TTV or time to value is a classic metric that every single onboarding team has a constant pulse on.

It’s great because you want to know how long it takes a customer to go from signing the contract to getting value from your product/service. However, as the onboarding space evolves so do the metrics that we use. 

A common trend I’m seeing SAAS companies do is onboarding in smaller chunks.

Story time!

Growing up I was a swimmer. My main event was the 200m backstroke. I wanted to break the 2:00 minute barrier more than anything. However, I couldn’t because I was racing it 200m at a time. I’d go as fast as I could for as long as I could, but no matter what I’d be gassed at the end. I’d always get close to 2:00 minutes, but I could never break it.

One day my coach approached me with a new plan. We were going to train splits. This meant instead of racing the whole 200m at once, I’d break it down into 4x50m phases. I’d race each 50m phase as follows (1 being the fastest and 4 being the slowest):

1 4 3 2

The first 50m would be my fastest. Second 50m would be slowest, third would be the 3rd fastest, and the last 50m would be barely slower than the first 50m. Finally when I broke it down into 50m phases I was able to crush the 2:00 minute barrier. 

What’s the takeaway?

Instead of sprinting through your onboarding - consider breaking it into phases. Measure how fast those phases go. Perhaps you measure Time To First Value, Second value, so on. Delivering the onboarding in separate chunks is easier for both the onboarder and the customer. You’ll be surprised when by the end of onboarding the customer isn’t gassed and you’ll see the overall TTV is faster than before because you paced yourself.