How would you react if your finance team told one of your customer facing sales or support team members the following: "We can't accept money from someone who isn't a customer". Would your jaw just hit the floor?
When something like this is coming from your finance or accounting department to your customer and prospect facing team, you know it is probably time to hit pause, and take a long hard look at what is going on. A statement like this means that your company is no longer focused on what makes your customer successful and that the supporting organizational teams are now focused on your own internal processes.
This is a real-life case study. The situation that caused this was someone in a company was trying to charge for an educational service. The educational service in this case was usually only offered to a customer who had already bought the product. In this situation, a prospect, who had not bought a product yet, was willing to pay for education as a "trial" to see if they would like working with the company. But accounting wouldn't let it happen. And to be fair, the system they were using, probably would not let it happen.
There are 4 really important lessons that we can learn here.
1) Your prospects are going to find a way to "Try" you out - whether you have a formal "trial" program or not. Its what they want to do in the buying process. So you must figure out a way that they can try you, your product, your service out in an orderly, productive, measured manner.
2) You must have flexible systems - ones that support both your current workflows, and those you haven't yet envisioned. The best systems are a combination of technology and people processes, so that when exceptions, like the above, come up, there is a people process that allows you to go outside the standard, 95% of the time, way we do things.
3) If you do not have a clear "Why" - why you are in business; If you don't have a clear mission as to who you serve and why; If your common goal for all to strive for is fuzzy, you are going to have department and teams that are consistently mis-aligned and often working at cross-purposes.
4) You must have your finance, operation and legal teams - from leadership on down - understand and be able to clearly articulate how they support the why of the company and the results you are striving to get for your customer. These teams have incredibly important internal purposes: Legal - to protect the company, accounting/finance - to protect your financial health and operations - to make sure stuff gets done. But these teams generally don't create value unto themselves and if they aren't focused on helping to create value for your customer, then the net result is that they are taking value away.
Peter Drucker said Marketing and business development is one of the two core things EVERY company does. (the other is innovation). Systems and people are there to support your company strategy, not get in the way of it. If your strategy is clear, and your systems are keeping prospects from paying you, its time to look at the roadblocks in a new way. Give us a call, we can help.
