Perennial | Post-Sales Systems Design

The Challenge

At the seed-to-Series B stage, post-sales is almost always the last thing to get built.

Your team is focused on product, revenue, and keeping the business alive. That's where the focus should be, but it means the post-sales systems that drive retention and scalable growth rarely get the time of day.

The consequence is a predictable set of patterns: support arriving through every channel with no structure, inconsistent onboarding and implementation, and teams spending most of their time reacting.

These gaps hit revenue directly: higher churn, slower time-to-value, missed expansion opportunities, and your best people burning out and leaving.

Add AI to the mix without the right foundation underneath it, and you're just amplifying problems.

The good news is that these patterns are well understood, and the path to a mature post-sales function is shorter than most teams expect. Getting the foundation right means that when you do invest in AI or hire your next CS leader, those investments land on solid ground.

Common signs of breakage

Customer requests falling through the cracks because there's no intake process or routing
Onboarding that depends entirely on which rep runs it, with no consistent playbook
Talented teams wasting time because there's no structure underneath the work
Customer feedback lost between teams, creating product blind spots and frustrated customers
AI deployed on top of undefined processes, making existing gaps worse
Your best people burning out or leaving because every day is firefighting

Services

Where we work together, and what changes.

These are the areas where Perennial works. The goal is setting up critical infrastructure your team can run long after the engagement ends. The result is stronger retention, efficiency, and expansion revenue.

Onboarding Systems Design

Milestone frameworks, handoff protocols, and repeatable playbooks that standardize delivery across customers.

Impact

Faster time-to-value. Less churn.

Support Operations

Intake systems, escalation paths, SLA design, and software selection. A support function built to scale, whether from scratch or from what exists.

Impact

Faster resolution. Compounding trust.

Customer Health & Retention

Health scoring models, early-warning triggers, QBR frameworks, and escalation playbooks. Visibility into risk before the conversation becomes difficult.

Impact

Higher net retention. More expansion.

AI Readiness & Workflow Design

A structured knowledge base, defined escalation paths, and clean service tiers. The architecture that makes AI adoption effective rather than counterproductive.

Impact

AI spend that delivers. Workflows that scale.

CS Team & Enablement

Hiring frameworks, role definitions, ramp programs, and manager-level playbooks for teams that need to operate independently.

Impact

A self-sufficient team. No bottlenecks.

Service Portfolio Strategy

Service tier definitions, packaging, and scope guardrails that set clear customer expectations and eliminate the scope creep that erodes capacity.

Impact

New revenue captured. Margins protected.

How We Engage

Three ways to work together.

Some companies need a clear picture of what to build first. Others are ready to build. Others want an ongoing thought partner. All three are available.

Starting Point

Diagnostic Audit

2 – 4 Weeks

A structured assessment of your current post-sales state. We map what exists, identify the gaps, and prioritize what to build first. Designed for teams that want clarity before committing to a longer engagement, and useful on its own if you plan to build internally.

Deliverable

Prioritized gap analysis and a clear roadmap of what to build, in what order, and why.

Core Engagement

Build Sprint

8 – 12 Weeks

A non-recurring investment with a defined scope and exit point.

A hands-on partnership to build the highest-impact post-sales systems for your business
Scoped to your stage, your team's bandwidth, and your cross-functional capacity
Perennial works alongside your team: reviewing inbound, sitting in on calls, validating configurations, and pressure-testing workflows
When we're done, the work has been built right and your team knows how to run it

Deliverable

The highest-priority post-sales systems built and handed off with full team enablement, plus a prioritized roadmap of what to tackle next.

Ongoing

Retained Advisory

Monthly

A monthly advisory relationship for CS leaders and founders who want a thought partner operating across the early-stage landscape. Includes:

Two focused Build Sprints per year
Cross-company visibility into how other teams are solving the same problems
A current practitioner view of the CS, support, and AI tooling market

Deliverable

Ongoing access to an experienced operator, providing cross-company perspective on the decisions that compound over time.

The Process

We align on scope and deliverables, then build something your team can run.

The Build Sprint follows a structured four-step process with a defined timeline and a clear exit point.

Scoping Conversation

We align on where you are, what's not working, and what's realistic given your team's capacity and any cross-functional dependencies.

