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The GTM Playbook Behind 133 Million Learners ft. Monika Saha (Articulate)
[Un]Churned – The No. 1 Podcast for Customer RetentionShow Notes
133 million learners. 100% of the Fortune 100. And the woman steering go-to-market behind those numbers will tell you to stop chasing churn. Monika Saha, CCO of Articulate, doesn't trade in best-practice platitudes. In this episode she takes the sacred cows out back: why "customer education is a cost center" is half-wrong instead of all-wrong, when fighting retention is a flat waste of energy, and why PLG companies are quietly light-years ahead while everyone else optimizes the wrong thing. Host Josh Schachter pokes the bear. Co-host Samantha Murray pushes back. Monika doesn't blink. If you run customer success, education, or GTM and you're tired of being told what you already know, this one's built to make you uncomfortable in the good way.
Josh is writing a book on building customer relationships. Follow his journey and insights at www.joshschachter.com
--- What You'll Learn - Why "customer education is a cost center" is partly true - How to standardize and modularize content so you stop reinventing the wheel - When improving churn is actually a waste of energy - How to segment a long tail so you invest where returns are real - Why PLG companies dominate in-app and digital motion - A simple QBR exercise to find AI-ready process bottlenecks - How to structure a number across a core product plus early cross-sells ---
Want the playbook, not just the conversation? Subscribe for deep-dive, actionable breakdowns from every episode at unchurned.substack.com.
--- Timestamps 0:00 - Preview and Meet Mac, Monika's dog 1:08 - Meet Sam Murray, Gainsight & Monika Saha, Articulate 2:11 - Articulate's Overview 4:20 - Monika's remit as Chief Commercial Officer: trial to renewal 5:37 - Lessons from her Gainsight CMO days 9:00 - Customer education & internal enablement 14:53 - Debate: is customer education a cost center? 20:30 - Controversial take: when fixing churn is pointless 23:43 - Why digital motion is foundational at a PLG company 26:56 - Can non-PLG B2B companies experiment like this? 28:48 - Embracing efficiency with AI 32:30 - Hitting the number: core product vs cross-sell --- Where to Find the Guest Samantha Murray: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samantha-murray613/ Monika Saha: https://www.linkedin.com/in/monikasaha/ --- Where to Find Josh: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jschachter/ Unchurned Substack: https://unchurned.substack.com/
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Want the playbook, not just the conversation? Subscribe for deep-dive, actionable breakdowns from every episode at unchurned.substack.com.
Want the playbook, not just the conversation? Subscribe for deep-dive, actionable breakdowns from every episode at unchurned.substack.com.
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