In the new world of PEG (Profitable Efficient Growth) operators must ensure investment in product development is tuned to Optimize SaaS R&D Spend and maximize the contribution to the company’s strategic objectives. Investing in R&D is critical for fueling innovation and accelerating growth at SaaS companies. However, determining just the right level of R&D spending and effectively measuring its business impact can be challenging. This guide provides helpful strategic insights to optimize your R&D budget allocation and maximize returns. Setting the Right R&D Budget First ..read more

We live in the trust-crisis age. The onslaught of information, personalized to our liking, through mass and social media, can hardly be consumed, nevermind trusted. The posture of skepticism of messaging and information continues to rise. As leaders, we seek to build trust and loyalty within our teams. The benefits seem obvious: motivation, collaboration, and dedication in an environment where employees trust their leaders and invest in their own and their teammate’s success. In our evolving culture, the bar to achieving trust continues to rise, making it more important to be deliberate when ..read more

In our post “Customer-Led Growth and Product-Led Growth: Friends or Foes?” we discuss how the emergence of Customer-Led Growth (CLG) as a leading strategy to fuel sustainable growth requires closely evaluating traditional roles and functions across the company. Some pundits believe that Professional Services (PS) no longer has a role in growth-oriented SaaS businesses since little value can be created with low-margin, non-recurring revenue. Others argue that Customer Success (CS) is becoming obsolete, as traditional CS is a caretaker – overhead that is only a luxury in the age of profitable ..read more

Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat. Sun Tzu, The Art of War Most of us start a new year with some form of a plan with defined and measurable objectives that cover a fiscal period that aligns with a budget – a Business Plan. We developed a set of best practices for annual business planning and outlined a 12-month schedule for building that plan. Many companies lack a strategic plan to provide a superstructure for the annual plan. The concept of strategy can be an amorphous one. The lack of strategy is a popular accusat ..read more

Ancient philosophers knew that the “only constant in life is change.” Leaders in our industry face unprecedented market challenges and many other obstacles to achieve our sustainable growth objectives. We need to not only be resilient in the face of these obstacles, but also build teams that can rapidly adapt to the dymanics of the market. The best leadership teams not only respond quickly, they “change before they have to” as famously advised by Jack Welch. This article is a follow-up to our post Unlocking the Power of High Performing Teams, which explores strategies for identifying and deve ..read more

In a start-up, innovating a new product, identifying a market opportunity, and establishing product-market fit is typically founder-led. Successful founders typically possess visionary thinking, resilience, and adaptability, but most importantly, the passion and commitment to realize their vision. An investor evaluating a founder-led business is interested in whether the business has a foundation for achieving consistent growth over time. The investment becomes more attractive when the team demonstrates a founder’s mentality. Most now agree that scaling to achieve consistent and sustained gro ..read more

At this point, everyone has either fully implemented, partially implemented, or at least strongly considered a Product Led Growth (PLG) or its cousin, Product Led Sales (PLS) strategy for their business. Successful implementation of a full PLG strategy (think Slack or Zoom) is difficult, and results have varied. With the shift in market focus toward profitable growth achieved through efficiency, the concept of Customer Led Growth (CLG) has gained popularity. While PLG focuses on acquiring and activating users through the product itself, CLG emphasizes delivering exceptional customer experienc ..read more

The customer retention and growth game is rapidly changing. From tracking NPS scores and support ticket volume to leveraging NLP and LLMs to perform real-time sentiment analysis, the game is rapidly changing. In our recent post we looked at Data Driven Approaches to Improve Retention. In this article we deep dive in predictive churn analytics and look at how you can take your Customer Health Index (CHI) to the next level. The Customer Health Scorecard Over the years, Customer Success has evolved from good Customer Support as the key value proposition for maintenance contracts to a full-blown ..read more

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal warned of the impact of technical debt in deployed software’s impact on the US economy.  The article posits that technical debt, accumulating from outdated systems and quick fixes, poses significant security risks and stifles innovation.  An estimate suggests the cost to address technical debt in the US is estimated at $1.52 trillion, with broader impacts costing the U.S. $2.41 trillion annually. A company (potential customer) saddled with technical debt from previously deployed software solutions represents a challenge and opportunity for ..read more

Most of us have seen firsthand the negative impacts that organizational silos can have. Silos tend to creep up naturally as companies scale. Departments and teams form their own cultures, processes, and goals. Without vigilant leadership, communication and collaboration breaks down. The symptoms become all too familiar – unnecessary overlap in work, lack of unity in strategy implementation, territorial behaviors, and in the worst cases, toxic office politics. Silos lead to inefficiency, stifle innovation, and can severely hamper employee engagement and retention. A 2022 Harvard Business Revie ..read more