Scaling professional services in high-growth SaaS startups

In hypergrowth SaaS environments, scaling professional services (PS) effectively is a make-or-break factor. At Propel25, Bradley Liou, Senior Director of Client Success at MaintainX, shared hard-won lessons from his experience scaling post-sales teams across startups like Deel, Lever, and now MaintainX.

Having joined MaintainX when the team was just 12 strong, Bradley has built a 110-person post-sales org, with over 50 in PS. His session distilled the blueprint for scaling PS across three pillars: people, process, and technology. He challenged leaders to leave with just one actionable idea to implement in their orgs today.

People: building the right foundation early

1. Culture and identity come first

Bradley emphasized that culture is your brand, especially in PS where the team represents the first post-sale interaction with the customer. He urged leaders to define the identity of their team from the beginning:

• Start by defining your PS brand: What are the 3 words your team uses to describe itself? What do sales, CS, and support say about you? What would your customers say?
• Make it consistent with company values: At MaintainX, which serves frontline workers, PS hires people who have frontline experience or engineering backgrounds. This builds immediate credibility with customers.
• Don’t wait for culture to happen: Culture forms whether you guide it or not. Be intentional early.

2. Define job levels and competencies early

Waiting for HR to implement leveling frameworks is a common mistake. Bradley stressed that even early-stage companies should:

• Design job families proactively: Define roles such as implementation consultants, onboarding specialists, and solutions architects.
• Create a competency model: Define what "good," "great," and "below average" look like for each role.
• Use tools like ChatGPT: Don’t wait for a robust HR team—use available tools to bootstrap this process.

Doing this early prevents organizational entropy as the team scales from a handful to dozens.

3. Start performance management on day one

Bradley emphasized the importance of setting a performance standard from day one:

• 30-day assessment: New hires undergo a mock client call with a detailed rubric. They're told about this on Day 1.
• 60–90 day progression: New hires shadow experienced team members, receive feedback from pod members via surveys, and receive coaching.
• 90-day readiness: After this ramp period, they’re expected to independently manage customers.

This creates clarity, builds consistency in customer experience, and ensures underperformance is addressed before it becomes a systemic issue.

Process: breaking down silos and driving alignment

1. Map the entire customer journey

Many PS leaders focus only on go-live. Bradley recommends zooming out:

• Map all customer engagement stages: Include pre-sales, onboarding, implementation, CS, AM, and support.
• Segment journeys by engagement model: Create high-touch, low-touch, and tech-touch variations with PS involvement clearly identified.
• Clarify handoffs and responsibilities: Identify who owns each phase, especially in ambiguous areas like pre-sales pilots or POCs.

This approach removes ambiguity, prevents dropped balls, and supports a seamless customer experience.

2. Think like a CFO when choosing KPIs

Bradley urged PS leaders to quantify their impact using metrics a CFO cares about:

• Gross margin target: MaintainX’s PS team targets 20%+, currently delivering 30–35%.
• Churn reduction: Customers who go through implementation churn 4x less than those who don’t.
• Net Dollar Retention (NDR): Implemented customers show a 12% higher NDR.
• Profitability impact: Show how PS contributes to top-line and bottom-line performance.

If you can’t quantify your business impact, you can’t secure more budget.

3. Specialize roles as early as possible

Bradley advises planning specialization before scale forces your hand:

• Use sales segmentation as a cue: If your sales org is hiring enterprise reps, build an enterprise PS team.
• Early roles to consider:
  
  • Implementation consultants by segment (SMB, mid-market, enterprise)
  • PMO for project oversight and delivery excellence
  • PS product managers to develop new service offerings
  • Pre-sales consultants to assist with scoping and services selling
• Involve the team: Communicate the growth vision early so team members can position themselves for future specialized roles.

This supports scalability, enables better customer matching, and improves internal clarity.

Technology: enforcing process and driving efficiency

1. Use tech as a forcing function

Bradley described tech as essential for enforcing the right behaviors:

• No CRM enforcement = no handoff process: If reps aren’t required to fill handoff fields, there is no real process.
• Tech stack at MaintainX:
  
  • Rocketlane for PS delivery and visibility
  • Gainsight for CS playbooks and outcomes
  • Zendesk for support ticketing
  • WorkRamp for customer education

He emphasized that tools must enable:

• Standardized delivery
• KPI tracking (e.g., time to value, utilization)
• Cross-system integration (e.g., implementation attach rate to churn)

2. Operationalize AI across the team

Bradley shared a strong POV on AI enablement:

• Every PS team member gets OpenAI enterprise access: Not a luxury, but a productivity multiplier.
• Use cases include:
  
  • Auto-generating Python scripts and code for integrations
  • Researching obscure documentation (e.g., SAP help centers)
  • Speeding up pre-sales solutioning and internal automations

He also urged PS leaders to think about AI-enabled services:

• AI onboarding advisory: Help customers activate and adopt AI features
• AI optimization audits: Review customer AI usage to recommend improvements

This unlocks new service lines and differentiates PS as a strategic function.

3. Lead internal change management

Change management isn’t just for clients. Bradley advised PS teams to own internal change rollouts:

• Apply PM discipline to internal processes: Treat internal tool rollouts like external projects with timelines, owners, deliverables.
• Lead cross-functional training and documentation: Use your PM and CS skills to educate internal teams.
• Examples at MaintainX: PS leaders led Rocketlane and Gainsight rollouts, ensuring high adoption via accountability and KPI alignment.

Final takeaway: pick one lever to drive change

Bradley closed with a challenge to the audience: from the nine ideas shared across people, process, and tech, pick one to act on immediately.

• People:
  
  • Define and broadcast your team’s cultural identity early
  • Build job levels and career paths proactively
  • Institute structured performance management from day one
• Process:
  
  • Map the full customer journey and PS touchpoints
  • Track KPIs that tie directly to business outcomes
  • Build specialization based on sales and customer needs
• Technology:
  
  • Ensure your tools enforce behavior and enable metrics
  • Enable your team with AI and build AI services
  • Own internal change management using PS best practices

Scaling PS in SaaS isn’t about heroic effort—it’s about thoughtful design, intentional structure, and leading from the front.

Stay tuned for more Propel25 session recaps and insights from PS leaders pushing the industry forward.