The path to growth within the SaaS model goes through the existing customer base. It has been proven over the years as the data has been accumulated and analyzed. The SaaS model rewards those companies and teams who understand the importance of creating and harvesting healthy customer relationships. The subscription economy has created a need to deliver value ongoing because the customer has more power than ever to make a change when they find more attractive and competitive alternatives.
Within Sales and Customer Success organizations there is tremendous pressure to grow customer relationships and understandably so. Growth is necessary to progress and sustain the business as it marches towards market and category leadership and answers to key employee, customer and investor stakeholders. So what is the best way to grow a customer?
I believe we must earn the right to grow a customer. It sounds obvious when you think about it but this is not always the mindset. It is not uncommon to see two different approaches to customer growth.
- One approach is engrained in a very internal focused approach in which the driving forces are focused primarily on internal motivations. The pervasive conversation and mindset is grounded in self-interest. You will see decision making driven by internal politics or purely for the purpose of hitting a number.
- The second approach is more customer focused where the customer’s needs and experiences with the business are the priority. This mindset is grounded in having the best interests of the customer at heart. It is the constant consideration for making decisions that will ultimately benefit a specific customer and the customer base as a whole. This does not come easy, however. It requires discipline from all facets of the organization and primarily that of leadership and the c-suite. It is a focus on doing whatever it takes to make a customer successful across all business functions while being easy to do business with and casting a vision for improvement for a customer.
The question is, what is the best path to facilitating customer growth?
I believe there are two key dynamics that need to come together to create the proper environment for earning the opportunity to grow a customer account:
- A corporate culture that understands the value of a customer as an asset.
- A clear path and plan to achieving a customer’s desired outcomes.
1. Treating The Customer As An Asset
As the saying goes, “it starts at the top”. Culture is everything when it comes to the ways in which an organization views and supports the customer and the teams that support the customer base. If an organization’s CEO and C-Suite understand the importance of creating and delivering value for a customer then the organization can truly become customer centric. If the customer base is not treated as the corporate asset that it truly is then it becomes exceedingly difficult to empower customer facing teams to do what is in the best interest of the customer. The more that those in leadership and on the front lines are empowered to do what is best for the customer the quicker customers will be to reciprocate when presented with new opportunities to advance the terms of the relationship. Customer growth can be directly correlated to the way in which the customer is viewed within the organization’s culture.
2. Creating A Desired Outcome Path & Plan
The ultimate goal of customer success is to help the customer achieve their desired outcomes. If customers are achieving their desired outcomes, they will renew and grow over time — creating positive results for all stakeholders.
In SaaS there is a spectrum of sophistication relative to software and outcomes. Some software is pure self-service and outcomes are enabled purely within the product. Slack comes to mind here. Implementation is light weight and the outcome is easily achieved. In a more sophisticated, medium to high-touch scenario, services and customer success teams play a much bigger role in helping the customer outline and define how they are going to achieve their goals, known as the success plan in many instances. The business problems being addressed and solved are more complex and require more time, brainpower, effort, strategy and technology.
There is also a spectrum of sophistication when it comes to devising success plans. Some organizations have a well defined and strict process and methodology for creating and working plans with a customer and some struggle to stay organized and disciplined. In the medium to high-touch scenario it is becoming increasingly important that customer success teams define, document and track success plans with their customers. Scaling can be difficult but if done correctly the plans can create the path to creating a healthy relationship. The clearer the plan for outcome achievement, the clearer the path to improvement for the customer and growth for the account.
The customer must have a great understanding of how they are going to be successful and in a perfect world this starts very early in the lifecycle. Marketing organizations should be helping set clear expectations with messaging, positioning and packaging and Sales organizations should be painting a well understood vision for a specific customer as to how they are going to solve the customer’s problems. Customer Success teams then step in and manage the relationship ongoing. If they are able to execute the initial agreed upon plan and evolve and adapt that plan over time through the delivery of value then growth opportunities are created. Only after this is established will customers grow.
Customer growth is what we all want to see but we must be mindful of what it really takes to make it happen.
