When sales reps are trying to close a deal, the one-time set-up fee often gets sacrificed for a time constraint. 
Some customers may wonder why you’re charging them for set-up and not understand what the cost includes, which can make selling it difficult. To offset the front-loaded cost of onboarding, some SaaS companies charge customers a one-time set-up fee. Save for some proactive outreach when problems arise, it doesn’t take much time to keep a customer happy. Onboarding is expensive.īut, once an account is active and using the software, the time required to keep the account is minimal. Here’s the issue: The bulk of the cost of customer success happens when a new customer signs up. If a customer’s signed on and they haven’t sent a proposal, or they’ve sent some but haven’t won any, we know it’s time to step in and see if we can help them. We monitor that activation metric very closely. You need to put activation metrics in place to ensure your customers are achieving their goals right away.Īt Proposify, we know our customers are getting value if they’re sending and winning proposals. Measuring that initial value doesn’t have to be a shot in the dark based on purely anecdotal claims of satisfaction. And that’s before factoring in expansion revenue.Īs your CSM rolls out the software and helps them get set up, it gives the customer ample opportunity to tackle any initial obstacles and get immediate value out of your product. On a company level, that means lower churn, higher retention, and increased lifetime value. In more concrete terms, proper onboarding means the difference between a customer with a lifetime value of $10K paid over one 12-month cycle or $100K over ten years. Going back to the farming analogy from part one, it’s nurturing the young sapling when it’s new and fragile and ensuring it grows into a healthy, fruitful tree. 
Onboarding is one of the most important functions of CS because there is such a strong correlation between a successfully onboarded customer and retention and increased lifetime value.
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