How to Build a Voice of Customer Program That Drives Retention and Growth | EP113

Speaker A: If you're an account manager, you already know the truth. You're the one keeping the business running. You own the client relationships, drive the revenue, and solve the tough problems. But you also know that most companies don't give account managers the playbook or the recognition they deserve. That's what you'll learn here on Account Management Secrets. The strategies, insights and edge you need to win. I'm Alex Raymond, and after working with thousands of account managers, I know what separates the best from the rest. This podcast is where we talk about all the stuff no one teaches you. How to handle. Tough client conversations, Drive renewals and upsells, improve your value every single day. No fluff, no outdated sales tactics, just practical strategies you can use right now to grow your accounts and accelerate your career. Let's get started. Most companies would tell you they listen to their customers, but how systematic are they about it? And more importantly, what actually happens with everything they hear? My guest today is Joey Yagoda, CEO of Westing Ventures. Joey conducts hundreds of customer interviews every year, working with companies to understand what customers value, where they're frustrated, why they leave, and where there may be opportunities to grow. In today's episode, we get very practical about building a real voice of Customer program and what that needs to look like. We also get into what private equity firms listen to when they are acquiring a company or managing a company and what that can teach account managers about retention, growth and risk. I hope you enjoy this episode of Account Management Secrets. Hey, Joey Yagoda, welcome to Account Management Secrets. Great to see you.

Speaker B: Hey, Alex, how are you?

Speaker A: I'm great, I'm great. And I'm excited for this conversation because your area of specialty, your specialization is voice of customer programs and really getting into it with customers. And in the world of account management, everybody talks about Voice of Customer, uh, and it's one of the things that everyone thinks they're doing very well, but in reality they probably aren't. And so I'd love to start off the conversation just by understanding what are the benefits in your mind of a formalized voice of customer program.

Speaker B: Such a great question. I think that when folks talk to customers, it usually happens, you know, closer to sales and renewal cycles. The idea here though, is to have a relationship with the customer that exists throughout the year, throughout that cycle. And so you're able to, through these more formalized programs, you can actually have regular touch points with customers, see what they think strengths and weaknesses are before renewal, before periods come up, you can be constantly iterating on the product to make that product or service even better along the way. Um, and I would add that customers feel really taken care of. So it's not just that you're talking to them and asking them what they want or what they need. When they have a problem, they bring up to you or when they are actually at renewal time, but rather you are having a formal dialogue and they're like, oh wow, this company really cares about me and wants to know what I think.

Speaker A: Yeah, I totally, totally, 100% get that. And when I've seen these programs run well in the past, they are, uh, kind of like my friend Bob London would say. So Bob's been on the podcast. He would say you do a listening tour, you go out and you literally just ask questions and then you zip it. You don't talk, you just wait to hear what they're saying. And I think one of the big issues to your point is when all of our major customer interactions are around things that we want to, right. We want the initial sale, we want the renewal, we want, you know, access to their C level person so that we can pitch them something. Uh, a lot of times the questions feel like they're performative, right. Like we're just asking questions so we can get on with our pitch. Uh, and what you're saying is, hey, there's a lot, there's a real value to zooming out and actually understanding what the customer is trying to accomplish. Right,

Speaker B: Exactly. I think that, you know, we live in a crazy world right now where things are changing so rapidly with AI and I think that people find that our customers workflows are so different, the things that our customers are thinking about are different than they were previously. And so by having these more regular check ins, we can actually understand better how our products and services are fitting into our customers entire world. And I think that you get on the call and you might have a goal on the conversation. There are certain types of calls where it's broader customer satisfaction or the certain calls you might be checking in more for all the end product. Or maybe it is a call which is, you know, six months in advance thinking about, you know, could this be a potential churn or not a churn. Right. But when you get on the call and it's not with the, you know, number one is the discussion about the renewal. You get on the call and it's, you know, overall, how are things going? Where are our strengths and weaknesses? And you're zipping it and listening. Right. It, you know, you do a great listening tour and then it really invites, at the end, more of those tactics, tactical questions that you might have hoped to ask. But the customers already said all the things which they needed to say, so they feel more open to talking about this more broadly.

