Care bears | Emily Garza

[JP] (0:00 - 0:20)

Oh gosh, I'm just gonna say it. Sometimes you have the Care Bear CSMs that come in and they want to shoot empathy out of their chest, as if that is what's going to drive the revenue. But the fact is like, empathy is valuable.

It can in fact help to drive it, but it's not, you don't just do it by shooting out rainbows.

[Dillon] (0:29 - 0:43)

What's up lifers and welcome to The Daily Standup with Lifetime Value. It's been a while. It's been a while.

We're giving you fresh new customer success ideas every single day. I got my man JP here. JP, do you want to say hi?

[JP] (0:44 - 0:45)

Hey, I don't fly spirit.

[Dillon] (0:47 - 0:53)

And we've got Rob with us, who does fly spirit. Rob, would you like to say hi and or defend yourself?

[Rob] (0:54 - 1:05)

Catch the spirit of Spirit Airlines. Do you remember that ad? Sing?

No. Did you make it up? It's the first time I've ever sung on this show, so that's good.

[Dillon] (1:05 - 1:10)

No, I didn't make that up. And we have Emily with us. Emily, can you say hi, please?

[Emily] (1:11 - 1:14)

Hi, and since we're in December, I'll say happy holidays.

[Dillon] (1:16 - 1:40)

Cardinal sin. Cardinal sin. We do not date the podcast.

What if we want to hold this until the 4th of July? Oh my goodness. Okay, forcing our hand.

And I am your host. Consider me forced. My name is Dillon Young.

Emily, thank you so much for being here and thank you for being excited. Can you please introduce yourself?

[Emily] (1:41 - 1:59)

I can. I'm Emily. I only read instructions that are written, not verbal.

I have been leading customer success teams at startups for the past 10 years or so. I'm really excited to be here and share lessons and things that I'm passionate about.

[Dillon] (1:59 - 2:14)

And we are excited for you to be here. If you don't know, we do one thing and one thing only on this podcast, and that is we ask the question, what is on your mind when it comes to customer success? So Emily, can you please tell us what that is for you?

[Emily] (2:16 - 2:24)

Thriving revenue. I feel like it's good or bad. Oh, good.

[Dillon] (2:25 - 2:41)

Good. Okay. Well, what about it exactly?

Are you doing it well, not doing it well? Are you finding challenges? Do you have any tips about how to do it best?

[Emily] (2:42 - 4:34)

Yeah. So I think that if you really think about the last two years or so, this has been a huge conversation in customer success. And I feel like people's perception of it has evolved a lot.

I think early on customer success, it was like, how can you distance yourself from revenue? We are training, adopting, enabling, showing value, all these kinds of buzzwords, which in the end should all lead to revenue retaining or growth anyway. But people really didn't want to overtly make that connection.

I feel like over the last year, year and a half, people have started to embrace this. That's not necessarily a bad thing, which is good because I come from a sales background. I lean that way anyway.

And I think that you're doing your customer success team a disservice if you're not tying yourselves to revenue. And I think sometimes that's really scary because if you don't have a sales background or your team hasn't been doing that as overtly in the past, how do you take steps? And I think you can be someone like me who comes in a little bit like bull in a china shop at a new company and says, cool, I want to own renewals and upsells.

Where do I sign up for this? Or you could say, okay, we own training and we own adoption. And how can we actually start to more directly tie the things that we're doing to the outcome?

And maybe that is, hey, if we do, I don't know, three of these key trainings during the year, that actually increases our retention rate by X amount. So if you don't own the direct revenue number, whether that's renewal or upsell or cross sell, it's a little bit harder. It's a little bit more work on you to tie some of those metrics, but I think super critical now, especially as companies are looking at CS to be that revenue retainer and revenue growth driver.

[Dillon] (4:35 - 5:03)

So you answered my question, which was, are you okay if they don't own the revenue number, but they own the leading indicators that most directly influence revenue? And I think what it sounds like you're saying is you've got to understand the method by which you impact the dollars that your company is receiving. Exactly.

Cool.

[Emily] (5:04 - 5:06)

And you have to be the one to tell that story.

[Dillon] (5:07 - 5:11)

Yes. Fair enough. Okay.

Rob, why don't you jump in here?

