The Second Sale

This past Friday morning as the Christmas cheer was wearing off, I was greeted by this Grinchy letter from my gym:

“Dear Mark,

Our community of valued Members like you are the reason we strive to maintain the highest standards in our Clubs.

In order to contend with the rising costs associated with these standards…in January, your monthly membership will increase by $12.

Thank you for your understanding and continued loyalty.”

For a gym where I was already paying a premium, I’ve decided it’s time to move on and take my membership somewhere else.

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In between stints running the SDR Team at a construction tech company, I had the opportunity to lead the Customer Success team for 2 ½ years. Sitting on the hot coals of daily life in operations, I didn’t have much time for reflection; it’s all about execution. 

Once I came back to Sales Development, I realized how many incredible lessons I learned from spending time on the other side of the house.

I’ve learned that one reason so many folks hate salespeople is the inconsistency of their experience before and after the sale. During the sales process, we see the best of what a company has to offer. We are handled like royalty, receiving the red carpet treatment. Warm smiles, patience in answering questions, and quick responses to communication are all part of a pleasant buying experience as a consumer.

Then what happens? 

After the purchase is made, there is a delta between the before and after treatment. Perhaps there is a delay in response time. Maybe there is a disconnect in what was promised in terms of the quality of a product or service and what is actually delivered. Or worse yet, an admission is made that a message you received during the sales process was inaccurate - and the product or service doesn’t function the way you were told it did.

This message from my gym reminded me of a few invaluable learnings about customers that I gained from my time in the hot seat of Customer Success.

Having been on the wrong side of too many purchases, here are three lessons I learned during my time in Customer Success to avoid falling into the cycle of churn.

LESSON ONE: Get Out to a Hot Start 

A wise man once told me that buyer’s remorse is highest right after a purchase. I believe this is true - and in B2B sales, the stakes are the highest.

It’s important to recognize the risk the buyer has taken in making the decision to purchase. Failure to get the desired result is not just a reflection on your product or service - it’s also a threat to the buyer’s employment. When there is a lack of delivery on what was promised, they will be the one on the hook for the decision to make a change from the most powerful operating system in the world: “the way we’ve always done it.”

One way to help quell these inevitable fears and concerns is to get out to a fast start with your customer. Before the whispers of doubt have time to creep in, if your customer success team takes immediate action, you will have a fighting chance. Here are a few ways to get out to a hot start.

Make a human introduction: Every company sets up workflows so that when the contract comes in, a generic email message is sent to congratulate the new customer. That’s just noise, and if anything, it shows a lack of understanding.

Picking up the phone to call the primary user can be a great gesture to begin building a relationship of trust. Knowing that there is a specific human to talk with - not a chat, a bot, or a general hotline - creates a sense of security for the person on the other side.

Set a kickoff meeting ASAP: Depending on the size of the purchase, there could potentially be a lot of stakeholders. Setting a kickoff meeting with their team as soon as possible - preferably within 24 hours after the sale - is a clear signal to the customer not just that you want to get to know them, but that you intend to deliver on your promises.

Ideally, if the kickoff can be scheduled on day one and held within the first five business days, you have taken the first important step to building a winning relationship.

Reconfirm the intended outcomes: In the kickoff meeting, in addition to making sure everyone gets to know one another, the most important aspect of the meeting is to clarify the goals. This may seem redundant if the sale just occurred, but trust me - it’s not!

Something will always get lost in translation in the handoff between Sales and CS. As a result, hearing the goals and intended outcomes from the “horse’s mouth” is a chance to gain insight on why they bought as well as what they expect. This gives you a chance to affirm your commitment to deliver on those goals.

In some situations, it’s also a chance for further discovery or even some conflict resolution. A customer may have additional goals that were not stated in the sales process, and it’s great to learn those early in your relationship. In the worst case scenario, a salesperson may have miscommunicated. Perhaps a goal was not shared, a delivery timeline was inaccurate, or worst of all, a functionality was misrepresented. 

While these revelations are painful in a kickoff, it’s so much better to deal with them early and take your medicine. If you discover these realities 3-6 months down the line, you will almost guarantee losing that customer. 

LESSON TWO: Bundle Up for the Cold

Another tough but essential lesson I learned in customer success was to embrace an icy reception from customers.

As a newbie coming from sales, I assumed that every customer I encountered would be as excited about the new software purchase as the decision-maker who bought it.

