There’s something so neat, clear and economical about grouping things in threes. See? I just did it there. Three of something, whether adjectives or bullet points, looks like the perfect amount of information — thorough enough to have substance, pithy enough to recall. For these reasons, the Rule of Threes is a speaking convention that many great orators have learned, practiced and mastered. Now, whether you need to place a comma before the third item may be up for debate. But the rhetorical power of the Rule of Threes is not.
But hey, sometimes even the best rules are meant to be broken. That’s my rationale for the story about I’m about to tell.
A few years ago, when a team of co-authors and I published “The Three Value Conversations,” we turned our focus (naturally) to three pivotal moments in the deal cycle that we thought — and still think — are fundamental to creating sales opportunities, bringing those opportunities through your pipeline, and negotiating a profitable close. The book was really about three moments of truth that occur in every deal cycle — three moments in which reps must:
- Create value by breaking through status quo bias and creating differentiation.
- Elevate value by delivering great business proposals that meet executive standards.
- Capture value by driving consensus and negotiating effectively to close larger, more profitable deals.
After the close
Together, the three value conversations spanned the entire customer acquisition side of marketing and sales. This side of the customer conversation calls for provocation and disruptive insights. It demands edgy, destabilizing messaging and skills designed to overcome buyer inertia and break down your prospects’ aversion to change. After all, that’s what our research revealed to be the most effective message for when you’re the outsider and trying to displace an incumbent and convince a prospect to change and choose you.
But once you closed the deal, that’s kind of where it stopped. We assumed that what worked for new customer acquisition would apply to the key post-sale situations, when you need to retain and expand with existing customers. Nevertheless, we started hearing a certain question from some of our customers.
The Why Change/Why You story (and the research supporting it) is great for when you’re trying to defeat the status quo, they would say. But what about when you are the status quo? What about when you need to retain your accounts and expand with them? After all, the key questions you need to answer in the customer deciding journey don’t end there.
A series of studies with academic partners revealed that the key customer retention and expansion scenarios you need to succeed in have a significantly different buyer psychology from that of new customer acquisition, and so demand tailored messaging and skills approaches. Where you need to disrupt the causes
of status quo bias as the outsider, you need to reinforce them when you’re on the incumbent.
Different conversations
The big takeaway: the customer conversation isn’t a one-size-fits-all thing. Different moments require different messaging, and trying to apply the same messaging and skills techniques to every key decision in the customer conversation will likely set you back. Mastery of all the buying situations of the customer lifecycle calls for a fourth value conversation that addresses customer retention and expansion, and helps marketing, sales and customer success teams apply a dedicated strategy and structure to these critical buying situations.
Enter “Expand Value,” for when you need to renew and expand existing customer revenue.
Your customers are a major potential growth engine. The conversations you need to succeed in with them are really a separate marketing and sales discipline with their own unique pressures and demands. These scenarios have a specific buyer psychology that calls for specific messaging requirements and selling competencies. These scenarios might include:
- Customer retention (why stay)
- Price increase communication (why pay more)
- Upsells and/or product migration (why evolve)
Make no mistake: There is a huge opportunity to gain an edge in the areas above. A Corporate Visions industry survey found that nearly 60 percent of companies think they are fine applying the same provocation-based approach they use to acquire new customers as they do to expand business with existing ones. That flies in the face of the research. It’s exactly that one-size-fits-all approach to the customer conversation that Expand Value pushes back against. While research shows that challenging the customers works great with prospects, it also reveals that this approach will backfire with existing customers as you navigate the critical customer success and expansion situations.
I guess if you’re going to break a rule as compelling as the rule of threes, the decision should be guided by research rather than hunch. Here’s to letting the rigor of research — not the whimsy of good feelings — inform how you respond to the business challenges you face.
To learn more about how Expand Value can address the challenge of customer retention and expansion, visit CorporateVisions.com/solutions/expand-value.
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