Leveraging Customer Success to elevate your sales cycle

By Emily Nelsen , Embedded Presales and Professional Services Leader

The most successful Customer Success (CS) team I ever managed participated in every single deal (pre-sale) that came into the organization. Looking at a customer during a sales meeting and saying, “This is who is going to help you realize these business outcomes,” goes a very long way. In the almost eight years I was at that company, this approach brought us 100% retention and growth across every customer. I believe it was because we articulated how we were going to help our customers, then we did what we said.?

So many times a sale can lose the “how.” You might develop solid hypotheses, validate pain, attach it to business outcomes, but not often enough do we articulate exactly how the journey to success is going to feel and what is required from both parties to achieve it. Who better to articulate this than the person responsible for it?

Customer Success across tech organizations can look wildly different from company to company–from being proactive and growth oriented to being reactive and support oriented.? There can be justified reasons for different models, but for the purposes of this article, I am focusing on CS organizations looking to grow and develop their accounts for long term returns.

There are four main components of CS you must get right. When done well, these activities can build the trust and credibility required to retain and grow accounts.

1. Participation during the sales cycle or, at a minimum, a solid handoff process
2. Successful onboarding of a customer
3. Running effective QBRs and executive engagements
4. Preparing for and executing successful renewals

This article is the first of four parts - outlining what role customer success should play during a sale, and how you ensure a smooth handoff once closed.

There are a few things to think through when bringing CS into your sales cycle:

• What role should they play???
• When should we bring them in?
• How do you assign a CS person prior to a deal closing???

Similar to how you might qualify an opportunity prior to bringing in a solution consultant or sales leader, there are criteria that impact the effectiveness of CS during your sale. Some of the key criteria include:?

• Change management requirements
• Organizational readiness
• Scope
• Key targets of the deal

Enterprise sales rarely, if ever, result in quick and fast implementations or zero change management. They get complicated, require massive engagement, and, if done right, they attach to a fairly large KPI. This means the sale is not over when the ink is dry - it has, quite frankly, just begun. Your CS team, likely alongside implementation and engineering, now has to execute. When CS has been engaged throughout the sale, you’ve already overcome the first hurdle: visionary buy in. Do they buy into and believe in the solution we are providing the customer? You need your CS team to believe with conviction.

For some organizations, bringing in customer success during a sale might be challenging, whether that be due to how the org is structured, capacity, or other reasons. There are ways to classify the critical opportunities of when to bring in CS, and I have developed sales engagement criteria to identify those. Their role during the sale should revolve around the how.? It should be presented alongside examples of success achieved by other customers CS is serving. And it should absolutely include an approach unique to the customer you are with.?

When CS is part of the sales process, the handoff is naturally easier. But when not attainable, build a solid handoff process. It should not be on the customer to re-educate teams within the same organization. Ensure that historical conversations, business outcomes, and scope are clearly communicated internally. If this can’t be obtained easily through a CRM or other tool, then create an asset for sales to complete. Value also comes in providing details not directly related to your deal. Those can look like business nuances, player insight, and other critical information gathered during the sale that will help set up your CS organization to win. This means that your sales team (AE, SC, etc.) must be enabled, and even sometimes incentivized, on the requirements for handoff success.?

For my largest Enterprise deal, I held six internal handoff calls, each targeted at a specific area and scope. This was prior to an onsite, multi-day kickoff with the customer that included full scope review with each line of business. We showed up proving we were aligned and we understood what each business required. That might sound excessive, but when the services portion of a deal is 7-figures, take the time to do it right. If you are organized along the way during your sale, this part should be easier. Do the work upfront to reap the benefits downstream.

If your company is interested in learning about how to build or modify your CS organization to better serve your customers and growth targets, reach out to me at [email protected].?