Starving for coaching | Dane Batson | TDSU Ep. 58

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That was a big breakthrough for him because he realized that his logic was inverse, that he was actually doing his team a favor by delegating projects to the team. That's what my wife says too. Yeah, what does she say? Gives me work.

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She says, do the dishes. All right, here we 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.

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I've got my man Rob with us. Rob, do you want to say hi? Howdy. And we've got JP with us.

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JP, do you want to say hi? Yeah. And we've got Dane with us. Dane, do you want to say hi? What's up, everyone? Hello.

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

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Would you please introduce yourself? Yeah, Dane Batson. Background, I was an accountant for a long time in a previous life. Got into the CS world about seven, eight years ago, and helped kind of scale and build a team at my current company.

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And we focus heavily on consulting, software sales, hardware sales for architects, engineers, and construction companies. That's where I've kind of been for about seven, eight years now. Same company, seven or eight years? Same company.

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Came into the company. We were a smaller firm. We were about 30 employees.

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And then we've grown to around 200 employees over the past several years. And part of that was helping to scale the CS team and just kind of grow that company and grow that team. Very cool.

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Well, Dane, you know what we do here? We ask one simple question of everybody who comes on. What is on your mind when it comes to customer success? So can you tell us what that is? Yeah, man, coaching. Coaching for CS, coaching people to get better.

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I think it's coming from a space of vulnerability. I got to get better at it. I'm not the greatest at it for sure.

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And I think just as an industry for CS professionals, I think we've put ourselves in this corner of for a long time. You know, we were teams of people trying to be that value add to the company, to this kind of trusted advisor to the company. And now you've seen this massive shift in the industry, and especially for us as a company and what we're going through.

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You know, people are expecting CS teams now to create revenue and to focus on these expansion sales. We've got to get better as leaders, as managers, to coach our people to get better at that, to do that through different platforms, to do that through training. And I think that's something that we have, you know, once me as an individual, but us as a CS community, you just have to get better at.

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I think you see a lot of stuff on LinkedIn or platforms. I think you guys are doing a good job about what you guys are trying to do and just talk about stuff. But, you know, LinkedIn gets so saturated with different ideas about how to coach, how to be better.

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And we just got to figure that out as a community, like what we're trying to preach to our teams. Dane, before I give the guys a chance to jump in here, I just have one quick question. What was the experience like for you coming from a background of accounting, which isn't typically the most commercially minded sort of profession? What was it like getting your sea legs, so to speak, in terms of learning how to sell, or is that still a work in progress? Is that part of where this is coming from? Tell me a little bit about that.

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Yeah, I mean, a work in progress for sure. You know, one of my, when you guys asked for like a topic, you know, I was going to go into data because I'm an accountant. So data was an easy conversation to lead into.

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But I know you guys have had some other guests that talk about that. So I was like, man, what do I struggle with? And what can I talk to you guys about? And that is, you know, like I said, coaching. And so, yeah, getting into that mindset of coming from accounting and, you know, there's the A-table accountant who sits in our little offices and does our thing.

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So, yeah, it's definitely a place for me to keep learning. And, you know, one thing that has helped that and certainly not here to be a gong advocate, but, you know, gong and the platforms that exist now are doing so much to leverage that. And that is one thing that has helped a great deal over the past several years.

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But it's, you know, it's awesome for me to help coach and be better at that. But yeah, I think it's just definitely a learning experience to go from that world into where we are now. Guys, who wants to jump in? I can jump in.

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I'd like to say I also like gong. I think they're really great. We love you, gong.

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We love you. You're awesome. So, yeah, I really appreciate coaching.

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So here's the fun of that. Sometimes people think that, I don't know what they think about me. I'm crazy.

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But I really only have a couple of years to see his experience. I am always starving for coaching. You know, I recognize people in my organization who have the wealth of experience, whether they're leaders or fellow, like colleagues, whatever.

