By Jan Young
Everyone has heard of Quarterly Business Reviews. Some people call them Executive Business Reviews. But have you heard of a Success Plan? Have you ever built one with your customer? Why should you? Where does a Success Plan fit in with an Executive Business Review? Let’s first start with defining what a Success Plan is.
What is a Customer Success Plan?
A Customer Success Plan should clearly define your customer’s goals and how you will help them achieve their expected value from your product. Here are the key elements:
Top Level Customer Goals
Objectives for the next 3-6 months
Key Results in the form of SMART Goals
S = Specific
M = Measurable
A = Attainable
R = Relevant
T = Timely
Key Activities & Milestones
Key Risks
Where do you get this information?
You can start from the information gathered during the Sales discovery process. The Executive Stakeholder told your Sales folks a lot of information. They told them what their pains were. They told them about the problems they wanted to solve.
➥ Help your customer feel heard: Include this information in your Success Plan!
Studies show as soon as your customer signs the contract they start to feel Buyer’s Remorse and question their purchasing decision. By including the information they already shared with the Account Executive, you give the Executive Stakeholder confidence that you, your company, and your product will solve their problem.Talk to your customer. Ask them. After you’ve pulled together the information your customer shared during the Sales process, show the Executive Stakeholder your first draft and get confirmation or feedback. Have them lead on setting SMART Goals with you, and guide them in the process to ensure that they are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely.
When should I build a Customer Success Plan with the Executive Stakeholder?
Kickoff Meeting: The Kickoff Meeting is a great time for the CSM to start the Success Plan process. This is when everyone gathers to talk about why they’ve purchased the product. Now you can turn the discussion into actionable goals and objectives.
Sharing the Success Plan during the Kickoff Meeting also relays to the Customer team responsible for Onboarding and Implementation why it is so important to their boss that they partner with you to onboard your product in a timely manner. Otherwise, they will prevent their boss from solving their business problem in the timeline needed.
Then what happens with the Success Plan?
After the Kickoff meeting, the CSM can let the Executive Stakeholder know if Onboarding and Launch are on track. And if it’s off track, the CSM can reach out to the Executive Stakeholder as an ally to get things back on track or at least proactively let them know what your company is doing to keep things on track.
At Launch and throughout Adoption, the CSM can update the Executive Stakeholder on progress of their objectives. If this is sent by email, the Executive Stakeholder will understand that the CSM emails are informative and provide value. If they provide enough value or if their goals change or need to be updated, the Executive Stakeholder will ASK for a meeting to update these goals, or will readily agree with the CSM that a meeting would be helpful.
Your Success Plan becomes your Executive Business Review, AND the Executive Stakeholder either asks for it, or understands the value of it, and you don’t need to chase them down to attend. Imagine that!
The Success Plan:
Is the platform that provides the SMART Goals to help you help your customer achieve value.
Shows the Executive Stakeholder, through the CSMs action, that the CSM is their strategic partner to help them achieve value.
Provides the foundation for a meaningful and strategic relationship between the CSM and the Executive Stakeholder.
Knowing all that, how can you go through another business day without using a Success Plan in your Customer Success Program?
Current & Legacy Customers:
Ok, great. But what about all of your current or legacy customers? How do you introduce Success Plans with them?
Prioritize. Which Customers should you roll out Customer Success Plans to first?
a. High value customers. Perhaps your highest ARR customers would benefit. Do they have a renewal coming up? You can suggest strategizing for the new year with them.
b. Accounts in trouble. At Risk customers may be focused on grumbling. Re-focus their attention on the value they are attaining and can achieve with your product. And if some of their grumbles make it into the goals, this allows you to include how they need to partner with your team to achieve their goals.
No upcoming renewal? No Response? No relationship between the CSM and Executive Stakeholder?
a. CSMs should start with sending value emails: Based on what you understand their original purchase reason and goals were, provide a quick update on the value they’ve received, or the status and what is outstanding to achieve the goal. These value emails are like mini Success Plan updates, one goal or objective at a time. Close by announcing your new Success Plan process that you’re offering to strategic customers and a Call to Action.
b. Have another 3-5 value emails ready to follow up. Check to see if the emails are opened. Send them weekly until you hear from the Executive Stakeholder. One of them, or the accumulation of them, is bound to spark an interest.
If the Executive Stakeholder isn’t opening the value emails, iterate on subject line and content.
If after 6-8 weeks of value emails the Executive Stakeholder opens the emails but doesn’t respond, you’ve done two things: 1) Introduced the CSM as a strategic partner, 2) Established a means of communicating with the Executive Stakeholder the information you want them to know.
Continue on a regular, but less frequent basis, to communicate value.
Note: These don’t have to be delivered by email. There are in-app guides if the Executive Stakeholder is using your product directly, and there are products that send these types of updates via text message.
Should every customer have a Success Plan?
This process can take a lot of time! Do I need to do this with every account? Yes and no.
If it’s a strategic account, it’s time well spent. The more you understand what your Customer’s objectives are, articulate them into SMART goals, then show how your partnership and your product have impacted your customer’s goals, the better off you and your relationship with the Executive Stakeholder and Customer will be.
What about Scale?
What if you have 50-75 Mid Market accounts? Or hundreds or thousands of SMB accounts? How can you produce Success Plans at scale?
If your Sales process is aligned with your Customer Success Program, your customers’ expectations of your product should be in sync with what you can deliver. Further, if you have correctly identified your customer segmentation and you understand your customer personas, you should be able to broadly identify the purchase reasons and goals by Customer Segment.
Based on those purchase reasons and goals, you should be able to build Customer Journeys and define successful behaviors and progress at each stage of the life cycle.
Internally: You can now derive the customer’s health score based upon the progress your Customer is achieving. If you’re really advanced, you have a way for your customer to input their goals digitally for you to track.
For your customer: This is the basis of their Success Plan and Score.
If they are on track, you’ve communicated the value that they are achieving using your product.
If they are off track, and you have a CSM who can intervene to help, give the customer a Call to Action to get the help that they need.
If they are off track and you do not have a CSM to intervene, give them a way to help themselves—videos, articles, in-app guides are a great place to start. Maybe they’ll want to upgrade their plan to get a CSM!
Across all of your Customer Segments, Success Plans:
Keep the Customer focused on your partnership and achieving value. When your Customer wonders “What have you done for me lately?”, they have the answer.
Help you make the case for expansion. When the Customer is receiving value, they are more likely to expand their purchase of services and products.
Keep the Executive Stakeholder’s interest in your product. They understand the value they are achieving.
Help you build your relationship with the Executive Stakeholder—who is deciding renewals—and helps the Executive Stakeholder see the CSM as their strategic partner who helps them achieve value from the product.
The Success League is a customer success consulting firm that helps leaders build and develop top performing customer success teams. We offer short-term consulting engagements that can kick-start your planning efforts, as well as coaching for leaders who need some weekly advice. Check out TheSuccessLeague.io for details.
Jan Young - Jan is passionate about lifelong learning, demystifying technology, optimizing teams, processes, and systems, and building effective relationships and communities. Her experience has included working in Enterprise companies and Startups of various stages, and she has advised several founders and startups. She serves on the board of Gain, Grow, Retain as co-lead of the Voice of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion council, and is a Founding Community Lead for CS Insider for which she writes and curates a series called “Inclusive Innovation”, and was recognized as a 2021 Top 100 Customer Success Strategist for her work in the community. She holds a BA from UC Berkeley, and an MBA from Columbia University. In her free time, she enjoys wine tasting, hikes, and Pickleball.