These are the concepts this book introduces or uses in a specific way. Each entry gives a short definition and links to every chapter where the term appears. Selecting a chapter takes you to the first place the term is used there and highlights it; the number shows how many times it appears in that chapter.
The third stage (60%), answering "Can someone inside the customer carry the case forward without us?" A credible internal advocate has the evidence and language to carry the business case when you are not in the room. The opportunity advances when that advocacy produces an explicit commitment.
The second stage (40%), answering "Is it relevant to something the customer is trying to accomplish?" The opportunity is connected to a customer need, goal, or reason for purchase. It advances when the customer agrees with the business case and someone inside their organization can carry it.
The three phases of the customer lifecycle. Align happens once (Purchase & Welcome through First Value). Engage is a repeating loop of Value Blocks, Sharing Insights, and Alignment Meetings. Achieve is renewal and growth, after which the customer returns to the Engage loop. This Align is a lifecycle phase, not the Align stage of the post-sale pipeline.
The recurring meeting that brings the relationship back to the reason it began, checks what has changed, and sets the next objective. It replaces the QBR's backward-looking report with forward-looking alignment.
The most recent kickoff or Alignment Meeting, used as the reference point for measuring progress and change.
The percentage of a person's capacity realistically available for direct customer work after indirect and unplanned effort are accounted for. CXology uses 65 percent as a planning starting point to validate, not a universal benchmark.
Launching the full product, all capabilities, and all users at once. The book recommends an iterative approach instead, with First Value as the first cycle.
The standard, designed version of a play that every team member runs, so the customer experience depends on the system rather than on who owns the account.
The three stages post-sale organizations move through. Reactive teams fight fires and are surprised by churn. Proactive teams anticipate risk. Strategic teams govern the post-sale motion with the same rigor as the sales pipeline.
The company's current interpretation of accumulated evidence about whether the customer is progressing toward and able to sustain the outcomes that justified the relationship, including conditions the post-sale operating system may need to address. It changes when new evidence materially changes that assessment, not because a play was completed or a metric moved slightly.
The broader experience through which the customer moves from purchase toward the outcomes they intended to achieve. The journey tells you where the important moments occur. The Post-Sale Journey Map lays out its eight inflection points and how to make it operational.
The meaningful change a customer makes from the reason they purchased toward the outcomes they intended to achieve. Activity tells you what happened. Progression tells you what changed. Evidence tells you whether that change actually occurred.
The amount of customer work a team can realistically perform in a given period. It is planned from the work the organization has designed to help customers progress, not from a ratio of accounts or ARR per CSM. Capacity determines whether the designed work can happen; it is not a customer health signal or a forecast input.
The full effort required to deliver a play or service moment well: preparation, execution, and follow-through. A 60-minute meeting that needs 30 minutes of preparation and 20 minutes of follow-through has a designed effort of 110 minutes. It is the bridge from journey design to capacity planning.
What a play produces when it works. It helps the customer progress toward the outcome they care about, and the evidence of that progress can count toward an opportunity's next pipeline stage when it meets that stage's exit criteria. Completing the play does neither on its own.
How a team's time actually splits: direct effort (designed proactive work and reactive customer work), indirect effort (necessary internal work), and unplanned effort (unexpected or avoidable work that consumes productive capacity).
What tells you whether the intended change for the customer actually occurred: something the customer does or says, not a completed task, a CRM update, or a CSM's impression. Evidence can inform customer health, and relevant evidence can inform a specific revenue opportunity, but it does not advance a pipeline stage on its own.
The living record of value created across the relationship, from the reason for purchase through First Value, Value Blocks, insights, and Alignment Meetings, including what has not worked.
AI's role in the operating system: helping the team execute the designed plays consistently, rather than serving as a content generator. AI can produce the output; humans own the outcome.
The observable evidence an opportunity must show to leave a pipeline stage. The stage reflects what you can prove, so an opportunity also moves back when the evidence behind its stage no longer holds.
The moment the customer starts using the solution on their own. It is the first step toward First Value, not the end of onboarding support.
The first moment the customer feels they have achieved something meaningful from their purchase, ideally within a few weeks of kickoff. It belongs to the customer, not to your implementation plan. For a first-term renewal, First Value is the evidence that moves it from Identify to Align.
The diagnostic layer behind Value Blocks: skill set, knowledge, cost (time, effort, money), competing demands, and the key contact's ability to drive change.
The kickoff questions that define success with the customer: what one thing must go right, how they define success, what your role is, what could put the effort at risk, and what would exceed their wildest dreams. The answers become the baseline for every Alignment Meeting.
The structure for writing an insight: a one-line gist, the background, the results and how they could be different, the action to take, and a closing reinforcement.
The renewal opportunity: it exists from day one, with a known close date at contract end and a value equal to the current ARR up for renewal. The lifecycle plays do most of the work that supports it, but it advances on the same evidence standard as any other opportunity.
Keeping the process moving after a meeting by doing what you committed to and confirming what the customer committed to. Distinct from follow-up, which only checks in.
The company's milestone that the solution is ready. The book separates it from First Value and encourages companies to define Go Live so it does not delay the customer's first win.
