How to Align Teams for Better Customer Experience

Over the years, I've discovered the truth: Game-changing products won't succeed unless they have a unified vision across sales, marketing, and product teams. When these key functions pull in different directions, it's a death knell for go-to-market execution. Without alignment on positioning and buyer messaging, we fail to communicate value and create disjointed experiences. So, how do I foster collaboration across these functions? 1) Set shared goals and incentivize unity towards that North Star metric, be it revenue, activations, or retention. 2) Encourage team members to work closely together, building empathy rather than skepticism of other groups' intentions and contributions. 3) Regularly conduct cross-functional roadmapping sessions to cascade priorities across departments and highlight dependencies. 4) Create an environment where teams can constructively debate assumptions and strategies without politics or blame. 5) Provide clarity for sales on target personas and value propositions to equip them for deal conversations. 6) Involve all functions early in establishing positioning and messaging frameworks. Co-create when possible. By rallying together around customers’ needs, we block and tackle as one team towards product-market fit. The magic truly happens when teams unite towards a shared mission to delight users!

An achilles heel of good tradeshow booth execution is a lack of alignment among booth staff and company team members... Several years ago, I had a friend 👨💼 come in town for a conference. He is a Sr sales rep for a big software company. This company was exhibiting and between space, booth, travel, etc, probably spent around $200,000. I took him to dinner and asked how the show was going. He essentially told me he didn't really know what was going on, and they just flew him in to be on the floor. $200,000 seems like a lot of money to me, as well as a lot of effort, to have a Sr sales rep have zero clue what is going on. He was 1 of 4 reps there and none of the reps were briefed. As a team, its hard to run a successful play without the players knowing the play. My point. Booth staff and team staff alignment is KEY to tradeshow success. Knowing the basics, like the schedule of events and process for leads is a must. But if you are looking to dominate a tradeshow and capitalize on the investment, here is what alignment looks like... Keep in mind, this can all be put into a 1-2 page document for all to review and study. Event team should be developing this with sales and MKG input. 1️⃣ Everyone involved has a clear understanding of WHY you are there and what the specific goals and target objectives are. 2️⃣ Customer, everyone has to have a clear picture of the customer profile that is there. Who is here? Who do we want to talk to? What role do they play in our pipeline development and relationship with customer? 3️⃣ What is the weeks strategy? Examples are, do you have a theme and why that theme? How does it tie into the pitch or offering? What is the plan to produce results at this show and what is everyone's part in it? 4️⃣ Engagements and offerings. What kind of engagements, offerings, activities and offsite activations is your company running, and why should people attend them? How does the raffle work? How do they participate? All staff needs to know this, and be armed with the ability to invite, set appts, and clearly explain what's going on to someone. 5️⃣ I highly suggest morning huddles before the day starts and evening huddles as the day ends. Talk, share, brief each other, and get ready for what's next. Stay in tune and on the same page for the entire show. 6️⃣ What is the narrative and story you are telling and promoting? Everyone should know this and be able to talk on it. Have scripts, develop talking points that everyone can use. 7️⃣ Everyone in your booth should know how to explore and qualify someone in conversation. Give them questions 8️⃣ What does life look like after this 3-4 day whirlwind? Have a follow up process with goals outlined so everyone knows what's next. Knowing what's next gives confidence to what you are doing currently. 💡 Have a why, have goals, create a plan, craft a strategy. Make sure everyone understands all of the above and how they contribute to success.

The one lesson I learned when I first became a SaaS Founder. Aligning the team is the main job.  Nothing else is more impactful than making sure the team is aligned. A misaligned team is pulled in different directions.  👈👉 No amount of strategy rethink can fix it. You can be tactical and worry about creating the right documentation structure, reporting structure yada yada, but whatever it is the outcome needs to be either the team is aligned. Or you have clarity what is required for them to get aligned. Doing other activities like status update meetings, strategy reviews etc. are only effective when everyone is working on the same thing in the same direction. This is not an easy task by any stretch. The good news is this can be developed where you as a founder learns to be sensitive to the fact that one or more team members are not aligned. 𝗧𝗵𝗿𝗲𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗜 𝗱𝗼 𝘄𝗲𝗲𝗸 𝗮𝗳𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝘄𝗲𝗲𝗸 🎁 1. Leadership Alignment Deck - A presentation that shows where we are coming from, what is critical for us now and what is changing for us 2. We build one feature at a time - This is closely linked to the answer what is critical for us now 3. Weekly check in with the leadership team - To understand if we are on the same page and if any course corrections are needed 99% of the times, what I think the team is thinking is different from what they are thinking. Our worse mis-alignment lasts 5-6 days max because of this. Have you ever been in the same boat? How did you solve this?