Aligning SaaS Leadership team on Priorities to deliver repeatable results

When SaaS companies develop their annual company strategic plan and a quarterly tactical operational plan, it is important to obtain alignment across the leadership team on priorities each quarter based on the Customer Lifecycle model defined for the company. The CLM is the driving force for all departments to align around as the leadership team designs and defines the customer experience to ensure quality and excellence is delivered for all products and services and produces real ROI for all customers in all markets.

The idea of having CLM at the center of a SaaS company’s strategy is to develop an excellence in execution that is always aligned across the departments each quarter and focused on improving the customer experience and the value received.

Let’s use a fairly standard and simple CLM model for discussing the details in how to execute and deliver results in a repeatable manner that is in continuous alignment:

What does CLM alignment look like for a SaaS company?

The leadership team uses the GTM strategic plan and plays as the guidelines for what the company is focusing on in the current fiscal year when developing their operational plans. They will use the CLM to plan how to create the ultimate customer experience from the onset of how the market is introduced to the company all the way through the on-going lifetime partnership. By using the CLM as the center of the company strategy, the departments will then keep the customer experience in mind when developing their tactical plans for executing each stage of the CLM.

Execution is a continuous rhythm of the business that utilizes standards, policies, processes and procedures to develop repeatability around the stages of the CLM and is a coordinated attack agreed to by all departments.

In order to understand how best to achieve this state of execution, we will discuss each stage of the lifecycle and how the departments lead, collaborate, and support each other throughout the customer lifecycle.

Let’s start with the QUALIFY stage:

The Marketing department is usually considered to be the quarterback during the Qualify stage. They are charged with introducing the company, products and services to the market and generating a demand for sales to work from.

Sales, Product and CS departments are supporting teams to provide Marketing content feedback, product roadmap planning and customer success stories.

The focus for the Marketing department is to create a tactical plan for managing quality and velocity through the TOFU/MOFU funnel to generate high quality Marketing qualified leads and build the top of the funnel pipeline.

Marketing and Sales coordinate and agree on the MQL and conversion goals to deliver on the annual TOFU pipeline goal and the goals required to start each quarter. This will ensure the teams are aligned in their mission to equip the sales team with the highest quality and quantity of pipeline to ensure they can deliver on their quota.

It is important that the Sales and Marketing teams coordinate on the tactics planned between inbound and outbound including how the Partner strategy will contribute to the pipeline goal. This is how a proactive approach to planning and executing to building quality pipeline in a repeatable manner is achieved during this stage of the customer lifecycle.

Marketing will also control the messaging, branding and sales enablement content to ensure consistency in how the company and products and services are presented to the customers and prospects in the target markets.

Marketing will transition the quarter back role to the Sales team when an Opportunity is created.

The next stage is the ACQUIRE stage

The Sales team will now be the quarterback and continue to work the prospect or customer through the sales methodology and drive the results throughout a well executed BOFU process.

The Marketing and Customer Success teams become the supporting teams to enable the Sales team to execute their sales methodology and cycles in an effective and timely manner to ensure higher win rates. 

Using the CLM and GTM plays that are defined for the year, the Marketing and Sales leadership teams are tasked with equipping the sales team with a quality pipeline at the start of each quarter to ensure they can deliver on their quota. The Marketing and CS teams will provide additional support and content throughout the sales cycle to enable the AEs to close deals in a timely manner and deliver on their target.

Finance supports the sales team by developing a pricing model that is easy to understand and easy for customers to budget and determine the cost of the solution long-term. They also support a timely contract process to help reduce the sales cycle time.

The product team will provide additional support as needed to include future product enhancements required to lead the market and remain competitive to support the Sales ability to win against the competitive landscape.

Once an opportunity is closed won, the sales team will transition the customer to the customer success team. 

The next stage is the IMPLEMENT stage

As the AE introduces the Customer Success team to develop a plan for the customer to fully operationalize the solution, the Customer Success team will now be the quarterback for the Implement Stage.

The CS team will provide a roadmap plan to guide the customer through a phased, step-by-step process that will enable them to achieve a higher state of maturity with improved standards, processes and procedures to be able to operationalize the technology. The Professional services team will generally take point in this stage and guide the customer through a best practice methodology.

If the solution is more of a shelf-ware, self serve solution, then the focus will be to provide an amazing on-line, easy to follow process to onboard and enable the customer to get fully operational on their own. For self service options, the key will be to provide an online roadmap that also shows the customer the possibilities and value the solution can provide.

The Implement stage will ensure the customer is launched into production and successful in achieving their high value outcomes and goals and objectives for improving their operational capabilities.

One of the first supporting teams will be the Sales team who will ensure a smooth transition and introduction to all the key stakeholders and team members. Building relationships deep and wide within the customer is key in this stage to help the CS team guide the customer to a successful deployment. 

The product team is a key supporting team during this stage to support the continued delivery of a high-quality product and new capabilities to meet the customer requirements to achieve their goals and objectives.

The Finance team supports the packaging and pricing of the various services programs to support the different levels of scope and service level requirements for the customers in each target market.

The Marketing team will provide on-going customer marketing support to ensure timely and accurate customer communication on all products and services and company changes.

Once the customer has launched the technology into production, the Customer Success Management team will take point to continue to strategize with the customer and provide updates to the strategic customer roadmap plan. The CSM will help the customer to prioritize and set the goals for each phase of the roadmap plan. They will ensure the customer is plugged into all the services available based on the program they have purchased as well as the online support portal and content available to allow them to solve most of their questions themselves.

The PS team will conduct a review postproduction to verify all goals and outcomes have been achieved which would include the CSM. This is the point of transition from the PS team to the CSM.

