How do you get the most revenue out of the pipeline and customer base that you have today?
A good starting point is just to educate your customers on exactly what you’re offering and how valuable it can be to them. Most customers don’t even know the full extent of what your product can really do.
And it’s really easy to launch customer education programs.
Below are some guiding tips for sales teams to follow when getting started with customer education. An important element that you don’t want to forget is ensuring that all of your material relates specifically to the problems and solutions that relate to your customer base. While it’s tempting to copy a competitor’s messaging, you know exactly what your audience loves most about your product, so keep using that to fuel your resources!
Skip ahead:
- 1. The sales landscape in 2026 and beyond
- 2. The new role of customer education in this landscape
- 3. How customer education drives success in sales
- 4. Parting advice
The Sales landscape in 2026 and beyond
Recurring revenue models are the future of B2B business.
Why?
First, is it the model that most customers prefer due to the ease of payments and the ability to cancel with less notice in case a lack of service occurs.
Tracking annual recurring revenue (ARR) or monthly recurring revenue (MRR) also allows the selling organization to easily forecast future revenue growth. If you’re approaching a funding round or acquisition, this predictable revenue model can also boost your company valuation.
Revenue via acquisition-led models is also taking a slower change in pace. Competing for net new acquisition is becoming more expensive and difficult to scale. In response, sales teams are shifting their focus on growing the customers that are already in place today. Not only are these existing customers easier to find (since they should be in your CRM), but you’ll also skip out on the high lead generation costs to attract them into new offerings.
Shifting the sales focus towards growing the customer lifetime value (CLV) metric earns benefits like:
- Strong relationship and improved feedback loop with customers
- More cost effective sell, using account-specific intel that you already have
- Ability to scale growth compared to creating customized approaches for each net new lead
The new role of customer education in this landscape
How can customer education help sales teams grow revenue faster when focused on retention instead of acquisition?
There are three key areas where customer education can be applied, each with unique tactics to use.
The important thing to remember is that sales and customer success teams should be partnered up to share knowledge about which features and use cases are driving the most value in each account. Keeping this top of mind ensures that you create customer education that is highly relevant and served at the right time.
Tip: Follow this Customer Success Guide to see how to do this in practice!
Adoption
The adoption stage is where new customers are just onboarding with your product and beginning to see the use cases come to life. This is where first impressions really matter.
The goal here is to get customers using your product as fast as possible so they can see the value. Prioritize launching education activities within the first 30 days of the customer lifecycle.
For example, Cricut has a beginner-friendly course that is offered to new users as soon as they open the box. This immediately eases early frustrations from navigating a brand new product.
Other tactics to try include:
- One-on-one training sessions with a dedicated customer success representative
- A QR code or link pointing to the help center
- How-to videos and virtual product tours
- A welcome newsletter with links to important resources and contacts
Renewal
When customers approach their renewal date, it’s very possible that they can be comparing your offering with competing solutions. The most important things to do in this stage are focus on the areas where you win for that specific account, and start your education early to get ahead of any friction points.
This helps show you educate your customer on how you are still the absolute best solution for them.
Later increased their customer retention by 320% by turning a webinar into an online course. Through this channel, they focused on product features that were outside of the 2–3 core use cases. Customers began to see the expanded value of keeping the software in their tech stack.
Other tactics to try include:
- Running a monthly customer newsletter sharing ways that similar customers are engaging with the product
- Hosting weekly or monthly virtual office hours to show off “secret” or lesser known features
- Engaging in quarterly customer business reviews where the customer success team can check-in on product adoption and demonstrate new functionality
Expansion
You can start thinking about customer expansion at any time, whether they have just signed one or they have been a long-time user. It’s a good practice to schedule check-ins with customers on a set schedule so you don’t forget to look for expansion opportunities.
The purpose of customer education for expansion is to show the customer other areas where you can solve other challenges that they are facing in the day-to-day.
As an example, DataDog has an entire customer education library stocked full of courses to help users understand how to code on cloud instances. While DataDog’s primary service offering is not training, they can earn additional revenue by providing this training to their existing customers.
A few things to try include:
- Offering paid certification programs so employees can show off their knowledge of your product
- Webinars or livestream events showcasing new products in other business areas
- Leading a solution mapping session with a customer to identify all challenges they’re facing that are relevant to your offerings, beyond what you sell to them today
How Customer Education drives success in sales
Even though we’re seeing a shift to customer retention metrics being a leading indicator for revenue growth, your normal acquisition-led model isn’t going anywhere. Customer education is still going to be a saving grace for getting new leads in the door and signing on.
Build pipeline
The market is overwhelmed with solution offerings. Sending the right information at the right time is the key to catching the attention of a potential lead.
When building your pipeline, focus on education pieces that inform leads about why your type of product makes sense for their type of business. You don’t need to get super technical about how your product stands out just yet.
Prioritize educating customers about solutions to common problems. The focus is on helping the entire market shift upwards to overcome those common issues. Customer education can be leveraged here to show that your business is a thought leader driving the industry forward.
Convert customers
When you have the lead in the door, the next priority becomes conversion. Focus educational resources around what makes your product stand out from competing products. And don’t just rely on explaining what product features can do. Focus on the real return on investment (ROI) that customers can expect to see once they start using your solution.
Education at this stage should be highly focused on the benefits that the customer will see through adoption. For example, the number of hours they can expect to save on a certain task or the amount of money they’ll save from no longer needing their existing solution.
Personalized product walkthroughs, one-pagers, and recorded videos are all great ways to demonstrate how you’ll help customers meet their goals.
Drive new revenue
Don’t forget about the customer as soon as they sign the deal. As we mentioned above, the future of revenue growth is going to focus on customer expansion a lot in 2024 and beyond.
Continuously sync with your customers to find areas that they are pulling value from or struggling with so you can build content that meets them exactly where they are. Start by creating short video recordings to explain new solutions or features they can test out to continuously do more with your business.
Parting advice
Customer education is a leading strategy for businesses that rely on recurring revenue models. Putting the right information in front of the customer or prospect at the right time, can help you effortlessly scale your revenue.
Before jumping in head first on content creation for your education tools, don’t forget to conduct a few customer interviews that help you benchmark on where your customer’s knowledge base is at today.
It also helps to build all of your customer education content in one place. Thinkific Plus is geared towards helping businesses sell more through customer education so that you can grow revenue, accelerate adoption, and reduce churn. See a demo of Thinkific Plus here.
