There are many useful ways to measure customer commitment to your product. Here is a rubric to help you assess each of your customers.
Gauging Customer Commitment
Some customers will tattoo your brand onto their body.
Harley Davidson and a few rock bands have able to achieve this.
But in general it’s difficult to create that level of lifelong commitment in a paying customer. You have to be content with accepting their money and working hard to evolve your offering to continue to meet their needs.
A Rubric for B2B Customer Commitment Levels
Less Prospect / Customer Commitment
-
- Give you Attention
- Shares Needs or Problem
- Sharing Project Data for a customized demonstration.
- Time and effort in evaluation
- Limited financial commitment: a few seat licenses for a few months for a full pilot project.
- Sharing Longer term plans / shared roadmaps (typically under mutual non-disclosure)
- Annual license
- ——-Prospect to Customer——-
- Will Act as a Reference (see Negotiate the Level of Reference in Parallel with Price and Others Terms and Conditions
- Basic: Your customer agrees to take calls from new prospects.
- NDA only: You can use name, title, and company on a slide that’s part of a presentation that’s delivered under non-disclosure.
- LinkedIn: for service firms you can ask for a reference on LinkedIn.
- Web Release: You can use name, title, and company on your website with a testimonial statement.
- Press Release: You can issue a press release with an agreed upon quote or set of quotes.
- Other (Public) Document: e.g. a case study, white paper, joint paper for a technical conference.
- Joint Press Release: You and the customer issue a joint press release. This is a very big deal with a public company and can be difficult for an early stage firm to secure.
- Logo: Using a customer’s corporate logo is normally involves more effort than securing an endorsement or testimonial from an individual employee.
- Testimonial
- Agrees to a Case Study
- Refers other firms
More Prospect or Customer Commitment