Earning a seat at the table | Jan Young | TDSU Ep. 32

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So somewhere between 89 and 97 percent of the company bottom line, your revenue, how you keep your lights on, is based on two CSMs handling 200 accounts. That's when he went, oh, maybe we need to pay attention to this. Oh, I want to keep the lights on after all.

Oh, do you? Okay, well, let me help you with that. All right. Sorry.

Yes, go ahead. What's up, lifers, and welcome to the Daily Standup with Lifetime Value, where we're giving you daily ideas in the customer success space for you to noodle over. I got my man JP here.

JP, do you want to say hi? What's up, pickleballers? I got my man Rob here. Rob, do you want to say hi? What's up, noodlers? And we have Jan here. Jan, do you want to say hi? I don't have anything funny to say, but I'll say hi.

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Hello, hi. I knew they were going to put that pressure on you. And I'm your host, the painfully empathetic to our guests person of CS, Dillon Young.

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Jan, do you want to introduce yourself? Sure, yeah, I can introduce myself. I guess, lately, I've been hearing that people think of me as Jan Young CX, which is sort of funny. Your branding is working.

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That's a company name. But yeah, so Jan Young, I am the founder and chief customer officer of Jan Young CX. I do coaching and consulting.

I'm building some courses. I lead a community of over 2,200 CS leaders, CSMs, and people transitioning to CS. That is called CX Exchange.

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You can find that at the CX Exchange. So it's cxxchange.com. And then you can find information about me at janyoungcx.com. We'll put it on the show notes so people don't have to trouble buster with that. Yeah, you don't have to stop and write down.

If you're driving somewhere listening to this, don't get in an accident. Yeah, please, pull over the road. What am I going to do? You must text it to somebody.

Don't text it to me. Jan, so you know the deal. You know what we're talking about on this podcast.

We want to know, very simply, what is on your mind when it comes to customer success. And this was a late entry, so none of us knows. Maybe JP.

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I do things up to the last minute. That's okay. You know what's on my mind is I really want CS leaders to be at the executive table.

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I really want them to be able to show up. And it doesn't happen by asking for it. It's not like if you say, mother, may I, then you will be granted this wand and a little pillow to sit on, and it's all just going to be lovely.

You know what I mean? It doesn't happen that way. You've got to step up to it. And the way that you get to step up and participate at that level and be one of the executives and work with your board is you need to know the numbers.

You need to be a revenue leader. And so you need to think of yourself as a post-sales revenue leader, and you need to think of yourself as a business leader. And so it's not just an account by account thing.

It's not a reactive thing. And so many CS leaders get into that reactive mode. It has to be where you come with the projections.

They're not telling you some quota. You come, you say, this is the lay of the land. This is what we can achieve.

This is our stretch goals. You have to come with that. And so I don't know if you call that like a pet peeve or a goal or a mission or all of the above, but that's what I think about all day.

Encouraging CS folks to really grab it by the horns, right? Like really like, you got to own it. Stop being told what to do. You're the expert.

I will say what I have been thinking a lot about lately, and it dovetails nicely both to what you said and my statement just now, is that you are often as a director of CS, VP of CS, if you are the chief customer officer, though there aren't a ton of those, you're definitely the expert. It's often likely that there are not multiple customer success experts in a company. And so you cannot rely on somebody else to give you direction a lot of times.

You've got to be paving the way. Anyway, JP, I want to give you a chance to jump in here. Before JP, can I just say, oftentimes we'll get frustrated that these other executives don't know.

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Well, how much do you know about what the CTO does? How much do you know about what HR does? Good point. Are you a marketing leader? You don't know their area. They don't know your area.

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Just because you're the leader of the customers, that doesn't mean they know how that really works. So yeah, you got to bring it. What's up, guys? It's Dillon here, and you know why I'm here.

Hat in hand. I got a favor to ask of you. If you like what we're doing, give us a like on whatever platform that you find us on.

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We want to make sure we're giving the best content we can to you and others within the community. Thanks so much, guys. I'll let you get back to the show.

Sorry, JP. I mean, so I'm not a leader. I have taken some revenue leadership with Winning by Design.

