Get aligned with a pre-kickoff call

Ideally, sales cycles get shorter and easier over time as the product matures and processes for customer journeys improve. However certain sales cycles can take longer than expected, especially for large enterprise customers and strategic deals. As I analyzed the success of the kickoff and onboarding of long sales cycles, I discovered that more than 60% of these presented problems and dragged longer than expected. I ran retrospectives with CSM teams to uncover the reasons and more than 90% of these had problems with customer expectation misalignment.

We reviewed sales & tech notes, sales pitch decks, success plans, and tech design documents. It became obvious that most of these became stale and outdated quickly as the sales process dragged on. When it came time to do the project kickoff and run the onboarding plan, the customer's priorities and objectives had evolved. CSM teams were spending additional time realigning with the customer stakeholders while the onboarding process was underway, causing delays.

I wanted to find a way to prevent this by offering customers an opportunity to realign objectives and priorities before the project kickoff and after they signed the deal.

Finding an opportunity window

I worked with sales leaders to get an idea of customers' expectations around kickoff and onboarding. Surprisingly, I heard that the larger the deal and the size of the customer, they had looser expectations in getting their teams engaged with the service/platform they had just purchased. Large hierarchies and company structures require dedicated teams or individuals to get involved while planning capacity and resources. This usually took one or two weeks which sounded more than ideal for performing internal preparation and planning.

In addition to the pre to post-sales handoff, I designed an optional process that could be executed in the one or two-week window between contract signing and the expected kickoff date.

How to plan and run the pre-kickoff call

The main objective is to realign business objectives and success metrics with customer stakeholders that will own the kickoff, onboarding, and implementation of the product/service they purchased. These are the basic requirements needed from both parties:

Customer stakeholders

1. Define a kickoff and onboarding captain. A main point of contact that will route questions, tasks, and responsibilities to other customer stakeholders. This captain must be present in the pre-kickoff call and subsequent kickoff and onboarding calls.
2. (Optional) List any other stakeholders that can support the kickoff and onboarding journey. They can temporarily provide coverage if the captain is unavailable.
3. Reserve time for a 30-minute live call with the CSM team after the contract signing and at least 3 days before the expected kickoff date.

Internal CSM team

1. Secure and confirm the 30-minute time for the call with the customer kickoff captain and any optional stakeholders. If possible, invite the pre-sales team (Sales rep, Solution Architect, and any executive sponsors).
2. Review any notes, presentations, and docs created during pre-sales. The pre to post-sales handoff process should cover this.
3. Create a 3 to 5 slide presentation that lists:
   1. The customer's business objectives, success metrics, and value realization objectives.
   2. The customer stakeholders that the CSM team will be working with. List names, titles, and emails.
   3. The expected kickoff date and onboarding journey milestones.
   4. (Optional) The contract terms, with any consumption, license, usage limits, or stipulations.
   5. (Optional) Support terms and SLAs.
4. Validate the contents of each slide with the customer. This will be an opportunity to show the customer "Here's what we heard during pre-sales. Is this still valid? If not, let's refresh it and commonly agree".
5. You will likely edit the contents of the slides as you review them with the customer. Be ready to do hot edits or take notes. Alternatively, recording the call for later review can help.
6. Send a copy of the updated slide deck to the customer at least 24 hours before the kickoff date.

Why make it optional for the customer?

As I designed the process and looked for a few customers to try it with before launching it, I asked for feedback. I first asked if they would like to have a pre-kickoff call and if they would find it valuable. The response was divided 50/50. As much as some were open to this new process and found it useful, half of the customers surveyed said they would prefer to address the alignment issues during onboarding; this prompted me to offer the call as optional.

When I enabled this new process internally to CSM teams, I emphasized "selling" the call. Showing templates and examples of what the call looks like and what it aims to do. But most importantly, to show the value and gains of doing so. Still, CSM teams will always mention that it is completely optional.

After 6 months of running this process, 3/4 of customers opted to have the call. I also ran a simple CSAT survey to measure satisfaction and 87% of customers responded positively. Worth a shot!