The Client Brief
- Grant Parker
- Apr 9, 2024
- 4 min read
Updated: Apr 15, 2024
The Client Brief Template is one of my favorite documents that I have ever made and used in my sales career. I have to give a shout out to my friend Molly Gallagher, who was working with me and helped put all of this document together.
The Client Brief Template is designed to be used after the sale has been closed, typically by a Customer Success or Account Manager. Remember, a Go-To-Market strategy isn’t just about finding and closing customers—it’s about keeping those customers. In order to do that, we need to make sure that we are meeting their needs and keeping them happy. This document is designed to help us do that.
Download the Client Brief Template for free:
Section 1: Desired Outcomes
When we think about our customers’ desired outcomes, we might be tempted to say something like: “The desired outcome for HubSpot CRM is cleaner data. The customer wants a central repository for all of their data to live.” It’s a fine statement, but it’s not actually an outcome. The real outcome is they want to close more sales. They want to shorten their sales cycle, and they make more revenue next year than they did last year. Our product is a stepping stone on the way to do that.
If we can understand truly what change the customer is trying to see by using our product, then we are well positioned to help them achieve it. In that case, we have a much better chance of renewing with this customer next year and growing the account.
We should also have a clear definition of what we want to see out of a relationship with them. Maybe this looks like wedging into a new vertical we haven’t sold before, or selling them our baseline product so that we can sell them more products into other departments later on. All of these are fantastic desired outcomes for us. It’s important that we know what we’re trying to get with this relationship so that every time I interact with them, all of my actions drive this desired outcome. There’s nothing worse than meeting with a client or prospect and feeling he had a good conversation, but then walking away from it thinking that we didn’t truly move the needle.
NOTE: I highly recommend the desired outcomes are repeated and agreed upon often. Every time I would meet with one of my clients, the top of the call would always start with me reiterating the desired outcomes, and making sure they’re still relevant to all parties. Making sure we’re on the same page is the critical job of the Account Manager.
Section 2: Account Health
The second section is designed to help us understand the health of the account. It’s very simply broken down into red, yellow, green scores. It asks five key questions designed to tell everyone how healthy or in jeopardy this account is.
Profitability
Is this account generating good revenue for us? Remember, it’s just as dangerous to undersell and over deliver as it is to over sell and under deliver—it just takes longer to go broke.
Feature Engagement
Are they using our product features in the way we want them to be using it? Are they making the most out of this product, or is there more that we can do? A customer that’s not using our key features may be likely to renew, but definitely won’t grow.
Relationship Status
Would they be willing to do a case study with us? Could they give us referrals? This is really important to keep track of, and if we have a yellow or a red, a lot of conversation should go into how do we make this relationship better with these people.
Support
Are we hitting our service level agreements like we promised? Do they have a low ticket volume, and are those tickets solved relatively quickly? This section is a direct predictor into the future of the relationship.
Are Product Needs Being Met?
Every client is going to ask for things we don’t have. But how often is that happening? Do they have a long list of un-met feature needs? If so, that may tell me that this relationship isn’t going to last.
NOTE My very strong recommendation is that this would be a quarterly process. Every quarter, we should get together all of the stakeholders to go through this list. We can then keep track of our healthy accounts, versus which accounts need more attention. If you maintain healthy relationships with your clients, your margins will increase, you’ll be spending less time on bad clients, more time on good clients.
Section 3: Relationship Mapping
Understanding who on our side is connected to who on their side will cut down on the cost of servicing and managing this account. For each title or role inside of the account, record their name, the status of the relationship today (red, yellow, green), and who owns that relationship on our side? If we do this on a quarterly basis, it becomes very easy to spot upcoming problems.
Section 4: Product Features
What features of our product is the client using? If there are features they haven’t used yet, how do I get them using that? The job of the Client Success Manager is to grow this account.
Similarly we can ask ourselves about their product roadmap. For startups or early stage companies, this can be invaluable feedback from the front lines.
Download the Client Brief Template for free:
Comments