What are we even doing all day? | Kevin Maufer | TDSU Ep. 55

(0:00 - 0:34)

Denny's. What's up, Lifers, and welcome to the... 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've got the habitual interrupter that is Rob with us.

Rob, would you like to say hi? What's up, shoobies? Awesome. Thank you for that reference. We've got Kevin with us.

Kevin, do you want to say hi? Hey, everyone. And I am your host, the ultimate shooby. My name is Dillon Young.

(0:34 - 3:53)

Kevin, thank you so much for being here. Would you like to introduce yourself? Sure. Does that make me a doobie-doo? Yeah, so Kevin Maufer... What's up, kids? Are you a dad? That was totally a dad joke.

You know that. So Kevin Maufer, I'm a CS and CX enthusiast, pretty much a nerd about it, geek out on customer experience. It's actually been part of my career since the beginning.

I mean, all the way back to retail and then moving into call centers and healthcare and even non-profit and ultimately where I am today in SaaS. I've always been at the enterprise level when I was a customer success manager. And as I moved into management and leadership roles, I led teams that were across the board, SMB up to strategic.

Now I'm helping other companies do the same thing, how putting together their customer success enterprise and the practice, developing teams and helping them deliver outcomes for our customers as well as a quality experience. That's me. Very cool, man.

Thank you so much for being here. You know what we're doing here. We want to know what is on your mind when it comes to customer success.

So why don't you hit us with it? Yeah. So I want to know and talk about more of what the heck goes on between onboarding and renewal. Everybody knows we put a lot of effort into pre-sales.

We put a lot of effort into onboarding because that's the experience, right? I mean, if that goes well, that bodes well for the contract and the engagement with the customer. If it doesn't, it just doesn't. And things tend to cascade from there.

And then obviously renewal, focusing on their renewal time. But what goes on in between or what should happen? And I've kind of brought it down at no acronyms, Rob, just so you know. So I'm just going to keep it on the down low and simple.

And that is listening and learning as well as who has what. Because there's nothing more frustrating for a when you get beyond onboarding, it's like, okay, now you're off and running and we'll talk to you in six months. We need to know who has what during that timeframe from the customer success manager to account executive.

Even I've seen customer success and sales come together as an account team, which is very productive and successful. But also the solution folks, the solution engineers, the architects, technical account manager support, they all have defined roles. And that continues after onboarding, believe it or not.

And we need to keep reiterating that and affirming that throughout the life of the contract with the customer. But also listening and learning, the old adage, and yes, I am a dad with dad jokes. You have two ears, one mouth, shut up and listen to your customer.

Yeah, they love hearing about what you got going on, but you're not going to bring world peace and cure cancer with your software. Just tell them what's coming and what they expect. But at the same time, listen to them, listen to their business, learn about their business, be a student of their business.

(3:53 - 5:33)

That goes so much further and builds confidence and trust so much better when you do listen and you learn. And the only way you've got to learn is if you listen. And to me, that drives more collaboration, more communication, a better community with your customer and customers, because they're going to want to talk to other customers because they're going, well, this is such a great experience.

What are your other customers getting? So to me, it's listening, learning, and who has what? A couple of points. In a beautiful world, a world which we do not live in, that's like the perfect world out there. That's like the QBRs purpose, right? Is to do all those things, is to be the nexus of that purpose.

So my joke was originally going to be, oh, well, that's what happens in between successful onboarding and the renewal period is just a bunch of QBRs, right? Where our customers listen to everything we have to say, and they nod their heads and they say, this is fantastic. And I can't wait to give you more money. But what I think is interesting is the point you made of customers like what you have going on.

I don't know if I even agree with that, unless it so happens that while you're playing that game of battleship and you're just throwing crap at them, you happen to hit one of the boats of need that they have. That's when they care. How do you get there faster, Kevin? It's what you said.

You listen. They'll tell you where the boats are because they want you to sink them. This is where the analogy doesn't work anymore.

(5:33 - 6:43)

But the idea is, that's why you listen, because they will gladly tell you what they want from you. It's your job to decide whether that's possible to start collaborating internally and creating the processes that allow you to stack rank what's most important versus the ARR that you can earn for blah, blah, blah. But the idea, that's the point of customer success truly, is to listen and help them solve the problems that they're going to present to you.

In order to listen, you have to ask the right questions. You've got to be a good student. You've got to be like, please teach me and ask the questions so that you can listen and learn from them.

What's up, guys? It's Dillon here, and you know why I'm here, hat in hand. I got a favor to ask of you. If you like what we're doing, give us a like on whatever platform that you find us on.

