The Frameworks

VITAL & GROW.
The post-sales motion.

MEDDPICC gave sales a language and a repeatable motion. Post-sales has been winging it ever since. VITAL and GROW change that — two complementary frameworks that govern every account from onboarding to expansion.

"You can't expand what isn't stable. You can't stabilize what you don't understand."
How It Works

Two frameworks. One motion. Three layers.

The maturity model governs when you use each framework. VITAL stabilizes. GROW expands. The maturity model tells you which one to use — and when to switch.

Step 1
VITAL

Diagnose. Stabilize. Prove value. Build the foundation before anyone touches growth.

→
Step 2
GROW

Expand. Multi-thread. Build alongside their business ambition. Only once VITAL is complete.

Both frameworks are governed by the Maturity Model — the operating layer that tells you exactly where every account stands and what it needs to move forward.

Framework One

VITAL — The CSM Framework

The diagnostic framework for account health. Before any conversation about growth, every letter of VITAL must be assessed. This is the foundation that everything else is built on.

V

Value Perception

Do they feel value in their language — not yours? The most dangerous gap in post-sales is the difference between the value you believe you're delivering and the value the customer actually perceives. If you can't articulate their ROI in the language they use internally, the value doesn't exist for them.

Diagnostic question: "Can your champion explain the business impact of your product to their CFO in one sentence — without your help?"

I

Investment

Are the right humans committed and engaged? Investment is not measured in logins or attendance on calls. It's measured in whether the people who matter are actively putting skin in the game — time, internal advocacy, resource allocation. Low investment is one of the earliest and most overlooked churn signals.

Diagnostic question: "Who inside the account is championing this internally when you're not in the room?"

T

Triggers

Early warning signals — human, org and competitive. Risk is psychological before it's measurable. By the time a health score turns red, the trust is already gone. The triggers that matter most are human: a champion going quiet, a leadership change, a budget cycle shift, a competitor gaining internal attention. These are the signals most teams miss entirely.

Diagnostic question: "What has changed inside this company in the last 90 days that we haven't formally acknowledged?"

A

Adoption

Real workflow embedding — not just logins. Login frequency is a vanity metric. True adoption is when the product is embedded in the workflows the business runs on. When removing the tool would create genuine disruption. That's the difference between a vendor and a dependency — and dependency is what protects you at renewal.

Diagnostic question: "If we turned off access tomorrow, which of their business processes would break — and who would notice first?"

L

Landscape

Champion stability, leadership health, org priority shifts. Accounts don't churn dramatically — they drift. They drift when a champion leaves, when a new leader comes in with different priorities, when the company pivots direction and your tool doesn't follow. Landscape monitoring is the ongoing practice of knowing what's shifting before it shows in your data.

Diagnostic question: "What are this company's top three priorities this year — outside of anything related to your product?"

VITAL

When all five dimensions are healthy, the foundation is set. Only then does the account move from the VITAL framework into GROW. Moving too early is one of the most common — and expensive — mistakes in post-sales.

Framework Two

GROW — The AM Framework

The expansion framework. Once the foundation is set, GROW governs how the account scales — from single use case to multi-threaded strategic partner. The AM is the CEO of this motion.

G

Goals

What is this business actually chasing this year — outside of anything related to your product? This is the most important question in account management and the one most AMs cannot answer. If you don't know what drives the business, your tool cannot move the larger needle. The best AMs know their accounts' board priorities as well as their own quota.

Diagnostic question: "What would make this company's leadership team consider this year a success — and how does our product connect to that?"

R

Relationships

Multi-threading depth, champion ambition and mobility. A strong relationship with one person is a single point of failure. GROW demands multi-threading — multiple champions, multiple departments, multiple use cases. And it demands understanding each champion's career ambitions, because champions who feel successful inside your account carry that story to their next company.

Diagnostic question: "If our primary champion left tomorrow, who would advocate for us — and how quickly could we get a new champion up to speed?"

O

Opportunities

Expansion signals by use case, department and org structure. Each new use case is treated as its own account — with its own risk profile, its own champion, its own ROI story. Parent and subsidiary relationships are mapped. Acquisition activity is monitored. Every new signal of business growth is a potential expansion opportunity if you're paying attention to the right things.

Diagnostic question: "Which departments inside this company have the same problem our current champion had before we solved it for them?"

W

Wins

ROI evidence that funds the growth story. Revenue is a lagging indicator. The wins that fuel expansion are the internal victories your champion experiences — the metric that moved, the process that improved, the executive that noticed. Cataloguing, quantifying and retelling these wins in the customer's language is the engine of every successful expansion conversation.

Diagnostic question: "What has your champion been able to claim credit for internally because of what we've built together?"

GROW

GROW is not a one-time motion. Every new use case, department or subsidiary resets the cycle. Each expansion opportunity runs its own VITAL check before GROW begins. The best AMs are running both frameworks simultaneously across different parts of the same account.

The Governing Layer

The Maturity Model

The maturity model sits above both frameworks. It tells you which framework to use, when to advance, when to pause and when to rebuild. Maturity is measured in depth — not time.

Stage 01
Fragile

Single champion. Single use case. Value is unproven. The account is at risk even if nobody is escalating. Most accounts enter here and too many stay here indefinitely because the team confuses quiet with healthy.

Active Framework
VITAL — full diagnostic mode
Stage 02
Stable

Value proven and articulated. Adoption is real. Champion is healthy. The account is safe — but stability is not growth. This is the handoff moment: VITAL is complete, GROW begins with the first expansion conversation.

Active Framework
VITAL complete → GROW begins
Stage 03
Embedded

Multi-threaded. Multiple use cases live. Strategic conversations are happening at a level beyond the day-to-day user. The AM is in GROW motion across multiple dimensions simultaneously, running VITAL checks on each new use case as it begins.

Active Framework
GROW — full expansion mode
Stage 04
Partner

In their roadmap. Known at the executive level. Champions carry the value story to new organizations. Parent/child and acquisition relationships are mapped and actioned. NRR is compounding. This is the account every post-sales team is building toward.

Active Framework
GROW — protecting & compounding

Important: Accounts can move backwards. A Stage 3 account can fall to Stage 1 overnight when a champion leaves or a merger happens. The maturity model gives you the language to say "we need to pause expansion and go back to VITAL" — and that's not failure. That's sophistication.

Go Deeper

Ready to implement the frameworks?

Templates, workbooks and playbooks that turn VITAL and GROW into working tools for your team. Or work with James directly.

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