02-01 | Reimagining the STARS: The Lifecycle of B2B Relationships
Series: Rising Through the STARS
The Preview Installment, published on the 3rd, offers an overview of what I aim to cover in this series. We will concentrate on how the STARS model, originally used to describe stages of a business’s evolution, can improve our effectiveness at the individual account or portfolio management level. By identifying relationship phases, sales professionals can bring strategic and tailored intention to their engagement, cultivate trust, and align internal teams. The series seeks to deepen understanding, establish a shared language, and enhance strategic thinking for long-term customer success.
Let’s make lemonade.
In this installment, I going to cover the Model, adapt it to the context that will provide us value, and then cover the dynamic movement between stages. In future installments, we will focus on each area in order to hopefully create helpful perspective.
Remember, at the end of the day. This series is about sharing the mental model I use to quickly diagnose how to most effectively engage with a customer. We often hear the phrase: Be a chameleon. But outside of intuition, is there something that can be offered that may systematically help identify what types of behavior or patterns of behavior may be best received by an account? I suppose that’s the question I am hoping to help answer here because I believe the answer is yes. This is the mental model that has helped me do that.
Everything here complements how our organizations interpret the lifecycle of customer engagement.
Let’s Start with the STARS Model
STARS is an acronym that captures five of stages of organizational development that business leaders commonly encounter:
Start-up
Turnaround
Accelerated Growth
Realignment and
Sustaining Success
In this article in the Harvard Business Review, Watkins suggests, “By using STARS to assess the situation you’re moving into, you can better understand the organizational changes needed and, correspondingly, the personal adaptation that will be required.”
Watkins continues, “Executives in transition must gain a deep understanding of the situation at hand and adapt to that reality…This is why I developed the STARS model—a framework for assessing business situations and helping new leaders figure out how to tailor their strategies (and themselves) accordingly.”
This is the key differentiating factor of the STARS model, which is absent in monetization frameworks like LAER or sales qualification frameworks like MEDDPICC. The STARS model's thesis is: What does the situational understanding tell me about how I need to show up to maximize my impact for both companies?
However, understanding a customer relationship's current stage serves us only to the degree that we can intentionally let it shape our approach to the relationship based on that information. In other words, labels don't matter. However, the meaning behind the label is very important.
That is what the lens of STARS offers us that existing frameworks and customer success perspectives struggle to capture.
Developing a Shared Language: Reimagining the STARS
First, let’s examine the stages as they apply to our relationship management context before I discuss the interplay and dynamics of how account relationships move from stage to stage or evolve.
Let’s say we have the following discrete stages:
Prospect
Start-up translates to Starting Early Engagement and Development (SEED)
Sustaining Success translates to Accelerating Success for Customer Expansion and New Demand (ASCEND)
Realignment translates to Realigning Engagement Strategy and Execution before Turnaround (RESET)
Turnaround translates to Taking Action to Correct Trajectory (TACT)
Churn
So far, absolutely no deviation from the STARS model other than
I suggested an acronym to contextualize each stage’s relevance in the B2B relationship management context
For completeness, I include labels for the failed outcome of a successful turnaround (Churn) and include “prospect” to acknowledge where an account is before any engagement
Let’s visualize them on paper just as Watkins does.
The Individual Stages themselves
By mapping your accounts to the STARS model, you create a structured, dynamic strategy that evolves with each customer's journey. This ensures you’re always focused on the right priorities to maximize value for both the customer and your organization.
Below is a breakdown of how you can leverage each stage of the STARS model to influence how you adapt your approach to account management in each situation:
Startup Stage: Onboarding New Accounts
Characteristics: A new customer relationship with limited history, undefined processes, and high potential.
Our Role: Act as a builder and consultant.
Key Actions:
Understand their needs: Conduct in-depth discovery to identify pain points and goals.
Define success metrics: Collaborate to establish clear KPIs and mutual expectations.
Customize solutions: Tailor your offerings to fit their immediate and long-term needs.
Build rapport: Foster trust through transparency and responsiveness.
Turnaround Stage: Recovering or At-Risk Accounts
Characteristics: Accounts facing dissatisfaction, reduced engagement, or risk of churn.
Our Role: Act as a problem-solver and restorer of trust.
Key Actions:
Diagnose the issue: Analyze data and solicit feedback to uncover root causes of dissatisfaction.
Quick wins: Implement immediate fixes to address critical concerns.
Rebuild trust: Communicate openly about solutions, timelines, and follow-up steps.
Reevaluate goals: Align with the customer on a refreshed strategy to regain value.
Accelerated Growth Stage: Expanding High-Potential Accounts
Characteristics: Accounts with increasing engagement, high satisfaction, and growth opportunities.
Our Role: Act as an innovator and enabler.
Key Actions:
Upsell and cross-sell: Introduce complementary products/services that align with their goals.
