Become a Value-Added Advisor with Cross-Section Data
Turn the industry data only you can see into exclusive insight that keeps customers from churning.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 3
- Confidence
- 85%
Every vendor sees a cross-section of what all its ICP customers are doing at the same time — a vantage point none of them individually has. Mansuri argues you should mine that vantage into exclusive benchmarks and reports for existing customers, shifting from 'a tool in the SAS stack' to a value-added advisor customers can't live without, materially reducing churn.
Origin
Sahil Mansuri's retention strategy for the downturn, illustrated with Bravado's own move to give clients market benchmarks, plus hypothetical plays for analytics tools and applicant-tracking systems.
Core principles
- 01Your unique advantage as a vendor is the cross-section view of everyone who fits a given ICP acting at once
- 02Repurpose the lead-gen playbook (white papers, research) toward customer retention instead
- 03Insight customers can't get elsewhere is valuable even when they've frozen new spend
- 04Redeploy internal talent — shift product marketing to a research team, add a data analyst or two
How to run it
- 1
Inventory the data only you can see
Identify the aggregate signals you hold across your customer base — e.g. an ATS knows how many roles companies have paused; Bravado knows who's hitting quota and adjusting comp.
- 2
Turn it into exclusive customer-only insight
Package benchmarks and reports available only to active customers: 'we'll tell you what percentage of companies that look like you are hiring, how they're adjusting quotas and comp — if you stick around as a client.'
Pro tip Make the insight a distinct point of value, so staying a customer is worth it even when the core product spend is under scrutiny.
- 3
Redeploy staff to produce it
Shift product marketing into a research function and attach a data analyst or two to create content exclusive to customers.
In the wild
Mansuri imagines an ATS like Greenhouse — whose customers are cutting recruiting budgets — publishing tailored reports: 'series B companies with ~50 employees used to have eight open headcount, now down to four; the main areas they're investing are X, Y, Z; salaries are moving up and down.'
→ The customer reacts 'I can't live without this data because it's actually helping guide my business decisioning,' giving the vendor a reason to be retained beyond the core tool.
Common mistakes
Only using your data for lead gen
Companies put out a white paper to attract prospects but never produce equivalent exclusive insight for existing customers — squandering the retention leverage of the same data.
Staying a commodity tool that just pushes product
Continuing to 'jam product down your throat' instead of extracting industry insight leaves you easy to rip out when budgets tighten.
Is it for you?
Best for
SAS vendors with a broad, homogeneous customer base whose aggregate behavior contains benchmarks individual customers would value during a downturn.
Not ideal for
Companies with too few or too heterogeneous customers to produce statistically meaningful cross-section insight, or where data sharing raises confidentiality issues.
From the transcript
“the advantage that every vendor has is you get a cross-section of what everyone who fits a certain ICP is doing at the same time”
“becoming less of a tool as part of the SAS stack and more of a value-added advisor”
“if you stick around with us as a client so now you're not just... they're getting insights on what's happening in the market that's still…”
From the episode
How to hit revenue targets in a recession
Sahil Mansuri (Bravado)