Speaker A: Yeah, I get that. Now, you've worked with a lot of different companies. You work both with, um, you know, vendors themselves. So, like, companies that provide services. I know you also work with PE firms or kind of folks on the ownership side. Um, and my question is, if you're a company doing this stuff, how do you know that you're doing voice of Customer effectively? Because, like I said, everyone thinks they're doing it. No one's doing it particularly well. Uh, what's your scorecard? Or how do you help to assess someone on the maturity or the effectiveness of their program? Basically, what I'm asking is, how do you tell people they're not doing it very well? What are you looking for?

Speaker B: It's such a great question. Right. So I think that you, first, you want to think about, you know, what. What does the program itself look like right now? Right. So I think that for a lot of firms, the programs are very, very, I would say, simplistic. And it's more, you know, maybe we do a quarterly check in. Right. Um, but it's not so much a formalized program what I'm looking for. When I'm kind of thinking about the scorecard process, it would be, you know, one. Do you have a formal framework for how you're thinking about your program? Right. So these are the different kinds of calls that we want to do. These are the different kinds of segments that we want to talk to. So, you know, might be large customers, small customers, might be by product type. Right. It might be by, you know, length of customer tenure. Right. So it's, you know, I would say first, the types of calls, second, the types of segments you want to talk to, and then third, you know, who's actually conducting the calls. Right. So I think in a lot of organizations, it is, you know, maybe the direct person who owns the account relationship, who's leading those calls. But there's some ways to be more strategic in thinking about who leads the calls. So you might think about, you know, um, having more senior leaders lead the calls or somebody in product or strategy, even if it's about the account team, um, sometimes folks are going to be more open and honest when you're getting feedback that comes from folks who are, uh, leading the calls in different parts of the org. And lastly, I would say, what are you doing with that feedback? So at some calls, it's just the interview goes into a set of notes, the account manager looks at it and then sort of makes some ideas for what can be done. But there's the idea that, you know, one, there's, you know, the individual account changes you might have to make. But two, at a more strategic level, what do you have to do to change the overall company's outlook based off of what you learn from those calls?

Speaker A: Yeah. When I hear you talking about this, it's almost like, are we doing voice of customer with like, lowercase letters or with, you know, uppercase letters? Like, are we actually doing this stuff? And, you know, a couple things I want to, uh, have you, you riff on and clarify a little bit is, you know, I can certainly imagine the instinct is, well, hey, the account manager or the csm, they know the customer really well, so it makes sense to have them do this kind of conversation and an interview. Okay. However, I can also imagine that, well, they're not properly trained. They probably already have, you know, history and biases and assumptions and desires here, which might therefore lead the conversation. So you might wind up not wanting that person to be doing interviews and actually zoom out and have a third party, which I know your company does, but, you know, a third party or a, you know, someone who has just been less involved with that account, do them specifically around the training and, like, what to do and how to conduct the interview. I would, I would guess. Am I in on the right track there?

Speaker B: I think you're 100% right. You know, the account manager knows the account, but, you know, sometimes the relationship is a bit too close. Right. So if you're looking for great feedback, um, particularly on the, the account relationship itself, you're not going to often get that if it's being asked directly by the account rep. Right. Um, you know, of course, you can use a third party, but you don't always need a third party. We do a lot of work actually training companies to do this research better on their own. I think when you're identifying the. Right. When you're doing that work, you have to identify the right people. Right. So maybe it is a different member of the account team who's not the relationship owner. Maybe it's somebody in product. Maybe it's somebody in, you know, if their team has a strategy team or a chief of staff. Right. Who's a bit further removed. So that way, when the person's on the call, when the customer's on the call, it takes out of their mind the idea that this Is, you know, this is a sales call or you know, it makes them know that um, there's going to be a chance for perhaps some more honest discourse to happen. Um, it just, it's hard to tell people the truth to the face of people who you care about and know about. You know, we often have deep relationships with our clients. That's uh, why it's so valuable to have, you know, somebody else with that perspective come in

Speaker A: and for sure your customers are going to be conflict avoidant and they're going to be overly polite and they're not going to want to say stuff that could be really materially useful for your business.

Speaker B: Mhm. I would add that at the end of the day there are some organizations though where structurally it has to be the account manager or uh, the CSM who does the call. And I think that there's still things which you can do to try to get that tougher feedback. Right. And I think one thing you can do is at the beginning of the calls, actually invite it. So you say, you know, we are on these calls because we really want to learn from you as we learn and grow as a company. Right. We're here for the tough feedback. Right. Just saying that gives folks permission, I think. Second, when you're talking about, you know, we often want to ask about the strengths and weaknesses of our organizations. Right. When you ask about weaknesses, you always want to invite it. So you always say something, you know, you might just say, you know, oh, what do you see as our biggest strengths? Where are things going really well? And then when it comes to weaknesses, you might say something like, all companies in the world, even the best performing companies, have opportunities to learn, grow and improve. Where do you see our opportunities to improve? Where are our weaknesses? And that way it opens the door.

