CSMs - Win With Customers!

Brought to you by Jody Geiger , Jenna Bugiardini and Klue

Voices of Revenue is a monthly newsletter spotlighting revenue operators making waves and sharing best practices.

The pace at which content is produced, lands and leaves our feeds is remarkable and alarming. We are here to ensure you don't fall behind the curve!

Volume 2

Last year Leonardo DiCaprio broke up with his long-term girlfriend just months after she turned 25. At 48 years old, he has seemingly never dated a woman 27 years or older. Drawing inspiration from DiCaprio's dating choices and the importance of recognizing the right attributes for long-term relationship success, we'll delve into the notion of tracking the right metrics to retain and expand customers. We will uncover the secrets to tracking the metrics that truly matter and increasing the lifetime value our customers derive from our software.

From Leo's breakout role in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape to unforgettable roles alongside Claire Danes, Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett and Kate Winslet, he has been on the cusp of an Oscar 5 times. Not unlike the feeling many Customer Success Managers have been having. They are developing executive skills in business strategy, operations, data analytics and project management yet historically, their career paths have felt limited. Like DiCaprio finally winning an Academy Award for the 2015 film The Revenant, CSMs are seeing career paths open up into roles like Chief Revenue Officer and CEO. The path into these roles will be paved with understanding and delivering real outcomes for customers that drive their businesses forward.

Let’s hear from some top voices in revenue on how to get there yourself.

How to Drive Real Value for Customers

Outcomes that Drive Renewals. Featuring: Kevin Chiu

Link to Original Voice: Customer Success Teams are Committing 7 Deadly Sins

Key Quote: “Where are the Positive Business Outcomes? Customer buys your product for XYZ reason, those PBOs (which were CFO approved) are never really tracked & delivered in health which is the data pulled into ‘QBRs.’ Real Health is based on Value-Realized Customer Outcomes. Zero exceptions.”

Takeaways:

• Value needs to be driven across the entire customer journey not just in their first month or one month before renewal.
• To deliver real value, CS teams must tie all their activities back to how they are driving revenue within the business to avoid being seen as a cost center. You can’t measure what you don’t track.
• By focusing on customer outcomes first you will be able to drive true value for your customers. CSMs need to deliver strategic up-leveled value to their customers.

Experimenting at Klue:

At Klue we are enabling our teams on how to use business cases based on customer goals in each of their success plan meetings. This allows each conversation to be rooted in business-level value for our customers, increasing our likelihood of renewal and expansion.

De-Risk Your Renewal. Featuring: Jay Nathan

Link to Original Voice: Retention Questions

Key Quote: “CS teams: Want to improve your renewal and retention rates? Start asking these questions…The questions are helpful, but the real value is in the process of finding an answer to each. That’s what yields the results.”

Takeaways:?

• Asking customer-centric questions focused on their organizational-level goals will lead to better renewal rates.
• Questions to ask include: What are their goals? Are they meeting them? What problem do we solve for them? Who is the economic buyer? Do we have a relationship? What criteria will they base the renewal decision on? What is the renewal decision process? Who are our internal advocates?
• Questions need to be asked and answered well ahead of renewal time.

Experimenting at Klue:

• De-risking a renewal and asking the right retention questions starts during Marketing and Sales activity, not just with Customer Success. Great customer journey alignment looks like sales teams creating compelling business cases rooted in the outcomes customers want to make it simple for CSMs to chart the course. Alignment at the top of revenue orgs across Marketing, Sales and CS is critical to the success of our customers. Without support and focus to maintain alignment it can be taken for granted. Departmental silos can lead to churn.

Health Scores are Flimsy. Featuring: Ella Dillon Conor Nolen Sasha Anderson on the Customer Led Podcast

Link to Original Voice: The Health Score Myth: Can One Metric Really Work?

Quote: “Surprises are for birthdays! I hate when you potentially are sitting on a platform of confidence only to get sucker-punched because you had no idea you were tracking or measuring yourself against the wrong metric.”

