Join Simon and Honor as they discuss lead to cash challenges organisations face, and how to overcome them.
In this episode of Never Mind the Pain Points the duo discuss the entirety of the customer lifecycle, how lead to cash priorities have changed, challenges organisations are facing and why a customer-centric approach is imperative for success.
Listen here or read on for an edited transcript.
Hello and welcome to Nevermind The Pain Points, a podcast dedicated to helping you unlock your business challenges. Pulling on our network of clients, partners, experienced employees, and industry experts, we wanted to share with you our views and opinions on common business challenges. As a consulting firm that deals with these pain points on a daily basis, we thought we were well-placed to give insights on addressing these challenges.
Enjoy the episode.
Simon Blosse: Hi everybody, and welcome to another Clarasys podcast. Today what we wanted to talk about was the whole of the customer lifecycle, as some of you may know it as the order to cash, quote to cash, lead to cash world. That’s something that we as a business have worked in for the last 10 years. I personally, as a principal consultant here, have worked in this area in my 16 years of consulting, and what we would love to share is our perspectives on the challenges that our clients are facing in this, but also in the new world that we recognize is there when it comes to lead to cash, order to cash or as we mentioned, the customer lifecycle.
I’m delighted to introduce my fellow podcaster here today, Honor.
Honor Stott: Yes. Hello Simon. So, yeah, I’m Honor, and most of my experience lies in the delivery of lead to cash transformation.
Simon Blosse: So we hope that you’ll find it interesting to hear our perspectives on the concepts of Lead to Cash, but ultimately what makes it different?
I think the challenging question that we wanted to start with was, we believe that lead cash is not just about a supply chain but is actually more than that. It’s actually related to how you make a meaningful experience, impacting to a customer and how you make sure that the offering you are giving is actually fulfilled and therefore you make sure the relationship you build on the basis of your lead cash journey is meaningful to your customers and obviously gets you money in the bank.
I don’t know, Honor, if you want to kick us off with just some ideas of how you think that has been reflected in the client work you’ve done so far.
What challenges are organisations seeing with their lead to cash processes?
Honor Stott: Yeah, definitely. So from the area of focus that I’ve been working in, it’s mostly at the point where the client has got to, okay, we’ve realized that there is a problem here and we want to try and improve what we’ve got. Most of that focus I’ve seen is focused on new customers. So how do we maybe convert more, or how do we make better marketing campaigns to be able to market to specific individuals and how can we tailor that more to the customer? But one of the things I think that might be a little bit of an imbalance is around actually how do we keep the customers that we currently have and how do we make the experience better for our existing customers and then hopefully in future upsell or use their recommendations to get new customers.
Simon Blosse: I think that’s a really interesting point. I think there’s such a focus always on the leads when it comes to the lead to cash, but actually, a lot of the cash comes from your existing base of customers.
Are there any examples you could give or recommendations of where you’ve seen that being done well?
Focus on current customers to generate cash
Honor Stott: So I would say, not specifically in a client world, but as a customer myself, one of the examples I would say I’ve seen is as people move more into a subscription culture there are some companies that do it so well. So it’s a tailored communication every so often to myself to say, oh, would you like to change this? Would you like to update this? But it’s not spam every single day. You’ve got something in your basket, how might you improve it? One of the ones I’ve seen recently that I’ve signed up to actually shows what is my social impact. So by using this product, you have saved X amount over the year for carbon for example, water saved as well. So showing my benefit from using their product is also something that I’ve seen and has led me to recommend it to others as well. As well as what I would say is just having a great service, so such a flexible service that they provide. So I can say, oh, I’d like something delivered on this date. I’d like four boxes. Three boxes, and if I don’t need it, I can push the date out so I’m not signed up to a delivery once a month. It is an “I don’t need it this month. I’ll update it”.