Speaker A: I love it. Yeah, no, that's, that's a great way to prime the conversation. You know, one of the parallels that's in my mind here, uh, which is, you know, kind of a real bugbear for a lot of account teams is, is Net Promoter Score nps. Now, uh, NPS is the, you know, not something that I recommend. I don't believe in NPS for B2B. Uh, I don't believe it predicts anything. Retention churn. I mean, I've had multiple guests on this podcast talking about that. I'm not a fan of nps. However, a lot of people still do Net Promoter Score. And one of the, one of the things that NPS does, uh, and is very simple. It's, it's the Same question every time. How likely are you to refer this, you know, to recommend us to a friend or colleague? And it's the same question every time. Therefore, if I did it at one company, I can do it the other. If I did it here, I can do it there, and so on. When I'm doing voice of Customer and I'm actually rolling up my sleeves and putting in serious work and going face to face or getting FaceTime with my clients, um, I have the opportunity. But it's also, I'd imagine, uh, maybe a little bit more of a challenge of asking lots of questions about lots of things. So I'm curious, like, how. How do you scope that out? Because I could have, you know, be talking about one thing to one person, something completely different somewhere else. It's hard to compare apples to apples in that context. It's hard to find trends. Uh, and so how. How would you coach someone through that?

Speaker B: I really want to answer your question. I just need to briefly talk about NPS for one minute because it's one of my. And I know you and I could talk about it for hours, I'm sure, But I just think that there's just two interesting things about NPS that, ah, I think nobody talks about, which is just one that, like, it is very, very, very industry dependent. So having done all these calls and having asked NPS so many different times, you know, there's a lot of diligences in, like, the legal industry. And you'll find that a lot of attorneys, I think, just give lower NPS scores to products in general. Right. So, like, NPS should just be thought of as a directional entity. I would not think of it as something which is, you know, uh, uh, like, live and die by nps. Um, and then I would say too, like, people ask the NPS score and they don't ask why. And it's like, if somebody gives something A9 and you don't ask why is it. Why isn't it a 10? You know, then it's not that helpful, right? Because, like, sometimes they'll be like, oh, I don't know. I would just never give anything a 10. Right. Uh, in which case that's a very different NPS than somebody being like, oh, it's an amazing company. I love working with them, but, you know, they need to fix this one thing about their service, or, like, the product is missing this one piece. So my brief, hot take on nps. But to answer the original question about how, so, uh, you need the interview guide. So an interview guide is, uh, A list of questions that you're going to go into each call. Um, the idea is not that you're going to ask every single question in each call, right? So we often go into calls that are 30 minutes. We might have a list of 40 questions. Right, but you're not going to ask all 40 questions, right. You're going to put an asterisk risk next to the questions that you think are the most important. Right? So you're, you're always going to ask things about, you know, strengths and weaknesses. You're always going to be asking, you know, about how the, uh, about how the service is fitting into the overall workflow, right. Depending on the kind of call you're doing, you might end up asking, you know, um, how are they thinking about the marketplace overall? Is there anything else which they're seeing in the market which is, you know, interesting to them that, you know, we should think about adopting? Right. Those kinds of questions you might always ask each time. Um, but you want to let the room for the conversation to breathe. Um, especially since conversations will go down interesting paths. So all the time now when we're doing calls and we're asking folks about competitors, we're hearing names of competitors that we have never heard of before, right? Because there's so many new folks out there, or we're hearing about homegrown AI workflows that are just entirely unexpected, right? So you want to give the call a chance to go down those really long paths. The other time where it's really important to drop the script is if a customer mentions a really deep pain point which they're having. Um, customers will often get in these calls and they might say, wow, like I really want to talk about this one service issue I had a month or two ago that I felt like wasn't resolved, right. And the number one most important thing when you're interviewing your own customers is that they need to leave the conversation still feeling good about being a customer. So it is more important that they leave feeling great and then it is that you get the exact perfect piece of information. You can always do a follow up call, you can always figure out a way and. But if they leave feeling great, then they're going to want to do the follow up call, right? If they don't leave feeling great, if they're like, oh, I was prodded too much, you know, I don't feeling great, then, then it's not going to be a voice of customer follow up. And then it's, you might have, you might have endangered the relationship in some elements. Right. And so the way that you keep things safe is if somebody is bringing up something that's really hurtful, that really, you know, was difficult for them, you go really in depth on it. You try to really understand it, you listen to them, don't defend, but you know, make sure you're dropping the script there. And then, you know, after the call you can figure out the best way to address it and you happy to talk also about how you go about addressing it afterwards.

