Beyond Renewals: The Surprising Ways Customer Success Drives Sales Growth

Customer Success (CS) is often viewed as a post-sales function, primarily focused on ensuring renewals and preventing churn. While these are undoubtedly critical aspects of CS, limiting its scope to just these areas overlooks its immense potential to significantly impact sales growth. In this blog post, we'll delve into the three surprising ways Customer Success teams can amplify sales efforts, creating qualified expansion opportunities, enhancing win rates in new deals, and boosting sales confidence through shared success stories and best practices.

This topic was explored in detail in our latest podcast episode, 13. Why does sales still take an inside out view? Jackie Quint discusses the success moments that will change your selling perspective and drive both customer satisfaction and profitability!. In the episode, Jackie Quint joined us to discuss the value of customer success as a key to revenue generation and why smart AEs partner with CSMs to win more deals and help customers achieve their strategic goals! Jackie's experience in carrying a bag, consulting with multiple companies and then running Sales Enablement, Operations and Customer Success at Sophos, Extreme Networks, Salesforce and Hitch, offers a remedy to the challenge of organizations that don't maximize their post-sales teams as a source of revenue. This blog post builds upon those insights, providing actionable strategies for leveraging your CS team to drive sales growth.

Jackie Quint's Perspective: Bridging the Gap Between Sales and Customer Success

Jackie Quint, a seasoned leader with extensive experience in sales, enablement, and customer success, emphasizes the crucial need to bridge the gap between sales and CS. Too often, these departments operate in silos, missing out on valuable opportunities for collaboration and synergistic growth. Jackie's perspective highlights that the most successful organizations treat customer success not only as a key driver of customer outcomes and NPS, but also an essential part of the revenue operating rhythm.

According to Jackie, a key issue is that "Too much of selling focuses on the hero's journey of bringing in new logos and undervalues the shorter-cycle, lower-cost, higher-win-rate sale to existing customers." Her experience suggests that organizations need to move beyond their functional silos and deliver on higher customer lifetime value.

Moving Beyond Silos: Customer Lifetime Value and the Role of Customer Success

Traditionally, sales teams focus on acquiring new customers, while customer success teams focus on retaining existing ones. However, this siloed approach fails to recognize the full potential of existing customers as a source of revenue growth. Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV) represents the total revenue a customer is expected to generate throughout their relationship with your company. Customer Success plays a pivotal role in maximizing CLTV by:

• Increasing Customer Retention: By ensuring customers are satisfied and successful with your product or service, CS teams reduce churn and extend the duration of the customer relationship.
• Driving Expansion Revenue: CS teams identify opportunities to upsell and cross-sell additional products or services to existing customers, increasing their overall spending.
• Generating Referrals and Advocacy: Satisfied customers are more likely to recommend your product or service to others, leading to new customer acquisition at a lower cost.

By aligning sales and customer success efforts, organizations can create a virtuous cycle of growth, where satisfied customers drive increased revenue and new customer acquisition.

The Three Unexpected Ways Customer Success Drives Sales Growth

As mentioned earlier, Customer Success can boost sales in more ways than simply managing renewals. Here are three ways CS can amplify sales efforts:

Expansion Opportunity Boost: CSMs as Trusted Advisors

Customer Success Managers (CSMs) are uniquely positioned to identify expansion opportunities within existing accounts. They develop deep relationships with customers, understand their business goals, and gain insights into their evolving needs. This trusted advisor status allows CSMs to:

• Uncover Pain Points: CSMs actively listen to customers and identify areas where they are struggling or facing challenges. These pain points often represent opportunities for additional solutions or services.
• Identify Growth Opportunities: CSMs understand customers' strategic objectives and can identify opportunities to leverage your product or service to help them achieve their goals.
• Build Internal Value Stories: Because of their deep understanding of the customer's business, CSMs can work with customers to build a buyer map and an internal value story that drives ROI.

Unlike Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs), expansion opportunities identified by CSMs are often highly qualified and have a higher likelihood of converting into sales. CSMs can provide sales teams with valuable context and insights, enabling them to tailor their approach and close deals more effectively. As Jackie Quint notes, "CSMs act as trusted product advisors, opening up qualified expansion opportunities, with fleshed out buyer maps and internal value stories that drive ROI. Try that with an MQL!"

