The term "closing a sale" is unfortunate. It reflects marketers' thinking that with the acquisition of a sale they can move on to something else.
Instead, the sale should be viewed as a unique opportunity to begin to engage the customer across what will hopefully be a multiyear customer life cycle.
According to a Forrester report on the customer life cycle, CMOs need to take specific life-cycle actions to win, serve, and retain customers:
CMOs must match specific....