3 Reasons Go-To-Market Must Involve CS, and How to Get Your Voice Heard

By Lauren Costella-Reber

Too often Customer Success gets left out of the Go To Market conversation. Our companies spend years developing advancements to the current product or building additional products, and then, when they’re ready to launch, the conversation starts with Product, includes Marketing, and ends with Sales. At best, Operations is included and at worst, both Customer Success and Operations are left out in the cold. 

This is a huge missed opportunity for businesses, and also the customer experience. When Customer Success isn’t aligned to Product, Marketing, and Sales, you miss on delivering against the “marketing promise” you made externally. You miss the opportunity to advise on the message in the first place. You miss the opportunity to influence how you sell and how you package the appropriate services. And finally, you miss the opportunity to examine what current and future customer segments look like for the business at large. 

I want to examine how missing these opportunities impacts the business, and more importantly share a few tips on getting your voice heard.

The Message

What you promise to your prospects and current clients directly impacts your ability to deliver against that promise and how you do it. Therefore, it’s absolutely essential that Customer Success finds its voice at the table when your company launches new products or goes to market with new Marketing and Sales strategies. When Customer Success isn’t at the table, you risk drastically over-promising and then under-delivering for new and current customers. No one wants that experience, but too often, when CS isn’t at the table, you make assumptions that can lead to disaster. Product may know how the product works, Marketing how to best position it, and Sales how to sell it, but if you don’t understand how you deliver it, or make poor assumptions on Customer Success’s ability to deliver it, your customers churn. It’s that simple. 

Pricing and Packaging

Just as it’s important to deliver what you promise, it’s equally important to ensure pricing and packaging align with delivery. If you’re launching a product that requires heavier implementation, for example, are you charging for implementation? And are you charging enough, especially in cases of Enterprise implementation? 

If CS isn’t part of the conversation, you could underestimate the investment needed to onboard customers onto the product, which might in turn lead to failed or incomplete onboarding, ultimately affecting your ability to retain or grow clients. Alternatively, you could fail to keep your gross margins in check if you aren’t earning back any of the cost of a high-touch onboarding journey. 

With CS at the table, you can advise on the level of effort needed to bring value to the customer and examine whether that investment changes depending on the customer profile, which leads me to my final point. 

Customer Segmentation & Targeting

When you go to market, you need to think through to whom you sell, what you sell, and how you sell it. When Customer Success isn’t part of the process, your organization cannot understand the right customer profiles. Customer Success is the front line of understanding the types of customers that work with you, the value they receive, and how they need to be treated. CS also has the data of what types of customers churn or which customer profiles struggle to receive value from the business. When CS isn’t part of the conversation, you miss out on your ability to target the right customer segments. Perhaps more importantly, you miss out on sharing with the organization which segments you don’t want to sell to, and therefore, you risk continuously selling to a segment that’s a poor fit.

These three reasons for CS to be part of the Go To Market process aren’t exhaustive by any means, but they should be large enough to warrant a seat at the table. The question remains: how? How do you get your voice heard?

Start with Data

The best strategy to have your voice heard starts with data. It’s critical to understand data along the customer journey including, of course, churn data. For example, if you can report on the velocity and satisfaction of onboarding by segment, you will be able to inform the Go To Marketing team on what level of service would be needed to successfully bring a new product or strategy to market. If you collect data on health and churn at various points throughout the journey, and can speak to the customer profiles that perform well, you can show how selling to a particular profile at specific points in the journey could impact lifetime value and margins of your business. Data makes decisions, not anecdotal stories or assumptions.

Ask More Questions

One of the best ways to be part of the conversation is to ask questions! When you hear whispers of a new strategy coming to fruition or a new product getting ready to be launched, it’s critical to ask questions that impact customers. For example, you might ask:

• What type of profile are you selling to? How did you choose that profile? 

• Has churn data been assessed when considering selling to this profile? 

• What is being promised and who or how do you plan to deliver it?

• What is the expected customer experience once the sale happens and who has been part of the discussion for delivery?

Approaching internal teams with questions allows colleagues to consider a larger picture and start to think through the importance of including others in the conversation.

Ask to Attend These Discussions

Finally, if you’re going to get your voice heard, ask to be part of the discussion. More often than not, the lack of inclusion of Customer Success in Go To Market discussions is an oversight. We can debate how the label “Go to Market” itself really doesn’t lend to thinking about Customer Success in another blog, but the point here is that you need to be part of the discussions to have a voice, so ask to attend! Or show up! Armed with data and great questions, your presence will be appreciated and needed. Only with your voice will customers, future customers, and the bottom line of your business succeed. 

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Lauren Costella-Reber - Lauren is a change agent, communicator, leader and passionate champion for Customer Success. When she’s not working as the Chief Customer Office at Dental Intelligence, you can find her blogging on the CS Playlist. Lauren has her MA and BA from Stanford University. She was a former USA National swim team member and enjoys staying active in the Bay Area.