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I think it was a phenomenal course. I was on it with a lot of other VPs. And I was like, I guess I'm here.

But it was definitely fairly challenging. But I saw that there was an importance to really speaking to a recurring revenue model. I'm able to come in and speak to the recurring revenue model and sort of align in a sense where we were just talking with some people about how there's so much data on sales folks.

And so I feel when you have that sort of data, you sort of can actually get a seat at the table. Because a lot of people I know at that C-suite really want to hear numbers. They don't want to hear a lot of fluff.

They don't want to hear maybe some of the talk tracks that as customer success professionals may naturally have. And so I think that if I'm thinking anything on this, I'm saying absolutely not to wait for permission. But of course, when you go in there, definitely being able to talk about the sort of impact that you're looking to have and have that thing ready and succinct and not simply like, hey guys, I want to participate because I'm on the tour too.

Make sure you're coming in with- Customers love me. Yeah. Right? Yeah.

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I make customers happy. Oh, that's so sweet. Yeah.

Oh, cool. What does that mean? But they keep paying less. No, but they're happy.

They're really happy. They're so happy because they're paying less. Rob, what about you? You're speaking to my heart.

This is something I feel very, very strongly about. I think it's a super important topic. So JP, you said naturally get a seat at the table.

And I wanted to actually dial in on what naturally get a seat at the table means. Because I want people who are listening to this, I want them to leave with some practical advice as to how to do this. And if someone here is just like, grab the bull by the horns, pick yourself up by the bootstraps.

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I'm not quoting anybody here, but they're going to leave saying, well, how do I do that? Right? And so I'll tell you a story, quick story of a CS leader who went about this the wrong way and then the right way. And wrong, I don't mean it was wrong. I mean, it was ineffective.

So the wrong way was saying, I want a seat at the table. I deserve a seat at the table. You should listen to me.

The right way was actually, this is the magic line. I've got something good to show you. And that was a cost of revenue analysis.

That was a gross margin analysis. That was a revenue forecast, an upsell forecast. And so what I learned, I just gave away the story here, didn't I? Yeah.

I was going to say it to you. It was me. You're doing it.

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

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My point is like, I failed my way out of this conversation more times than I've earned my seat at the table. And so that's the value that I hope to provide to whoever's listening to this is that it's not a push. It's a pull.

You've got to figure out how do you get the executive team to pull you into the meeting? How do you get peak their curiosity to say, Oh, maybe we should bring this person in. And what I did actually, which was cool is I engaged a friend as like a personal consultant. And all I did was buy him dinner and drinks and stuff like that.

A friend who is just way better than me at some of this stuff. And I think what folks should probably do is think about what resources they have available. If they don't have resources available, then let me know.

Cause I'm happy to connect them with folks that I know do this. That's exactly why I wrote the free guide. Yeah, exactly.

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Seven steps for CS leaders become post-sales revenue leaders, right? Because it literally goes through all of that, right? That's why building a course. That's what I coach people about. Yeah, exactly that.

Because you don't have to be alone. You don't have to learn it the hard way like Rob and I did. And like literally I've been able to, cause you're also, you're not just transforming a CS leader.

You have to transform the way that CEOs and boards think about this, right? They're used to relegating CS to the sidelines. So you have to be able to show them like, Hey, this is, this is why it's actually important. I actually showed like, I went to the CEO and I said, so it looks like CS is responsible for somewhere back of the envelope between 89 and 93% of the company bottom line.

And he starts arguing with me and he starts basically saying, Oh no, I think it's closer to 97%. And I'm like, okay, all right. So somewhere between 89 and 97% of the company bottom line, your revenue, how you keep your lights on is based on basically two CSMs handling 200 accounts.

That's when he went, Oh, maybe we need to pay attention to this. Oh, I want to keep the lights on after all. Oh, do you? Okay.

Well, let me help you with that. Yeah. So yeah.

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That's our time. Thank you so much for being here. Incredibly valuable information.

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Thank you, JP and Rob for jumping in. Jan, we got to have you back. It's been too long, but for now, ta-ta.

All right. Fun stuff. Thanks.

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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. Find us on YouTube at Lifetime Value and find us on the socials at lifetimevaluemedia.com. Until next time.