Here’s a thought exercise to start the day…

What if our customers only paid us for performance? In other words, if our product doesn’t produce measurable results, no cash changes hands.

What would we do differently to drive performance? How would we measure it? Would we be more careful about who we sell to?

How would we measure our own effectiveness in driving customer performance?

In essence, SaaS has driven us all to a pay-for-performance model. We have found creative ways to price and contract annually, but 12 months isn’t that long. And many B2B SaaS solutions have a CAC payback period of >12 months.

If our companies lived and died by performance, we’d all be in the customer success business, and we’d be clear about 1) defining customer’s desired business outcomes, 2) determining how to measure and monitor our impact on those outcomes; and 3) engaging continuously to drive the required results.

That’s what customer success is.