What is nearbound success?

The best success leaders use nearbound tactics to surround the customer experience with voices the customer trusts.

Growth at all costs versus efficient growth (read more here)

Excess capital meant it was okay for companies to focus on new business without much attention to retention. But closed won doesn’t equal retention.

This new focus on efficient growth will require companies to equally value all parts of the customer lifecycle (pre-sale and post-sale), and adjust their operating models to balance resources across all go-to-market teams—Sales, Marketing, and Success.

CS needs a spotlight (watch more here)

Traditional GTM strategies have overlooked CS’s strategic role. So instead of creating value, leaders have encouraged CSMs to fight fires and "keep customers happy."

This ignores a basic economic principle—people buy (or in this case renew) when the perceived value is much greater than the cost. 

Mark Kosoglow and Kevin Chiu explained,

Renewals are not automatic, people just think they are.

 

You can’t stop creating value for your customers. The minute you do, they become at-risk…even if you’re still project managing that account well.

A Customer Success leader’s job is not to “make a customer happy.” It’s to drive outcomes.

Use nearbound success tactics to drive those outcomes.

How to do nearbound success

Your CS leaders are customer (and partner) experts (read more here)

Your CS team lives closest to your customers which means they have intel on customers and partners.

Want to know who to partner with—ask CS who your customers talk about most. Want to know which integration to build—ask CS what customers are asking for. Want to find low-hanging partner fruit—ask CS who they’re already working with informally. 

Realign your CS team (read more here)

If your company still maps out its strategy based on the traditional funnel, introduce them to the bowtie. For a company to be successful in 2024, it needs to measure both pre-sale and post-sale customer activities.

Regular training and development (read more here)

A complete nearbound GTM requires that Sales, Marketing, Partner, and Success are aligned and feeding information to one another. For example, Marketing can live in market and share trends, insights, and relevant info with CS. And CS can help upsell, co-sell, and resell.

Define clear role responsibilities (read more here)

CSMs feel like everything falls onto their shoulders. Leadership should clearly define what falls to a CSM, and what falls to another function like support or even partners.

How to deliver more value to customers (read more here)

Give every account attention, every week. Mark Kosoglow and Kevin Chiu explained something they’ve done at Catalyst.

Every week a key leader should go one-by-one through every account and ask its CSM, “What are you doing this week to create additional value for your customer?"

When Catalyst implemented this, they noticed answers were all initially project management items. As the exercise continued, the CSMs started to realize areas where they could add more value — ideas, conversations, projects, and briefly mentioned customer problems.

More nearbound success resources

• 5 Ways to Align Customer Success Teams with Your Nearbound Strategy

• The 7 Deadly Sins of Customer Success in the Nearbound Era with Mark Kosoglow and Kevin Chiu

• How to Align Your Success Team with Your Partners with Sunir Shah and Bruno Yoffe

•  How to Attach Partners to Customers so Everyone Wins with Jen Spencer and Rich Gardner

• Bringing Champions Into Your Nearbound GTM with Jeff Reekers

• You Work for the Customer: Remembering the ’Why’ of Partnerships with Jill Rowley
   

• Empty Platform Promises: Delivering on 1+1 = 3 with Russell Dwyer and Chris Trudeau

• The PX Factor: How Outstanding Partner Experiences Elevate Customer Satisfaction by Bernhard Friedrichs
   

• Why "Happy" Customers Aren’t Enough

• How Zapier Scales Partner Success

Stuff you don’t want to miss!

• Nearbound Summit 2023 Recordings—The future of GTM is Nearbound. Watch the recordings to hear how B2B leaders across departments unite with Nearbound strategies and tactics. Listen here.

• January 25th— CEO Summit—Join Pavilion and many more companies to be part of expert-led educational sessions, covering top-of-mind issues for CEOs and Founders. Learn about the latest sales insights, building a pricing strategy, and co-selling. Register here. 

• Feb 5th-7th in Miami—Impartnercon 2024—Partnerships are the future of growth. Join partner leaders to learn what it means to build the future of business, together. Register here.

• March 19-20th—Affiverse’s Amplify Summit—Join them for a 2-day virtual event to help affiliate businesses amplify their performance. Learn about digital, partnership, and affiliate marketing. Register here. 

Th dynamic duo: CS & Partnerships

Share this with your CS partner in crime!