This was presented at SalesHacker Conference in San Francisco on 11/6/2014 by Lincoln Murphy.
Customer Success as a Growth Engine: Ideal Customers, Advocates, and Upsells.
The most successful Enterprise SaaS companies know that growing revenue only through new customer acquisition is the less efficient way to scale. Rather, they understand that growing revenue within your existing customer base - through up-sells, cross-sells, and expanded use - is the most profitable way to scale.
In fact, Enterprise SaaS companies that grow revenue - and company valuation - by expanding revenue within their existing customer base also know the key to making this work is to focus on - and operationalize - Customer Success.
18. METHODOLOGY
1. Determine the Situation youâre Solving For
2. Get access to your Customer Data
3. Find the Customers that Match your Situational Criteria
4. Append Data for those customers (Demo, Tech, etc.)
5. Look for common / shared characteristics
6. Find new customers matching those characteristics
7. Profit!
19. FIND YOUR MOST SUCCESSFUL
CUSTOMERS... AND GO GET MORE
JUST LIKE THEM
20. SURFACE YOUR MOST SUCCESSFUL CUSTOMERS
⢠You could pull together:
⢠average Net Promoter Score (NPS) over time
⢠Sales cycle length
⢠Time to first value
⢠On-boarding/implementation milestones and timing
⢠Customer Support data
⢠Get your Account Managers to apply a âhealthâ score â based
on their gut â to each of the customers they manage
⢠Gainsight makes this easy ď§ donât be afraid to pitch
your product!
21. FIND YOUR MOST EFFICIENTLY
ACQUIRED CUSTOMERS⌠AND GO
GET MORE JUST LIKE THEM
22. FIND YOUR MOST EFFICIENTLY ACQUIRED CUSTOMERS
⢠Look for customers:
⢠That had a short sales cycle
⢠Efficient (Fully-loaded) Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
⢠Have a high Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)
⢠Agreed to long-term contracts
⢠Frequently Increase usage/buy add-ons/etc.
⢠Have a low cost to support
⢠Or all of the above?
⢠What are the patterns? What are the characteristics of
those customers?
23. IDENTIFY CUSTOMERS THAT
EXPANDED THEIR USE OF YOUR
PRODUCT⌠AND GO GET MORE
JUST LIKE THEM
24. IDENTIFY CUSTOMERS THAT EXPANDED USE
⢠Intra-Company Virality
⢠List companies that have expanded their use over their
lifetime with your company.
⢠Who did you initially sell to? What dept/persona?
⢠When it comes to expansion potential, that potential is
only realized when the customers have achieved
success... when their customer health score is high.
⢠No Customer Success⌠No Expansion Revenue. Period.
25. FIND YOUR CUSTOMERS THAT ARE
YOUR BIGGEST ADVOCATESâŚ
AND GO GET MORE JUST LIKE
THEM
26. FIND YOUR BIGGEST CUSTOMER ADVOCATES
⢠Inter-Company Virality
⢠Chasing logos is fine... If they bring you more logos!
⢠Look for customers that have:
⢠Referred new customers (in-product, WOM, etc.)
⢠Have given testimonials
⢠Have talked to prospects on your behalf
⢠Have spoken at your events
⢠Participated in case studies with you
⢠If not for you, have they done it for others?
29. UPSELL OPPORTUNITIES
1. Be Clear On What Success Means for your Customer
2. Set Goals With Your Customers
3. Benchmark Where Your Customers Start
4. Mention Upsells Early In Their Lifecycle
5. Identify Success Milestones For Upsell
6. Improve Time to First Value and Upsell Faster
7. Ask for the Sale at the Appropriate time