Markus Rentsch’s Post

Growth at many SaaS companies is decelerating, even stagnating. Because they still don't understand growth. They still don’t get that ➡️ New customers are more reluctant to buy no matter your efforts ➡️ You can acquire a customer only once but growth them 5-10x their initial size ➡️ The best SaaS companies make 90% of customer revenue after the initial sale The most powerful growth engines available to SaaS companies are their Customer Success Managers. They are the driving force behind 🔥 long-term loyalty 🔥 expansions, up- and cross-sells 🔥 new acquisitions from referrals 🔥 winning repeat customers 🔥 successful price increases and yet they receive the least amount of education and training. While the role of a CSM is the most demanding one in the company because none else needs to have such a broad set of skills and knowledge. We are talking about ✅ Decoding Customer Value ✅ Operationalizing Customer Value ✅ Delivering Customer Value ✅ Measuring Customer Value ✅ Demonstrating Customer Value ✅ Monetizing Customer Value and complementary abilities like ✅ Identifying why customers really churn ✅ Reverse-engineering accurate ICPs ✅ Determining additional customer needs (roadmap) Customer Success is the only growth lever that pays compound interests. Start investing in the people that make it happen. PS: Here's how I can help --> https://lnkd.in/d3Mk-wt3 #saas #customersuccess #customervalueledgrowth

Net Revenue Retention at most SaaS companies is down and the reason is simple: You don’t deliver enough value. New customers buy based on the value they expect to receive from your product. Existing customers based on what they have received. No CFO is paying for product usage and convenience anymore. They are consolidating their company’s tech stack and scrapping everything that does not deliver a substantial ROI. That’s bad news for some vendors and a great opportunity for others. If you want to increase your NRR you need to double down on customer value. Here’s how: 1. Customer Discovery - identify customer goals, the problems they need to solve, and their level of skills and knowledge. 2. Success Planning - create a roadmap that outlines all the steps customers need to take to close the gap between their current performance and their goals. 3. Customer Enablement - build a training and education program that gives customers the skills and knowledge to solve their problems. 4. Tracking Success - measure customer results with the metrics they care about and follow up to ensure steady progress. 5. Demonstrating Value - highlight the benefits of working with you and your product to every stakeholder. 6. Monetizing Value - discovering growth opportunities for your customers and turning them into expansions, up-and cross-sells (plus asking for referrals) Accurate. Predictable. Repeatable. This is the CSM Operating System for Customer Value-Led Growth. PS: Join 7.3k+ CS professionals and sign up for my weekly newsletter to learn more --> https://lnkd.in/dtC7MEjP

SaaS CEOs, COOs, and CROs, you are leaving 80-95% of revenue on the table. 👎 short customer lifetime 👎 little to no expansion revenue 👎 zero new business from referrals 👎 low profitable “competitive prices” This is happening because you don’t invest in proper CSM training and education. Your CSMs don’t have the skills and tools to deliver, grow, and monetize customer value. They end up doing extended customer support and becoming the dumping ground for all kinds of tasks. The biggest waste of opportunities of all time. If you want to unlock your full revenue potential your CSMs need to master 6 core disciplines. 1. Customer Discovery: Understand what value means to customers, how they measure it, and what keeps them from accomplishing their goals. 2. Success Planning: Translating the insights of the discovery into a dedicated roadmap that outlines all the steps customers need to take. 3. Program Design: A tailored mix of content and services built to educate and train customers to solve their problems. 4. Tracking Results: Measuring customer progress with the metrics they care about and detecting deviations from the success path in real time. 5. Demonstrating Value: Benchmarking your customers' performance with the one they had in the beginning at every opportunity. 6. Monetizing Value: Identifying opportunities to further grow your customers' value and translating them into expansions, up- and cross-sells (plus asking for referrals) Customer Success Management is the most powerful growth engine in SaaS. If you keep asking what's the ROI, you are doing it wrong. PS: Learn more → https://lnkd.in/d5tSzwJP

The biggest opportunity costs in SaaS come from a CSM team stuck in reactive work. Here’s why: Growth- and revenue leaders are moving heaven and earth to increase new customer acquisition. At the same time, there’s 10x as much revenue sitting within their existing customer base. That never gets unlocked because the CSM team lacks proper training and education. Successful expansion and up-selling have nothing to do with sales skills. New customers buy based on expected value, and existing ones are based on realized value.   With a reactive CSM team, you don’t create enough value to drive additional demand from the customer side. Not even enough to achieve/maintain an acceptable retention rate. CSMs need an operating system to create customer value accurately and repeatedly. This is the one I’m using: 1. Customer Discovery: Understand your customers' goals and success metrics, problems and root causes, and your customers’ skills & knowledge to determine their needs. 2. Success Planning: Translate the insights of the customer discovery into a dedicated roadmap that outlines the steps they need to take to accomplish their goals. 3. Customer Enablement: Create the content and services that give customers the education and training they need to solve their problems. 4. Tracking Results: Measuring customer progress with the metrics they care about and intervene in (almost) real-time when customers have fallen behind. 5. Demonstrating Value: Benchmarking your customers' actual- with their previous performance and highlighting the benefits for every stakeholder. 6. Monetizing Value: Identifying growth opportunities for your customers and translating them into business cases for expansions and upsells (plus asking for referrals). This is how CSM is meant to be. Proactive. Strategic. Creating results. PS: Join 6.7k+ CS professionals and sign up for my weekly newsletter if you like this post → https://lnkd.in/dtC7MEjP

