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Customer-Led Growth Best Practices · Sales Pipeline Radio

• 0:00
  Matt: All right.
• 0:01
  Welcome everybody to another episode of sales pipeline radio.
• 0:04
  I'm your host, Matt Heinz.
• 0:05
  Excited to have you here for an awesome new edition.
• 0:09
  If you are listening and watching on demand, thank you very much
• 0:12
  for downloading, for subscribing.
• 0:15
  If you like what you hear today, if you like this content, this format,
• 0:18
  we got a lot more , about 360 Sales Pipeline Radio over the years, every
• 0:22
  episode on demand past, present, and future at salespipelinearadio.com.
• 0:26
  Very excited today to cover a topic that we have been
• 0:29
  thinking a lot about this year.
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  And very excited to have someone I consider the, one of the preeminent
• 0:34
  experts in customer led growth.
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  Julie Persofsky.
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  Julie is an advisor to SaaS companies worldwide, helping them achieve
• 0:43
  exponential growth and really excited to have her joining us live
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  from Whistler, BC, Canada today.
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  Julie, how are you doing?
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  I'm doing great.
• 0:52
  Thank you so much good to be here.
• 0:54
  I'm excited.
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  We are experiencing a cacophony of something led growth initiatives, right?
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  There's, there's event led, there's partner led, there's all this and that.
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  So on one hand, I'm like, customer led just adds the mix.
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  However, I'm really excited to see so many companies lean in on the
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  customer experience and thinking of the customers as a conduit and accelerant of
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  revenue, not just in retained revenue, but also net new revenue as well.
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  So when we've used the phrase, whether it's customers that led us to growth or
• 1:26
  whatever, what does that mean to you?
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  What are we talking?
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  Right.
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  So at the end of the day, you have a pool of customers that already use you,
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  already have a budget for you already have hopefully achieved impact from your
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  product or service and they essentially are a pipeline of massive revenue
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  potential through upsell cross sell.
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  Also making sure that you retain that business is huge.
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  And then the other component is leveraging your customers for advocacy
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  to help you generate new leads, right?
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  So there's referrals, there's customer stories, there's references, and so all
• 2:04
  of that, leveraging your customer base to fuel your next stage of growth is really
• 2:10
  where customer led growth comes from.
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  A lot of companies focus almost their entire marketing effort on
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  net new growth on acquisition.
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  And if you're an early stage company, maybe you don't have a big customer
• 2:23
  base and that's a great place to start.
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  However, many of those companies as they mature, continue to spend the
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  majority of their time, budget, and efforts on acquisition, and they got
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  maybe a newsletter and an 800 number for their customers, how and when
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  do you start to change that balance?
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  And what are the first things companies should do to invest in
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  that customer relationship in a, in a more effective way?
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  Yeah.
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  I mean, obviously the first thing you're going to do is--
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  you need that pool of customers.
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  You're going to have a customer success team that's going to
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  be managing your customer base.
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  And that's the first thing you need to do.
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  And then as you start to grow and get this large group of customers you want to
• 3:04
  start thinking about it from a marketing standpoint of how are we nurturing them?
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  And you mentioned this list of people that maybe you send an email to once a year.
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  The most forward thinking companies today are collaborating with a customer
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  marketer, someone on the marketing team and customer success to think about--
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  if we want our customers to be most successful, what impact do they need to
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  achieve throughout our customer journey?
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  And actually milestone those moments across your one.
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  And then I like to think about it as year one and then all the time after
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  year one, because that first year is really, really crucial in onboarding
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  steps and adoption and whatnot.
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  And then you think about what are those impact moments that help our
• 3:45
  customers be successful so they retain?
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  And then also what are the opportunities to have them grow with us?
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  So whether it's usage based but also are there new products you can sell to them?
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  So a really good critical time to think about really leaning into ,nurture your
• 4:01
  customer base and marketing to them is when you have products to sell to them
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  because generally speaking, your customer success team is going to be great at
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  helping them use the product, but unless you enable them to sell to your customer
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  base, they're not going to think about it.
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  They're not necessarily intended to do that.
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  And that's not necessarily their skill set.
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  So we want to shift that to say, here are some ways to think about why you
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  would sell this to your customers.
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  The impact of the greater impact they could achieve.
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  And here's howand so that's where the collaboration comes in.
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  Companies also invest heavily in thinking through their buying journey.
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  And you talk a lot about customer journey.
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  What are some key stages of that?
