Why Customer Success is the New Sales
With new sales hard to come by in this market, it is more crucial than ever to maximize the potential of your existing customers. If your Customer Success (CS) team isn't driving renewals, expansions, upsells, and cross-sells, you might be missing out on significant revenue opportunities.
It's time to stop viewing CS as merely a support function and start embracing it as a vital sales role.
CS = Sales: Embracing the Reality
For years, Customer Success has been portrayed as a non-sales role, but this perception no longer holds true. Modern CS Managers handle renewals, expansions, upsells, cross-sells, and provide premium support services. They have quotas, variable compensation, and accelerators tied to Net Retention. In essence, they are engaged in sales activities.
The Benefits of Aligning CS with Sales
Recognizing CS as a sales function means recruiting, training, and structuring teams differently. Integrate your CS team with your sales team from the start. Train them in forecasting, asking good discovery questions, and managing their book of business rather than just offering product support.
Here’s how to instill a more sales-oriented mentality within your CS organization:
1. Align Goals and Incentives
Set Clear Revenue Targets: Establish revenue-related goals for the CS team, similar to those of the sales team, including upsell, cross-sell, and renewal targets.
Incentivize Performance: Implement performance-based incentives and bonuses tied to achieving these revenue goals. This can include commissions on upsells and bonuses for renewals.
2. Cross-Train with Sales Teams
Shared Training Sessions: Organize joint training sessions for CS and sales teams to learn from each other. This can help CS professionals understand sales techniques and vice versa.
Job Shadowing: Encourage job shadowing where CS team members spend time with sales teams to observe how they handle negotiations and close deals.
3. Leverage CRM and Data Analytics
Use CRM for Visibility: Utilize CRM systems to track customer interactions, deal stages, and health metrics, providing CS teams with the same level of visibility into customer data as the sales team.
Data-Driven Decisions: Implement analytics to monitor customer health scores, usage patterns, and renewal likelihood. This data can guide CS actions towards upselling and preventing churn.
4. Promote a Proactive Customer Engagement Approach
Regular Customer Check-ins: Schedule regular check-ins with customers to identify additional needs or opportunities for upselling before the contract renewal period.
Customer Feedback Loops: Establish feedback loops to gather customer insights regularly, which can highlight opportunities for additional services or products.
5. Foster a Collaborative Culture
Align Objectives: Ensure that the objectives of sales and CS teams are aligned. Both teams should work towards common goals such as customer satisfaction and revenue growth.
Team Collaboration: Encourage collaboration between sales and CS teams on strategic accounts. Jointly develop strategies for account growth and customer retention.
6. Continuous Education and Skill Development
Sales Training for CS: Provide sales training programs specifically designed for CS teams. This should cover negotiation skills, identifying upsell opportunities, and closing techniques.
Customer Success Certifications: Encourage certifications in customer success management that include modules on sales and revenue generation.
7. Implement a Structured Handoff Process
Seamless Handoffs: Develop a structured handoff process from sales to CS to ensure no information is lost and customers feel a seamless transition. This builds on the initial sales momentum and sets the stage for CS to continue the relationship with a sales mindset.
Detailed Handoff Documentation: Ensure detailed documentation is shared during handoffs, including customer goals, success metrics, and potential upsell opportunities.
What else we’re reading
The Surprising Impact of Meeting-Free Days : You’ll need an account to read the whole thing, but this excerpt speaks for itself. “When one no-meeting day per week was introduced, autonomy, communication, engagement, and satisfaction all improved, resulting in decreased micromanagement and stress, which caused productivity to rise.”
Business Wars : If you are in a strategic bind with competitors, always start by looking at what other companies have done when in your situation. Business wars is a great and free way to relive some of the great competitive wars of the past (and present) and learn from the results.
Forget the pecking order at work : We revisited this classic TED talk this past week. With all the layoffs and looking for anything to increase revenue, organizations are putting a lot on some chosen “super star” employees. Is there a better way? Our favorite quote: “It's the outstanding collaborators who enjoy the long careers, because bringing out the best in others is how they found the best in themselves.”
FAQs
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Integrating CS with sales helps align goals and incentives, encourages cross-training, and fosters a collaborative culture, ultimately driving revenue growth and improving customer satisfaction.
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CRM and data analytics provide CS teams with visibility into customer interactions and health metrics, enabling data-driven decisions to guide upselling and prevent churn.
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Regular customer check-ins and establishing customer feedback loops are effective strategies for identifying additional needs and opportunities for upselling before the contract renewal period.
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A structured handoff process ensures no information is lost and customers experience a seamless transition, maintaining the sales momentum and setting the stage for CS to continue the relationship with a sales mindset.
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Continuous education and skill development, including sales training and customer success certifications, equip CS teams with the necessary skills to identify upsell opportunities and effectively engage in sales activities.
