Hi Reader,

I was working with a client who had a good product, good team, and a long list of logos they were chasing to get an appointment.

I asked, “What does your existing account strategy look like?”

Silence.

I asked, “How do you get more business from existing customers and get them to make introductions for you?”

More silence.

Turns out, there wasn't one.

Marketing wasn't touching existing customers. Sales had moved on. Customer success did onboarding and took inbound but did nothing proactively.

So, we ran a small experiment. Marketing sent one email to existing customers (not strangers, existing customers), about features they hadn't activated yet.

Nine demo requests came back. Every single one turned into an active opportunity.

One email. That’s all it took. Not saying it will always be that easy but oh my gosh, what could your team be overlooking?

The question is, what is your team compensated to do? Most account executives are paid to close deals and move on. If there are no account managers to grow the business and ask for introductions, it doesn’t get done.

Most customer success people get paid to onboard and maybe check in once in a while and of course, take inbound. They are not expected to make proactive outbound calls through the life of the customer. Imagine the information they could provide the account manager to grow the accounts.

Here's the thing nobody wants to say out loud.

Your comp plan rewards the behavior that has many of you ignoring existing customers.

Retention isn't Customer Success's job alone. It's everyone's job. Until the structure changes, the behavior won't. Set expectations and compensate when those are met.

But wait, there’s more . . .

Before you can sell more to existing customers or ask for an introduction, they have to be happy because they are successful using what you sold them.

If they're not, you don't have an expansion opportunity. You can’t ask for an introduction. You have a churn risk.

User adoption is key. If you sold them 500 seats and they are only using 100, what do you think will happen at renewal time?

Software that isn't being used gets eliminated. It doesn't matter how good the product is if no one uses it. If your customers never got properly onboarded, if adoption never happened, you have quietly built a ceiling over your own growth.

When your pipeline isn't full you have no choice but to chase people you don’t know.

And chasing is exhausting.

Because cold outbound is harder than ever. Buyers don’t want your calls or your emails.

The best way to get new business is through introductions from successful customers or others who know you and trust you.

When existing customers have been successfully onboarded, relationships are nurtured, and new relationships are built, sales, marketing, and customer success can work together to determine if there is potential for growth and create a plan to do so. That is when there is the opportunity to ask them to introduce you to people they know who trust them.

That's the best new business development there is.

No cold outreach required.

A process is required that includes expectations and metrics.

One more story before I go.

Another company I worked with had zero to minimal communication with their existing customers for sixteen years. Sixteen. Their customers called in when there was a problem. That was the relationship. ACVs ranged from $100K to a million dollars a year. Their book of business grew a small amount every year due to the growth of their customers, not due to working on the relationship.

They finally hired an account manager. She started calling.

You know what customers said to her?

"Thank you so much for calling. We've never heard from anyone."

Customers paying up to a million dollars a year, thanking someone just for picking up the phone.

In roughly six months, the account manager surfaced $1.2M in opportunities in those existing accounts.

That revenue was always there. It just needed someone to show up.

Is your team showing up?

Last month's live conversation with Adam Miller, CEO of Elevate and demand gen expert, and Andy Cunningham, one of the best positioning strategists in the business, blew me away. The messages I got afterward told me we were onto something.

So we're going deeper.

Episode 2 is Wednesday, May 27th, 9am Pacific | 12pm Eastern.

Adam, Andy, and I are going to get into all of it, why the relationship breaks down after the close, what a real account growth plan looks like when sales, marketing, and customer success own it together, how onboarding and adoption help set the ceiling on everything that follows.

If any of this is hitting close to home, this is for you.

​REGISTER HERE​

To your sales success,

Alice

P.S. The biggest thing I've learned from working with B2B tech companies on this? The revenue is almost always already there. It's just waiting for someone on your team to find it.