And if you want to know when we're dropping new stuff, give us a follow. Give us a subscribe. And maybe best of all, if you want to give us some feedback, drop a comment and let us know what you like, what you don't like, or how we can get better.

(6:43 - 6:50)

We want to make sure we're giving the best content we can to you and others within the community. Thanks so much, guys. I'll let you get back to the show.

(6:51 - 7:15)

So here's a shameless plug for a guy who is not paying for a sponsorship, and he really should be. Do you know Bob London? Fantastic at this entire process of how you can sort of flank or short-circuit the normal mechanics of the relationship by asking really good questions and then just shutting up and listening. And be okay with the silence for a little bit too.

(7:16 - 8:13)

And also with the answer, because a lot of times when he asks questions, that answer might be, yeah, I don't really like you guys right now. Like, you suck right now. And being okay with that and understanding like, okay, well, how do we get better? That's the, you know, if you were to renew today, would you? And why? Because I want to know why either way, you know? And so let's, even if it's good, let's add to that.

Let's build on that. Rob, why don't you jump in? I would, but you're not ready for this. You're not ready for this.

The acronym. Oh no. Whoa.

All right. Hey, listeners, audience members, before we started recording, Rob was telling us he's going a little bit acronym crazy these days. So he ran one past us.

We shot it down. We said, it's no good. So here he's gonna, we are the shark tank judges and he's about to present his second product to us.

Kevin, take this one. You can have it. Okay.

(8:13 - 8:27)

Flow, feedback, learning, organization, watchfulness. Watchfulness? I don't know, man. Yogi Berra said you can observe a lot just by watching.

(8:27 - 9:51)

And I like that phrase. I like this topic a lot. I like it a lot because, so it's been on my mind recently because I heard somebody who does product marketing.

He recommended a certain question to ask your customers, which is not just the standard, how is your process, whatever after onboarding, but more nuanced questions like what surprised you in the onboarding process? That's a really cool question to connect with the user experience. I think it applies really well, particularly Kevin, at the enterprise level, where you come from. And it's a cool follow-on.

Last week, we were talking about consumer models, product led models, and why those don't get enough attention. But I realized also, we haven't talked a lot about these super enterprise models where you might even have three to five people on a single account. Wells Fargo is your client.

You might have a CSM, a solutions architect, an AE, a renewal specialist, and subject matter experts for this and that. You might have multiple people on a certain account if it's big enough. And I was just talking to a friend about this because he works in that situation with his account.

He's got a small book of business, 18 total accounts. And it is precious for them to have rules of engagement really clearly defined between everybody involved. Because what happened is, for example, they had a new AE step in on the account.

(9:51 - 10:04)

We just said, I think we should just double the price. Went for it, completely backfired for this one account. And I hate to say it, but that AE turned out to not be a fit at that company.

(10:04 - 10:50)

My point is to say- How is he allowed to do that? I think he just hyped everyone up internally. It was like, this is going to go great, guys. Yeah, it was an act of sheer persuasion on his part.

But it's super interesting because, you know, my friend who was the CSM on the account, had initially had no awareness this was happening. And then disagreed with it when it was too late. And he's also and then he also said, look, my job is to expand the account.

This is a seat-based payment model. My job is to keep selling more seats. So, I'm selling here too.

We don't have to increase the list price and try to sell a full subscription model that's not seat-based. When we have a method that's working, we've been working with this account for years. That's battleship at its best right there, dude.

(10:50 - 11:06)

Yeah, right. You just literally sunk this thing. Well, yeah.

And now, you know, this account is at risk. It's at risk because a competitor is sweeping in right now and saying, hey, we can do better than this. So, yeah, it really underscores the importance of this.

(11:06 - 11:11)

We don't hire jerk-offs. That's their pitch. Now that we got that done, let's move on.

(11:12 - 11:32)

Oh my gosh. I mean, yeah, the dedicated account team can bring a lot of confidence, but you've got to be aligned internally. Oh my gosh.

You've got to be lockstep. You've got to flow internally. Absolutely.

Let's end with flow. And that's our time, guys. To sink this battleship before it's too late.

(11:32 - 12:27)

To save us from any more acronyms. I don't even know the word. What's the word for? I don't know where acronyms.

I don't freaking know. Okay, we'll edit this out. What's the acronym for acronym? Is acronym an acronym? Anyway, Kevin, thank you so much for being here.

Appreciate this question. It seems like it's like hiding in plain sight. Like, how do we spend all of our time? How do we continue to improve the relationship when not working on the bookends of the relationship? And it's something that we can't lose sight of.

So appreciate you bringing this to us. We'd love to have you back in the future, but for now, we've got to say goodbye, Kevin. Bye-bye.

Great seeing you guys. 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.

(12:28 - 12:43)

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.