When you set off to a destination, you typically use a GPS to guide the way. If you hit a roadblock, you can simply have the GPS reroute your trip to get back on track.

A sales dashboard essentially acts as a “sales GPS.” It can help you determine if your company is on the right path towards hitting its goals, and correct the course if necessary.

With the right sales dashboards, you’ll be able to analyze performance across your sales team and make better decisions. But what kind of dashboards should you create? And what kind of information should you include in one?

In this article, we’ll explain what sales dashboards are and how they can improve your sales process. We’ll also provide a list of sales dashboard examples to help you set up your own.

A sales dashboard is a tool that helps you visualize key sales data from one place.

Common metrics that you can track include:

With a sales dashboard, you can track your teams’ performance against company objectives and make informed decisions about your sales strategy.

For example, if your reps are struggling to convert opportunities into buyers, you might revamp your sales playbook or provide scenario-based training. Without a sales dashboard, you’re left to figure things out on your own.

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to sales dashboards. In fact, it’s best to use a range of dashboards to get a clearer picture of your operations.

Here are eight sales dashboard examples that you can model to create your own.

Sales managers have a lot on their plates. While their responsibilities can vary from company to company, they need to track the right sales KPIs to inform their strategies.

A sales manager dashboard helps sales managers monitor key metrics for their entire team and track their performance against sales goals.

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Relevant KPIs:

At a glance, sales managers can see how much revenue each sales rep has generated against their target. They can also see a breakdown of conversion rates and average sale values.

What makes this dashboard valuable is that it can reveal coaching opportunities. For example, we can see that Graham Fowler achieved just 45% of their quota. A sales manager can hone in on their weaknesses and provide personalized sales coaching to help bring their numbers up.

A sales activity dashboard monitors the day-to-day activities of your sales reps. They include things like the number of calls that your reps make and how much revenue they generate.

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Relevant KPIs:

Sales activity metrics are examples of “leading indicators” — data that can help you gauge future performance. If a rep isn’t hitting their targets, looking at their activity metrics might tell you that they’re not making enough calls, in which case you can help them course correct.

Tracking sales activity metrics can also help your reps establish their own benchmarks. They’ll be able to know how many calls they have to make to hit their revenue targets.

Sales conversion dashboards show how effective your sales team is at moving prospects to the next stage of the sales funnel. They also help you evaluate your sales strategy.

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Relevant KPIs:

Leads don’t always convert — that’s just the nature of doing business. However, a low lead conversion ratio could indicate a poor lead qualification process.

Revamping your sales qualification process makes sure that your reps are focusing on prospects that are more likely to convert. Importantly, it can improve lead conversion ratios.

By analyzing conversion ratios for each stage of the sales cycle in a sales performance dashboard, you can pinpoint issues early on and take steps to address them.

A sales pipeline dashboard helps you gauge the health and status of your sales pipeline. You can also use them to identify trends as prospects move from one stage to the next.

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Relevant KPIs:

A sales pipeline dashboard gives you a high-level view of your pipeline. It shows the number of open opportunities in each stage and their estimated value. Full visibility into your pipeline means you can strengthen pipeline reviews and address at-risk deals before it’s too late.

A sales opportunities dashboard provides a clearer picture of your opportunities or prospects who are deemed likely to convert.

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Relevant KPIs:

This type of dashboard uses “weighting” to estimate revenue. For example, an opportunity in the negotiation stage has a high chance of converting, hence the 90% probability. A $100,000 opportunity at this stage would be valued at $90,000.

Sales opportunities dashboards also typically include a list of acquisition sources. This helps sales managers determine where their most valuable opportunities are coming from.

A sales forecast dashboard provides an estimate of how much revenue your company will generate in a given period (monthly, quarterly, or yearly). It may also show other relevant metrics like target attainment and pipeline coverage.

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Relevant KPIs:

A sales forecast helps companies make informed business decisions.

For example, if you anticipate lower revenue for the next quarter, you may hold off on hiring new staff. But if you expect an increase in revenue, you might consider expanding the sales team or even entering a new territory.

Sales forecasts also help sales managers set realistic quotas. If you expect to generate $500,000 from one territory but $200,000 from another, you can set those targets accordingly without putting undue pressure on your team.

A win/loss dashboard is an invaluable tool for conducting a win/loss analysis — the process of understanding why you won or lost certain deals. Sales leaders and sales managers use these types of dashboards to refine their sales strategy.

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Relevant KPIs:

By analyzing won deals, you can identify and narrow down the key criteria for your ideal customer profile (ICP) — a description of the buyers that would benefit from your solution. For example, if your company won more deals from certain industries, you might shift your sales strategy to focus on those verticals.

Likewise, analyzing lost deals can highlight gaps in your sales process. Maybe your messaging wasn’t strong enough or a rep didn’t demonstrate sufficient product knowledge.

Another benefit of a win/loss dashboard is it can help you identify top sales performers and learn what they’re doing differently. With these insights, you can iterate on your sales process and share their playbook with the rest of the team.

A sales by region dashboard helps sales managers understand where their company is making the most sales. It provides insights into how well products are performing in certain areas.

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Relevant KPIs

Products that sell well in one region may do poorly in another. But it’s impossible to know for sure unless you look at the data.

With a sales by region dashboard, sales managers can view sales data for each region and see how certain products are selling. They can also see the reps responsible for each sales territory and how much revenue they’ve generated for the company.

Now that we’ve looked at different examples of sales dashboards, let’s look at how you can create one for your company.

If you’re not already using a sales dashboard, you’re missing out on valuable sales insights that can help you drive more revenue for your company.

Follow these steps to create a sales dashboard.

Before you start creating your sales dashboard, you’ll want to determine who you’re creating it for and what they’re trying to answer.

Consider the following:

Knowing the target audience and their purpose will help you determine which KPIs to include in your sales dashboard.

There’s no shortage of sales data you can track.

While it’s tempting to fit as many metrics as possible into a dashboard, too much data can overwhelm your salespeople and make it difficult to extract meaningful insights.

Identify which KPIs to include based on the audience you identified in the previous step. Be sure to also consider the questions they want to answer.

Assuming that you’re already using a sales CRM, you should be able to quickly compile the data you need for the dashboard you’re creating.

Relevance is key here.

Only collect the data that supports the purpose of your dashboard. That means you’ll cut out any “fluff” that doesn’t add value. This will make it easier for the intended audience to gather the insights they need without any distractions.

Ways to track your sales data include:

The final data is to pull your data into a sales dashboard.

While you can use Excel or Google Sheets, entering the data manually into a sales dashboard template isn’t the best use of your time. It also increases the risk of human errors, which can skew your data.

The good news is that most sales CRMs support dashboards out of the box, allowing you to visualize key metrics with the data you’ve already been collecting.

Here’s an example of a sales overview dashboard in Zendesk:

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It displays a column chart of revenue for each month, as well as a breakdown of deal sources.

Using a sales tool like Salesforce, HubSpot, or Pipedrive is one of the simplest and most efficient options for pulling data into a dashboard. You can also connect your CRM tool to sales dashboard software or even a data visualization tool like Tableau.

