New job: From CS to Growth and Scaling

Walter Zepeda

Hello!

Looking for some helo from anyone with some experience in growth and scaling.

I built a CS department which is now pretty self-running and I'm being tapped for a position where I can help grow and scale the entire company. I believe this will include Marketing, Sales and Customer Success. I have a few questions for anybody who might have some experience in this:

• What would be your first order of business?
• Has anyone worked with a structure with departments where you have leaders instead of traditional manager positions (in order to keep a flatter structure?
• What learnings can you bring from CS to implement in other departments?
• If I get a formal offer, what kind of initial plans would you recommend I present to the board (initial review of all processes, request for full control of everything from marketing down to cs, budget, etc)?
• Do you know of any good resources related to growth and scaling?

Sorry of the questions are a little over the place

David Jackson

Walter,

Grab that job!  It is what CS is really about - putting value to customers at the ore of the company: the red thread that defines what you market, what and how you sell and how you ensue the customer achieves their goals.

Your starting points:

1. Company-wide, use case based ICPs with an emphasis on the individuals in the customer you sell and serve.
2. A high-level customer lifecycle engagement blueprint written from the outside-in around which individual teams build their capabilities.
3. High-level KPIs that show performance across the lifecycle above departmental metrics.  CLTV:CAC ratio and NAR are my favourites.  

I have done this with my own SaaS company with great results and have coached a few others through it.  it works! But you have to forget some of the narrow ideas about CS.

Good luck

Dave J

Walter Zepeda

Hey @David Jackson, thanks a lot! I will definitely take your advice on those 3 points