It’s a common question without a definitive answer. However, as with a number of other factors that come with setting up a customer success function in a B2B SaaS company, the frequent response is “it depends.”
As a SaaS founder or leader, you already know that hiring the right people is crucial to success — especially when you’re looking to scale up to the next stage of growth. It’s important when hiring leaders of existing functions within the business, but it’s even more critical when launching a new one. Hiring a leader for a new or growing customer success function, in particular, requires an extremely thoughtful approach. A VP hire at a SaaS company is even more complex (and often unsuccessful) – according to research, 75% of initial VP hires fail in the first 19 months.
The first year is crucial in every SaaS customer journey — not only for customers themselves but also for your customer success team. This is because it has many points of friction (and thus failure), any of which has the potential to dampen value, discourage the achievement of outcomes, and, ultimately, lead to churn. Customer success teams looking to dependably deliver on customer outcomes, increase renewal success rates, and grow revenue from existing relationships must identify and tackle these points of friction in year one with greater sophistication.
As your business grows and changes, so too must customer success. Even during the current economic uncertainties, SaaS companies in multiple markets are experiencing significant growth, and the competition for opportunities continues to increase. While customer acquisition efforts should always be a mainstay in growth strategy, preserving the revenue your business worked hard to win is more essential than ever.
As a SaaS leader, you already understand that building a customer success organization is critical to the success of your business. But that’s never been more true than today. All too often, sales teams and leaders are hungering for that next opportunity. New customer acquisition is important for growth, but customer retention and expansion are the foundation for realizing both company value and financial resilience. Today’s economic challenges underscore the need for SaaS leaders to place some focus on building a customer [...]
With a potential recession looming, both early and growth stage companies must be fiscally prudent, including taking into consideration headcount freezes. A hiring freeze doesn’t mean a Customer Success team is stuck at its current capacity. Here, we share three battle-tested ways to increase Customer Success capacity - and improve CS performance - without adding headcount. Revise your CSM variable compensation plans A CSM focused on achieving the right outputs will naturally increase productivity and performance. Confirm each CSM’s variable compensation goal is [...]
Considering belt tightening on your company’s budget? Probably a good idea given that, according to The Conference Board, 60% of surveyed CEOs foresee a recession by the end of 2023 and 55% expect inflation to extend into 2023. Are your investors increasingly looking for their portfolio companies to spend more wisely in the interest of preserving financial runway? Here are three ways to enhance your Customer Success IQ in the face of economic uncertainty Develop a consistent, repeatable plan for addressing customers that [...]
Is your start-up ready to make its second Customer Success Manager hire? If so, follow this approach: Make the second CSM hire the right hire by first stepping back and determining the type of Customer Success organization needed to reliably deliver on your customers’ business outcomes. Avoid hiring another CSM just like your first CSM When picking its first CSM, a start-up typically selects an individual best described as a jack of all trades. That’s because a jack of all trades is [...]
A start-up SaaS company continues to evolve over time as it grows. As such, it’s important to recognize the stage of maturation that your company is in and, based on that, know what’s needed from Customer Success in each stage of your company’s evolution. Know these Customer Success focus areas so that you’re ready to fuel your company’s continued growth by transitioning and scaling the Customer Success team to best support the next stage of evolution at the right time. Stage 1 - [...]
With the planning process concluded, it’ll be time to maintain cross-functional communication to keep teams aligned.
