WHAT I KNOW: GOAL Map, Don’t Journey Map—Part 1

Posted on May 25, 2022

Hi everybody, this is Jeanne Bliss. And what I know is that GOAL mapping, not journey mapping will lead you to better results, and to longer term sustainability to earn admirable growth.

Now, I know I’m shaking some trees here, but the notion of journey mapping—think about it. And I’ve done this myself. Again, this is based on this 35 years of initially thinking about journey mapping.

Why Journey Maps Fall Short

The challenge with journey mapping is that we made it be what we want to get from the customer. Think about your own journey map:  Often, it’s the stages of your sales pipeline, and then the things after your sales pipeline that you want to achieve with customers to get more growth from them. So: attract, convert upsell, cross sell, increase growth, renewal, retention, advocacy. That’s a lot of journey maps we see out there.

But the challenge with that is that it doesn’t change culture. It also will push you into silo-based actions, which is not what we need to fundamentally shift how we link together to improve customers lives. Okay, you ready?

GOAL Map: What Does Your Customer Want to Achieve?

A GOAL map is starting with the goals your customer wants to achieve, or needs to achieve, because they put their trust and their money in your pocket. So for example: an idea in a GOAL map might be: make me smarter, helped me understand this challenge, I’m going through, guide me to the best solution for my family, work with me and improve my life as my conditions change. And on and on and on.

That happened to be a goal map we were working on with an insurance company.

The fundamental thing to think about in a goal map is that it has to also shake the tree of what you measure. Because in a journey map, we can stay the status quo and measure the processes and those KPIs that are internally driven.

KPIs That Make a Difference

Let me give you a story about work we did with Bombardier Aerospace, when we were working with them. So we were working with a very smart and great sales and service organization. And they said, “Let’s build the sales and service journey map.” Now this is the part of Bombardier that was selling private planes to high wealth individuals. And I noodged him a little bit—as my Italian grandmother would say—and said to them, “Do these customers of yours really want to have a sales and service experience? They do not. They want to have and they continue to want to have a ‘keep me flying’ experience.”

A “keep me flying” experience means make sure that the planes and your people and your service, and yes, your parts are in the right place so I’m in the air when I want to be. That also, as a mission glues together your pilots, your planning people, your parts and service, your technicians, your concierge, your communication, your website to drive an experience that’s about measuring what your customer cares about.

And it pushes on new KPIs, KPIs which will transition and transform your company. These new KPIs are: how many days am I in the air when I want to be? How many days am I on the ground when I don’t want to be? And how quickly you get that customer back up in the air?

By measuring the things that your customer cares about, it’s going to push on how you do work. It’s going to give you angst. It’s going to force you to rethink what you measure, but it must be what leaders say, every month or week or quarter. How many customers did we keep up in the air? And so what I want you to think about is what’s your version of the “keep me flying” metric?And what are the customer goals that will drive you to unite?

Now this is part one of this goal mapping “What I Know session.” I’m going to put more detail in in the next one.

Until then, what I know is that goal mapping is a rethinking of how you unite your organization and how to lead for growth and behavior that’s admirable. For more, go to customer bliss.com/WhatIKnow.

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