#48: Success Plans That Work

Fail to prepare, prepare to fail.

It's no surprise that Success Plans are the top program CS leaders are investing in in 2024.

Success Plans foster an understanding of the customer's goals and expectations, while also providing a structured roadmap to achieve that end state. A great Success Plan is also an accountability structure that both the customer and the CSM can leverage on an ongoing basis. 

They are a fantastic tool for delivering measurable outcomes!

The problem is that most CSMs struggle to create success plans that work.

I see 4 main challenges with most Success Plans today:

1. Not every customer gets one;
2. They are often created too late, after onboarding;
3. They are not data-driven based on proven strategies to unlock the customer's use case
4. They are forgotten shortly after being created, never revisited, reviewed and revamped

In this newsletter, I will share a process you can use to build success plans that work.

1- The Template

Success Plans can be simple and still be effective.

You don't need a Project Management Tool, Gantt charts and automation to have a strong plan that you and your customer can use as a baseline to drive success. 

I often share this basic template with CSMs I work with as a baseline to start. I used it for years with customers from SMB to Enterprise and due to its simplicity, and it's worked really well.

What's truly important to have is:

• Clear Measurable Goals: What is the customer trying to achieve?
• A Baseline: Where are they with that goal today? (metric)
• Milestones: What needs to be done to get there?
• Tasks: What steps do you need to take to get the work done?
• Owners: Who will deliver the different tasks?
• Deadline: When will these tasks need to be completed?
• Status: Where are we with these tasks today? (updated ahead of every meeting).

If this is your first time building success plans, start with a simple template like this.

It's more important to have a rich discussion anchored on what's important for them than to over-engineer and have no buy-in. 

Looking to take your plans to the next level?

• Have a menu of goals to pick from: These should be the main outcomes you deliver to customers based on your Jobs to be Done (guide here). 
• Data-Driven Strategies: For teams who have invested in understanding the strategies that deliver the highest results for customers, you can offer pre-populated Success Plan templates that customers can edit with their CSMs. This expertise is highly valued by customers.
• Build the Success Plan into your product: Bring the success plan in-app. You can use a Customer Success Platform to build a Customer Hub into the product so customers don't need to access different documents when working through your plan.
• Connect to Real-Time Data: Use product data to update the plan automatically and to trigger actions and reminders to customers and the CSM.

When you build these efficiencies, the Success Plan can be scaled to every single customer as self-service becomes possible.

2- The Process

The Success Plan should be an early part of the customer journey. Ideally something that happens even before onboarding, to help tailor the full customer experience. 

This 7-Step Customer Journey is a great tool to use when designing your process and establishing when the Success Plan is created and reviewed.

I recommend a CSM to use the Success Plan in at least 3 moments:

1. When the customer signs, to ensure there's a shared vision of success from day one;
2. At the Mid-Point of the Contract to review the customer's progress and set new goals;
3. In the Renewal Preparation Process revisit the commitments and results delivered.

The frequency in which you revisit the plan will depend on how often you connect with the customer (ie. their segment) and how they are progressing.

You might have a monthly meeting with a customer that is struggling and a quarterly one with a customer that is progressing well. 

Here's where things get hard...

How do CSMs know which customers to prioritise?

Having the customer's goals with clear KPIs collected in-app, and a trigger programme designed to alert CSMs when customers are lagging is the way to scale (I wrote how you can do that in this earlier newsletter).

Besides alerting the CSM, you can use a trigger programme to proactively target customer personas with content that is relevant to their use-case and where they are against their goals .

I talked about how to build a smart system that goes from Goal to Success Plan to Trigger Programme at Pulse last year and the recording is available here.

TL'DR

If you want to proactively help customers achieve their goals, you should be using Success Plans. If you want your plans to work and scale:

• Templatise the Plan
• Use Data Driven Strategies to Guide the Customer
• Build the Success Plan in-app
• Create a trigger program to react to customer's progress towards their goals

See you next Friday!