Manufacturing epiphanies | Anika Zubair | Ep. 95

[Rob] (0:00 - 0:14)

I remember the CEO, he walked into the room, he looked around, he goes, this is the revenue room. And I was like, this is the revenue room? Wondering what this revenue room looks like.

It was a, it was a dusty ping pong table and me and a coworker.

[JP] (0:15 - 0:23)

Oh, that's what I'm going to call my podcast now. Jazz.

[Dillon] (0:26 - 0:37)

What's up lifers and welcome to the daily stand up with lifetime value, where we're giving you fresh new customer success ideas every single day. I got my man, JP with us. JP, do you want to say hi?

[JP] (0:38 - 0:39)

Happy to be here, people.

[Dillon] (0:40 - 0:50)

And we've got Rob with us. Rob, do you want to say hi? I was muted.

Okay. Lord have mercy.

[Anika] (0:51 - 0:55)

It's as though we haven't done. We're professionals here. What?

Just stop it.

[Dillon] (0:55 - 0:58)

It's as if we haven't done a hundred plus of these at this point.

[Anika] (0:58 - 1:03)

I was about to say, I feel like I'm the season pro and what's going on.

[Dillon] (1:03 - 1:12)

Well, so like 99%, but you're stepping over your introduction here, Anika. So Anika, can you please say hi?

[Anika] (1:13 - 1:15)

Hello, everyone. Excited to be here.

[Dillon] (1:16 - 1:24)

And I am your host. My name is Dillon Young. Anika, thank you so much for being here.

As though you need an introduction, can you please introduce yourself?

[Anika] (1:25 - 2:10)

Thank you for having me. I feel honored. I'm like, I love everything you guys are building, but hello everyone.

My name is Anika Zuber. I'm head of customer success at Griffin. I have spent the last 13 years in post-sales revenue roles as I like to call it, but it is customer success roles.

So working in implementation, success, support, you name it, just really enabling the customer to see success. And then obviously driving revenue for the business as well. I do host my own podcast as well.

A lot of people say they recognize the voice before they recognize me. That's where that's from. It's the customer success pro podcast.

I share a lot of content on LinkedIn. I'm a customer success coach, lots of extracurriculars. I could keep going, but let's dive into the topic because we could just keep chatting about everything else.

[Dillon] (2:11 - 2:25)

I love it. You can tell you're a pro, no pun intended, because you knew when to segue. We can't waste all our time here.

Tell me again, really quickly. How did you describe the profession? What did you say?

13 years doing what?

[Anika] (2:25 - 2:27)

Post-sales revenue leader.

[Dillon] (2:27 - 2:45)

I like it. I like it. That's the way to go, right?

Let's not tie ourselves to any one title. Anyway, Anika, you know what we do here, and that is we ask every single guest the exact same question. What is on your mind when it comes to customer success?

So can you please tell us what that is for you?

[Anika] (2:46 - 3:23)

I think I might've alluded to it in what I introduced myself as, but it is about how customer success drives revenue for customers and for company. But it is all about money. And I think a lot of people underestimate and see it as a dirty word, by the way, really do.

I know it's an uncomfortable word. Money is something that we don't always talk about, whether it's your salary, your bills. But it makes the world go round.

It's a reason why we're all working, and it's a reason why your customers pick your product or service. And I think customer success is a revenue generator, and it's not talked about enough.

[Dillon] (3:24 - 3:47)

Was this an epiphany you had? Because you mentioned 13 years post-sales revenue leader. But I have this sort of timeline in my head that we have only recently, past couple of years, all come to grips with the fact that revenue is a word that we're going to say every single day and that we're going to be responsible for and we've got to be able to report on.

Was it like that when you got started 13 years ago?

[Anika] (3:48 - 3:51)

No, quite the opposite. I actually worked in sales many moons ago.

[Dillon] (3:51 - 3:53)

That's why you're not afraid. That's why.

[Anika] (3:53 - 5:29)

I'm not. I've definitely been in the uncomfortable seat of trying to pitch and sell and close and all that kind of stuff. But I never enjoyed it that much.

But I always knew that there's certain skills and tactics behind it. I think everyone gets scared by those skills and tactics that you do have to have when talking about revenue or being comfortable with revenue. But the epiphany that I did have, or the moment where I realized this, is when we really, as a business, started to see customer success grow.

