Build Loyalty Through Post-Sale Engagement
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Explain the significance of post-sales customer engagement in driving long-term value.
- Describe the role of customer asset lifecycle management within the Revenue Cloud ecosystem.
- Identify the common use cases related to customer asset lifecycle management.
Before You Start
Before you start this module, make sure you complete the following content. The work you do here builds on the concepts and work you do in that content.
Service After the Sale
In today’s fiercely competitive business landscape, success no longer hinges solely on the quality of your products or services. It also depends on the strength of your relationships with customers. Excellence in what you deliver is no longer the finish line; it’s merely the starting point. What sets a company apart is its ability to go above and beyond through exceptional after-sales service.
Sam Walton, the American business magnate, once observed that there’s only one boss: the customer. “He can fire everybody in the company, from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.” In that spirit, it’s not enough to gain a customer; it’s important to earn their loyalty every day thereafter.
Far too often, companies focus their energy on winning new customers instead of nurturing existing customers. Yet, it’s the after-sales experience, the continued support, and the responsiveness, that transforms a buyer into a lifelong advocate. The real measure of your brand lies in how you support your customers a day later, a month later, even years after the transaction. Sometimes, customers don’t recall your clever tagline, but they remember waiting 3 days to renew their cloud storage subscription.
The Big Why
According to Forrester Research, post-sale engagement directly drives customer retention, loyalty, and growth. In fact, Forrester’s data shows that when enterprise leaders put the customer at the heart of their strategy and operations, they see an average growth of 28% in revenue and 43% in customer retention.
That’s compelling. But, why is post-sales customer engagement such a critical part of your overall sales strategy? The answer comes down to three big reasons.
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Customers expect it: Customer relationships don’t end with the purchase. They now expect continued value throughout their journey.
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Modern delivery models demand it: With cloud and software as a service (SaaS) dominating the B2B space, the value of a product is tied to its adoption. If your customers don’t use it or don’t understand how, they won’t stay. Make post-sales experiences proactive, not reactive.
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Your business depends on it: Growth doesn’t just come from new customers. It comes from keeping the ones you already have. According to another Forrester report, 61% of annual revenue for most companies comes from existing customers.
Strive for an effective post-sale strategy to better equip your sales, marketing, and customer service personnel. This means adopting a complete revenue management solution that empowers your teams to manage the entire customer journey—from the first touchpoint to post-sale support and revenue growth.
Salesforce Revenue Cloud does just that. It supports every stage of your sales lifecycle—from defining your product catalog and pricing, to enabling configure, price, quote (CPQ), managing contracts, handling end-to-end order fulfillment, invoicing, and tracking customer assets. If you’ve completed the Efficient Sales with Revenue Cloud badge, you know how Revenue Cloud simplifies complex quoting and ensures accuracy.
In this module, you go a step further and explore how Revenue Cloud supports your business after the sale is closed. Learn how to track the full lifecycle of a customer’s assets and foster long-term relationships beyond the transaction.
A Business Scenario
SmartBytes, a leading provider of electronic products and solutions, recently transitioned to Salesforce Revenue Cloud to replace its outdated, error-prone CPQ system. The company relies on Revenue Cloud to handle everything from product cataloging and pricing to quoting, order management, contracts, asset tracking, and billing. As an impact of this shift, SmartBytes has eliminated siloed systems and disjointed processes, bringing everything under one streamlined platform. The result? Less time fixing internal inefficiencies and more time selling.
Chris Thomas is a high-performing sales rep at SmartBytes. He has years of experience and reliably brings in high-value customers.
One of Chris’s recent wins is Capricorn Coffee, a rapidly growing retail provider of coffee beans. With the surge in new coffee shops, Capricorn Coffee recently opened multiple offices and turned to SmartBytes for its electronic infrastructure needs. Chris worked closely with Capricorn stakeholders to get their requirements, tailor a solution, and deliver a compelling proposal. Using Revenue Cloud, he then configured products to match Capricorn’s exact needs, generated accurate quotes, finalized the deal, and created the order, all in a seamless workflow. He closed the deal smoothly, and both parties walked away satisfied.
But as you’ve learned earlier, closing the deal is just the beginning. Chris delivered exactly what Capricorn Coffee needed, but now it’s time to ensure continued support, foster trust, and build a long-term relationship that benefits both companies.
Coming Up
In this unit, you learned why post-sale support is a vital part of your customer journey. It plays a key role in building retention, loyalty, and long-term business growth. In the next unit, follow Chris as he works with Capricorn Coffee to address post-sale needs and strengthen their relationship through continued support.