Building Bridges Is More Important Than Ever! CS must be about building coalitions – with customers AND internally – to drive the right outcomes and experiences. Internal coalitions are more important than ever, as a full 54% of  CS professionals report being remote full-time. You NEED Product, Services, Support, Sales, Marketing etc. to drive the right initiatives that drive the right improvements for customers. But you may find they aren’t listening to you. Why? Each department sees the world through their lens. Try telling someone what to do and they’ll push back. But when a critical m ..read more

The current mantra: “Customers churn when they don’t see the value. CS is all about ensuring the customer sees value.” But CSMs must refocus to add real value. [Note: This article appeared on LinkedIn and had outstanding participation from many noted CS industry experts.  Click here to read the post with comments on LinkedIn.] EVERY SALE in #B2B #SaaS results in change. Technology alone is not the answer. it’s ADOPTION — CHANGE — that customers must go through to acquire the value. In Customer-led Growth firms (CLG,) folks at the TOP drive this type of change. Everyone at your c ..read more

Would you like to meet with your key stakeholders in the account on a regular cadence to align on perceptions, future, and priorities? These business reviews are variously called JSPs, QBRs, or EBRs, but face a common set of issues: – Difficult to schedule as the customer feels they are a waste and even ghosts the requester – People don’t show up – The wrong agenda focused on the vendor’s plans and not on the customer’s situation/needs – CS folks send post-meeting satisfaction surveys and get little feedback MINDSET is key to the solution. Make it all about them ..read more

Marketing Must Catch Up With the New Realities: Leverage Marketing’s Win/Loss Framework to Accelerate Your Career Part 4 in the Series: Visualize Your Advocacy Rate The Right Metric Can Power The Right Outcomes “I don’t need any more customer-advocates,” said no one ever.  In the old world Marketing would have to settle for a handful of case stories, references, and testimonials that quickly become worn-out. In this new world there’s the opportunity to create your advocate army. So how are you measuring Advocacy Rate? And why isn’t this a C-level KPI? We’ve covered a lot of ground as this ..read more

Marketing Must Catch Up With the New Realities: Leverage Marketing’s Win/Loss Framework to Accelerate Your Career Part 3 in the Series: Expansion Selling Starts with Listening The first and second installments of this series discussed the importance of optimizing Marketing’s time and resources by paying attention to Net Revenue Retention (NRR) and customer lifetime value. Companies that show strong retention and expansion-sales (“land and expand”) are given higher valuation multiples. Driving shareholder value, whether you are public or privately held, rewards everyone. More specifically, we’v ..read more

Marketing Must Catch Up With the New Realities: Leverage Marketing’s Win/Loss Framework to Accelerate Your Career Part 3 in the Series: Listen For Growth The first and second installments of this series discussed the importance of optimizing Marketing’s time and resources by paying attention to Net Revenue Retention (NRR) and customer lifetime value. Companies that show strong retention and expansion-sales (“land and expand”) are given higher valuation multiples. Driving shareholder value, whether you are public or privately held, rewards everyone. More specifically, we’ve discussed the import ..read more

Catch Up With the New Realities: Leverage Marketing’s Win/Loss Framework to Accelerate Your Career Part 2 in the Series: Optimize Your Resources For Maximizing Lifetime Value Our first in this series about Marketing’s need to rise to the “subscription economy challenge” focused on creating shareholder value through a focus on NRR. Which would you rather show on your resume: (a) “Executed demand gen campaigns to increase sales-ready leads by 23%” OR (b) “Grew NRR by 18% year-over-year by building an ongoing Customer Engagement program that increased Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) by 14% through ..read more

Marketing Must Catch Up With the New Realities: Leverage Marketing’s Win/Loss Framework to Accelerate Your Career Part 1 in the Series: NRR Must Be A Marketing Imperative You are a modern marketer working in the subscription economy.  Whether your firm embraced recurring revenue from the start or if the transition is in progress, there is undoubtedly awareness that the old mantra of hunting for mega-deals is being (has been?) replaced with a land-and-expand strategy for customer acquisition.  What’s more, since customers are in the position to more easily switch providers, fewer are ..read more

You’ve invited a supplier to demo what is supposed to be the latest and greatest Customer Feedback or NPS software… What questions should you ask?  Here are 9 suggestions to drive a discussion with the provider that goes beyond feature-function to understand what they truly deliver: What are the measures of success you typically recommend? Why it matters: What outcomes should you expect with this vendor? Surely you have expectations around the results… you’re not bugging your customers to only acquire data in search of a problem, right?  We KNOW that surveys without action do more h ..read more

I don’t mean to be negative but I suspect you (and your colleagues) are guilty of driving churn. How many of these things are your company doing? Are you single-threading (i.e. generally working with one primary point of contact) in an account? And then, when that person (inevitably) changes jobs you’re scrambling… yes? Are you ignoring feedback by not closing the loop with what your customers are telling you in your NPS surveys? Do you know root-cause of why one stakeholder is a promoter and yet the person sitting right next to them is a detractor? Are you failing to help your customers with ..read more