Simon Blosse: Yeah, and I think what you’ve touched upon is actually an interesting concept. When you talk about lead to cash, most people are focused on how do I convert a new lead into a new opportunity and a new sale. What we have been seeing, especially in the kind of clients we’ve been working with, whether it’s public sector or consumer-oriented, has been this subscription impact or the focus on subscription and that subscription can be what you may not think of one as, but whether it’s a, “I want to have this delivery coming to me every month and have access to this service for a year”. And I think what we found that some of our clients have been struggling with is that focus on lead to cash is sometimes forgotten about the fact that there’s then a long year or even more, ideal state would be maybe one to three years, but that then entails a different kind of mentality when it comes to supporting that and how you actually maintain that customer satisfaction over that time needs a little bit more of probably what we would call normally the software as a service mentality to it, which is being proactive in terms of preparing for the fact you’ve got a thousand deliveries due first of the month, every month. The fact you’ve got someone who is expecting to have 365 days a year access to a website. That’s a little bit different in terms of the strategic directions of lead cash that I’ve seen before. And I think it needs that kind of focus. And if you get that right and you think about it more as “how can we be proactive in it?”, “how can we keep our customers happy?” And it comes back to your point earlier around rather than being that new one, it’s actually the existing customer, ’cause that is an existing customer. Keeping them happy is actually your absolute special moment. And I think that does need a specific strategy, whether it’s about tracking what customers are expecting, getting clarity around what their satisfaction is, what they’re moaning about, but also being mindful of being proactive on it.
Treat customers as individuals, not just accounts
Honor Stott: Yeah, I agree and, I think what you touched on there is going to be enabled by having a particular setup within whatever system you’re using to support your lead to cash / order to cash journey, and being able to actually segment and break down your individuals. So you can get all the way up, for example, from a really large account to understand who is that person who’s buying that service. Say, for example, it could be a librarian within an overall organization or a stream of libraries that are buying that. So how do you tailor that service to that individual, and that’s gonna come from how you break down and segment your customers within your accounts.
Simon Blosse: I think that’s such an interesting point because I’ve definitely seen a shift in realization that although it may be easier, and probably more enjoyed by the business to look at account level, the reality is you are dealing with individuals within those accounts. So whether it is, oh, I am a librarian, as you say, buying books from a business every single year, or I am somebody who is buying access to information services every single year, or test kits for health reasons. I am an individual within an organization, and I think a lot of the challenges around lead to cash is this kind of account-level orientation, which has just come from the nature of the way that Salesforce systems are set up. That has actually caused a lot of people to get into a bit of a stuck scenario, where they are like “wait, who are you? Where do you come from?” scenario when you call up when you’ve got a problem, and it comes back to that if you are dealing with somebody six months down the line, who may not have been the person who bought that service, they are the person receiving that service. So having some way in your business to genuinely understand who is calling, who is asking for support or who is buying from you. I think is becoming ever more prevalent as an important factor in being successful when it comes to lead to cash, because that’s what gets those renewals and that’s that subscription economy of like, how do we actually make that happen? You need to be front to mind of, okay, it’s Honor who called. It’s not just Clarasys who called.
Collating customer information enables meaningful experiences
Honor Stott: Yeah, exactly. And having that information would allow you to create those meaningful experiences and to be able to target those people at the right time. So bringing it into the kind of not-for-profit space, like at the moment is hard times for a lot of people and for fundraising in particular, you have to be very specific with who you are targeting and who you’re marketing at, because at the end of the day, it’s gonna be the people who have that really meaningful connection with the charity that are still gonna give that maybe five pounds, two pounds, 10 pounds a month, because they really love that cause and it’s really important to them. Whereas if you’re marketing it to Joe Blogs over there who have no idea and just spamming everyone over emails, the connection through it is not gonna be as valuable. And you possibly might not get as much as you want from your fundraising campaign and maybe more people unsubscribing than actually continuing their subscription.
