This book is like 10 years old and was outdated when it was published. My new book - Maximizing Lifetime Value (link in bio) - is actually relevant in 2025.

A new book just dropped today called Software as a Science. It's by the guys at @SaaSAcademy and it is fantastic. I got a preview copy of it, consumed it in one sitting. This is the book you need if you want to learn how to build and scale a SaaS business. Like period. Like this is the book. The SaaS Academy guys know what they're doing. They've helped thousands of companies add billions in market valuation. Uh, this is the book that you need to get, so you can go to and get your free physical copy of the book. I think you just have to pay shipping and handling. So get the book, learn how to build and scale your SaaS business, but also pay attention to how they're launching this book because there's a lesson there. So congratulations to @DanMartell, @JohnnyPage13, @MattVerlaque, & @MarcelPetitpas. on an amazing book. This is going to change businesses. This is going to change lives. So, get the book. Congratulations, guys. #SaaS #Startup #Scaleup

CSM Comp: Bonuses vs. Variable This is really about incentivizing the behavior that we're looking for. And because it's a bonus, there's not the fear associated with not, with something not working out and you simply not getting your full salary. If the CSM is doing well, then they're going to go above their on target earnings with these bonuses. And if they're not doing well, they're not going to lose, there's no downside beyond simply, getting paid what they, what their salary is. But you as the manager, you as their leader are going to intervene and try to get them back on track. That's the key. #CustomerSuccess

CSM Comp - Milestone Velocity Bonuses Another way to do it is velocity. So how quickly are we moving them through these milestones? Remember it's a progress milestone.  So if I can move customers through those faster, that doesn't mean that we're. We're skipping steps. It doesn't mean that we are doing things poorly. It's actual progress. So if we're able to move them, especially as we move into progress milestones that are more customer centric the milestones in the early days in onboarding they're more what we call, there's there's technical and administrative milestones.  And as you move towards customer centric milestones, you get into operational and tactical and strategic. Those are so much more meaningful to the customer because they're they're customer centric. And if customers are making changes on their side through the use of our product, it's impacting their business in a meaningful way. That's great. And if we can do that at a faster clip. That's awesome. And so you can bonus on the velocity of those things. #CustomerSuccess

Don’t worry about upsells until churn is below 10%? Really? No, this mindset limits growth and stifles potential. Unless your environment is overtly customer-negative and you have massive churn across your entire customer base, you don’t need to hit some mythical churn threshold before upselling. Yes, address churn where it's an issue, but also recognize that some customers are progressing and ready for expansion NOW. Here’s the truth: - Even with higher churn in some cohorts, you have other customers ready, willing, and able to buy more. - Waiting to upsell those customers means not meeting their needs when they need it, and missing out on LTV growth and reducing NRR in the process. By upselling to those ready customers, you can offset churn and achieve NRR over 100%, sustaining and even growing your business while keeping valuations high. Remember, it’s not about waiting for perfect conditions. It’s about recognizing and seizing opportunities for your customers to expand where they need to. #CustomerSuccess #Sales

How Variable Comp is Done in CS (not good) There was a show a long time ago called Third Rock from the Sun and they were aliens. And they came to earth, it was John Lithgow, was like the main guy, and he found out about tipping at a restaurant. And so it was basically these aliens trying to learn how to be human. And he sits down at the restaurant and he puts a stack of money on the table and the wait person he shows them the stack of money and he says, every time you don't do something I like, I'm going to take some of this money away. That was, so the incentive for the wait person. Was not to go above and beyond and hopefully get a big tip. It was don't mess up, don't do things wrong, or this person is going to just sit there and take money. And of course, that's what he did. The whole episode was him just taking money off of the stack. And it sounds harsh. It was funny the way it was presented. And of course he learned the lesson, like that's not how you get the best from the person that you're working with. But that's what we do in customer success management. I say, we. I don't do this, but is you're basically saying here's your on target earnings. Here's the stack of money. And every time you don't do something right, every time a customer churns, which you had, not full control over, every time a customer contracts, which, it's because they were sold too much initially or the onboarding person didn't work with them right or whatever. So it's outside of your control, but every time something like that happens, we're going to take money off of your, the stack of money that you should be getting. That's how variable comp is generally positioned. In customer success, it is a threat. It is, it's, it only has downside potential. It is meant to motivate CSMs to simply do the job that the CSM would do no matter what. And it ends up adding a lot of stress and overhead to CSMs who already carry a lot of stress and overhead simply trying to make customers successful when it seems like the rest of the company doesn't want the customers to actually be successful. #CustomerSuccess

Progress Milestones and CSM Comp Progress milestones are really the basis for operationalized customer success management. If you're not, if you're not building your operation around the customers moving through these milestones, then I would encourage you to really take a look at what you're operationalizing around, because it's possibly something that's not super meaningful and, isn't really moving everybody in the right direction. So progress milestones are important. So all of these things are amazing. And you're right. Not every milestone has an associated expansion opportunity with it, but every milestone is important. So if we move our customers through those milestones that's something that, that we should be celebrating and maybe even bonusing the CSMs on. #CustomerSuccess #Compensation #VariableComp #Sales