Sales dashboards are valuable tools that visualize key sales metrics. Within one view, sales managers can monitor metrics like total revenue, conversion rates, and more. They can use these dashboards to track sales growth and identify issues early on.

Another way to use sales dashboards is to create revenue forecasts.

However, creating a forecast isn’t easy. You have to consider a range of variables to estimate how much revenue you’ll generate. Forecasts are rarely 100% accurate, but poor forecasting can affect decision-making and even sales performance.

Gong’s sales forecasting software eliminates the guesswork in forecasting revenue. It analyzes data points across all interactions to create forecasts based on facts. It also integrates with your CRM, so data like phone calls and emails are tied to your buyer records.

Click here to request a demo today.

Investing in an effective onboarding process is a must for every company. It helps users experience the value of your product and reaffirms that they made the right decision.

However, many companies continue to fall short of buyer expectations. In fact, as many as 90% of consumers feel that companies “could do better” when it comes to user onboarding. If your company is struggling with retaining buyers, the problem may be your onboarding process. 

In this article, we’ll look at user onboarding best practices that help create an effective onboarding experience and increase engagement.

It’s important to make the signup process as effortless as possible.

If you’re experiencing a high drop-off rate — the percentage of users who start signing up but don’t complete the process — you’re probably asking for too much information upfront.

Here’s a good example of a frictionless signup page from Notion, a productivity and collaboration tool:

Notion only asks for your email address. You can also continue with a Google or Apple email address. 

Experiment with your signup form and measure your drop-off rate. Even a simple change, like adding a new authentication option, can lead to more signups. 

Signup process best practices:

The fact that a buyer has signed up for your product doesn’t mean you’ve sealed the deal. The buyer is still evaluating your company and could churn if your solution doesn’t deliver value.

An effective welcome email can set the tone for your brand and reduce the time to value — the amount of time it takes for new buyers to derive value from your solution.

Here’s an example of a welcome email that Miro, a collaborative whiteboard platform, sends to new users:

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First, it welcomes the new user by name. Then it reiterates its value proposition (“Collaborate without constraints”) to reassure the user of their decision. Finally, it provides a short list of next steps for the user to take.

Welcome email product onboarding best practices:

71% of consumers expect brands to deliver personalized interactions. What’s more, 76% of consumers get frustrated when companies fail to meet those expectations.

Every user has different needs, so it doesn’t make sense to lead every user down the same onboarding path. Delivering personalized onboarding journeys helps you increase engagement and exceed users’ expectations.

When a user first signs up for Asana, a project management tool, they’re asked what their role is and the kind of work they do. Then, the tool asks them what their main objectives are.

Asana personalizes the rest of the onboarding journey based on the user’s selection. If they select “Personal task management,” they’ll be taken straight to a page where they can start adding a list of tasks.

Examine your buyer personas and consider how each might use your platform. Then, offer personalized onboarding journeys that enable each persona to achieve specific objectives. You can also create journeys based on specific roles or different departments (finance, sales, human resources, etc.).

Personalization best practices:

In the early days of Facebook, the growth team discovered that users who added at least 7 friends within the first 10 days were more likely to stick around than those who didn’t.

These are known as “aha” moments — when a new user first derives value from your product. An “aha” moment can be as simple as creating a checklist or as complex as building a workflow. Getting users to complete these actions is key to increasing retention.

Here are other examples of “aha” moments for different tech companies:

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What sets retained users apart from those who have churned? 

Look through your analytics, note any patterns in behavioral data, and hone in on the specific actions that correlate to buyer retention. Then, optimize your onboarding process to guide users to those actions as quickly as possible.

Best practices for finding your product’s “aha” moments:

One way to enhance the onboarding experience and help users get to that crucial “aha” moment as early as possible is to fill your empty state with helpful information. 

An empty state is a blank space users see when they first log in to a product. These pages typically don’t have any activities since it’s the user’s first time using the product.

Trello, a kanban-style project management tool, shows a helpful empty state when users first log in to the platform.

Right away, Trello provides a brief description of what boards are and includes a link for users to create their first one. There’s also a list of popular templates that users can get started with.

Here’s an example of a project management template:

Each card provides a handy tip to help users learn about different features.

Empty state best practices:

The downside of walkthrough videos is that they’re passive — users simply watch a video, barely interacting with the product. By the time they finish, they may forget where certain features are or how they work.

A better way to create an engaging onboarding experience (and make it an active learning process) is by using an interactive product tour. These typically include tooltips and popups that point out different areas of an interface.

Humanity, an employee scheduling software, provides action-driven tooltips that guide users toward specific actions (like adding new employees).

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Users are then asked to enter a few employees’ names.

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What makes tooltips effective is that they’re triggered one at a time, so there’s little risk of overloading your users. Tooltips also let users go at their own pace.

Interactive walkthrough best practices: 

People generally loathe having checklists with incomplete tasks. This is because of the Zeigarnik effect, a phenomenon that explains our tendency to remember unfinished tasks over finished tasks.

Including a checklist or progress bar taps into this powerful principle, as it can motivate your users to complete the items by helping them keep track of their progress.

As an example, DocuSign presents new users with a checklist that contains six items. There’s also a progress bar at the top of the window.

The first item is already checked off. All that’s left is for the user to finish the onboarding process by completing the other steps.

Progress bar best practices:

86% of buyers are more likely to stay with companies that provide ongoing onboarding resources. To increase retention, send periodic emails to help your users get the most out of your products.

Here’s an example of a follow-up email that Klaviyo, a marketing automation platform, sends to new users:

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The email goes on to explain how users can reach new buyers by integrating their eCommerce store with the platform. It also includes a clear CTA for users to get started right away. 

Follow-up email best practices:

New users will likely have questions about your product. But rather than reaching out to a customer success representative, most users prefer to troubleshoot problems on their own. In fact, 81% of consumers expect brands to offer more self-service options.

Offer plenty of self-service options that users can turn to if they encounter a problem. Common examples include: 

Here’s an example of our help center that our buyers can use to navigate our platform:

With self-service options, users can get the support they need without having to wait to speak to a customer success representative. They can also lower buyer support costs by reducing the amount of time reps spend answering the same queries.

Buyer self-service best practices:

Always look for ways to improve your onboarding process.

Consider sending exit surveys to buyers who canceled their subscriptions. Not everyone will reply, but some may be more than happy to share their thoughts.

If users aren’t getting to those “aha” moments, it’s your job to find out why. Dig into your user behavior analytics data and come up with experiments. Examples include offering interactive walkthroughs or more personalized onboarding journeys.

Be sure to continually seek and incorporate feedback from your users. Even small changes can lead to profound results in terms of engagement.

Onboarding testing and iterating best practices:

A proper onboarding experience can make all the difference when it comes to user retention. Follow the customer onboarding best practices laid out here to increase engagement and reduce churn.

Want to drive more buyers to your onboarding?

Book a demo today to see how our customer success software can help transform your sales process. Identify at-risk accounts, create a winning playbook, and get actionable insights that drive next steps.

While volatility can make sales exciting, it doesn’t always lead to stable payouts for sales representatives.

