How do you follow up and reinforce the value of your solution after the sale?

- Regular Check-Ins - Provide Additional Resources - Personalized Updates - Regularly ask for feedback - Celebrate Milestones and Successes - Offer Additional Support - Share Industry Insights - Conduct Value Reviews - Introduce New Opportunities - Engage Through Social Proof - Try to build a Community

The journey of creating value never ends, not even after the sale. To maintain long-term relations with your clients and customers, it is important to provide constant support to your customers. Collect customer insights and feedback and then tailor your offerings in a way that increases customer value. Moreover, provide personalized recommendations and introduce them to such features and complementary products to make your products more appealing and enhance the current solution. Do feature your clients and share their testimonials and success stories on your socials to make them feel recognized.

Sending a thank-you note to your customer is a simple yet impactful gesture. Express appreciation for their business and trust, showing you value them beyond the transaction. This fosters a positive relationship and provides an opportunity to request feedback, testimonials, or referrals, enhancing ongoing engagement and satisfaction.

A heartfelt thank-you note is like a handshake that lingers—it leaves a lasting impression. It tells your customer that you see them as more than just a sale, but as a valued partner in your business journey. This small act of gratitude can turn a one-time transaction into a long-term relationship. Plus, it’s the perfect moment to invite their thoughts or ask for a referral, subtly turning appreciation into opportunity.

Thank you note is a no-brainer. A well executed sale should come down to a joint thank you where both parties are happy with the outcome.

Delivering or exceeding on the Quantified Value Promise is the best form of satisfying your customer. The World Class Sales people ensure that they close the loop with their clients, by going back and measuring the "Value Delivered" and contrasting that with the "Value Promised", highlighting the successful delivery.

The best value sellers measure & communicate value at 3 critical times. 1️⃣ During the sale, create a value "estimate" 2️⃣ After the sale but before your offering is implemented: * agree on specific "value goals" * gather the baseline data * establish ongoing value data collection & review processes 3️⃣ After delivery, quantify "value delivered" to the customer Many firms are so excited to get the sale that they skip step 2. A value goals workshop should be a required part of your implementation process. Successful value communication requires shared value goals and an ongoing value data collection & review processes. Your retention improves and you build trust and credibility for future upsell & cross sell value claims.

Value should the the foundation of the post-sales engagement, starting with helping the customer achieve a significant win to reinforce the decision to move forward. I have seen that tracking every assumption made pre-sales is not required for all customers. Genius Drive developed the GROWS framework, which includes tracking the Goals they were aiming to achieve, the Rollout progress, the measurable Outcomes, the anecdotal Wins, while building a Strategy for ongoing value delivery. It is not about articulating value realized to the most granular detail, it is about measuring quantitative and qualitative wins to deepen the relationship.

This is a critical step to drive long term relation and value realization. Sales team should remain engage until a proper handover to PS and CS is conducted which also includes clear definition of success criteria or project KPIs that would be adopted to measure value. for SaaS business this is key to enable CS to do their job and drive adoption and expansion and for sales execs that will need to justify renewal and expansion at the time of renewal. Depending on the sales/post sale model CS or Sales should own the value monitoring/measure. Value Engineering should own the modeling and reporting. Make sure you have a clear strategy to get ready to the buyer's question at the time of renewal: what value your solution has delivered?

In value selling, quantify and communicate your solution's value with relevant metrics. After the sale, continuously monitor and measure the value delivered, and share results with the customer. This approach demonstrates your impact, validates your claims, and helps identify and address any gaps or issues, ensuring ongoing customer satisfaction.

Is "customer success" just your old reactive customer support and account management functions? Too many firms simply rebranded without changing the capability. Measuring value allows you to be more proactive in generating the customer's desired outcomes. If you and your customer have set clear value goals and identified the KPIs that drive that value, you can be monitoring those KPIs to predict potential value shortfalls. These leading indicators highlight areas for proactive support. Even better, they allow you to prioritize scarce resources on those performance improvements that drive the most value. Integrating value management into ongoing support and education is like having cheat codes for retention and expansion.

Reinforce your solution's value by offering ongoing support and education. Provide training, coaching, troubleshooting, and best practices to ensure effective use. This helps customers achieve their goals, solve problems, and enhance their skills, while building trust and positioning yourself as a valuable partner and advisor.

Customer success goes beyond escalating tickets. Great CSMs make an enablement and success plan where they combine learning sessions and knowledge sharing calls with other customers. This plan needs to be mapped to the client’s maturity, business goals and roll out of the solution. Providing an online learning environment without guidance is useless. It is as good as sending a note saying to check the FAQ.