Speaker A: Most account managers and CSMs I know are really afraid of two things. First, they're afraid of getting a surprise churn notice from one of their most important accounts. But you know what they fear even more than churn? Sitting down and asking the customer if they're going to renew. For some reason, the renewal conversation makes a lot of account managers and CSMs squirm. It doesn't have to be painful. You can ask for the renewal or upsell with ease and confidence and build trust with your customer along the way. I want to show you how I'm launching a brand new program within the Amplify community called Mastering Renewals and Upsells. It starts on October 22nd and it's going to give you everything you need to close your renewals early and negotiate upsells with confidence. Head on over to amplifyam.com to learn more and I hope to see you there. Well, so yeah, I mean, uh, this is interesting because you're doing these interviews with uh, existing customers. You're doing them with customers that have churned. So you're doing with both. Maybe you're also having an opportunity to talk with prospects sometimes times. So you got different people in, in the uh, in the life cycle. Uh, so you need to be conveying, we hear you, we're listening to you. You know, we're paying, we're paying attention. And the customer needs to come out of that feeling heard. Because at the end of the day, like one of the questions that's on my mind and presumably on other listeners here is like, what's in it for them? Like what is the, what does the customer get out of spending time with you or spending time doing a voice of customer?

Speaker B: It's a really great question. So I would say that, you know, first, um, sometimes folks do get paid incentives to do these calls. So sometimes organizations will offer a gift card. I think you have to be careful because I think Cinema's customers don't really find it appropriate. And you know, definitely in certain industries it could be looked upon unfavorably in procurement processes. So just, I would be careful around that. But I think incentives can help under different circumstances. I would say also that it's a lot about the way that you phrase the conversation. So when you say we're looking to learn and grow as a company, I think that people really appreciate that and they might be more willing to take these calls than they would otherwise. I would add, though, that is not always easy to get these people on the phone. So current customers, you're always going to have a much higher hit rate on the calls than you would otherwise. Prospects that you lost, you might have a lower hit rate with turned customers as well, just because there's no longer that currently existing relationship. Um, that is why sometimes folks will hire a third party, um, who can then use expert networks. So sometimes folks will use expert networks like The Alphasites and GLGs of the world to find prospective customers who didn't sign up or churned customers. Um, there. The incentives, I think for them to talk can be pretty significant, but it's a chance to have a conversation, often in a blinded context to understand better where your company fits in in the market.

Speaker A: Okay, got it. And I think everyone's going to be curious and very interested to hear what are some of your favorite questions. So let's, let's use the churn customer scenario. Like what are your two or three go to questions.

Speaker B: I will tell you one of my most, uh, favorite questions to ask. But you have to be super, super, super careful with it. Super careful with it. Right. So it's just one, you know, is there anything that could have been done that would have kept you as a customer? What would have had to have been different? And sometimes an answer about the relationship, sometimes it's an answer about the product itself, sometimes an answer about price. It's an amazing question. I think you just have to be a little bit cautious because it can sometimes come off a bit salesy in certain contexts. So just, you can do it, but definitely be careful with it. I would also say, you know, you can ask, would you ever consider coming back? And you know, what would make, you know, if I came back in a year or two years and you said, oh, uh, actually I'm back. Right. What do you think would have happened? Right. What, what changed? I think that's always super interesting.

Speaker A: So what, what could have happened differently to make you stay? And if you were to come back, what would those circumstances be or what would be different? Okay, all right, good. Those are, those are great. So, uh, for people listening Weave that into your normal, like, conversations with people. Like, don't make this a formalized, you know, once a year type of interrogation on a customer. Figure out how to weave this stuff in, because the sooner you hear about it, the better. I mean, I assume that's part of your coaching as well, is, you know, yes, of course there's value to doing this in a formal way. And you might as well ask something like this every time you're with a client.