Should low sales always translate to low pay? How can managers and reps strike a fair balance?

Enter the sales commission structure, which outlines how a company pays their sales reps based on performance. Sales commission structures or compensation plans can take on a wide range of forms, with the best providing sales reps both financial stability and an incentive to make more sales.

But which sales commission plan is right for your sales department? In this article, we’ll explore the many types of sales commission structures, which ones are most common, and some general tips for choosing one that’s fair for everyone and best for your sales organization. Read on to learn more!

Earning commissions are essential for keeping sales people motivated and hungry to sell more. But not all commissions are equal, however — nor is any one type of commission plan appropriate for every company, product, or sales team.

Instead, most high-performing companies try to adopt a unique sales commission structure that gives sales teams the commissions they deserve without negatively affecting the bottom line.

As you might imagine, establishing an effective commission model with a reasonable commission rate is highly dependent on multiple variables, such as the net revenue of each sale, the size and scope of the sales team, the frequency of sales, and even the product itself.

While these variables can vary, the goals — and their necessary balancing points — remain the same:

Sales commission plans also help companies retain salespeople if sales are inconsistent, or if they don’t have the budget for a full-time sales team. Again, situations can vary, as do their associated commission structures.

For most companies, achieving these balances usually comes down to changing their compensation plan by adding a small per-sale sales commission rate on top of an existing salary — usually 10–20% of their overall pay. This helps keep valuable salespeople while giving them a healthy (i.e., not bottom-line-breaking) incentive to keep working hard.

Of course, a commission plan such as an 80:20 salary-to-commission ratio is only one of many potential examples (though it may be among the most common). Before we dive into other commission structures, however, let’s take a closer look at different kinds of commissions.

Commissions aren't always just a “straight cut” of total sales — they can also be based on a person’s regular salary or the amount of the work they performed. These variations are typically grouped into three major categories:

As we’ll see in the next section, these basic commission types can be combined or structured in many interesting ways.

So how do you know what type of commission structure is right for you?

It depends. Looking at our examples from earlier, you can probably imagine scenarios where one type of commission is more appropriate than another. For example, paying a graduated commission might make little difference if sales volumes are relatively small.

Other factors such as turnover, industry standards, and on-target earning (OTE) also influence commission plans. Again, the primary goal is to motivate salespeople and avoid turnover without breaking the bottom line.

The most common commission structure is base salary plus commission. While this is technically a form of graduated commission rate, it doesn’t always come with graduated commission tiers based on revenue — a salesperson might get paid a base salary plus a straight commission rate or a base salary plus a piecework commission rate. It all depends on the company, the product, and, of course, the money.

Now that we know the basics of commissions, it’s time to see how they’re used and structured in the real world.

While there are plenty more types of sales commission structures than we have room to list, here are the ten most common compensation strategies you’ll encounter.

Essentially a form of straight commission, 100% commission is exactly what the name implies: the salesperson gets paid solely in commission with no base salary.

While a straight commission might sound risky, it can‌ be the ideal structure in many situations — especially if the company doesn’t put a cap on total commission payouts. With no caps on earning potential but nothing to back up their salary, salespeople under this payment structure will be extra motivated to sell as best they can to meet their sales targets. Other benefits of this structure include speed to market (i.e., no overhead required for sales staff) and having an easy way to gauge sales performance.

Despite these benefits, however, a 100% commission percentage isn’t always appropriate: salespeople earning a straight commission will be considered independent contractors, and a straight commission can also leave sales reps with too little (or too much) income. 

Base salary plus commission is by far the most common sales commission structure. Here, salespeople earn a base pay (either hourly or salary) and then a commission on top of it.

The actual salary-to-commission ratio can vary, however. Typically, the base pay isn’t enough to be considered a livable income for the salesperson. Instead, it provides them a buffer for “slow” periods while incentivizing them to sell more (and, as a result, make more).

This structure often provides the best of both worlds, allowing companies to save money while avoiding turnover, while also allowing salespeople peace of mind and the flexibility to invest in their skills.

Whether there’s a base salary or not, there’s often the question of how to structure the commission itself.

The most common approach is a revenue commission, which is based on a set percentage of revenue. This is what we’ve encountered so far, where a salesperson with a revenue commission of 10% would earn $100 on a $1,000 sale.

A major benefit of this sales commission is that it’s straightforward and easy to understand. Both companies and salespeople know exactly what to expect from each sale, and the structure makes sure that top performers get top pay. While it can definitely cut into profits, it’s a good structure for already profitable companies looking to grow into new areas with minimal risk.

A tiered or graduated sales compensation plan can be useful for further rewarding sales past certain milestones. A typical tiered commission structure might offer 5% commission on the first $10,000 in sales, then 8% commission on all sales past that point.

Tiered commissions usually serve to motivate sales reps and encourage them to surpass major sales goals and milestones. The opposite can also exist to penalize underperformers or to ensure that salespeople reach a certain goal, such as offering only 80% of their normal commission for sales under a certain amount.

As the old saying goes, you have to spend money to make money — and a gross margin commission structure is the best way to account for this.

Where revenue and tiered commissions take a “straight cut” of the sale, gross margin commissions factor in the company expenses necessary to make the sale (travel, food and beverage, etc.) and only pay the salesperson the difference.

For example, suppose a salesperson makes a $1,000 sale, but the sale had $200 in expenses. Under a gross margin commission, the salesperson would walk away with $1,000 - $200 = $800 (i.e., the gross margin of sales revenue).

A commission draw guarantees a minimum monthly salary for salespeople by paying the difference between salary and commission as a sort of flexible “base salary.”

Note that this is nothing like the “base salary plus commission” structure we covered earlier. For example, if a company guarantees a monthly salary of $3,000 but a salesperson only makes $2,500 in sales one month, then the company will pay an extra $500 to guarantee their $3,000 monthly salary. However, the extra amount is usually deducted from the next month’s commission.

While it may sound a bit overcomplicated, commission draw is a great way for new or growing companies to guarantee salaries without having to set money aside. This allows companies to stay flexible and keep dedicated salespeople while spending the bare minimum.

Residual commission rewards salespeople for securing long-term customers by paying them a regular commission for as long as that customer stays with the company. This is usually appropriate for companies offering monthly subscriptions, recurring payments, or long-term contracts with regular renewals.

Territory volume commission ensures that every salesperson within a certain territory receives the same commission. For example, if a territory has three salespeople and they make $1,000, $700, and $1,300 in sales, each of them might receive the average ($1,000).

While this can sometimes help promote team dynamics, some high-performing salespeople may feel like they’re carrying the weight of under-performing team members.

Multiplier commission takes the typical revenue commission (i.e., a set percentage) and multiplies it by a modifier depending on a salesperson’s success. For example, a salesperson who meets their quote might have their regular commission multiplied by 1.25 for a 25% bonus.

Though multiplier commissions can be a valuable incentive tool, many companies and salespeople alike find it introduces unnecessary complexity into otherwise fair and straightforward sales commission models.

Some companies abandon commission structures altogether and simply offer their salespeople the “base rate only” – in other words, an hourly wage or salary. This is rarely successful, since removing sales compensation can also remove a salesperson’s motivation or incentive to sell.