[Rob] (5:11 - 6:47)

This came up recently because I recently instituted with a client and this is not a new CS team, but a new process, pipeline reviews seems like something somewhat straightforward, but they hadn't done it before, but a pipeline review of upcoming renewals and upsells. And it was really interesting just to see in practice, like how we could put a meeting on the calendar that has been longstanding with the sales team and an age old practice. And it started to force their hand to start to not just become aware of what the revenue is, where you could come into a meeting and say, here's the revenue that's at risk.

Here's the revenue that's up for renewal. Here's the revenue that's expansion opportunity, but then also force the vocabulary around that too. In this team's example, they're like starting to geek out about this.

They're starting to study like their customer acquisition costs or CAC. They're studying their CAC to LTV ratios and their payback periods on revenue. And it's been so cool to see how it can explode and excite a team when you actually embrace this.

To get there though, obviously, I think we all have a degree of hesitation around the fact that it's like novel material, right? So with most teams, like I end up, I don't know, recommending just starting with the basics around playbooks, scripting and objection or rebuttal documentation, like the tactical documentation you can use around revenue conversations with customers. But I think also if you could build a whole culture around revenue, there's a huge opportunity on upside here for a lot of teams that hasn't been tapped, even though it might seem intimidating for some of us to start.

[Dillon] (6:48 - 7:01)

JP, I know this is a conversation you've been having a lot lately at work here in our little universe. So tell me what you think about what Emily has to say, or maybe the questions that it presents for you.

[JP] (7:02 - 9:03)

Where my mind immediately went was, yeah, that conversation we had the other day where Emily, basically Dillon and Rob had expressed this favor for people who had sales backgrounds coming into CS. And where I led in with that was to zoom out a bit even more, this word strategic that has been much maligned, I feel like, right? It's almost redundant to say like a strategic CSM, because that's what we should be doing.

So I think that simple statement of drive revenue, there's actually a lot in there. So that process of driving is something that I think a lot of salespeople are very comfortable with, which is why when they can come into customer success, that can be very much an asset. And I think that there's, oh gosh, I'm just going to say it.

Sometimes you have the care bear CSMs that come in and they want to shoot empathy out of their chest, as if that is what's going to drive the revenue. But the fact is like, empathy is valuable. It can in fact, help the driver, but it's not, you don't just do it by shooting out rainbows.

When people are looking at a P&L chart or whatever, they want to see how this is happening. So that's why I say two of those things are important, because you want to be driving and then towards what? Towards revenue, right?

So sales is driving things towards revenue, but CS also needs to be driving things toward revenue, albeit in a different way. And I think that this is where we get to where the strategy really is. How does a CSM employ this strategy to ultimately drive revenue, not to drive empathy?

That's the key difference. We use empathy to drive revenue. We're not using empathy to drive good customer relationships.

So I think hopefully if there's people out there, you're listening and you're like, I want to get into CS. I just laid it out there for you. All right.

Don't be a care bear CSM. You're driving revenue.

[Dillon] (9:04 - 9:07)

It's about the money, baby. Emily, do you want to close us out?

[Emily] (9:07 - 9:47)

I can jump in there. So one, yes, sales skills are important, but let me be clear. I don't want failed salespeople, right?

I don't want those salespeople who are like, can't be any good. And they're like, no, CS is easy. I'll jump over there.

I don't want you. Number two, I think with this shift, people and CS leaders need to be really thoughtful about setting their team up for success. And if people haven't had that skill and background previously, you need to be doing training, right?

Just setting up a forecast meeting doesn't work, but being able to say this is what a forecast meeting is, and here's what the steps are. You've got to bring people along based on where their background is.

[Dillon] (9:48 - 9:58)

Fantastic. Love it. Emily, thank you so much for being here.

That is our time. Would love to have you come back in the future at a time where we don't tell them what month it is.

[Emily] (9:58 - 9:59)

You're wearing a winter hat though.

[Dillon] (10:00 - 10:09)

That's because I'm bald and it's very chilly. This is the first time it's been on, yeah, exactly.

[JP] (10:09 - 10:10)

Oh, gosh.

[Dillon] (10:10 - 10:11)

Yeah, JP, for real.

[Emily] (10:12 - 10:14)

It will be better next time.

[Dillon] (10:14 - 10:17)

Thank you so much. Please come back soon. But for now, we've got to say goodbye.

[Emily] (10:18 - 10:19)

Thank you.

[Voiceover] (10:25 - 10:55)

You've been listening to The Daily Standup by Lifetime Value. Please note that the views expressed in these conversations are attributed only to those individuals on this recording and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of their respective employers. For all inquiries, please reach out via email to Dillon at lifetimevaluemedia.com.

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