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How Customer Definitions of Success in Onboarding Can Disrupt Revenue Results
Misaligned success metrics sabotage onboarding outcomes and cost you expansion deals
Clare Knight
June 19, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes
How much do you truly analyse success metrics expressed by your customers?
What if this is what you are hearing?
CEO: "We need 20% efficiency improvement across operations."
IT: "We need seamless integration with existing systems."
End User: "We need something that doesn't crash every Tuesday. Please!"
In reality none of these definitions of success will actually drive the outcomes they need.
Customers are terrible at defining their own success during onboarding!
This is where your genius comes into play!
Guide them toward success definitions that actually drive business value and set up natural expansion pathways.
So, do you want to be just a product delivery service, or a strategic partner?
(Psst, the answer is the latter!) ↓
🧪 The Project: Success Alignment Skills
This will guide customers toward success definitions that not only drive retention, expansion, and referrals, but also allow them to excel with your product.
Step 1: Understand the stakeholder web
If you only engage with a primary contact, you miss the broader ecosystem of decision-makers.
Create a simple stakeholder map for every new customer and identify what success looks like to each.
Executive Level: What business outcomes justify the investment?
Operational Level: What daily improvements would make their jobs easier?
End User Level: What would make them actually want to use the system
Financial Level: What metrics prove ROI to the board?
Don't assume your main contact understands everyone's priorities.
They rarely do.