DecisionLink today announced that the DecisionLink ValueCloud® has been named and certified by Vendor Neutral in a brand new category: customer value management. Customer value management (CVM) uses metrics to ensure high levels of value are delivered to every customer based on their needs throughout the life of the relationship. Managing customer value as a practice and with an enabling application allows enterprises to treat customer value as a strategic asset and win business and retain customers more often, decrease discounting, accelerate deal cycles, market and showcase value, price more effectively and reduce churn. DecisionLink’s ValueCloud® augments CRM systems and efforts by providing the missing link to elevating conversations, establishing “trusted advisor” status with customers, and forging long term customer relationships.
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DecisionLink Customer Value Management Infographic (Graphic: Business Wire)
“Customer relationship management is at a tipping point,” said Nancy Nardin, founder of Smart Selling Tools and co-founder for Vendor Neutral. “Enhancing CRM by managing customer relationships based on value promised and value delivered is the next level strategic advantage for today’s enterprise organizations to succeed and win, and the ultimate differentiation when competing for business.”
The need for the discipline is further evidenced by big-brand solution companies embracing customer value management and subscribing to DecisionLink’s ValueCloud®. In each of the last 10 competitive battles, DecisionLink’s ValueCloud® has been declared a winner over simpler, less comprehensive “value selling” tools. Brands like Caterpillar, CrowdStrike, DocuSign, Marketo and most recently ServiceNow, to name a few, are turning to ValueCloud® to enable go-to-market transformation by enabling higher level conversations focused on value versus price. ValueCloud® is helping companies achieve “trusted advisor status” in the early stages of the relationship, throughout the implementation when value can be checked, and at the later stages at renewal time, when value achievement can be validated.
“CVM is inherently customer centric and helps reps sell strategic advantage to senior executives and justify investments to line of business and procurement staff,” said Gerry Murray, Research Director, Sales Technology for IDC. “Delivering value on the customer’s terms is essential to customer experience. Vendors that directly and continuously measure value will much harder to beat than those who only take snapshots of customer sentiment.”
DecisionLink’s ValueCloud® was recently selected by ServiceNow following an intensive evaluation of possible solutions. “Our choice became clear when we realized DecisionLink’s ValueCloud® gave us the ability to scale across the customer lifecycle and handle early stage as well as later stage (renewal) conversations with customers; had a more robust math engine that was easy to use and was able to handle multiple personas and sales motions. And besides all of that, really like the people at DecisionLink and felt they would be there to support us in this transformation and help us enable a value-based organization at ServiceNow – literally helping us change the game,” said Chris Dowse, for ServiceNow. “Our customers need us to show them how we are consistently providing tangible value for the dollars they are spending with us. Across the board, we have amped up the ability of ServiceNow’s company representatives to have meaningful value-based and quantitative conversations with our customers at scale.”
“We selected ValueCloud® from DecisionLink to enable VMware’s End User Computing ‘Customer for Life Mission’; the entire program is centered on value – identifying it, communicating it and ensuring it is achieved,” said Mike Maxey, Senior Director of World-Wide Sales, Emerging Products for VMware, another client who is focused on ensuring lower churn and is implementing a Customer for Life program.
DocuSign is so serious about CVM and enabling teams for value-rich customer conversations quickly, they’ve created a self-serve function using ValueCloud®. The head of Customer Value Management at DocuSign – Ran Haimoff, had this to say about the speed and scale the ValueCloud® delivers: “With ValueCloud® our account managers can create a high quality, value hypothesis for any account in mere minutes.”
Jim Berryhill, the CEO and founder for DecisionLink said, “We believe customer value is at the core of every good Customer Relationship yet determined there was a lack of tools that deliver visibility and manageability across an enterprise, into this important and strategic asset. And we believe that the shift companies are making from product companies to solution companies demand ‘value-based’ discussions in order to achieve the goal of ‘trusted advisor’ status; without value there can be no meaningful relationship in business.”
“Our platform facilitates the expectations, agreement, and realization of customer value across the entire customer journey,” explained John Porter, CTO and co-founder for DecisionLink.
In addition, Silicon Valley entrepreneur, Joe Sexton, has joined DecisionLink as Executive Advisor to the CEO and investor. Most recently, Mr. Sexton led the growth of AppDynamics to a successful $3.4B exit to Cisco. He is on the Board of Directors of Crowdstrike and Executive Advisory Board of PagerDuty, both companies with massive IPOs in the past year. He had this to say: “I’ve been looking for someone to deliver an enterprise application for value selling and management. I have been following DecisionLink for some time. They’ve broken the code with ValueCloud®. CVM is the next great market category. I feel so passionately about the need for CVM, I’ve invested in DecisionLink and joined their team to help make it happen.”
DecisionLink is also announcing ValueCloud® integration with Customer Success Management leader Gainsight. With integration specifications developed in conjunction with 10 key Gainsight Customers including DocuSign, VMware and ProCore, DecisionLink will provide six primary areas of synergy delivered by ValueCloud® for Gainsight clients. Nick Mehta, Gainsight CEO recently observed, “One of the biggest trends I see in larger companies moving to Customer Success is helping Technical Account Managers (TAMs) become more proactive and turn into CSMs.” The integration of DecisionLink ValueCloud® Value Achievement Tracker with Gainsight’s Customer Success Platform provides an unparalleled level of capability for Customer Success branded as “Better Together.”
DecisionLink’s ValueCloud® is available immediately from DecisionLink at www.decisionlink.com or by calling 800.670.8301. DecisionLink also offers a free customer value management assessment which may be requested at www.decisionlink.com/contact-us/.
About DecisionLink
DecisionLink’s ValueCloud® is the first and leading solution for enterprise-class customer value management. The ValueCloud® enhances the value of CRM systems by providing the missing link to elevating conversations and shifting relationships from tactical to strategic by providing value insights from initial sales call all the way through to contract renewals. The ValueCloud® turns customer value insights into strategic assets that can be leveraged across the enterprise, from CXO’s, to line of business leaders, to Product Managers, to Marketers, to sales & sales support teams, to value managers. DecisionLink is trusted by top enterprise businesses including Caterpillar, CrowdStrike, DocuSign, Marketo, ServiceNow, VMware and more. For more information, please visit www.decisionlink.com, call 800.670.8301 or engage with us on social media at www.facebook.com/Decisionlink, @decisionlink www.twitter.com/decisionlink or www.linkedin.com/decisionlink.
Copyright © 2019 DecisionLink. All rights reserved. DecisionLink, its logo, and ValueCloud® are trademarks or registered trademarks of DecisionLink. Trademarks of other companies mentioned appear for identification purposes only and are property of their respective companies.
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