\ Revenue Leakage: Product or Customer Time to Value Problem?
Everyone looked at the tech problems. This sales leader looked at the blind spot...
…how long it took customers to see benefits.
"Don't assume your growth problem is a tech problem. Alignment around solving specific customer pain is far more powerful than feature breadth." - James Trotter, AspireSix
THE PROBLEM
A FAST-GROWING SAAS COMPANY HIT TURBULENCE JUST AS IT WAS PREPARING FOR ITS NEXT STAGE OF GROWTH:
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Sales stalled and retention slipped while leadership blamed technical issues.
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Customers waited months to see results, eroding confidence and revenue.
- What looked like a product problem was actually a growth problem hiding in plain sight.
The Numbers Say It All
Time-to-value reduced from 17 months to less than 5 months
In-year bookings increased 73%
Expansion revenue grew 44%
Transactional velocity doubled
AspireSix sat down with James Trotter, Principal Consultant, AspireSix to discuss how he helped a SaaS company realign its growth strategy, rebuild momentum, and uncover the leadership blind spots hiding beneath “technical” problems.
What was happening inside the company when you joined?
James: When I came on board, the company was in the middle of a massive product re-platforming. Everyone was focused on fixing technical debt. But the real issue wasn’t the software; it was how long it took customers to feel any value from it. Sales cycles were dragging out, implementations were taking forever, and customers were frustrated before they ever saw results.
What did you notice that others had missed?
James: Fresh eyes helped. It was clear we didn’t have a product problem; we had a time-to-value problem.
[Time-to-value is how long it takes a customer to start getting measurable benefit after buying a solution.]
As the platform expanded, the sales playbook never evolved. We were still selling everything the platform could do, instead of taking the time to identify a prospect's most urgent problem first, then relate how the platform could alleviate their pain.
How did that disconnect show up in the business?
James: Deals were big, but they took nine to twelve months to close. Then it could take another eighteen months before customers were up and running. That’s over two years before they felt real value. During that time, new customer contacts rotated in and client priorities shifted. In addition, our salespeople got pulled back in to "save" deals that should have been closed and celebrated months earlier. That cycle drained both revenue and morale.
What did you do to change that?
James: We shifted from selling the “whole platform” to a focused land and expand approach. Instead of pitching everything at once, we zeroed in on each prospect’s number-one priority and built success from there.
That required a new sales playbook, a tighter handoff between sales and implementation, and bringing customer success into the deal from day one. We also made sure clients understood upfront what their role and responsibilities would be during implementation so projects stayed on track and delivered value faster.
We built a shared process, created standard handoff documents, defined SLAs for kickoff calls, and automated key steps. It wasn’t glamorous, but it completely changed momentum. Within six months, our average time-to-value dropped from seventeen months to nine, and within a year we were consistently below five months.
How did leadership react to such a shift?
James: There was healthy resistance at first. Moving from “big deals” to “focused deals” can look risky on paper. But once we showed that total bookings grew faster within twelve months and that customers were happier and expanding sooner, the results spoke for themselves.
What lesson should executives take from this experience?
James: Don't assume your growth problem is a tech problem. Alignment around solving specific customer pain is more powerful than feature breadth. Executives must resist the temptation to lead with everything you can do and instead focus on solving the one problem your customer cares about most. When you do that, complexity becomes manageable and growth accelerates.
How does this connect to the AspireSix approach?
James: At AspireSix, we create your go-to-market strategy around your customer’s path to value. That means embedding customer success from the start, equipping your sales team with clear plays, and ensuring your leadership decisions don’t create hidden costs later, what we call Executive Debt™. And we don’t just build the strategy; we teach your team how to continue executing long after we are gone.
When you fix the value problem, revenue doesn’t just recover … it compounds.
Let's reduce your time-to-value in 90 days. Start with a complimentary one-hour working session.
To learn more or schedule a working session, visit aspiresix.com/team/james/