Clearly, there’s many different ways to create a commission structure. But which sales commission is right for you and your sales talent?

While there’s no one answer, following these tips can help you identify the most promising options. And don’t forget that you can combine different commission structures to achieve a combination of goals.

Your sales goals will likely be the biggest factor in determining your commission structure. For example, if you wanted to increase sales 25% and keep 50% of existing customers, then you might choose a combination of 100% commission and residual commission to incentivize salespeople to attract and keep customers, respectively.

Even the most well-intentioned commission structures are limited by budget and revenue. Make sure that your budget, expected revenue, and expense estimates are enough to compensate both your salespeople and your company. A gross margin commission structure could help with extra sales and marketing expenses.

Since every salesperson is different, it’s crucial to look at each one and identify their sales strengths (and weaknesses). In doing so, you’ll see where they’re most effective, which could help inform which sales commissions would be most incentivizing.

How do you measure success, and what is a “sale” for your company? How many sales do you expect over a certain time frame? Defining these and other key performance indicators (KPIs) such as deal size and win rate can also help define the specifics of your commission structure.

Are your sales a one-time purchase or do they lead to recurring payments ‌(e.g. monthly subscriptions or contract renewals)? Does your pricing structure lend better to a one-time commission or a residual commission?

Whichever commission structure you choose, always review it with your sales reps first. Remember, the goal of a commission structure is to motivate and reward your sales professionals!

As we’ve seen, fine-tuning your commission structure relies heavily on analyzing performance and sales data over time. Using revenue intelligence tools is one of the best ways to identify your sales department’s strong areas and further incentivize your most effective sales strategies.

Your sales commission structure makes all the difference when it comes to keeping your sales teams productive and motivated. With revenue and sales intelligence from Gong, you can have intelligent insights into your sales pipeline, deals, buyers, and sales team performance — everything you need to know to create an optimal commission structure and become a sales leader.

Ready to do sales smarter? Request a free demo today.

You have to spend money to make money — and that’s especially true when acquiring buyers. But how do you know whether your investments in customer acquisition are actually paying off?

One of the best ways is to calculate your CAC LTV ratio.

This ratio directly compares your customer acquisition costs (CAC) to their lifetime value (LTV), allowing you to measure the exact return you’re getting on your customer investments. Calculating your CAC LTV ratio can also help identify your most valuable buyers, and even key areas for improvement.

In this article, we’ll run through the basics of the CAC LTV ratio and how to calculate it, as well as provide a few helpful tips for boosting your ratio and staying competitive.

A CAC LTV ratio (also known as a LTV CAC ratio) is the ratio between a buyer’s Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) and their Lifetime Value (LTV). In other words, it’s exactly how much value a buyer returns for every dollar spent in acquiring them.

While there’s plenty of room for ambiguity in calculating both CAC and LTV, both sales metrics are usually expressed in dollar amounts. As a result, it’s necessary to associate every cost and value monetarily, even if there isn’t a clear cost association.

For example, while you may not be able to get an exact dollar amount for how much ad spending it took to convert a specific buyer, you may be able to achieve a “good enough” estimate by taking an average of all buyers. Similarly, limiting the analysis to only known variables (e.g. established sales and marketing costs) may also be enough.

Thankfully, it doesn’t take laser-focused precision to get a useful (read: accurate) CAC LTV ratio. While you’ll definitely want reasonably accurate figures for marketing expenses, revenue, and so on, the calculations are usually very forgiving.

To put this in perspective, let’s take a closer look at both LTV and CAC calculation, and how you can compare them.

Customer acquisition cost (CAC) is the monetary cost of acquiring new buyers. For most businesses, CAC is expressed by the following formula.

CAC is the ratio of the total sales and marketing expense (or S&M expense) spent to acquire a certain number of new buyers. This ratio is essentially the average customer acquisition cost per new buyer.

For example, suppose a company invested $10,000 into their sales and marketing initiatives (such as a go-to-market strategy for a new product). If this investment resulted in 100 new buyers, their average CAC would be $10,000 / 100 = $100 per buyer. In other words, the company has an average customer acquisition cost ratio of $100 per buyer.

Note that there isn’t an objectively “good” or “bad” CAC — it all depends on the company and product. While a CAC of $100 would be great for a $5,000 product, it would be very, very bad for a $10 product. We’ll be able to determine this by calculating the customer lifetime value (LTV) in the next section.

Lifetime value (LTV) is the total value (usually revenue) a buyer generates over their “lifetime” with the company. LTV can be expressed by several formulas depending on the company or product.

Generally speaking, LTV is the total revenue generated by a buyer over a certain period. For SaaS and ecommerce companies, this is usually dependent on average monthly revenue per buyer, since their business model usually operates under monthly subscriptions or other recurring monthly purchases.

For example, suppose a SaaS business charges an average of $100 per month for an analytics platform. If a buyer uses the analytics platform for 24 months, then their LTV is $100 x 24 = $2,400. Similarly, if another buyer uses the analytics platform for 12 months, then their LTV is $100 x 12 = $1,200.

Note that LTV can be calculated as an average or on a per-customer basis.

An ecommerce company might take an average by multiplying the average purchase value by the number of repeat sales and the average customer retention rate (in months). For example, if a product has an average order value of $50, and that product has 5 repeat sales over an average of 12 months, then the average LTV is $50 x 5 x 12 = $3,000.

Just like CAC, a buyer’s LTV can be either good or bad depending on the context of the product and the average CAC — something we’ll see more of in the next section.

CAC and LTV depend on each other to provide meaning and context.

For example, a “high” LTV might not actually be very high if the average CAC is close to or exceeding it. Similarly, a “low” LTV might be very good if the average CAC was very low.

Clearly, “high” and “low” are entirely subjective here — especially where every company has different pricing, subscription models, acquisition costs, and so on. Instead, it’s the ratio between them that makes all the difference.

That’s where the CAC LTV ratio comes in. By taking the ratio of LTV to CAC, companies can get a more accurate measure of a buyer’s “true” LTV by basing it on acquisition costs. As you might imagine, you want your CAC LTV to be at least 1:1, which is where a buyer generates enough revenue (LTV) to cover their acquisition cost (CAC).

Of course, different CAC LTV ratios have different meanings — some of which aren’t entirely obvious. As we’ll see later, even a high CAC LTV ratio can indicate areas for improvement!

Businesses use CAC LTV ratios to measure the effectiveness of customer acquisition. Here, “effectiveness” isn’t the same as simply acquiring a large number of buyers — instead, it’s maximizing the return on investment in customer acquisition.

This metric is useful for many reasons, and for many different people.

While “CAC LTV ratio” and “LTV CAC ratio” are used interchangeably, both mean the same thing: The ratio of a customer’s lifetime value (LTV) to their acquisition cost (CAC), i.e. LTV-over-CAC.

Calculating a CAC LTV ratio is fairly simple, assuming you already have a reliable CAC and LTV to work with. However, what’s not so simple is figuring out what different ratios mean, and how to change them.

