Customer Obsession: The Secret to Retention & Growth

Narrator: Welcome to Revops Revolution, where we focus on changing the game for driving revenue. In each episode, your host, Jesse Morris explores the different areas that affect change and drive revenue across your organization. If this is your first time joining us, please subscribe so you don't miss out on any future episode. Here's to the revolution.

Jesse Morris: Welcome to another day of the Revolution. I'm your host, Jesse Morris and today I'm excited to welcome Hayden, uh, to the call. Hayden has been a seasoned go to market executive. Hayden, super excited to have you. Thanks again for joining.

Hayden: Yeah, Jesse, my pleasure. Excited to uh, have the conversation and just based on our pre conversation, a lot of things to learn from one another. Thanks for having me.

Jesse Morris: Most definitely. So Hayden, you've been, you're now the president and CRO at Seismic, uh, which is awesome. You've been leading go to market for a number of years. I think you were global field ops at Pegasus. Uh, you spent years at Microsoft running business applications which speaks my language. Uh, you built your foundation at IBM for I think 11 years. You went from financial services to consultant to VP, uh, over that time, which is super impressive. And I'm sure you've learned a lot. And I think what's fun is you're still talking about our pre discussion of how much you're still learning, which is one of my favorite things about this moment that stops.

Hayden: You're, you're toast. You're done.

Jesse Morris: That's right. That's right. He tells us maybe a little bit more about yourself, of things maybe I didn't cover. Maybe even just personal or anything. Sure.

Hayden: Dad of, uh, three girls, a brother of five sisters. Um, started off in consulting, went to IBM. As in consulting. I went to IBM because I wanted to get out of consulting after business school. And I knew there was a million options there. Um, I was right there right around the time as Cloud was coming, um, and had an amazing opportunity to go to this kind of new thing called Salesforce. And then it all took off from there. Like you said about Microsoft, I think that was one of the best parts of my career. Um, I went from IBM to Salesforce for a little while, but I was there right at the beginning of Satya's reign. Um, and what I learned from him and the organization, everything you read about him, um, the way he operates, it's all true. It's real. And those seven years, um, which started basically a month after he started as CEO, were just an amazing time. But here I am m later in my career at Seismic, uh, we are the global leader of, uh, enablement. I'd always wanted to go to a smaller company, do something smaller, perhaps an ipo. Um, and it's been a hell of a ride over the last four years.

Jesse Morris: Jesse, that's awesome. And you know, what's cool is like, you've kind of touched a lot of the different parts. You know, you've done the consulting stuff you were talking to me about. You've even been involved some of the M and A side of things.

Hayden: Yep.

Jesse Morris: Um, you know, and obviously now on the enablement side, leading the go to market motion for that, you know, you've seen a lot. And I think that's, that's one of the cool things about, you know, the space we work in is there's so many different areas that you can learn and tap into and still so much, you know, some, and even, you know, some of the changes we're talking about.

Hayden: You know, something on that point. Sorry to interject, but, um, I do a bit of mentoring. Um, just published an article on Forbes about mentoring. But, um, I often talk to folks that are sellers that want to be a CRO, and I say, exactly to that point, just doing sales and going straight up, you're going to be doing you and you and your team a disservice if that's the route. Get into different parts of the revenue engine. They'll make you a, uh, uh, more rounded leader.

Jesse Morris: No, I think that's great advice. And it's something, I think that, yeah, I would say you're seeing it more common now in, in the CROs I'm seeing is there's a little bit more variables. I would say maybe 10 years ago, it was kind of, it was only the sales path. Right. Was the, the path to the CRO. So.

Hayden: Right.

Jesse Morris: Um, so, you know, today, I know one of the topics that you and I kind of talked about in prep for today was all around pipeline management in the age of uncertainty. And it's, it's, it's interesting because I think most people that are listening to this podcast and will listen to it. Um, you know, if you ask them, you know, pipeline, and you bring that topic up, you probably hear a wide variety of things. Typically you got one of two responses. Right. I don't have enough. Which is probably the most common response. Or actually I have enough, but we're leaking too much out of the, the faucet. Right. We've got too many things that are kind of coming in and we're just not converting at the rates we need to convert at. And, and I Think one of the things I really like is this industry has shifted. And you know, ultimately it's like, it's kind of the same concept people talk about for years. What got you here won't get you there. Right? That's the whole premise behind this. And you and I talked a little bit a couple weeks ago. Um, you know, you said forecasting is your superpower. You said, hey, I used to be within, I think, 8 plus or minus 8% by week four. Uh, and now you're struggling to even call it two weeks out. And I think, you know, interestingly enough, I would say similar for me, like, forecasting has been my superpower over the years, and I've definitely seen a shift over the last couple years versus, you know, years ago. And, and so I'd be really curious from your perspective, like, what has changed in the industry, in the space and then how are you adapting to that change?

