TL;DR: Palantir didn’t win by building the best product. They won by embedding into workflows until adoption was inevitable. Mid-market SaaS can do the same — without billions in budget.
The SMB and mid-market SaaS world is crowded. Competition is fierce, features are easy to copy, and buyers are more skeptical than ever.
You can pour resources into new features, aggressive outbound, or clever pricing models. But if your product doesn’t stick, none of it matters.
The truth: most SaaS companies don’t have a sales problem. They have an adoption problem.
Which is exactly where Palantir’s story becomes useful.
Palantir didn’t follow the Silicon Valley SaaS script. They ignored “scalable onboarding” and “light-touch customer success.” Instead, they embedded their people inside customer organizations. They sat with clients, solved problems in real workflows, and didn’t leave until the product became indispensable.
It’s tempting to think: “That only works if you have billions.” But the principles are highly portable. You don’t need 50 engineers sitting with every client. You just need to adapt the playbook for mid-sized SaaS.
This article breaks down the 5 key lessons from Palantir’s success and shows you how to apply them in your company with the resources you actually have.
Palantir’s biggest insight wasn’t about technology. It was about behavior.
They realized early on that good-enough software that gets adopted beats world-class software that sits idle.
Think about it: most SaaS churn doesn’t happen because the competitor has a shinier feature. It happens because users don’t embed the product into their daily work. They don’t make it a habit.
When growth stalls, most SaaS execs turn to one of two levers:
Ship more features.
Sell harder.
Both feel logical. Neither solves the core problem.
Here’s why:
Adding features often creates more complexity for users, not more value.
Selling harder fills the top of the funnel but doesn’t stop the leak at the bottom.
What you actually need is adoption-driven growth.
Palantir didn’t obsess over feature parity. They obsessed over embedding. Once their software was integrated into a customer’s daily workflow, ripping it out was nearly impossible.
For mid-market SaaS, this translates into one simple truth:
👉 Adoption is your moat. Not your roadmap.
When your product becomes part of how customers operate every day, competitors can’t displace you — even with a better feature set.
Here’s a practical framework to shift from feature-led growth to adoption-led growth:
Measure adoption, not logins. Track metrics like time-to-first-value, depth of usage per role, and workflows completed — not just whether a user signed in.
Design role-based playbooks. Don’t drop generic documentation. Build workflows tailored for SDRs, AEs, CSMs, or managers. Show exactly how their job gets easier.
Set adoption milestones. Instead of just celebrating “go-live,” define success as:
Week 1: Each SDR sends 3 AI-generated follow-ups.
Week 2: Managers run pipeline review using the dashboard.
Week 4: 80% of reps complete tasks using the tool.
Kill dead features. If usage is flat after 90 days, stop investing there. Redirect resources to what people actually use.
Reward adoption. Highlight internal champions in client organizations. Show off their wins. Adoption spreads fastest through peer proof, not vendor pressure.
Let’s say you build sales enablement software.
Feature-led approach: You launch a “new AI call summary” button. Announce it in the release notes. Hope reps use it.
Adoption-led approach: You create a “Call Debrief Workflow” playbook. It says:
After each call, click the “AI Summary” button.
Copy the key points into HubSpot.
Use the suggested next steps for your follow-up email.
Managers: review the AI summary in weekly deal review.
Now you’ve turned a feature into a workflow. It’s embedded into daily work. It sticks.
Measuring the wrong thing. Don’t confuse logins with adoption. You care about workflow usage.
Building for buyers, not users. Remember: the exec signs the contract, but the rep’s daily behavior decides adoption.
Scaling too fast. Fix adoption in one role or team before expanding across the org.
Palantir embedded forward-deployed engineers (FDEs) into every major account. That’s not realistic for a 50-person SaaS company.
But you don’t need their scale to copy their principle. You can run a lean version of embedding.
Here’s a simple process any SaaS company can implement with one customer success manager (CSM):
Assign a CSM as a “mini-FDE.”
For the first 30 days after go-live, their job is to shadow the customer’s usage and spot friction.
Fix one ugly workflow.
Don’t try to overhaul everything. Pick the task that causes the most pain (example: SDR → AE handoff). Build a custom workflow or playbook to solve it.
Document the win.
Capture before-and-after metrics: time saved, errors reduced, or faster response.
Expand from proof.
Once the first workflow sticks, layer in a second one.
This creates trust and momentum without heavy resource investment.
A SaaS company selling pipeline review software noticed managers rarely logged in after onboarding.