Simon Blosse: But it is funny cause I feel like our conversation has navigated from being what you might think, which is if you join this and you’re expecting a lead to cash, we’re actually talking a lot bit more about maintaining the customer base. And I think that is where the true success that we’ve seen our clients have lies is, maintaining that customer base, really focusing on exciting, engaging with and driving the best service on a longer term and a longer campaign than probably would be your normal kind of product delivery orientation, and I think that’s really what we see as being a vital element.
Subscription models enable ongoing commitment to cash
One of the things that in my previous clients I’ve been working with is trying to separate that difference between an individual product being delivered and it just getting there and that being done to the long-term service relationship, whether it’s a subscription service, whether, as I mentioned earlier, that kind of online access. That’s the way the world is working now. So lead to cash is actually more lead to subscription, dare I say it in a weird way because that’s when you are laughing because then you’ve got that ongoing commitment to cash. You’ve got that ongoing commitment from your customers, but you have to equal that as a business. And I think that’s where some of the challenges with an equal service that’s ongoing, which is costly if you’re not careful about how you manage that.
Honor Stott: Yeah. And from a business point of view, maintaining your existing customer base is cheaper than having to go out and generate all those leads, find new individuals and spend a lot of money on really expensive marketing campaigns. So that’s gonna be a way in which if you maintain your subscriptions and also use that recommendation base as well, like for example, one of the ones I’ve used recently as a consumer, I’ve recommended it to four or five people because it’s so flexible. It takes one of the things that I do on a daily basis off my mind. I don’t have to go and buy this product in the shop. I don’t have to think about it. And I’ve recommended it to my mum, my grandma, and that’s what you want to get. And it’s the same with say if you have a book subscription service, it’d be like so easy, fantastic, every time I expect it to be there, it’s there. And then I guess on the flip side, when you have a bad experience with a subscription and maybe it doesn’t come on time or you have no idea you have problems with delivery, say a product, or actually, we were talking about test kits earlier. Maybe your eligibility changes and you no longer have access to it. You can feel very kind of, outrageous, probably the wrong word, but as a customer, you can be very vocal and damage that subscription service very, very quickly through the means of today. So Twitter, social media, things get out there very, very quickly. It’s not just the completing through, and making sure that you’ve got that one order. It’s ensuring that individuals have a good customer service and product as you go through.
How lead to cash has evolved and problems with the evolution
Simon Blosse: I totally agree and I think this comes back to that point of lead to cash, dare I say it traditionally was once you got the cash, you’re laughing. Whereas actually a lot of this culture that we are talking about, the new business models, involves you’ve kind of opened the door to the service that you’re providing. So let’s say someone’s paying 120 pounds for a year-long subscription. That’s a year-long subscription you then have to support. The more proactive, the more effective you are at understanding the status of that, the better you are likely to survive those scenarios because they’re not gonna happen, right?
So that complaint, that moment that it all breaks down like if you don’t get your magazine in September when you’ve signed up for a year, you are gonna talk about that. And I think it’s the same whether it’s a business or a consumer-oriented world, where if you can’t get access to what you are entitled to or what you are expecting to get, and entitled to you are gonna be shouting from the rooftop and being very annoyed. And I think that’s where it’s an interesting development or evolution, dare I say it, of the lead to cash scope that we have seen in Clarasys, and I think our clients are really trying to lean into us to help. And I think it builds on that subscription economy. It builds on that whole concept of really focusing on existing customers.
One question I’ve got for you, Honor is, I suppose, in terms of the challenges that you think that we have seen, we’ve gone through obviously a few years of very unique, very challenging environments from a world global border perspective. I dunno if there’s anything in terms of that challenge when it comes to the lead to cash you think is worth us thinking about as well.
Which lead to cash challenges have come out of the last few years?
Honor Stott: So I’d say, in the last couple of years it’s been very much focused on number one, covid and borders being more difficult to cross from a Brexit point of view. One of the areas that I think I can probably talk about a little bit more is around covid testing. We didn’t expect that to ever need to be a thing, a service. And even though it’s not lead to cash in a traditional sense, it’s still a, someone submits an order, it goes through to fulfilment and you are provided with your product at the end of the day, which in this case it is a testing kit and some of the difficulties I there was initially with the scale, so having to ramp up and scale so quickly to be able to then provide a website service. First of all, I mean, we’re not a Glastonbury, we weren’t set up for Glastonbury numbers…
Simon Blosse: I love the way you’re connecting covid to Glastonbury. Brilliant. Don’t know where you’re going with it, but I love it.
