[mswen]

You are correct that this is very difficult to untangle. But remember features that initially excite and please customers because they were new and provided even unexpected benefits, soon migrate into "more is better" kinds of features and then over time every competitor is offering the same feature and it is "table stakes." You really only expect sales upticks for features relatively early in that lifecycle. The rest just contribute to customer retention.

You should assume that most businesses already have some kind of solution in place, either from a competitor or an internally developed a set of processes and supporting software. When you look for sales bumps you need to consider the length of the sales cycle - you might not see any switching for 2 or 3 quarters after it becomes generally known that the feature is available.

I think your surest sign is in customer retention statistics. If normally you experience 10% non-renewals of license every quarter. I would look in the quarters right after it is introduced to see whether renewal rates improve.

And, still your critics might say well it wasn't the new feature that your department created and introduced, it was the new marketing campaign and we revamped our process for renewing customers. And, you know they might be right. Or, the improvement is a subtle combination of all those factors. Unlike science, businesses, particularly B2B, rarely do controlled experiments.

You can track inputs and outcomes over time and point to correlations but that is about the best you can do.

[bonfire]

Thanks! I was thinking perhaps surveying customers after purchase/renewal to tick multiple selection boxes and say which features they liked which contributed to their decision. Still it can be a combination with the new marketing campaign but at least I will know that feature X is one of the reasons they decided for the product.