Transformation through Sales & Marketing Alignment
A strategic motto at TELUS is “Putting Our Customers First”. Through sales playbooks, sales coaching programs, and marketing enablement, DSG and TELUS were successful in shifting the sales and marketing focus from products to the customer world. Key outcomes included bigger deals, longer customer relationships, product intensity and a deeper understanding of the customer.
At TELUS we have a motto - putting our customers first. We want to drive our customer's experience and enable them to transform their business. But we needed to transform the way we did our own business to have the ability to support the business transformation of our customers. We needed to look at how our sales teams were supported by product and marketing, how our product teams worked with marketing, and how marketing worked with sales. That alignment was the first place we needed to start in our sales transformation journey.
The approach we took with DSG was to start with a sales playbook. We brought together stakeholders from product, sales, and marketing into Vancouver where we all sat together for two days to learn more about our business and how we interface with our customers. The result of that collaboration focused playbook that provided guidance to our sales, marketing, and product teams on how engage our customers in a business conversation vs. focusing solely on our products. This sales playbook became the foundation of our transformation.
DSG worked with our sales, marketing and enablement teams on a broad range of integrated programs that have fed our evolution into a digital transformation company. Those programs included a sales leadership development program focused on coaching, "open office hours" where sellers can come with their challenges and get fresh ideas, and continuous learning activities that build the confidence of our salespeople.
One of the biggest wins from the program with DSG is being “O Focused” which just means focusing on others vs. self. When we focus on our customers, it builds a relationship that revolves around their business. This ultimately drives better business outcomes through bigger deals, longer relationships, and product intensity in every account. Gaining a deeper understanding of the customer drives our business by thinking and talking about our customers rather than talking about ourselves.
