Everyone Says Churn is Inevitable

Everyone says churn is inevitable. It’s not.

If your product delivers real value, churn is entirely solvable. Well, maybe not entirely, but mostly for sure.

I was reading a SaaStr article this week on “tactics to avoid churn and drive ROI on retention.” It highlighted things like measurement, segmentation, and NPS. All important ideas, but also spots where many companies get sidetracked.

Here’s where I agree, and also where I think leaders need to dig deeper.

✅ Measuring retention properly matters. ✅

Too often, companies can’t tell you which customers are healthy, at risk, or prime to expand. The article’s point about tracking retention ROI is valid, but tactical metrics alone don’t move the needle. You need to measure the right things: usage correlated to value realization, not vanity usage dashboards. In my work, this is where we start, by defining measurable “real” customer outcomes and creating the instrumentation to know if you’re actually achieving them.

✅ Segmentation is critical, but underdefined. ✅

SaaStr calls out segmentation, but to go one further, segmentation must align directly to how customers achieve measurable value as well as exactly how you engage with them to ensure it.

Segment customers not just by revenue or size but by their path to value: how they use the product, what outcomes they’re targeting, and the motions required to drive that outcome.

That’s what guides the right coverage models, success cadences, and success metrics. Without that linkage, teams end up treating dissimilar customers the same, and retention suffers. Not all customers are equal.

🚫 Where I diverge: NPS as a churn signal. 🚫

NPS can tell you how people feel, but not whether they’re realizing measurable value. I’ve seen “promoters” churn because the product never became part of their process. I’ve also seen “detractors” renew because, despite misgivings, the product was driving real value and was hard to remove.

What matters is understanding if customers are achieving the outcomes they expected when they bought. Center on quantifying business value realization, not sentiment, as a predictor of retention.

So, yes: Measure, segment, and analyze. But don’t stop there.

Until you can answer why customers leave in the language of their business, you’re not managing churn, you’re just observing it.

The good news: churn isn’t mysterious. It’s a mirror.

And once you look at it through the lens of measurable value, it becomes not just solvable, but predictable. And what you predict you can control.

Most churn attributions are wrong. It’s not “feature gaps” or “budget cuts.” It’s that customers can’t connect your product to a measurable business result. Fix that, and everything else follows.