Why your customers avoid talking to you - and how to change that

There is a reason that your customers avoid talking to you. It's because you most likely don't spend time talking about things that they care about. Likely you're spending most of your time talking about things YOU care about. Things like how much a customer uses your product or service.

Understanding what a customer cares about can be hard to figure out, mostly because the things that they are measuring or looking at regularly aren't the things you're looking at. All you have is metrics inside your business or your platform that show how much a customer uses your product. And here is the core problem: customers don't buy your product to use it (thanks Nick Mehta and Dan Steinman )- they buy and pay for it to solve a problem. If you want to have conversations that are meaningful to them,? the "Value Realization" (or 'VR') framework is a tool you need.

The VR framework organizes usage metrics in a way that transforms them into something relevant to a customer, as it illustrates a journey from usage at the start, to results at the end. Picture a pyramid built from 4 blocks - the bottom two blocks are metrics that you have in your business about how your customers use your product or service. The top two blocks are the metrics that a customer has about the value they are striving for. Let's call each block of the pyramid "Level 1 - 4 Metrics" with 1 on the bottom, and 4 on top. Let's build out this pyramid together, and we'll start by unpacking what is included in Level 1 and Level 2 metrics.

Level 1 Metrics: At the foundation of your Value Realization (VR) framework, you need to illustrate to a customer that the product or service you offer is being used. While a customer doesn't buy a product to use it, if they don't use it at all, there is simply no way that they can get value from it. Level 1 metrics will? reflect the most basic levels of activity in your system. Software log-ins, number of entries into the platform, or the number of service sessions booked are all examples that could apply. The goal here is to communicate to a customer that there is some level of adoption, and allow you to show trends in where adoption/use is higher or lower across different groups in their business.

Level 2 Metrics: Once you've established your foundation, you're going to gather data about how effectively a customer is using your product or service. At Level 2, you're looking to gather metrics that reflect the ENGAGEMENT a customer has with what you offer, which could be things like adoption of advanced features, feedback (like NPS), or number of repeat service sessions booked. These metrics reflect impact that is happening as a result of usage, and should allow you to answer a question like 'is the product being used well'?

THE GAP: Once you have YOUR metrics organized in this way, you can turn your sights to the metrics that your customers are tracking about what is happening in THEIR business. These metrics are ones that are not immediately accessible to you as they typically live outside of your systems. As a result measuring customer outcomes tends to stop at Level 2 - and your customers don't care about Level 1 and Level 2 metrics. This is where the VR framework really gets to work.

These customer metrics, Level 3 and Level 4 will be stacked on top of the foundation that you build with Level 1 and 2, and will answer the following questions:

• Level 3: How is using the product or service changing the the environment your customer works in?
• Level 4: What are the results that your customer is going to achieve in their business?

Level 3 Metrics: Here, you are looking for signals that the way people are operating, or the way a customer's business operates has changed in some way after using your product or service. Examples would be things like shorter sales calls, a change in how people enter information into a system, or momentum building for the start of a new program or initiative. These data points are not the outcomes that a customer is looking to achieve, but are signals that you or your customer can point to that indicate change is happening in their business.

Level 4 Metrics: Finally, we reach the top, and here, you are looking for evidence of achievement of value. Because 'value' means different things depending on the customer, the data here can range, but some examples could include an increase in sales volume, clean data in a system, or the successful launch of a new program or product.

For the VR frame to work, 'value' must be meaningful to the leader who is the sponsor for your product or service. Ideally, the metric here is meaningful in an objective sense to other stakeholders across the business as well, as realizing value in one business unit opens the door to expansion to others, repeat business, or even new business sales as a result of this 'customer success story'.

An Example: An example will be helpful to illustrate how this process works, so I'll draw on a recent conversation in applying this framework conceptually with Allan Wille , co-founder and CEO of Klipfolio , a business intelligence platform. For them, 'Value Realized' for a customer could be the ability to make decisions with clear insights from data (among other things). As we apply the framework as an example, here are questions that we are looking to answer with data with each block on the value pyramid:

• Level 1 (Adoption/Usage) - Has a customer set up data feeds into the tool? Have they activated their licensed users?What these metrics tell you: The customer has started to use the product and is on a path to value.
• Level 2 (Engagement with Product) - Is the customer building custom reports or using templates? Are they accessing our 'help' and training materials to get to know how to use the platform better?What these metrics tell you: The customer is adopting the tool, and is looking to grow how they use the platform.
• Level 3 (Applying what is being learned) - Are reports getting embedded in other systems? Are reports becoming part of a 'standard' dashboard or Board Materials? What these metrics tell you: A customer is changing the way they operate as a result of using your platform.
• Level 4 (Value Realized) - Has the customer been able to make critical decisions from data that was previously invisible? Have they been able to increase efficiency, or eliminate other platforms as a result of setting up Klipfolio?What these metrics tell you: A customer has achieved Value Realization from the use of your product or service.

At the start, it is not necessarily clear that 'setting up a data feed' is directly connected to the outcome of 'making critical business decisions'. There is a journey to take, and each block on the value pyramid takes us a step closer to the outcome. Once we put these steps together the path becomes more clear.

So...why do your customers avoid talking to you? Because you're either talking about Level 1 or Level 2 topics or metrics, OR about Level 4 metrics without making the connection explicit about HOW you actually HELP them.? Revenue leadership done right is when you can build a customer VALUE REALIZATION flywheel, connecting the USE of your product to the VALUE your customers are trying to realize. And if you've done it once, there is no reason that you can't apply the framework elsewhere, and do it again, and again.

Take this framework and give it a shot - it REALLY works, whether you're in Customer Success, Marketing, or new business Sales. If you like the idea but aren't sure where to start, give me a shout out here on LinkedIn and let's talk more about it.