Address Your Client’s Current Priorities

Eight Things the Customer Success Team Should Do in a Recession – Part 2

Overview

There were a lot of great points made in my recent interview with Nick Mehta, CEO of Gainsight, but there was one aspect of the interview in particular that I think was particularly important. This was the part of our conversation when we discussed the role of the Customer Success Management team during a recession, or during any period of uncertainty where businesses are tightening up budgets and only performing essential activities due to fear of an impending recession, which I think is a good description for the situation we find ourselves in right now.

This article is partially based upon my recent discussion with Nick Mehta, and describes eight practical steps that almost any Customer Success Management team should be able to take when faced with a recession or period of uncertainty. In fact, to be exactly accurate we will discuss seven things to do and one thing to avoid doing. The original interview that inspired this article was recorded and the recording is available from our website here and from our YouTube channel here.

Address Your Client’s Current Priorities

Generally speaking I think we all understand the concept of the expression “to walk a mile in another person’s shoes”. The idea of course is that it can be very beneficial to see things from the perspective of someone else, as this realization of their perspective on things leads to a much greater understanding of their needs. Of course, all good companies do this all of the time with their customers, and indeed they even designed and built their products and services exactly with this understanding in mind. In this way, a well run company finds itself in the admirable position of selling a range of products and services that customers actually want and need, rather than ones which they do not. This is “Business 101” and is one of the key differences between running a successful business or running a failing one.

However, in “uncertain times” we need to remember that just as things are different for us, so they are for our customers, at least potentially. What I mean is that when times are difficult very often a company’s priorities will change too. Whereas in the good times, a company might have been chasing growth and investing in new innovation, during more difficult times that same company might well be focusing instead on reducing costs and limiting risk, which of course could mean a very different – if not very nearly opposite – set of management decision making might entail.

This being the case, we need to grasp this and think carefully about our marketing to both new and existing customers. We might need to put on hold the campaigns about how much more pleasant it is for our clients’ employees to use our solution versus those from our competitors, and replace it for example with a new campaign that shows how much more economical our solution is compared with those of our nearest competitors.

Of course, to do this does necessitate having an up-to-date and accurate understanding of your clients’ current situation and needs. Not all companies struggle in a recession – in fact, some businesses can positively thrive in uncertain or difficult times. Not all of our customers might be facing the same types of challenges due to a recession or period of uncertainty, so it is important that we recognize this and put some effort into researching and where necessary segmenting our existing customers (and our new prospects too of course) by their new needs. Once we have segments with various relevant and up-to-date needs clearly understood, we can build programs to evangelize to those clients exactly how our solutions are going to help them not just in general, but specifically with those very problems that we know they are struggling with the most right now.

How do we do this? Well, the most obvious way of course is simply to ask our customers. However, when the news is bad news, this can sometimes take some careful handling. It might be difficult for your client to accept some messages even internally, let alone feel comfortable discussing them with outsiders. It may not be their policy to admit that they are struggling because they do not want to be associated with uncertainty around their value (eg their share price) or even their ability to stay afloat in the future if things remain difficult or get any worse. This is perfectly understandable, and we may have to read between the lines a little, and also find ways of addressing these sensitive issues in a way that is less threatening to the client’s stakeholders.

This of course is where all that stakeholder relationship building that we emphasize so much throughout our training and certification programs can pay off. Customer stakeholders who trust you and already consider you to be their trusted business adviser are far more likely to open up to you and share their real challenges with you than stakeholders who do not yet trust you.

Where we do find client sensitivities that lead to it being difficult to ask them outright, or where we simply do not have the time or resources to reach out to all clients, we may well find that some more generalized research via the Internet on a particular industry within a region (Retail in North America for example, or Telecommunications in the Far East) may yield some great insights from industry pundits and other experts via interviews, articles, and so on. Research conducted in this way is always worth validating, so do remember to check in with customers to get their perspective on whether what is stated as a trend or challenge in their industry in their region is something they would agree with (regardless of whether it relates directly to them or not as a specific company).

Stay tuned for Part Three of the “Eight Things the Customer Success Team Should Do in a Recession” article which will be published next month.

Go Back to “Eight Things the Customer Success Team Should Do in a Recession – Part One.”

Go to “Eight Things the Customer Success Team Should Do in a Recession – Part Three.”