Honor Stott: When you log on, people were expecting to just be able to order their test, go through. They weren’t expecting to have a waiting page or a holding page.
Simon Blosse: Oh yeah. That’s so true. Yeah. It’s basically the same as when you got five laptops trying to get your tickets.
Honor Stott: To get the tickets. So here we go. And I’m not saying it ended up being that point, but in that case, the people struggled with actually the lead part. So it was very much a, I can’t get access, I can’t get on to order my test. And there was a lot in the background that happened obviously to scale up quickly and we were not set up to be able to do that, I guess initially. But in that case, there was a focus on that lead. And then after that, it was then recurring customers. Customers in a way that you, you know, you needed your daily testing that would help kind of sustain that if it was ever gonna be a business in future.
Simon Blosse: So I suppose just for those who might be listening, who are looking at that scaling challenge ahead of them, is there anything from you going through that with the world of covid testing that you could recommend or think about that you would think would actually help you with that?
What advice would you give to organisations with challenges with scaling?
Honor Stott: I would say it was a very particular instance, yes. So I think nobody knew how much everyone was, I mean, policy changed very, very quickly, overnight. But what I would say is it’s about understanding, again, your users and your customers. So if – hindsight, you know, you had the time and there was a change in policy, which said in two, three years time, everyone needs to have access to this testing, you would go through and actually understand who those individuals are, how likely are they to be able to access this website at this time and ensure the right testing is in place to make sure that everyone can access it, stress testing and things like that. And then work from there. So again, it’s coming back to that user base and understanding what their needs might be and when they might log on. So it could be, you know, after school times, for example, versus, I can’t remember exactly, but there were certain days where you’d see a shoot up in people ordering versus maybe on a midweek on a Wednesday when most people are in work and probably not ordering tests. So again, understanding the user base and understanding their behaviours and habits would help with the level of scale that you would need to be able to have.
Simon Blosse: So that’s really interesting in terms of supporting the demand of requests almost. I love that analogy of being almost like a Glastonbury concept, but that’s the dream, I suppose, for a lot of businesses, right? If you’ve got that demand on your website. You’re like, oh my gosh, we’ve got so many people wanting our product. Is there anything in terms of, I suppose then the meeting, so imagine if you’ve got that scenario where, okay, we can cope with that. But then in terms of the demand on the supply chain, and then the fulfilling of those orders, the managing of all the, let’s not forget, cash, is there anything there that you think is worth sharing from your experiences in the last few years?
How to manage the orders or the leads once acquired?
Honor Stott: For the last couple of years there has been a greater expectation from consumers, from what I’ve seen, for people to be able to access things like then, there, very, very quickly. So for example, I was working with a client, it was all about being able to have access to particular subscription services online. So news articles, websites, pictures, things like that. Once you’ve signed up and you’ve got through, yeah, you’d expect instant access. But actually, in the background there’s probably an account setup, there is somebody who, going through the process needs to permit that person to be able to access that or that account, or that individual or, as we said earlier, that overarching account. And it could be on the system there’s a large account that actually already has access to that, but this individual doesn’t. So again, making sure that you can do that as seamlessly and as quickly as possible for the individual, or setting that expectation upfront and being like, okay, it’s gonna take, two, three days and then you’ll have access. Here’s a number to call if you don’t get access by this point. So if you know it’s gonna take a little bit of time because of the background fulfilment aspect in your order to cash or lead to cash, then it’s setting that expectation up front and saying, we’ll get back in touch with you. If you haven’t heard, then this is your contact number. There’s nothing more frustrating on the other side than being told it’s gonna be this day, not hearing anything, and then having no one to contact or having to go back through and sit on the phone for ages to try and get that access sorted. So there’s a big focus on once that person, you’ve gone through the lead, you’ve got the opportunity, you’ve closed it off, you’ve got the contract all sorted, all that start permissioning, getting them that access really, really quickly. And then starting to look at, how well did that go? How can we improve that going forward? Is one of the things that I would advise.