Deepen collaboration: Expand your relationship by engaging multiple stakeholders.
Proactively propose innovations: Share insights and solutions that drive greater value.
Track and celebrate wins: Demonstrate measurable ROI to reinforce their decision to expand with you.
Realignment Stage: Addressing Stagnated Accounts
Characteristics: Accounts that are stable but show signs of stagnation or decreased engagement.
Our Role: Act as a strategist and revitalizer.
Key Actions:
Reassess priorities: Revisit their business goals and explore new challenges or opportunities.
Reinvigorate interest: Introduce new features, services, or strategies to reignite enthusiasm.
Leverage case studies: Share success stories or benchmarks to inspire renewed focus.
Rebuild connections: Engage new or previously inactive stakeholders to uncover fresh perspectives.
Sustaining Success Stage: Nurturing Mature Accounts
Characteristics: Long-term, stable accounts with consistent engagement and a high level of trust.
Our Role: Act as a trusted advisor and partner.
Key Actions:
Monitor and adapt: Stay attuned to changes in their industry or goals to maintain relevance.
Create value beyond expectations: Deliver insights and thought leadership that keep you ahead of competitors.
Strengthen loyalty: Showcase appreciation through exclusive benefits, personalized service, or events.
Advocate for advocacy: Encourage them to become brand ambassadors through testimonials or referrals.
A brief point about sales qualification methodologies because I raised in the Series Preview. Here is a simple contrast table between STARS and MEDDPICC.
| Aspect | STARS Model | MEDDPICC |
|---|---|---|
| Focus Area | Customer lifecycle and relationship management | Deal qualification and sales execution |
| Timescale | Long-term, evolving across the account lifecycle | Short-term, focused on closing deals |
| Purpose | Manage accounts to maximize lifetime value | Ensure high-quality, winnable deals |
| Primary Framework Goal | Adapt account strategies based on their lifecycle stage | Validate and qualify opportunities in the sales pipeline |
| Relationship Level | Strategic partnership and retention | Transactional focus on closing |
As I emphasized in the Preview, these models are complementary rather than conflicting.
Deals can emerge from any of the STARS model's stages, and MEDDPICC will help us qualify prospective deals and navigate customers' buying processes, ensuring mutual alignment through the close process.
Once the deal is closed, STARS guides how to nurture and grow the account over time, tailoring our management strategy as the relationship matures.
By integrating MEDDPICC for sales with STARS for account management, you can effortlessly transition from closing deals to achieving ongoing customer success, ensuring both short-term victories and long-term growth.
Similar sentiment as it relates to LAER and other monetization models. These models are useful but the aspect they lack is an appreciation for the situation and circumstance the customer relationship is currently and the implication for how to adapt our own style to maximize our effectiveness in that circumstance.
Deepening Our Understanding: The Dynamics
First, let’s define what I mean by Dynamics.
Dynamics refer to the forces, processes, or patterns that drive change, movement, or interaction within a system. It is often used to describe how elements within a system influence each other over time.
Our purpose here is about “patterns that drive change, movement, or interaction within a system”.
So let’s look at the Pattern of Movement a Particular account relationship can follow…
Each particular stage of relationship evolution, similar to business evolution as Watkin describes, is subject to success or failure, ultimately dictating our direction.
Summary
In the B2B tech realm, it is very common for sales and operations leaders to change account ownership, often as frequently as annually. Therefore, being sensitive to where a customer has been and is currently when taking ownership of them allows us to approach them with a style that is more likely to be well received.
This article's purpose was to provide an orientation to the STARS model and outline how I see its application to individual customer relationship management.
Each installment in the rest of the series will focus specifically on the Cycles I have outlined: Growth, Recovery, and Crisis Cycles. I will explore the key dynamics that drive these cycles, including the forces that accelerate, sustain, or disrupt them.
The next 3 installments, in order of focus will be:
Growth Cycles: The conditions that enable expansion, innovation, and momentum, as well as the challenges of sustaining upward trajectories.
Recovery Cycles: The mechanisms of resilience, adaptation, and renewal following downturns or disruptions.
Crisis Cycles: The triggers, responses, and long-term effects of instability, along with strategies for navigating uncertainty.
This series will provide insights into how systems evolve and how individuals and organizations can effectively manage change by analyzing the underlying organizational, economic, and social dynamics that shape these cycles.
Disclosures:
This content is intended in the spirit of experiential knowledge sharing. I do my best to accurately describe strategies and techniques I use in the field for creating great customer interactions but I am not responsible for their use or misuse nor the outcomes that result from either.
I use GrammerlyAI to: 1) proofread for spelling & correctness 2) make changes/updates to grammar, sentence structure, etc. to improve clarity and readability and 3) ensure my writing is absent of any plagiarism
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