The Rebirth of Software as a Service

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David Ellin
David Ellin Member Posts: 170 Expert
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in Industry Insights

As many of you know, there's a huge trend to cut CS and transfer renewal and expansion tasks to Sales. This is a very shortsighted way of thinking for senior leadership because they're cutting the liaison to the customer - the person who knows what the customer needs, and how to provide it to drive impact, retention, and expansion.

Check out the new article in Harvard Business Review that addresses this and send the article to leaders who can benefit from its perspective.

https://hbr.org/2023/04/the-rebirth-of-software-as-a-service?utm_campaign=hbr&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter

I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts on this.

David

Comments

  • Michelle Wideman
    Michelle Wideman Member Posts: 54 Navigator
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    @David Ellin, definitely an interesting topic. I think it's more critical than ever to be able to clearly articulate value, the value Success provides, but also the value customers are receiving for anytime you can't communicate this your job or your product/service is at risk of not being renewed. Alignment at the executive level around ARR, NRR, churn and margins and understanding your cost to acquire and cost to support a customer is huge and ties back to the value of the roles. In my experience, strategic/global account executives are expensive. If you need them focused on landing new logos, it makes far more sense to have a less expensive renewals resource hounding procurement on a renewal for my experience has shown that it's more following up on a company's process than it is the need for highly paid negotiation skills. So you can outline how much time a renewals rep is saving an AE and the revenue impact. The same is true for Success, I spent the bulk of my career in sales and often times felt more like a support account manager, than a sales account manager. Other tips would be to track success qualified leads(incrementals, but also net new-are we leveraging our existing happy customer base to refer new customers=lower cost of sale). Other tips would be enhancement requests that are being submitted by the Success team, if you are adding and productizing new features, how much revenue is this driving. Overall by aligning on a company's goals and showcasing how these roles are impacting these goals it helps empower the executive team to make data driven decisions.

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