Raise your standards | TDSU Ep. 24

I did a quick one line chat GPP. Tell me the different titles for customer success. 20 titles come back. 20 titles.

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What's up lifers and welcome to the daily stand up with lifetime value, where we're giving you fresh ideas every day about the customer success profession. We've got our man, Rob with us. Rob, do you want to say hi? What's going on lifers?

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JP, do you want to say hi?

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So bozos.

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Felicia, do you want to say hi? Oh, hi lifers. And I'm your hostDillon Young. Thanks again for being with us guys. Felicia, do you want to introduce yourself? Sure. ThanksDillon I'm here in New Jersey. I have been in B2B SAS tech for over 14 years, 10 in customer success, five as a manager. I was also a individual contributor, primarily in process improvement, document management and account payable workflows. And happy to be joining you today.

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Thank you so much for being here. Felicia, before we get into the real topic here, quick yes or no from a fellow New Jersey in our New Jersey people, the worst drivers in the US. They're pretty bad drivers. I'm actually a native New Walker. Okay. So you're right up there. It's kind of a neck and neck between those two. Anyway, before we get off track here, guys, Felicia, what topic do you want to bring to us today?

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So I'm in the job market now. And like I said, I've worked with a lot of startup companies and I really feel like it's time to standardize customer success as a profession.

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So wanted to talk a little bit about that today. What is that? It is a profession. It's not an industry. It's not a sector. It's not a segment.(...) And you know, that involves the titles, the levels, the functions within customer success.

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So what does that mean to you off the top of your head?(...) You start with that elevator pitch. What's the first, what's the first thing you think we got to standardize?

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So one, you need to standardize as a professional, right? So you need to do it for yourself. You need to be able to measure where you are. You need to be able to define your career path and your professional growth.(...) The companies need to do that so that their customers understand the value that they're getting. If they're not sure themselves, what the value is of a customer success professional or customers aren't going to recognize that you're not going to have that good faith value you get out of having a customer success team. And also for your internal teams, I've internal teams sometimes don't know yet like what does that customer success team doing? And so I'm talking about, I have done the full journey from pre-sales to renewals. Am I full cycle? Am I full charge?(...) What am I? Am I experienced? Am I journey? So there's a lot of lingo going around, a lot of language. And of course the interpretation is wide open. I did a quick one line chat GPP, tell me the different titles for customer success. Obviously it's very quick. 20 titles come back, 20 titles. And so now take that into the job market and you hear a lot of hiring managers, oh, we're getting all these applications and these folks, they're not even qualified for the role. I've been around a while. I don't like to use the word seasoned because I'm not salty.

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I read all of them and I can tell they're all control C, control V, right? They're not really specific on what they want. And now you throw into that mix of should they carry quota? Should they not carry quota? Well, so before we get to the cherry quota, not carry quota, which is a whole other can of worms, I want to give you guys an opportunity to toss out their opinions on what you're saying and maybe viewpoints.

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Yes. I definitely believe that there should be,(...) there needs to be some sort of standardized. There needs to be something. I mean, there really does need to be something because there's so much variance that I see in what's happening in terms of what's considered customer success and just how different it can look. So I think, yeah, high time for some sort of standard, just something. I saw Dylan's face light up when you explained your topic, Felicia, cause we've had this conversation many times that we're on the cusp now of moving beyond the conversation of what is customer success,

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which it's kind of crazy to think how many times we've all had to just, the people who are responsible for showing ROI of their products aren't very good at showing the ROI of their own jobs, like justifying their own jobs at times. And I think now that customer success has matured in ways and been around for a while and also been through a lot of like reckonings with its identity, right? Through booms and busts of venture capital and through all different phases of tech that we've seen in the last many years, even just in the last three years, I think we're sort of moving the conversation beyond what is customer success and more into the how and the why of customer success.(...) Yeah. And I think you hit it like customer success. Let's talk about the history. I don't know if anybody knows it, but account management started in the early nineties. Peter Drucker, the founder of modern business management,

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came up with the key account manager and in the mid nineties,(...) a CRM company actually hired a woman, Marie Alexander, and she had a unique way of using their technology, really innovative. So he hired that customer to come in, build his customer success team, what she was doing there. And that was kind of the start of customer success. It wasn't Salesforce. It's been around for a long time. A lot of great folks,(...) executives have really like amped it up, right? The profession is flooded, but you'll still see customer success folks uncomfortable with saying it's a profession. If you're an accountant, if you're a staff accountant, you're a senior accountant, it's a profession that's easy to say. I feel customer success folks are really uncomfortable about saying this is a profession.(...) And I think it's time to now level it up. As you said, now we need to progress further. We've come a long way, but now we need to progress further and really develop that lexicon. All right. I'm dying to know what's your take on the quota versus no quota. I think that a customer success manager is an amped up account manager. It's an account manager taken to the next level. It's the child of account management.(...) I think instead of thinking about customer success should be doing sales. It's that there really shouldn't be account management or account executives outside of the CS organization.

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So I would say that customer success should also be doing selling, but I also feel that it cannot be one person doing

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all of customer success, including selling, because there's folks that want to Institute, like give customer success folks a quota. They're not really talking about the other piece of it. They'll say, okay, you have a goal now you have a quota, but they're not teaching them or training them on how to forecast.

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And they're not giving them the market tools on how to identify the market opportunity within their own customer base.(...) So I think customer success folks are really in a great position to generate that additional revenue, but there's a lot of extra functions around selling

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that I don't think that one person can do all of that and do the customer success function. So if you enable the customer success person with those tools, the market research within their customer base, their training on forecasting, then a customer success person would be the right person to also do that selling. I think that goes back to your thoughts about standardization. I mean, we have, it's a very clear standard motion for sales. You hire a certain type of salesperson, right? It's typically an attitude. It's that Hunter mentality. And then you give them tons of tools and resources and training to go and be a good salesperson. We talk about not only do we not get that training, but it's often completely different. Our goals are completely different. And so I can agree with that. I wanted to see where that went. I'm a big fan of the commercial motions living within customer success. Rob and JP, any last words before we skedaddle?

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Just love what you said, Felicia. If we can wave a magic wand, then hopefully this professional will be well standardized within the next year or two.

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I'm open to starting a... That's a magic wand too. On the wish name.

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So anybody wants to join me?

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That's our time, Felicia. Thank you so much for being here. And for sharing your perspective. Really hope you have some good luck on the job search in the coming days, weeks, months. And we hope to speak to you again soon. Thank you. See you.

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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.

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For all inquiries, please reach out via email toDillon at lifetimevaluemedia.com. Find us on YouTube at Lifetime Value and find us on the socials at Lifetime Value Media.

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Until next time.

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