The Problem
NRR is flat despite more CS headcount. PS margin doesn't add up the way finance thinks it should. Sales, Services and CS operate as three handoffs, not one system.
Underneath most of this sits the same structural fault: accounts were landed on price, through a motion built to close fast, not to grow. "Land and expand" gets treated as a strategy when really it's just the land half — the expand half was never designed, resourced, or owned by anyone.
That shows up as flat NRR, as PS treated as a cost centre instead of a margin engine, and as tactical buyers with no path to the executive relationship that would actually unlock growth. It's rarely a sales-execution problem. It's an economics-and-ownership problem, further upstream than most companies look.
I fix the economics and the system underneath them — not just the quarter's pipeline.
The Approach
Boards ask "what's the PS margin?" It's the wrong question.
CS cost-to-serve, CS coverage ratio, PS margin and utilisation — each one is a legitimate number. Taken in isolation, each one is dangerous. A coverage model built on today's ARR says nothing about what an account could be worth tomorrow. A depressed PS margin can mean poor pricing discipline, not a weak product. Optimise any of these in isolation and you optimise the wrong thing.
The numbers that actually set the valuation multiple are different: Net Revenue Retention, Time to Value, Expansion Velocity, Logo Quality, Churn Prevention. CS and PS are the engine behind every one of them — not a cost line sitting next to the engine.
In practice, that means engineering expansion instead of waiting for it, building PS margin as a repeatable model instead of a headcount lever, and bringing PS into the sales cycle early instead of after signature. Each is a different symptom of the same root cause: post-sales run as disconnected cost centres, not as one architecture aimed at revenue.
Case Studies
LEAPP FROG: From Paying Peanuts to Paying Strategic
The challenge. I inherited a customer base where most accounts generated minimal revenue and churn was highest in that exact segment. The prior motion sold cheap, through resellers, on price — land fast, expand later. The "later" never arrived, because no one owned it.
The hidden opportunity. Buried inside that "low-value" segment were around 20 accounts that were actually multi-billion-dollar enterprises, right in the middle of our ICP, buying tactically at departmental budget levels when they should have been strategic platform decisions.
The fix. Built a cross-functional program — BD, Sales, Marketing, CS and Partners, each with a defined role — to move these accounts from tactical to strategic in five phases: qualify, gather internal intelligence through existing contacts, map the real executive buyer, reposition the conversation from tool to platform, then multi-thread the relationship so it didn't rest on one contact.
The outcome. Not every account converted — some churned even after a genuine attempt, and that was an acceptable outcome. The accounts that did convert grew ACV more than 2× on average, several 3–6×. Combined with new business sold the same strategic way from day one, the region more than doubled new ARR, beat its previous sales record, and lifted average ACV 3× across new and expansion business.
Repositioning PS as a Sales Accelerant, Not a Cost Centre
The challenge. The classic dysfunction: a deal closes on an elegant sales narrative, and PS reads the handover notes wondering how they're actually supposed to deliver it. Services gets treated as a cost centre and kept out of the sales cycle, so customers only meet the delivery team after signature — by which point expectations are already set, and often wrong. Meanwhile, buyers have already been burned by IT project failure rates as high as 70% (McKinsey & Company) — they may be sold on the vision, but not yet on the journey to get there.
The reframe. When I took over an EMEA/APAC services organisation, the first problem wasn't process or methodology. It was mindset — on both sides. Sales needed to stop seeing PS as a source of friction. PS needed to stop seeing itself as an order-taker. The mission I set was simple: PS exists to maximise ARR, without losing money — not to maximise its own services revenue or margin.
The fix. Brought PS into the sales cycle early, as expert guides rather than a delivery afterthought. Trained consultants to lead with credible best-practice recommendations instead of pure requirements-gathering, and made joint sales/PS pre-call preparation mandatory rather than optional.
The outcome. Sales cycles got faster, not slower. Customers started citing the implementation approach itself as the deciding factor in competitive wins. Projects kicked off clean, with sales, PS and the customer all working from the same scope — no more "but Sales already told us" conversations at the start of delivery.
PS Margin as a System, Not a Headcount Problem
The challenge. A skeptical CCO didn't believe the economics of bringing offshore delivery resource on-site could work — the assumption was that offshore only made sense as a cost play with junior, cheap staff.
The re-model. Built the cost and margin model that showed the real number: hiring experienced (5-year) consultants at roughly £40–50k instead of £5–10k grads was immaterial against a £200/hr sell rate. That freed the model to be a genuine centre of excellence — technically proficient, able to work with autonomy, aimed at being "the best in the world," not a cost-arbitrage play.
The scale-up. The same delivery and financial model, carried into the OpenText acquisition and kept visible to the SVP of PS through regular numbers and performance updates, was rolled out across all OpenText products — growing the team from 6 to 140 people over three to four years.
The outcome. A PS margin model that didn't depend on cutting cost per head. It depended on the right economics, proven once, then repeated at scale.