Curious about what’s making us tick and think a little deeper here at Tingono?
So many things.
As we continue to work with our customers to refine our product and our messaging, we’re always keeping our pulse on the market.
And social’s been a great way to do that for us.
Over the month of February, a lot of what we were reading was touching on “Customer-Led Growth”.
Well, what is that?
We’ve heard of product and sales-led growth.
According to to Forget the Funnel, customer-led growth is “a strategic approach that leverages customer insights to qualify and quantify customer value, then operationalize and optimize the end-to-end customer experience.”
So why is this important?
Well, we know data siloes can be your business's downfall.
So this approach of having growth stem from a unified understanding from both the GTM and technical teams makes for a better customer experience.
At Tingono, we strive to be highly adaptable and tailored to our customers. So of course, we appreciate many of the tenets of CLG. Growing with our customers is something we’re excited about over the coming years!
So without further ado, here are 10 posts from February you can’t miss!
Post 1: Don't get freaked out, but many SaaS companies will fail.
So what are we supposed to do to combat this?
Bring together the right mindset, and the right data.
We’ve talked extensively about the value of utilizing your data correctly. Combined with a human touch, it makes our go-to-market function unstoppable.
We also loved that Markus touched on the long game in this post- expecting results overnight isn’t good for anyone.
This is especially true when you really want to extract value from your data, and then see if what you’re trying is a worthwhile investment.
So this one is a comment (Is that cheating?)
But, Shareil makes a great point.
Onboarding is a continuous activity, not just something that happens in the first 30, 90 or 120 days.
There is always more opportunity to ensure that a product or feature is being utilized to its full potential across a team.
That could be ensuring each new team member gets a chance to interact with the product in a learning environment.
Or it could be making sure that the champion is fully aware of updates and improvements to the product.
There really are tons of opportunities to ensure onboarding as a practice continues through the full life cycle.
Yes, this post is a bit broader, and focused more on marketing. (And I’m a marketer 😉)
But, because we’re focused on this idea of customer-led growth, marketing is of course a major piece in that.
“customers repeating your messaging back to you, in their own words, and confirming that they are actually realizing that value is $$$ and strong proof of product-market-fit.”
What Mario said stuck out to me because this is such an important part of working at a startup- it's hard enough defining your ICP at the beginning.
And then it’s another challenge altogether to ensure that the marketing you’re doing is truly resonating.
So for me, this was a great, tangible point of evidence that I can use down the line to see whether or not we’re resonating with our customers.
I loved that Emilia and Vas again hit on the idea that customer-led growth stretches far past customer success.
And of course, this comes back to the idea that customer success is a team sport.
It’s not entirely resting on your customer success managers and leads.
To be truly customer-led, the best customer experience is strategized from all sides. It doesn’t just sit in one bucket of QBRs and the help desk.
Everyone across the business takes responsibility for a great experience. And it creates a stronger team with better retention.
I also loved that they brought up that a CCO could logically grow into a CEO.
This position has a great opportunity to really bridge that gap between technical and customer facing teams, using qualitative and quantitative data points.
So of course with that skill set, a CCO could be an awesome CEO as well.
We loved Jan’s take on best utilizing your CSMs to not only support your customers, but also other teams.
This comes back to the idea of a unified team.
Everyone is responsible for the success of the customer- not just CSMs.
Your CSMs also have the power to support other teams and can get credit for it, backed in financial data.
We actually featured a post just last week disagreeing with this idea!
We totally align with Sahil’s idea that customers deserve the best. But, the idea that every customer absolutely needs the white glove story isn’t quite right. A one-size-fits-all approach never works!
And a white glove experience for every customer leads to an inefficient use of resources.
Not every customer demands this high-touch type of service.
You’re better off finding what each customer needs. Some may need that super high touch. Some may not.
Others might be happy and long-lasting with a few check-ins per year.
Use your data to find out what customers need! Customize solutions that are as unique as each of them 😊
And hey, that might just be the fancy restaurant!
Markus appears again!
And we’re not mad about it.
Shifting our understanding from QBRs as a check on our list for our day, rather than a way to truly serve customer's value is key.
Don’t just treat QBRs as an act of going through the motions.
By customizing each (carefully), and not just refilling the same template, both CSMs and the customer can extract much more value.
Like he said, customers get invited to a lot of QBRs. Don’t be a skippable event. Ensure that they know it’s going to be worth their while. Time is money!
Read that statistic that Lauren mentions in #2 again.
Wow!
Again, the value of a retained customer cannot be overstated. They are so important to your Net Revenue Retention.
And Lauren again touches on that customization aspect!
Knowing where to put the most customer success effort is important to run as efficiently as possible. Don’t just throw a bunch of money and time into every customer.
Be mindful about who will get the most value from each action.
And, she brings up the idea of the “VIP of Customers”.
Is this the same as your internal champion?
It sounds like it might be... We hope to hear more from her about this idea.
Nick asserts that it isn’t the “why” that people struggle with, it’s the “how”. This really rings true.
We know that losing customers is bad.
We know that expanding current customers is important for growth.
But the breakdown occurs in how we solve these issues.
So what’s the best next step?
We think it’s a deeper understanding of the data that we already collect.
Basing decisions in data makes for stronger evidence points. We can accurately make decisions on why we need to cut costs in one area and invest more in another.
So are you ready to do that?
Tomasz talks about how important distribution is going to be for startups.
The value of generative AI is only growing. It’s improving and getting more and more accurate. And it’s producing better work every minute.
So, if a startup using generative AI truly wants to end up on top, they need to find their customer niche. And quickly.
Everyone is in this same race. It’s going to be about who can get their ICP correct first, and then successfully reach them.
So if you’re using generative AI in your GTM motion, have you created the most accurate ICP possible? Do you have a plan to reach your audience?
Also, don’t forget to check out last month’s list, where we featured our ten favorite LinkedIn posts about revenue growth.