Workato’s SVP of Embedded Sales and Director of Solutions Marketing joined us at SaaStr Annual to talk about how to nurture customers — a great topic in general, but especially for embedded sales and APIs that can take a while to scale.

The Second Most Important SaaS Hire? Customer Success. Here’s Why It Changes Everything

A few key learnings from Workato’s SVP of Embedded Sales Nam Lee and Director of Solutions Marketing Hannah Peacock on why Customer Success is the game-changer in SaaS:

The Non-Obvious Truth: Hire Customer Success Before More Sales

Nam did something counterintuitive – he hired a Customer Success Manager as his third hire, even with pressure to add more sales heads. Most founders wait way too long here. But the results?

• Time-to-value plummeted
• Expansion revenue became almost automatic
• Sales cycles got more honest and efficient

The 5 Things We Learned About Customer Success at $100M+ ARR

1. Sales actually exaggerates. Shocking, I know. But a great CS team keeps promises realistic and achievable.
2. Time-to-value is your most critical early metric. If customers can’t get live fast, nothing else matters.
3. Good customers need minimal effort to expand. When the product works, they want to spend more. Focus on making them successful instead of selling them.
4. Marketing + CS alignment is worth 10x more than you think. Get them working together on expectations from day 1.
5. Your ICP needs CS input. Period. The best customers are ones your CS team fights to work with.

What Most SaaS Companies Get Wrong

The standard playbook is:

1. Hire sales
2. Hit growth targets
3. Eventually add CS when churn becomes painful

But that’s backward. The data shows building CS early creates:

• 2x better retention
• 3x faster expansion revenue
• Way more referenceable customers

The Real Math on Customer Success

Here’s what happens when you nail CS:

• Happy customers = Renewing customers
• Renewing customers = References
• References = More customers
• More customers = Faster growth

It’s compound interest for your SaaS business.

The One Big Thing

If you only take away one thing: Hire CS earlier than feels comfortable. Way earlier. It’s the foundation that makes everything else in SaaS work – sales, marketing, product. Don’t wait until you’re forced to fix churn. Build it into your DNA from the start.

And a clear non-obvious learning: Having your CS team actually want to fight to take accounts from sales? That’s when you know you’ve built something special.

My guess? If you’re at $1m-$10m ARR, you probably need to double down here. Now.