Customer-Centric Business Approaches

It takes 7 seconds to lose a client's trust. (Sometimes with words that seemed perfectly reasonable.) I've watched smart professionals lose deals they deserved to win. Strong relationships. Perfect fit solutions. Gone in seconds. Because here's what nobody tells you about client conversations: Your words can either open doors or close them. After training 50,000+ client-facing professionals… I've heard every phrase that makes clients pull back. The pushy questions. The tone-deaf assumptions. The pressure that breaks trust instantly. 10 phrases that push clients away: ❌ "Do you have a price range in mind?" ❌ "When can we close this deal?" ❌ "Let me tell you why we're the best." ❌ "Are you ready to buy today?" ❌ "Who else are you talking to?" ❌ "I just wanted to check in.” ❌ "You really need what we offer." ❌ "Let me know if you have any questions." ❌ "This is a limited-time offer." ❌ "Can you introduce me to your boss?" Each one risks sounding like: "I care more about my quota than your success." Now 10 that build partnerships instead: ✅ "What outcomes are most important to you?" ✅ "What would success look like for you?" ✅ "Would it help if I shared how we've helped others?" ✅ "What's your timeline for making progress?" ✅ "What's most important when choosing a partner?" ✅ "I had an idea about your goals. Want to hear it?" ✅ "What challenges are you facing that we might help with?" ✅ "Would it help if we scheduled time to dive deeper?" ✅ "What priorities are driving your timeline?" ✅ "Who else should be part of this conversation?" Notice the pattern? Every better phrase puts the client's agenda first. Not yours. Because when you stop selling and start solving, everything shifts. Clients lean in instead of pulling back. Conversations flow instead of stalling. Trust builds instead of breaking. You don't need a personality transplant. You don't need to become "salesy." You just need to change your questions. Because the truth is: Your next client conversation is either strengthening a partnership or weakening one. Your words decide which. ♻️ Valuable? Repost to help someone in your network. 📌 Follow Mo Bunnell for client-growth strategies that don’t feel like selling. Want the full cheat sheet? Sign up here: https://lnkd.in/e3qRVJRf

If I joined a new company as a Customer Success Manager, here are three ChatGPT prompts I'd use to quickly get up to speed. 1) Determine key stakeholders within my customer's business 2) Figure out what they do day-to-day and common points 3) Create messaging that resonates immediately Here they are: Prompt One (Identify Key Stakeholders): "I'm a Customer Success Manager for [product/platform] that helps companies with [primary use case]. Our solution delivers these outcomes: [Outcome one] [Outcome two] [Outcome three] [Outcome four] Help me build a stakeholder map. Include anyone who might be influenced by our product, who might have a project that touches our product, or anyone who might be involved in the buying committee. Which stakeholders and departments should I prioritize for relationship building to ensure successful adoption and expansion?" Prompt Two (Understand Stakeholder Motivations): "For each of those stakeholders, please summarize the following points in tabular format, with each point as a column header and each stakeholder as its row: --> What business outcomes and metrics matter most to this stakeholder --> How this stakeholder typically measures success in their role --> Common challenges this stakeholder faces when trying to achieve their goals --> How our solution specifically addresses these challenges and supports their success metrics --> What risks might cause this stakeholder to disengage or question our value" Prompt Three (Create Tailored Communication): "Now, let's create four different communication templates: - An introduction email for a new stakeholder explaining our partnership vision - A QBR summary highlighting value delivered to their specific department - An at-risk account message addressing potential adoption challenges - An expansion opportunity message tied to their business objectives For each template: 1) Open with a specific pain point or opportunity relevant to their role 2) Acknowledge their current approach and its limitations 3) Explain how our solution delivers unique value for their situation 4) Include a clear next step or action item Keep it under 150 words and easily scannable Use straightforward, jargon-free language." With these three prompts, I can hit the ground running in any new CS role - understanding who matters, what they care about, and how to communicate our value effectively from day one. This is just a small example of how ChatGPT could impact your day-to-day role as a CSM. It should really become a companion to your work. What other AI prompts have you found helpful in customer success roles?

