Since the dawn of Customer Success, we’ve been saying it’s an organization-wide responsibility.  But no one has ever described what that means.  Until now.

I call it the 5 Year Customer model.

I’ve talked to hundreds of founders, CEOs and CS leaders.

This is what I hear…
→ New customers are increasingly hard to find.
→ Sales cycles are getting longer, and our Customer Acquisition Costs are rising.
→ We need to generate more revenue from existing customers to hit our targets.
→ Churn is rising and customers that do renew, renew for less.
→ Upsell happens, but only for a small percentage of customers.

Leaders and teams are burning out, and running out of answers.

So I set out to work with leaders to dig into the underlying causes of this all-too-common situation.

What I found may surprise you.

Most organizations are simply not built to keep customers for the long-term.

That’s right.

–> They say they’re all about delivering long-term value.
–> They say they put customers at the center of everything they do.
–> They say Customer Success is everyone’s job.

It’s all BS.

Most companies are designed, top to bottom, to attract and sign customers ONCE.

And they leave retention and upsell to CS.

So we asked ourselves…

What if we could get rid of all the outdated legacy thinking and systems that got us into this situation?

What if we could start over with a new flavor of SaaS company?

One in which every function was truly aligned around a single, common goal…

ATTRACT, ACQUIRE AND RETAIN CUSTOMERS FOR 5 YEARS.

How different would it look from our organizations today?

→ What core FUNCTIONS would we need?
→ What would the singular PURPOSE of those functions be?
→ What BEHAVIORS would we need to see?
→ What MEASURES would we put in place to motivate these behaviors, and hold everyone accountable?

The names of the functions sound familiar.

But their purpose, behaviors and key measures are NEW.

So far, I’ve talked to a handful of founders and CEOs about this.

I’m encouraged by the lively conversations and fresh perspective it’s bringing to the problem.

It’s a new lens through which to view your organization.

To see problems and solutions in a new way.

And if nothing else, it’s changing the conversation.

Because I can’t handle the old ones anymore.