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  Cause I think a lot of companies say, okay, like I got this buying journey,
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  they bought and now they just use, right.
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  But there's, but there's more than that.
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  And so how do you think about the nuances of that customer journey and sort of
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  then building strategy and designing an optimal sequence across that journey?
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  Yeah.
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  So we're going to shift our thinking a little bit.
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  Okay.
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  So in sales, you have a marketing funnel, right?
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  You have got all these people that are going through your marketing funnel.
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  Then you generally have your BDR or SDR funnel who makes it
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  through as a qualified lead.
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  And then you have your sales, your actual sales funnel for your AEs.
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  And that's going to take you through to close each of those different teams or
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  sections have their own funnel and then we kind of think about customer success is
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  anything post sales, but actually customer success has 3 core funnels as well.
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  So, we think about onboarding and onboarding is extremely linear and the
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  easiest 1 to think about as a funnel.
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  And I actually encourage you to think about onboarding as its own funnel.
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  You have customers come in who have closed won.
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  And what are those steps they need to go through in order to hit
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  first impact and then, you know, full onboarding or graduation.
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  So we can pass it off to the true customer success team.
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  That's one funnel.
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  Really, if you're going to take away one thing from an onboarding perspective
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  today, it's what is first impact?
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  And I define first impact as that moment where your customer kind of
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  says, like, that's why I bought.
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  What is that moment?
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  And how do we get them there as fast as possible?
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  Because if it takes really long time, they're going to start regretting it.
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  Next piece is that customer journey.
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  And that's going to be, you know, how do we get them to use and adopt your product?
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  And when I think about the customer, that it's what are the key moments, right?
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  What basic things like use, what do they need to do in order to get full
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  impact or full value from your product?
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  What are those key moments?
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  And it's not all at once.
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  You know, sometimes if it's a very, if you're trying to change behavior,
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  you could think about it as what are the things they need to do on
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  a daily, weekly, monthly basis in order to make your product habit
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  forming and how can you support that?
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  One company I'm actually working with we encourage them to set up
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  every single week, set up one thing.
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  Then check it every day, learn from it and report back to your CSM at the end of
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  that week on new insights that you had.
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  And so it's training them to not just use the product, give them value, but
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  it's also starting to create that habit for me, you know, where it's like,
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  okay, you go in, you check your email, you check this product, you move on.
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  And then the last piece of the funnel is that expansion that growth piece and I
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  like to map it out concurrently with use.
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  So if you think about your customer journey and those core impact moments
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  and order for them to get the most impact from your product, when can
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  you insert expansion opportunities?
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  And so a really simple way to think about it is you're probably doing customer
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  business reviews or QBRs or EBRs, whatever you call them anyways, think about
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  theming those EBRs throughout the year and making them really prescriptive and
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  actually inviting certain people from your customers, depending on the content.
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  So, for example, Three months after onboarding, that's going to be, Hey, are
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  you set up properly or using it properly?
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  Let's just sort of do like a little mini health review.
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  Don't invite your decision maker, right?
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  This is a champion user.
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  The next one could be, Hey, let's give you some insights about how our top customers
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  get the most impact in the first year.
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  That's strategic.
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  Let's invite some strategic thinkers, let them know what you're going to cover.
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  And that's how you start to build out, a very full suite of people
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  engaged in your customer base.
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  So you're not single threaded.
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  You start to really land in and hone in on impact moments
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  and share some great insights.
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  Those impact moments sound really important.
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  And as I think about experiencing as a customer with a lot of companies I
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  use, both personally and professionally I think sometimes there can be a take
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  it for granted kind of feel right.
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  Where like, Hey, they're in the product.
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  They're doing fine.
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  Their checks clearing.
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  I think we're good.
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  Like the reinforcement of the why, right?
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  Like when you buy something, you have high hopes that it's going to work,
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  but you're hoping it's going to work.
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  Sometimes you need that reinforcement, not just as first impact, but ongoing impact.
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  And it may be beyond just the people using your product.
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  I'm also curious; when you've got a user team who are experiencing and
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  using the product, but then you have executive sponsors who may no longer
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  be involved day to day, week to week, month to month, but may make decisions
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  around budget and renewals at some point.
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  How do you keep those folks engaged?
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  Yes.
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  So there's the two main things.
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  I agree.
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  The impact moments are so valuable and something that
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  companies don't think about.
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  And one of the most important pieces is a company may bought for one reason, right?
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  Maybe it's awesome cost savings or time, whatever it may be.
