🚨Avoiding Code Reds: What Your Customer Isint Telling You
Early Warning Signs That Go Unnoticed
Hey Team,
It's 2:30 PM on a Friday. You're mentally prepping for the weekend when suddenly a 🆘 CODE RED 🆘 pops up on your calendar (yes, of course the only available time is 3:30pm 😵💫). Your inbox erupts with panic from every stakeholder who's ever breathed near the account. Your boss, their boss, and that person from Legal whose name you can never remember - all wanting to strategize. The client's threatening to slash their contract or walk entirely. Welcome to enterprise SaaS!
Those first few weeks of implementation are like the honeymoon phase - everyone's bright-eyed and slightly delirious. But after seeing enough of these, you learn to spot the red flags hiding behind those "everything's great!" status updates.
Here are four early warning signs that your next successful implementation might be low-key derailing:
#1. Strategic Conversations Die
Pattern: The customer moves from enterprise transformation conversations to basic functionality, signaling potential value misalignment or adoption challenges. This decline from transformational vision to basic functionality often precedes serious adoption issues. When your questions shrink, so does your opportunity to drive strategic value:
Here’s an Example:
Week 1: "This could transform everything about how we work!"
Week 2: "What are other organizations doing differently with this?"
Week 3: "Can you show us how to pull basic usage reports?"
Week 4: "Is there a quick guide for my team?"
#2. Stakeholders Start Disappearing
Pattern: Leadership engagement drops, signaling your solution's downgrade from strategic initiative to routine implementation. The risk isn't just about attendance, it's about your SaaS solution losing its strategic positioning within the customer priorities. When leadership steps back, ROI conversations become harder and renewal gets dicey.
The C-suite exec who championed the project delegates status calls
Strategic discussions get pushed to more operational or technical teams
Your project sponsor becomes increasingly harder to reach
Meeting attendance shifts from strategic leaders to platform administrators
#3. The Timeline Shrinks
Pattern: Timeline compression isn't always a red flag- sometimes it's necessary for quick wins or urgent needs. The key is distinguishing between tactical necessity vs. abandoning the strategy. A compressed timeline that maintains its long-term vision is different from a rushed implementation that's lost its strategy.
Here are some conversation shifts to watch out for:
Three-year roadmap discussions become a 90-day implementation plan
Long-term capability building turns into a quick feature rollout discussion
Strategic milestones gets replaced by implementation/deployment checklists
Conversations around phased change is reduced to basic user training
*As a reminder, business priorities are ALWAYS shifting - the key is watching for the cascading effect these shifts. Essentially, when timelines compress, make sure your transformation goals don't compress with them.
#4. Success Metrics Get Redefined:
Pattern: Remember that strategic vision from the sales cycle? Watch how it quietly transforms. Success metrics often break away from transformational goals (pre-sales) to basic functionality tracking (post-sales). When success gets redefined to basic utilization, you're setting yourself up for difficult renewal conversations where strategic value needs to be proved again.
Reimagining workflow automation → Checking task completion
Building enterprise capabilities → Monitoring feature adoption
Transforming digital operations → Tracking user engagement
Accelerating business growth → Running monthly reports
Why This Matters
Each of these signals represents a critical decision point. When you spot them early, you have a chance to recapture the strategic narrative. Miss them, and you'll find yourself celebrating a "successful" implementation while leaving value on the table.
Remember our discussion on the Three Levels of Strategic Value? These signals often indicate you're sliding from Level 3 (transformation) back to Level 1 (implementation). The key is spotting them before the slide becomes permanent.
Try This:
This week, try one of these 5 minute “tests” to see where you are with one of your customers:
Option 1: Pre-Meeting Check
Before your next customer meeting, quickly review:
Last 3 meeting attendee lists
Original exec sponsor participation vs. now
Latest success metrics discussed and compare these against your kickoff conversations to spot any early warning signs.
Option 2: The Conversation Level Test
In your next status call, intentionally raise one strategic question from the pre-sales cycle.
Who engages
How quickly it shifts to tactical discussion
If anyone redirects back to original vision
See you next week!
Happy advising,
Anita