During follow-ups, uncover new needs or challenges to identify upsell or cross-sell opportunities. Offer additional features or services that align with their goals and address pain points. Avoid being pushy; instead, use value discovery questions to ensure your solutions are genuinely relevant and beneficial to their evolving needs.

In a recent podcast episode, our guest said that for customer success teams, they are well positioned to ask, "Would you like fries with that?" That struck me as a great reminder that building trust to gain a new customer is a significant hurdle. However, once we have helped to solve a challenge for them and there has been value realized, we can more easily have a conversation about the challenges to be solved. We are not selling, we are helping people solve challenges. It is an exchange of value and the buyer should be the one gaining the most from the relationship.

Tracking "Value" KPIs (e.g., the customers performance that drives the value that they get from our solution) enables you to proactively maximize the value that they receive from your current offering. This builds trust and credibility that your value claims while cross-selling or upselling are likely to be realized. It leverages your advantage from being an incumbent. Sharing a Customer Value KPI dashboard keeps your value delivered front and center throughout the customer relationship.

Reinforce your solution's value by encouraging satisfied customers to refer you or write testimonials. This generates leads and enhances your reputation. Referrals and reviews serve as powerful social proof, influencing potential customers. Offer rewards, discounts, or recognition to incentivize them, boosting both credibility and customer engagement.

When you launch a new product, you may be offering an initial-use discount for those customers willing to try something new. A condition of the discount should be their willingness to be a reference site and write a case history with you. Set the expectation up front or better put the terms into the SOW. We never want to give a discount without getting something in return.

Successful businesses leverage their customer base to gather insight on the value they are generating with the technology and build benchmark and case study that can be use to set baseline value for BVA (Business Value Assessments). Leveraging satisfied customers to build your value benchmark analysis, further supported by customer referrals or case studies is a great way to scale your value selling motion. Run recurrent 'value diagnostic' with the client to help them measure the value realized is another great way to gather insights to enrich value models and support sales for expansion and renewals.

Most customers are reluctant to share their experience by fear of sharing company secrets or becoming the target of endless reference calls. I have seen multiple SaaS companies give Amazon vouchers for feedback provided on G2 crowd. It seems to work pretty well when customers know that they will get the vouchers independently of their ratings. A best-in-class approach is when you create a sense of community where your clients feel safe to share their experiences and successes with their peers.

I'd go a step further here. It's not only about thanking the customer. The goal should be for the customer to get credit within their organization for the value they created through both a good purchase decision and effective implementation. When we author a customer value report for a client, the report author is our client (with appropriate acknowledgement of our role in the back). This ties the value creation directly to client individual(s) who helped us make it happen. They use the value report internally to further their careers and get more funding for future projects - which benefits us in the end too. 🎇We're not selling an offering -- we are creating success stories for our clients. 🎇

Celebrating customer milestones isn't just about sending a generic "congrats" email. Consider creating a digital "Wall of Fame" showcasing customer achievements or hosting exclusive "Milestone Masterclasses" where successful clients share their experiences. You could even gamify the process, awarding virtual badges or real-world perks for reaching certain goals. By elevating these celebrations, you're not just acknowledging success - you're fostering a community of winners who associate their triumphs with your brand. This approach turns each milestone into a powerful marketing tool and a catalyst for deeper customer loyalty. It's not bad for marketing, either!

EYQA, a 360° Value Advisor for Kotec (a digital services company helping airlines), identified a challenge for Kotec's client, Maurya Flyers (a friendly regional airline). Long wait times at baggage claim were impacting passengers. EYQA went beyond evaluating value of Kotec's software solutions. By understanding Maurya's small team struggled during peak travel periods, EYQA leveraged their network to connect them with part-time baggage handler training. This sped up claim times and kept passengers happy. By focusing on Maurya's needs, EYQA became a trusted advisor for Kotec, proving their value in helping airlines like Maurya truly soar.

TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) is widely used to assess value, but it has several weaknesses. ⛔️By definition, Total Cost of Ownership focuses on cost reduction and often misses potential revenue impacts and risk levels that can be valued. ⛔️The bigger problem is its comprehensiveness. By definition assessing total cost requires gathering data for any cost that your offering could conceivably impact. Customer value modeling is a better alternative. It includes all areas that impact value - not just cost. Also by focusing on just the points of difference with the customer's alternative, less data is required. That means more customers will share their data and you'll save time. Most importantly, you'll also simplify your value story.