On this month’s episode of The Customer Success Channel Podcast, brought to you by Planhat, I chatted with David Jackson, CS Coach, Author, and CEO at TheCustomer.Co, about why the customer is at the heart of everything we do and should be the basis for how we design our organizations. Yet, a lot of people talk about the product, sales, revenue, and even marketing-led growth but take the customer-led growth for granted.
In the early days for SaaS companies, we tend to focus on sales and product-led growth as we are trying to find some sort of proof of concept of a product. So, when should a SaaS company really shift to customer-led growth? And why should customer success focus on people and not necessarily a company or logo name?
In our discussion Dave helps answer some of the tricky questions when it comes to customer-led growth:
- Why should we focus on people and not customers?
- How does focusing on people and not a faceless customer drive change for your ICP?
- How do you go about building a successful plan for a person instead of a customer/company?
Some key takeaways from this discussion:
- It’s very difficult to think of a successful business that doesn’t have customers. It’s a bit like breathing. You know, you’re not going to survive if you don’t breathe. You’re not going to survive as a business if you don’t have customers
- Who makes the decision to buy your product? A company or a person? Who uses your product? A company or person? Who advocated for your company? A company or person?
- It is so important to look beyond attaining yet another logo to your list of customers, and instead focus on the most important thing – the people
Make sure you listen to the full episode and let me know your thoughts.