Closing a deal is step one. What happens next determines whether that customer renews, expands, or churns.

Making sure your product delivers the value you promised it would.

Achieving this requires deliberate, proactive effort. You’ll need a proactive and data-driven customer success process.

The right customer success (CS) strategy helps companies identify and address customer pain points. This helps them achieve their business goals.

In today's competitive B2B market, job turnover is high and buyers have limited budgets. Focusing on customer success is crucial to prevent churn and increase renewals.

Learn four impactful customer success strategies we practice at UserGems. They help build strong relationships, support customers, and keep your product on their renewal list.

What is customer success in B2B sales?

Customer success is made up of proactive communication strategies. These ensure your product enables customers to achieve their desired business goals.

In B2B sales, customer success requires ongoing engagement well beyond the close of a deal. To turn customers into repeat buyers — and grow their budget with you — bring value to their business.

Follow-ups are a classic customer success strategy many organizations use, but they're difficult to stay on top of. Mimecast's Gar Smyth shares how incorporating CSM advice on automation took their pipeline generation results to the next level.

Customers continue to need your support and guidance long after you close a deal. Following the CSM's advice helped Mimecast generate $18M in new business pipeline and increased product adoption in the sales team.

Customer success programs reduce churn, increase renewal rates, and create the kind of loyalty that turns customers into advocates. This reduces your churn rate, increases customer loyalty, and extends your customer lifecycle.

4 customer success strategies that work

Happy customers are more likely to renew, provide referrals, leave positive reviews, and be open to upsell and cross-sell opportunities.

Effective customer success strategies combine tailored engagement, proactive outreach, and relationship-building aligned to each customer's specific goals and needs. The strategies you use need to be tailored to your business, customers, and goals.

Here’s what our CSMs recommend.

1. Build relationships with your customers

Strong customer relationships drive retention. They’re also how you turn a closed deal into a long-term account. But it can be overwhelming when trying to build relationships with new stakeholders.

Jasmine Reynolds, former Sr. CSM at UserGems, recommends sticking to customer relationship management basics.

“Don't lose your new relationship in the chaos. Instead, make sure you’re checking in with your CSM basics to keep you on track,” says Jasmine.

Keeping things simple helps you build valuable relationships with your customers, and it doesn’t have to be super complicated. Jasmine recommends developing these essential qualities as a CSM trying to develop a relationship with your customer:

• Be responsive and attentive

"Your stakeholders rely on you for support and guidance," explains Jasmine. "Being responsive and attentive builds trust and strengthens your relationship."

Customer feedback shows engagement and provides valuable insights to improve your service.

Jasmine says, "When a stakeholder reaches out with a question or concern, respond promptly with a clear and concise answer. Sometimes the best way is to schedule a 15-minute call with your subject matter expert."

Tony Bulgarella, Senior CSM at UserGems, adds, "I try to respond to all emails the same day, even just to confirm receipt and say I'm working on it. Never leave a customer hanging.”

• Provide value

"Providing value to new stakeholders builds strong relationships," says Jasmine. "Sharing resources, industry knowledge, and best practices positions you as a valuable partner."

"If a new stakeholder is ramping up and a new feature is available, create a quick Loom video covering highlights and how they can benefit."

Tony advises CSMs to see themselves as facilitators. "If you can't get something done yourself, know who to go through to make it happen!"

• Understand their goals and objectives

Successful customers have achieved their desired outcome with your product.

"Understanding your stakeholders' goals is crucial in providing the support and resources they need to be successful," says Jasmine. "Understanding their goals lets you tailor your approach to meet their specific needs."

She continues, "If a new stakeholder's main goal is to increase revenue, offer resources like upselling training or market trend insights."

“A customer may ask for something, but don’t always be a ‘yes’ person,” says Tony. “Ask ‘Why do you want this’ and make the judgment on if it will really solve their problem/is beneficial.”

Getting customers to value realization sooner increases your retention rate and drives referrals.

• Build rapport and show empathy

“You’ll need to be able to feel what your champions are feeling, good or bad,” says Tony.

Jasmine explains, "Showing empathy towards their challenges builds trust and shows you are invested in their success."

She adds, "Build all relationships with these basics in mind and you'll set a foundation for trust. And remember: your customer relationships are YOUR BRAND. Handle them with care.”

Your NPS reflects every interaction a customer has with your team — and each one is a chance to reinforce or erode trust.

2. Stay flexible and provide support based on their needs

"Customer Success is pretty similar to plant caretaking," says Caroline Irby, Senior CSM at UserGems. "I have multiple houseplants, and they don't all need my care every single day.

However, I have a system to ensure I am at least doing a high-level check-in every few days for all of them. They're all on different care schedules."

“It’s the same for my customer accounts,” Caroline explains. “My orchids require a bit more attention than my pothos, just like my customers in implementation or who are facing challenges require more specialized attention than my customers on auto-pilot who understand the product and are seeing clear ROI.”

To manage this, Caroline recommends meeting the customer where they're at.