There is a fundamental thing that I think most leader miss about #CustomerExperience: It's not about scores, ease, or usability. It's about improving customers' lives. Far too many companies have #CX leaders who are merely #UX leaders, focused on designing and deploying websites and apps that are usable. Others have CX programs that are entirely focused on cutting costs and increasing margins. And, even the best CX programs are often obsessed with NPS and CSAT scores, which at least is more customer-centric than the others but still misses the point. The heart of CX and customer-centricity is in the commitment to improve customers' lives. Full stop. This doesn't imply that CX is about harming the organization to benefit the consumer or client. Instead, it's about leveraging customer-centricity to build profitable and sustainable growth. Every business in the leader in the world is tasked with improving margin and delivering more profit for shareholders. It's what they are compensated to produce. But there are different ways to make this happen. The customer-centric way is to create such a terrific experience for customers that they remain rabidly loyal, willing to pay more, unavailable to competitors, and interested in purchasing more of what you offer. There's a reason why Apple can claim less than 20% share of the global smartphone market and 10% of the PC market, and yet it routinely commands the highest market cap of any corporation on earth. My point is that if your company's route to profitability is through shrinkflation that annoys customers, but you put effort into improving your content, that is not a way to build loyalty. If you are an insurance company denying ever more claims to improve margin, no amount of UX enhancements to your apps will change the way people feel about you. If you are constantly adding fees, raising prices, and cutting services without considering how you're doing even more to improve customers' lives, you cannot expect better NPS, more loyalty, and an improved reputation. CX isn't some trick you do to distract customers while you deploy policies that harm them. CX is about knowing how to earn customer trust and loyalty so that you produce strong and sustainable business outcomes. This why, although bottom-up CX can deliver some improvements, it is the top-down commitment from leaders to be customer-centric that separates the long-term winners from the losers. Is CX a program at your organization? Or is it a way of life? And does your commitment to customers only extend to how much they buy from you, or are you striving to improve customers' lives?

🧩 As many of us have discussed for years, Customer Success isn’t a department. I suggest in 2025 (and beyond), it’s a business model. One of the most important shifts I’ve seen as a CCO? CS has outgrown the “post-sales” box. When I talk about key customer topics or metrics at the executive table or with Board, I don’t start with CS terminology. I start with business outcomes: ✅ What’s our expansion potential? Where are we growing and where do we have opportunity? ✅ Where are we at risk of silent or churn? ✅ How do we operationalize lifetime value—not just acquisition? That’s when everyone leans into the conversation. Because Customer Success today is about predictive revenue strategy— Not just reactive support or proactive engagement. Here’s how we’re reframing CS at the top level: 🔹 Retention = Revenue efficiency In tight markets, retention is the biggest foundation of growth. We need CS to surface leading indicators and opportunities for growth, not lagging ones or metrics not related to revenue. 🔹 Health = Forecasting advantage When CS owns a true customer health score that is correlated to customer value and key stakeholders, it becomes an early-warning system and a roadmap to expansion. 🔹 CS Ops = Strategic intelligence This isn’t a siloed function. CS Ops must be integrated into the company’s broader approach to operations — whether that’s stand-alone, part of Business Ops, or embedded in RevOps. That’s how we ensure the customer lens is built into how we operate, not just how we serve. The more I connect CS to core business goals, the less I have to defend it… and the more we’re asked to lead. 💬 For other CS and GTM leaders: What’s resonating at your exec table right now? How are you positioning CS as essential to the business? #CustomerSuccess #CCO #ExecutiveLeadership #RevenueGrowth #PostSales #CustomerStrategy #FutureOfCS

Last week I posted about where CX is spending their time today. This was based on my long tenure in the discipline, and not a survey of CX leaders or teams (we're too focused on surveys!!). Argue all you want on the percentages, but it's pretty close. It's also pretty unfortunate that is where people are spending their time. Here's where leading CX teams are focused: Heavier analytics and modeling. This includes leveraging machine learning. If you don't have data scientists on your team today, it won't be long before your team is irrelevant; this might sound harsh, but it's 100% fact. (This also includes journey analytics and orchestration.) I also created a clear delineation between Change Leadership and Change Management, including an overall increase in time spent from the last post for both. This is about strategy, vision, influence, and then working with your business partners to make it sustainable over the long-term. Technology remains at 5%, as it's not where you should be spending your time. This percentage should be about integrating, and you should be partnering with IT stakeholders on this anyway. In many ways, tech is also embedded in the Change agenda. Governance and reporting come down significantly in the "what it should be" model. Why? Because reporting is being automated, and you'll automate your team out of a job if that's all you're doing. Also, because modern CX teams are focused on action, not reporting. So governance should be about action and creating change, not report-outs on what's happening. So when I see consultants come out with frameworks with "management" in each of their pillars, as in "Data Management," or "Journey Management," or "Value Management," there's too much focus on "management" and no focus on what matters to your business and your customer: ACTION. Where are you taking your CX team in the next 12-24 months? Happy to chat about the above, just DM me. #customerexperience #analytics #ai #future #journeymanagement #nps #csat