Speaker B: There is so much that you can learn, and I think that if you're doing it just before renewal, you're definitely missing out. I would say, though, I think sometimes people are afraid of these conversations, right? Especially account manager or csm. If they're not the one leading it, they might be a little bit scared about it. But I think I do a lot of work with investors too, who are looking at acquiring companies or who are working in portfolio companies. You know, when customers are giving feedback, I don't think that they're looking at, uh, the customer feedback and they're thinking, oh, you know, how does, how does this reflect on the individual member of the account team? How does this affect this individual account manager? Right. I think it's much more so what does this tell us about the overall organization? And I think that the truth is in terms of the different levers that an investor can work on to try to improve a company's performance. Right. You know, uh, changing the way that services might be done, you know, the account manager relationship, etc, that is, that's a lever that is often something which is. I would not say it's easy, right. But at least there is. You know, there's a playbook out there. There's podcasts like this. Right. It's not, um, it's much, much harder to completely transform the product that a company delivers. So when they're doing these calls, they want to know specifically, like, is there something about this product that is not defensible in the age of, the age of AI? Or, you know, is there something which is innately flawed with the product that customers dislike? Things around service can definitely be tweaked, but I rarely see that being a deal killer.

Speaker A: Awesome. Uh, I want to come back to that PE point because I think there's a lot there we can, and it'll allow us to tie this stuff together into the investor perspective. But I have two other things I want to ask about before we get there. Uh, the first is when you were talking about the structure of a formal program and we were saying, you know, who does the interviews and what are we asking? And so on the last piece was what do we do with the feedback that we receive? And I have seen a lot of companies go through the effort of doing a, uh, really nice VOC program and they have their questions and their questions are great and they get this stuff from their customer and the data just sits in their little silo and it doesn't make it through the rest of the company. It doesn't get to marketing for their website, uh, updates. It doesn't get to the product team well enough. It, you know, it doesn't get to finance to talk about pricing. So my question to you is like, what are the things that you want to see happen after this, uh, interview takes place?

Speaker B: I think that there's two tiers of feedback, right? We have the feedback, which is the account level feedback, which I think is relevant for a lot of the listeners of this podcast. Right. So what do we do at the individual account level to solve feedback concerns that come up? And then second, what do we do at the company level? I think at the individual account level, right. Um, I think that there's a chance after the calls to figure out, you know, after the cycle of calls, you say, okay, for each account, what have we learned about that account and where might there be opportunities to improve, especially if there's a major service issue or a major product issue? Um, when I, when you do loop around with customers though, to address those issues, I would be very cautious. I would not say, oh, we heard in this interview that you said this about our service. So, you know, we're going to do this. Just, I would just. People don't like that. It feels like, you know, somebody almost tattled on this conversation that was supposed to be, you know, one on one and honest. They might know that the feedback is going to go back to the team, but they just don't like that interaction. I would go back to them and I would just address the problem directly. They'll know where it comes from and they'll be super appreciative on the actual company level. Right. I think it really helps when there is a champion around this work and the champion can be somebody or maybe it's somebody more senior in the account management organization. Um, maybe it's somebody who is, you know, on the executive team, but somebody who is helping to make sure that that work is being, being pushed throughout the organization. Right. Um, I think that boards love to see this work. Right. Like, this is super, super interesting for boards. And so there's a Lot of reasons for senior teams to be thinking about this so much more. I also seen this really work. Like you can take your knowledge and say, okay, we're going to do twice a year a workshop where we basically, you know, we look at some recordings of the customer calls together. We might even do a panel of some firms it's appropriate to do like have a customer panel come in and interview a few customers at once. Right. Um, especially if you have some kind of con conference or some kind of event for folks. Um, and then afterwards you can actually brainstorm new ideas, think about what you learn from that. And then everybody leaves with, you know, kind of an assignment for their part of the organization as, okay, this is our pathway forward to try to better incorporate the voice of the customer in marketing, in product, in sales, in all the different teams.

Speaker A: So how formalized do you suggest these reviews be? I go out and I gather a bunch of data. It's in, you know, people's heads. We bring it together. Maybe I'm showing it to my execs, some sales leaders and so on. Like what, what do you like to see in terms of an output?