Simon Blosse: I think that’s really interesting the way you said that. Like almost you want all of the external visible stuff to happen before all the internal complexity happens. I think that’s quite a hard thing to do, but you are so right. The permissioning, the getting people access instantly is what makes or breaks, in reality a deal, right? And I think it’s interesting you highlighted that because it comes back to that point around the account versus individuals.
Customer centricity is imperative to offer a good experience
Simon Blosse: One of the things I’ve found with some of the clients I’ve been working with is this challenge around, there is a very strong account-level focus. So they know exactly who their accounts are, how much they’re spending every year, what they’re buying, and what they’re not, but the reality is, accounts don’t call you up. People like Honor, people like Simon, call you up. And they go, where’s my access to this, why have I not got this particular subscription? Why haven’t I got this product? Why can’t I access this service? And the biggest challenge that the clients I’ve been working with have been facing is, the connection of those dots to reach that account is painful for the customer, for that client. So for example, they ring up and they’ll be like, wait, who are you? Where’d you come from? Kind of thing. And you’re like, well, I’m from Clarasys and I’ve got this account that I should have set up with this. And, and they’re like, oh yeah, okay. Well, who are you? We don’t know you. We don’t have you on your account. And that is a challenge we’ve got because you’ve got this individuality of expectation from customers or consumers to have these services oriented around them. But at the same time, a lot of the lead to cash processes and the ways that everything is being established is very account heavy because that was the only thing we could do before. And I think as we get that evolution of like that transition from, okay, you’d no longer have to just deal with the account, you have to deal with the 300 people that are part of that account is a big step for a lot of our clients, and I think probably for a lot of people who hopefully listen to this, might feel the same.
There are ways around that, right? It’s that customer-centric data model. It’s that customer-centric stuff that sounds like just words, but that’s when it comes to light and when it really hurts the business. Because if you are calling up, you’re like, where’s my access to this? And it’s not there, and they dunno who you are, you aren’t going to say that’s a great experience and that’s customer experience being the heart of all of the success when it comes to repurchases ongoing customer experience and ongoing, I suppose, conversion to cash, that’s important.
The other thing I was gonna talk about was, it’s just leaning into a little bit of your experience when it comes to testing packs. One of the things I think we’ve discussed a few times in the last year or so has been the difference that we noticed when packs got swapped out with different companies and different businesses were suddenly appearing on brands. I think we were discussing a little bit about how that actually is a good strategy sometimes to have, which is you are still focusing on the service you’re providing, the outcome that your customers have paid for and admittedly, in the case of the test and trace, it was much more around a service in terms of testing, but it was still there. I don’t know if there’s anything worth sharing on that, because I think it could be relevant to more than just testing packs.
Focus on the outcome your customers expect, and cut costs where you can
Honor Stott: It definitely is. What I would say is that, in terms of our approach, we were initially thinking about the lead, and then thinking about the ordering and all the fulfilment.
Simon Blosse: Yeah.
