Farm Don't Hunt

The Definitive Guide to Customer Success

Learn what it really means to run your business from the Customer Success standpoint. Even fewer have the experience to build the Customer Success function and optimize its performance.

Guy Nirpaz, a pioneer in the field of Customer Success, breaks down the intellectual underpinnings of Customer Success as a theory and provides pragmatic, actionable advice for orienting your business around this new model.

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A really practical handbook for anyone looking to be a leader in the space. Customer Success is something that is evolving really quickly, and this book is the right combination of simplicity and insight to understand it.”

MARK ROBERGE
Sr. Lecturer at Harvard Business School, CRO HubSpot

What's inside?

A practical guide for the Customer Success Leader. The first half of the book provides the structure for you to think about your Customer Success efforts. The second half of the book provides practical advice for managing customers under this new paradigm.

The Story Behind the Book

THE BIG IDEAS AND THE INSPIRATION BEHIND FARM DON'T HUNT

I have been saying for some time that sales itself needs to move way down the funnel and focus on what happens after the customer sign on the dotted line. But the question is “how do you do that?” Well, what “Farm Don’t Hunt” captures is how you do customer success. A great resource for any customer success leader who is wondering what to do.

JACCO VAN DER KOOIJ
WINNING BY DESIGN

Farm Don’t Hunt is a working guidebook for every senior management team and customer success executive. What to do. Why it matters, how to measure it. Action plans. Baselines. Success Plays. It’s an indispensable consultant-in-a-book that will be tapped many times through the first couple of years of your customer success journey.

MIKAEL BLAISDELL
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE CUSTOMER SUCCESS ASSOCIATION

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Who is Guy Nirpaz?

Guy Nirpaz

Guy is a Silicon Valley-based Israeli entrepreneur and CEO of Totango, a Customer Success software platform. A pioneer in the Customer Success field, Guy established the Customer Success Summit and is a well-regarded industry speaker and community Contributor. Guy loves people and technology and has dedicated his career to improving the way in which business is done through innovation.

Fun Facts: Guy moonlights as the lead guitarist in a rock band based out of his garage in Palo Alto and used to command a tank battalion...as well as having grown oranges.

Full list of essays included in the book

01

Introduction

The Hunt for Customers
A Change in the Customer Relationship

02

Customer Success – The Farming Paradigm

Your Customers Are Like Trees
Your Grove is Your Business
Your Harvest is Your Revenue
The Goal

03

The Customer Success Cycle (Or, How Trees Grow)

The Customer Success Cycle
The Customer Journey
Where the Farming Metaphor Breaks Down

04

Managing Your Grove

Customer Success is a Portfolio Management Exercise
Customer Success vs. Pipeline Management
Customer Success vs. Project Management
Customer Success vs. Customer Support
Focus on Drivers to influence Outcomes
The Customer Success Scorecard    (or, your grove report card)

05

Doing the Work

Setting the Strategy
The Tactics: Activities of a Customer Success Manager
The Engagement Model:  Combining Activities Into Success
Programs and Success Plays
Putting It All Together
The Importance of Incremental and Iterative Improvement
When to Do What—Prioritizing the Stages
Prioritizing Success Plays Within Stages
About Planning and Predictability

06

Onboarding

The Customer Onboarding Program
Customer Onboarding Success Plays
Trigger:  The customer is unable to use the product
Trigger: The customer is unhappy
with the onboarding process
Special Topic:  Customer Health Indicators

07

Nurturing & Growing

Nurturing Success Program
Feature Adoption Program
Usage Reporting Program
Periodic Business Review Program
Customer Feedback Program
Best Practice Sharing Program
Nurturing Success Plays
Trigger:  Account Suffers from a Drop in Utilization
Trigger:  Users Affected by a Service Outage or SLA Breach
Trigger:  A Key User Leaves the Company
Trigger:  A Support Storm – Many Similar Cases Occur
Case Study:  Do as I Say, Not as I Do!

08

Harvesting

Harvesting Success Program
Harvesting Success Plays
Success Play:  Outbound Upsell/Cross-Sell Communication

09

Saving

Saving Success Plays
Trigger:  Too Many Escalations

10

Building the Team

Customer Success Manager (CSM).
Support Manager
Education Manager – Training Manager
Operations Manager
Upsell/Renewals Manager
Professional Services

11

Customer Success Relative to Other Business Functions

Sales
Customer Support
Product
Marketing
Special Topic:  The Need for Customer Marketing

12

Farming Tools

The Limitations of CRM
The Rise of Customer Success Tools
Aggregation
Signalization
Workflow