And part of almost like a service that was paid for or was like, oh, it's costing us money to keep customer success going, rather than it being realized that actually having a very strong customer success team function strategy will result in longer term revenue for your business. But I think this epiphany happened, funny enough, in like 2017, 2018. And then the pandemic really solidified it for me when it just really felt that everyone was basically furloughing everyone that was in some sort of customer success field, because it was like, oh, like short term thinking, the customers will be fine, let's just go try to chase new logos.

And then the same thing, funny enough, in this little SaaS bubble that we live in happened a few years ago. Like it's like suddenly, oh, dang, money's not cheap anymore. We're not going to invest in customer success anymore.

So let's start cutting customer success teams and doing mass layoffs and reducing force. And I think it's the narrative that we're using. And I don't think we're using the right narrative when it comes to customer success.

So I'm really trying to push the revenue thing here because it's what businesses care about.

[Dillon] (5:31 - 5:50)

HOFFMAN You're not going to find any dissenters in this group, though I think there is a large cohort of folks in our little bubble who might disagree with you. Rob, I want to give you a chance to jump in here. You present on this stuff a lot, this idea of revenue and CS and its power and its importance.

So talk a little bit about that.

[Rob] (5:51 - 6:24)

Yeah, no, it's interesting to hear you guys use the word epiphany because for me, it was actually the opposite where I was like shocked and alarmed when I met other folks in the CS community and they weren't focused on this. And we're talking like almost 10 years ago for me. So I think my experience of this has actually been different than most people's.

And that's not to say one's more right than the other or anything like that. But my first experience in the formerly titled customer success role, I remember the CEO, he walked into the room, he looked around, he goes, this is the revenue room. And I was like, this is the revenue room?

First of all, we haven't collected enough.

[Dillon] (6:25 - 6:26)

That was your epiphany.

[Rob] (6:26 - 6:35)

Yes, that's true. That's true. Wondering what this revenue room looks like.

It was a dusty ping pong table and me and a coworker.

[JP] (6:35 - 6:37)

Oh, that's what I'm gonna call my podcast now.

[Rob] (6:38 - 8:02)

So, but yeah, no, it was like, but yeah, no, it was classic startup office on Market Street in San Francisco. Regardless, that team ended up making up two thirds of net new revenue. We went from the first dollar that we collected to we were fortunate enough for it to turn into a unicorn company where CS made up two thirds of net new revenue, which was baffling for a lot of people that joined the team because they, similar to what that story that you described, Anika, they had to have their own personal epiphanies around this.

And there were a lot of interesting coaching moments where we talked through the reasons why someone was hesitant to own revenue. We would have to unpack, is it because of a lack of interest, because of a lack of skill, or is it because a lack of time? And each person had a different reason.

And sort of the same way we run risk playbooks for customers, my coworker and I, we ended up building internal playbooks for how we handle internal blockers for our internal people. And how do we, we genuinely use this phrase, like how do we manufacture a moment where this person in customer success realizes that they have the capability to own revenue? And it was like kind of part of our onboarding process.

So it was a really cool, fortunate experience to be part of that ultimately impacted the whole culture of the company. But yeah.

[JP] (8:03 - 8:04)

You were manufacturing epiphanies?

[Rob] (8:05 - 8:08)

Manufacturing epiphanies, baby. That's what I do for a career now. I'm like Disney.

[Anika] (8:09 - 8:14)

That's a great title. That is going to be your title for now. Manufacturing epiphanies.

[Rob] (8:14 - 8:36)

There we go. I don't know. There would be moments where we would get on a call with a customer, put it on mute while the customer was talking, and have a micro coaching moment.

You're going to tell the customer, no, right now. And they're like, really? And then that for a lot of people, that's like a breakthrough moment.

It's a challenging situation to be in for a lot of us in CS who just always say yes.

[Anika] (8:37 - 9:24)

Yeah. But I think it's what you just mentioned about coaching is something else that I think is missing from that skills, negotiation ability to do it. A lot of people don't realize how much coaching salespeople do, by the way, like training, coaching, like the amount of money a sales leader is going to drop on all of their AEs to do some level of continuous coaching and training to be the closers that they are or to warm up leads the way they do.

And we don't coach our CSM. It's rare. It's really rare.

