Chief Customer Officer 2.0: How to Build Your Customer-Driven Growth Engine

Author Jeanne Bliss writes the customer experience roadmap to transform your business and culture.

Chapter 1: The Chief Customer Officer Role Is Clarity

Chief Customer Officer 2.0 gives you a proven framework that has launched and advanced the customer experience transformation in both business-to-consumer and business-to-business companies around the world.

And it will take years off your learning curve.

Written by Jeanne Bliss, a CCO practitioner for over twenty years, and pre-eminent thought leader on the role of the Customer Leadership Executive and customer experience, this book outlines in detail Jeanne’s Five-Competency Model. The same model Jeanne uses to coach the C-Suite, Chief Customer Officers, and Vice Presidents of Customer Experience globally. Using her framework, you will discover how to:

Manage and Honor Customers as Assets
Align Around Experience
Build a Customer Listening Path
Embed Experience Reliability and Innovation
Lead One Company Accountability, Leadership & Decision Making

Chief Customer Officer 2.0 will quickly get you into action with a united leadership team, shifting your business focus to earning the right to growth, by improving customers’ lives. In Chief Customer Officer 2.0, Jeanne Bliss provides practical guidance on how to embed the Five Competencies into the way your company develops products, goes to market, enables and rewards people, and conducts annual planning. And she fearlessly shares her leadership tools and ‘recipe cards’ developed over thirty-years as a Chief Customer Officer practitioner and coach, to support and enable your business transformation.

Including over forty case studies of how Chief Customer Officers around the world embed these five competencies, this is the book you have been waiting for. The book that tells it like it really is and gives you the framework to begin to build your customer-driven growth engine — today.

If Jeanne Bliss hadn’t written her first book, I wouldn’t be in the role I have today. Now, ten years later, she continues to provide leading guidance for Chief Customer Officers.

Jeb Dasteel
Senior Vice President and Chief Customer Officer, Oracle

It’s really very simple: Anyone in business should be thinking about customers, and anyone thinking about customers should be reading Jeanne Bliss.

Don Peppers
Founding Partner, Peppers & Rogers Group

No one knows more about the Customer Experience Leadership Role than Jeanne Bliss. Buy this book to jump-start your learning, get traction and transform your business.

Scott Dille
Senior Vice President and Director of Client and Employee Experience at Northern Trust

Download the first chapter of Jeanne’s book, free!

Studying Sales Techniques

Summaries of the best, most recently published techniques for selling better and smarter.

Become the Best Salesperson You Can Be

Knowing what to study can make you a true entrepreneur within your organization. in this ebook you’ll discover a quick shortcut – a synopsis of five of the most influential sales books we’ve read recently. Each chapter will summarize the key points to get you selling better, faster.

In this ebook, you learn:

The latest thinking about effective sales approaches
How to plug leaks in your sales pipeline
The most effective way of to lead the sales-customer dialog
How to listen actively and build trust with prospects

Accelerate Learning and Master Your Skills

Experimenting with different ideas and learning from trial and error is a solid way to improve. Not only can you hone your skills, but you can also identify and scrap the stuff that doesn’t work.

But the reality is that to get really good, you need to practice — a lot — and that takes time. In fact, some experts argue that to master a skill, you need to accumulate 10,000 hours of practice. Now most of us haven’t got the time to wait that long! So here’s some good news that can shortcut this learning process significantly. It’s simply to learn from the thought leaders in the industry by studying the right books and following three main points:

Accelerate your learning and get an edge
Stay up to date
Develop the right personal skill set

The challenging global economy, changes in consumer buying habits, and the shift toward customer-centric selling have made sales a challenging and exhilarating profession. Download our free ebookand learn more.

In the past, a lot of selling was done via cold-calling. The problem with this tactic is that it has turned sales into a numbers game. But as you’ve probably experienced, this approach misses the point of what a skilled salesperson can achieve.

Get your free trial of Pipeliner CRM now.

Startups, Sales, & CRM Solutions

With a startup, an entrepreneur or several entrepreneurs are quite literally diving into the unknown. As anyone who has done it will tell you, there is a great deal of “learn as you go” involved, along with unpredicted obstacles, unforeseen expenses, and many other factors.

This ebook acts as a map through these uncharted waters, to help get a startup’s sales organization blasting off.

Chapter 1: Know Your Buyers

A startup is generally brought about by an entrepreneur or entrepreneurs, derived from a bright idea. At some point, however – ideally before the business is founded or a product or service is actually produced – it is vitally important that those directly engaged in running the business learn everything they can about their potential buyers.

