During advertising’s creative revolution, agencies were in search of Big Ideas to help their clients gain awareness in the marketplace and differentiate from the competition.
Books such as A Technique for Producing Ideas by James Webb Young were studied by advertising greats like Bill Bernbach and David Ogilvy to put a process to idea generation.
Part of an agency’s reputation was built on the creative ideas they could bring their customers.
Customer Success Managers could have a similar philosophy. What are some ways we can bring Big Ideas to our customers?
- Product Use Cases: We can study our existing product use cases and have a library of ideas ready to pitch. We can also use our knowledge to brainstorm new use cases for our client’s situation.
- Content Resources: Content marketing is a great resource for helping customers solve problems. CSMs can find ideas for our customers by leveraging the expertise of our content marketing teams.
- Brainstorm with Colleagues: Our colleagues have likely worked with clients on number of creative solutions. We can get idea inspiration brainstorming with our coworkers in CS, Sales, Product and beyond.
- Association: A popular theme in innovation is applying an idea from one field to another as noted in The Innovators DNA. For example, a process like learning to play an instrument or sport could give us clues on how we can help our customer with change management.
- Seek inspiration: Steve Jobs famously browsed Cuisnart appliances for design inspiration for Apple. What inspiration can we draw from our daily life to develop inspiring ideas for clients?
Customer Success Managers can use our unique relationship with the customer to provide Big Ideas. We can be a creative solution to our customers challenges.