I think some leaders take the time, but we're all busy and we're all trying to figure it out. And the poor CSMs are also trying to figure it out. You're going to be nervous regardless if you're not going to have the right playbooks, tools, coachable moments that you just said, Robert, that's oh, say no on this call.

And it's safe to say no. But those moments are far in between.

[Dillon] (9:25 - 10:13)

I JP, I want you to jump in here, but I just have to tell the story of where I went. I remember going to my boss. I was leading a team and I went to my boss and I said, hey, this woman I have on my team, incredibly knowledgeable, 30 plus years of industry expertise, understands our product, but has never done sales.

Can she take a $1,200 course on basic sales training skills? It's only eight hours across like a two week period or something. I don't think it's really going to impact her ability to do her job in the meantime.

Without even a debate or a discussion, they were like, no, no, we can't afford that. And I was like, OK, cool. I understand where we're at here in terms of how we value CS and those skills, thinking that we were just going to have them.

Anyway, JP, go ahead.

[JP] (10:14 - 11:36)

Yeah, I'm going to borrow a line from Craig Robertson's character in Pineapple Express. I sink it. I sink the money that they spend on training sales.

And I was like, where has this been for me? And I know that I do get great coaching from CS, but I've also had some really great coaching from sales leaders, actually, where I am. Hopefully in the future, this could be something that's more people can loosen up the purse strings a little bit more.

I'm going to just say my epiphany moment, something that I bucked against, I think, earlier on when I was on LinkedIn, I was seeing people talk about customer obsessed. And I was like, I really don't like that phrasing because I'm not obsessed with the customer. I'm impact motivated.

I want to have an impact. And as a CSM, when you want to have an impact, automatically, how are you going to have that impact? It's going to come down to revenue.

You're either saving somebody money, helping somebody to get right, like all of these things are going to be tied to revenue. And having that awareness can actually guide you, even in places where they may not have those metrics in place. You can become that person who can see it.

And so that was really my epiphany moment. Even for somebody, if you're not a CS leader or anything, you should be thinking about how you're impacting the revenue at your company and the ways that you're doing it.

[Dillon] (11:37 - 11:39)

Anika, do you have any final words before we get out of here?

[Anika] (11:40 - 12:25)

I would just say all of this resonated. I kept nodding along to everything that we were talking about. I just hope it's wider discussed.

I hope it's wider accepted. I hope people get the coaching they need and we have space for that. I hope people realize that there's so much value a customer success manager drives, especially when it comes to revenue.

I just hope you're realizing that you're doing that every single day. We sometimes get caught into being the yes sir or the yes ma'am person. But even when you're doing that, you are driving revenue for your company and for your customers.

I really hope that you realize that it's both. It's not one or the other. You're driving revenue for both and that's your role.

And I really hope everyone gets that out of this conversation today.

[Dillon] (12:25 - 12:47)

Amen. I think it's a gift to have you join us and reiterate that. We say it a ton.

And I guess I would double down on what you just said, Anika, in that I think a lot of people got into this to be friends with customers, to help customers. And in fact, the flip side of that is I think a lot of folks think that they don't have a ton of power, a ton of control, a ton of influence. And both of those are wrong.

[JP] (12:48 - 12:49)

It is a ton of work. So wrong.

[Dillon] (12:49 - 13:17)

It is a ton of work what we do. It's very data oriented. It is very revenue oriented.

But because of that, you also have so much more power and influence than I think most CS professionals recognize or they are given credit for. And we've got to respect that and we've got to fight for it. So that's where I want to leave it.

Anika, thank you so much. We're out of time. You should absolutely come back.

Hey, really quick. Call out where folks can find your podcast and everything you're working on.

[Anika] (13:18 - 13:52)

Cool. Yeah. Podcast is podcast.thecustomersuccesspro.com.

Everything, thought leadership, everything I share is on my LinkedIn, which is just linkedin.com forward slash Anika Zuber. And then any other content in regards to my coaching, the programs I'm running, all of that is on thecustomersuccesspro.com. So all of those places, feel free to reach out.

I do love, I respond back to every single person, by the way. I know people don't like to reach out, but I am an inbox zero girly. We don't have time.

[Dillon] (13:52 - 13:55)

We don't have time. Anika, thank you so much.

[Anika] (13:55 - 13:56)

We'll talk to you again soon.

[Voiceover] (13:59 - 14:35)

You've been listening to the Daily Stand Up 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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