Читать книгу Startup CXO - Matt Blumberg - Страница 34

Often, by necessity, startups build Service teams in an ad hoc manner with all hands on deck helping in any way they can to keep their clients happy. As startups start to scale and hire a dedicated Service team and leaders, it can become a major cost center and a major source of value. The startup CFO can get involved early to partner with Sales to ensure the team is making good decisions on team structure and prioritization. There are generally two major areas in the early days where the service team needs to be monitoring. One is the service team cost as a percentage of revenue (in order to drive a healthy gross margin) and the other is the retention rate metrics by cohort and important segments. On the gross margin, the finance team can help accurately measure the metric and benchmark it against similar businesses. Unlike operating margin, which will be very different for a startup versus a mature company, the gross margin should be fairly similar for a startup versus a mature company, or at the very least it will be in the same ballpark. Giving the team a target, say, “you have about 15 points of revenue in order for us to have a healthy gross margin and be comparable to our peers,” helps the team set reasonable targets for revenue under management per rep, and learn what the overall team cost structure should look like. On customer retention metrics, you want to help the team measure the gross number and the number by cohort and appropriate segment, especially by region and channel.