should you offer a service, too?
Some companies charge for onboarding. Most of us offer it for more than free — we give everything we’ve got to our new customers to make them fall in love and stay with us forever.
If a problem is problematic enough, don’t you think some customers would be open to paying you to help them solve it?
I do. I’ve done it. And tons of companies do it every day. It’s just that most of the people getting paid to implement new tools are consultants, not employees of the software company building the tools.
I spent six years in and around Atlassian. Only recently did Atlassian build its own sales team. Not long ago, the ‘sales team’ was a massive network of consultants. These consultants are experts at Atlassian tools and (more importantly) the problems Atlassian tools can solve. They get paid mucho dinero to install new tools and build the systems around them.
But who knows your product better than you? Who knows the specific customer problems you solve better than you?
(If your inner voice whispered anything other than “Nobody”… close this email and spend time reflecting on why that is. Seriously.)
So why shouldn’t you and your team also implement your apps and help customers build the right capacity around your apps?
There are two areas where I think you could test a paid service:
Onboarding. If you solve a burning issue and customers want fast time to value, consider charging to take customers from trial to advanced user faster. You have the depth of experience with your tools. You also have the breadth of experience to see what best practices are across companies. That plus speed is valuable.
Customer success. You sold your product to a big, hungry-for-solutions company. You have the right champion inside the company. She knows how valuable your product would be if only more employees used it. Can you offer a service to solve complex problems across a company? Yes, you can.
Nevermind what the additional services revenue would do for your company. Imagine how ingrained and baked in your product could be if you do the implementation. If a new account onboards faster, you’ve probably extended their lifetime value.
If a good customer pays you to make them a great customer, what’s their CLTV then? How long will they stick around when you go from a software vendor to a partner?
The value unlocked by extending the right customers’ tenure could be enormous.
Peter
(459 / 500)
PS: I understand there may be capacity issues. “We’re a small team. We can’t afford to spend time doing that.” Could you test it out? Suffer through a season of long days and see if it pays off?