Retention motions intro

How You Keep & Grow Customers

Your growth engine doesn’t stop once you’ve converted a customer. The third core motion is retention. The system for activating new users and keeping them engaged.

Retention plays a huge role in not just ARPU, but LTV (lifetime value). It strengthens your unit economics, reduces CAC payback pressure, and creates surface area for referrals, expansion, and upsell.

The Three Retention Motions

1. Product-led (PL)
   • The product itself is the driver of retention.
   • Think: consumer apps, SaaS tools with sticky daily/weekly use.
   • Best when: Product value is obvious, usage is frequent, switching costs are high.
   • Output: Habits form, cohorts flatten, retention compounds.
2. Sales-led (SL)
   • Account managers and customer success teams drive renewal and expansion.
   • Think: enterprise SaaS, services, complex deployments.
   • Best when: Revenue per account is high enough to support human involvement, product complexity requires handholding.
   • Output: Renewal rates and expansion revenue depend on rep quality + relationships.
3. Hybrid
   • PL retention for smaller accounts, SL retention for larger ones.
   • Best when: You serve both SMB/consumer and enterprise segments.
   • Output: Flexible and realistic, but operationally complex.

How to Decide Your Retention Motion

Again, tie back to your Foundational Five, Guardrails, and Acquisition + Monetization Motions.

Key questions to ask:

• Product Fit:
  • Does your product naturally drive repeat use? → PL works.
  • Or does it need support and training to sustain value? → SL might be required.
• ARPU & Economics:
  • If ARPU is low, you can’t afford sales-led retention.
  • If ARPU is high, sales-led or hybrid may be the only way to prevent churn and capture expansion.
• Alignment with Acquisition + Monetization:
  • A PL acquisition + PL monetization setup pairs best with PL retention.
  • A Sales-led monetization motion almost always requires SL or Hybrid retention to follow through.
  • Hybrid monetization usually calls for hybrid retention.

Decision Table: Retention Motions