So when growth slows, the conversations change.
You start to hear:
- A ton of talk about raising prices. A lot. There are reasons to do this, but not because you are missing the plan.
- Deleting low-end and free editions. To force users and customers to pay more.
- Forcing customers to buy multi-year contracts. This hides churn, but really only defers it. If smaller customers want to pay monthly and are happy, why force them otherwise?
- Threatening to sue customers over autorenewals, nonpayment, etc. You’re really going to go sue a customer?
- Hanging on to low performers. Because recruiting gets harder. You start to hear a lot of excuses for underperforming management when growth slows.
- Moving customer success into sales. But then who will care about the customers, really?
The founders may be the only ones to fight here. That energy has to go into winning, into gaining market share, into getting back to growth. Not into getting more pain out of the base.
It’s gotten so bad, that even I’m a bit scared to buy a new SaaS product today. It’s all too much:
Fight for your customers. Fight for the little guy. Fight for Free. Fight for The Future.
(image from here)