I couldn’t have been more wrong on that one…

What I learned was this:

1) Most companies have not communicated the purchase across their teams very broadly - if they have communicated to them at all.

2) Most employees will be resistant of technology because they will see it as a nuisance - or even worse, as a threat to their job.

3) Some users will go as far as trying to make sure the product or service fails in an effort to protect their turf.

I remember one infamous implementation early in my Customer Success tenure that left a lasting impact.

On a cold December morning between Christmas and New Year’s, we were kicking off day one of our Implementation process on-site with a customer. Because we had hardware to install that enabled our software, there was significant coordination and planning involved to make sure the right equipment would be accessible and that we had the resources to execute.

Since we had been working with our primary user for a full month before our on-site hardware implementation, I assumed he had prepped his team for our arrival. We showed up at 6:30 AM on a grey, twenty degree morning half an hour before sunrise. Our SOP was to arrive 30 minutes before the scheduled 7:00 AM start time to make sure we made a successful first impression. 

As I sipped on my coffee, I saw the time tick by. 7:00 AM turned to 7:05, then 7:10, then 7:15 - with no sign of our user. 

Finally at 7:20 AM he rolled in and greeted us. “Hey guys - I’m just gonna go crack some skulls and let these guys know you’re here and they’ll be working with you all day today.”

Around 7:45 AM, a few surly faced mechanics came out to meet us. They did not appear to be full of hope and joy with our presence. Nor did they seem to know - or care - that our software would be saving them from countless wasted hours and operations headaches. We were just some unannounced pain-in-the-ass that was disrupting their day.

As we worked side-by-side with them, one of my CS guys was brave enough to ask the question that was on all of our minds.

“So, do you guys know anything about us?”

The mechanic grunted. “No. I’m guessing it’s some big-brother software to spy on us.” Needless to say, we had a long uphill climb to get the guys in the field on board. 

As frustrating as it was, it was such an important experience. Going forward, we would do two things:

First, we would repeatedly remind our primary users to communicate with their teams before we were coming out to share how our software would make their jobs easier - not steal their jobs.

Second, we would walk in assuming that despite our pleas for our customers to communicate to their team in advance, absolutely nothing had been shared prior to our arrival. As a result, we needed to give 110% effort to win the hearts of the field, spending quality time with them and exercising patience and understanding to prove our worth. 

Once we did these two things, we had much more success in establishing great customer relationships.

LESSON THREE: Get your first W Early

When you work on the Customer Success side, it’s easy to get really jacked up about all the bells and whistles of a product. You’re on the cutting edge of new features that make life easier and better for a customer. When you’re in the weeds every day, you know that changing a dashboard or cutting down the number of steps to accomplish a function is huge.

But it’s also easy to forget that the customer will NEVER use 100% of what you have to offer.

Back in my early tenure as a wrestling coach, I made the mistake of teaching really nuanced technique. In my desire to teach some cutting-edge moves that elite wrestlers were using, I forgot a simple truth: my team could benefit a lot more from learning the basics to help them score points. 

It’s the same in customer success.

At first, I fell in love with all the high-end features that could really help an equipment manager at a civil construction company. But when I taught him a basic function such as how to see all his equipment on a map, he was overjoyed.

Instead of trying to wow your customers with the advanced bells and whistles, go back to those initial goals. By focusing on core ways to meet those goals in simple ways, prove your value by delivering customer wins on the basics - and do it as early as possible in your relationship. In doing so, you will establish the most important currency of all: trust.

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As a final note, when I think about where my customer relationship with the gym went wrong, I don’t harbor any ill-will or blame. After all, most customer success teams don’t get it right. When I reflected on my year of membership, a simple truth hit me: I never really fell in love with the place. In fact, it was the opposite.

You see, within the first week, I was bombarded with emails and texts about a few complimentary free sessions. At first glance, this seemed like a great customer appreciation gesture and delivery of value. What I quickly realized was that under the guise of free, these sessions were just strategies to earn early upsells and squeeze more dollars out of me. 

The result is that my trust was broken from week one. Although I enjoyed the workout facilities, I knew I needed to be on guard that any friendly conversations with staff were really just entry points for additional sales on my behalf.

Going forward, even though I spent 4-5 days a week there getting plenty of workouts, the place just had me on edge because of that initial experience.

Fundamentally, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with upsells or raising prices. But if you want to have a long, successful relationship with customers, you better build trust and add value before you do.

If you don’t - be prepared for the consequences! 

#trust