Throughout the history of the software industry, Marketing has made promises, Sales sold the features and functions that Product built, and Onboarding/Implementation configured the software and handed off to Training to (hopefully) teach the users how the software worked. Support responded to complaints. SaaS brought major changes in the shift to subscription pricing and the new capability of monitoring in real time what the customer was doing with the application’s feature set. Customer Success was supposed to ensure adoption and therefore retention and expansion, but all too often, got left holding the bag for the consequences of the gaps.
Now the industry is moving into a new phase, driven by AI and other factors, focusing on Value and attempting to reckon with the gap between what Sales promised the customer, what the customer thought they bought, and the value that the customer actually realized. In order to keep up, let alone succeed, software companies must transform their strategy and organization so that Marketing, Sales, Product, and Customer Success all consistently focus on the proven delivery of Customer Realized Value.
The Transition process begins with a Current-State Review, the recognition of the effects and costs of the structural disconnects between the functional departments of the company. The next step is to begin the shift to a Value focus, starting with the construction of a library of outcomes that correlates to the actual business objectives of the customer — the jobs/tasks to be done by role, what they’re worth, and how to prove they were accomplished. The result is the foundation for increasing adoption, retention, and expansion sales that all the functional groups will share as a basis for their operations.
What would that transition look like for your company? For more information, contact us.
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