Started from the bottom | Dane Zdunowski | The Daily Standup Ep. 73

[Dillon] (0:00 - 0:25)

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 with us. JP, do you want to say hi?

Hey folks, what's up? And we've got Dane with us. Dane, do you want to say hi?

Hello. Hello. And I am your host.

My name is Dillon Young. Dane, thank you so much for being with us. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

[Dane] (0:26 - 0:45)

Yeah, hi, happy to be here. So yeah, I'm currently a Principal Client Success Manager with a company called Jenzabar. I've been with the company about two years in the CS field and previous experience coming out of higher education, about 15 plus years in student services.

So happy to be here and talk about everything CS.

[Dillon] (0:46 - 0:58)

Anybody who comes with a branded polo, you know what sort of level they're working on. I don't have any branded polos. We don't have any daily standup polos, do we JP?

[JP] (0:59 - 1:01)

Oh, we got to change that. Right?

[Dillon] (1:02 - 1:21)

Well, it's summer, so maybe we go sleeveless. What do you think? Anyway, Dane, it's a pleasure to have you here.

You know what we do here. We ask one simple question of every individual that comes on the show, and that is, what is on your mind when it comes to customer success? So can you tell us what that is?

[Dane] (1:21 - 3:40)

Yeah. Yeah. So thinking about customer success, I really wanted to highlight kind of what our team was doing, right, and the approach to customer success.

And with our newly formed Principal Client Success team here, like Jenzabar, like I said, I've been here about two years. It'll be two years next month. This principal team was just formed back in March of this year, right, in 2024.

So this is a really brand new concept for us as an organization. But I really wanted to highlight and shout out like the good work that we're doing and how our principal team is really supporting our customers at a higher level than the standard CS team that we have at the organization. So really, we are tasked with focusing on our higher need, higher touch, higher ARR accounts, right, to really hone in on adoption and retention, right?

That's our biggest piece here. So real quick, I want to give a shout out to Kayla Winnin. Kayla is my manager.

This is her brainchild, right? She... Hi, Kayla.

Hi, Kayla. Awesome. Yeah, Kayla, she has been like the driving force behind getting this team together over the past couple of years.

And so really, you know what? It's nice is because I have a really smaller focus caseload of clients that I work with directly, so about 22 schools right now, which is great. What I'm able to do as a client success manager for them on the principal team is really beyond the IT team, get to know the teams at the campuses, do these visits, get to meet with these larger groups of end users of our product, and really get that direct feedback from all the end users and not just IT itself, which is great.

And what we're also doing, besides connecting with these higher touch accounts, we're also working a lot with consortiums, which is great. I don't know many other organizations that are doing that. So for example, we started collaboration with our HBCU schools, which is awesome.

So we're connecting with them. We had our annual meeting last month, and we had separate events just for that consortium. So we get to know those end users, get to know their challenges, what's working well, what's not working well, and how we can just better support them as an organization.

So that's just a great thing I feel like our team is doing as well.

[Dillon] (3:41 - 4:03)

What was the impetus for creating the principal group or the high touch group, enterprise, whatever you want to call it? I heard you highlight this idea of getting feedback from everybody. Was that it?

You wanted to get closer in order to further hone the product, or is it, hey, these guys are just too valuable for us to risk losing them? What is it for you guys?

[Dane] (4:04 - 4:44)

Yeah, yeah, Dillon, great question. I would say it's a combination of both, right? These are definitely our higher, like the accounts that we're like, hey, we really need to protect these guys, right?

In terms of like, they've been with us for a long time. We want to make sure that they are good to go, that they're up and running on our product, as well as having a minimal caseload compared to your standard client success manager on our team. We have that time to get on campus, have more check-in meetings with these clients, and get to know the broader group besides IT.

So yeah, it's definitely like that, maximizing our time and having fewer clients that we directly work with.

[Dillon] (4:44 - 4:58)

JP, sitting in seat, and I know you actually work with like SMB for the most part, right? So you probably have a higher volume. What kind of questions do you have, or what piqued your curiosity about the description of this?

[JP] (4:59 - 6:00)

Well, I used to work in higher education, and I think in general, there are some, I guess, parallels, I think. Like I used to work in admissions, and so in admissions, you also deal with a pretty high volume, a very high volume coming in. Although I'm definitely not interacting as much with people, but some of those interactions that I do have, they could be a bit high stakes, I'd say.

