We have written a lot about the importance of developing a fully aligned corporate story and strategy. The truth is, however, this is only part of the challenge CMOs face when it comes to delivering a clear, compelling and consistent message in the marketplace. What comes next is where most CMOs and executive teams fall short. What’s that?
Ensuring every employee instinctively activates the corporate story and strategy in the customer experience. For this to happen, CMOs need to secure enterprise-wide collaboration and support. Every employee has to play his or her part. It is not easy. A recent article in Forbes, “Strategy 101: It’s All About Alignment,” said it best …
“Assuming you have created a sound strategy based on the union of customer desires and company output, you now face the challenge of inserting employees into the mix — in a way that aligns their daily decisions and actions with the strategic direction of the company. Success rates drop by around 50 percentage points in this phase.”
Success rates drop off a cliff because activating a consistent story in the customer experience requires that your employees actually understand and embrace that story. Getting employees and partners engaged is difficult. To do it right, CMOs must infuse the corporate story and strategy into the company’s culture.
Remember … it starts on the inside.
Leaders, managers and ultimately every employee must ensure the story and strategy are communicated in a consistent manner inside the organization. Harvard Business Review explained the importance of delivering a consistent message to employees in “Selling the Brand Inside.” The article stated, “Employees need to hear the same messages that you send out to the marketplace. At most companies, however, internal and external communications are often mismatched. This can be very confusing, and it threatens employees’ perceptions of the company’s integrity: They are told one thing by management but observe that a different message is being sent to the public.”
Don’t forget … it takes unwavering commitment from the executive team.
For employees to embrace and activate your strategy and story — leaders must drive mindset, behavior and cultural change throughout the employee population. For this to happen, CMOs must lead the charge. To illustrate the importance of unwavering executive commitment, we share this experience of a major financial services institution. Leaders in the firm told customers that it was shifting from being a financial retailer to a financial adviser, but a year later, research showed the customer experience with the company had not changed. It turned out leaders across the company did not support the change internally, so employees were still churning out transactions and hadn’t changed their story or behavior to match their new adviser role.
It requires formal training.
Companies spend millions of dollars training their general employee population, sales teams and customer service representatives on basic job skills. Yet, the fundamental requirement of every employee is to be able to articulate a clear, compelling corporate story.
Every employee should be able to share with conviction who your company is, what it does, the value it delivers and ultimately why someone should do business with your organization.
Why is it then, that very few companies train their employees on how to tell the corporate story?
Don’t make this mistake.
Learn how OnMessage can help you develop and activate a shared corporate story and strategy across your organization.
