Behind the Scenes at Global-Roam

As we gear up for an intensive recruitment effort to find our new General Manager for Initiating, Opening & Sustaining Client Relationships (which others might call a GM for Sales and Marketing) it was timely to see this “8 ways to build customer loyalty” article posted on Inc.

Maintaining a high retention rate is critical to our business, and something we’ve done reasonably well over the past 12 years – but there’s always room for improvement (it’s not 100%).

These 8 pointers will be another useful reference in the months ahead…

We have no department for Sales and Marketing.

Though 2 very busy years has elapsed, not much has changed (in that respect) from when I drew this diagram back in early 2010:

It was obvious to us, then, that we first needed to overhaul our department for “Discerning, Developing and Delivering what the customer wants”.

This took some time, but we have done so (as such, that side of the organogram looks very different now). As alluded to here, we’re starting to see early signs that clients are being delighted with product upgrades again.

Given that we’re now gearing up to make our first hire at the top of our department for Sales & Marketing, it was a good coincidence that I happened upon the article “Ending the war between Sales and Marketing” published in HBR back in 2006.

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This is a brief post to follow on from the first update, provided 7 months ago.

I’ve made this post as we’ve had inquiries periodically over the intervening period, asking whether we’re going to be kicking off the recruitment process soon.  Hence for those others who might be interested, this post is to keep you updated.

The short answer to the question is “not just yet”!

I am very keen to have this person onboard, as he/she will be a key contributor to achieving the ambitious vision we’ve set for the business.

However we’ll be generating a higher ROI through 2011 if my focus remains elsewhere for a little while longer… read more »

Technically speaking, our recruitment process has not even begun yet.

However, back in January I did mention that we hoped to have our GM M&S in place before the end of the year.

As a result of the interest generated when we kicked off the process of recruiting Derrick as our GM for DDD WCW, a number of people contacted me about this second position.  Some of these have kept in touch with me to keep tabs on our progress with a view to being considered when the process begins.

In case there are other interested people out there, here are some details of our status.

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For those who have been frequent readers of this blog, you will understand that I have a number books on the go at any one time.

This makes for eclectic reading, and generally slower progress than would otherwise be the case.

1)  Binary Review

… however I pretty much flew through this one, given it was aligned with our primary core value of “Customers First”, and the other ones as well.

The Book	What we thought
“I love you more than my Dog” by Jeanne Bliss	Just where we are headed

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This may be the first time you have read an article posted on our “Behind the Scenes” blog – or you might be a regular reader.

Whatever is the case for you, you will have formed some kind of impression about our company, and the type of B2B software services we provide.

As such, we’d like you to tell us what you think of us, as this will help us to continue to develop and enhance the services we provide – now into our 2nd decade of service.

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As noted previously, we have recently appointed our General Manager for Discerning, Developing and Delivering what the Customer Wants.

As part of the process of getting our new GM up to speed in understanding who our customers are (and what keeps them awake at night), we are investing significantly in touring around Australia to meet with a diverse sample of our clients.  Others will be talked to via phone, Skype or WebEx – whilst we hope to visit clients in other countries later in the year.

On the plane out of Brisbane yesterday afternoon, I had the chance to read this article “Specialise yourself right out of a job” from the AFR.

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Food for thought, this morning, when I trundled along to a breakfast event hosted by the AMI, featuring Dr Don E Schultz of Agora fame, and author of a number of books (none of which, it would seem, we have previously added to our shopping cart).

Don’s main thesis is that:

1)  The “modern” approach to marketing emerged in parallel with the industrial age of society, and hence is based on similar principles (e.g. a Taylorist view of the world – which leads into a “command and control” focus internally, and a top-down mentality in terms of push-based marketing to “consumers” (how I hate that term).

2)  Given that we’re progressing from this Industrial Age into what’s been termed by a number of people as a “Customer Age”, Don’s view is that marketing also needs a transformation.

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Some time ago, Paul Klaptocz wrote this (restricted) review of a book “Four Steps to Epiphany”, written by Steve Blank.

Out of interest, I watched through this hour-long lecture by the author, given at Stanford - in which he summarises a range of guest lectures over the year.

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