they have the potential to bring a better and differentiating customer experience using innovative frameworks like design thinking and others. But it is difficult, if not impossible, to offer a personalized customer experience if organizations are not deeply connected with their customer’s buying journey. And it is difficult, if not impossible, to fully understand the customer buying journey in the absence of this critical partnership between SAMs and Marketing. 

of joint scorecards that integrate the customer goals and KPIs, thereby demonstrating measurable impact in and on the customer’s business model. In these disruptive times, where the SAM role is growing ever-more complex, the strategic accounts organization has a tremendous opportunity to leverage Marketing as their quarterback, especially when SAMs seek personalized, actionable insights and value solution alongside the customer decision-making journey. Allow us to borrow an analogy from diving. The SAM is the explorer, diving deeply into the needs and goals of their accounts. But in order to deep dive, they need air from their counterparts in Marketing in the form of analytics, business cases and data-based insights.