Your employees think that they're customer centric. But the reality is that your company culture is far from customer centric. What do you do? In my experience at most companies, most employees believe they are customer centric. 📉 But CX scores and measures of customer centricity at those same companies say otherwise, ❓ Who's right? ⚖ Honestly, it doesn't matter. If employees believe they're customer centric, you have to meet them where they are. Instead, the challenge for companies is that they need employees to change behaviors, to be more customer centric. So how can you get employees to change behaviors when they don't feel like they need to? 💡 Bright spots analysis - a powerful technique for culture change. Look closely at the best customer experiences your company delivers today. Then identify what employees are doing that is contributing to that specific great #CX. Those are bright spots. Then recognize, celebrate and highlight other employees whenever they exhibit those same best practice behaviors. By spotlighting the ideal behaviors you want to see, whenever you see them, you bring attention, and create clarity for what great looks like. You also show employees who you recognize what it looks like when they do it themselves. Which then puts it in their hands to figure out how to be customer centric more often. And this aligns with a secret of behavior change. 💡We don't believe our way into new actions. We act our way into new beliefs.  Behavior change is hard. But it's far easier when we have a model for what good looks like, and examples of when we've exhibited the desired behaviors ourselves. Bright spots analysis provides both.

I have been coaching a good amount of revenue leaders as of late. Heads of sales, vp's of sales, chief revenue officers and founders who are wearing the sales hat because they are pre-seed or seed. I ask them all this question early on in our journey together. "Can you tell me the details behind your last 5 deals closed?" They typically know the answers. But, it is all in their head or their reps head. I then ask them this question. "Does everyone in the organization know the details behind the last 5 deals closed? I'm talking, marketing / product / legal / finance / IT / HR. Everyone!” They typically say, no. People know we won deals but not the details. This is wear I push them to implement my "win story" framework as it pertains to onboarding. OMG, a sales leader working with HR & People Ops..... Yep! Step 1: Actually get to know your people team and not just when issues come up. Step 2: Walk through some recent win stories with them. Step 3: Tie ROI to why you want to have an onboarding session with everyone hired that talks about "win stories." If you need help here. Use this. "Sarah! All employees are "customer facing" these days, especially in the world of social media. It is important for them to know why we exist other than our mission, vision and values. They need to know WHY the last 400K deal signed with us, like the deep reasons. Example, ABC org partnered with us because of a succession action plan. They had a lot of processes in place and were tying performance to pathing but coaching was missing, that is where we came into play. To take that critical talent and prepare them for future V - C Suite opportunities!" Something like that. Step 4: Be organized. Have all of your "win stories" in one location so you can point new hires to a specific area to read and study. Step 5: Make the meeting very short. Typically a Q&A due to their study and then share one recent win and go into everything from deal size to lead source to revenue to mutual action plans to expansion hopes. Step 6: Be sure you work with whoever owns your slack or teams environment and loop in your rev ops person to ensure that any time a "closed won" deal happens, an update goes to each person on the team! Can have a channel just titled "win stories." Here is what will happen when you implement this, seen it time and time again! Revenue will go up. Why? Because you will have the entire team thinking about the WHY behind the organization and how you are making your customers and future customers life easier. And if you want to get real real crazy? Have every other leader in the org implement something similar about their day to day wins and actions, CTO / CMO / CHRO / CPO / and everyone else! PS-In a remote world, we have sort of lost touch with this type of stuff. We no longer hear Jamal or Ashton running down the hall talking about a deal they just closed or Sam or Larissa talking about their new feature release while talking to the SE team.