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  But oftentimes there's other areas, there's other value drivers that
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  your other customers are getting.
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  And so as someone in the customer success team, and even customer
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  marketing, if you can start to document those different types of impact and
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  capture them in stories or different snippets, it's a great way to nurture.
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  Hey, customers like you.
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  Executives like you have been achieving X, Y, and Z from using our products.
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  You want to learn more?
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  And we don't do that, right?
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  I mean, you said, take it for granted.
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  We often just sort of say, oh, yeah, they're using the product.
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  They'll be fine, but really we want them to continue to gain more impact because
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  here's, what I've noticed about customers.
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  They have this massive pain, which is why they bought in the 1st place, right?
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  But as soon as they start really using your product, that pain
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  goes away and it's really funny.
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  It's funny about pain.
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  Like, have you ever had an injury?
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  You forget how much it hurts.
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  And so all of a sudden your customers no longer have that pain.
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  And so the resonance of the impact you're helping them achieve is
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  kind of not as powerful as it was when they first started using you.
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  So they almost have amnesia.
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  And then all of a sudden you're going to raise the prices.
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  Maybe they snap and you maybe had a bug or something and
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  they've forgotten how painful it actually was before your product.
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  So your job is to also kind of like remind them, right?
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  Remember what life is like without us.
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  We are your Mecca.
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  And, in addition to that, we can do so much more.
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  Julie Persofsky.
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  She is a long time advisor to SaaS companies looking to achieve
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  exponential growth and that growth can't just come from net new sales.
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  The exponential comes in leveraging those customer relationships.
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  Talk about that interplay between successful customers
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  and driving new pipeline.
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  I think people think of like, okay, I've got these customers.
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  My goal is retention.
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  My goal is expansion.
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  But successful customers are leading indicator to health
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  of your net new pipeline.
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  Talk about that connection and how that interplay works.
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  Absolutely.
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  And I think the world of advocacy, it's such a soft concept, right?
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  Oh, now we need advocates.
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  But really, I think it's fuel your business.
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  I spent five years working for an advocate marketing platform.
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  And part of what was so powerful is they actually create an
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  engine for your sales team, right?
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  So think about if you're in sales, think about how much faster a deal
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  closes when you can bring in a great reference, how much faster
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  a prospect goes through your sales funnel if it's been a referral, right?
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  I think it's like the stats were like 80 percent faster.
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  Right.
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  And we're likely to close if it's come from a referral, we don't even
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  ask our customers for referrals.
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  So in addition to marketing supporting the world of your customer success team
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  and nurturing our clients and helping them expand and educating them and you
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  know, whatnot, it's about capturing those advocates and nurturing them to help fuel
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  your sales funnel: asking for refferals.
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  Ask me if I'll be part of a reference program, capturing great stories.
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  And I'm not talking about the boring stories that you see on websites, right?
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  Like make them human, right?
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  Talk about the people behind it and the problems they're solving
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  and some of their interests.
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  So that way you actually want to read more and learn more.
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  So who owns this?
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  Because you get a lot of heads nodding, like, Hey, this makes a lot of sense, but
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  you've got a marketing team that isn't staffed for this currently, you've got
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  a sales team that's focused on net new, you've got a customer success team that
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  sometimes is mostly reactive and tactical and just really making sure people can
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  use the product, this whole idea of a buying journey and advocacy and creating
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  these moments of impact and communicating them, who should own that and how
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  do you start to build that function?
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  That's a really interesting question because not only is the
• 13:46
  customer success team often reactive and they want to get proactive.
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  It's a goal, but it's hard when you're like, you know, every month
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  you have renewals coming up and you have to fight fires and shifting
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  to that's really important.
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  The other piece I would say is your customer success team is often really,
• 14:02
  like to hold their customers close.
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  They're scared to let other people touch their customers.
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  Terrible analogy.
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  Okay.
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  They're scared to let other people talk to their customers.
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  And I would encourage if you're in customer success and listening
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  to this, only benefits can happen.
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  You know, I agree.
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  You don't want salespeople just randomly calling, but if you're open and say, Hey.
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  Let's collaborate on a really effective, creative customer journey
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  where marketing can help and maybe, you know, account managers can help.
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  We can do some great things.
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  And it's often scary as someone who's numbers are made by retention to let other
• 14:40
  people open up potentially Pandora's box.
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  But if you map out that customer journey and you have those moments when other
• 14:47
  people in organization can come, they can really support your initiatives.