Win Rate Boost: CSMs Building Confidence in New-Logo Deals

Customer Success involvement can be a powerful differentiator in new-logo deals. Prospective customers often have concerns about implementation, adoption, and ongoing support. By involving CSMs in the sales process, organizations can alleviate these concerns and build confidence. CSMs can:

• Share Best Practices: CSMs can share insights and best practices from their experience working with other customers, demonstrating how your product or service has helped them achieve success.
• Address Concerns: CSMs can directly address any concerns or questions that prospective customers may have about implementation, adoption, or ongoing support.
• Showcase Success Stories: CSMs can share compelling success stories that highlight the value and impact of your product or service.
• Articulate Implementation, Adoption, Success, and Change Management Best Practices: Jackie Quint notes that CSMs can participate in high-value, new-logo deals building buyer confidence by sharing implementation, adoption, success and change best practices that become a core differentiator!

This involvement can significantly increase win rates by demonstrating a commitment to customer success and providing assurance that the customer will receive ongoing support and guidance. Demonstrating a post-sales commitment can be a deal-maker for many prospective customers who are weighing their options and choosing between vendors.

Sales Confidence Boost: CSMs Empowering Sales Teams with Success Stories

Customer Success teams are a treasure trove of success stories and best practices. By effectively sharing this knowledge with the sales team, organizations can significantly boost sales confidence and effectiveness. CSMs can empower sales teams by:

• Providing Relatable Quotes and Anecdotes: CSMs can share real-life examples of how customers have benefited from your product or service, making the value proposition more tangible and relatable.
• Sharing How Obstacles Were Overcome: CSMs can provide insights into how they have helped customers overcome challenges and achieve their goals, demonstrating the problem-solving capabilities of your organization.
• Enhancing Conversational Competence: With access to a wealth of customer success stories, sales teams can have more informed and persuasive conversations with prospective customers, addressing their concerns and highlighting the value proposition in a more compelling way.

By leveraging customer success stories, sales teams can build stronger relationships with prospects, demonstrate the value of your product or service, and ultimately close more deals. Jackie Quint argues that, "Via sales enablement, CSMs share stories with relatable quotes, anecdotes - and specifically how we overcame obstacles - that take AE conversational competence to a new level!"

Actionable Steps: Sales and Customer Success Enablement

To realize the full potential of Customer Success in driving sales growth, organizations must invest in enabling both sales and CS teams. This includes:

• Sales Enablement on Post-Sales: Sales teams need to understand the role of Customer Success in the customer journey and how they can leverage CSMs to their advantage. Sales Enablement teams need more knowledge of the post-sales role in selling.
• Customer Success Enablement on Sales: CS teams need to develop strong communication, sales, and problem-solving skills to effectively identify expansion opportunities and support sales efforts. Customer Success Enablement teams need to build better CSM skills in selling.
• Cross-Functional Training: Provide opportunities for sales and CS teams to collaborate and learn from each other, fostering a shared understanding of customer needs and goals.
• Shared Metrics and Incentives: Align sales and CS metrics and incentives to encourage collaboration and ensure that both teams are working towards the same goals.
• Technology Integration: Implement technology solutions that enable seamless communication and collaboration between sales and CS teams, such as shared CRM platforms or collaboration tools.

By investing in sales and customer success enablement, organizations can create a high-performing team that drives both customer satisfaction and revenue growth.

Conclusion: Embracing Customer Success as a Revenue-Generating Engine

Customer Success is no longer just a post-sales function focused on renewals. It's a strategic asset that can significantly impact sales growth. By leveraging the unique skills and insights of CSMs, organizations can unlock new expansion opportunities, enhance win rates in new deals, and boost sales confidence. To realize the full potential of Customer Success, organizations must break down silos, foster collaboration between sales and CS teams, and invest in enablement. Embracing Customer Success as a revenue-generating engine will drive sustainable growth and create a competitive advantage.

This blog post has explored the key themes discussed in our latest podcast episode, 13. Why does sales still take an inside out view? Jackie Quint discusses the success moments that will change your selling perspective and drive both customer satisfaction and profitability!. Be sure to listen to the full episode for even more insights and actionable strategies on leveraging Customer Success to drive sales growth.