Read Time:  2. Minutes

I’ve written about Customer Success before, but the topic just keeps coming up.
 

You would think that professional sellers who earn hundreds of thousands of dollars would have the success of their customers dialled in as part of their sales process.

But they don’t… Let me explain

When I facilitate Big Rock Reviews for my clients and get to step 8 of the review, I ask a simple question.

What are you doing to ensure Customer Success BEFORE you get your purchase order?

This question surprises most sales reps, as though customer success would magically occur once their prospect buys their solution.

But of course, it doesn’t work that way

Customer Success needs to be architected into the solution, and most sales reps have a big blind spot here.

For example, in many SaaS organizations, the enterprise rep is responsible for selling the platform, usually on an annual or three-year contract.

Once the platform is sold and installed, the consumption of the solution often falls to the

Customer Success team, who are charged with ensuring the customer actually consumes it.

But if the solution is not installed correctly or the customer is not trained correctly, the customer ends up in the ditch, and their first experience with the solution is poor.

I’ve seen this time and time again

Rather than enjoying their first experience, the customer is left with problems and challenges. 

The vendor often ends up in the penalty box until the issues are resolved.

Sound familiar?

You can sell a customer anything once, but if the implementation doesn’t go well and their first customer support experience is poor, you take one step forward and two steps backwards.

Annuity business is the holy grail in complex account selling, especially in the SaaS world

Do everything possible to win the footprint, and if the customer has a great first experience, you’ll usually be able to go wide and deep and sell that same customer additional workloads!

Once you’ve developed a track record of success with the customer, the follow-on sales usually take less effort and discounting to win. They’re now a happy annuity customer.

Thinking about what needs to happen after the sale and baking that into your sales campaign pays huge dividends.

Bundling in training credits, providing implementation consulting assistance or knowledge transfer are just some of the things you can architect as part of the initial selling process.

This all makes implementation and support that much easier to execute 

Ask your reps about their customers’ success before it’s too late.. and ensure they don’t take their order until they’ve thought through how to install and support the solution.

Customers love it when you look over the horizon and demonstrate that you’re thinking about their success, not just your commission cheque.

• See you next week when we explore: Another big Blind Spot reps have around Negotiating their deal.

See you next Saturday.

Great Selling – Jeff@SalesLeadersOnly.com