Case study: Gainsight wins by selling customer outcomes with Valueplan
“Valueplan is our customer maturity assessment, stakeholder alignment tool and success plan generator all in one. It’s an elegant tool. Customers, sales and CSMs all love using it.”
— Tim Van Lew, Director, GTM Programs & Advocacy
Introduction
Gainsight, well known for its human-first culture, has always been at the forefront of delivering value to its customers. In line with this philosophy, Gainsight developed a sophisticated customer value framework known as the Operationalizing Outcomes (O2) model several years ahead of their peers. This model documented the business outcomes and measures customers could expect from using Gainsight's products as well as how Gainsight’s products would deliver that value.
Challenge
Creating a value framework is only half the battle. Operationalizing value frameworks across an entire company comes with several challenges. In Gainsight’s case, the sophistication of the framework made it difficult for employees to remember its details, and employee turnover as well as acquisitions compounded the difficulty of maintaining consistent training. The responsibility landed on employees to discover and log the correct business drivers for each customer in Salesforce. Additionally, a legacy survey designed to ask prospects about desired value, resulted in overhead for both prospects and employees as they manually exported survey results into presentations.
Solution
Enter Valueplan.io. Gainsight partnered with Valueplan.io to integrate their O2 model into the externally facing Valueplan platform, launching https://gainsight.valueplan.io. Initially, Gainsight targeted midmarket and SMB segments by incorporating Valueplan.io into outbound email campaigns, targeting middle-of-the-funnel prospects. Completing an assessment only takes 3 minutes for prospects then gives back an extremely valuable and personalized deliverable - A now, soon, later roadmap of value prospects can expect to achieve over time with Gainsight. They also receive personalized content and peer benchmarks. The call to action is simple. Click to see your personalized value roadmap in action by requesting a product demo.
Impact
The first 9 months of utilizing Valueplan.io yielded remarkable outcomes. These figures not only represent tangible financial success but also highlight the efficacy of Valueplan.io in enhancing Gainsight’s customer engagement process.
High Conversion Rate: Valueplan.io became Gainsight's second-highest converting asset.
Significant Pipeline Growth: Over $1 million in pipeline was directly attributed to Valueplan.io’s implementation.
Revenue Increase: A direct revenue generation of $70,000 was realized.
Exceptional ROI: A staggering 500% return on investment was recorded in the first year alone.
Broader Impact
Beyond the impressive financial metrics, the implementation of Valueplan.io brought additional strategic benefits:
Engagement with Senior Buyers: The users completing the assessments were often more senior than those engaged through other campaign assets, indicating a higher level of decision-maker involvement.
Adoption Beyond Target Market: While initially focused on SMB and midmarket segments, Valueplan.io saw significant adoption among enterprise prospects as well. This wider appeal underscored the versatility and effectiveness of the tool across different market segments.
Stakeholder Alignment: Particularly in enterprise scenarios, multiple stakeholders from a company engaged with the assessment tool. This enabled Gainsight’s sellers to compare and contrast results, ensuring that customer stakeholders were aligned on the value they sought to achieve with Gainsight’s offerings.
Existing Customers: Valueplan.io also saw traction with incumbent customers as CSMs leveraged the tool for driving success planning and their EBRs.
International Growth: Entering the Japanese Market
Following the remarkable success in the United States, Gainsight recognized an opportunity to replicate this achievement in a new, growing market: Japan. A fully localized version of Valueplan.io was developed, ensuring that the platform resonated with the Japanese audience in their native language. To ensure compliance with local data policies and to enhance performance, the platform was also hosted within Japan. Initial results are promising:
Rapid Adoption: Similar to the U.S. launch, the Japanese version of Valueplan.io quickly became a top converting asset for Gainsight's sales and marketing teams.
High Engagement: The localized platform resonated well with the Japanese audience, leading to increased engagement and conversion rates.
Market Penetration: This move significantly contributed to Gainsight's penetration into the Japanese market, establishing a strong presence and credibility.
Conclusion
Gainsight's adoption of Valueplan.io is a testament to the company's commitment to continuously evolve and enhance its customer value proposition. By leveraging technology that aligns with their human-first approach, Gainsight has set a new benchmark in customer engagement and value realization. This case study demonstrates how innovative solutions like Valueplan.io can transform the effectiveness of customer engagement strategies, particularly in a B2B context.