What actually makes growth create more growth?
This spring, I wrote a series about the Commercial Engine.
The starting point was quite simple:
Customers have changed the way they buy. So we need to change the way we create growth.
Not Marketing on its own.
Not Sales on its own.
Not Product on its own.
And not Customer Success on its own.
But as one commercial engine, working around the same customer journey and the same commercial goals.
In the last post, I tried to make that quite practical.
Shared customer data. One customer journey. Common metrics.
I also suggested small cross-functional Revenue Pods, with people from Marketing, Sales, Product and Customer Success working towards the same outcome.
I’ve kept thinking about that since.
Because I think there is a bigger question behind all of this:
What actually makes growth create more growth?
Not just how we generate more demand, improve conversion or increase retention.
But what happens between those things.
A strong brand makes Sales’ job easier.
What Sales learns from customers can help Product make better decisions.
A better product creates more value for customers.
Customers who get real value stay longer, buy more and recommend us.
And that makes it easier to win the next customer.
None of this is particularly revolutionary. We know these things are connected.
But I’m not sure we always run our companies as if they are.
Because if you follow the chain, something interesting happens.
Marketing doesn’t just create demand. It can make Sales more effective.
Sales doesn’t just close business. What Sales learns can make both Marketing and Product better.
Product doesn’t just deliver what was sold. A better product can improve retention, expansion and advocacy.
And Customer Success doesn’t just retain customers. Great customer experiences can create new demand.
So growth isn’t really a sequence of separate activities.
It’s a system.
And when the system works well, the output from one part becomes input into another.
The next cycle starts from a stronger position than the one before.
That, to me, is where growth starts to create more growth.
But do we actually organise for that?
This is the part I’ve been thinking about.
We still tend to organise Marketing, Sales, Product and Customer Success as separate functions.
And there are good reasons for that.
We need specialist competence. We need leadership. People need colleagues they can learn from. And someone still needs to worry about the marketing budget. 🙂
I’m not suggesting we get rid of functions.
But I keep coming back to one thing:
If growth is actually created between these functions, is that also where more of the work should happen?
Take something as basic as acquiring new customers.
Is that a Marketing problem?
A Sales problem?
A Product problem?
In reality, probably none of them on their own.
The same is true if the challenge is to grow existing customers, enter a new market, launch a new product or improve retention.
These are business problems. And solving them usually requires people from several parts of the company.
That makes me wonder whether we should spend less time asking:
“What should Marketing do?”
“What should Sales do?”
“What should Product do?”
And start more often with:
“What problem are we trying to solve and who do we need around the table to solve it?”
It sounds like a small shift.
I don’t think it is.
And then there’s AI
There’s another reason I think this discussion is becoming more interesting.
AI can already do more of the work that used to sit within our functions.
Customers can research more on their own. Content can be produced faster. Data can be analysed differently. Sales can automate parts of prospecting and preparation. Customer Success can automate parts of support and communication.
I don’t think the interesting question is which jobs AI will “take”.
I’m much more interested in what becomes more valuable when AI can do more.
Where does human judgement matter?
Where do relationships matter?
Where does deep customer understanding matter?
And where do we need people from different disciplines to solve something together rather than simply becoming more efficient within their own function?
I don’t have a neat answer to that yet.
But I think it’s a much more useful question.
So where does that leave the Commercial Engine?
I still believe in the basic idea I wrote about this spring.
Marketing, Sales, Product and Customer Success need to work around the same customer journey and the same commercial goals.
But I think I stopped one step too early.
Getting the functions to work better together is important.
The more interesting question may be what happens when we start looking at growth itself as the system and organise, lead and measure accordingly.
That’s what I want to explore in this series.
I don’t have a new model with four boxes and a clever acronym. 😉
And I don't have all the answers. Rather some questions.
But I do have a few hypotheses.
And I’ll start with this one:
If growth is cross-functional, why do we still organise the work around functions?
That’s next.
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