#64: How To Deliver Measurable Results For Customers

The only way to ensure customer retention is to deliver value. 

But... what's "value"?

• Knowledge can be value
• Productivity can be value
• De-risking can be value
• Revenue can be value
• Data can be value

When you use these high-level buzzwords, value is just another fluffy concept.

Until you attach actual measures to it.

• What level of skill improvement?
• How many hours were saved?
• How much risk was avoided?
• How much revenue was gained?
• What data insights surfaced?

When you quantify these promises into numbers and connect them to the metrics your customers care about, you demonstrate that your product has a measurable impact.

That's the baseline for strong retention.

So you need to shift from delivering "value" to delivering "measurable results".

Lucky for you, I just released Episode 1 of the CS MasterClass where I walk you through exactly how you can define and measure value for your customers. 

But here's a spanner in the works: Not every measurable result is valuable. 

Let's say a customer purchases your CRM platform to improve rep productivity and increase revenue. After six months of using your product, you show them how 90% of their team has completed a sales productivity certification.

Is that a measurable result?

 - Yes.

Is that a valuable measurable result?

 - Not really. 

This customer isn't likely to renew simply because their team got upskilled in sales productivity.

Conversely, if you can show that sales cycles have shortened because reps are more productive and each rep works 30% more leads today compared to 6 months ago, that's a different conversation.

Shorter Sales Cycles -> Money in the bank sooner, with less effort. 

30% more leads per rep -> Need to hire fewer reps to grow.

These are measurable outcomes that impact the bottom line.

Rep productivity is the reason WHY this customer bought your product.

In this case, completing certifications might be an important step in the journey of getting results but it's not the end game. If 100% of reps were certified but the rep productivity stayed the same, the customer would cancel their subscription and find another solution.

So, how do you discern between what truly matters and what's nice-to-have?

• Have a clear set of goals that your product enables
• Use standard metrics of success for each of those goals 
• Analyse the correlation between achieving those results and retention
• Collect information about individual customer goals in a Success Plan
• Agree on the top KPIs you'll report on a regular basis 

Francis Frei, author of the book Move fast and Fix Things says "Choose what you want to be excellent in".

That means:

1. Pick the few measurable outcomes that your business will be best in class at
2. Be the best at delivering them

Everything your CS team does should be geared towards helping customers achieve those measurable results.

Want to explore how to design a value realisation journey?

Don't miss next week's episode of the CS MasterClass where we will cover exactly that.

See you next Friday!