Speaker B: M. That's a great question. And what I think is most helpful is you can almost have a upfront scorecard. You know, we do this a lot when we do work with investors. Right. But it, it also works at the portfolio level as well or working with individual companies. Right. You take a scorecard and you say, okay, how do we think that we're doing on these different dimensions? Right. So you know, you think about what's the most important for your company. Right. So maybe it's product, maybe it's service experience, um, maybe it's, you know, new opportunities. Right. And so on that scorecard, it's, I think about it less so as like a, we're giving it a numerical rating, but it's more, you know, what is the red, yellow, green color you would give in those areas? Um, and then, you know, can you write in, you know, these are some of the key takeaways we have in those areas. And over time you can track against those key metrics each and every time. What I would say to take that to kind of the very next level is, okay, you know, how are we actually going to make sure that we are acting upon this regularly? Right. So what some organizations do really, really well is put it in calendars. So they have a calendar date where it's like, okay, we're going to do semi annual reviews where we're going to talk to, you know, Churned customers lost prospects, satisfaction calls. Right. Um, that's in the calendar, and there's a review date that's about a month afterwards where they actually get together and they review what they've learned. And I think that that calendaring holds you honest and sticks you to it,

Speaker A: because that's the critical point here is, uh, keeping the information fresh, uh, talking about it, making sure it percolates through the whole company, that it's not just one person or one team's purview to do this stuff. Because, I mean, that's where the gold is, right? Like, understanding how your customer sees the world is incredibly important and you want everyone to be aware of it. So formalizing that, I think is a really important part. So awesome. This has been really helpful for us to understand kind of how to do this and why it makes sense. Joey, Um, I want to switch now because, you know, you had mentioned that you work with private, uh, equity firms on either, I presume, both before they're buying a deal or when they have a company or when they're trying to offload a company. Maybe all three of those scenarios where things like customer churn, uh, are a big deal. So first, explain to us why is customer churn a big deal? For the private equity owners,

Speaker B: the number one thing that a PE team is looking at when they're doing an acquisition and they're doing customer calls is typically the churn risk, right? Because they're thinking about nobody wants to acquire an asset and then find out that, you know, all the customers are, are going to leave, right? And so they want to try to understand better that customers are going to want to continue to be customers post acquisition and into the future, and they need to identify the potential risks towards that. Right. And especially nowadays. You know, I mentioned this before, but it's, it's AI for a lot of software companies, right? Um, it's how defensible are you sort of in that age and in that era, Right? That's going to be the number one thing each and every time. There's other things which they're looking for in those calls, but that's the number one thing. It's also why they sometimes want to talk to churned customers, because they want to understand why they left. Right? So you might do a bunch of calls with current customers, and they seem to be pretty strong on sticking with the company. But if there have been churned customers, they can tell you why they left. And sometimes it's. Sometimes they left because there's a competitor out there which Just your current customers haven't evaluated yet, you know, and so they're like, are you like, oh wow, the churn risk is actually still there even if the current set of customers do not look like they are at high churn risk.

Speaker A: Mhm. And the way I think about it is, and we've had several conversations on this podcast on the topic is there's sort of two lenses. There's the, there's the risk lens of like, if I'm going to buy something, is the value going to stay or is the value going to erode over time because customers leave? So as a buyer, I'm very interested in that. Once I'm the owner of the company or I'm looking to exit the company, I want to get the best possible enterprise valuation. So the best multiple. Now we all know that if your churn, uh, rate is high or basically your retention rate is low, um, then you, you have these issues around multiple compression. Uh, because a lot of times people equate, investors will equate NRR net revenue retention as kind of a general how is this company doing metric. Right. Like it's a, it's a very broad overall measurement of the whole management team. Right. And so they say nrr, what's a key component of that? Well, our customers staying or leaving is the primary driver. And therefore if we have low nrr, especially low GRR gross revenue retention, then that's telling us we're likely in a multiple compression scenario, which means the enterprise value of the company is going to be lower than we want it to be. And that is a big problem because all these guys have their own, you know, IRR commitments and all this stuff to their, to their stakeholders, their shareholders. So they're looking at that. So I think of it as, you know, yeah, I want to make sure that do I understand what I'm buying and once I have it, what are the different levers I can pull to increase basically my ebitda? Like, so how can I make sure that I have the most possible income there and then what can I do to increase the multiple that I'm getting on that income? And I think understanding your customers and their needs, wants, desires, why they stay and why they, they leave is like potentially one of the most important questions you could be asking.