Instead of pushing more training, a CSM shadowed a sales manager for two weeks. They discovered managers still preferred Excel because it was easier for quick filtering.
The CSM built a custom view inside the product that mimicked Excel. The manager adopted it immediately. Within a month, the team abandoned spreadsheets entirely.
It didn’t take 10 engineers. It took one focused CSM solving one workflow problem.
Trying to fix everything at once. You’ll overwhelm the customer and your own team. Start small.
Shadowing without action. Shadowing is useless unless you actually solve the pain point.
Skipping documentation. Always record the before-and-after. Customers forget fast. Data makes the win visible.
Most SaaS onboarding looks like this:
Kickoff call.
Training session.
“Here’s the help center.”
Good luck.
The result? Adoption stalls, usage drops, churn risk spikes.
Palantir flipped this model. Adoption wasn’t an afterthought. It was the product.
Instead of throwing bodies at every account, build structured embedding systems:
90-Day Embedding Sprint. Replace “onboarding” with a defined embedding process. Success = usage in daily workflows, not training completion.
Role-Specific Playbooks. Show SDRs how to use the product in prospecting, AEs in pipeline reviews, CSMs in QBR prep. Adoption is role by role.
Weekly Office Hours. Instead of ticket-based support, run group sessions where customers bring real problems and get live workflow fixes.
Internal Champions. Identify 1–2 users per client who “get it.” Train them deeply and let them spread adoption internally.
A customer success SaaS replaced their standard 2-hour training with a 12-week “embedding sprint.”
Each week focused on one role, one workflow:
Week 1: CSMs use AI to draft meeting recaps.
Week 3: AEs run pipeline reviews inside the platform.
Week 6: Managers pull team performance dashboards.
By week 12, adoption hit 70% active usage across roles — double their previous benchmarks.
Palantir treated onboarding as part of the product experience. Mid-market SaaS often treats it as a side process.
That’s a mistake.
If customers don’t get value fast, they churn.
Here’s how to make onboarding part of the product:
Dedicate 1 resource for 2–3 weeks. One CSM should be accountable for activation, not just “support.”
Map pain points. Spend the first week capturing where the team wastes time or makes mistakes.
Deliver one quick win workflow. By day 30, the customer should see measurable value (example: cutting lead response time in half).
Build a quick wins library. Document every workflow solved for one customer. Reuse it with the next.
A mid-market SaaS in the HR tech space used to run generic training sessions. Adoption hovered at 20%.
They switched to a quick-win model: in the first 30 days, every customer got one workflow fixed. For one, it was automating interview scheduling. For another, it was streamlining onboarding paperwork.
Within six months, average adoption rose to 60%. Churn dropped by half.
Palantir’s ultimate moat was becoming infrastructure. Once their software was embedded, removing it would break operations.
Mid-market SaaS can achieve the same — without billions.
Role-Specific Templates. Pre-build workflows that map directly to customer roles.
Source of Truth. Position your platform as the place where decisions get made (example: pipeline reviews or QBRs).
Regular Working Sessions. Replace generic QBRs with ongoing co-working sessions where you actively use the product together.
Integrations. Connect deeply into CRM, billing, and communication tools so your product becomes part of the daily stack.
A SaaS sales coaching platform moved from “nice to have” to “must have” by embedding itself in weekly deal reviews.
Instead of being an optional analysis tool, it became the system where managers actually ran the meeting. Removing it would have broken the sales rhythm.
That shift turned the product into infrastructure.
Here’s how a mid-sized SaaS company can apply Palantir’s lessons without Palantir’s resources:
Start with adoption, not features. Measure usage in workflow outcomes, not logins.
Run a 30-day shadow sprint. Assign a CSM to fix one ugly workflow.
Replace onboarding with embedding. Use a 90-day sprint focused on adoption per role.
Guarantee a quick win in 30 days. Show value fast. Build trust.
Aim to become infrastructure. Tie your product to revenue-critical processes so it can’t be ripped out.
Time-to-first-value. Days from go-live to first measurable impact.
Workflow adoption. % of target workflows completed using your product.
Role adoption. Usage by SDRs, AEs, CSMs, managers.
Expansion revenue. Growth from existing accounts vs. net-new.
Churn vs. adoption. Customers with low workflow adoption should be flagged months before renewal.
Palantir’s playbook isn’t about size or budget. It’s about mindset.
Stop thinking like a vendor that sells features.
Start thinking like a partner that embeds workflows and delivers outcomes.
SaaS companies that adopt this playbook will see faster adoption, stronger retention, and more expansion.
Because in the end, the company that gets used daily and drives impact wins.