Getting all your key stakeholders in the same room to align on value reviews (formerly quarterly business reviews) can be a challenge, let alone getting them to stay engaged and align on top priorities. When your clients are double booked, chances are that value reviews will be the meetings that are sacrificed. And when stakeholders do show up, it is often only for 15 minutes so they can check a box off their to-do list, leaving little room to align.
In a recent Customer Value Community Sandbox workshop, front-line sellers and customer success managers (CSMs) gathered together to address this problem. This open forum allowed practitioners to be honest about their challenges and share the strategies that work for them. Below are their insights on how to ensure value reviews help your customers succeed and expand with you.
1. Gain Alignment
The number one key to a successful value review is starting with alignment. Take the time to work with each of your individual key stakeholders to determine what their biggest priorities are. Often, you may find that the Chief Customer Officer may have a different top priority from the Chief Sales Officer or the Chief Revenue Officer. It is crucial to work with each stakeholder and document their specific objectives, meaning the key to success value reviews begins all the way back in the discovery and presales process. Ensuring that the needs of the stakeholders are documented earlier sets up CSMs for success down the road.
2. Create a Roadmap to Success
Once your stakeholders’ objectives are documented, you can begin to create a roadmap to success on how you will achieve the objectives. Take the time to create a timeline with tactics, metrics, and targets for when and how your team will achieve the individual objectives set in place. This roadmap will allow for informative and effective value reviews that give your stakeholders a quick overview of where you are at and if you are on track or behind, allowing you to jump right into the conversation of what needs to happen next, saving everyone time.
Ecosystems Collaborative Success Plan helps to build your roadmap by giving you a place to document tactics, metrics, targets, and timelines in a collaborative environment where you and your customer can work together through our partnership roadmap.
3. Ensure the Right People are Included
Prior to your value reviews, utilize the resources that are available to you. Work with your key points of contact in your client’s company to ensure that the right stakeholders will be at the upcoming meeting. They will be your best leverage to champion to C-level executives internally and encourage better attendance and collaboration at upcoming value reviews. With the right people in the value review conversation, you can more effectively progress and determine the correct roadmap forward.
4. Tailor Meetings to Increase Engagement
Work with your stakeholders to ensure the value reviews are most beneficial to their needs and time frames. For example, maybe your highest stakeholders have a pattern of only attending the first 15 minutes of a meeting. Tailor the meeting so that the most important points are covered at a high level right in the beginning, and then dive deeper into the discussion, later on, to ensure they hear what is most important.
Additionally, speak in the language that is right for each stakeholder. If you know that your chief sales officer prefers to get straight to the point and hear the numbers, tailor the conversation to appeal to their preference of receiving information to increase the likelihood they will be engaged.
5. Host Workshops and Coaching Sessions
To help ensure your CSMs feel confident in knowing how to prepare and engage your stakeholders in value review conversations, worst workshops, and coaching sessions that give your CSMs the chance to practice live and ask questions in advance. Giving formal training sessions and open office hours when CSMs are struggling can help improve value reviews over time and increase their confidence.
Ecosystems in-app coaching can aid your CSMs as they build out their roadmaps, helping you to create winning Collaborative Success Plans to aid in both value reviews and renewal/expansion conversations.
To learn more about how Ecosystems Collaborative Success Plan can aid you in achieving successful value reviews, contact our team.