Honor Stott: But what if that fulfilment is a physical product and not just a service? I think particularly with test packs, for example, the outcome is you needed to be able to accurately test whether you had covid or not. It could come from a provider over in Europe. It could come from a provider in the UK. As long as that test kit was fit for purpose, it didn’t really matter where it came from. From a business point of view, you’d probably look at that and say, okay, so how can we reduce the costs of these tests? Are there any that are particularly cheaper? Can they be manufactured in a slightly different way? Or is there a producer who is saying that they’re gonna be cheaper, but they still end up providing the same outcome for the individual. So with the test packs, for example, you did see there was a change, and I mean we discussed it earlier. There was also change in swabbing technique and things like that, and that’s probably one that people actually did notice quite a lot. Whereas in other services or other products, when you’re providing that, it could be, say flowers, people don’t really know where they come from, but it could be a provider down in Kent. Or if you are needing to provide a flower service up in Manchester or Stoke, for example, you are gonna try and get your flowers locally to try and reduce your cost. But still, the outcome should be the same for the individual. And I think that’s the bit that businesses really need to hinge on. Yes, swap them out. Try and change your costs. Try and reduce your costs. At the moment, there’s a lot going on in terms of costs and it is quite difficult. And for example, if you’re having struggles with borders, can you try and procure that from the UK but keep an eye on the outcome because if the product is not as good as someone getting it in London versus someone getting it in Stoke and Manchester, you’re still gonna get that translation of bad recommendations or “I wouldn’t buy this again”, and that’s still gonna percolate, but you’re not kind of missing that. So definitely switch it out and it’s a good way of thinking about the bottom end of your lead cash and order cash point.
Simon Blosse: I think it’s something really interesting about the way you were talking about quality there. So it’s all well and good trying to keep your costs down, but it comes back to that fact. Yeah, we want to get the quickest conversion from a lead to cash as possible. But the reality is you want to also get a repeat of that. And I think sometimes the best strategic direction could be, oh, we’re gonna switch out suppliers. They can do it for cheaper. I think some of us may already know about the story of Hermes changing their name because the brand was not good and switching out and trying to be as powerful as possible in terms of the delivery side. But equally, I think in terms of flowers, you know, if you don’t get the right supplier of flowers, but they get there quicker, what’s the actual benefit?
And I think that’s something that’s interesting when it comes to the overall offer, right? So we talked a lot around this kind of building a subscription economy. Subscription doesn’t have to be an actual subscription. It can be actually looking at the lifetime of a customer and looking at like, okay, how often are they buying from us? Are they liking what we’re doing? So back to your flower example, are they actually enjoying the hours they have or they like, yeah, that was nice, great gift, but kind of died in a few days. It’s not gonna result in you then ordering for the next birthdays, anniversaries, and so on. That longevity of a customer is the equivalent probably of a subscription economy.
Don’t forget about how you’re allocating the cash in the end
The final thing I sort of wanted to talk about, or maybe not the final thing, but at least, the final topic was the cash part. It’s something that I found has been quite an interesting one with the clients I’ve been working with, when it comes back to that account concept, which is, how do you correctly manage the cash scenario when it comes to allocating to accounts funding? And one of the watch-outs that I think is just quite interesting to share was just we found there were a number of times when customers were very frustrated because they didn’t have the credit as businesses to buy. They were told they hadn’t paid, they were told that they were not eligible to buy until X had cleared. And they’re like, well, that’s nothing to do with me. That’s the New York office. That’s the UK office. And it comes back to that concept of individuality of the customer, but actually, in the concept of lead to cash and the customer experience in that, I think it’s really important to think about how you allocate the cash that they actually give you and just be mindful of the fact that sometimes that can go quite wrong and can completely ruin business relationships. And I think it’s probably more irrelevant to the kind of business scenarios that we would talk about. So if I have signed up for something and I expect a service and then someone else is not paid in the same company, the fact I’m not eligible to that service is not because of me not paying, it’s because they didn’t pay. I dunno if there’s anything more you wanna add on that, but I think it’s just an interesting point on the lead to cash journey is don’t forget about how you’re allocating the cash in the end and make sure that doesn’t impact the customer experience and make sure that you don’t impact or make it a negative experience because of that.
