By: Dan Sixsmith, Head of Customer Success
B2B selling is quickly becoming a team sport. GTM teams are being asked to deliver a seamless experience to your prospects and customers. All the while, CFOs are looking at ways to rationalize technology spending and your program might indeed be on the chopping block. More and more, the question being asked by your customers is:
"Tell me again...what value did we receive?"
Does the question make you uncomfortable? Here is what typically happens today:
Two Different Types of Answers
Without Value Clarity
❌ The room goes quiet
❌ Trust erodes
❌ Relationships become strained
❌ Potential evaporates
With Value Clarity
✅ Confidence grows
✅ Partnerships strengthen
✅ Force multiplication of success
Trust is the Foundation of B2B Deals
Failing to deliver on commitments can erode relationships. So, the stakes are high, and the ability to confidently navigate the post-sales value conversation is key to effectively answering the question and setting your accounts up for long-term relationships, expanded value, and future growth.
Customer success in many organizations is being looked at to drive growth. Some have called customer success the new Demand Gen. All the more reason to have a compelling story backed up by numbers and outcome attainment.
What Can We Expect When We Deliver on Our Value Promise?
Market Share Growth: B2B brands that can have after-sale value conversations are nearly 3x more likely to increase market share compared to those that don’t (LinkedIn B2B Institute).
Reduced Churn: Transparent communication and accountability minimize buyer’s remorse, with companies investing in post-sales support reporting 25% higher retention rates (Zendesk).
Referral Potential: Satisfied customers are 3x more likely to advocate for a brand, amplifying organic growth through word-of-mouth (Bain).
How to Capitalize on This Massive Opportunity
They need to know right out of the gate that you have a process to measure success and playback the value received—not just at renewal time, but the entire way through the term of the relationship.
Strategies to Keep Your Promise
Strong Start / Attaching to Outcomes / Co-Creating Value
Implement tailored onboarding experiences that cater to each customer's specific needs and goals. This approach ensures a smooth transition and helps customers quickly realize the value of their purchase (everyone wants fast time to value).
Customer Experience is critical, particularly at the time of kickoff and implementation. We know that the majority of IT buyers almost immediately experience buyer's remorse. They need to know right out of the gate that you have a process to measure success and playback the value received—not just at renewal time, but the entire way through the term of the relationship.
The key skill here is Discovery—validating the specific outcomes the customer is looking to achieve and their timelines. In addition, find out the 'why' behind the outcome. What is the current state issue that needs to be solved to get to the desired outcome? Ideally, a smooth handoff from sales makes this an easy confirmation/reinforcement. Lastly, you must gain alignment among the stakeholders.
To help ensure your customer success managers (CSMs) feel confident in knowing how to prepare and engage your stakeholders in value review conversations, set up 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 conversations 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.]
Roadmap for Success / Proactive Customer Success Management
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.
Secondly, instill a growth mindset in your team, anticipating client needs and addressing potential issues before they arise. Discussing future needs and ways to add even more value.
For CFOs, the proof is in the pudding. Dollars and cents need to be part of your pitch.
Leverage Community Building
We hear so much about social proof. What better way to facilitate this than to foster a sense of community among your customers to encourage knowledge sharing and peer-to-peer support.
For example, the Ecosystems Customer Value Community is the only one of its kind in the value space, consisting of over 3,700 value practitioners and leaders. This has been helpful for those seeking to deliver a compelling post-sales experience in several ways as it consists of:
- In-person meet-ups
- Online forums
- Webinars
- Slack channels to connect and share experiences
There, members can highlight customer success stories. Moreover, if you're struggling with something, you can find out how others are addressing or solving for it.
Value Realization Tracking
For CFOs, the proof is in the pudding. Dollars and cents need to be part of your pitch. Implement tools and processes to help customers quantify and track the ROI of your product or service. Enable CSMs and AMs to be able to leverage these to quantify value delivered. Go one step further and compare it to the pre-sales value "promise." And one more step to demonstrate where the customer can realize "even more value" through additional features, or new solutions and services.
In addition:
- Develop custom dashboards that showcase key performance indicators and pull in real-time data
- Provide regular impact reports demonstrating the value delivered over time
- Offer benchmarking services to compare performance against industry standards
By implementing these strategies, B2B organizations can significantly enhance their post-sales value delivery, leading to increased customer satisfaction, loyalty, and ultimately, higher customer lifetime value.
The Bottom Line
In 2025, keeping your promises is essential. And being able to prove that you did so will be the difference between blowing up your numbers and skating by—or even coming up short.
Do it.
