Playing dress-up | Ep. 131

[Rob] (0:00 - 0:03)

I don't know what little Robbie does, but I think he's a conductor.

[Dillon] (0:03 - 0:05)

He's got one of those little sticks.

[Rob] (0:05 - 0:15)

He's doing such a good, he just works on computers. He's on phone calls. He says he's a conductor. I don't know. He was supposed to be a doctor.

[Dillon] (0:22 - 0:36)

Let's do it. Let's go. 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 - 0:38)

Vita Valorum, baby.

[Dillon] (0:39 - 1:12)

Perfect. And we have Rob with us.

Rob, do you want to say hi? What's up, lifers? What's up, lifers?

And I am your host. My name is Dillon Young. Boys, couldn't get anybody to come and hang out with us today.

So it's just going to be the three of us. And JP, before we started recording, you were posing this question to me, and actually before Rob even arrived. And I would love for you to expound further on your hatred for everybody in your...

No, I'm kidding. It was an interesting question though, so why don't you repeat it?

[JP] (1:13 - 3:34)

Yeah. So I was just thinking about, we had these conversations about what is CS, and what does a CSM do, and how we bring in value. And we still have these sort of memes, if you will, about, oh, we had Thanksgiving, and people say, what do you do?

What do you tell them? So anyways, I was just thinking about, now that I've had a few roles in customer success, and I thought about what are some of my sort of major duties. And I know that we have this idea of preventing churn, protecting revenue, what have you.

But I posited, oh, I feel like the secondary task of a CSM is really, what's the word I use? Resource allocation. Facilitation, yeah.

Facilitation, yeah. Resource facilitation. To which Dillon replied, I might argue that's even one A, one B sort of deal.

And the reason I say that is because, Rob, you've referred to CS, or what people sometimes refer to CS affectionately as the junk drawer, right? What people don't know what's happening. And I feel as if CS, we can exist in these spaces between an organization where sure, I may have my main sort of proactive duty, which is having a success plan for a customer, and meeting, and pushing those things forward.

But what else do I have? Customers reach out to me, and maybe what they really need to do is need to talk to support. Or maybe what they need to do is need to talk to someone from sales.

Or maybe they have a great story that would be great for marketing, right? There's all these other places that I feel like, since we usually position ourselves as the prime point of contact, like I thought about that one of our sort of primary functions really as CSMs is really to facilitate these resources, and also to set the boundaries around them. I hate to say that, and I feel like I don't hear that talked about as much, but sometimes we are protecting resources at a company.

You have a really noisy customer, whatever. So how do you reset those expectations so that they are not taxing a company's resources? Hence why I said one of our primary ways we can bring values as a resource facilitator.

[Dillon] (3:34 - 5:00)

I think an interesting analogy, I always refer to it as a quarterback. We should look at the whole field. We should be reading defenses.

In a lot of cases, we have the ability to call an audible if we need to kill a play. However, I think another one is somebody was telling me this a couple of weeks ago. We are the conductor of the orchestra in that we are the only ones on stage positioned to experience everything the way the audience is meant to, and can then direct different groups, the violinists or the percussionists, to speed up, slow down, be quiet, be louder in order to provide the best experience for the audience.

A third one might be as a general contractor versus subcontractors, where you are controlling the entirety of the project and the experience. And oftentimes, you have to be a subject matter expert and see it through the eyes of the customer. But other times, you're just calling up your plumber friend and having them do the work, getting the best price, and so on and so forth.

So I think there's a number of different ways to look at it. I think they all are applicable sometimes or for some people. But Rob, what's your take on what JP is saying?

The conductor analogy is interesting. I like it, spiritually. But I also just imagine over the Thanksgiving table.

I don't know what little Robbie does, but I think he's a conductor.

[Rob] (5:01 - 5:07)

He's got one of those little sticks. He's doing such a good job. He just works on computers.

He's on phone calls.

[Dillon] (5:07 - 6:47)

He says he's a conductor. I don't know. He was supposed to be a doctor.

While I was listening to you guys, I made up a new idea. So this is hot off the presses. And I'm calling it the five personas of CS orgs that I see.

This is a brand new framework? Brand new. Framework alert.

Oh, brand new. So these are the five, I think, five personas of CS orgs that I see. There are those that we all don't really like that are built as administrative functions.

They handle billing and invoicing and email, like just client emails and stuff like that. That relates closely to the second one, which is the entirely reactive support model that JP you brought up. Third model is pure customer success.

I would call it purely pure. Like the entirely health focused customer health focused model, which is interesting where you're not responsible for like commercials. So the fourth one is you're responsible for all the account management commercials.

And then fifth one is what we're talking about now, which is you're the dispatcher, right? You're the quarterback. These models aren't mutually exclusive, right?

But I do think that's part of the problem is that a lot of companies, everyone, your VP of sales, your CEO and your COO and your CFO and like everybody, even people on the team, they all have a different idea of which one of those personas they are. And that creates a lot of friction, right? Because we're not on the same page because there's no defined charter of like, this is the identity we chose customer success will be.

That it is the commercial function post-sale, something like that. So I don't know. I'm curious to get your thoughts.

[JP] (6:47 - 6:48)

I mean, I can implement that.

