What's value to you? | TDSU Ep. 20

[00:00:38] The consulting people. What? Yeah. Billable hours.

What's up Lifers and welcome to The Daily Standup with Lifetime Value where we're giving you fresh ideas every day about customer success. I've got my man Rob with us. Rob, do you want to say hi? What's going on Rizzlers? I've [00:01:03] got my man JP with us. JP, do you want to say hi? What's going on messy rumors?

I got my man Armando here. Armando, do you want to say hi? What's going on everyone? And I am your host, the amuse bouche of customer success. My name is Dillon Young.

Armando, thank you so much for being here. Do you want to introduce yourself? For sure. For sure. Uh, I work in customer success.

[00:01:33] I am a writer, and I'm also a TEDx speaker. Oh, s--t, we're going to have to talk about that more later on, but Armando, you know the deal. You bring one topic about customer success. You know the question: what is on your mind when it comes to customer success?

Loaded question. What I have thought about probably a little too much, especially over the last two years is why [00:02:03] customer success should have their own growth quota attached to them and not be purely relationship driven.

So, dropping a bomb. I don't think so. Well, let me, let me clarify a little bit though. You want them to have a growth quota, right? You're not on your knees yelling at the sky,

"Why do I have to have a growth quota?"

It is more like, "Why wouldn't we?"

Absolutely. Yeah, why wouldn't we?

And even [00:02:33] myself I currently have a growth quota and who knows customers best than the CS team? And you can drop in super casually, " Hey, I know these four things that you have constantly harped on over these last few months. Let's take a look at this."

It should be a natural progression instead of having to bring in an account manager, an account executive, or anyone along those lines... that's purely there for the sale. And at that [00:03:03] point, your relationship grows even further into more value.

And you don't, in your current role, your sales partners don't get involved at all? Like once they sign the deal, they're out the door? They never come back?

Is that the way it works for you guys?

They are involved. I work with one AE. I work with a few, but there's one AE in particular that I work with and we're on a lot of our calls together. So it's natural when the sale comes, they know that her and I we're a combo, we're a deal, we're part of a [00:03:33] team.

We're always there. So I never have to say, "Oh, by the way, I'm introducing this person for the very first time."

So now they have their guard up. And that has been instrumental personally to, in my opinion, to my success and being able to always be at that growth quota and be one of the best in terms of the leaderboards.

Gentlemen, what do you think?

Hot potato.

I mean, this is, this is one of the most existential questions in customer success, [00:04:03] right? I mean, I, Dillon and I, this was like probably the first conversation that Dillon and I had. Wasn't it Dillon? Our first conversation was how you don't like the guys from, uh, [redacted to protect the innocent], but I'll edit that out.

It's not true at all! Yeah, bleep that out! Um, so yeah, maybe I'll just bleep it. I'll leave it in, but...

No, it's something I've, I've come to feel extremely strongly about, and I sort of reflect on why. Why do I give so much of a s--t, about this [00:04:33] topic? And for me it's because I recognize my background in the business world has always been one where I have to do everything for myself.

And that was something aversive at first. And then it became something I was curious about. And then it became something where I was like, I actively do not want people getting in my way. When I see an avenue to revenue. Ooh, that's a good one. Avenue to-- that's a JP line right there.

Ooh!

If I have to go say like, [00:05:03] "I need help."

Like I, if I have to go ask somebody to step in, to come close the deal, I feel like I am not treated at the level that I want to be treated as a business professional. So I, I really unpacked that more of an, at an industry level. And I'm like, where is this trend developed of, you know, CS people not having a growth quota?

And I realized there's a combination of factors. I mean, number one, when money was really easy, people were making roles for everything, right? Like, let's make a subject [00:05:33] matter expert for the FedEx integration. And it's like some obscure part of your product that like doesn't actually add a ton of value.

And it's like, those roles don't exist as much these days. Another reason is that a lot of CS folks really just haven't, Dillon and I, and JP and I, like, we've talked about this a lot, that they don't get the same time and attention and training that their counterparts do who are on purely growth focused, sales focused sides of the organization.

And that's an unfortunate problem [00:06:03] that, personally, I'm trying to hopefully help fill that gap in the market. And a lot of other folks are out there trying to help teach CS people how to have hard conversations, how to have revenue focused conversations. And so, it's not an easy thing and, uh, certain people don't like that expectation as well, but at the end of the day, yeah, I think CS is at a very hard juncture right now where...

it's not just even that we should have a growth quota. I think we kind of have to, to continue justifying what our [00:06:33] roles mean to the organization. Sorry, that was a lot to unload.

I think before, JP, you jump in here. I think another way of saying it maybe more succinctly, which isn't usually my role, is it's probably easier to teach...

customer success motions to a salesperson than it is to teach a customer success person how to sell. And so if you don't bring that to the table, it's easier to fire you than it is to fire a salesperson for that same [00:07:03] reason.

Dillon, for that reason, I almost always hire like customer success people who have a sales background.

JP, go ahead.

Yeah. I mean, give me a quota. Don't give me a quota. I'm still up in there creating value. I mean, I'm going to find a way, I'm going to find a way to track what I'm doing. You know, I mean, I like metrics. I like being able to measure my impact. I like being able to speak to things, um, very concretely, but I think I've had also had a lot of work experience where [00:07:33] that information, for whatever reason, was not readily available either because they weren't mature enough to have those KPIs.

I've definitely had murky ownership situations. So to me, I've just learned, just sort of let go and be like, "Hey, I'm just going to learn to create value in a multitude of ways, make sure that I track it, and sort of just be that way. Be, be almost like more Swiss army knife, African army knife, [00:08:03] some kind of really useful...

Chinese army knife. Chinese. I feel like they got a lot of, you know what I'm saying?

Gotta bleep all of this.

So yeah, Shaolin, Shaolin on the t-shirt. Yeah, I think, I think that like from a, the alignment standpoint of some of the people higher up, I think that those things are super important.

I think for me as an individual contributor, I'm going to find a way to just create the value and speak to it when the time is right. Armando, any last words?[00:08:33]

Two things stood out. One that Rob said, one that JP said. The first that Rob said was, you look for CS folks with a sales background. I couldn't agree anymore. I come from sales, so I think that's why it's a little bit more natural for me to sell. To your point also, Rob, I think the majority of CS folks I meet are uncomfortable making that hard ask, making that hard sell, they're uncomfortable doing it.

And so it begs the bigger question of, and this is to JP's [00:09:03] point, what does value even mean? And I think that's been my biggest struggle in customer success all along. I interviewed with folks years ago and people would say, "Oh, your role is purely relationship driven." Well, tell me what that means.

And no one can give me an answer. That was my biggest challenge, which is why now, having been in CS for almost three years, I think we have to have that growth quota. I would make a bet that if you're out there interviewing today, there are not a lot of [00:09:33] hiring managers saying it's purely relationship based anymore.

I think they just can't afford it. Anyway, that's our time, Armando. Thank you so much for bringing this topic. Really glad we got to spend some time with you and please come back soon. All right?

Appreciate it, y'all.