“Churn is bad, and what we’ve been doing is not working.” This blunt truth reflects the growing frustration among revenue and customer success leaders. Despite aggressive investment in customer acquisition, companies continue to lose valuable recurring revenue through preventable churn.
The solution? Shifting from an acquisition-first to a customer-first revenue growth model — a model that prioritizes retention, expansion, and customer lifetime value. This is the essence of customer-led growth, the approach proven to fuel sustainable SaaS growth and improve SaaS revenue metrics.
In a recent webinar, Kate Whittaker, Manager of GTM Strategy & Execution at Totango hosted Michael Harnum, CEO at ESG, and Chris Dishman, SVP of Global Customer Success at Totango, in a discussion where they shared tactical practices to help business leaders make this crucial pivot. Below are three actionable strategies they shared:
- Make customer-led growth a company wide strategy
- Give teams the resources to take advantage of AI
- Plan to constantly iterate to avoid stagnation
Make customer-led growth a company wide strategy
For customer-led growth to drive results, it must be embedded across the entire organization — not just the customer success (CS) team. Top-performing companies also adopt these best practices across sales, marketing, and product to ensure a seamless, scalable revenue strategy.
Here’s how to align your business around customer-led growth:
- Sales and CS collaboration: The handoff from Sales to Customer Success must be seamless. A disjointed transition creates friction that customers will feel first. Smooth onboarding accelerates time to value, reduces churn, and sets the stage for long-term success. Alignment here ensures your customer success software and integrated technologies deliver actionable, consistent data across the lifecycle.
- Executive sponsorship: Customer Success must be recognized as a strategic growth lever. Getting CEO and CFO buy-in is critical to position CS as a revenue-driving function. CS leaders should communicate value in terms that matter to the C-suite: net revenue retention, customer lifetime value, and revenue intelligence.
- Technology alignment: Integrating customer success platforms with your CRM and cross-functional systems creates a unified view of the customer. While homegrown solutions may seem sufficient, they lack the agility to scale or generate the insights needed to drive proactive engagement. A robust customer success management solution is essential to unlock the full value of your post-sale motion.
Customer-led growth begins with your customers, and the ability to infuse that north star into the culture and operations of the entire organization.
“Retention is a company wide effort. It involves product, marketing, sales and customer success, and everyone working together to prevent churn and drive efficient growth.”
— Chris Dishman, SVP of Global Customer Success, Totango
Give teams the resources to take advantage of AI
The rapid adoption of artificial intelligence in revenue management presents a powerful opportunity — but only for those with a solid go-to-market foundation. If your playbooks, workflows, or data models are flawed, AI will only magnify those issues.
According to Michael, the key is to start with a clear-eyed assessment of where you are today. Get an honest diagnostic assessment of the organization’s:
- Customer segmentation
- Health scoring and indexing model
- Customer journey mapping
- Library of playbooks and lifecycle workflows
- Customer educational resources and enablement
Don’t chase perfection — focus on progress. When your go-to-market foundation is solid, AI-powered customer success software becomes a catalyst for transformation, not a distraction.
“Technology isn’t going to fix a problem. AI is an accelerator to customer intelligence, but if you don’t have the playbook to execute on that new insight, then it’s a lost cause.”
— Chris Dishman, SVP of Global Customer Success, Totango
Plan to constantly iterate to avoid stagnation
Adopting customer success management platforms is a non-negotiable step toward scalable, customer-first revenue growth. But many businesses falter by aiming for perfection in the early stages of platform implementation.
Chris highlights the importance of starting with an MVP (minimum viable product): “The biggest pitfall I see is organizations striving for perfection right out of the gate. That leads to stalled deployments that never deliver impact.”
Here’s how Michael and Chris advise leaders to avoid that trap:
- Adopt a rollout plan with incremental milestones. Start with high-impact segments or workflows and iterate.
- Set a precedent to measure, optimize, and evolve. Use data-driven feedback to refine and retest processes and workflows over time.
- Secure cross-functional alignment. Bring in the CRO, CFO, and RevOps leaders early. Without their input, Customer Success teams risk becoming isolated — lacking the data, integration, and strategic support required to succeed.
Find your rhythm to sustainable revenue growth
To combat churn and achieve sustainable SaaS growth, companies must evolve from acquisition-first to customer-first growth strategies. That evolution starts with alignment, a solid operational foundation, and the intelligent use of technology and AI.
By embedding customer-led growth best practices into the core of your business, leveraging AI-powered intelligence, and investing in modern customer success software, your organization can reduce churn, increase retention, and unlock long-term growth. Watch the full discussion here.
Recurring revenue is a rhythm — not one note. It’s a commitment to continuous improvement and innovation, led by the customers you’ve got. So, they meet their goals, and you meet yours.
Learn how Totango can help your business put revenue on repeat.
%201.svg)
