SE360 / PRACTICES / SAAS
PRACTICE 02 — SAAS
Product-led, sales-led — the argument is over.The answer is sequenced.
Every durable software company eventually runs both motions. The question is which one leads, when the second one enters, and whether pricing lets either of them work. That is design, not philosophy.
IN BRIEF
SE360's SaaS practice designs go-to-market for software companies, treating acquisition motion, pricing and packaging, and net revenue retention as interlocking systems. It serves companies from post-product-market-fit through public listing. Work runs in four engagement shapes: the Diagnostic, the Sprint, the Retainer, and the Embedded.
01 — THE PROBLEM
SaaS go-to-market discourse spent a decade arguing motions as identities — product-led companies versus sales-led companies — while the companies that compounded quietly ran both. The trial that feeds an enterprise pipeline. The sales team that closes what the product opened. The design question is sequencing and hand-off, and most companies get the hand-off wrong: product-qualified signals that sales ignores, sales-sourced deals that bypass the product entirely.
Beneath the motion sits the quieter killer: pricing. Most SaaS pricing was set at seed stage, in an afternoon, by analogy to a competitor — and never revisited with evidence. Packaging that fights the buyer's mental model. A value metric that punishes the customer for succeeding. Net revenue retention treated as a customer-success KPI instead of what it actually is: the compounding engine of the entire company.
We treat a SaaS company as three interlocking systems — acquisition motion, monetization design, retention engine — and we refuse to optimize one while ignoring the other two.
02 — WHAT WE DO
| MOTION ARCHITECTURE | PLG, SLG, or hybrid — chosen by ACV, buyer, and product surface, not by fashion. Includes PQL/MQL unification and the product-to-sales hand-off design. |
|---|---|
| PRICING & PACKAGING RESEARCH | Value-metric identification, willingness-to-pay research, tier architecture, and the migration plan for existing customers. |
| NEW-LOGO ENGINE | Demand creation for a compressed funnel: category content, community, intent capture, and a trial and demo experience designed to sell. |
| NRR SYSTEM | Expansion pathways, usage-based triggers, renewal architecture, and churn forensics. The 120% NRR plan, engineered rather than hoped for. |
| METRICS & BOARD NARRATIVE | The SaaS metrics stack — CAC payback, burn multiple, NRR — instrumented honestly, and translated into the story your board and next lead investor will read. |
03 — HOW IT RUNS
01
Diagnose
Two to three weeks. We map the revenue system as it actually operates — data, motion, message, market. The output is a written diagnosis, not a workshop.
02
Design
The GTM blueprint: where to play, how to win, what to build, what to stop. Falsifiable, sequenced, costed. A board-grade document your team can execute without us.
03
Build
We construct the system alongside your team — positioning, playbooks, pipeline infrastructure, enablement, measurement. Working assets, not recommendations.
04
Run
For engagements that continue: we operate inside the motion, own numbers with you, and transfer the system as your team compounds.
04 — DELIVERABLES
DOCUMENTS
motion blueprint · pricing study with migration plan · retention architecture · board metrics narrative
SYSTEMS
PQL scoring and routing · trial-to-paid instrumentation · expansion trigger system · revenue dashboard
05 — ENGAGEMENT SHAPES
Four ways to work. Every scope is bespoke.
| THE DIAGNOSTIC | Two to three weeks. The written diagnosis of your revenue system and the sequenced recommendation. The smallest honest engagement we offer. |
|---|---|
| THE SPRINT | Four to eight weeks. One defined problem — a pricing study, an entry study, a launch architecture — taken from question to decision-grade answer. |
| THE RETAINER | Quarterly. Design and build, held to numbers agreed in advance. Reviewed — and cancellable — at every quarter boundary. |
| THE EMBEDDED | We operate inside the motion: a partner and pod accountable for a revenue outcome alongside your team, until the system runs without us. |
FEES ARE SCOPED PER ENGAGEMENT AFTER THE FIRST CONVERSATION. WE DO NOT PUBLISH RATE CARDS, AND WE DO NOT PRICE AS A PERCENTAGE OF MEDIA SPEND.
06 — QUESTIONS
Post-product-market-fit through public. Pre-PMF founders are better served by the Product Launch practice.
We design the demand engine and can operate it under the Embedded shape. Commodity channel execution alone is not the product.
It is when improvised. Migration design — grandfathering, communication, timing — is half of every pricing workstream we run.
Yes. Usage-based and outcome-based pricing for agentic products is an active research area of the firm.
Four to eight weeks as a Sprint, depending on research depth. The output is decision-grade, not directional.
Bring us a hard problem.
Engagements begin with a conversation, not a proposal. Tell us where growth is stuck. We will tell you — plainly — whether we are the right instrument, and what we would do first.