For example, when education is a product, I think there's something that's really interesting that happens. Like schools got so much prestige, right? Like renewals, when we're talking about schools, this is so different.

Because I went to like Northeastern, that was like $40,000 a year back when I went, which was now overjoyed, right? That's a lot of money per year. Could have bought a Lamborghini, but I would have still been in debt because I'm in debt now.

[Dillon] (6:01 - 6:07)

So they would have repossessed my Lamborghini, but- You got a Lamborghini for a brain now.

[JP] (6:07 - 8:01)

Right, right. That's what I got. It works real fast, right?

So follow me where I'm going. Follow me where I'm going. I used to work at a big state school where I live.

I'm not going to say the name, but they definitely had a program, a nursing program that was super competitive. They only have 80 spots, but there's 8,000 applicants. Okay.

And so I had duty at the front desk. And if you know anything about parents, they're not shy about coming in these helicopter parents where they may think that somehow this reflects upon them. And I know that it's a little bit different because it's not just a matter of paying, right?

It's a matter of sort of competitiveness, but at the same time, still dealing with people who could be like getting all A's and yet somehow not making the cut, right? And being in a position where I may have to explain to someone, hey, this is really not quite in my hands. I know that as a CSM, a lot of times I am in a position where I have to be in the middle, which is like the uncomfortable part.

I don't have as much power at my organization to tell you that I can really do something, but yet you may expect so much of me because I said, I was your primary point of contact. And so that's sort of what I've related to. Cause I heard you talking a lot about a higher ed.

I don't know again, too much about like the ins and outs of gents bar, but I think back to my days as a working in admissions and how some of those things inform the comfort or discomfort, if you will, but trying to get comfortable being uncomfortable when you're in the middle, which is, I think even if you're enterprise CSM, you're still in the middle a lot of times.

[Dane] (8:01 - 8:52)

Yeah. Yeah. JP, you hit on a lot of great points.

And so in my former life, right in higher ed, I was an academic advisor. So I was that point of contact for students. And I find myself doing the same exact thing now in my current principal role with the schools that I work with.

It's a matter of, for me, the priority is maintaining that relationship, right? Who do I need to know beyond the it team? Do we need to reach out to the CFO, the president of any of the vice presidents, right?

Make those connections. So that is my focus. I'm more about the people and connecting them with the resources that at my company at Jenzabar to get them whatever help they needed, whether it's managed services, product development, software support.

I'm their connector. I'm comfortable being that liaison. Yeah.

So I find a lot of similarities and I will say JP, I went to Northeastern for my grad program. Kudos there.

[JP] (8:53 - 8:57)

You have a Lamborghini as well, or maybe a Ferrari actually.

[Dillon] (8:57 - 9:51)

Both in a lot of debt. Sorry, guys. Well, I am too.

And I didn't have go to nearly as prestigious a university. Dane, I love this. This is super cool.

It's interesting to hear at the inception of a job or a department like this, I have often come into roles like that. Sometimes there's no distinction between principal and just regular CSMs. Sometimes you'll call them like I remember back in the day, you would just call them junior CSMs versus regular CSMs versus senior CSMs. And now we're getting all these different qualifiers. And it's really interesting to hear.

So it's really cool to hear as well what the decision looked like when you're standing it up to begin with. So thank you so much for bringing this to our attention. We are out of time, but I'd love to have you come back maybe in a couple of months and tell us how things are going.

But until then, we've got to say goodbye, Dane.

[Dane] (9:52 - 9:53)

Well, thanks for having me.

[Voiceover] (9:58 - 10:28)

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.

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

[Dillon] (10:31 - 11:01)

Hey folks, it's Dillon here. Thank you for tuning in as always. Now I've got a favor to ask of you.

If you've made it this far, hopefully it means you like what we're doing with our program. So I'm asking you to please give this a like and a follow or a subscribe and leave a comment too. Your likes and your follows and your subscriptions, they allow us to keep doing what we're doing and reach a larger audience.

Your comments help us make sure that we're making the best content for you. Best of all, it's free besides a few moments of your time. Thank you again for following along and we'll see you next time.