Competing for Customers: Why Delivering Business Outcomes is Critical in the Customer First Revolution

Competing for Customers: Why Delivering Business Outcomes is Critical in the Customer First Revolution

by Jeb Dasteel, Amir Hartman, Craig LeGrande
Released February 2016
Publisher(s): Pearson
ISBN: 9780134173153

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Book description

Business-to-business customer expectations have changed. To survive—and thrive—in today’s economy, where customers are constantly reevaluating their purchases and looking at options never available before, you need to deliver business outcomes, not features and functionality.

Suddenly, your “sale” is no longer a one-time event: it’s a relationship that demands continuous care and nurturing. You need to constantly deliver, measure, and demonstrate the value you create for your customers.

Like it or not, it’s your job to make sure your customers succeed—and keep on succeeding—with what you’ve sold them. That job has a name: “Customer Success.”

Delivering customer success means radically changing the way you engage with customers—from sales, to marketing, to engineering and support. This book gives you a complete framework for doing just that. Step by step, you’ll learn how to make sure your customers are achieving business outcomes from your offerings…now, next year, and for years to come.

Embed customer success in your organizational DNA, in 3 steps:


Listen: Truly understand what it means for your customers to succeed with your offerings
Engage: Start a productive dialogue, collaborate to solve problems, and promote awareness of the value you create
Ensure: Innovate to deliver on your promises, prove it to the customer, and build retention 

Table of contents

  1. About This E-Book
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright Page
  4. Praise for Competing for Customers
  5. Contents
  6. Acknowledgments
  7. About the Authors
  8. Foreword
    1. Endnotes
  9. Introduction
    1. The Subscription Economy
    2. How to Compete for Customers: Our Central Thesis
    3. The Three Pillars of Customer Success
    4. Endnotes
  10. 1. Two Meta Trends Shaping the Competition
    1. Meta Trend #1: The Customer First Revolution
      1. Customer First Companies Perform Better
      2. Mastering Your Digital Identity Is Critical
      3. Local Beats Corporate
      4. B2B Customers Are Seizing Power
      5. Buying Happens Even Before the First Phone Call
    2. Meta Trend #2: The Subscription Economy
      1. The “Cloudification” of Business
      2. Investment Equations Will Be Radically Realigned
      3. Switching Costs Don’t Matter Anymore
      4. Barriers to Entry Will Crumble
      5. Products Will Morph into Services
      6. Delivering Outcomes Will Be Critical
    3. Endnotes
  11. 2. Making the Case for Customer Success
    1. Managing in an Upside-Down World
    2. First-Mover Advantage
    3. Snowball Effect
    4. The Economic Justification for Customer Success Delivery
    5. Protecting Revenue
    6. Expanding Revenue by Building on Your Base
    7. Extending Revenue with Referrals
    8. Do You Really Care About Customer Success?
    9. The Customer Success Investment Landscape
    10. The Three Pillars of Customer Success
    11. Endnotes
  12. 3. Listen
    1. Setting Up “Listening Posts”
      1. Collecting Structured Feedback: The Customer Survey
      2. Unstructured Feedback: The Power of Storytelling
      3. Aligning Customers and Employees: Both Sides of the Same Story
      4. Instrumenting for Success: Boosting Your Listening Power
    2. Measures of Success
    3. Closing the Loop
      1. Collect Anecdotes and Develop Hypotheses
      2. Collect Feedback and Conduct Analysis
      3. Report and Take Action
      4. Measure and Communicate Results
    4. Getting Started
    5. Endnotes
  13. 4. Telogis Listens for Success
    1. Listening First
    2. Thriving in the Subscription Economy
    3. Delivering Value from Day One
    4. Blurring the Lines
    5. Pushing Forward
    6. Tackling the Future
  14. 5. Engage
    1. Marketing: Storytelling with a Business Impact
      1. The End of Fluff
      2. Lifecycle Marketing
      3. Getting Personal
      4. Harnessing Social Media
    2. Sales: Strategic Selling in the Subscription Economy
      1. Rules of Engagement
    3. Professional Services: Going Beyond Implementation
    4. Customer Service: From Break-Fix to Business Outcomes
    5. Product Development: Turning Products into Customer Success
      1. The Role of Automation in Strategic Customer Engagements
    6. Endnotes
  15. 6. Cisco: Engaging Customers to Deliver Business Outcomes
    1. Culture Shift
    2. The Language of Business Outcomes
    3. Turning the Tide
    4. Cisco’s Tips for Turning Engagements into Outcomes
  16. 7. Ensure
    1. The Most Critical Capability
    2. Adoption Optimization
    3. Customer Performance Measurement
    4. Value Management and Realization
    5. Endnote
  17. 8. How GE Power Fuels Growth by Delivering Outcomes
    1. Transformative Journey
    2. Holistic Thinking
    3. Powering Up
    4. Rethinking Selling
    5. Future of Outcomes Selling
  18. 9. How Rockwell Automation Measures Success
    1. Customer-Centric Leader
    2. Quantifying Value
    3. Transformational Vision
    4. Shifting Landscape: From CAPEX to OPEX
  19. 10. Creating a Blueprint for Customer Success
    1. The Four “Ps” of the Customer Success Blueprint
      1. Planning
      2. People
      3. Processes
      4. Platforms
    2. DNA Mapping for Your Business
      1. Sales
      2. Marketing
      3. Professional Services
      4. Customer Support
      5. Product Development
    3. Change Management
  20. 11. How Oracle Focuses on Customer Success
    1. Oracle: A Snapshot
    2. The Oracle Customer Success Journey
      1. Globalizing Sets the Foundation
      2. Building through Complementary Innovation and Acquisition
      3. Specialization Creates Value for Customers
      4. Customer Programs for Scale and Consistency
      5. Engaged Employees Mean Engaged Customers
    3. Some Serious Challenges
    4. Where Oracle Is Today
      1. Listening
      2. Engaging
      3. Ensuring
    5. What Oracle Has Learned
    6. What Comes Next
  21. 12. The Journey to Customer Success
    1. Listening: From Customer Loyalty to Customer Success
    2. Engaging: From Transactions to Outcomes
    3. Ensuring: Delivering Value Predictably
    4. On the Road to Customer Success
    5. Getting Started: Satisfiers and Loyalists
      1. Listening
      2. Engaging
      3. Ensuring
    6. Gaining Traction: Collaborators and Partners
      1. Listening
      2. Engaging
      3. Ensuring
    7. The Customer Success Index
      1. Online Assessment Tool
  22. Index

Product information

  • Title: Competing for Customers: Why Delivering Business Outcomes is Critical in the Customer First Revolution
  • Author(s): Jeb Dasteel, Amir Hartman, Craig LeGrande
  • Release date: February 2016
  • Publisher(s): Pearson
  • ISBN: 9780134173153