Absolutely spot on! CSMs are often underutilized, but they have the potential to be the biggest revenue drivers. Proper training and a clear focus on delivering and monetizing value are key to unlocking growth opportunities 📈 #Customersuccess #growthpotential #Saas

The value of CSM is criminally underrated in most SaaS companies. There are only 2 things you can do about it: ⛔️ Keep complaining and hoping for a miracle ✅ Take up the fight and deliver irrefutable proof of value If you are in favor of the latter, here’s what you need to do: 1. Deliver substantial value for your customers ➡️ identify customer problems and resulting needs ➡️ provide outcome-focused training and education content and services ➡️ make sure your customers understand what they get 2. Turn that value into revenue ➡️ stop believing the BS about commercial responsibility ➡️ your customer relationships are built on the exchange of value ➡️ identify growth opportunities for your customers and create additional demand 3. Create a monthly report that contains: ➡️ Revenue at risk saved and recovered --> cherry on the cake if you can present a customer case that was e.g. oversold but you saved them anyways ➡️ Customer portfolio growth through expansions and upsells --> it does not matter whether you closed them, they are only happening because you created the demand for ➡️ Revenue from new acquisitions through referrals --> Ask marketing for the data about revenue per channel ➡️ Revenue from customers for life --> former customers who brought your product to their new employer because of you Remember: Your leadership cares about revenue. If you keep showing them product usage and customer health figures you will remain being perceived as glorified support. PS: Here's how I can help --> https://lnkd.in/dN2DUtDh

Even the most value-packed product can lose customers if the user interface is clunky or the onboarding process is cumbersome. In addition to focusing on customer value and ROI, investing in user-centric design and streamlined workflows can significantly reduce churn. Regularly gathering and acting on user feedback can help SaaS companies stay ahead of the curve and continuously improve their offerings. Adaptability and a commitment to evolving alongside customer needs are key to thriving in this competitive landscape. Until next time, share what you are doing. What's working for you and what's not working? ……………………………………. PS: Wanna become better at customer success - retain, grow and help your customer, visit --> https://successguardian.in #saas #cco #customersuccess

3 steps to identify your SaaS customer's problem worth focusing on. (And 9x the contract value of your customers.) STEP 1: List all the problems. Ask one of these questions and LISTEN: - What do you believe is your problem?  - Tell me about your biggest challenges when it comes to [desired outcome]. - What challenges are you facing that you'd regret not solving six months from now? STEP 2: Bring the list to its essence. Ask one of these questions and LISTEN: - What's going on in your business that makes [what they shared] a priority? - What metric is suffering most as a result of that? - Why now? Why not wait a year or two? STEP 3: Value rank the list. For each problem your prospect mentioned, answer this: - On a scale of 1-10: How valuable is this problem to solve? - On a scale of 1-10: How critical is this problem to solve? - On a scale of 1-10: What's your ability to exceed expectations by solving it? It gives you a formula: (1 x 2 x 3) = a number between 0-1000. Still with me? Because the next part is important. Focus on the problems on the list above 500; These are mission-critical for your prospect, AND give you a competitive edge. If it's below 500, forget it. How do I know? Following this formula helped one of my clients turn a customer with €10K ACV into one with a €90K ACV (Annual Contract Value).

Growth at many SaaS companies is decelerating, even stagnating. Because they still don't understand growth. They still don’t get that ➡️ New customers are more reluctant to buy no matter your efforts ➡️ You can acquire a customer only once but grow them 5-10x their initial size ➡️ The best SaaS companies make 90% of customer revenue after the initial sale The most powerful growth engines available to SaaS companies are their Customer Success Managers. They are the driving force behind 🔥 long-term loyalty 🔥 expansions, up- and cross-sells 🔥 new acquisitions from referrals 🔥 winning repeat customers 🔥 successful price increases and yet they receive the least amount of education and training. While the role of a CSM is the most demanding one in the company because none else needs to have such a broad set of skills and knowledge. We are talking about ✅ Decoding Customer Value ✅ Operationalizing Customer Value ✅ Delivering Customer Value ✅ Measuring Customer Value ✅ Demonstrating Customer Value ✅ Monetizing Customer Value and complementary abilities like ✅ Identifying why customers really churn ✅ Reverse-engineering accurate ICPs ✅ Determining additional customer needs (roadmap) Customer Success is the only growth lever that pays compound interest. Start investing in the people that make it happen. PS: Become 1% better at delivering, growing, and monetizing Customer Value a day in less than 5 minutes --> https://lnkd.in/dZ2yRHNR

This week, I saw a problem that keeps coming up for a lot of companies: not setting the right expectations with the customer from the start. Let’s say you’re a SaaS company, and during the sales process, you tell your client they’ll be fully using your software in one month because you want to close the deal. But deep down, you know it takes at least three months for them to get the hang of it. That’s a recipe for disappointment. When marketing and sales overpromise, and then the delivery falls short, the client is left feeling frustrated and misled. The relationship starts off shaky, and it can quickly lead to churn. The Fix? Make sure your sales and marketing teams are giving realistic timelines and being clear about what to expect. When you set the right expectations from the beginning, you build trust, and that’s what creates happy, long-term customers. It’s always better to underpromise and overdeliver. Not only do you surprise your customers in a good way, but you also set a strong foundation for a lasting partnership. Has this ever happened to you? I’d love to hear your thoughts or experiences in the comments! #CustomerSuccess #ExpectationManagement #SaaS #CustomerExperience #SalesAlignment