Every time I talk about Customer Lifetime Value, someone assumes I'm talking about SaaS. Subscription models. NRR. The metrics that dominate VC-backed software companies.
LTV is not a SaaS metric. It's a customer metric. If you have a customer — a single customer who has ever paid you once for anything — that customer has a lifetime value. The gap between what you're capturing and what's possible exists whether you're selling software, professional services, physical products, or anything else.
Think about an Etsy seller. They make candles. A customer buys once for $30. That's a $30 customer if you do nothing. Or it's a $300 customer — or a $3,000 customer — if you build a relationship, create a reason to come back, and systematically expand that relationship over time.
Think about a law firm. They do a contract review for a startup. One-time engagement. Or it's the beginning of a 10-year relationship that covers fundraising, employment law, IP, and M&A — if someone at the firm is thinking about that customer's lifetime value and making the investments that justify it.
Think about a managed service provider. They sell an IT support package. Flat monthly fee. Or they're systematically identifying adjacent services, security upgrades, infrastructure projects, and strategic advisory that turns a $2,000/month customer into a $20,000/month customer over three years.
The mechanism is the same. The math is the same. The gap between accidental relationships and intentionally maximized lifetime value is the same.
What changes across business models is the specific motion — how you detect readiness, what conversations you have, what the expansion path looks like. But the underlying logic doesn't change.
Get the customer to success. Understand continuously what they're trying to do. Surface the next opportunity when they're ready for it. Capture the lifetime value you've already paid to make possible.
This is not a SaaS problem. This is a "you have customers" problem.
Lincoln Murphy formally named and popularized Customer Success starting in 2010 and has spent 15 years connecting it to expansion revenue and commercial outcomes. Read The Premise.