Joined May 2007
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Jun 12
Company size tells you nothing about how a customer operates, what they're ready to adopt, or what they actually need.
Here is a behavioral segmentation model you can use, built from the spend management category, with the AI layer that now runs across every B2B market.
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Jun 12
3 things this map shows that company size doesn't:
1. Progression from reactive to optimized is behavioral, not demographic. Any B2B category can build an equivalent.
2. AI maturity does not move in parallel with operational maturity. The gap is diagnostic.
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Jun 12
Stage 5 is not an incremental over Stage 4.
Stage 4, a well-run team uses systems.
Stage 5, agents run systems & the team runs agents. Everything changes.
The map tells you what the customer is ready for.
buff.ly/N8Pdk2k
#B2BSaaS #AI #ProductStrategy
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Jun 11
Stage 5 is not a better version of Stage 4.
Stage 4, a well-run team uses systems
Stage 5, agents run systems, the team runs agents
The cost structure and skills change. Commercial model changes. It is a different operating model.
buff.ly/N8Pdk2k
#AI #AgenticAI #B2B
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Jun 10
The customer tool stack of the maturity model is an integration roadmap.
Stage 2: QuickBooks, Xero, Sage
Stage 4: NetSuite, SAP, Dynamics
Your integration priorities, in the right order, by stage. No guesswork required.
buff.ly/N8Pdk2k
#B2BSaaS #SaaS #ProductStrategy
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Jun 9
There is one variable that determines whether AI will create lasting value for a B2B customer.
It is not the quality of the model. It is the state of the data beneath it.
That variable is systems integration.
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Jun 9
Agents need clean, connected, real-time data to operate reliably.
A customer with immature systems integration will run into accuracy and trust problems with AI agents regardless of model quality. The errors compound with the state of the data beneath them.
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Jun 9
Practical move: look at integration state before scoping any AI feature.
It tells you whether the customer can extract durable value before you build. That single check prevents a category of errors, expensive to diagnose after the fact.
buff.ly/N8Pdk2k
#AI #B2BSaaS
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Jun 8
AI features deployed into immature operations produce immature results.
The data pipeline is a proxy for something deeper: how integrated and disciplined the underlying operation is. Diagnosable before you build a single AI feature.
buff.ly/N8Pdk2k
#AI #B2BSaaS
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Jun 5
How you segment your customers is the most upstream decision a B2B company makes.
Change the segmentation model and you don't change one strategic decision. You change all of them.
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Jun 5
At Spendesk, rebuilding the ICP around behavioral maturity rather than company size shifted six things simultaneously: product strategy, roadmap, partnership sequencing, growth motion, messaging, and capital allocation.
Every one of those is downstream of ICP definition.
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Jun 5
"Build for mid-market" is not a product strategy.
It is a revenue target dressed up as customer insight. The product team can't do much with it beyond guessing at features and working backward from sales requests.
Full piece:
buff.ly/N8Pdk2k
#ProductStrategy #GTM
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Jun 4
PLG is not a single motion.
Early-stage customers: PLG. Product does the selling.
Mid-stage customers: PLS. Product opens, humans close.
Late-stage customers: SLG. Sales-led from the start.
buff.ly/N8Pdk2k
#PLG #ProductLed #B2BSaaS
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Jun 3
LTV:CAC ratios vary by customer maturity stage, not by FTEs.
Well served stage 3 and 4 customers expand, refer, and stay for years.
Oversold stage 2 customers underuse, disengage, and churn.
The difference shows up in cohort data.
buff.ly/N8Pdk2k
#SaaS #B2BSaaS #GTM
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Jun 2
At Spendesk, we had a 3,000-person company churn. And a 40-person company that was more operationally sophisticated than any enterprise account on our books.
Company size had told us they were different customers. They weren't.
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Jun 2
A 3k-person enterprise managed spend manually. No policy infrastructure, no integrations, one person doing it all. We sold them a product built for sophistication, they didn't use.
A 40-FYE company had FP&A resources, integrations, procurement workflows and we underserved them.
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Jun 2
Company size had produced the opposite of clarity.
The question that breaks this open is not "how big is this company?" It's "how do they actually operate?"
Full piece:
buff.ly/N8Pdk2k
#B2BSaaS #GTM
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Jun 1
Most B2B roadmaps accumulate features without coherent direction.
Because the roadmap has no through-line.
The through-line is: which stage of customer maturity does this serve? Every feature has a stage.
buff.ly/N8Pdk2k
#ProductManagement #B2BSaaS #Roadmap
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May 29
Most AI deployments underperform for a reason that has nothing to do with the AI itself.
The company wasn't ready. And no amount of model capability was going to fix that.
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May 29
The precondition for AI to create durable value is always the same: systems integration.
Agents need clean, connected, real-time data. Immature integrations cannot extract lasting value from AI agents.
The accuracy problems compound with the state of the data beneath them.
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May 29
AI does not let customers skip stages of operational maturity.
It amplifies the stage they're already at.
Full piece:
URL: buff.ly/N8Pdk2k
#AI #B2BSaaS
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