The CAC LTV or LTV CAC ratio formula is expressed by the following formula:

Here, the CAC LTV ratio is simply a buyer’s LTV divided by CAC, whether the CAC is specific to the customer or the average for a pool of customers.

For example, suppose a buyer pays $100 per month to a SaaS company for 10 months. Meanwhile, the SaaS company has spent an average of $5,000 on sales and marketing to acquire 10 new buyers.

What is the buyer’s CAC LTV ratio?

With a CAC LTV ratio of 2.0, we know that the buyer generated twice the amount of money it took to acquire them — a 200% return.

CAC LTV ratios typically range anywhere from 0 to 5 (or above). But which one is “best?”

Generally speaking, a good CAC LTV ratio is about 3.0. This ratio indicates a healthy return on investment without leaving too much extra growth on the table.

Here are the typical LTV to CAC ratios a company might encounter.

Whether too low or too high, there’s plenty of ways to improve your CAC LTV ratio.

Generally, low CAC LTV ratios can be increased by either increasing revenue or decreasing customer acquisition costs. Similarly, high CAC LTV ratios can be decreased by spending more on custom acquisition.

Try these effective strategies for boosting your CAC LTV ratio (especially if it’s low).

Not all buyers are equal — and the process of acquiring one buyer may be completely different than that of another. By fine-tuning your sales and marketing campaigns to different buyer segments, you can allocate sales and marketing expenses more effectively, which will lower your CAC and, in turn, boost your ratio.

In some cases, selling slightly more to a single high-value buyer can be easier and more profitable than selling to a large group of low-value buyers. By giving them extra attention, you can boost your most powerful LTVs and improve your ratios across the board.

Boosting your annual recurring revenue (ARR) is an effective way to boost the LTV of your buyers, and, as a result, your ratio. Some ways to boost ARR include (carefully) increasing subscription prices for new buyers, creating add-on services, and finding more buyers.

In the case of a high ratio, you may need to spend more on customer acquisition to increase both customers and ARR.

The key to both high LTVs and better ARR is increasing customer lifespan — in other words, keeping them happy. While there are many ways to do this, one of the most effective is to identify and address their specific needs. If they feel taken care of, they’ll be more likely to spend more for longer.

Reducing your CAC is one of the most effective ways to improve any ratio — and one of the best ways to do so is divert investments away from ineffective areas of your sales and marketing efforts. Companies can expect a double benefit if these costs are re-invested in areas with proven sales efficiency.

By extension of addressing buyer needs, you should pay special attention to buyer problems and pain points. By knowing and addressing these issues, you’ll not only improve the LTV of your current buyer, but also draw in new buyers looking for similar solutions.

Improving and maintaining an optimal CAC LTV ratio requires closely monitoring not only your revenue, but just about everything else throughout your sales pipeline.

While it’s possible to keep track of these points through a variety of tools, using a revenue intelligence tool is the most effective way to keep everything in one place.

With total visibility at all points in your sales process, you’ll be better equipped to increase customer value, fix inefficiencies, and invest in your most valuable buyers — all of which lead to a healthy CAC LTV ratio.

Ready to boost your CAC LTV ratio?

With Gong’s Reality Platform, you can automatically capture sales communications and get AI insights to help you see what works (and what doesn’t).

With additional features for forecasting risk, tracking strategic adoption, and even coaching and task automation, Gong gives you the tools you need to make the most of your sales expenses.

Request a free demo and see why Gong is the #1 choice for over 3,500 customers.

Chances are, you’ve heard of net dollar retention but are unsure how to utilize it for customer success.

Let’s clear things up.

Net dollar retention (NDR) is a crucial metric for SaaS companies. Calculating it can help marketers and sales reps forecast customer lifetime value (LTV) and make decisions that better align with the buyers’ long-term needs.

But customer success teams also need to pay close attention to this metric, because their work can directly influence it.

This article will help you understand dollar retention, its value and meaning, and how it is measured. We will also give you an easy net retention formula to follow.

Net dollar retention is a key performance indicator businesses use to measure customer loyalty, growth, and profitability. This metric helps you understand how much revenue your business keeps compared with the amount lost due to churn or cancellation rate.

If you earn $100 from a buyer cohort today, how much will you earn from them in a month? In a year? Think of NDR as a measure of how successful your business is at keeping its buyers and incentivizing them to spend more.

You may have also heard the term net revenue retention, which has the same meaning. NDR is measured in percentages and is usually calculated monthly, although yearly calculations can also be helpful when you need to focus on the long-term dynamics.

Net dollar retention can and should exceed 100%.

Gross dollar retention, or gross retention rate, is a similar metric, although slightly less insightful. It shows the amount of revenue that you keep from your existing buyers but without including upgrades.

Unlike NDR, gross dollar retention can’t exceed 100%.

Net dollar retention rate is one of the most crucial performance metrics for SaaS companies. It indicates if a company’s product or service is meeting buyer needs effectively enough to get them to renew after their initial subscription expires.

Companies with high NDR rates have many satisfied repeat buyers, while those with low NDR rates rely on the constant stream of new subscribers but rarely see renewals.

That’s why you can’t tell how a business is doing by looking at its monthly recurring revenue alone — you need to know how much of that money the company actually retains.

Businesses with a high net dollar retention rate are considered highly successful because they have loyal buyers who keep coming back for their products and services. Conversely, businesses with low NDR struggle to keep their buyers interested and engaged.

Here’s why monitoring NDR is a must for any growing and established SaaS company:

Keep in mind, a healthy net dollar retention rate enables you to reduce customer acquisition costs (CAC). This is important because acquiring new users requires more resources than retaining existing ones.

Yearly customer churn costs US companies $168 billion per year. Of that amount, $35.3 billion of that money could’ve been recovered by keeping buyers happy.

Hefty CACs will be less of a problem if your retention rates are high. Engaged buyers, whose loyalty only grows over time, will enable you to focus on the product itself instead of pouring all your resources into acquisition. They’ll be the ones doing word-of-mouth marketing for you.

Let’s sum it up.

Knowing your net dollar retention gives you a better understanding of your customer base and their habits and needs. You’ll be able to serve them tailored products and services that give them the best value for their dollar.

Ultimately, tracking NDR helps flag problems early on, so you can take proactive steps to reduce churn and unlock longer-term profitability.

To calculate your net dollar retention (NDR) for a set period, you’ll need your monthly recurring revenue, upgrade MRR, downgrade MRR, and churn MRR data over the course of said period.

You can rely on this net dollar retention formula:

Let’s say, your company starts the month with $450,000 in monthly recurring revenue.

During that month, some of your loyal customers enjoy your product so much that they decide to upgrade to a premium plan, bringing you $70,000 in additional revenue. However, other users downgrade to a cheaper plan or stop using your product altogether, costing you $50,000.

Based on the data above, your NDR rate would be 104%:

A high resulting percentage indicates the health of your business. It means that existing buyers continue to purchase additional products or features from you during their lifecycle. The more money retained from existing customers, the better.

Net dollar retention rates of over 140+% signify that your retention strategy works smoothly and you can safely increase your customer acquisition spending — you know your efforts will pay off generously.