The next stage is the VALUE stage

As the PS team transitions the customer back to the CSM to continue to support and guide their strategic roadmap plan, the CSM will become the quarterback during the Value stage.

In this stage, the focus for the CSM is to ensure the customer is realizing value from the use of the technology in production and all goals and objectives have been achieved. This is usually where the CSM will be documenting progress to KPIs and metrics that measure the operational improvements and prove an ROI.

The CSM documents the customer success story and shares with the Sales and Marketing teams. They also coordinate with the PS team to publish and celebrate the customer’s Go-Live.

The supporting teams will continue to be the Sales, Marketing and Product teams to ensure any outstanding issues can be resolved and the customer can continue to realize value on an on-going basis. Marketing continues to support customer communication tactics for all updates to products and services. Sales can be included in various customer business review type meetings to continue their customer relationship and be ready to support additional phases that can lead to expansion opportunities.

The CSM teams generally will maintain the quarterback position through the next stage as well therefore, no formal transition is required.

The next stage is the RENEW stage

Depending on the maturity of the SaaS company, the renewal stage may continue to be quarterbacked by the CSM team. However, in some mature organizations, renewals can also be managed through a revenue or business operations team. In other organizations, the renewal process can be managed by the Sales team or a collaboration between CSM and Sales.

Whichever business practice the SaaS company adopts, this stage will still require a coordinated process between Sales and CS. If CS owns the renewal number, then they will tend to be the quarterback in the Renewal stage and if Sales owns the renewal number, then they will be the quarterback.

For this example, we will assume the CSM is the quarterback and owns renewals. The CSM will incorporate into their customer touchpoint plans a specific set of communications and/or meetings with specific information about the customer’s progress to the Customer Roadmap plan, usage, value and recommended next phase of the roadmap plan. The idea is that once the CSM establishes agreement with the customer on the roadmap plan and confirms the value, engagement and indispensability are being realized, the renewal becomes a simple transaction.

The goal at this stage is to make the renewal a non-event, a simple transaction because in the Value stage the customer agreed with the plan and confirmed the goals, objectives and value have been achieved and they are ready and looking forward to the next phase. They are bought into the overall roadmap plan and committed to fully operationalizing the solution across their organization and company.

The Finance and Product teams will provide supporting roles during this stage to ensure the right products and pricing will support the future needs of the customer requirements. This is usually to support the Customer Strategic Roadmap plan developed by the CSM in partnership with the customer.

From the Roadmap plan the customer would continue to plan additional phases, ensuring the renewal and setting up the expansion until the customer has operationalized the solution across the entire organization deep and wide.

The next stage is the EXPAND stage

This stage is generally quarterbacked by the CSM as they are designing and driving the customer roadmap plan to ensure the solution becomes highly engaged across many users and indispensable to the operations of the business.

The expansion of the customer should have been mapped out in the Implement stage and continued to be reviewed, modified and confirmed with the customer on a regular basis. The customer roadmap plan is what helps the customer to also plan for when and how much to expand their current agreement.

As the customer plans for expansion, it can require the support of the Sales team to modify the contract as needed to meet the customer requirements or negotiate any changes or additional terms.

The Finance and Product team are important supporting teams in the Expand stage to help provide the right pricing model, contract structure and product requirements to provide a successful execution of the roadmap plan.

Determining Priorities in Alignment Across Departments

Once the CLM model is defined and agreed to as a companywide strategy, the leadership team utilizes the GTM strategy and plays to focus the company strategy for the year on specific tactical plays for each defined target market.

Each department determines their operational plan for enabling and supporting the GTM strategic plays and how they will execute each play around the CLM model as a coordinated team to deliver the best customer experience in the most efficient and effective manner.

The departments come together to review each team’s operational plan by quarter to review the priorities and alignment. This is usually conducted as part of the leadership team’s annual strategy sessions but should also be continually reviewed from quarter to quarter as the leadership team determines what’s working and not working. It may be that the goals, objectives and priorities need to be modified to drive to the targets for each quarter.

The beauty of this approach is that the leadership team is focused on the customer and the experience and value the company wants to deliver to all customers. It helps the teams to focus on specific target markets, ICPs, tactics and outcomes that all the departments are aligned and coordinated on for each quarter. It also supports the teams understand of each department’s contribution to the success of the company and the timing of what each department needs to deliver to ensure the company can meet each quarter set of goals. 

As the departments publish their operational plans and quarterly goals to support the plan, the leadership can review each other’s plans and discuss areas where the initiatives, goals or objectives are misaligned. For example, if in Q1 the Sales and Marketing teams will be selling a new product that will be launched and the Product team has moved the launch to Q2, then the team would discuss the strategy and modify the tactical plan to be aligned. This may trigger additional conversations on how Sales will achieve their Q1 goal if this delivery is delayed.

The CLM and GTM strategy should align the leadership team and allow the team to mature and become more proactive in their planning and execution to be able to deliver results in a more repeatable and predictive manner. The quarterly plans should be coordinated and agreed to across the leadership team with a clear understand of how the plan will deliver on the goals. The weekly updates and reviews should provide key insights to status the progress to the goals. The team can determine together if they should stay the course or make any modifications earlier in the quarter to deliver on the results.

This approach will become the company’s regular rhythm of the business for planning, monitoring, analyzing, evaluating what’s working and not working and determining priorities that are aligned for quarterly goals and objectives. As the company matures, this execution process will enable the company to become more predictive in their ability to deliver results in a repeatable manner quarter over quarter.

As always, I welcome your thoughts and feedback. If you would like additional support to help your company achieve this type of CLM best practices, please reach out to [email protected].