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I'm always sort of seeking that from people when I talk to them. So I naturally seek it out. But I do think that there is this thing, I promise I'm not trying to show for gong now, but there is a really cool feature where, you know, you can give, it's very easy to give feedback when you're listening to calls.

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And I think that it really helps to break down some of the discomfort that can come with coaching, with receiving feedback in general. I know that I've used it with some of my coworkers and, you know, honestly, like being the new guy, they were all like really good. So I'm just taking, I'm like, oh, I'm gonna use that.

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You know, so I feel like I didn't really give them that good of feedback, but I have personally benefited from people giving me this much needed feedback. For example, one of my current position, we're doing some peer coaching rounds, right? They paired us up with somebody and we were listening to each other's calls. And she gave me something really great.

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You know, she said something about, I think screen-sharing, like, you know, maybe don't, we don't wanna screen-share like the whole time with them. We do wanna have some conversation with them, right? That little bit of feedback, that's not like a harsh piece of feedback. It's not something that's gonna make me like, oh my gosh, I was so terrible.

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But it is very like actionable, something that I can take and apply and get better. But I think that, obviously, I think my contribution to this conversation has to do with, I think that there is a goldmine in peer coaching, that it always does not have to be on the leaders to coach. Leverage the experience of the team so that everyone sort of gets it, because everyone may not have the same sort of hunger for that improvement.

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But if you do things like peer coaching, I think it's really scalable and can be really effective. It's also way cheaper, economical, particularly in this environment where people aren't necessarily gonna go buy these huge multi-thousand dollar courses, particularly from one individual. Why don't we make sure we're all sharing our skills and expertise first? Rob, why don't you go ahead? Rob Markman Yeah, you're hitting on one of my favorite parts of my job.

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It's not peer coaching, but I get to coach a lot as a consultant. And it's kind of funny how people engage consultants because they're semi in the operation, but they're generally not. I'm happy you brought this up because I have the coolest story that happened last week.

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It's not every day that I get this opportunity to do something like this, but I was talking with someone, he's a manager of a small team, and he said, I'm having a really hard, I'm like really overworked and I'm having a hard time delegating. And so I got the opportunity to be like, okay, well, let's unpack why are you having a hard time delegating? Why do you find it hard? And he said, well, he eventually revealed I wanna be a servant leader to my team. And I was like, okay, so that suggests that you're doing a disservice to your team if you're delegating to them, is that right? And he's like, wow, yeah, that sounds really stupid when you say it out loud, I guess you're right.

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And I thought that was so cool because we actually got to the third layer deep on the logic that he was thinking through his delegation strategy. And that was a big breakthrough for him because he realized that his logic was inverse, that he was actually doing his team a favor by delegating projects to the team. And now he's growing as a leader as a result.

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That's what my wife says too. Yeah, what does she say? She gives me work. She says, you're welcome, do the dishes.

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You're welcome. But it's a cool thing. And I'm not trying to toot my own horn or anything like that.

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But, and it doesn't happen every day. It happens very rarely. You know, it's happened to me rarely.

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I know I've been very dense to coaching at times, but it's cool and it works. No, I think there's a huge issue with, I think there's the coaching mentality of, I can do coaching in one-on-ones and like kind of my team meetings, but what is nice about, you know, Gong and software is that allow you to do it kind of live or allow a CS rep or a CSM to learn as they're going through the process. I think it's kind of that next step we need to get to.

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And that's why I think, you know, Gong is great. You have that kind of feature to do it while you're listening to a call. But that's where I kind of look at for these CS platforms is that a place they're going to go to where a CSM is engaged in that conversation with the customer or they're engaged in some kind of customer journey or playbook and that ability to coach like kind of live or learn on the fly is I think kind of a next step we need to get to as just a CS industry.

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I love it, Dean. Great topic. That's our time, but we'd love to have you come back and give us an update on how the coaching is going in another three, six months.

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I think that'd be a great way for us to bring you back into the fold. But for now, we've got to say goodbye. Appreciate it, guys.

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Thank you. 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.

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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 lifetimevaluemedia.com. Until next time.