Planning for 2025: Building the Business Case for Budget
By Kristen Hayer
This is it! I’m wrapping up my 2025 planning articles this week. For this final post I want to talk about how best to build a business case for the things – people, tools, training – your team needs to deliver an excellent customer experience next year.
Here’s how you can have the best chance of getting your budget approved:
Know Your Audience
Who approves your budget? Is it your team’s executive? Probably not. Budgets are typically approved by the CEO and CFO, often in combination with the Board of Directors or an investor team. Remember that your audience does not know customer success at the deep level you do.
Your business case will need to educate as well as convince. Also, you need to position what your team needs in terms of what is good for the company. By understanding the goals and objectives your company has for 2025, you can better position your budget as aligned with those goals.
Develop Your Story
In what way does your budget support the needs of your company? Don’t assume that your audience understands the link between the work you are doing and the larger goals of your organization. You need to draw that line for them. Talk about how your team drives revenue, how the tools you are asking for will drive retention, or how the training your team needs will boost sales. Revenue, whether protecting it, growing it, or both, should always be a part of your business case.
Collect & Organize Your Data
You will need to present data that supports your claims. It isn’t enough to say, “Adding 5 people will help us retain customers.” You need to show that there is a direct relationship between the number of customers a CSM manages and customer retention. If you still have the time before budgets need to be submitted, run a small-scale test that gives you the data you need to support your story. The teams with solid data on what will happen if the company invests in them will be the ones who get the budget.
Commit to a Forecast
In addition to gathering data, you’ll need to project what you expect into the future. You might be forecasting things like revenue, retention rate, number of opportunities or even number of referenceable customers. Any claim that is a part of your business case should have a related forecast for the entire year. If you haven’t created a forecast before, team up with someone on your sales leadership team and have them show you how they do it. It can be a little scary to commit to hard numbers going into what will be a year of change, but it is necessary.
Present Your Case
You will likely be presenting your budget a few times, to a few different people. Ensure that you have a solid presentation. First, keep it simple and just focus on the things you are asking for.
This is not the time to review every metric you’ve ever measured. Second, be thoughtful and creative about how you present the data you do choose to present. Choose the kind of charts or tables that best highlight your past or expected results. Finally, write a talk track that is focused and clear. By making your requests obvious you make it easier for decision-makers to say yes.
Prepare for Q & A
Be prepared for questions. The Board of Directors exists to advise the company’s executives which means they are expected to ask a lot of questions. Plan ahead by brainstorming the kind of questions you’ll likely get and designing answers for those questions. Run your Q & A by one or two of your peers and see if they think of anything else or can help you refine your answers.
You will probably get a few questions you didn’t think of, but if you can be prepared for the bulk of them you’ll feel much more confident going into a budgeting session.
If you aren’t the one presenting your budget to the decision-making team, you’ll want to make sure you review all of this with your team’s executive so they are prepared. This will help them help you.
I hope this series of articles has given you some solid ideas about planning for 2025. Good luck, and know that you can always reach out to The Success League for help in achieving your goals next year!
The Success League is a customer success consulting firm. If you want support getting through your 2025 planning, we would be happy to help! Visit TheSuccessLeague.io for more on our consulting, coaching, and training offerings.
Kristen Hayer - Kristen founded The Success League in 2015 and currently serves as the company's CEO. Over the past 25 years Kristen has been a success, sales, and marketing executive, primarily working with scaling tech companies, and leading several award-winning customer success teams. She has written over 100 articles on customer success, and is the host of 3 podcasts about the field. Kristen has served as a judge for the Customer Success Excellence awards, and is on the board of several early-stage tech companies. She received her MBA from the University of Washington in Seattle, and now lives in San Francisco.
