Catalyst put 100 CROs/CCOs/VP of Sales/CS in a room to debate the most broken GTM strategies leading to missed ARR targets. Detailed notes below?? 1?? “Health Score” is broken. Almost 100% agreement in a room full of top operators from the world’s best companies. None of them trust it. None of them use it in the board room. Yet so many force CSMs & AMs to use it. The irony is how it is the top requirement on a “Customer Success Platform.” Multi weighted multi-product parent-child health scores with fancy little drag n drop weights. 12+ fancy buttons. 0% accuracy. The only thing that matters to executives (backed by churn data) is tracking the PBOs (Positive Business Outcomes) for their customers, yet many struggle to do so effectively. 2?? QBRs aka the Waste Your Time meeting Case in point --> ALL of these execs bought software products. Signed the DocuSign. How many of them showed up to QBRs? Zero. QBRs are supposed to be the most important meeting for the CSM yet the DocuSigner doesn’t even show up. How is that effective? There’s got to be a better way to communicate value to your “Renewal Committee” that don't show up to QBRs. 3?? Uniform agreement that Sales is superior & far more advanced in their operational rigor compared to Customer Success teams. Think about the sales discipline it takes to hit new business targets with 95%+ accuracy. MEDDIC, Stage-Based entrance & exit criteria, Command of Message Training, Deal Inspection, 1:1s, Weekly Forecast Meetings. Where is the operational discipline on the other side of the house? The most important opportunity of all isn’t the New Business Opportunity. It’s the Renewal Opportunity. 4?? CRO 1.0 & CCO 1.0 leaders will be replaced. The highest ranking Chief “Commercial” officer isn’t specializing in outbound sales (SDR/AE) & isn’t a happiness-vanity-metric customer officer driving “adoption” & “usage.” The evolution? A commercially oriented leader, highly proficient in P&L, metric-driven on extracting the highest NRR, GRR, & CLTV. The 3 most important metrics in the board room. 5?? CSMs driving "adoption" will be wiped out. Clari stripped their team down & got rid of every CSM that drove “adoption.” The economic didn't add up. Too much overlap between AM, SE, CSM, Renewal, AE, etc. Their adjustment? You either are a highly technical product expert or you're commercially minded. No middle ground. ? 6?? Measuring Activity to Impact. If you can't correlate your team's actions to higher NRR/GRR, you are a second-tier leader at best. Driving your team's actions based on insights and reporting on the impact of those actions is the MINIMUM requirement going forward. ------------ If you found these notes helpful, we're planning our 300-person, 2-day CRO CCO Summit for early next year at one of the most exquisite retreats ??? Like ?? this post and Comment "CRO" and we'll add you to the top of the waitlist. #sales #customersuccess #clg #ceo
Cro. I love the bold thinking/commentary but be careful on #5. You gotta get customers to first and then scaled value and they often need help with change management to get there. Clari and others have plenty of avoidable churn because they don’t do this. But u can’t just load up on expense with poorly defined jobs and mediocre leadership. Perhaps defining the activity in #6 gets u there. And clearly part of your approach here is being bombastic and provocative which a certain dude named Marc showed works well. Kevin Chiu Mark Kosoglow
That speech was ??????
CRO ;)
CRO ??
Kevin, would love to learn more about #5. CRO
Cro
CRO
Customer Success Operations Consultant | Scaling CS for Efficiency & Retention | Process, Strategy & Growth for Real Humans—With Heart & Humor
1 年Number 3?? This has been one of my biggest shockers in living into SaaS from E-commerce. There’s a huge divide between the operational rigor of the two departs and has put CS on the defense in this climate. The reality is CS can learn a TON from sales processes (and marketing) to really drive operational excellence. CS is not a feeling, but we can’t seem to identify how to consistently measure and drive that motion. Can’t wait to see what comes out of all this magic hang time you all put together ???