A good net dollar retention rate will vary depending on your industry and type of business. Generally speaking, anything above 100% is considered reasonably healthy, with anything over 120% being excellent.

If your NDR drops below 90%, it might be cause for concern.

Any numbers below 80% should be further investigated as there may be issues with customer retention or upselling strategies. It makes sense to maintain your NDR at least near or above 100% to ensure long-term financial stability and growth opportunities.

According to Dave Kellogg, a tech advisor and angel investor, the median net dollar retention for enterprise software startups is 104%. In his opinion, for early-stage SaaS companies, the benchmark should be set at 90% or higher. Companies that go public typically have net dollar retention rates of well over 110%.

Kellogg also notes that organizations must deliver impeccable customer experiences to maintain a good net dollar retention rate.

Ultimately, this metric serves as an indicator of customer satisfaction.

NDR enables you to understand what needs improvement before your frustrated buyers abandon you for a competitor’s product.

Follow these 5 steps to improve your net dollar retention rate.

Attracting new buyers is important. However, the focus should be on retaining existing buyers because it’s less expensive.

Gaining the trust of your buyers will make them more likely to purchase additional products and services, resulting in higher levels of loyalty and boosting your NDR rate.

Reducing downgrades and churn can help you unlock growth and get a more dedicated audience truly passionate about your product.

Achieve this by:

Educational newsletters, helpful prompts, smooth onboarding, step-by-step walkthroughs, video tutorials, checklists, and kickoff calls — there are limitless ways to help your buyers make the most out of your product.

Customer service plays an integral role when it comes to retention rates.

Developing good relationships with your buyers starts at the initial contact point and continues throughout their journey. Anticipate buyer’s needs and be attentive to what they have to say about the product. Once you’ve provided them with a solution, make sure to regularly follow up with them to get feedback and see where you can help.

Upselling is an effective marketing tactic for increasing revenue from existing buyers. However, they may need a little nudge to open their wallets, and that’s where SaaS companies often get creative.

Limited-time offers, seasonal sales, bundles, pop-up reminders, and contextual upgrade prompts can help you entice your buyers and make them crave a more feature-rich plan. You can also tease your users by showing a glimpse of what they can get through a blurry screen.

For example, SquareSpace shows a blurry screen and displays a banner at the top to encourage users to upgrade their plan to view traffic data.

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This is just one example of how you can get users to upgrade to a premium plan.

Referral programs can be a great way to acquire new buyers in addition to growing profits from existing ones. Your users will be more likely to stick with your product and promote it further if their friends and colleagues are using it as well.

Referrals also help you lower your acquisition costs, get fast and reliable conversions, and increase positive brand awareness.

The last step is measuring your results so you can compare different tactics and adjust your strategy accordingly if needed. Now that you know which metrics impact your net dollar retention, you can choose analytics tools that provide you with a complete picture.

Now that you know what NDR is, you can see that achieving a good net dollar retention rate requires consistent effort. Customer-facing teams need to work in alignment to exceed customer expectations and get ahead of churn.

Meet Gong for customer success — the only tool you need to give your CS team visibility into customer journeys and account health.

With Gong, you can:

Book a demo to see Gong in action.

Quarterly business reviews (QBRs) are a crucial component of the customer success management process.

They give the customer success manager an opportunity to reconnect on customer goals, align on strategic direction, and share insights on upcoming feature releases (a great way to encourage retention).

Few disagree that the QBR is a valuable activity, but many struggle when it comes to determining what should be included in the agenda.

In this article, we’ll explore several quarterly business review examples. Use them as inspiration for designing your own QBR agendas to strengthen customer relationships and drive retention.

Let’s start by looking at three examples of quarterly business review agendas. If you’re new to QBRs, you may benefit from skipping ahead to our 101 on quarterly business reviews before circling back to these examples.

Our first QBR meeting example is a generic agenda that you can use to review the past quarter’s performance in any business context.

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Like any good quarterly review, this QBR example kicks off with a recap on the buyer’s key goals and what they want to accomplish.

This helps the account manager or CSM realign with the customer’s definition of success, as business objectives can shift over time.

Our second QBR example is an executive business review built specifically for companies that sell software products.

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This regular business review allows the CSM to dive deep into product usage analytics, a best practice for SaaS QBRs.

They can address any roadblocks in product adoption to help the buyer get more out of their platform. It also serves as the perfect opportunity to introduce new features that might have been released since the last quarterly business review.

Our third quarterly business review example is for companies that need to provide their clients with project updates, such as website development agencies and construction companies.

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This example covers key KPIs like customer health index and scorecards. It also covers action items from the previous review, as well as the buyer’s goals so the account manager can update their understanding of what defines success for that client. Because it’s a project-based QBR, it includes space to discuss potential risks.

Looking for a QBR template to manage customer relationships and ensure your business review agendas are consistent across the board?

The agenda below is what we at Gong believe to be the ultimate QBR agenda, drawing from the examples discussed above, as well as our own experience.

Note that the QBR agenda is broken down into 9 core sections:

Let’s look at how to use the nine critical sections in practice.

By examining several QBR examples like the ones discussed above, we’ve created the ultimate agenda for you to use in your own customer success strategy.

Introduce all guests (if everyone has met before, provide a quick recap).

For example:

Meeting attendees:

To discuss:

Recap on your current understanding of your buyer’s goals, objectives, and timelines.

For example:

From there, dive into some specific questions about the customer’s current situation to align with any changes in strategic direction or objections.

Sample Questions:

Discuss how your product utilization data relates to the buyer’s objectives. Use the following questions to guide your conversation:

Review instances where the buyer has accessed customer support, and how well their support tickets have been handled.

For example:

Review your customer health scorecard and key metrics.

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For example:

Discuss the buyer’s current lifecycle stage. Use the following questions to guide your review:

For example:

Use your product usage data to compare performance against internal benchmarks.

For example:

Give your buyer a sneak peek into upcoming product releases, and discuss how they relate to their goals.

For example:

Close your QBR conversation by recapping on the discussion and assigning action items.

For example:

Whether you’re new to quarterly business reviews or simply looking to refresh your memory before building out your own agenda, the answers to these questions will help you understand what a QBR should look like in practice.

A quarterly business review (QBR) is a formal meeting held every three months between your client stakeholders and a customer success manager (CSM) or account manager, depending on the industry.

At each review, your CSM will take the following four actions:

The intention of the QBR is to ensure continued alignment with customer goals and intentions, with the end goal of improving customer retention and reducing churn rates.

Holding business review meetings on a quarterly basis offers four important benefits:

All of this feeds into the overarching goal of QBRs and the customer success department in general: improved retention.

If a CSM’s understanding of their buyer’s goals is outdated, they’re going to make flawed recommendations that fail to catch potential churn signals.

A good CSM works to foster a strong relationship with their clients through regular QBR meetings that ask questions about customer needs, business developments, and satisfaction with product usage.

This makes them better prepared to provide strategic advice, recommendations, and product-related education.

Quarterly business reviews have five primary goals:

Trust is built through building a personal relationship and through the CSM demonstrating that they care about their customer’s goals.