"For some, this means meeting every other week to stay on course and hit our goals," says Caroline. "For others, this could be a Slack check-in or monthly status calls. Flexibility based on each customer's needs is imperative to keep them thriving."

She adds, “The iteration matters. What works for one account won't always translate to another — and the CSMs who figure that out early are the ones whose customers consistently hit their goals.”

3. Be proactive about renewals

“For many CSMs working in SaaS, we are experiencing renewals in a bear market for the first time,” says Jordan Kilmer, Sr. CSM at UserGems.

"You can no longer renew a customer on unrealized potential or the strength of your personal relationship. Even customers with clear success attributable to your partnership are not the slam dunk renewal they once were."

Current market conditions have created different evaluation criteria. CSMs must revise how they approach the renewal conversation.

Here’s how Jordan recommends approaching renewals.

• Ask early, ask directly

Renewal conversations may feel stressful, but CSMs must initiate them. Start the conversation by asking:

• How are other vendor renewals going at [customer]?
• What does the process look like in our new environment for you and the team?
• Align on priorities and customer success metrics

Find out what their priorities are so you can align on what needs to be done to provide value to their business. Get this information by asking:

• What metrics need to be hit for us to have a successful renewal?
• Where do we stand on those from your perspective right now?
• Work backward on timing

Don’t wait until the last minute to start a conversation about renewals. Reach out to customers early on with messages such as:

• With your renewal coming up in X months and A, B, and C in mind that we just discussed, let’s focus our efforts on driving those results.
• I recommend we set up a detailed action plan to get us to the spot where this renewal is secured because we’re delivering the value needed from our partnership.

"Customers are often relieved to discuss this directly — they're happy their partners understand this dynamic," says Jordan.

He adds, "You may hear scarier updates than you anticipate. But you'll get the chance to align on priorities and help them hit their goals so they can renew."

4. Multithread

“More valuable relationships within customer accounts lead to stickiness,” says Justine Wares, former CSM at UserGems. “Unfortunately, siloing the relationship during the initial purchase or onboarding process often undermines this stickiness.”

Justine explains, “As a CSM, it’s our responsibility to find and build new relationships (aka multithread) within customer accounts to showcase our product’s value and increase stickiness.”

But how do you do this? Steven Farina, Director, Customer Success at UserGems, points to one solution — multithreading.

“Multithreading is retention insurance, and right now, it should be your highest-priority retention move,” says Steven.

“It's easy to overlook: You have a strong champion. They're engaged, efficient, and hitting on all the key metrics you aligned on. The stuff green accounts are made of, except:

• Your last email failed when sent to an invalid recipient
• Renewal is coming up in just a few months
• And you're at square one because your champ left and nobody else at the company has been engaged with you or your product.”

Steven explains, “With what's happening in tech right now, the brutal reality is if you haven't already come up against this, you absolutely will.”

Multithreading is your best bet, and here’s how to get it done:

• Identify your decision-makers from the outset

List the roles needed to drive a successful program. Ask customers to bring these people to the first call.

• Glorify your champ

How can we bubble up some of these wins to the team? Who else should be invested in the success of this program?

• Suggest a few common roles you work with

For example, ask questions like: I often also work with folks in XYZ roles. Anyone come to mind that we should loop in to take some of the work off your plate?

• Proactively reach out to other interesting titles (without skipping over your champ)

Justine advises reaching out once you find these contacts. "Reference the work done with their colleagues, share metrics your product has accomplished, and offer to include them on the next call or chat for 15 minutes."

Here’s a template from Steven that you can use to start the conversation:

Hey X, I'm your CSM at [company]. We're currently helping your company with [insert value prop]. Given your title as [title], I thought it might make sense to loop you in.

I'm working with [insert champion], who has done a stellar job standing the program up so far. Would it make sense for the three of us to connect?

If you're a UserGems customer, we surface these contacts in your CRM automatically and keep them updated continuously. Either way, it's well worth the time and effort.

"After learning about their initiatives, it could make sense to add additional use cases," says Justine. "If it doesn't, you've still added another potential champion — a huge win."

Using customer success to boost pipeline generation

Providing ongoing support and guidance to help customers get the most out of your product or service protects and grows your revenue, reducing pipeline anxiety.

Happy customers are less likely to churn. They also provide revenue expansion opportunities and champion your products internally. When your previous champions move to new companies, they provide a warm path into new accounts, increasing your chances of closing a deal by 114%.

An effective customer success in B2B sales strategy helps you:

• Build relationships with new stakeholders
• Provide support based on their needs
• Start renewal conversations early
• Multithread to have multiple champions

This all comes together to help you continue to deliver value to your customers. If you're ready to give your revenue team the AI command center for outbound and ABM, try a self-guided UserGems demo today — backed by our money-back guarantee.

About UserGems

UserGems is the AI command center for outbound and ABM, combining Data Agents, Intelligence Agents, and an AI Chrome Extension to help revenue teams know who to target, what to say, and when to act.

Companies like Mimecast, Greenhouse, and Medallia use UserGems to track champion movement, build buying groups, and convert that signal into pipeline.