Customers go through 6 types of Progress Milestones Hey, I'm Lincoln Murphy, and I help SaaS companies maximize LTV and grow NRR through scalable expansion, or what I call customer-centric upselling. I want to talk about progress milestones—the backbone of operationalized Customer Success Management. Think of them as markers that show customers are moving in the right direction. There are six types of milestones: Technical, Administrative, Functional, Operational, Tactical, and Strategic. These range from product-centric to customer-centric milestones. Customer-centric milestones are more valuable to everyone and are more likely to have expansion opportunities and logical advocacy asks associated with them. Technical - Actions taken outside the primary UX Administrative - Actions taken to set-up and configure the product and users Functional – Actions taken in the product via the primary UX Operational – Actions supported / enabled by Functional use Tactical – Event supported by the Operational progress Strategic – Customer / Stakeholder Goal or Outcome Understanding and managing these milestones is required for operationalized customer success management. Otherwise, what are we even doing here? I'm going to keep diving deeper into Progress Milestones in the next few videos, including how to use them to unlock massive revenue growth from within your customer base. So make sure you like this video and follow me so you don't miss those. And be sure to share this video with your network so they can learn from you. #CustomerSuccess #Sales #Expansion #Growth #LTV #NRR

Customer Success is really just this ONE thing. 👇 Hey, Lincoln Murphy here. And I help SaaS companies maximize LTV and grow NRR through scalable expansion. What I like to call customer centric upselling. Customer Success is foundational to expansion. It creates the environment for expansion to happen. And when you boil down Customer Success to its essence it's really just ensuring your customers move through Progress Milestones on their way to reaching their goals. It's very simple to overthink and overcomplicate these things. In fact, people will often ask me, you know, what should go into a customer health score and they'll come up with all these different inputs. And I say, you're missing the main one. And that is customer progress. In fact, the only thing that really matters is customer progress. You can look at things like C-SAT and billing and support tickets. And whatever, but if you don't also know whether or not your customers are making progress, then the health score is pretty much irrelevant. It's all about customer progress. So if we stay focused, On simply moving the customer from where they are to where they need to go, which requires you to understand their goals, to track their progress, to intervene when necessary to get them back on course, then you'll have the foundation set to maximize LTV and grow NRR, which really just comes down to customers staying longer. So increasing their lifetime with us, and then over that extended life cycle, getting them to buy more, the longer they stay, the more opportunities they have to increase their investment with us. I'm going to dig deeper into Progress Milestones over the next few videos. So make sure to like this one and then follow me. So you won't miss those. And also share this with your peers, because I think a lot of us could benefit from simplifying our view of customer success. What do you think though? Let me know. And definitely look out for the next video. #CustomerSuccess #Sales #Upselling #Growth

RT @AmchamBR: E para encerrar o #CeoForumPOA, recebemos @lincolnmurphy para falar sobre a transformação do atendimento ao cliente. https://…

What actual AI - libraries, APIs, models, etc. - are "AI" calendar scheduling apps built on/using? #ai #ArtificialIntelligence #ChatGPT

In a separate window I casually had #ChatGPT write a python script for me to run locally to do some work I just didn't want do manually. Not bad for < 1 hour for a non-programmer.

In the ~40mins since my last tweet when I gave up on Bard, ChatGPT and I built a new extension, from idea to tested and working in both Chrome and Edge. And #ChatGPT had a really cool suggestion (and workaround) for how to do something that I never would have thought of.

Back in GPT-4 Code Interpreter and feeling sane again. Bard will be great (right?) but for now, it's just not super helpful with pretty much everything I've tried. I'm fully aware that I am spoiled by ChatGPT and GPT-4.

Writing a Chrome extension in ChatGPT was a breeze. It took very little debugging and then it just worked. Bard is not having as much luck. Granted, what we're trying to do is different, but it's failing on some basic things, like trying to use deprecated manifest structures.

Using Bard to write a ChatGPT Chrome extension

Testing our #ChatGPT prompts in #BardAI Bard output (so far) seems closer to that of GPT-3.5 Bard doesn't seem to like complex prompts, similar to GPT-3.5 Bard will only get better, obviously. But out of the box it doesn't appear to be on par with GPT-4

In addition to all of the visualizations it can create and the analysis it can perform... #ChatGPT Code Interpreter will straight-up write Python code for you... and execute it right inside of ChatGPT. No need to download the script and run it locally. I had it write a script to clean-up and split a text file into smaller chunks. It wrote the code, I uploaded the text file to manipulate, and it executed the code against that file, creating 3 smaller files for me to download and use.

I say please and thank you to #ChatGPT because you just never know what the future holds. Those of you giving cold directives and not peppering in compliments and the occasional "I appreciate you" are just asking for it when the uprising happens.