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  Who owns it though?
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  I would say everyone's bogged down with their own challenges.
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  I think customer marketing is often a very undervalued role in organizations.
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  It would sit under marketing, but dot line to your head of CS, right?
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  What you want is a creative like marketing to come up with really great campaigns
• 15:14
  for your customers and for your advocates.
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  And so someone who can think strategically and creatively, but collaborate and
• 15:20
  help build out that customer journey.
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  That'd be my recommendation if you have the budget for for that.
• 15:27
  Yeah.
• 15:27
  And hire Julie to help you answer a lot of those questions quite honestly.
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  I know we're running short on time here.
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  We're working together a lot more closely now on some content
• 15:36
  around customer led growth.
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  We got a webinar coming up, so I'm super excited about that we will put
• 15:41
  a link into the comments here for those that are sort of nodding their head and
• 15:44
  saying, yeah, this totally makes sense.
• 15:45
  Where, what other resources should they go look for?
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  What should they be reading?
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  What other things do you recommend that go check out?
• 15:52
  That's a tough question.
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  What should we read?
• 15:55
  Putting me on the spot here.
• 15:56
  You do a great job through your LinkedIn profile, through a lot of
• 16:00
  your content, talking about this.
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  I didn't mean to make it a loaded question, but I
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  have this question as well.
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  Right.
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  Cause as much as you have spent time on this initiative, it is not a very well
• 16:11
  documented part of the revenue process.
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  And so I think, you know, maybe that's why the the webinar and this content
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  is even more important because we don't have a lot of other people
• 16:21
  that are talking about this today.
• 16:22
  Yeah.
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  There's lots of great people talking about , I'll call it traditional
• 16:26
  customers, how to onboard your customers and whatnot, but I think this, this
• 16:30
  marriage between ... what's so fascinating is sales and marketing are so built.
• 16:37
  They're so old in terms of companies have been doing those.
• 16:42
  They're so traditional in terms of what they've been doing.
• 16:43
  It's been, you know, obviously modernizing in terms of the tools
• 16:46
  and the different programs, but customer success is still in it.
• 16:50
  , it's a toddler, right?
• 16:52
  You know, when I started in customer success, we weren't even
• 16:54
  called customer success managers.
• 16:55
  We were called solution managers, right?
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  So this concept is new, and so we have to also think about the fact that
• 17:01
  we are in its infancy and we need to continue to evolve it and learn from it.
• 17:06
  Where I think we can really go is learning from those worlds of sales
• 17:12
  and marketing and applying that to the world of customer success is critical.
• 17:18
  And I'll say, that's one of the things, prior to launching my own company,
• 17:22
  about 6 months ago, I was a consultant with Winning By Design and that was
• 17:26
  a huge component of what we did.
• 17:27
  Right?
• 17:28
  And so I think that whole applying sales concepts to the world of customer
• 17:32
  success and leveraging that learning those frameworks is really critical
• 17:37
  to adapting to the new world of, it's not just about retention anymore.
• 17:42
  And if you're just doing retention, you are not going to win as a company.
• 17:47
  I want to, I'm going to say what you just said again, just to reinforce it.
• 17:50
  If you're just thinking about retention, that is not enough.
• 17:53
  And it is not enough to win and get the full value in a win win way for your
• 17:58
  customers, as well as for your business.
• 18:00
  And I think you're right.
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  This is kind of a new way of thinking about things, the complexity of the
• 18:05
  buying process continues with complexity of the customer journey in these big
• 18:11
  complicated companies with multiple layers of users and advisors and executive
• 18:15
  sponsors, you are doing yourself a disservice if you aren't thinking about
• 18:19
  that in the same level of depth and discipline, as you're thinking about
• 18:23
  the buying journey and coordinating what sales and marketing you're doing there.
• 18:26
  Julie, thanks so much for joining us.
• 18:27
  I'm going to put a link into the comments to make sure everyone
• 18:30
  has access to the webinar.
• 18:32
  clearly this is an area that needs a lot more content and your head is full of it,
• 18:36
  so looking forward to getting more of that and thanks for taking the time today.
• 18:39
  Same.
• 18:40
  Thanks so much, Matt.
• 18:41
  Thanks everyone for joining us.
• 18:42
  We'll be back next week every week at 11:30 Pacific, 2:30 Eastern.
• 18:46
  Thanks for joining us on another episode of Sales Pipeline Radio.
• 18:48
  Take care.