B2B Customer Insight: The Proven Path to Growth (Hc), Barrett John

The Customer Success Manager has become a critical asset to organizations across the business landscape. As the subscription model has spread from the cloud and SaaS to more sectors of the economy, that pivotal role will only grow in importance. That's because if you want to compete and thrive in this new environment, you need to put the customer at the center of your strategy. You need to recognize you're no longer selling just a product. You're selling an outcome. Customer Success Managers (CSM) are committed to capturing and delivering those outcomes by listening to their customers, understanding their needs, and adapting products and services to drive success. Although several existing resources address the customer success imperative, there is no authoritative instruction manual for the CSM profession--until now.

The Customer Success Professional's Handbook is the definitive reference book for CSMs and similar roles in the field. This practical, first-of-its-kind manual fills a significant gap in professional customer success literature, providing the knowledge every CSM needs to succeed--from the practitioner level all the way to senior leadership. The authors--acknowledged experts in building, training, and managing Customer Success teams--offer real-world guidance and practical advice for aspiring and experienced CSMs alike. The handbook is written by practioners for practioners. An indispensable resource for front-line Customer Success Managers, this much-needed book:

• Demonstrates how to build, implement, and manage a Customer Success team
• Helps new CSMs develop their skills and proficiency to be more employable and grow in their careers
• Provides clear guidance for managers on how to hire a stellar CSM
• Presents practical tactics needed to drive revenue growth during renewal, expansion, and customer advocacy opportunities
• Explains proven methods and strategies for mentoring CSMs throughout their careers
• Offers valuable insights from Gainsight, the Customer Success Company, and the broader customer success community with more than a dozen of the industry's most respected leaders contributing their perspectives

Currently, with over 70,000 open positions, Customer Success Manager in one of the fastest-growing jobs in the world. The Customer Success Professional's Handbook: How to Thrive in One of the World's Fastest Growing Careers--While Driving Growth For Your Company will prove to be your go-to manual throughout every stage of your CSM career.

Did you know that less than one percent of all leads become customers? It is a true and shocking stat, but there is a way to stop the waste and flip this around.

In this highly anticipated book, we reveal the secrets behind our signature TEAM - Target, Engage, Activate, and Measure - framework to transform your approach to market, increase sales, and retain your ideal customers.

Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is the new B2B. It's time to challenge the status quo of B2B Marketing and Sales, and transition to what the business arena already expects as the updated B2B model.

A transformation like this can only happen through an account-based approach that unites marketing, sales, and customer success teams (go-to-market teams) as #OneTeam. In summary, the TEAM framework coupled with the account-based approach enables your company to focus on the target accounts, engage them in a meaningful way, activate the sales team with top tier accounts proactively, and finally measure success based on business outcomes over vanity metrics.

The process is simple when you have the right book - ABM is B2B. What are you waiting for?

The Amazon effect is permanently altering buying experience expectations while technology has lowered the barriers to entry. "Me-too" competitors lurk around every corner making differentiation a fundamental challenge and margin erosion a constant threat.

Along the way, the Business to Business buying journey has fundamentally changed.

In this brutal new age of business, every B2B enterprise faces a looming and existential threat of irrelevance and extinction. The undeniable truth is that in this hyper-competitive paradigm, there are only two alternatives:

1. A race to the bottom in which price becomes the sole differentiator, customers are merely transactions, and your products and services are viewed as commodities.

2. A race to relevance in which you separate yourself from, and rise above, the "me-too" horde with a shift away from pitching "stuff" to a customer-centric focus on delivering real, sustainable value through Measurable Business Outcomes.

This is exactly why the world's most agile and profitable companies, along with the highest earning sales professionals, are taking the lead in the race to relevance by transforming how they approach the buying journey.

In Business Outcome Selling Strategies Jeb Blount, one of the most celebrated sales strategists of our generation, and business transformation guru Jason Eatmon, give you the secrets for how next generation B2B sales organizations are accelerating sales productivity, operationalizing hyper-growth strategies, and locking out competitors. You'll learn powerful strategies for:

• Building the foundation for hyper-growth
• Connecting cross organizational disciplines to build an agile sales and growth driven culture
• Winning mindshare early through familiarity and shaping
• Nine Box Qualifying and the 4Rs: Right Prospect, Right Message, Right Time, Right Fit
• Digital Sales Transformation and integration
• Targeting tactics, sales engagement strategies, and sequencing
• Mastering the Four Levels of Sales to rapidly respond to buyer expectations
• Leveraging the MLP strategy to bend win probability in your favor
• Effective Stakeholder Mapping
• Deploying the READ Influence Methodology to gain stakeholder buy-in and consensus
• Differentiating with the MBO + EBO value equation
• Leveraging the powerful SCORE Discovery Model to get below the surface and become a true partner for your customers
• Uncovering the Metrics that Matter that lead to higher prices and long-term margins
• Mapping and presenting Outcome Based Solutions
• Leveraging Value Bridges to become the vendor of choice
• Linking marketing, sales, operations, and service to deliver Referenceable and Measurable Business Outcomes
• Deploying the CAIRE Account Management and Customer Success model to rapidly grow existing accounts and make customer relationships sticky
• Leveraging the comprehensive BOSS Strategic Planner to win your biggest opportunities

Business Outcome Selling Strategies (BOSS) isn't a typical sales book. Inside, you'll find a powerful field guide, proven processes, and complete system that connects the dots between sales, marketing, business development, operations, service delivery, account management, and customer success.

Leveraging these strategies, tactics, and tools, your organization will transform into a well-oiled, cohesive growth machine that delivers a legendary buying experience and unassailable competitive differentiation.

1.1 The peculiarity of business markets

1.2 The issues in focus

1.3 The study approach and methodology

1.4 Organisation of the volume

Chapter 2. PERSPECTIVES ON MARKET - B2B MARKET AS NETWORK

2.1 Comparing perspectives on market

2.3 Market as institution

2.4 Market in the marketing perspective

2.5 Market-as-network

Chapter 3. ANALYSING SUPPLIER CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS

IN BUSINESS MARKETS

3.1 The substance of relationships

3.2 Relationships in markets

3.3 Content and functions of interorganisational business relationships

3.4 Connecting resources, activities and actors

3.5 Interaction in business relationships

3.6 Interlocking of behaviours and its consequences

Chapter 4. ACTORS IN INTERACTION

4.1 Actors from an interaction perspective

4.2 Actors in business relationships

4.3 Perceptions, interpretations and behaviours in interaction

4.4 Symbolic interactionism

4.5 Identity construction and sensemaking

4.6 Actors' identities in business relationships

4.7 Interaction's actors: inter-actors

Chapter 5. AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF INTERACTION IN BUSINESS RELATIONSHIPS

5.1 Organization of the field study

5.2 Differences in identity attributed by different customers to the same supplier

5.4 Reflections on methodology and limitation of the study

6.1 The meaning of interaction in business relationships

6.2 The significance of heterogeneity and change in relational identities

6.3 Interaction's actors

6.4 Implications for research and practice

Index