Anyone who is customer facing should be building close, authentic, long lasting relationships with their customers. It pays off in more ways than you can imagine: repeat customers, references, community champions, content ideas, competitive intel and so much more. Here are 5 ways you and your team can start building those relationships: 1. Amplify a customer’s LinkedIn posts - When your customer posts something interesting, don’t just like it yourself but share the link on your internal chat and ask your team to like it as well. It’s amazing how powerful this is. It’s human nature to look at who is liking your content on any social platform and most people get a consistent number of likes. If you drive 50% more for a customer they will notice that. 2. Help find candidates for their team and jobs for them if they’re looking - In your position engaging with a specific persona all day every day you have amazing visibility and connections into relevant candidates for open jobs and companies hiring. If you let your customers know that you can be a resource for them on both sides of the table you will see how quickly you can start playing matchmaker. 3. Share best practices that have nothing to do with your company/product - Everyone is looking to improve in their job. Everyone wants to know what their peers are doing at other companies. When you hear good ideas from other customers or read about a best practice, send it to them. Just show them you’re thinking about them and are invested in them being successful. 4. Make them look good in front of their manager and/or team - It needs to be authentic and relevant but find a reason to give your customer a shoutout when you’re in a meeting with them. It doesn’t even need to be a big thing but something about how they’re the fastest to roll out your product, how their feature request ended up becoming a game changer for a bunch of customers, how they’re the most productive team you’ve seen at one particular thing. 5. Fight for a feature/bug fix/service that they’re asking for - In short, be the squeaky wheel for your customer. When they ask for something, set the expectation that it takes a while to get that thing done but then go fight for it internally. Each company has their own process for this kind of stuff but if you push in the right ways you can usually get their request prioritized. When it’s done make sure the customer knows you fought for them to get that thing done. The best thing is that these are “free”. Of course they will take time and energy but the return on this work is astronomical. I honestly didn’t appreciate the power of these relationships when I started my career but I now have close relationships with so many customers that I’ve worked with over the years. They’re a sounding board for business ideas, they’re working with companies I’m advising and we’ve become each other cheerleaders. What did I miss? What else are you doing to build relationships with your customers?

I’ve coached thousands of sellers on how to create the perfect sales pitch using a framework called the 5 P’s. Until today, I have never shared this with anybody except my coaching clients. Here’s why it’s so effective: when most companies create a first call deck or sales pitch, they make it all about their own company and how great they are.   𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐍𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐑 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐬! The reason why is simple: customers don’t care about your products and services. They care about themselves, achieving their goals, and solving their own problems. Yet most pitch decks fail to speak to the problems which customers face and the pains they are causing. That’s why I created a framework which focuses solely on the customer’s challenges and how your solution can solve them. 𝐈 𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝟓 𝐏’𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐏𝐢𝐭𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠. 𝐇𝐞𝐫𝐞’𝐬 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐡 𝐏 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫: 𝟏. 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐛𝐥𝐞𝐦: What problem do most prospects you work with face that your company can solve? The problem should be very high level, and important to Senior Executives at the company. It should be a business problem, not a technical problem. For example, if I sell CRM, the problem I solve would be rep underperformance, low rep productivity, or missed forecasts. All of which are important to a CRO or CEO. 𝟐. 𝐏𝐫𝐢𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐨𝐧: Why does the problem exist? What is the root cause of the problem? By understanding the source of the problem, you demonstrate credibility and establish immediate trust with prospects because you are speaking their language. In the above example, I could say that reps often miss their forecasts because leadership has poor visibility to their sales pipeline and no way to accurately predict which deals are most likely to close, all of which a CRM solves for. 𝟑. 𝐏𝐚𝐢𝐧: What pain is the problem causing? The pain is always focused on the metrics that are impacted by the problem. For example, missed forecasts could mean a reduction in stock prices, missed revenue targets, and sales layoffs. 𝟒. 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐞: How does your company solve the problem? The promise should always solve the primary reasons you just outlined. So for example, AI driven forecasting would prevent inaccurate manual forecasting and low visibility to deals. 𝟓. 𝐏𝐚𝐲𝐨𝐟𝐟: What metrics do you positively impact by solving the problem? Key payoff metrics for a CRM would be improved rep quota attainment, productivity, and accurate forecasting, all of which drive top line revenue & profitability. In this week's training video, I walk you through how to create the perfect sales pitch using the 5 P framework. You can find the training here: https://lnkd.in/gmu_Bdu3 PS - If you want to access a copy of the Problem Mapping Template so you can fill out the 5 P’s for your own solutions, get it here: https://lnkd.in/gASNe_em

Your growth is stalling - because customers feel forgotten. When I was an executive hiring agencies, the relationships often felt too transactional. It rarely went beyond deliverables. That’s something I wanted to change when I owned my agency. I remember a client once saying: “I trust your team more than my own.” That stuck with me. It wasn’t just about delivering great work - it was about showing up in ways they didn’t expect. My big takeaway: Customer-centric strategies go beyond the work itself. They’re about building trust and creating value. Here’s how to do it: 1. Map the customer journey - what’s working, what’s not? 2. Turn data into action - behavior reveals more than surveys. 3. Align your teams - sales, marketing, and CX should work as one. 4. Prioritize retention - it’s more profitable than constant acquisition. 5. Iterate constantly - customers evolve, so your strategy should too. Stay focused: Growth isn’t just about more - it’s about better. Better relationships, better strategies, better results. P.S.: What’s one way you’ve strengthened loyalty with your customers?