Assess Your Company

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

• Utilize the tool and explain the results.
  
• Determine next steps after the assessments.
  

Assess Your Company

We designed a diagnostic tool to help you assess the degree to which your organization is customer- and market-driven, and the extent to which it performs the essential activities we’ve outlined. Take a moment to complete these five steps.

1. Get a Quick Read on Your Organization

Ask the following question, "How much is my organization like the one below?"

We rely on a guiding philosophy of helping customers be successful. We understand our customers and the market. Selling is important, but the emphasis is on developing products/services that "sell themselves."

You can use The Mountain of Success to see where your company is in this assessment. If the above assessment doesn't sound like your company, there's work to be done. If this does sound like your company, your company may be best in class. But this is only the start.

2. Find Your Opportunities for Improvement

Rate your organization in each of the areas below across a 1-5 scale.

Then, add up your scores. Produce a single aggregate score for Customer-Driven Activities, and a single aggregate score for Market-Driven Activities. These scores will be used in step 3 below.

Then, add up all the scores. This total score will be used in step 4.

3. Find Your Organization on the Matrix of Success

Using those aggregate scores of Customer-Driven Activities and Market-Driven Activities, you can place your company on the Matrix of Success. This is a matrix divided into four parts where the y-axis is a 0-15 score for Customer-Driven Activities. They x-axis is a 0-15 score for Market-Driven Activities. The goal is to have a high score on both to get your company to the top, furthest right of the matrix—TARGET, Best Chance of Success Over Long Term. 

If your company does well in Customer-Driven Activities, but not well in Market Driven-Activities, or vice versa, then you're in a CAUTION area. There's a need to focus on the area that's scoring the lowest. But make sure you don't over compensate and start to neglect the areas where you're doing well.

4. Rate How Your Organization is Doing Overall

Now, it's time to take your overall score and rate how your company is doing as a whole. Use the simple table below and input your score according to the target.

5. Next Steps to Help Your Organization

Looking for areas to improve? Take a look at:

• Collect and analyze information using tools like Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, and Marketing Cloud Engagement.
  
• Engage customers using community and social tools.
  
• Share information internally using tools like Chatter.
  
• Improve reports, dashboards, and analytics to generate insights for decision making and action.
  

Next Steps

Take a moment to reflect on your scores. Are there any patterns that emerge? For example, is your organization good at gathering information—but not so good at analyzing or sharing it?

If your scores are not good—don’t fret. It’s always a good idea to resist the temptation to judge the organization or others, or to attempt quick fixes. There are often contextual factors (that is, situational factors) that influence results that need to be understood. Consider this exercise to be an opportunity to find out more about your company.

For example, it’s often a good idea to review the results with an appropriate manager or executive, then write down the results of your conversation to help organize your thoughts. This step is highly recommended since the results of the diagnostic tool likely only include your own perceptions, and some of the activities might be happening at your organization, but are not visible (for example, the executive team performs the activities at retreats).