This evolution is driven by customer preferences. Nowadays, customers want to experience the solutions as well as the financial flexibility that a subscription provides versus an up-front purchase. This shift is critical for organizations to realize because it places a premium on increasing the Customer Lifetime Value (CLV).
The name of the game today is “Land and Expand.” Identifying and Landing a new customer is just the beginning of the customer journey. Today, companies have to include Adoption, Expansion and Renewal as part of the process to fully monetize their customers’ value.
It is important to think about the customer experience holistically. This means defining all the jobs across pre- and post-sales motions, how the jobs interact with each other and how sales compensation plans can influence behaviors that ultimately drive revenue growth.
Our recent XaaS research identified the following six sales compensation trends:
Most sales leaders focus their design efforts on their key sales job—the account executive or account manager. However, there are two other customer-facing positions that are important to focus on—the customer success manager and the XaaS renewal rep.
Organizations are either launching a customer success manager (CSM) job or they are in the midst of fine-tuning this job. The CSM is always focused on Adoption. However, companies are wrestling with what the CSM’s role is during the Renew and Expand sales motions.
The XaaS renewal rep is more complicated than the standard software maintenance/hardware support renewal rep. The key question used to determine the right job design and sales compensation plan is, Are your XaaS renewals a transactional re-order or a high-touch resell?
Essentially, how an organization structures its jobs/talent profiles and consequently its compensation plans is critical to ensuring that the organization is extracting full CLV from their customers–a critical aspect to success in a XaaS environment.
To learn more about AGI’s proprietary XaaS trends, customer success manager and/or XaaS renewal rep job design and compensation, watch our webinar or schedule a complimentary XaaS Sales Strategy Research briefing.
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