Win the Retention Growth Play
reduce churn to capture revenue
According to analysts, as much as 70–80 percent of the average company’s revenue comes from existing customers.
Yet, most commercial leaders (nearly 60 percent) see no need to take a different approach between customer acquisition and customer expansion. More than half believe the same provocative messages they use when communicating with new prospects are still applicable in a renewal scenario.
Despite this pervasive belief, our research shows that customer retention conversations require an entirely different approach. When you’re the insider, defending your relationship with existing customers, you can’t disrupt the relationship—you need to reinforce your value and highlight the reasons why you’re still the safest choice.
You can’t rest on your laurels and leave it to chance—you need to actively reinforce your value and ensure your customers continue to choose you.
identify your retention growth levers
To win your retention growth play, you need to use a unique approach that shows existing customers that you’re still the best solution to meet their strategic needs. Your messages, skills, process, and teams must all be aligned to execute it effectively.
Process: If your teams aren’t following a retention process that aligns with your customer’s behaviors and motivations, you’ll be far less likely to win those renewals.
Messages: An effective retention message is 180 degrees different than an acquisition message. That’s because you’re not trying to disrupt the status quo, but rather reinforce your incumbent position and strengthen the customer relationship.
Skills: Your teams need to be able to articulate the progress your customer has made with your solution while reinforcing your value as their status quo.
Leadership: For your retention growth play to succeed, you need to pull your managers out of the day-to-day minutia and empower them to lead.
Technology: Your tech stack binds your messages, content, and seller skills to your process. You don’t need more tools, but rather the right tools to support your retention growth play.
empower your teams for customer retention
Customer success isn’t the only team that impacts retention. You need to ensure your sales and marketing teams are also telling the same story and following the same process to reinforce the value of your solution with your customers.
close the confidence gap
When you execute your retention growth play successfully, you actively defend your customer relationships and reduce churn. And when your retention strategies are in sync with the psychology behind your buyers’ decisions, it closes the gap between strategy and results, leading to shorter sales cycles and outsized revenue growth.
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