Speaker B: I think number one is you know, understanding this churn piece, right? Like what's the risk of churn? And then I would say number two, especially in a great point around looking about how to increase ebitda, it's where might there opportunities for Me to increase the relationship that we have with customers so it's understanding better or what they like. Oh, so yeah, can we do more of that or oh, you know, what are the other services which they're buying from other people? Can we get into that area? Could I potentially acquire another entity and combine it with this entity and then use that to super serve these customers? So those value creation levers, you know, if we're thinking about how do you increase revenue overall, obviously you have to have people staying as customers to then upsell them on other new entities. But then you're always thinking about, okay, where are those opportunities to expand? Which is why, especially on those calls and uh, I think on every call it's, you know, what do we not offer today that you'd love to see us offer in the future? What's something that would make you even more excited to be working with us?

Speaker A: And what's a PE firm doing differently than their portfolio company when it comes to thinking about that, this stuff?

Speaker B: It's a really good question. So I think that PE firms are thinking very big, right. So I think that they're really thinking about where might there be opportunities to really increase top line revenue, um, and to sort of do that value creation motion. I think that they are less thinking about, you know, the next renewal cycle. Right. So they are less in the weeds on individual accounts. There are some exceptions, of course. Right. So like some companies will have one or two really large accounts, in which case those are, you know, obviously super, super important to understand, but they're taking a much more bigger arc, which is why I think that, you know, there's less of a. Sometimes account managers are afraid when the firm is doing these calls. But I would say that, you know, they're not looking, they're tending to look for overall trends because they're taking this bigger picture view.

Speaker A: So when you work with a PE firm, are you doing it across? And I know that they wouldn't necessarily have a bunch of competitors in their portfolio, um, but they're still, I presume, looking industry wide or across a bigger trend rather than one particular company. Is that right?

Speaker B: Yeah. So I think that firms will often have areas which they'll specialize in. Right. And they'll be thinking about different theses, about, um, which areas of the market are the most interesting to them. Right. And so, you know, you'll often be, if you're doing a diligence, you're working on one individual project. Right. But then you might be. There are times where we'll do for one firm, three related diligences where we're doing voice of customer work, you know, across three similar kinds of potential acquisitions. Because they really believe in that thesis. They're just trying to figure out, okay, where's the best opportunity in this space right now? Right. And when you look at the actual portfolio work, so firms will, you know, have some firms have large portfolios, some firms focus on a few smaller bets. Right. Um, I'd say that when it comes to that kind of work, right, you're often, uh, figuring out, okay, what is one kind of motion, right? So, you know, uh, we're learning one thing from this portfolio company. We're doing a workshop based off of this, right? Oh, wow, that's working really well. How do we then move towards doing that across other portfolio companies? And some of these large firms, they'll have value creation teams. These are teams that are really just focused on the post acquisition. What do we do to improve value? And they'll even have sometimes somebody who has a role like a title, like, you know, cross. Cross portfolio initiatives, sometimes where that role is really focused on thinking about, okay, how do we make sure that the different portfolio companies are learning from each other and that we're bringing the best of, uh, ourselves as a firm to help each of those individual entities.

Speaker A: Got it? Yeah. Totally make. Totally makes sense that staying close to the customer and understanding this is going to be critical. So whether you are operating in an operating company or a portfolio company and you're doing this as part of your day job, it, uh, makes perfect sense to stay close to your customer and understand how they see the world and where the world is going. If you are on the ownership side, the investor side, you just want to make sure, are my investments, Is this a good bet? And if I've already made the bet, how can I increase the chances of a good outcome? I just want to wrap up here. Joey, this has been super great conversation. Thank you. But I want to wrap up and zoom out a little bit. And you've done many actually. How many of these interviews have you done? How many, how many times have you done

Speaker B: this? You know, it's hundreds a year, right? Okay, so

Speaker A: you've done lots and lots.

Speaker B: Yeah. So

Speaker A: you did lots and lots of these. Uh, and what I want to know is, across all the different interviews, if you could, if you could summarize and if you could really zoom out, uh, what are one or two things that uniformly customers just wish their vendors knew about them? Like, I mean, I know you're going to say it depends and there's going to be a whole lot of variables here. But like what is it that customers, at the end of the day they're just like, man, I just want people to understand this.

Speaker B: Okay? So I think one like people really do care about the relationship that they have with the account team. Right? And having a great relationship comes up all the time. It cannot make up for having major product flaws or major service flaws. Right. But it goes a really, really long way and there's a lot of companies out there that are uh, really really ahead because of those relationship level differences. So I think I would not undersell like thinking also about the audience on the call today. It's just like customers I think really, really do value this relationship which they have.

