No, this isn’t a post on the importance of retention/renewal/expansion, though the underlying principles can impact retention/renewal/expansion. It’s a very different focus on our customers, what they mean to us and what we mean to them.
This came up in a discussion, someone was asking about Partners In EXCELLENCE, our GTM process, and our strategies. I mentioned, offhandedly, that we have a principle underlying everything we do. I said, “We are driven by creating customers for life!”
What does this mean?
First, when we create customers for life, we have a couple of focus area: The enterprises and companies we work with; and the individuals we work with. We want to create lifelong relationships with both. As the companies grow and develop, we want them to keep engaging us to help them with those strategies and the challenges they have in achieving goals. They are important to us, but we fail until we become important to them. And we want to be important to each individual, not just while they work for a particular client, but when the move to different roles in other companies. We want them to reach out for ideas and, often, help.
How do we do this?
We are driven by creating deep value, impact, and meaning for our clients–companies and individuals. While we may have a number of change management programs, tools to support those programs, tools/templates/training for most aspects of GTM. When we engage our clients, we seldom talk about what we sell. The majority of the time, we focus on what they are trying to achieve. Our attention is on their problems/opportunities/challenges. We work with them generating ideas about they why/what/how they do these things. At some point, they say, “We need your help…” We define the project plan and things we can do to help them achieve these. In the course of doing this, we may providing tools, processes, methodologies, templates, playbooks. We may provide training for 1000s of people.
Our focus with the client organization is not what we sell. Those things are just vehicles through with we help the client achieve their goals. The entire focus is on helping the enterprise achieve their goals. We are interested in the organization and it’s success. As we look to expand our relationships within the account, we don’t focus on what we can sell, we look at where we might help them. Sometimes that help is a few conversations. Sometimes that help results in massive projects.
At the same time, we care deeply about the individuals we work with. Whether the people on the project team, the executive team, or even 1000s of sales people. We are driven to have an impact on them and their ability to achieve their goals. With the core team, we establish deep relationships with each individual. We are interested in them and their success.
Our clients, customer and individuals, recognize this. As a result, they come back to us, “Can you help with this….? We’re struggling with that….” The organizations we work with keep wanting us to help them.
The individuals we work with want the same. And when they move to a different organization, they say, “You helped me before, can you help me in my new organization?”
We do have “subscription products.” Renewal is usually about a 5-15 minute conversation, usually it’s, “We need to extend this for another few years, can you send us the paperwork…” We never focus on renewal, because we don’t tend to focus on what we sell, rather our focus is on “are we helping our customers achieve their goals.” Sometimes, we recommend, “You no longer need these products, you probably should stop.”
We create customers for life.
This doesn’t mean they buy from us every year. They may not need our help some years, but they always come back. One large technology organization comes back to us every other year. We have been working with them on their strategic planning for 26 years. Because of their strategic planning process, they don’t need us every year. But we are their partner in this process.
And for the majority of others, we are their first call, “We are looking to do this, can you help us?”
Last week, I got a call from someone I had never met. This person was relatively new to one of our clients. This person said, “Dave, I’ve heard so much about your work with other parts of the organization. I’ve taken over this division, could we talk about how you might help…?”
Last week, I got a call from a CRO–he was an old friend, we had worked together in several of his past jobs. “Dave, I’m at this new company, can we talk….”
Do we have a 100% hit rate?
No, there are some organizations that don’t fit what we do and how we work. While we were successful in projects we conducted, we know we aren’t a good fit (and they may also say we are not a good fit.) There are relatively a small number of clients/individuals, where we/they decide to go different directions. And that’s always the right thing. There just wasn’t a good fit, better to recognize this and move forward.
What would happen if we started shifting our focus. Rather than focusing on retention/renewal/expansion of what we have sold. What if we started shifting our focus to “Creating customers for life?”
Afterword: Here is the AI generated discussion of this post. Enjoy!
Leave a Reply