Hayden: You know, when you talk about pipeline, I think of, uh, Glengarry Glen Ross, right? The movie Leads, Leads, abc always be closing M. Uh, I think it was a. It was so much easier to forecast accurately when things typically moved in a linear fashion. Anyone that's worked for me would say here he's always all about being closest to the pen and sticking your number because forecast, uh, fidelity equals personal integrity. Fidelity equals integrity. That's incredibly hard to do today. And I think what's driving that, um, is pipeline early stage, right through to late stage, to the point of close, is behaving so differently. Um, first of all, just pipeline acquisition, and we could go deep down that path. For me, I think the buyer. The buying process has most m. Certainly changed. That's one piece. Um, number two, you've got a lot of really thin teams that you're selling to. Like the folks that you're selling to, they don't have the bandwidth to. To put in the time for the proper buying cycles. They often don't know the new approval processes. You've got AI coming in and all sorts of questions around Infosac and legal terms that slows things down. And then last of all for us and many companies, so many companies went through downsizing a little bit over the last three years. You've got a smaller sales organization that has to walk and chew gum at the same time vis a vis closing the myriad of deals they've got in this quarter while also progressing the early stage. That's really hard to do if you're working a sizable deal that is multi Persona, multi divisional. How the hell do you spend time on developing, um, those are some of the challenges, I think, that are making pipeline creation, progression and closure so challenging in order to nail your forecast.

Jesse Morris: So I think it's really intriguing. So you talk about buying process, then teams. Uh, and I think what's interesting around the buying process, uh, you and I talked about this in the prep as well. But I'm curious from your perspective when we talk about buying process, obviously I think all of us that are listening to this, that in this space would agree. Legal and infosec, that process has gotten infinitely more complex, you know, over the last.

Hayden: Just, even the customers don't know that process and they don't know.

Jesse Morris: And actually, I think what's interesting is I don't even think it's just them. I actually think the companies themselves haven't even made up their mind fully on what that process looks like. Right. Like, you know, last year I, you know, I, I bought, uh, I think, I thought. I think I bought seven new pieces of software and I had over 45 pieces of software that I was responsible for purchasing or renewing. Uh, and you know, what's interesting is I would go to Infosec in one week I would get one answer, and then, you know, another week I'd get another answer. And part of it, I think is Infosec is also scrambling to figure out exactly your point because everybody's starting to sprinkle AI and everything, right? And so it's like, how do we control this and you know, data policy, data sharing, data ownership. I worked for a European company which is like infinitely more complicated to get things approved.

Hayden: Totally going through it right now.

Jesse Morris: So I'm curious, from your perspective, what are the. And I hit on one. But what are you. Would you say when you think about that buying process has changed? Can you go into detail, like, what does that look like? And again, how are you adapting to that?

Hayden: Yeah, so a couple things. Um, number one, put yourself in the seat of the buyer, the person who wants to go buy the software. First of all, there's just confusion of what you're buying. Is it what I really need? I have never seen the rate and pace of companies claiming to be able to do things that they. That isn't core to their business. Just think about the world of revenue tech, Revtech, um, anything that helps a seller. I mean, you have everyone from Salesforce to Adobe claiming that they do revenue enablement, revenue, um, enhancement, whatever. Then there's a myriad of specialists that do little pieces. So it's wading through that clutter and then Obviously, everybody within that organization has a point of view of what they heard is a best practice or a best practice company. So you get that. Okay, so now, uh, it's, I found the right company. This is the one that makes sense. We've made the decision on this. Their process that they use is no longer linear, particularly if you're a platform organization. Then you got to go work with the marketing team, maybe the ops team. Of course the CEO. Uh, CFOs got to play a role. People, stakeholders within the division. And then what we've also seen, Jesse, and I'm sure you've seen this is the rise again of the cio, particularly with platforms. So selling to a customer is challenging because of what do they want, what do they need? And also often they have done most of the work, uh, all the way through before they even engaged a seller. Then once you are involved, you're selling to the buyer, you're selling to the key stakeholders, you're selling to the board, you're selling to the infosec team, the legal team. CFO's got approved. Oh, there's now new AI committee. Um, it's a very confusing cycle and understanding that is paramount. I use the saying often, Jesse, and it comes from my early days. Um, we must apply the seven Ps. The seven Ps are proper prior planning prevents piss poor performance.

