“Every time we gather information, things get a little more complicated. » Mrs McGinty is Dead (1952) Agatha Christie, an investigation by Hercule Poirot “But by nature and by professional distortion, he did not trust anyone until he had personally verified and established the truth of what was being said. reported to him » The Indiscretions of Hercule Poirot (1953)
For at least two reasons, digitalization, and the consecration of the customer approach, the general orientation of the business should be focus more and more on the final act of sale. Can marketing be the leader of this evolution, of these two major leaps?
There is no need to hesitate, but how do you go about it? The line to follow is clear
1. First, Marketing must take stock of the importance of customer orientation in the structure of the company itself.
This requires open interviews and not questionnaires where we check boxes that are sometimes unclear in their statement, especially when we stage situations to be evaluated. It’s not about pleasing the interviewer but about understanding the client.
Open questionnaires must favor three elements: the language of the questioned, the truth of the statement and the sincerity of the diagnosis.
2. Secondly, as far as digital is concerned, the idea is not to digitize everything with the aim of “being modern and contemporary”, but, on the contrary, to carefully select the priorities of digitalization according to the costs that this generates.
In this case the rules of conduct are
• accessibility for all, except for reasons of confidentiality, with secondary
• an economy of integration, so as not to multiply data entries and processing.
Armed with this dual diagnosis, the company must then map out the paths to take to achieve its ambition and measure its time and efficiency.
This predominantly strategic and digital marketing audit can then be based on three parts
• First the state of play for commercial marketing activityand the path to follow for business development.
• Second, the summerat places for the entire structure and its capacity to satisfy this dual “customer – digital” orientation and reasonable paths to achieve them effectively
• Thirdly, establishing a walking rhythm with well-controlled costs and therefore agile and without entering at this stage into what would be a headlong rush towards the long-term. Indeed, the emergency must not be drowned out by the postponement in the name of the budget. We can even suggest a zero-based budget (BBZ) type approach.
That being said in broad terms, choose two or three indicators at most for each of these three components and immediately integrate the emergencies
A question remains: who in the company will dare to propose it given the current deployment of digital budgets? For the moment, it is therefore rather a non-place, but for all that, Hercule Poirot is right, the multiplication of information and AI will complicate the task if the managers do not master a limited number of key parameters chosen by them and observed by the markets. Against the grain? …Or simply, that Hercule Poirot does not hold it against me, elementary my dear Watson.
