Introduction

Every functional area (Product, Marketing, Sales, Success) of every B2B business has insights the other functional areas need. Desperately.

Yet most companies don’t have any human or tech structure in place to ensure those insights are consistently shared. Sure, Sales shares pipeline information, and Product shares roadmap a couple times a year. Marketing, in most organizations, shares the most actionable data - but do the other functional areas act on it? Not usually. So, how valuable is it, if it’s not compared to other functional area insights? Are any of these insights tied to strategic objectives?

And what about all the great offline, unstructured data Sales receives from prospects and customers, during phone calls, meetings, business dinners, hallway conversations? The same is true for the Success side of your organization.

How often does the Product group conduct focus groups? User groups? How often is Product assessing customer activity in the platform or app? How, structurally, are those insights shared with Sales, Success, and Marketing?

What if we could CAPTURE those insights - from each department - and compare them to the data that Marketing gathers? In addition to that, how powerful would it be to regularly be looking at Product usage in conjunction with the other functional area insights?

Might we see connections between what we’re hearing from customers and what we’re seeing in product?Yes.The question then becomes - what does it cost organizations who can’t find a way to capture these insights? What does it cost organizations when key functional areas aren’t regularly collaborating via a structured information feedback loop?Most importantly, what is the upside for organizations who are first to find a path forward to mine this untapped insight goldmine?In this book, I’ll explore what it means for organizations who currently aren’t using data holistically. You’ll hear (through my research) from companies who ‘sort of’ have a system for data and insights sharing, but can’t seem to get buy-in from all departments (and therein lies the problem!).And you’ll hear from many who just simply don’t understand the power behind data and insights sharing. Or who get it, but don’t have the right systems in place, human or otherwise, to make it happen company-wide.The happy news is, whatever the size of your organization and resources, there is absolutely work you can start doing TODAY to close these gaps, deepen your collaboration with your colleagues, and positively impact both the customer & employee experience, as well as the bottom line.

Whatever the size of your organization and resources, there is absolutely work you can start doing TODAY to close these gaps

Maureen Blandford, Founder, Serendipitus
@MaureenB2B

Read, Watch, Follow

I’m not the only one looking at insights sharing. And at the conclusion of each chapter, I’ll point to the individuals and organizations whose work inspires me. I’d encourage you to Read, Watch, Follow these innovators for deeper research and inspiration.

I’ll also be sharing with you some cool folks who are looking at the power of collaboration to drive material change and optimization across a wide breadth of initiatives.