Speaker A: So who are the companies that are really ahead on this stuff?

Speaker B: I think that there's, you'll often see that. I think you see it one of two ways, right. There are some companies which I think are ahead in the world because they are really, really great at ah, this account management motion. And it's often companies which have really really um, service based offerings. Right. So if you're really somebody who is like interacting with this company constantly, right. Uh, you know, uh, sometimes it's companies which you know, offer like you know, some sort of uh, B2B industrial services where you're like really, really working with them closely or maybe it's offering, you know, you even see it in certain sales organizations but like high volume sales at the individual order level. Right. You tend to see accounts matter, like account teams mattering the most. I think on the flip side, right, like there are certain companies that are maybe in the tech space where you know, the account team might not be thought of as often, might not be super present. Right. And so those companies are sometimes getting by off of just having you know, a great product or a product that's really integral into people's lives. But that being said, oftentimes I think companies distinguish themselves by having a great account team. And it really.

Speaker A: Okay, I think about that in terms of like, yeah, uh, how in how embedded are you? Right. So how embedded are you there? And so therefore I can imagine that a lot of like service firms, systems integrators, consulting firms, people who are out there doing the work and like really spending time advertising agents really spending time with clients therefore would score higher. Okay, so the first one was the relationship, uh, matters. What are some of the other things that you've heard? I just wish that everyone would understand. X.

Speaker B: Got it. I think that we are Hearing all the time that people have frustrations around contract renewals. Right. So I think that. I think that there's almost two kinds of businesses out there. There are certain kind of businesses that are a bit set and forget it. Where kind of people sign up for services and then, you know, prices don't change too much. Right. Things are quite predictable. Right. And then we see other companies out there where at, uh, renewal time, they're seeing changes in price that they feel don't make sense. Or maybe things started in perpetual licensing and then they had to switch. Us companies sometimes have to do. They switch from perpetual licenses to yearly renewals. And I think that folks are still frustrated about changes that even happened four or five years ago. People kind of don't forget it. And so the biggest advice I have related to that is whenever you are making large structural changes around pricing programs or large structural changes around the way that, like contracts or licensing are done, the communications around it and like, salvaging those relationships are so, so important.

Speaker A: That is truly a point of stress intention for pretty much everybody. Yes, I get that. Wow.

Speaker B: And often people who are, you know, I think often our listeners are not the people who are making the decision to sort of change these structures, and yet they're the ones who have to communicate it,

Speaker A: right? Yes, no, indeed, for sure. That comes up all the time when I'm talking to my Amplify members. They're talking about this stuff and they're being told to push through a price increase. They don't know how or why and causes a lot of tension. Uh, so this is great. Joey, thank you so much for this conversation. Quick, like, last piece here. If someone is excited about the ideas that they've heard in this episode and they say, hey, I want to do something, I need to get better at this, what is the first step that they should be taking to implement a proper voice of customer strategy?

Speaker B: That's a great question. So I think, you know, one, feel free to reach out to me. I'm happy to have calls with anybody to, you know, give some quick thoughts on how they can do this. But I think second, you know, I would figure out, okay, you know, who in my team and who in the organization can, can work with me on this and sort of be a real champion, right. To make sure that this is being shepherded throughout the organization. Right. And then I would, you know, you can start small so it doesn't have to be that you are doing, you know, 50 customer calls every quarter. Right. You can start small and say, okay, we're going to start with a pilot. We're going to do 10 customer calls. We'll identify the right person. We'll have a champion who, you know, can help us make sure that it's being that whatever relearn is brought to the wider organization. You do that pilot right, you go through those motions in the right way, um, and then you can say, okay, wow, this worked really well. We'll expand it out even further.

Speaker A: Awesome. So start small. That's the path to victory here.

Speaker B: I think that people overestimate. You know, you can learn a lot from just a few calls.

Speaker A: Fantastic. Joey Yagoda, thank you so much. Really fun conversation. Uh, I appreciated the deep dive into voice to customer. I learned a ton. And look, people, relationships matter. And don't mess up your contract renewals. You heard it, you heard it here first from, uh, from Joey. Thanks for being here.

Speaker B: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Speaker A: I hope you enjoyed this episode of Account Management Secrets. If you're ready to boost your career and sharpen your skills, come check out Amplify. Explore our elite community of top performing account managers. Packed with courses, tools, tools and a vibrant network@armplyam.com. thanks for listening and I'll, uh, see you next week.