RevRev Ep. 1 – Kevin Siminski

October 15, 2020 | Written by Dave Duke

In this episode of Revenue Revolutionaries, hear Kevin Siminski, CCO at Salesforce Marketing Cloud, share his perspective on the power of a beginner’s mindset, building proactive customer programs, and the leverage he’s gained by embracing teaching. Listen to or watch the full episode below.

Episode Key Takeaways

1. Customers matter! – Kevin explains that it’s very easy to become disconnected from customers. It’s critical to recognize that customers see the same things that internal engineering teams are seeing when they are looking at the ‘green, yellow, and red lights’. (i.e. internal dashboards). We must talk to customers to put ourselves in their shoes.

2. Connecting engineering teams to customers produces results – The raw feed that is created by connecting an engineering team directly to customers is so important to ensure the customer’s perspective is understood. As a leader, it’s important to reduce or remove the ‘game of telephone’ that can be created by silos.

3. A beginner’s mindset creates clarity – In a large organization is very easy to get lost in the size of the company. A beginner’s mindset is necessary to ensure the customer stays top of mind and understood. There are always ways to improve and a beginner’s mindset can be a catalyst for regaining a focus on the customer’s needs.

4. The CCO role and value delivery are grounded in listening – Kevin explains the importance of listening to customers and being the voice of the customer internally to ensure the customer’s voice doesn’t get lost. He is always looking for opportunities to build trust with customers and he articulates how listening is foundational to building trust with customers. Customers can get into difficult situations and Kevin is always looking for opportunities to develop programs that put his team in a position to be responsive to customers and be proactive to prevent issues. At the end of the day, data is king!

5. Customer stories unlock internal alignment – When customer stories are shared internally to cross-functional stakeholders it is much easier to create internal alignment around customer needs and use cases. Leverage customer stories to create a consistent drumbeat that represents their voice.

Check out additional episodes of Revenue Revolutionaries here.