Tag: Customer Success
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If It Doesn’t Have Customer Value First, FAHGETTABOUDIT!
No matter what role you play—product management, product marketing, sales, customer onboarding, or account management—if your starting point isn’t quantifiable customer value, fuhgeddaboudit! Nothing else matters. Period. End of story. I know firsthand how easy it is to get caught up in your own goals—corporate goals, sales targets, marketing KPIs, retention quotas. Before you know […]
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The Solutions Value Chain: A Framework for Strategic Customer Value
What is The Solutions Value Chain? The Solutions Value Chain is a framework that helps you uncover real, strategic value for your customers—from the top of their organization all the way down to the people in the trenches doing the day-to-day work. It’s designed to ensure that your products don’t just help users but make a measurable […]
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How Customer Success Can Grow User Adoption on New Releases
If you’re looking to grow user adoption on your products, a few more tools in your arsenal beyond traditional release announcements and in-product reminders will help your cause. Put yourself in the shoes of your users. They’re short-handed, carrying heavier workloads, and they’re overwhelmed with the amount of information coming at them from every direction, […]
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Onboarding Customers – How To Use Job Tasks For Superior Results
When you’re onboarding customers, the end game is to improve the job performance of your users in ways that have measurable value to their organization. If that goal sounds familiar, there’s a good reason. It’s the exact same goal product managers aim for when they’re building new features and products. Onboarding Customers With a New […]
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Why A Customer Account Roadmap Is Beneficial & How To Create One
The word roadmap usually conjures up thoughts of a product roadmap for people in a technology product company. For customer success managers though, the intent of a customer account roadmap, while similar, is bit more surgical than a product roadmap when it comes to defining success and leading customers to it. Think of the customer […]
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How to Set Customer Success Managers Up To Play Offense
In most B2B organizations, it’s more the exception than the rule that customer success managers inherit accounts where they’re in a position to play offense because the customer is thrilled with your products. Let’s dream for just a minute. It Starts With Product Management Product management consistently does discovery at a level that makes them […]
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The One Thing That Simplifies Sales Enablement Most
Nothing eludes the ripple effect of your product management model, and sales enablement is no exception. Sales enablement encompasses a lot, but there’s one thing that still matters more than anything else when you’re a salesperson in the throes of the sales process. It’s the conversations you’re having with buyers at all levels, from users […]
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Portfolio Positioning Is What Makes Your Product Positioning More Strategic
Here’s a simple example of portfolio positioning and how it makes your product positioning more strategic. Your accounts payable product improves the customer’s cash flow. It sounds strategic. What CFO doesn’t want a stronger balance sheet? Your accounts receivable product further enhances cash flow. Even more strategic when customers use both, right? There’s still something […]
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Integrating Business Processes vs. Products
Let’s start this discussion of integrating business processes vs. products with the spotlight on pre-sales, sales, and customer on-boarding since they bear the brunt of the ripple effect. Here’s the scenario. You’re in the throes of the sales cycle and it’s product demo time. In addition to functionality, you’re highlighting the fact that all your […]
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Market Strategy vs. Product Strategy
Going all the way back to my practitioner days, it was apparent then that as product management goes, so goes the rest of the organization. I guess that shouldn’t be a surprise since everything revolves around the products. My goal is to highlight the strategic ripple effect across engineering, product marketing, sales, including presales, customer […]