# of Post-Sales Employees at $5M in Revenue

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Chaun
Chaun Member Posts: 4 Newcomer
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in Industry Insights
I’m leading a one person post-sales team :) and I’m doing some headcount planning. I’d like to know how many post-sales employees your company had when it had about $5M in recurring revenue. Thank you! 

# of Post-Sales Employees at $5M in Revenue

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  • Doug Havlik
    Doug Havlik Member, CS Leader Posts: 21 Thought Leader
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    5-8
    We had 5 (CSMs, onboarding PMs, and a support specialist). 
  • ZayHanlonCX
    ZayHanlonCX Member Posts: 3 Navigator
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    5-8
    @Chaun
    Some of your planning could be dependent on the ARR for each customer. You may have a segment of "enterprise" accounts where you have 1 CSM with a $2M book of business that has 10 customers, and 2 CSM's with 50-60 customers each working a 1:many model at $1.5M bob each. Have you segmented out the customer base? If they're all non-enterprise sized, then I'd think about level of engagement, roles/responsibilities (do they own renewals and expansions? do they do their own onboarding and deployments?), before determining the number of people needed.
  • ashley_martin
    ashley_martin Member Posts: 30 Navigator
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    I agree with @ZayHanlonCX - I think it really depends on your customer journey mapping.  If your implementation is simple and can be done through videos, FAQs, etc then you might not need as many head count.  If you have a complicated implementation it might require more resources.
  • Bodin Pollard
    Bodin Pollard Member Posts: 7 Navigator
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    $1M per CS person on average has been reasonably reliable for me over the years, in both Enterprise and SMB companies. As others have said above, though, it depends on a few factors - one of which is your company's current margin. If your customer revenue (your $5M) is 100% of your company's income, then this has to pay for everything, not just CS, so you need sound reasoning for why you believe CS should take a bigger chunk of it.

    You'll need a very clear ROI-based argument about WHY an increased investment in CS will benefit your company. In the short term, it's likely to take money from other things, so have a good plan for how you'll educate your Execs on the medium- to long-term benefits. They'll want to know how the initial cost of those extra people will be repaid and how long it will take before margins start to improve (3/6/12 months?). This allows them to plan budgets and predict future funding/investment needs, etc. If you can't help them do this, they won't invest.

    Going through the process of figuring out how to get Exec buy-in (don't be afraid to ask them to help!) will help you arrive at the right $/CSM ratio for your business at its current stage.

    You may already have a really good grip on your company's overall costs and financial strategy, so forgive me if I'm preaching to the converted. Either way, good luck with your expansion plan!

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