That’s a great question Bronto Benny! Let’s ask Christian Jakenfelds from Commsor to jump in and explain what he calls the three waves of customer success, and where marketers fit into this equation.
The First Wave: Maintain revenue by retaining customers
“Back in the early 2000s, Salesforce was growing at an explosive rate. But then they realized they weren't actually growing. They were adding customers each quarter and churning just as many each quarter. If they did that for another six quarters, they were going to start to run out of customers.
Having great sales will not mean much if you can’t keep those customers long term!”
The Second Wave: Grow revenue by expanding customers
“Later, in the 2010s, there was this realization that revenue teams could expand existing customers. If your company added another product or introduced seat-based licensing, you could grow revenue without signing a single new customer. We went from just focusing on annual recurring revenue (ARR), to net recurring revenue (NRR).”
The Third Wave: Expand business through customer referrals
“The third wave, I believe, is the next iteration of customer success. Having worked in both customer success and sales, an issue from the first two waves has emerged, causing a clear divide between the two. On one side, you have sales who are compensated on ARR, and then you have customer success who are compensated on NRR. Yet, no one is looking at existing customers and thinking about generating new business through them!”
Customers from warm intros or referrals have a
37%
higher retention rate [5]
This is Where Marketing Comes in
Exactly! Your company has focused on retaining the customers, customer success has then expanded the customers. Now you, the marketer, create the Third Wave by creating new customers from the networks of your existing customers through referrals.
This is your wheelhouse: getting high quality leads with a limited budget. Customer referrals close faster for higher revenue, less negotiation, and everyone stays longer.
First, recognize that to make this a success, collaboration between sales, marketing, and customer success is critical.
As a marketer, you are the one to lead the charge. Why? It all goes back to the core of your role: lead generation and opportunity creation with limited resources. Though all revenue teams are working toward a single goal, collaboration between these groups can prove difficult. Other teams can be protective of their client relationships, so it may be difficult to ask for access to those relationships.
However, not doing so can lead to stagnation and what Christian Jakenfelds calls ”marketing soft work.”
If a marketer gains access to a Customer Success Manager’s book of business and the marketer operates in a way that sours the relationship, that CSM is the one who has to deal with the repercussions. To avoid stepping on toes, in general, marketing has opted to do the soft, safe work like simply grabbing case studies for the website.
On the other hand, asking your most satisfied and influential customers for warm introductions to other prospects (the “hard” work) is infinitely more fruitful.
What Does Success Look Like Here?
Understand who your customers are, where they are in the journey, which ones are willing to say nice things about us, who they know, and then map all of that back to the prospects your sales team are trying to get in front of.
Figure out how to leverage each individual customer to touch each individual prospect. It's hard work because it’s a one-to-one transfer of trust that we’re trying to impart from the customer into the prospect!
- You’re looking for individuals, not accounts. Sure, an account might have a 10/10 Net Promoter Score so they’re getting results they need, but they may not have anyone who would shout about your product from the rooftops. Remember, accounts don’t impart trust, people do!
- You don’t always need to look for senior level individuals. Your buyer is already likely a senior level person, so there’s a high chance they’d rather meet with an end user, not a VP.
- Look for random moments of delight! Keep an eye out for the email snippets and the LinkedIn comment praise. This is why it’s critical to work in tandem with your Customer Success Managers.
Connecting Customers with Prospects
Connecting customers with prospects is vital to your organization’s growth.
What we just covered above is a very intentional method that requires handpicking relevant customers and prospects in order to meet. There is a more top-of-funnel approach to get customers from the consideration to decision stage that is just as effective and, as a byproduct, creates community.
Strategic GTM Advisor, Corrina Owens, pioneered this at Gong where she developed an Account-based Marketing (ABM) program that matched skeptical late-stage prospects with experienced customers (former skeptics themselves) to help push stalled deals over the finish line and ultimately build greater trust with buyers.
Traditionally, a vendor's salesperson connects their prospect with a pre-selected customer reference. But “there is a lot of distrust in that,” Corrina says. Vendor involvement can come across as a conflict of interest.
But with this program, “We were completely removed from the process. All we did was send them to the community.”
Here’s how she did it:
- She built a matching program on Matcha.so that connected their customers (the former skeptics) with late-stage prospects in a 1:1 setting.
- The sales team at Gong was completely removed from this process.
- Instead of sellers inviting their prospects to join, Corrina stepped in to invite the buyers to the community (with the blessing of sales, of course).
- She set it up, stepped back, and let the connections happen organically.
What she didn’t do:
- Control who was matched
- Prep customers in advance
The results:
Within the first year, over 600 introductions were made, and 1,500 in total since January 2024. The program has generated over 1,500 buyer-to-customer introductions since its inception!
“The cost of renting land from the Facebooks and the Googles of the world is getting more expensive, so blending in an approach where you have familiarity, high conversion rates, and warm introductions certainly helps from an acquisition cost perspective. In a new paradigm where efficiency rules, we need to leverage all the resources that we can.”
In this guide, we posit that the networks around you are your greatest source of untapped pipeline. Your business is surrounded by them. Networks of advisors, investors, employees, customers, influencers, partners, and so on—networks full of people who have either built relationships with your potential customers or, even better, are themselves your potential customers.
Instead of starting from scratch every time you go to market, consider building upon the trust your networks have already established with your buyers.
The Go-to-Network approach harnesses existing trust and relationship equity, helping you source more leads, drive more pipeline, and create a stronger brand.
Let’s get started.
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