Proposal and Kickoff

Defined scope, timeline, deliverables, and success criteria.

Build Together

Perennial works alongside your team, reviewing inbound, validating configurations, sitting on calls, and pressure-testing workflows as we build.

Handoff and Operate

Your team leaves with the skills and documentation to run what we built.

Check Availability

Why Perennial

Operator experience and perspective.

The value comes from having held the roles, made the decisions, and lived with the consequences.

Built In The Trenches

Perennial's founders bring over 20 years of combined post-sales leadership, forged in the same high-growth, high-ambiguity environments their clients operate in. They've built Customer Success from both sides: standing up a new business unit from $1M to $50M+ ARR with top-quartile net revenue retention, and scaling a broader CS organization from 5 to 90+ professionals while driving >130% Net Revenue Retention for four consecutive years. Add in a decade of management consulting and VP-level post-sales leadership at multiple health-tech companies, and Perennial brings the pattern recognition that only comes from doing the work across multiple stages and contexts.

Cross-Company Pattern Recognition

Through work with startups at various stages, Perennial has built visibility into the recurring patterns and solution frameworks that show up consistently. That exposure spans a decade of management consulting across industries, multiple health-tech companies from Series A through growth stage, and now direct advisory work with early-stage teams building post-sales for the first time. It's the kind of cross-company perspective an employee at any single company can't have, along with a current view of CS, support, and AI solutions across multiple environments.

Hands-On AI Experience

Experience evaluating enterprise AI tools and building internal training frameworks. The companies that get the most from AI are the ones that build the right architecture first: structured knowledge bases and workflows with a thoughtful balance of human touch and automation. Perennial helps you get this right.

Technical & Analytical Chops

Perennial brings years of experience in highly technical environments working with engineering and data science stakeholders, blending business strategy with technical execution, including forward-deployed CS models where implementation is done alongside the customer.

The Team

Ben Cohen

Co-Founder & Managing Partner

Ben spent over seven years at Komodo Health, joining at the Series A stage as an individual contributor and rising from CSM to Senior Manager to Director as the company scaled. He was promoted to become a founding CS member in a newly formed business unit, where he pioneered customer success for an entirely new customer segment, hired and managed a team, and helped scale the business from $1M to $50M+ ARR with 140% net revenue retention. He built the playbooks, health scoring models, cross-functional strategy, and hiring guidelines the function ran on. In his final role, he was tapped to stand up a new Support organization, designing enablement programs, defining escalation paths, and building metrics for team and customer efficiency.

He started Perennial because he’s lived the experience his clients are going through: building post-sales from scratch, figuring out what to prioritize with limited resources, and giving reactive teams the systems to actually get ahead. He also advises multiple venture-backed startups, bringing cross-company visibility into the recurring patterns and solution frameworks across the early-stage landscape.

Ben grew up outside Philadelphia and lives in Denver, CO. He remains irrationally optimistic about the 76ers.

Phil Mishkin

Co-Founder & Operating Partner

Phil spent ten years at Deloitte Consulting before spending the next decade leading post-sales teams in health tech. At Komodo Health, he built and scaled Customer Success from a 5-person team to 90+ professionals, drove >130% Net Revenue Retention for four straight years, launched a managed services practice that added >$2M in revenue in year one, and helped fuel the company’s ~100x ARR growth. Most recently, as VP of Client Success at CertifyOS, he led post-sales strategy for a scaling provider data management platform, turning around the function, stabilizing the client portfolio, and laying the foundation for growth.

He co-founded Perennial because he’s repeatedly seen (and solved) the challenges early-stage health-tech teams face: standing up post-sales with limited resources, prioritizing effectively, and shifting from firefighting to sustainable growth.

Phil grew up in Pennsylvania, earned his MBA from The Wharton School, and lives in Jersey City. He’s a lifelong Philadelphia sports fan and he trusts the process.

Mature post-sales infrastructure, built for your current stage.

At the seed-to-Series B stage, post-sales is almost always the last thing to get built.

Where we work together, and what changes.

Three ways to work together.

We align on scope and deliverables, then build something your team can run.

Operator experience and perspective.

Ben Cohen

Phil Mishkin

Let's explore the value we can create.