Chapter 2: Empower Sales from the Beginning

One of the first decisions in a startup should deal with how your salespeople are to be regarded and empowered. This will determine a critical path for the future of your company – and its level of success.

Chapter 3: 4 Crucial Considerations for CRM Systems

As startups get off the ground, they have numerous choices to make regarding automation. Due to a fledgling company’s financial status, these choices are often mitigated by cost. When it comes to the choice of CRM systems, however, there are four other important factors to take into account in addition to its price.

Chapter 4: Startups and CRM Solutions: A Real-World Analysis

There is a lot of theory on operating a startup (just check the curriculum of your local college or business school). But in the real world, due to the demands of getting a business up and operational, much of the time any theory goes right out the window while entrepreneurs struggle to keep clients happy, keep the bills being paid and seeking out new business. Here is one real-world story.

Chapter 5: Startups and CRM Solutions: Another Real-World Analysis

With a startup, an entrepreneur or several entrepreneurs are quite literally diving into the unknown. As anyone who has done it will tell you, there is a great deal of “learn as you go” involved, along with unpredicted obstacles, unforeseen expenses, and many other factors. The evolution of a sales process early on, along with the correct choice of CRM solution, are two ways you can guard against unforeseen circumstances. Here is another real-world story of how one startup proceeded.

Chapter 6: Pay Careful Attention to Software ROI

Startups come about due to entrepreneurs and their innovative actions. In addition to spotting and seizing an opportunity that others have evidently missed or not taken full advantage of, an entrepreneur will find all kinds of nifty ways of getting a startup off the ground while cutting costs and keeping everything within budget.

In today’s automated world, one of the important startup costs is that of software. But despite the hell-bent effort to get the business up and running, time should be taken to evaluate software ROI (return on investment) as accurately as possible.

Download and read Startups, Sales, & CRM Solutions now.

Sales and Marketing Alignment Explained

Capitalize on the new buyer’s journey by aligning sales and marketing.

Help your business grow!

Discover the advantages of making your sales and marketing work together.

A huge part of the buying decision is made before your customer reaches out to your brand or meets your sales team. What does that mean for your sales department? Learn more about recent changes in the customer’s buying journey and explore the benefits of aligning your sales and marketing departments. Configure your sales process to match this new buying landscape.

In this ebook, you learn:

The powerful benefits of aligning your sales and marketing efforts
How and why the buyer’s journey is changing
How to take control of the front end of your sales pipeline

Download this free ebook and learn how buying decisions are made – and how you can be there at the right time.

The fact is, for each day that your sales and marketing departments are out of alignment, your business is haemorrhaging money. And lots of it… Here’s some proof…

Pipeline Management: Success with CRM

Pipeline management means the difference between accurate, successful sales and hit-or-miss sales that mysteriously make it to the close or don’t. Pipeline management therefore even affects the success or failure of a company, and the attainment of company goals.

This ebook shows you the relationship between pipeline management and sales success, as well as the vital role played by the choice of CRM solution.

Chapter 1: Pipeline Management: The Backbone of Your Enterprise

Much has been written (and spoken of) regarding the need for an accurate sales process – also known as sales pipeline management. Companies generally fall into a rough range of possibilities with regard to pipeline management.

Chapter 2: Pipeline Management: Critical to Attaining Company Goals

What may not be clear until you take a closer look is the fact that accurate and effective pipeline management is essential to the attainment of long-term company goals. For that reason, pipeline management might also be called “opportunity management.”

Chapter 3: Pipeline Management: A Self-Sustaining Success

Laying out the separate steps of the sales process and making sure they are followed is the only way of bringing control to sales, both for the salespeople and sales management. If played right, pipeline management is also a self-sustaining success.

Chapter 4: Pipeline Management: The Vital Importance of Automation

When allocating a budget in an enterprise, automation often takes somewhat of a back seat to other matters. While the causes for this are many and varied, we will not attempt to examine them here, but simply demonstrate the vital importance of IT support for one crucial activity: sales pipeline management.

Chapter 5: CRM and Booming Your Company

Automated tools for CRM have been around in one form or another since the advent of computers. CRM today goes well beyond simple contact management, however, and if intelligently utilized can help steer an enterprise into whole new levels of profitability.

Chapter 6: Where CRM Can Go Wrong

CRM can and often does become almost more of a hindrance than a workable solution. Why does this occur, and what can be done about it?