Adoption is increased through product-education based on a CSM’s understanding of their buyers’ goals and needs. All of this drives retention, as satisfied buyers are less likely to churn.

QBRs can also be used to spot revenue growth opportunities, for example, when a CSM identifies that a buyer could benefit from upgrading their plan to one that offers a specific feature relevant to their needs.

QBR agendas can look different across companies, industries, and verticals. For instance, a CSM at a software company will discuss product adoption in their QBRs, but this isn’t always relevant for a marketing agency to discuss with their client.

There are, however, some similarities across the board. All QBR agendas should include the following:

Ready to create your own QBR agenda? Learn how in our guide: How to Create a Quarterly Business Review Agenda.

A good QBR shouldn’t be an arbitrary reading of product usage, result, and challenges.

Great CSMs will use these meetings as opportunities to forge relationships with buyers, identify at-risk accounts, and spot opportunities to upsell or cross-sell.

Gong’s revenue intelligence platform is perfect for helping customer success teams identify what works, and then replicate that across all conversations.

Automatic churn signals allow CSMs to get ahead of renewal conversations by catching key terms like “downsizing” or mentions of your competitors.

Conversation intelligence pulls insights from your highest performers’ conversations, helping you coach your team to drive revenue growth and improve retention.

Request a demo with our team today to discover how you can drive performance in your QBR conversations.

Your quarterly business review (QBR) presentation is an opportunity to reflect on how well your current strategies meet your buyer’s business goals.

If your business review presentation isn’t clear, to the point, and goal-oriented, your buyers will leave the meeting unsure about whether your services are improving their bottom line.

Here are the top reasons you’re struggling to convey your reflections clearly, along with presentation tips and best practices to upgrade your QBRs.

Your QBR presentation is a great opportunity for business growth.

Make your business review count this upcoming quarter by avoiding these traps.

Your quarterly executive business review should be concise, direct, and focused on specific business goals.

Speak too broadly, and you risk your presentation sounding like a high-level rundown. Explain every little detail, and you won’t have time to cover what matters.

Pick the key goals and concentrate on progress over the quarter.

Reiterate what you’re working toward, the steps you’ve taken, and how those strategies have played out. Then use this information to suggest your next steps.

Find QBR presentation examples or a good business review template that can help organize your thoughts. Not only can a presentation template help order your points, but it’ll also make it easier to create a fitting presentation design that visually illustrates what you're saying.

Remember, don’t get distracted by tangents. Stick to an agenda to keep your QBR on track and take questions at the end.

It can be tempting to sugarcoat or gloss over anything that’s been unsuccessful. But, it’s important to be upfront and discuss the context.

You’re not here to read your buyers a success story. A business review presentation is an opportunity to critically analyze your progress and agree on an action plan for the next quarter.

If you’ve got bad news, rip off the bandaid. This honesty nurtures trust and invites everyone in the meeting to brainstorm solutions.

Don’t say: “This quarter we’ve been testing an adventurous marketing strategy and we’re starting to see emerging patterns that steer us away from previous ideas toward a more fruitful future.”

Do say: “The marketing strategy we tested this quarter wasn't as successful as we’d hoped. The data shows that we misjudged campaign timings, so potential buyers went to our competitors. Taking this new information into account, our plan for next quarter is to use HubSpot to do XYZ.”

While it’s important to explain your tactics, you need to draw conclusions for future campaigns. Focus on wins, challenges, and opportunities.

Try doing a SWOT analysis to give an objective insight into the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT).

For example, let’s say your buyer wants to increase their sales.

Your Facebook advertising campaign led to more sales (strength), but the website kept crashing due to over-capacity (weakness).

Upcoming revenue from the influx of new buyers means you can funnel funds into upgrading your website to cope with higher traffic (opportunity). But, you’ll need to scale your customer success department or risk being overwhelmed by support calls (threat).

While data and analytics are important, it’s easy to get carried away with too many key performance indicators (KPIs). 

It’s better to have a handful of KPIs that your buyers will understand explicitly, rather than having so many that they get lost in the data.

Pick the KPIs that show a clear picture of how you’re defining the success of your strategies.

As a customer retention example, you might use tools to measure:

Your buyers don’t need to hear all the figures. They just want to know how churn is affecting their profits.

So, you only pick customer churn rate and net revenue retention to show how many buyers you’re losing and how it impacts the bottom line.

While you don’t want to ramble on or make excuses, it’s important to contextualize your progress, both good and bad.

There are many internal and external factors that impact campaign success, from economic and political issues to company restructuring. A tactic could fail because you made a poor hiring decision or because there was an unexpected global pandemic.

Contextualizing your progress helps you to understand the reason for your results. Not only does this help traverse these issues in the future, but it also shows you how to leverage similar landscapes to benefit from the context.

As an example, take Virgin Pulse.

Even amid economic uncertainty, their sales team is thriving. They’ve recently increased top-of-the-funnel conversions by 400%.

By using Gong to listen in to sales meetings, they’ve identified common trends that led to successful deals, despite the negative economic factors. Highlighting common discussion topics, questions, action items, and relationship dynamics, Gong shows sales managers what buyers need in real time.

So, if they see buyers are worried about high prices during future periods of economic downturn, they know to offer promotions when people are tightening their belts.

Real data gives credibility to your findings. It proves that your strategies are working as they say they are and enables you to drill down into how you’re succeeding.

Rather than simply pointing out which campaigns were successful, solid data can help illustrate the factors that have affected your progress, when, and how.

Plus, it’s easier to explain your results concisely with hard numbers.

Remember though, nobody wants to hear someone drone on about numbers.

Visuals and infographics make your QBR presentation design more engaging and easier to understand. Add data visualizations to your presentation deck to help everyone conceptualize the data.

While you don’t need to reinvent the wheel, your strategies should fit your buyers.

The strategies you choose need to align with your buyer’s goals. But, beyond that, they should fit the firm’s resource capacity, target persona, business model, and operating style.

When you design solutions, take a deep dive into these aspects of the buyer’s operations to better tailor your ideas.

After all, it's no use building a TikTok campaign for a company that targets senior citizens.

Just look at Addepar.

While they could have recycled many of their previous strategies to improve sales effectiveness, they chose to delve into their buyer personas.

Using Gong’s Deal Insights tool to analyze buyer interaction data, the wealth management platform can now devise extremely specific, highly-impactful sales tactics.

For example, every account manager now encourages prospects to invite another member of their team into the sales pitch call because it significantly increases the chance of conversion.

This very niche solution might not work for every company, but it works for Addepar because it’s founded on their exact target persona.

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking you have all the answers.

Just because you’ve seen a hiccup like this before, doesn’t mean you know how to solve it too. If you’re only drawing conclusions from data and your own experience, you might miss key day-to-day factors affecting your success plan.

For example, imagine that your buyer wants to improve bottom-of-the-funnel conversions.

Looking at the KPIs, you notice most buyers drop out when asked to enter personal data. You incorrectly conclude that you’re asking for too much information.

However, that’s not the problem.

After talking to the technical support team, it’s clear the bugs in the onboarding process are affecting customer experience. Your time, efforts, and resources would be better spent improving the customer journey.

