Drive customer retention & expansion using account-based strategies

It's spring, 2020. We all know what happened.

But what also happened was an increased focus on driving customer retention as it became apparent early on that new logo acquisition was going to be hard.

Customer retention became the new acquisition.

Fast forward to spring 2023 and it feels like we're in the same boat (sans the pandemic of course).

So how can you use an account-based approach to not only retain your customers but expand to drive new revenue?

Churn Risk

Don't wait until the last minute. Identify these accounts at least one quarter in advance so you can start driving value.

Use the data at your disposal, whether it's user data or consumption data, create a cohort of accounts up for renewal with low usage.

From there, work with the account and customer success managers to align on how to attack these accounts to drive increased usage and renewal.

These are probably accounts who never fully adopted your product or solution. So a strategy may very well be communicating the basics once again, and/or reminding them of what life was like before your product or solution.

Bonus: use intent data to identify accounts researching your competitors and help your AMs and CSMs prioritize those for outreach.

Up-Sell

This is very similar to the process mentioned above.

Leverage the same data to identify those accounts who are super users or consumers of your product or solutions.

With that data you can create cohorts of these accounts based on the current products or solutions they're using, and which additional product or solution would make sense.

It should be important to note that it's not all on the data to drive the cohorts. Lean on your AMs and CSMs to help create these cohorts as they are the ones working with the accounts every day and have first-hand knowledge.

From there, align with your teams on the strategy, and begin communicating the benefits of expanding their usage.

Bonus: use intent data to see if any of these accounts are researching topics related to products or solutions you offer that they're not using yet.

The White Glove Treatment

These are your whales.

The big name accounts, the ones driving the majority of your revenue.

They deserve a full court press. Or 1:1 account-based.

Every key stakeholder has been identified. Strategic priorities for the upcoming year identified. Business success while using your product or solutions identified.

EVERYTHING.

Once that's in place it's the process of communicating the value your product or solutions has driven for their business. What was life like before you? What it's like now? How it can be even better in the future?

And it's not just the AMs, CSMs or marketing involved. Pull in the c-suite to have conversations, invite them to lunches, dinners or executive events. Use them to drive home the value of your partnership.

Customer retention and expansion is more important than ever. But you can't wait until the last minute, or the quarter of renewals to start driving value. Get ahead of the game by driving the right value at least one quarter in advance.