Success Plans have long been a cornerstone of Customer Success strategies, yet many professionals continue to struggle with creating and leveraging them effectively. This challenge is understandable, given the complexities of managing change, addressing competing priorities, resolving client issues, and navigating stakeholder management. Moreover, conflicting advice from so-called thought leaders adds to the confusion: some argue that Success Plans need to be thorough and detailed, while others advocate for their simplicity.
This article is not here to tell you what your Success Plan template should look like—though we will share a template and offer recommendations. Instead, our goal is to help you understand how to leverage Success Plans effectively as part of a broader effort to enable your customers. We’ll discuss how to use these plans to foster customer success and how they can be integrated into your overall strategy.
Rethinking Success Plans: From Repository to Roadmap
Traditionally, Success Plans are often viewed as a repository of information—a place to store data about the client and track progress toward goals. However, this approach can be limiting. We encourage you to think of Success Plans not just as a repository but as a joint project plan, or a mutual action plan, a roadmap focused on enabling the customer to succeed. This shift in perspective transforms the Success Plan from a static document into a dynamic tool for collaboration, strategy, and execution.
Success Plans are not just for Customer Success teams; they can be invaluable to Account Managers (AMs) and Account Executives (AEs) as well, especially during trials or proofs of concept. While Mutual Action Plans are often used to manage the deal, a Success Plan can be leveraged to manage the testing and adoption process during more complex sales involving proofs of concept or trials. In these cases, Success Plans help with buyer enablement, ensuring that the customer’s journey is smooth and aligned with their goals.
The foundation of an effective Success Plan lies in focusing on customer enablement—helping the customer achieve their goals by leveraging your product or services. Your product is not the end goal; it is a means to an end. The true objective is to solve the customer’s problems and achieve their goals, which should align with their current priorities.
If your Success Plan and client engagement are built on this foundation, you are well on your way to enabling your customers and, in turn, achieving your retention and revenue goals.
Common Pitfalls in Success Plans
Before we dive into the specifics of creating a Success Plan, it’s important to recognize some common mistakes that are often made:
- Treated as a to-do list: Success Plans should not be a simple checklist of tasks. They need to be strategic, with each task tied to critical business goals;
- Only tactical, not strategic: A Success Plan should balance strategic objectives with tactical actions. Focusing solely on tactics can lead to a myopic view that misses the bigger picture;
- Focused on one person, not the client as a whole: Success Plans should be multi-threaded, involving multiple stakeholders within the client’s organization. This ensures that the plan is integrated into the client’s workflow and business initiatives, not just one stakeholder’s usage;
- Chasing product adoption without alignment to goals: Product adoption is important, but it should be tied to stakeholder and business goals. Adoption for the sake of adoption is not enough; it must contribute to solving the client’s problems;
- Self-serving objectives: Sometimes, Success Plans focus too much on hitting product adoption goals or improving health scores without considering the client’s bigger picture. A good Success Plan identifies and aligns with the client’s broader goals;
- Confused with Account Plans: Success Plans should be customer-facing and collaborative, not confused with internal account plans that focus solely on the vendor’s objectives;
To create a truly effective Success Plan, it’s crucial to avoid these pitfalls and focus on building a collaborative, strategic document that aligns with the client’s business goals and priorities.
The Structure of an Effective Success Plan
Although there is no one-size-fits-all approach, a good Success Plan should include the following information:
1. Executive Summary
The Executive Summary is often overlooked in Success Plans, but it is a critical component. It serves as the anchor that ties together the strategy and tactical execution. The summary should succinctly align the Success Plan with the client’s overarching company goals and priorities, ensuring that your efforts are focused on solving the problems that matter most to the client.
2. Business Goals and Priorities
The next section should outline the top business goals and priorities. Be specific and quantify these goals, detailing how they will be measured and where the data will come from. This information is vital when it comes to Executive Business Reviews (EBRs) and renewals, as it allows you to demonstrate the impact of your work on the client’s top business goals.
3. Departmental Goals
Similar to business goals, departmental goals should be quantified and aligned with specific department heads. These goals are often more granular and directly related to the stakeholders you are engaging with. Understanding and aligning with these goals ensures that your Success Plan is relevant across all impacted departments, not just a single department or individual.
4. Program Goals
Program goals are related to the specific initiatives, priorities, or projects you are working on with your main point of contact. These goals should also be quantified and measured, and they should directly contribute to achieving the overall business goals.
For example, if the business goal is to reach $100 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR), a departmental goal might be a $20 million ARR target for the sales team. The program goal could then be to increase sales-qualified lead (SQL) to sales-qualified opportunity (SQO) conversions, improve overall sales conversion rates, and reduce the sales cycle time.
5. Tactical and Operational Objectives
With the goals established, the next step is to map out the specific tactical and operational objectives needed to achieve the desired results. This includes actions such as training sessions, ensuring integrations are utilized, and driving product adoption in a way that provides value to the client.
For example, if your product is a conversational intelligence platform, objectives might include ensuring that 100% of the sales team is using call recording, that sales reps are utilizing call summary features, and that sales managers are engaging with the platform daily for call coaching and pipeline reviews.
6. Communication and Collaboration Plan
A well-defined communication and collaboration plan is essential for ensuring alignment with the client. This plan should outline how and when you will engage with the client, setting clear expectations for both parties. It also serves as a tool for identifying the client’s level of buy-in and commitment.
7. Risks and Opportunities
Finally, it’s important to document any potential risks and opportunities. This could include risks like resistance to change from the client’s team or opportunities such as a new feature that could enhance the client’s results. Identifying these factors early on helps to mitigate surprises and keeps the Success Plan on track.
Leveraging the PART Framework
By now, some of you may be familiar with our PART framework from our other articles or training courses. The PART framework—Problems, Actions, Results, and Triggers—is a powerful tool for diagnosing and aligning with client goals at various levels. By incorporating elements of PART into your Success Plan, you can ensure that the plan is both comprehensive and aligned with the client’s needs.
1. Problems
Identify both rational and emotional problems for each stakeholder. Rational problems are business goals that can be quantified, while emotional problems are more personal and can include things like frustration with long working hours or fear of job loss. Addressing both types of problems helps to build strong relationships and ensures that your Success Plan is relevant to each stakeholder.
2. Actions
Map out the actions that need to be taken by and for each stakeholder. These actions should align with the business, departmental, or program goals and ensure that your Success Plan is collaborative, not siloed.
3. Results
Define the expected results for each stakeholder and ensure they align with the overall goals. This alignment is crucial for demonstrating the value of your efforts and securing renewals and potential growth opportunities. Think of it as a pyramid. The Success Plan goals should ladder back up to the departmental goals, top business goals and priorities.
4. Triggers
Identify the triggers that drive each stakeholder’s priorities. Understanding why a particular goal is important, and why now, helps you to tailor your approach and engage more effectively with the client.
Conclusion: Putting It All Together
Creating an effective Success Plan is not just about following a template or checking off a list of tasks. It requires a deep understanding of the client’s business, strategic alignment with their goals, and a collaborative approach that engages multiple stakeholders. By avoiding common pitfalls, structuring your plan effectively, and leveraging the PART framework, you can create Success Plans that drive customer enablement and secure long-term retention and growth.
For more on Success Plans and other revenue topics, you may enjoy our Quest to Quota Attainment Course (which also includes a Micro Skills Series course on Success Plans). It is broken up into short modules, making it easy to learn and practice new skills in short but effective time blocks each day. You can get a sneak peak at one of our course videos on our YouTube channel – in this video we delve further into PART for Customer Success.
And finally, if you need hands-on support for your revenue-generation efforts, check out the services we offer.
