Injecting Entrepreneurial Customer Retention Mojo into the IIoT

How do you inject entrepreneurial customer retention mojo into industrial Internet of Things environments?

If you are part of engineering, IT and manufacturing culture, you figure customer retention is up to the customer service folks, post-sale. As a result, how you design, develop, implement and serve up solutions is missing a dash of all-important entrepreneurial customer retention mojo.

You and your IIoT organization have a unique opportunity. Make the decision to be more creative and entrepreneurial in how you work, communicate, ideate and innovate. Each time you work cross-functionally across your own organization. Every chance you get to collaborate with your clients’ teams.

Why? Because every time you collaborate with each other and with clients, your actions impact whether that customer is inclined to continue doing business with you. That’s customer retention in my IIoT Playbook.

IIoT project execution can be lengthy. Also, contracts can span years. As a result, an organization gains the impression they have room to “breathe.”

Alternatively, consider the impact you and your teams make on customer retention during this span of time.

Continuously inject solid doses of entrepreneurship into how you execute your own job functionality. Over time, team effort aggregates. Clients feel the love, attention and your organization’s consistently-executed interest in retaining their business.

The goal? Executing a rock-solid IIoT customer retention strategy throughout the duration of each client relationship.

Entrepreneurial customer retention mojo keeps perspective fresh.

Even in fast-paced IIoT work environments, team interactions easily become rote, stale and “old.” Same people, projects, quality of interactions. You know the feeling.

How about making meetings more entrepreneurial? Instead of the same old agenda and reporting, actually schedule time to ask “What if?” questions. During the course of project design and execution, what aspects make team members think more creatively about that project and, potentially, other projects?

You will find that adding a dash of entrepreneurial mindset into the workday rekindles curiosity, open-mindedness and experimental mindset. The team unearths those hallmarks of the technical and engineering professions which motivated them to work for IIoT companies.

As you re-engage each other, differently, teams awaken the passion, creativity and mindset that creates tangible value for customers.

Learn to articulate how entrepreneurial customer retention mojo contributes to value creation.

Why keep all the entrepreneurial fun to yourselves? How about learning to articulate the value you bring to customers’ tables? Start by walking the value talk throughout your own organization.

IIoT work environments are characterized by cross-functional, collaborative teams. We know that executing this strategy is easier said than done. After all, IIoT manufacturing ecosystems include a variety of people who were not necessarily hired by executing a comprehensive IIoT human capital strategy.

Never mind.

Do what you can, with whom you can. Then capture, articulate and walk the talk. Here’s why.

Technical and engineering professionals have some of their finest entrepreneurial moments buried “on the other side” of an organization. Project input-throughput-output falls under the domain of operations, manufacturing, engineering, IT, you get it.

Where are the business, sales, marketing and finance folks in your daily, monthly, quarterly and annual interactions?

When you communicate how you’ve re-injected entrepreneurial mindset into “what you’ve designed,” that’s when collaborative magic happens across the enterprise.

Engage across the organization to inject entrepreneurial customer retention mojo into the IIoT.

Here’s the daunting part. And it’s the most entrepreneurial, as well.

As you collaborate with colleagues to create engineering and software outcomes, discuss how you might communicate your insights to “those” business types. The ones who live on the other side of the organization.

What do you engineering, IT and Ops folks know that the sales, marketing, finance and business folks wish they knew?

The real power of executing a rock-solid IIoT customer retention strategy is when you translate across the sales-engineering interface®. And it’s a two-way street.

First of all, learning about sales, marketing and business development strategy before you design creates more productive and profitable insight. As a result, your technical team understands why that sale was made, in the first place. Also, you comprehend why that client chose to do business with your organization over all other competitors.

Finally, the biz types gain greater confidence in leveraging your teams’ expertise in creating enduring business outcomes.

Do you currently inject entrepreneurial customer retention mojo into “what you do” for your organization? Want to learn how?

Take the next steps.

1. Subscribe to the Sales Aerobics for Engineers® Blog via the red Never Miss An Article box . Receive new posts on customer retention, tech workforce hiring strategy and team collaboration.
2. Download free resources, including White Papers, Study Guides, and Interviews to catalyze your organization’s strategy for retaining customers.
3. Are you an Owner, CEO, VP, decision maker or manager? Book a brief consultation with Babette at in**@sa***********************.com . What are you waiting for?

Babette Ten Haken writes, speaks, consults and coaches about collaborative value creation for customer success and customer retention. She connects the dots between strategy and execution. She works across leadership, human capital / HR and technical/IT/engineering teams within the industrial Internet of Things ecosystem. Her focus? Creating enduring business outcomes. Babette’s playbook of technical / non-technical collaboration hacks, Do YOU Mean Business? is available on Amazon. Visit the Free Resources section of her website for more tools.

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