Reach out to the people on the ground. If you’re building sales strategies, talk to sales managers. If you’re trying to improve the customer success program, speak with the customer success team. Leveraging employees provides you with a big source of real-world data.

Try using Gong to analyze these interactions so you can find common themes between teams and pinpoint valuable insights from the people working with your strategies every day.

While it’s a quarterly business review, it’s important to use these reflections to look toward the future.

By unpacking what works and what doesn’t, you now have the building blocks to craft goal-oriented, actionable next steps for the upcoming quarter.

On top of that, you’ve also learned lessons that could impact your future trajectory.

For example, you may have found a new technology to help you develop your product twice as quickly as expected. While you planned to dedicate the next quarter to development, you now have to adjust your product roadmap to move into the next stage.

Upgrade your roadmap with updated next steps and timescales, taking into account the reflections and lessons from the past quarter.

A quarterly business review presentation isn’t just an opportunity to reflect on last quarter’s progress. It’s a chance to show what works and what doesn’t, so that you can adjust your strategic plan for the next quarter.

It shouldn’t be a diatribe.

Use a quarterly business review template or sample QBR presentation to help organize your thoughts, so you keep every client meeting brief, customer-specific, and goal-centric. Add infographics to clarify data and a roadmap slide to contextualize future actions.

Don’t forget to harness customer and team interactions to help you understand the context of your progress and the main areas for improvement. Get a demo of Gong today to help you gain valuable insights to shape your business review presentations.

Many businesses are losing valuable customers, not because their product isn’t effective, but because their sales and customer success processes aren’t effective.

Instead of begging marketing for an endless avalanche of leads, more and more companies are using technology to better understand and improve the customer experience. That’s where customer success tools come in.

The right customer success tool can help you understand the buying cycle, identify dropoff points and blockers, and learn what customer behavior leads to loyal business.

Read on to learn what customer success tools are and why they’re so important for acquiring and retaining customers. Then we’ll cover ten of the top customer success tools on the market and how to choose the right one(s) for you.

Customer success tools are products that help you document, analyze, and improve the customer experience, from onboarding to renewal.

While some customer success tools specialize in different areas (onboarding, retention, etc.), they generally allow you to track the interactions a buyer has with your team, your product, and even your content. This data allows you to assess customer health and can help identify those falling through the cracks. Customer success tools can help you manage support requests and track your pipeline and upcoming renewals.

CSM stands for customer success management or customer success manager. “CSM software” and “CSM tools” are other common terms for customer success tools. They collect and analyze customer data to help you satisfy and keep more customers.

Modern CSM tools integrate with your other technologies and make it easy to share data between them. For example, Gong connects with your calendar, email provider, and web conferencing platform to give you a detailed picture of each customer experience.

When it comes to software and technology, there are tons of acronyms. Here’s a quick rundown on the differences between CSM, CRM, and CMS.

There are endless tools and technologies that claim to make your business more successful, but is customer success software really necessary?

It is if you want to improve customer experience, reduce churn rate, and create an all-star CS team.

Customer success technology keeps all account information in one place and makes it easily accessible. This boosts customer satisfaction by creating a more consistent and personalized experience.

Let’s say a buyer contacts support. With the right customer success tool, your rep can pull up their information and know at a glance how long they’ve been a customer, how often they contact support, and whether they’re at risk of churning.

Customer success tools also give you valuable data for evaluating your sales pipeline and understanding the factors that correlate to retention.

One benefit you might not expect is that customer success tools can help coach your customer success managers. For example, after using Gong’s searchable library of customer communications to train and coach new account managers, Appen reduced the ramp time of new CSMs by four months.

The right customer success tool can be an absolute game-changer.

Here are 10 of the top customer success tools and what they have to offer.

Gong is a customer success tool that records and analyzes customer-facing calls. It offers data-driven insights into your sales pipeline and your market, and coaches your customer success team.

Key features

Gong is best for any business seeking perfect call records and notes, custom coaching tips to train and ramp reps, and unprecedented AI-powered insight into your market.

Gainsight is a customer success platform that combines data from multiple sources to predict risk, operationalize expansion, and understand customer feedback.

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Key features

Gainsight is best for mid-market businesses looking to make sense of tons of data. It’s most popular among software and IT companies.

Designed for software-as-a-service (SaaS) businesses, Custify is a customer success tool that helps you track product usage and monitor customer health.

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Key features

Custify is best for small businesses in the SaaS market. Customers praise the customer success platform’s ease-of-use.

SmartKarrot bills itself as an intelligent growth platform, helping you track and manage accounts, from onboarding to brand advocacy.

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Key features

SmartKarrot is best for mid-sized and small businesses that want to have control over what they see and implement standardized and automated practices.

UserGuiding is a user onboarding and help tool, enabling businesses to create self-serve resources to guide buyers and maximize adoption and usage.

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Key features

UserGuiding is best for small businesses that want to create a robust collection of user guides and resources, without having to code. It’s better for building general help content than providing any account-specific support.

Zendesk is a customer service solution that allows businesses to provide a mix of conversational support and self-serve resources.

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Key features

Zendesk is most popular among small and mid-sized businesses that need to provide a mix of personalized and generalized customer support.

ChurnZero is a customer success platform that helps CS teams better understand their buyers so they can provide a better user experience for individual accounts and their audience.

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Key features

ChurnZero is popular among technology and IT companies, especially those in the mid-market category. It’s a well-rounded tool for building customer communities and collaboration.

Planhat is a customer data platform that combines information from different sources. Two-way synchronization allows Planhat to share data with other applications as well.

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Key features

Planhat users praise its ease of setup and intuitive platform. Small to mid-sized businesses like that they can build custom elements without having to code.

Best known for their customer relationship management (CRM) system, HubSpot’s Service Hub is an extension of the CRM to strengthen relationships and manage help requests.

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Key features

HubSpot Service Hub is best for businesses that already use the HubSpot CRM. Buyers appreciate how organized the ticketing system is, but note that the Knowledge Base software can be difficult to work with.

Totango offers a variety of customer success tools that cover CS goal-tracking, customer journeys, cross-functional alignment, and more.

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Key features

Totango works with businesses of all sizes and the tools available make them usable in different contexts. Buyers praise their ability to centralize user data, but also note that the software can be slow.

To choose the right customer success software, you have to assess your business needs and which tools will support your areas for improvement.

It’s also important to consider that some CSM tools are suited to certain kinds of businesses. The SaaS industry tends to have a longer sales cycle, making customer acquisition an expensive process. A SaaS company needs a customer success tool that allows them to learn from each account and coaches reps to win more deals faster.

Like any technology, a customer success tool’s integrability is also a big part of the conversation. You need to consider how this software will work with your existing tech stack. Look for pre-built integrations with your most important tools, like Google Workspace, Office 365, Zoom, and Webex.

Delivering a great customer experience is a complex challenge for any business. The right customer success tools give you actionable insights and help you delight and retain your buyers.

We’ve covered some of the best customer success tools on the market, but the choice is yours. Your business can’t succeed without an effective customer success program.

Book a demo to see how Gong empowers your sales and customer success teams.