Customer Value Management is Here

Widely-used CRM applications manage customer “relationships,” but do little to capture, manage, and leverage data associated with customer “value.” Customer value management (CVM) adds not only the discipline and methodology to capture value data, but also a math engine to create actionable intelligence from value data – driving better business outcomes for both buyer and seller.

Such knowledge allows companies to accelerate their success and unlock their full potential. To fully utilize CVM, an enterprise translates customer value data into valuable insights and assets so product managers, marketers, salespeople, value engineers, professional services teams, and customer success teams can leverage it across the organization.

While customer value management (CVM) is not new, the enterprise-class applications that enable value practices to accelerate, automate, and scale effectively are new. CVM programs like ValueCloud^® aid the management of a customer’s or prospect’s relationship relative to the value promised, delivered, and derived. They use data and insight to quantify and measure value and to create tools and assets that improve business performance throughout the customer journey.

Why Do I Need CVM?
Understanding how a customer uses your product or solution – and where they derive value – is hugely important through every stage of the customer journey. CVM complements and completes CRM and customer success functions. It adds the “why” to the “what we are doing.”

Even in the early stage of that journey, at marketing, CVM helps create assets that market to specific demands that derive real customer value. At the pre-sales stage, that means more, better-quality leads. At the sales stage, CVM improves attach rates and converts leads to opportunities more efficiently.

With the assets derived from a CVM solution, close rates improve by selling directly to the value derived by each specific customer. Deal velocity accelerates with CVM, reducing the manual work required to create a value hypothesis for each customer or each sales opportunity.

Post-sales results show reduced churn rates and increased performance, with ongoing subscriptions and greater ability to cross-sell or up-sell.

Typically, users quote a 20 percent improvement in lead conversion and close rate, and a 50 percent improvement in deal velocity. Those are huge numbers when scaled across an entire enterprise.

Many companies have built value practices that do amazing work, and that has really shifted the needle in business performance. Some have managed with Excel^® spreadsheets and home-grown software tools, but these are impossible to scale and accelerate. DecisionLink’s ValueCloud allows both small and large enterprises to access a customer value management engine and efficiently manage value relationships – creating tools and assets that positively impact the success of the sales process.

How Do I Deploy CVM?
Installing an enterprise-wide solution is actually simpler than expected. Most customers (large and small) are up and running within a month – and seeing measurable return on their investment in the first quarter. Once deployed, these solutions are easily scaled and disseminated throughout the entire customer-facing organization.

The common denominator for success is a sales leadership team with real commitment to implementation, reporting, and measuring. It’s important for those leading the project to communicate their expectations and inspect what they expect.

Because we now have the applications, technology, and skills to deploy, scale, and fast-track CVM through an entire enterprise, it’s the right time to take advantage of a solution that can improve any company’s sales numbers. Historically, understanding customer value was the key to winning – now, it’s also the key to survival.

Jim Berryhill is CEO, co-founder, and director for DecisionLink, whose ValueCloud^® is the first and leading solution for enterprise-class customer value management.