Accidents Happen at Intersections...

...and 100% of the accidents that cause customer and revenue churn in your B2B SaaS business happen at intersections that exist in your customer journey.

There is one particular intersection that, if allowed to exist, is the most dangerous and will cause the most churn in your B2B SaaS business.

That’s an intersection separating your Sales team and your Customer Success team at the point of customer acquisition.

Why is an intersection between Sales and Customer Success so dangerous for a B2B SaaS company?

Because it introduces risk into what is the most critical phase of the customer journey...the first 30-90 days post sale.

What happens or, as importantly, doesn’t happen in the first 90 days of the customer’s lifetime has a profound impact on the likelihood of:

• The customer churning or reducing their subscription/consumption

• The customer progressing to be a successful customer that is likely to expand their investment in your solution.

We need to ensure your customer realizes as much measurable value as possible during this 90 day period. We need to achieve at least one pre-agreed and measurable Value-based Outcome in that 90 day period.

How do we make an intersection separating Sales and Customer Success safer?

To ensure safe passage of new customers into your Customer Success team and towards that first Value-based Outcome, Sales must provide Customer Success with clear and immediate access to complete data about the new customer as well as key customer relationships.

Having walls across the intersection blocking access to this data and these relationships OR gaping holes into which the data and the relationships can fall into, creates huge risk to the objective of retaining and expanding that customer across their lifetime.

Make sure all data required by Customer Success to ensure a successful first 90 days is:

1. Fully documented by your Sales team

2. Is available in a system or format that Customer Success can access and utilize

3. Drives a seamless extension of customer relationships from Sales to Customer Success

This will make the intersection a lot safer…

...but why not go one step further?

Remove the intersection entirely. Bring your Customer Success team into the sales process.

Empower Customer Success to partner with your Sales team and your prospect to ensure that all the data and relationships needed to execute the seamless transition of prospect to successful customer are in place BEFORE the clock starts ticking.

By doing this, great momentum can be created in the later stages of your sales process to not only achieve and accelerate a Win but also to ensure and accelerate the achievement of the first critical milestone in the customer’s journey...their first Value-based Outcome.

Video Summary

About the Author

Ross G. D. Fulton is the Founder of Valuize Consulting. Through 16+ years in software go-to-market strategy, sales engineering and customer success leadership roles, Ross has led on both sides and astride the wall that separates Sales and Customer Success in many software companies. Valuize Consulting helps B2B SaaS companies to acquire, retain and expand more revenue and customers by integrating and aligning Sales and Customer Success strategies.

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