Download Pipeline Management: Success with CRM now.

Pipeliner CRM Features and Functionality: Philosophy Into Action

All of Pipeliner CRM’s features express sound business philosophy–and are designed to totally empower your sales force

Features and Functionality: Philosophy Meets the Real World

In our previous 2 ebooks, Theory Made Real and Reducing Risk, we demonstrated how Pipeliner CRM is the sum total, in the real world, of sound philosophical business principles. Theory Made Real explored the 6 basic principles that form the foundation for Pipeliner, with examples of how they are expressed in the product. Reducing Risk laid out the Pipeliner Selling System, which follows the basic pattern of a sales process against the backdrop of the buyer’s journey, and how this, too, embodies the basic principles.

In this our third ebook in the series, we explore all the specific Pipeliner CRM features—many of which are totally unique in the CRM market—and how each of these reflects the philosophy which inspired it.

Our goal with this book is to bring the reader an understanding of the power that Pipeliner can bring to a sales organization and business, and also to provide a continuing overview of the applicable principles on which any business is based.

Stage 1: Focus

The first stage of the Pipeliner Selling System, Focus, deals with:

Focusing reps on deals that matter
Honing in on specific aspects of the deals themselves
Focusing the buyer in on your solution

Under the heading of Focus are the Pipeliner CRM features contained in this chapter:

Dynamic Contact Management
Effective, Efficient Leads Management
Pipeline View: Visual Key to Your Processes
Your Instant, Visual Sales Timeline
Archive: Understanding the Past is Key to Your Future
Pipeliner CRM Profiles: It’s Your View
Template Designer: It Really Is Your CRM
Pipeliner CRM’s Built-In Help

Stage 2: Engage

The second stage of the Pipeliner Selling System, Engage, means reaching out and touching this prospect, getting involved with their particular company and issues, and accomplishing the actions necessary to move them to the next stage toward a sale.

Under the heading of Engage are the Pipeliner CRM features contained in this chapter:

Sales Activities—Your Path to Sales Success
Social Selling Made Easy
Tracking Sales Efficiency: Pipeliner Hit Rate Manager
Online or Offline: Full CRM Functionality
Notes Management and Integration
Apps Integrations
Pipeliner App Integrations
Auto-Profiling: Saving Hours of Admin Work
History Log: Tracking Changed Data in CRM
Sales Reports: See More to Sell More

Stage 3: Convince

At the third stage of the Pipeliner Selling System, Convince, you are convincing the buyer—and all decision-makers and influencers at the company acting as evaluators—that purchasing your product or service is absolutely the right thing to do. It is at this stage that the sale is made.

Under the heading of Convince are the Pipeliner CRM features contained in this chapter:

The Pipeliner Task Board: A New Way to Work
Dynamic Target: Constant Focus
Smart Org Chart & Buying Center
Filters: Zeroing In on Deals That Count
Getting a Handle on Sales Velocity
Sales Dashboards—Insights On Demand
Customized Auto-Calculations
Sales Document Management
Microsoft Office Plug-In

Stage 4: Close and Cooperate

At the fourth stage of the Pipeliner Selling System, Close, your buyer has become a customer. Ultimately your aim is to move that customer into the next and final stage of the Pipeliner Selling System, Cooperate. At that point your customer has become an advocate—and is much more of a partner than a customer.

There are 2 final features that are particularly applicable to the Close and Cooperate stages of the Pipeliner Selling System:

Multiple Pipelines
Bulk Update Feature

Opportunity Management

Qualifying a lead might be a relatively simple task, but opportunity management is a bit more complex. Why? The stakes are higher: a salesperson is now going to invest valuable time into working the opportunity. It has the real potential of becoming what everyone in the sales force is after: a closed sale.

Everyone is betting that this opportunity will pay off, but there is always that risk factor. Not all sales close. Will this one turn to profit, or become expensively wasted effort? How can the odds be improved in favor of your sales force and your company?

The essential key to opportunity management is accurately evaluating the risk factors. That is, knowing all about your target prospect company—at the very least understanding the industry and how most companies within it operate. Knowing which employees within a company are vital to engage as part of the selling process; having an understanding of your target company’s buying process; and of course knowing all the qualifying questions to ask before you invest serious time and effort.

Chapter 1: Sales Techniques – Opportunity Management

Qualifying a lead is relatively simple. Opportunity management, however, is a bit more complex. The stakes are higher: a salesperson is now going to invest valuable time into working the opportunity, engaging key people at the target company, making presentations, and utilizing all possible sales techniques.

