Customer Success and Great Demo! – Ahead of the Curve?

There is a growing “Customer Success” effort in the software industry – and in particular for SaaS companies who now realize that their continued growth depends directly on happy customers who renew their subscriptions, and for Land-and-Expand organizations who also realize that expansion only happens when the “Land” customers are happy, as well. 

What maps directly to achieving Customer Success in Great Demo! methodology?

Great Demo! was founded with the key concept that, “It’s all about the customer…”  With this in mind, here are a few Great Demo! elements that lead (rather directly, in many cases) to securing Customer Success:

Tangibles:

• Situation Slides – which are all about the customer (and their objectives and goals)
• The Delta, Critical Date, and V.R.E. in particular – these are important Customer Success metrics
• Illustrations – selecting compelling software screens that resonate requires clear understanding of specific customer needs and desires, as well as their preferred mechanism for consumption
• The Do It pathway similarly requires a critical understanding of how the customer wants to consume your capabilities (e.g., “Fewest Number of Clicks from a logical starting point”)
• Transition Vision and its timeline through to V.R.E.’s (Value Realization Events) – these are all about Customer Success
• The use of a Situation Slide to assess the likelihood of a “No Decision” maps also to the idea of a “good” vs. “bad” prospect (to avoid pushing a sale on a customer who won’t be successful)
• And for those who notice, our post-Workshop follow-up emails are always polling for success stories from you, our customers…

Intangibles:

• The “It’s all about the customer…” overarching theme
• The use of “You” mode in presenting demos
• The emphasis on “Daily-use” as opposed to “Set-up” mode

For those with existing Customer Success programs, Great Demo! provides substantial reinforcement; for those with new efforts, Great Demo! offers some excellent starting points!

Great Demo! practitioners – any additional ideas to add?