Use customer data to your advantage
Honor Stott: Yeah. I think it really comes down to the accounts, the tracking, understanding again who your individuals are. Particularly within the not-for-profit area. What I would just say relates to fundraising and particular donors. There’ll be some individuals who will say, I’m restricting my funds to go to this specific cause within this specific charity. And I have seen historically that it is quite difficult to match it up still using spreadsheets and coding to try and match it all up. And at the end of the day, you really wanna be able to come back and say to that individual to provide that meaningful experience and to keep them donating to be like “thank you so much for your donation. It is gone to this specific area as you requested, and this is what it led to, and this was the impact that you have had. If I get that as somebody who’s given some money towards a charity, I’ll be like, oh, that’s really good. You know, I’m gonna give that again for that particular cause, or maybe next time I might go to another one.
And then also as a charity, you could always say, we had some funding, we put your funding to here this time, but actually, if you are interested, we’ve got another area that actually could do with a little bit more funding. So you can then use that insight and use that information and say to an individual, “oh, there’s something that’s quite similar and associated that actually maybe you might want to put your funding towards next time”.
But you can only do that if you connect up the individual that sent the money, where it’s gone through the charity and exactly what cause it’s gone through, so who’s benefited from it, and then eventually what impact that has had. It is really key to providing that meaningful experience, understanding where the cash goes.
Simon Blosse: And I think it comes back to that point around customer data being at the dare I say it, customer level. It sounds weird to say it, but I think too often we say, oh yeah, we’ve got customer data. And then you look at it and you go, oh, actually, that comes back to the point, like actually that’s not an individual customer. You don’t actually know what their wants, their needs, their desires are, and therefore you can’t target the next conversion you want to make. But equally, whether it’s to do with, oh, Simon wanted to put forward money to build schools, and then it’s suddenly gone into, I don’t know, social centres, whatever, that’s fine, but it’s like being transparent about that. But equally, if you’ve got an individual who’s purchased a particular type of service from you before, it’s really important to capture that information so you can then go, yeah, we’ve got 300 customers from this one business, but they’re all buying differently. They’re all wanting different experiences, different expectations, different software, different products and we need to reflect on that and be mindful of that.
Honor Stott: Yeah, definitely.
What top thing should organisations think about when it comes to improving the overall customer lifecycle?
Simon Blosse: I think just to close today’s chat, it’s been really great to hear different perspectives on lead to cash. I’d love to get from you and maybe for our listeners, what you think, Honor, that if you could recommend the top thing to think about when it comes to improving the overall customer life cycle, if we call it that, which includes test to cash or test or lead to tests or order to cash, lead to cash, all those buzzwords. But like in terms of just making sure that you’re engaging customers to make sure that they are getting what they asked for and embracing that, and then you are also aware of that. Have you got anything you’d like to sort of give to listeners to think about. If they’ve got that same challenge ahead of them?
Honor Stott: I would say understand what is meaningful for those individuals and focus on splitting up that data. It might feel like a thankless task initially, so prioritize that. Find an area that you’re really interested in, but then dig down into that detail and then work out how you provide that specific service to them really, really well.
Simon Blosse: Yeah, I think that’s really important. I think my lens on this comes back to that theme that you might have picked up already, but subscriptions and not thinking about subscriptions is just being subscriptions, but being about a relationship you’re developing with a customer and how you set yourself up for success to support that. And that could entail being proactive in being like, okay, wait, I’ve got a thousand customers expecting this next. Who is not going to get it for whatever reason that may be, and therefore I can call them ahead of that. Or how do I make sure that people are engaging with us on a long term basis so we are not spending a fortune on new customers all the time, but actually building on that existing customer base.
And I think that’s what we mean by subscription mentality. It’s not about only selling subscriptions, it’s about thinking about existing customers, building that long-term relationship and supporting that in a proactive manner.
Great. Well, I think we’ll stop there. Hopefully those of you listening have found this really helpful in terms of the concept of customer lifecycle order to cash, quote to cash, lead to cash. Whatever it is that your business is oriented around.
Of course, if you’d like to know more, please contact us at Clarasys.
Honor Stott: Thank you very much.
Simon Blosse: Thanks, Honor.
Thank you for joining us for another episode of Nevermind the Pain Points. Please get in touch with any queries or for any support with your lead to cash challenges.
