Here are links to the five posts from last week and things to steal for yourself and/or take back to your team.
Click through on each title for more of our thinking or just take the insights here.
Your ICP Is Too Inclusive
The insight: An ICP that doesn’t exclude anyone isn’t an ICP. Deals outside of the ICP teach bad habits to everyone from BDRs to engineering.
Change this: Put an expiration date on your ICP. Every two months pull your closed won and closed lost deals and look for the outliers, e.g. long sales cycles or custom features/promises. Then revise your ICP as needed and tell the team.
Onboarding Complete Is Not Customer Live
The insight: A finished checklist tells you what your team did but not what the customer changed as a result of your product. Live means they’re doing the job they brought you in for without you.
Change this: On the kickoff call ask what specific job needs to get done and who has to do it. Keep asking until the answer sounds specific. For example “our AEs have run pipeline reviews off your forecast for two weeks.”
Silence Is a Loud Signal
The insight: Customers who complain are still trying to make it work. The surprise churns can be green on usage but silent with feedback.
Change this: Track days since the last meaningful two-way exchange (not auto replies or a one-word “thanks”) and who it was with. Get alerted if too much time passes (e.g. 30 days) and reach out with something useful and not “just checking in.”
Expansion Is Selling
The insight: If you want CS to expand accounts then you’re asking them to sell. If you didn’t hire them to sell though, giving them a quota will backfire without proper sales training.
Change this: Hire post-sales people with sales skills from day one. Train them in the same way you train your AEs. Don’t be allergic to training CS on sales.
Trials Require Structure
The insight: Most trials fail before they starts because nobody defined what success looks like.
Change this: Don’t start a trial until the rep can finish this sentence: “This trial ends on [date], and it’s a win if [person] can show [specific result] to [named exec].”
