Insight certainty 4/5 debate potential 2/5

Pickens: The SaaS sales model is an hourglass, not a funnel

Alison Pickens · a16z Podcast | The Rise of the CCO · Jan 2, 2019 · at 12:14

Alison Pickens, Customer Success Leader at Gainsight, explains how the shift from traditional software sales to recurring revenue requires all business functions to focus on post-sale growth.

0:00 / 0:02exact quote · 2.2s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“It's no longer a funnel. Actually, it's an hourglass”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

More from Alison Pickens

Insight
Pickens: Customer success must report directly to the CEO
“I think people are realizing that customer success needs to report directly to the CEO.”
Alison Pickens Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 0:54 a16z Podcast | The Rise of the CCO
Insight
Pickens: NPS is not always correlated with revenue outcomes
“We found that NPS isn't always correlated with revenue outcomes.”
Alison Pickens Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 23:22 a16z Podcast | The Rise of the CCO
Disclosure
Pickens: Gainsight does not set quotas for its customer success managers
“We don't have quotas for our CSMs at Gainsight.”
Alison Pickens Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 4:23 a16z Podcast | The Rise of the CCO
Insight
Pickens: Recurring revenue requires distinct indicators for renewals, upsells, and advocacy
“We measure three different leading indicators of the three different types of revenue that you can drive in a recurring revenue business. So we've got a predictor of the renewal. We've got a predictor of upsell, which is actually the CSQLs, customer success qu…”
Alison Pickens Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 6:23 a16z Podcast | The Rise of the CCO
Disclosure
Pickens: Gainsight bonuses CSMs on health scores, CSQLs, and customer advocacy
“For each of these three metrics, our CSMs have targets every quarter, so they're held accountable for moving a certain number of customers into the green level of the health score every quarter, achieving a certain number of customer success qualified leads, a…”
Alison Pickens Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 6:44 a16z Podcast | The Rise of the CCO
Insight
Pickens: CS leaders fail when they give up budget battles early
“My biggest mistakes over the past four years have been related to budget and giving up on a budget battle too early. You've got to prove that case that you're truly aligned to revenue.”
Alison Pickens Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 19:58 a16z Podcast | The Rise of the CCO
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, over 1,000 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.