Takeaways:

• Have conversations with your customers. Ask them this: “Hypothetically, if you were to renew today, would you? Why or why not?”. Now use this intel to map your next 6 months of value-creation in the account.
• If there is a drop in usage, bells should go off. Focus on signals over health scores.?Your most predictive signal is usage.
• It is hard to forecast accurately and with precision. Up your operational rigor through creating consistency with and through managers. Hold weekly deal inspection meetings. Review details like the last meeting held with customers, track deliverables and sentiment, look at signals like health scores and usage, and discuss qualitative components.?
• Multi-threading is key. Are economic decision-makers attending meetings with us? Are they using the technology? Make a plan with managers to increase engagement.
• Implement and follow a methodology to measure the health of your customers.

Experimenting at Klue:

• We have increased our operational rigor through a weekly revenue forecast meeting where all leaders roll up their forecasts, key deals and activity. Aligning across all revenue-driving roles from top of funnel through renewal and expansion has increased our customer focus and strategic agility.

Goal-based Engagement. Featuring: Daphne Costa Lopes on CHURN FM with Andrew Michael

Link to Original Voice: Jobs to be Done

Quote: “To have a customer success plan that is different to your jobs to be done framework means that you literally have two different languages that are spoken inside the business which makes data analysis and tracking of leading indicators of value very different because your product team is talking one language and your customer success team is talking a different language.”

Takeaways:

• Leverage the Jobs to be Done framework used by Product teams asking “What are the jobs our customers want to do with our product?” to align Product, Marketing, Sales and Customer Success into one cohesive customer journey.
• Make the jobs to be done with your product the success and usage metrics:
• Answer this: what is the value to their business your customers are looking to get out of your product?

Experimenting at Klue:

• Our customer success plans are evolving from metrics we view as leading indicators of usage and adoption health into outcomes we can help drive within our customer’s businesses. We are working to build an index of outcomes we can consistently drive value through and that we know matter in the’ jobs to be done’ within our ICP.

CSM to CEO

Gain, Grow, Retain with Jeff Breunsbach

Link to Original Voice: Removing Pressure from CSM

Quote: “Like many of us, I think there are CSM teams out there that we are pushing in many directions right now. We are really trying to get them more into the commercial activity.”

Takeaways:

• We are asking a lot of CSMs today. How can we relieve some pressure and increase engagement with our customers??
• We need to find a way to do things at scale.
• Specifically, we need to find effective and simple ways for CSMs to scale so they can focus on what they need to.
• One idea is an intentional Office Hours call for customers. Use a one-to-many format with no slides to prep and no need to be the only expert in the room.
• To get started, reach out to 5 customers to understand the challenges they are facing. Focus on one persona (one specific role) at a time. Gather insights intentionally. These insights and themes will be the questions and content of your next month’s worth of Office Hours sessions.
• Use the Office Hours call to answer one question collectively. Doing this regularly will build a community rooted in best practices.

Experimenting at Klue:

• At Klue we are building community through The Compete Network. We are creating a space to share ideas and collectively develop best-in-class compete programs with our customers.

How to Go From CCO to CRO with Sangeeta Chakraborty and Rosie Roca

Link to Original Voice: CCO to CRO on the Customer-Led Podcast

Quote: “If you think like a company leader, you think about selling as something that is a natural outcome that is authentic to you. If you think about the long-term outcome for the customer and the shareholder then you become a company leader that can contribute way beyond what your job description technically is.”

Takeaways:

• The market is making new business harder and customers are seen as a true path to expansion in these times. CSMs have an opportunity to step into new roles that are at the forefront of revenue growth.
• Lean towards your strengths. If you’re a strong forecaster, lean into that and share it across the organization so that your value is seen by others. Build a team around you who have complementary strengths to fill in any gaps.
• Don’t be scared of sales. People can tend to shy away from sales in their role but leaning into developing their sales skills will drive value forward.?
• As a CSM you are bringing outcome stories that a seller doesn’t have.

Experimenting at Klue:

• At Klue we are one revenue organization. Our ‘Sales’ Slack channel includes Customer Success, Sales and Marketing folks. We all post wins and can see clearly how each of our departmental teams drive revenue growth.

As we continue to spot trends, we'll keep you updated. See ya next month!