The SaaS Sales Method for Customer Success & Account Managers: How to Grow Customers (Sales Blueprints Book 6)

83 Pages·2018·2.21 MB·English

by  Dominique Levin & Jacco van der Kooij & Winning by Design

Copyright ©2018. Published by Winning By Design LLC, a Delaware company
All rights reserved as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976.
No part of this book may be reproduced, used or distributed in any form or by
any means, or stored in a database or archive, without the expressed written
consent of the publisher.
The contents of this book were created in the United States of America.
Edited by Fernando Pizarro and Dan Smith
Revision 5.0
Winning by Design LLC
San Francisco, California
United States of America
For more information, visit www.winningbydesign.com
More from Winning by Design The
SaaS Sales Method for Customer
Success & Account Managers: How
to Grow Customers is part of
Winning by Design’s Sales
Blueprints series. Other books in
the series include: The SaaS Sales
Method: The Science and Process of
Sales
Blueprints for a SaaS Sales Organization: How to Design, Build and Scale a
Customer-Centric Sales Organization The SaaS Sales Method Fundamentals:
How to Have Customer Conversations
The SaaS Sales Method for Sales Development Representatives: How to
Prospect for Customers The SaaS Sales Method for Account Executives: How to
Win Customers
Contents
CUSTOMER SUCCESS: GROWING THE
BUSINESS TOGETHER
1 ONBOARDING
1.1 HANDOFF
1.2 ONBOARDING
2 USE
2.1 ACHIEVING FIRST VALUE
2.2 USAGE AND RECURRING VALUE
2.3 CUSTOMER CONTACT CADENCE
2.4 CUSTOMER HEALTH SCORE
2.5 HANDLING FRUSTRATION - THE GOLDEN
SEQUENCE
3 EXPANSION
3.1 BLUEPRINT OF AN IMPACT REVIEW
3.2 ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT
3.3 ORGANIZATIONAL SELLING
CONCLUSION
SUMMARY: KEYCHARTS
ABOUT WINNING BY DESIGN
CUSTOMER SUCCESS:
GROWING THE BUSINESS
TOGETHER
The real measure of customer success isn’t landing more and more customers. It
isn’t even keeping those customers through improved retention efforts. The best
companies are able to keep their customer churn below 5 percent per year, which
only comes from focusing on creating Impact for the customer across the entire
customer lifecycle. Despite this, retaining customers is not the focus of the best
companies.
Static customers are no longer good enough. The top companies grow
customers along a logically orchestrated customer journey, leading to
positive Net Revenue Retention (NRR).
Companies with a customer success operating model often have Net Revenue
Retention (NRR) – defined as expansion revenue minus revenue churn in a given
time frame for your existing customer base – that is greater than 130 percent.
Figure 1. The SaaS Sales Method - A journey of experiences, shows how
expanding revenue from existing customers has become more important than
ever before Selling has become a team sport. Customer success has become a
team sport as well. Everybody, from marketing, to sales, to post-sales personnel,
is responsible for customer success. If you sold to a bad-fit customer, the
customer will not be successful. If you don’t have a plan to impact the
customer will not be successful. If you don’t have a plan to impact the
customer’s business over the next year, the customer will not be successful.
Seneca famously said, “if you don’t know where you’re going, no wind is
favorable.” So it is with customers – you need a plan, which is the whole point of
The SaaS Sales Method.
Figure 2. Outline of the key customer success activities Key processes during the
growth phase of a customer journey are:
Preboarding: In some situations, it might help to introduce your
customer success team even before the customer has committed to your
solution.
Handoff: In this meeting, sales will introduce the customer success
team to the client. For larger clients, there will be an internal pre-handoff
meeting in which sales coordinates with other functions, including
customer success, product, and marketing as appropriate.
Orchestration and technical kickoff: Whereas most companies
organize a technical kickoff, many forget a business orchestration
meeting in which you (re-)affirm a client’s one-year goals.
Delivering value: Ultimately, a client bought your solution for a reason.
If the customer isn’t seeing results, renewal and expansion are highly
unlikely.
Monitor and respond: It is not usually necessary to meet your client
frequently. However, it is always necessary to monitor the health of a
customer and to respond to signals, good and bad.
Review results: Not too long before your client’s renewal or expansion
conversation, it is important to remind them of the results you have been
able to achieve based on the goals set during the orchestration meeting.
Renew and expand: If orchestration goes well, renewal and expansion
conversations flow very naturally out of your mutual interest in growing
the customer’s business together.
Since impact and Critical Event play such important role in The Saas Sales
Method, we will review our SPICED framework here. More details can be
found in The SaaS Sales Method for Sales Development Representatives: How to
Prospect for Customers, and The SaaS Sales Method Fundamentals: How to
Have Customer Conversations.
The entire customer-facing team should be made aware of the customer’s
situation. You might recognize the topics covered in the meeting from the
SPICED framework we developed in The SaaS Sales Method Fundamentals:
How to Have Customer Conversations.
Situation Any facts or circumstances relevant to your deployment at this
particular customer.
Pain The issue(s) that brought the customer your way in the first
place.
Impact The ways in which you can improve the customer’s business.
Critical Any particular deadline to achieve impact.
Event
Decision Any considerations that made the customer choose your solution
Criteria over others.
IMPACT DEFINED