Are you ready for the “Era of Results-Led Growth”? This is a term coined by Greg Daines, CEO of ChurnRx in a recent LinkedIn post. It refers to a shift in business strategy from product-led growth where the best and cheapest product led the market.
Customer experience followed as the top strategy to retain and grow business where happy customers stay, and unhappy customers leave. However, Greg’s research has proven this theory isn’t true. Instead, it shows that improving satisfaction scores have led to declining customer retention and loyalty.
His research also reveals that the best predictor of customer retention is measurable results. In fact, customers with measurable results stay 6 times longer on average than customers without measurable results.
As customer retention is currently being prioritized as a growth strategy, you must make this shift to remain competitive in the marketplace.
What does this mean for your customer engagement team?
Customer Engagement for Results-Led Growth
Account managers tasked with retaining top customers need to hit the ground running when they start working with a new account. This means getting to know them and delivering value quickly, then keeping abreast of the evolving customer organization and goals and continuing to deliver measurable results.
When you stop driving measurable outcomes for the customer, they will churn, according to Greg’s research. Therefore, the results-delivering customer engagement process should include the following elements:
Effective Sales to Account Manager Handoffs
The handoff from the sales rep to the account manager is pivotal to results-led growth. This is where sales shares essential information gathered from their interactions with the new customer such as why they chose your product or service and what they want to achieve through their partnership with your organization.
These insights enable the account manager to hit the ground running by creating a preliminary account plan based on the customer’s goals for the partnership. This creates momentum to drive measurable results for the new account sooner.
Productive Onboarding
An effective handoff process also sets the stage for a more productive onboarding process. Initial customer engagements can springboard off the information shared during the handoff, facilitating tailored onboarding and more meaningful discussions.
This allows account managers to ask probing questions, verify the customer’s preliminary goal, and inquire about the customer’s designated KPI to measure success. This paves the way for the collaborative creation of a plan to achieve the first key result early in the relationship.
At this point, it’s time for the account manager to show the customer exactly what they need to do to achieve their goals successfully.
Progress Review & Accountability
Customers want you to track their progress toward measurable results. “Just measuring doubles the lifespan of your customer even if they find out that they’re getting terrible results,” according to Greg.
Tracking and measuring the customer’s progress helps keep them honest and holds them accountable for doing their part in achieving measurable results. If they fall short, this is where the account manager can work collaboratively with the customer to adjust the plan toward goal attainment.
Structured Repeatable Customer Engagement Process
Customer engagement teams have a lot on their plates, especially now as businesses are doing more with less. Establishing a structured cyclical customer engagement process, like our KAM process™, acts as a roadmap to deliver measurable customer results and greater lifetime value. It allows account managers to always know what to do next with each customer without hesitation and never miss a step.
Our process, for instance, includes the following repeatable steps:
Know: This step allows account managers to get more familiar with the customer, their goals, challenges, and priorities. Activities employed at this stage include building robust org charts, conducting Voice of Customer (VOC) interviews, and executing SWOT analyses. The insights gathered here enable account managers to identify the measurable results most important to the customer and the KPIs to track progress.
Act: This step is where account managers collaboratively create strategic account plans with their customers. These action plans are complete with tasks and milestones to drive the achievement of measurable customer outcomes. They also detail who is responsible for each task and are shared with all participants, including the customer.
Measure: At this stage, account managers track metrics to gauge progress toward goal attainment. It’s essential to monitor progress based on success measurements that are meaningful to the customer. Then provide updates to keep them aware of positive or negative changes and aware of measurable goal attainment.
Rinse and Repeat: Once the cycle is complete, it’s time to start again by refreshing knowledge, and updating the action plan accordingly. Then tracking and measuring progress toward the customer’s measurable goals and providing the client with updates.
Make the Shift to Results-Led Growth
Don’t fall behind the competition. Differentiate your business by shifting your customer engagement strategies for results-led growth. Improve your sales to account manager handoffs and productive onboarding to hit the ground running so customers receive measurable results faster.
Review progress with customers. This is what they want, even if they aren’t doing well. Hold customers accountable if they aren’t participating or their results are falling short. Then help clients get back on track and guide them to success.
Implementing a structured repeatable customer engagement process to drive meaningful results for customers helps keep account managers on track. As they move through the steps, reps always know what they need to do next so nothing falls through the cracks and customer outcomes are achieved faster.
Making the shift to results-led growth will not only accelerate and increase the delivery of measurable customer results, but it will also improve your customer retention and lifetime value.
Update your customer engagement skills and hear more from Greg Daines. Register for KAMCon.
