The Customer Lifecycle Leader: Why Your Next VP Should Own Presales to Renewal

Introduction

Here's a familiar scenario that plays out in enterprise software companies every day: A £2M deal is on the brink of collapse. Not because of product issues or pricing, but due to a challenge as old as enterprise software itself; the handoff.

The presales team promised seamless integration. Professional Services discovered undocumented systems. Customer Success inherited a fractured relationship.

If this sounds painfully familiar, you're not alone.

This scenario bleeds revenue and trust at every handoff. But what if the problem isn't the execution of these handoffs, but their very existence?

The Hidden Cost of Traditional Silos

In my 15 years spanning Presales, Professional Services, and Customer Success in the payments industry, I've witnessed firsthand the real cost of these artificial boundaries:

• Implementation failure rates are staggering: One in three companies rate their enterprise implementations as unsuccessful^[1], with failure rates ranging from 55% to 75%^[2]
• Revenue retention is suffering: Even top-performing companies with £15M-30M+ ARR struggled to reach 100% net revenue retention in 2024^[3]
• Growth dependencies have shifted: Companies now derive 40% of their growth from expansion revenue; making seamless customer journeys critical
• Handoff friction is documented: Customer Success teams frequently report insufficient information transfer, forcing them to "re-do discovery post-sale”^[4]

Silos don’t just affect the implementation efforts inside the vendor. I can recall several programmes where the initial implementation has gone smoothly but, when the customer’s project team were replaced by their ‘BAU’ counterparts, cracks started to become apparent in anything from the new project was dependent on some third-party systems that hasn’t been fully launched or, more frustratingly, where we delivered exactly what we were asked for but, what was requested, was not what the operational teams required. Both these projects required time-consuming (and costly re-work) that both delayed the customer’s time-to-value and the vendor’s ability to recognise revenue.

The Integrated Alternative: Customer Lifecycle Leadership

The most innovative companies in payments and enterprise SaaS are restructuring around a new paradigm: unified ownership from first demo to renewal. This isn't just about better coordination; it's about fundamental transformation of how we deliver customer value.

What Does a Customer Lifecycle Leader Own?

Traditional Model:

• Presales: "Get the deal signed"
• Professional Services: "Get it implemented"
• Customer Success: "Keep them happy"

Lifecycle Leadership Model:

• Unified Ownership: One leader accountable for the entire journey
• Integrated Teams: Presales engineers who stay through implementation
• Consistent Strategy: Expansion opportunities identified during presales, delivered through PS, and realised in CS
• Single Accountability: No more "that's not my department"

The Systems Thinking Advantage

Here's where mental models become crucial. Traditional organisations optimise locally—each department maximises its own metrics. But customer value is created through the entire system.

Customer Lifecycle System Diagram

Customer Lifecycle System
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
INPUT               →    PROCESS           →    OUTPUT
(Presales)               (Implementation)        (Success)
                         
• Discovery             • Knowledge Transfer    • Value Realisation
• Solution Design       • Technical Setup       • Retention (85-95%)
• Expectations Set      • User Training         • Expansion (40% of growth)
• Commercial Terms      • Go-Live Support       • Advocacy

                    ← FEEDBACK LOOP →
        (Insights from CS inform future Presales)

When you apply systems thinking to customer lifecycle:

• Presales designs solutions with implementation and expansion in mind
• Professional Services captures use cases that drive future growth
• Customer Success feeds insights back to improve presales positioning

Why This Matters More in Payments

The payments industry makes this integrated approach even more critical:

1. Technical Complexity: Payment integrations touch multiple systems, requiring deep technical knowledge throughout the lifecycle
2. Regulatory Requirements: Compliance needs span from initial scoping through ongoing operations
3. Ecosystem Dynamics: Modern payments involve multiple parties—acquirers, processors, schemes—requiring consistent relationship management
4. High Stakes: When payments fail, businesses stop

The best deals that I’ve been involved with have been where an integrated team has been formed at the inception of the project where professional services have been involved in the requirements capture (to, for example, keep timelines realistic), CSMs have been involved in the pre-launch training (to ensure that all common flows have been trained) and, even, the Support team have met their counterparts - and sometimes performed fire drills before go live to prove the flow of information is both swift and transparent.

Building the Lifecycle Leadership Function

Organisational Design

Option 1: Unified Reporting Structure

Chief Customer Officer
├── Presales Engineers
├── Implementation Managers  
├── Customer Success Managers
└── Technical Account Managers

Option 2: Pod Structure

Enterprise Account Pod
├── Sales Engineer (Presales)
├── Implementation Lead (PS)
└── Success Manager (CS)

Compensation Alignment

The key to making this work? Aligned incentives:

• Presales: Compensated on successful go-lives, not just signatures
• PS: Compensated on time-to-value and expansion opportunities identified
• CS: Incentivised on net revenue retention across entire account lifecycle

Skills Development

The Customer Lifecycle Leader needs:

• Technical depth to credibly lead all three functions
• Commercial acumen to drive revenue growth
• Systems thinking to optimise the whole
• Change management skills to transform organisations

What the Data Tells Us

The business case for integrated lifecycle leadership is compelling:

Valuation Impact

Software companies with Net Revenue Retention rates above 120% trade at a 63% premium over the market median^[5]. This isn't just about retention—it's about proving sustainable, efficient growth.

Industry Benchmarks

Looking at public SaaS companies reveals the retention^[6] ceiling:

• Good: Workday at 100% NRR
• Better: Zendesk at 116%, Okta at 120%
• Best: Datadog at 146%, Snowflake at 169%

The Retention Reality

Best-in-class gross retention sits at 86%+ across all business stages^[7]. But here's the challenge: achieving this requires seamless handoffs—or better yet, no handoffs at all.

My Results at Broadcom

When we unified Presales, PS, and CS under single leadership:

• Net revenue retention improved to 95%+
• Time-to-value decreased
• Zero voluntary attrition among top performers
• Professional Services revenue grew 20% year

The Path Forward

The artificial boundaries between Presales, Professional Services, and Customer Success are relics of a simpler time. Today's complex, technical products, especially in payments, demand integrated leadership.

As you evaluate your next VP hire, ask yourself:

• Can they credibly lead technical discussions from demo through implementation?
• Do they understand the commercial implications across the entire lifecycle?
• Will they break down silos or reinforce them?

The companies that figure this out will dominate retention and expansion metrics. The ones that don't will continue losing revenue in the handoffs.

Your Next Steps

1. Audit your handoff points: Where is knowledge being lost?
2. Calculate the real cost: What's the revenue impact of disjointed customer experience?
3. Pilot the pod model: Start with your most strategic accounts
4. Hire for breadth: Your next VP should have experience across the lifecycle

What's your experience with customer handoffs? Have you seen successful models that break down these silos? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Next week: I'll share the BRIDGE framework—a practical methodology for managing the entire customer lifecycle in enterprise payments.

Footnotes