Post Sales Is Pre Sales
- Dan Greenberg
- 5 days ago
- 7 min read
We exist in the era of the buyer. Never before have buyers had so much access to information. While an abundance of data can lead to information overload, savvy, investigative buyers can now independently research the details they once relied on sellers to provide in order to become informed about products. This may seem like an old and boring story, after all, we are in the age of AI, and what we are talking about here was the information age. However, buyers en masse have been adapting to the new world of information availability and it has taken time for them to build new ways of doing things into their day-to-day activities. We are only now seeing the full effects of the internet information age play out in how buyers relate to sellers. And, yes, it is just in time for the age of AI.
Due to these technology improvements and the mass digitization and adoption of technology in business over the past 30 years, switching vendors and providers has become much easier. This reality is even more so in the software world where switching can be as simple as signing a new contract and running some internal trainings. Of course, vendors work hard to become more sticky, and to integrate themselves into the systems of the businesses they sell to, but nevertheless, switching costs are lower than they ever have been, and are especially so in software.
So, what does the fact that customers know everything, and can switch easily mean for selling organizations?
A Shift to Customer Success: Organizations must focus on building value and reliance with existing customers, moving beyond traditional "account management" which often centers merely on customer service.
Re-evaluating New Business: Selling organizations must stop overvaluing new business at the expense of existing accounts.
We will talk about both of those components in more detail, but first I’d like to reference the book “Customer Success”, written by Nick Mehta, Dan Steinman, and Lincoln Murphy. In the book they discuss the evolution of the Customer Success function from non-existence to necessity in some firms, as well as the foundations and practices that lead to successful customer success organizations. I recommend the read because it provides a good understanding of how the customer landscape has changed and the reason for the growth in necessity of Customer Success teams; a direct response to the changes in customers and their capabilities over time. While the book is fairly prescriptive, and very practical throughout, it does also speak to the high level landscape that sales organizations find themselves in. There are many customer centric sales and account management related learnings that can be gleaned from an understanding of the landscape.
The new reality that we find ourselves in, due to customer knowledge and low switching costs, leads to two realities for sellers and sales organizations that I mentioned above.
Let’s first take a look at the idea that customer success is a vital function for a growth organization. As businesses become more digitally reliant and more technologically focused when it comes to core operations, switching vendors is easy, but more importantly, there is no incentive for companies to become overly reliant on any one particular tool or vendor relationship. If a buying organization finds a better offer, or a better product, it feels less risky than ever before to switch to that product whenever they want. So, buying organizations go to some lengths to negotiate breakable contracts, light integrations, and test and learn approaches that allow for maximal flexibility. This reality puts the responsibility directly on the growth organization’s account team to work with existing clients and expand the value they get out of their solutions. Being sticky requires that your clients recognize value in product use, and integrate those products into the core of how they do business. The understanding of client goals, followed by the recognition of value has to come first, but once it does, selling in that deeper level of integration is every bit as much of a sales task as the original sale was.
Many organizations divide sales tasks between sellers and client success or account management, but that does not make the function of those account management and client success teams any less of a sales function. So, whether you are a seller or not, learning about goals, working with clients to recognize value and then selling a deeper level of integration is a selling function.
Client Success teams and account management teams are actually in a better situation to sell than sellers. For starters, new business sellers don’t have a working product and results that they can point to in order to help earn credibility, and maybe more importantly, client organizations have to share goals and needs with customer success reps in order to get the help they need. The problem is that many organizations do not reinforce the idea that post sales is pre sales. A customer success person’s job is not to listen to issues and solve problems, it is to be constantly running discovery, and understanding not what the client needs, but why they need it, so that they can open up additional conversations and cross-sell, upsell, and drive deeper integration.
Most customer success organization leaders will tell you that they operate with a focus on discovery and upsell activities, but if you listen to a call and hear an account manager solve a problem for their client, you will often realize that the focus is on customer service, not framing, and growth. Your best clients are your current clients, and yet most organizations don’t operate with that understanding. Firms that have already bought from you are more likely to buy more, and buy again. Every solved problem is a missed opportunity. I am by no means saying that problems should not be solved, but discovery is the most important of the tasks.
The second idea that I want to take a look at is the idea that new business is not as valuable, relative to existing business, as it used to be. Most companies operate with a goal of making as much money as possible. When a lot of money comes through the door, shareholders like it, employees like it, and management likes it. The thing about money is that it is completely fungible, so no dollar is inherently more valuable than any other dollar. Sure, it may be sexier to close a brand new deal with a brand new client who has never spent a penny before, but their first dollar is worth exactly the same amount to the company as the next dollar spent by the company’s oldest customer. By the same token, if that new client has a bad experience and leaves, the opportunity cost of that missed revenue is exactly as valuable as the opportunity cost associated with upsell dollars not driven because of a lack of focus on existing clients. The clients who have already spent money with your company, and already integrated you into their systems are far and away the most likely to spend more money with you. Why? It’s simple. They have already proven they are willing to do so.
In a world where switching costs are high, and switching is hard, and in a world where information is hard to come by, new business is very valuable because new clients tend to stay, since they can’t easily find information about your competitors, and switching is hard and expensive. But we don’t exist in that world anymore, so new business is simply not as valuable as it used to be. Any client can leave at any point, and the most likely clients to leave are the ones who are newest since your solutions are not fully integrated into their operations, and since onboarding is a relatively tricky period of time in the client relationship. This means that the long term value of a new client may look like a big number, but when weighted properly to account for churn, it gets much smaller. This means that training customer success and account management teams to onboard, and to consistently treat post sales and pre-sales so that they can farm new revenue from existing clients becomes every bit as important a sales function as what we have traditionally considered sales up till now. Client Success and account management teams should be trained like sellers, and incentivized like sellers, and sellers should remain focused on existing business and think about new dollars from old clients as every bit as valuable as new dollars from new clients.
Sure, there are times when it is strategically important to build a bigger base of clients, and other times when it is strategically important to focus on retention, but on the whole, new business is just not as valuable as it used to be relative to the whole.
The authors of the book “Customer Success” make a number of great arguments for both the importance of a top down organizational focus on client success, and the rethinking of the way that customer success teams are developed. But they also talk about the structure of organizations that best supports good customer success practices, and they recommend a Chief Customer Officer, or a Head of Customer Success who is on the same level as the Chief Revenue Officer or Head of Sales and can promote the development and fulfillment of resources for the Customer Success team. This is the one area where I think they have missed the mark. As barriers to competition continue to get lower and adoption and switching get easier the lines are more and more blurred between new and existing business. This means that Customer Success should not be a standalone function, but rather a seamless part of the revenue organization. Sales should no longer be thought of as driving new business. The function should include relationship managers and client success managers and it should be thought of as driving new dollars, from whatever source makes the most sense for the given moment.
A client who is not spending currently, but who is sold on value prop, and needs guidance on how implementation will affect their business, needs a person who we would typically categorize as an account manager. At the same time, an existing client who tested the solution and is likely to churn, needs a person who we would traditionally categorize as a seller. Sales and Customer Success need to be in one organization so that they have one overall goal. Find the next dollar. All dollars are worth the same. Hunters and farmers can and should work together and go where they are needed most to close that next dollar if they are incentivized properly, and work together in one organization.
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