This post will review the idea of “cascade” as a way to think about helping our customers gain value from our products.
Let’s Review:
The Concept of Cascade
Growing-up in the 1990s I remember a Cascade dishwasher commercial with water flowing from one scene to the next. The commercial communicated the idea of a rush of water creating sparkling dishes.
According the Proctor & Gamble, Cascade was created in the 1950’s to capture the new home dishwasher market.
So, what does cascade mean that made it an appealing brand name for washing dishes?
According to the Oxford Languages definition from Google:
- A small waterfall typically one of several that fall down a steep rocking slope
- A process whereby something, typically information or knowledge is successfully passed on
From Value One to Cascading Value
As CSMs one of our primary goals is to obtain Value One.
According to The Seven Pillars of Customer Success by Wayne McCulloch, Value One is the customer’s “first business achievement that solidifies the customer’s decision to purchase your solution.”
When we are working with our clients – we can first establish – Value One.
Once we achieve Value One – we can start thinking about refining our process to achieve second, third or fourth value and more.
We can start to hone “a process whereby something, typically information or knowledge is successfully passed on.”
We can refine our value process to “cascade” the value as if it were “a small waterfall, typically one of several that fall down a steep rocky slope.”
What Ways Can CSMs Create Cascading Value?
Let’s review some ways we can help our customer cascade value with our solutions.
1. Uncover Customer Goals
We can understand our customer’s opportunities and challenges to generate a number of ways we can deliver value. For example we can ask questions like, what are your strategic initiatives? What priorities do you have? What changes in the market are you responding to?
2. Select Where to Focus
After we’ve developed ideas on where to create value, we can help our customer decide where to focus. Criteria could include:
- Quick wins: tasks we can implement quickly with minimal resources
- Top priorities: critical items a customer should address first based on business goals
- Phased approach: tackling our initiatives one stage at a time
3. Implement Solutions
Next, we can help our customer implement the initiatives. Here are some ways we can help our customer:
- Guidance: we can guide our client through the implementation by holding client and CSM work sessions, sharing content resources to inform the process and tapping the expertise of our internal teams for expert knowledge
- Project Management: we can help our customer by planning steps, following-up on progress and troubleshooting road blocks to keep projects on task
- Encouragement: we want to provide positive energy and a can-do attitude as our customer tackles challenges
4. Improve Our Process
As we begin to implement solutions – we want to think about how we can make our process better. In Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products author Leander Kahney profiles how Apple’s design team honed their process over time to create the iMac, then the iPod, the iPhone and finally Apple Watch. How can we apply our learning, experience and knowledge to make the process better?
5. Identify Places to Find More Value
How can we help our customer get more value? We may want to think across our customer’s enterprise. What other job functions in the organization could benefit? What other divisions could use these solutions? How can other geographies apply the learnings? We can help our customer think across the organization to find more ways to implement the solutions and gain value.
As CSMs deliver more value for our clients we help our customer gain efficiency with our products by doing more with our offering. CSMs can unlock cascading value to help our clients shine just as Cascade dish detergent promises.