Lessons in Customer Lifecycles

Below we showcase real-world stories to help you improve the way that you align your company to the customer's buyer journey.

Story 1 | Improving client retention through PADRE Operations

A fast-growing company is finding that more sales are falling out in onboarding and early adoption or canceling early resulting in a higher than industry average CAC/LTV.

Challenges

The company revenue was growing at a rate of 50% CAGR.
NRR program was initiated revealing an appalling 40% retention rate.
Early contract terminations (first 90 days) were upwards of 25%.

Assessment

The company had prioritized revenue growth over all other metrics.
HR roles and responsibilities were found to be non-existent.
No documented delivery processes existed.
No established SLAs between departments existed.

Execution

Based on our assessment, we recommended and implemented the PADRE operations framework. PADRE is an acronym for pipeline, acquisition, deployment, relationship, and expansion backed by the silent "R" of renewal. Learn more here.

Documented as-is and to-be processes using the Lean Six Sigma SIPOC model.
Installed PADRE operations committee to build a prioritized roadmap focused on sales to onboarding issues.
Reset and document roles and responsibilities with HR. Later, updated incentive plans to match revised R&Rs.
Improved business analytics to monitor NRR, CAC/LTV, and churn in real-time for faster diagnosis of delivery and retention issues.

Results

NRR had a long way to go but improved 2x to 80%. A new data analytics offering had an NRR of 110%.
Churn reduced from more than 50% to less than 20% per year.
Reduced time-to-live (TTL) from >150 days to an average of 17 days.

Lessons

With PADRE, you learn the most by intersecting the company at the deployment stage. It is the first time the promise of the company presses up against the expectations of the customer. From there, you can determine which way to go next. Sometimes it is a sales or marketing issue and sometimes it is a product and engineering issue. Either way, if you start in the middle, you'll know which way to go next.
Don't overlook the simple and tedious task of documenting, in writing, what is happening presently and then asking why...a lot. And then install simple measures to diagnose where the most pressing issue is happening. Measure twice, and cut once. Don't change a process until you know what is happening, why it is happening, and how it needs to change. It is such a simple concept and so few slow down enough to do it.
Don't get bogged down by how badly you are performing to industry benchmarks. This company was expecting 50% YoY growth without the wheels falling off the bus. First, industry benchmarks are rarely true and accurate. And second, measure your progress against yourself and your reality. A 100% improvement in NRR and churn is an amazing outcome with room to grow. Celebrate the rigor, new habits, and the process as much as the progress and outcome or you'll kill morale.