Expansion opportunities. They enter the pipeline at Identify once they are specific enough to manage, and each moves on its own evidence, so it can sit in a different stage than the renewal.
The two dimensions of First Value. Heart is the customer's feeling of accomplishment. Smart is the adoption logic underneath it that makes future use more likely.
The first pipeline stage (20%), answering "Is there a real revenue opportunity?" The renewal enters here at purchase, and expansion opportunities enter once they are specific enough to manage. A first-term renewal stays here until the customer reaches First Value, unless a documented exception sets a revised First Value date. Other opportunities advance when they are tied to a customer need or goal.
A consequential moment in the customer journey where the company has an opportunity to build or block loyalty, and where meaningful customer progression should be intentionally designed and observed. Many happen when you are not in the room, and recognizing them is your responsibility, not the customer's.
The third layer of the Post-Sale Operating System: the capabilities that make execution observable, trustworthy, repeatable, and scalable. That means data, health, capacity, technology and AI, cross-functional alignment, and management discipline. It is not a technology layer.
The fourth stage (90%), answering "Has the customer committed to moving forward?" The customer has given a verbal yes or its equivalent, with a credible path forward: timing, ownership, approvals, and next steps. Intent is not a signed contract.
A designed motion for a specific inflection point in the customer journey, with a trigger, a sequence of actions, supporting assets, an intended outcome, and a way to measure whether it worked. The book covers eight lifecycle plays, from Purchase & Welcome to Renew & Grow.
A barrier between your offering and the value the customer wants. Occasionally a deal breaker, but far more often a small annoyance that adds up over time.
Either a best practice someone on your team already uses, or a response you design to counter a specific loyalty blocker.
A ritual that makes the accumulation of customer wins visible inside the company, whether a literal jar, a win report, or a shared story, so retention and expansion are celebrated rather than invisible.
The long stretch between First Value and renewal, where most post-sale relationships lose momentum. It is navigated by three plays working together: Value Blocks, Sharing Insights, and Alignment Meetings.
A deliberate renewal-readiness moment around the midpoint of the contract to re-anchor value, surface risk and timing, and spot growth signals while there is still time to act.
The smallest meaningful win that proves progress against the customer's reason for buying. Not all the marbles; the first important marble.
The final stage (100%), answering "Did the revenue outcome actually close?" The commercial process is complete and the outcome is final, whether a full renewal, a reduced one, an expansion, or a loss. It is not the end of the relationship: the next cycle of goals and opportunities begins.
AI that recommends what to do about a signal: which play to run, which contact to reach, and what message fits the moment. The CSM still decides.
The six motions every onboarding moves through: Align, Configure, Connect, Verify, Transform, and First Use. The form varies by company; the logic does not.
The single, trusted customer record the whole operating system runs on, built by centralizing the data, democratizing access, and eliminating local copies.
A Post-Sale Operating System is the integrated management system a company uses to design customer progression, execute the work intended to support it, observe whether that progression occurred, and translate the evidence into decisions about customer health, capacity, retention, expansion, and revenue forecasting. In plain terms, it connects what the customer needs to accomplish, what the company does to help, what actually changes, and what that means for the revenue.
A Post-Sale Pipeline is the structured revenue process for managing existing-customer retention and growth opportunities from identification through customer commitment and Net Revenue Close. Revenue opportunities, not customers, move through five stages: Identify, Align, Advocate, Intent, and Net Revenue Close, and each advances only when observable evidence satisfies the exit criteria for the next stage.
Running the post-sale motion as one system across every team that touches the customer, instead of a collection of functions. Customers experience one journey, not your org chart, and every seam between teams either builds confidence or creates friction.
A health score built on evidence of customer progression as well as risk signals. It asks whether the customer is progressing toward the outcomes they bought for and is able to sustain them, rather than only whether they are at risk.
A separate kind of meeting for a relationship that has become unhealthy or where terms need to be redefined. Alignment keeps a healthy relationship moving; a reset is needed when it has already broken rhythm.
The unit that moves through the post-sale pipeline. Every customer creates at least one retention opportunity at purchase, and expansion opportunities are added when they are specific enough to manage, so one customer can have several opportunities in different stages at once.
Matching the level and type of engagement to what each customer actually needs, somewhere between high-touch for everyone and fully digital. AI and automation make it attainable at scale when they sit inside a coherent operating model.
The default forecast probabilities for each pipeline stage: Identify 20%, Align 40%, Advocate 60%, Intent 90%, Net Revenue Close 100%. They are standardized assumptions tied to increasing levels of commercial evidence, not measured close rates, and they apply the same way across segments. Opportunity value × stage probability = weighted forecast value.
Plays that protect the lifecycle when the relationship changes shape: Key Contact Change, when a champion or sponsor leaves, and Offboarding, when a customer decides to leave.
A small, purposeful step toward a larger customer objective, sized to be completed by the next Alignment Meeting. Originally called Goal Blocks.
The reusable collection of common Value Blocks, each tied to a customer need, with its resources and completion criteria.
The structure for the Key Contact Change meeting: start with the new contact's goals (You), then the shared work (We), and only then your company (Me).
Ask me directly, or tell me what happened when you tried it. The best questions get answered in the open, and results from the field shape the next edition.