Chapter 2: Sales Strategies and Opportunity Management: Knowing the Buyer

The key component of all sales strategies is opportunity management. And the key element of opportunity management is evaluating risk—having as much information as possible to outweigh the possibility of the sale becoming a loss.

Chapter 3: Sales Techniques: Sales Rep Flexibility

The time has come to let salespeople utilize their “on the ground” judgment and sales techniques when it comes to making various decisions about opportunity management. Selling today requires flexibility, judgment, and a focus on results—not process.

Chapter 4: Sales Strategies: Analysis of Lost Opportunities

If sales management or even members of the sales force can statistically analyze past losses as part of opportunity management, such analysis can yield plentiful data that is helpful to the creation of new sales strategies, helpful to the improvement of closing ratios and helpful to taking time out of sales cycles.

Chapter 5: 6 Vital Qualities of a CRM Solution in Opportunity Management

A CRM solution is crucial both to the operation of a sales force and, factually, of a business itself. But as a sale travels further up the pipeline, the precision of that CRM application increases in importance. By the time you’re well into opportunity management—that stage of a sale in which a sales rep is heavily engaged—your CRM solution had better be fully supportive or you run the risk of losing those opportunities.

Chapter 6 Sales Techniques: The Viewing of Opportunities

While the handling of sales opportunities is a technical subject that we explore in some detail, there is an underlying factor that affects any salesperson’s opportunity management: the way an opportunity is viewed.

Download our ebook Opportunity Management now.

Metrics and the Art of Sales

Is Sales an Art or a Science

It’s an age-old argument that still persists today: is sales an art or a science? The old timers will firmly argue the former, and the modern-day salesperson armed with the latest smartphone and steeped in technology will often argue the latter. But the truth is, that both are true for a sales force – but only in the right combination.

A sales rep today is armed with plentiful technological assistance. But he or she still must be able to rapidly relate to a prospect and engender trust, know when to pitch and when to hold back, and be able to read the prospect well to ascertain when to go in for that close or when to address other issues.

The job is far easier with the pattern of an agreed-upon sales process, an intuitive CRM solution, and instant access to an infinite amount of data through the web – but in the end it is still ability and skill that will bring the sale finally to its close. A sales force operates with both art and science. A skillful combining of the two will mean steadily increasing sales for your company.

Make the Metrics of Sales Work For You

Managing a reliable sales process is undoubtedly one of the most important functions of a sales leader. All you need to do is gather the data, right?

In actuality it is not enough to rely on sales process metrics alone. Those metrics must also have context — and especially a relationship to each other so you can put them to work for you. In this eBook you will learn:

How sales process metrics have changed over the last decade
How to measure each and every step of the sales process
How to understand and leverage the context of your sales process metrics

Download this free eBook and and discover some great tools for effective sales process measurement and control.

A good part of the reason you want a sales process is so you can actually view and measure the progress of sales as they go along, and monitor sales rep performance. Without a sales process, the only real measure of success you have is the total number of sales closed and the total dollar figures.

1. Is the Sales Force Running on Art…or Science?

In the end it can be seen that a sales force is operating with both art and science. A skillful combining of the two will mean steadily increasing sales for your company.

2. 4 Ways to an Accurate Sales Process

If you look back through business history, the evolution of the sales process was an attempt to adapt the methodologies of manufacturing or computing to sales. Essentially you have certain inputs that go through a specific process; given the same inputs and the same process you should end up with the same results every time.

3. Sales Force Automation and ROI

Due to these considerably reduced costs, it would seem that the question of rapid ROI has been solved – or has it? Taking a closer look, it will be found that evaluating CRM ROI is just as important as it ever was, perhaps even more so. It just has a different set of factors necessary for evaluation than it once did.

4. Sales Process Metrics: Know Your Context

Take the one final step and understand the full context of sales process metrics – and raise the number of closes consistently into the future.

5. Sales Process: Measuring “Now” Versus “Then”

You need to be able to accurately measure progress through each step of the sales process (sales pipeline) in order to fully control and predict sales. Additionally such measures have to show what’s happening now as opposed to only reviewing what happened last quarter or last year.

6. CRM Solutions: The Sales Force and Beyond

A flexible, intuitive CRM solution is crucial for a sales force to survive, let alone succeed. But that same carefully chosen and well-implemented CRM application is just as important to other key company departments whose input comes before and after sales.