[Dillon] (6:50 - 7:37)

I would say if you set the foundation at the beginning of your story, Rob, of saying, now assume that there is no charter, this could happen. And I think that assumption would be what is often the reality, but isn't necessarily true. I think we're getting better.

And like, I mean, how many people have we had come on here with the job search topic and say, you really need to understand what they're expecting customer success to do in that organization? Because I think there's a lot of people who don't like personas one through three that you were explaining. Maybe they don't love number five.

And so it's incumbent on the CS professional, I think to learn that whether you're an IC or a leader at that organization. But JP, go ahead.

[JP] (7:39 - 8:17)

No, that is really good. That's a lovely idea. That's so great.

So is that one of our big problems? Is that we are constantly having these organizations like, can we filter, for example, the hiring process in a way that you are hiring for the right persona? In other words, they are very well suited for the CS expectations there.

I think that is a really awesome idea because, yeah, you can get hired. We talk about this all the time. You get hired in CS somewhere, it could be different.

[Dillon] (8:17 - 11:17)

Let me interrupt you. Yeah. Because the answer is obviously yes.

And the way in which you do that is by creating a job description that actually describes what you're doing. And yet that almost never happens because the person writing the job description has no CS background. And so they go and look online and they find a mishmash of personas one through five.

And they're like, I'm putting everything in my job. Or they find one that doesn't include the support piece. And yet the organization is so young that it inevitably will include that support piece.

And then you're attracting people that are like, oh, I hate support. And this doesn't mention it at all. I'm thrilled.

And what if you get the whole way through that interview process without hearing about it? And then in the first two weeks you work there, they're like, oh, by the way, you got to answer tickets too. You know what, Dillon, you are so right with that.

And it's such a problem. There's a couple of good tells and interesting strategies that I'm thinking of now. Like one tell is there, like how much of the comp is variable?

That's usually a good tell. Tell me more about that because I have a theory on this. So if I look at the full spectrum of flat salary to the full-on sales approach, which is like a 50-50 base OTE ratio, I think commercial CS often lands around 20% of total OTE, total on target earnings are variable.

20 to 30, I've seen. Yeah. So that, to me, if I heard 30, I'm like, okay, I'm going to be expected to sell some stuff in this role.

Because otherwise, what are they comping so much money on? They're not putting that money out there just for me building relationships. This is unrelated, but I will say when I have looked at jobs and when I have been designing CSM comp, I don't get anywhere near that range unless the company and the product are sophisticated enough to give a CSM room to actually spend time on it.

Because very often I find that they still want you to spend time on tickets. And those are diametrically opposed because what are they always going to want you to fix first, the unhappy customer? Totally.

And you can deal with selling more later. And they'll often turn it around on you and say, oh, it's clear that you're more sales or I've lost out on roles because I've talked too much about the commercials. And they're like, yeah, but you get to do a lot of tickets in this role.

And I'm like, it's an enterprise CSM role. And you want me to spend 40% of my time on tickets. And so I go back to this idea of a lot of these folks, they don't know what they're doing.

And that's more negative than I want it.

[JP] (11:17 - 11:18)

I get you.

[Dillon] (11:19 - 12:32)

It's a good tip. Keep going, Rob. Another tip that I just thought up.

Bold strategy. But if you're interviewing for a role, you could ask if the team has done a time audit of how the current team members are spending their time. It's something that I always do as part of a consulting engagement is let's start by assessing where your team is spending their time and break down what's proactive, what's reactive, what's time spent per client, time per activity.

And also time that you like versus time that you don't like. And that's just like almost tautological, right? Yeah.

Like the way that I've framed it that gets people to buy in. Because trust me, the first reaction when people hear time tracking is they roll their eyes. Yeah.

The way that I frame it is this is an exercise that we will do for one week or two weeks. That's it. And the most important thing is that last column that I mentioned is what is the time that you like and the time that you don't like?

What are the activities that you like and you don't like? What are the things that make you feel energized or drained? And then people are like, oh, okay, I can get behind this because now I'm starting to do this as a self-discovery exercise, not just for our big brother management team.

[JP] (12:32 - 12:58)

Yeah. I want to call out one thing. I do think that there's another topic in here, which is about how roles change as a company grows.

So you can get hired for a certain role. You can come in. The expectations are all there.

You're like, oh my gosh, great. And maybe that company is a series A and then they grow. They become a series B or series C or something changes.

So I would love to hear more about that because I feel like I don't see that talked about.

[Dillon] (12:59 - 13:33)

I love so much of what you talk about, Rob, and this is a positive to you, is couched in this idea of trust between leader and IC that I have never seen. I wouldn't answer honestly with what I like and don't like because I wouldn't have a job in another three months because I'd be like, yeah, I hate answering support tickets. And they'd be like, oh, we're going to go find somebody who actually wants it.

And I understand, again, I'm being hyperbolic and being very combative in this episode.

[JP] (13:33 - 13:37)

But can you tell the truth? Is it a safe space to tell the truth?

[Dillon] (13:38 - 13:52)

That's an important question. I love the ideas you brought to the table, Rob. I think the devil's in the details, of course, right?

But good stuff to think about. Anyways, we're out of time. We'll catch you all next time.

Love you. Bye. Peace.

[Voiceover] (13:57 - 14:27)

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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