The Business Development Flywheel

Idk why most businesses don't seem to grasp and/or prioritize this concept:

• Marketing brings in new leads.
• Sales closes those leads to turn them into customers.
• Customer Success helps these new customers achieve their desired result as quickly as possible.

Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success are supposed to work together.

And when you do Customer Success properly, it feeds the whole Business Development Flywheel because most happy customers are willing to provide reviews, testimonials, and/or referrals (AKA = new leads).

I have a belief that most businesses aren't good at optimizing their Business Development Flywheel. They think each department should be siloed, and that leads to friction in the entire process. Such as:

• Marketing doesn't collect the key info about a lead to handoff to Sales which prevents the intro/demo call from going as well as it could
• When Sales closes a deal, they aren't incentivized to care about Customer Success, so new customers often feel lost
• When new customers feel lost, they get frustrated which means that, instead of them having goodwill towards the business, they feel doubt & resentment as an unhappy customer which means these unhappy customers won't provide reviews, testimonials, or referrals, and they will also become more burdensome to the Customer Success team (which actually negatively impacts the Finance team because more Customer Success work = more spent on labor costs).

Customers don't want friction. And they don't want to be confused. Customers want a smooth, simple process. They want what they're paying for, and if you give them what they want, most of them are more than happy to help promote your business to others.