Why a single owner of sales and customer success improves customer fit, accountability, and installed-base forecasting
Vikas Bhambri · GTMfund
Published September 6, 2024Explore the lesson. Sign in to access the slide download.
Drawing on a sales and customer-success leadership role, the speaker argues for a unified owner of the customer lifecycle. The session explains how that structure improves accountability for customer fit, lifecycle decisions, and forecasting of the installed base.
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“lucky than good and in this case we were lucky so I joined customer as the VP of s sales um in 2017 you know I had three sales people in one bdr and was like told to go build the business and then we had a transition on the leadership level and our CEO looked at me and said hey we've got these five people in CX so at that point they kind of had a a mixed set of responsibilities but mostly on boarding we had one support person and he said can you take”
“does here's my phone number I'm the guy you call I'm not directing this elsewhere so that was a a significant benefit I think some of the other things is it allowed me as our business mature to really think about about our life cycle holistically and how we wanted to onboard customers to ensure long-term growth right because the thing is we were looking to build a big uh significant business and so we didn't want to just burn and churn through through”
“are being escalated because they don't fit their ICP and my first question is so why did you sign them and he's like I don't know ask the sales guy right or sales gal right they went and signed them because they've got numbers to hit they've got booking targets right so once again having a single leader trust me I did not want to hear from customers that were unhappy so that held me accountable to making sure we had customers that were the right fit for”
“like we have no idea right we it's like even understanding the forecasting behind that right how do we make sure that we're running similar plays to understand the forecasting and the growth for our existing customers so being able to make datadriven uh decisions so is this a fit for everybody um I would say if you're in kind of particularly a”
“Kustomer Founded in 2015 Joined 2017 ICP: B2C MidMarket/Enterprise customers Sales Motion: Mostly Rip & Replace Average deal: $75K ACV required implementation and tremendous growth opportunity through organic growth and cross-sell/upsell motion CRM for Customer Service”
“Sales & CX”
“Enhanced Revenue Growth Optimized sales processes Effective customer onboarding Increased upselling and cross-selling”
“$60M+ hit an inflection point Competing priorities Single point of failure PLG / simple onboarding, low ACV sub $20k Single leader for CX after build out Considerations of having a single leader for Sales and CS FAILURE POINTS NOT A FIT(?) DO DIFFERENT”
Video
Scaling from $0M ARR to a $1.2B acquisition with a Single Leader for Sales & CX - Slide Deck
Limited Partner at GTMfund, a venture capital fund investing in early-stage B2B SaaS companies.
Sophie Buonassisi · GTMfund
Mark Abbott · Ninety.io
Aye Moah · Boomerang
Irina Novoselsky · Hootsuite
Alex Quilici · YouMail
Kyle Racki · Proposify
Each slide with a short explanation of what it shows. Open the slide text for its exact wording.
11 passages
SaaSOpen, September 2024 Scaling from $0M ARR to a $1.2B acquisition with a single leader for Sales & CX Vikas Bhambri Limited Partner, GTMfund
The talk covers Kustomer’s business and team structure, the benefits of aligned customer experience and revenue, and considerations around a $60M inflection point.
Over the next 20 minutes I’m going to show you WHY 1 LEADER Kustomer’s type of business How did we end up with a single leader for Sales x CS Team structure BENEFITS CONSIDERATIONS Aligned customer journey Enhanced revenue growth Data-driven decision making The $60M inflection point Motion and ACV What I would have done differently
The profile describes Kustomer as a customer service CRM for B2C mid-market and enterprise accounts, with a mostly rip-and-replace motion and a $75K average ACV.
Kustomer Founded in 2015 Joined 2017 ICP: B2C MidMarket/Enterprise customers Sales Motion: Mostly Rip & Replace Average deal: $75K ACV required implementation and tremendous growth opportunity through organic growth and cross-sell/upsell motion CRM for Customer Service
The growth chart rises from 2017 through 2021, with acceleration after 2020, illustrating the company’s scale-up under a single sales and CX leader.
A Single Leader for Sales & CX
The organization chart places Vikas above Sales, Business Development, Channel, SC, RevOps and Enablement, PS, CS, and Support.
Sales & CX
The journey diagram connects research and purchase through onboarding, usage, support, and renewal; the slide links end-to-end oversight and coordinated messaging with improved customer satisfaction.
Aligned Customer Journey End-to-end oversight Coordinated messaging thru combined enablement Improved customer satisfaction
The slide links optimized sales processes and effective onboarding with increased upselling and cross-selling, illustrated by rising coin stacks and an upward arrow.
Enhanced Revenue Growth Optimized sales processes Effective customer onboarding Increased upselling and cross-selling
The slide pairs comprehensive analysis with improved forecasting and resource allocation, alongside dashboards and charts being reviewed.
Data Driven Decision Making Comprehensive data analysis Improved forecasting Optimized resource allocation
The slide lists competing priorities and a single point of failure after a $60M+ inflection point, notes low-ACV PLG as a poor fit, and suggests a separate CX leader after the function is built out.
$60M+ hit an inflection point Competing priorities Single point of failure PLG / simple onboarding, low ACV sub $20k Single leader for CX after build out Considerations of having a single leader for Sales and CS FAILURE POINTS NOT A FIT(?) DO DIFFERENT
The recap brings together Kustomer’s business, team structure, customer journey, revenue and data benefits, and the model’s inflection points and trade-offs.
Over the last 20 minutes, I showed you: … with real examples! WHY 1 LEADER Kustomer’s type of business How did we end up with a single leader for Sales x CS Team structure BENEFITS CONSIDERATIONS Aligned customer journey Enhanced revenue growth Data-driven decision making The $60M inflection point Motion and ACV What I would have done differently
The speaker closes with a thank-you and contact details shown on the slide.
SaaSOpen, September 2024 Thank you! [redacted email] Vikas Bhambri Limited Partner, GTMfund