The Second Sale begins immediately after the first sale is closed, and it’s a continuous flow of small wins.
I often struggle to explain the concept of Customer Success to the uninitiated. It’s frequently confused with customer support, professional services or account management.
I have to stop the discussion right there.
Customer Success is not a new name for an old concept. It’s a discipline, a mindset, a set of practices all supported by a technology toolset.
But in an attempt to oversimplify it, I’m proposing a new phrase:
Customer Success is not a new name for an old concept. It’s a discipline, a mindset, a set of practices all supported by a technology toolset.
The “first sale” is well-understood. It’s the one we celebrate by ringing a gong, a closed deal, a converted trial user.
But as subscription-based products continue to overtake traditional buying models, it’s The Second Sale that will determine the long term success of your company. That’s because unit-level profitability isn’t realized until well-after the first sale is made. Consider the unit economics of a typical *aaS customer (source: http://www.a16z.com):
Source: http://a16z.com/2014/05/13/understanding-saas-valuation-primer/
Let me repeat: The Second Sale will determine how successful your company is going to be.
The Second Sale begins immediately after the first sale is closed, and it’s a continuous flow of small wins. Here’s what I mean:
And the list goes on…
So, it turns out that Blake was right. We must ABC: Always be Closing. And this is why Customer Success is not support, it’s not professional services, and it’s not reactive account management.
It’s a proactive approach to building a customer lifecycle and systematically addressing likely objections which will arise along every step of the journey. Objections that subvert your investment in the sale, erode customer ROI, and cost your company dearly in lost revenue and growth opportunities.
Like Sales, managing the Second Sale is part art and part science. Part listening and understanding to customer objections, part designing and implementing solutions to scale.
In a data-driven world it is possible to get feedback, build assumptions, test hypotheses and systemize positive results through everyday successes and failures.
The Second Sale drives improvements to virtually every part of the business because it will become the heart of the business strategy. So when people ask me what I do for a living, my new answer is this: I help companies build businesses by closing The Second Sale – consistently, reliably, and across every function of the business.
I believe that companies who choose not to take this approach do so at their own peril.
I've spent my career working in technology companies to build customer-centric teams, processes and technology platforms. In 2017, I founded Customer Imperative, a consulting firm that helps fast-growing B2B SaaS companies improve renewals, increase expansion sales and scale customer engagement. See full bio ›