Human necessity | Daniel Zarick

[Daniel] (0:00 - 0:17)

The first two, three, four weeks are often pretty painful. We're sold so effectively and we see companies come to us looking to solve this as a tool, as a facilitator, it's a process and guardrail for running that. It doesn't magically solve it.

It's still a human problem and it's a coordination problem.

[Dillon] (0:24 - 0:35)

What's up lifers and welcome to The Daily Standup with lifetime value, where 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] (0:37 - 0:37)

Hello.

[Dillon] (0:40 - 0:41)

Was that the joker?

[JP] (0:42 - 0:44)

So we are doing a good job.

[Dillon] (0:44 - 0:51)

All right. And we have Rob giggling in the background. Rob, do you want to say hi?

[Rob] (0:51 - 0:52)

Hi people.

[Dillon] (0:56 - 1:10)

The joker and Pee-wee Herman. Yeah, they're really not that dissimilar.

I don't think. And we have Daniel with us, a serious businessman. Daniel, please don't feed into the hype.

Do you want to say hi?

[Daniel] (1:11 - 1:12)

I'm going to say hi.

[Dillon] (1:12 - 1:13)

Normal.

Yes, please.

[Rob] (1:14 - 1:14)

Thank you.

[Dillon] (1:15 - 1:22)

He has a reputation to protect. And I am your host. My name is Dillon Young.

Daniel, thank you so much for being here. Can you please introduce yourself?

[Daniel] (1:23 - 1:45)

Yeah, thank you. Thanks for having me guys. I'm Daniel, CEO of Arrows. Arrows is a collaborative customer onboarding tool and digital sales room tools built specifically for HubSpot. So we focus solely on HubSpot customers and really add a collaborative layer on top of what is typically your internal workflow and process inside the CRM. And we add a customer facing kind of layer on top of the CRM.

[Dillon] (1:46 - 1:50)

Very cool. Very cool. Can I ask really quickly the name Arrows?

Where does that come from?

[Daniel] (1:51 - 2:11)

A lot of people, it feels aligned with our onboarding kind of forward momentum sort of product line that we have. It actually comes from a vintage or older formula one team that was called Arrows. I look for kind of non typical places for names.

And then when they feel right, that's when we usually pull on that. Cool. I like it.

I love that.

[Dillon] (2:11 - 2:30)

You said it's usually like you made yourself sound like an old grizzled vet. And I love that vibe. Anyway, Daniel, you know what we do here?

We ask one single question of every single guest, and that is what is on your mind when it comes to customer success. You're free to expand that out a little if you'd like, but why don't you tell us what that is for you?

[Daniel] (2:31 - 4:07)

For me, it is the handoff from sales to onboarding or success and how to maintain and keep momentum through that. A thing that we believe at Arrows is onboarding is more of an extension of the sales process than like the start of the customer relationship, but there's so much pain in there for customers. Like when we Arrows have signed up for a partner, like an agency or a product, and then we cancel later, even in the first few months, it's always because.

We were so excited in sales and then the momentum and the progress was totally dropped. We had activation energy. We were like, let's go.

We want to kick off this cold email partner. We want to sign up for this new product. Then the first two, three, four weeks are often pretty painful.

We're sold so effectively and we see companies come to us looking to solve this Arrows as a tool, as a facilitator, it's a process and guardrail for running that it doesn't magically solve it. It's still a human problem and it's a coordination problem across teams. So that's what's on our mind a lot.

And you know why we have a product that helps solve it. But even in that we see there's tension between success saying, Hey, our sales team is selling deals this way, or they're not collecting this information. And sales is like, I sold this great customer.

You didn't activate them. You didn't get them live. It's maybe the revenue is actually usage-based revenue.

So if you didn't get them live, actually don't get paid out. Now there's a lot of problems. And that single point between what we see often as a sales pipeline in your CRM and then some post-sales process, hopefully a pipeline in your CRM as well, but maybe it's somewhere else.

[Dillon] (4:08 - 4:29)

JP, I want to come to you first and because I bet I already know Rob's answer, particularly when, when you talk about that handoff and the bleed between sales and CS, but JP, what does this look like at Posit or how do you guys talk about it? Is it, is it extremely siloed or is there a lot of overlap and collaboration?

[JP] (4:29 - 5:33)

There's definitely a lot of overlap and collaboration. I think there's standardization and process is where the opportunity really is. And so fortunately I don't see very like mudslinging where I am.

So that is nice. I can say that honestly, there really isn't any mudslinging whether people do that personally or not, I'm not sure. But I think that you highlighted something that was really great, Daniel, when you said that you have this software that really helps, but ultimately it's a human problem.

And I think that is such a great way for people to think about the tools that we use in general, because so often people look at a tool as the solution in itself without thinking about how will they actually use the tool to solve a problem. If I buy a hammer, it's not going to nail nails by itself. Like I still have to swing it.

