How Fleet tripled its retention rate by moving from service to SaaS

🔍 TL;DR

• Company: Fleet (IT equipment leasing & management)
• Challenge: Retention rate with room for significant improvement
• Solution: Transition from pure leasing to an integrated SaaS platform
• Impact: Retention rate increased by 3x
• Takeaway: Embedding your service deeper into a customer’s workflow increases retention and long-term value.

Context

Today, I’m breaking down Fleet how to 3x retention rate by shifting from IT leasing to a SaaS-enabled platform, with key takeaways you can start applying tomorrow. Let’s dive in!

Product 101 for Executives

• SaaS-enabled model: Hardware or service + software for recurring revenue.
• Switching costs: What it takes for a user to change tools.
• Roll out: Launch a new feature or product.
• Product-led Growth: Growth driven directly by the product.
• ARPA: Average revenue per customer account.

Disclaimer: The organizational choices and technical solutions shared in this newsletter aren’t meant to be copied and pasted as-is. Always keep your company’s context in mind before adopting something that works elsewhere! 😊

The Company

Fleet simplifies IT equipment lifecycle management for SMBs. Instead of purchasing computers and IT hardware, companies subscribe to Fleet’s all-in-one leasing solution, which includes hardware, maintenance, and now a software platform to streamline management.

🥵 Their challenge : Low Retention Rate

Fleet initially had untapped retention potential due to the transactional nature of its leasing model. The lack of deep integration into customers' IT workflows meant businesses could easily switch providers or return to direct purchases. This issue led to:

• Low long-term engagement beyond the leasing period.
• Difficulty differentiating from traditional leasing providers.
• Limited control over the customer’s IT ecosystem.

😢 How the Problem Affected Fleet’s Performance

• Retention rate: Below where it needed to be
• Upsell potential: Limited expansion revenue

💡 Their idea to solve the problem

To address this challenge, Fleet transitioned from a pure leasing business to a SaaS-enabled model by launching “Cockpit,” a platform that allowed businesses to track, secure, and manage their IT equipment more effectively. This move shifted Fleet from being a transactional vendor to an infrastructure player within client companies.

🤷🏼‍♂️ Why would it work

By embedding Fleet deeper into customers' IT processes, switching costs increased, engagement improved, and businesses became reliant on the platform beyond just leasing.

✅ Their decisions to make it work

🍾 The results

To boost retention:

1. Nail your activation moment and make it fast
   
   Identify the "aha moment" when users see core product value and redesign onboarding to get them there in <10 minutes.
2. Build a Retention Review as a recurring process
   
   Once a quarter, run a full Retention Review across Product, Growth, CS, and Marketing. Analyze cohorts, segment by behavior, track activation-to-retention funnels — and prioritize one retention initiative per quarter.
3. Design features to earn habits, not just engagement
   
   Ask: Does this feature create a reason for the user to come back next week? Build nudges, routines, or data loops into the product that naturally create return behaviors.
4. Treat churn as a symptom, not the disease
   
   Instead of chasing churn with discounts or features, dig into why users leave. Segment churn by cohort, behavior, and outcome to diagnose root causes.

My full interview with Fleet’s CEO

Dive deeper into this topic with Sevan Marian, CEO of Fleet, in my latest podcast episode (in french 🇫🇷) :

🎙️ 📺 Listen now: Youtube / Spotify & Apple Podcasts

Bonus: I got you the first month free on your next Fleet order — just use the code “Stellar” (click here).

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