[Daniel] (5:33 - 5:36)

And you have to swing it straight like this other, you have to swing it.

[JP] (5:37 - 6:12)

Yeah, exactly. I'm almost like, I want to talk to you and hear more about as someone who's, this is your thing that you created, knowing that, because to me that's very CS, right? Like I have a product and I'm thinking, okay, how are you using this product to solve your problem?

Not just, are you using the product, right? So I think that that would probably take too long and get more into like how you found the company. But I think that was a really good call, especially from someone who's the owner you were like, Hey, this is still a human problem, but this is a tool that was designed to help you solve that.

[Daniel] (6:12 - 6:25)

Well, you mentioned it's a process thing and it's standardization and that is what the tool can enable, but you still have to have the team on board with that, both teams and everybody involved. And by extension, share that with the customer. So they know here's what we're going to do.

[Dillon] (6:26 - 6:49)

Yes. The collaboration is still key and finding a way for everybody to agree on this new process, this new tool, a level of accountability. Is always where it seems, whether you believe a piece of technology is a tool or it's a solution that's going to solve all your problems.

A lot of times we still fall short on like accountability and that piece, but Rob, why don't you jump in here?

[Rob] (6:49 - 7:45)

Yeah, I'll try to keep it quick because I know that you guys have heard some of my bag of tricks on this. Maybe Daniel hasn't. What I really like is that we're reaching a layer of depth.

It's a deeper layer when you guys say that it's a human problem. So there's a lot of advice out there on this, and I think like the most common unifying thing as well, have a handoff form from sales to CS. Okay, cool.

That goes, it goes somewhere, right? That's a start. But when you apply that, like it's a human problem framework or that lends to what we're discussing here, sorry, I did it again.

Then you start asking like, why do handoff forms typically fail? And there's a lot more you can do beyond that. There's actually a presentation that I've done on, call it the 11 steps to a seamless sales handoff.

And it goes through things like, do you have a clawback protocol? Now that that's a good way to get a salesperson's attention. Yep.

[Daniel] (7:47 - 7:51)

You hold back some of the commission until there's a live customer, right?

[Rob] (7:51 - 9:03)

Yep. Or another thing is like turn the mirror on customer success. What are we doing on customer success to create sales enablement?

That's an interesting thing. The best sales enablement person that I ever had was someone I promoted from our customer support team because he knew how bad it was to see like clients fail and how he traced it back to the sales process. The one that came up during the conference we were recently at is creating a closing script for sales, like CS having discretion to influence how a deal is closed.

It's pretty cool. And also this 10 commandments document that I've referred to before. We're basically like, I worked with a sales VP once.

He was so tired of me complaining about poor fit deals. He was like, Rob, just write a document and I'm going to make sure the team adopts it. So I gave it this grandiose title, 10 commandments and ended up being like 12 commandments, 14 commandments, 16, but it's good to keep it.

It's good to keep it trim, but that kind of just speaks to the bigger picture that you really do need managerial alignment to affect all of this. But those are some tools that have worked in smaller environments where getting that managerial alignment is a little less multi-threaded.

[Dillon] (9:03 - 9:22)

Daniel, why don't you close us out with kind of the way you guys think about it. Maybe what's the lowest hanging fruit for people to start thinking this way as opposed to the thing that jumped out at me is this idea of a piece of technology that aids in solving a problem versus buying a piece of technology and thinking it's the solution in and of itself.

[Daniel] (9:22 - 10:22)

Well, yeah, I'd say you have to enforce usage and proper usage across teams, whether it's sales, success, whoever's using it. JP, you mentioned you have to buy a tool and make sure people are adopting it and sharing it to us. So the customer is like the so far mostly unspoken kind of third constituent here.

There's a handoff form, but it's for us show the customer in the closing script and the closing stages. Like here's what onboarding looks like. Here's what the next few weeks look like.

Let's align around that. Let's get an agreement around that and the work we're going to do together. And hey, some of this is your work that you actually, a lot of it's probably your work that you have to do.

And we're going to get you this thing. I've sold you the outcome, but it actually takes two weeks, four weeks, three months of work across a lot of team members for us to get to the outcome. And we're going to do everything we can, but we need you aligned on what that work is.

So that's where the success and onboarding and sales teams can align on making sure their customers continue that momentum even after the close.

[Dillon] (10:23 - 10:53)

Very cool. I love it, Daniel. Side note.

Congratulations. Just recently married. Is that right?

Thank you. Yeah. Just a small clap.

Thank you so much for coming onto the show and sharing this, talking a little bit about Arrows. I was reading a little bit about it. Seems like a really interesting tool.

So again, thank you so much. We are out of time. But we'd love to have you back in the future.

For now, we've got to say goodbye. Appreciate you all.

[Voiceover] (10:57 - 11:28)

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 lifetime value, media.com.

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