Jesse Morris: Um, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Say it slower.

Hayden: Proper prior planning prevents piss poor performance.

Jesse Morris: I've never, it's funny, I've never heard that.

Hayden: Never heard that.

Jesse Morris: I really like it. Yeah.

Hayden: And you know, you talk about planning, you talk about understanding your customer account plans and whatnot. But a piece of planning that so many sales teams forget is what are the gotchas that are going to trip you up. You fall in love with the person you're talking to and what they're telling you. Um, I constantly reinforce my team on the big strategic deals. What are all the angles that are going to trip you up? And it's all the names of all the roles that I just talked about and other things that may come into play. You know, it's, you know, margin. How's the company doing on margin? What's that impact on buying new stuff? So traditional selling of selling value, selling to your sponsor, the buyer does not work. You've got to go in with a plan for all the gotchas. Look around the corners. The famous saying of, uh, Gretzky was so good because he went to where the puck was going, not where the puck was. Sellers have to do that as well.

Jesse Morris: I love that. And I think, you know, it's interesting you hit on a couple of things I really, I'd like to actually go even deeper on. You talked about multi threading and the reality that that creates and a different, you know, again, most sellers are not used to really having to sell to Boat, you know, all these different parties. Right. It might just be I've always sold to the CRO or I've always sold to, you know, whatever this entity is. But to your point, now all of these different people are involved and it's

Hayden: particularly worse for companies that had single SKUs or two SKUs that were for the CMO. As soon as they take on more SKUs, whether through partnerships, acquisitions or new development, that's when it gets a big problem. They're not used to doing it.

Jesse Morris: It's a whole. Yeah, it's a whole new motion. And then, you know, you, you, uh, actually talked about thin teams. But I think thin teams plays in two roles. One is not just that, you know, people are trying to do more with less, but also the people that can implement, you know, technologies in particular too, they're stretched in. Right. Because to your point, you've got this whole consolidation. So, you know, that was one of the biggest challenges I'd always have is like, I'd have all these companies pitch me and I'd be like, that's a cool product. I like it. I don't know who in the world I'm going to have on my team try to implement this thing.

Hayden: That's right.

Jesse Morris: You know, over the next six months, like we can talk again in six months and maybe I can pencil you in kind of thing, right?

Hayden: Yeah, yeah.

Jesse Morris: You touched on something else. And I don't know if this is what you're getting at, but this is something that one of my co founders and I talk a lot about, which is buying insurance. And I'm going to explain what that means. So, you know, obviously, you know, I've got an early stage tech company if I'm competing against a larger known entity. Right?

Narrator: Yeah.

Hayden: Uh, yep.

Jesse Morris: Your point? You've got to sell this to the board, like at the end of the day, even if maybe the board doesn't have to sign off on it. When you go to the board meeting and they're like, hey, you know, what's AI look like? And you're like, well, we just, you know, did this one thing with this one company, that's risk to you. Ultimately, it's your name on it. And if it goes wrong, you're going to take the fall for it. Now if, on the other hand, you purchase a very known entity, a Salesforce of the world, and it goes wrong, that's a different thing, right? Because it's like, well, I mean, you can't fault me. I purchased Salesforce.

Hayden: And so the old saying of you don't get fired by buying IBM. It's the same now as Salesforce, Microsoft, Adobe, et cetera. Yes, exactly.

Jesse Morris: And so that's another thing. And then margin, which was the other one you hit on, which is really interesting. So, uh, I think I'll expand on this one. I think this is what you mean is like, while, yeah, we all get budgets for the year, the reality is those budgets can change every quarter depending on how the quarter went, right?

Hayden: And so, or, or all of a sudden tariffs pop and everything gets held because they don't know the uncertainty. Abs, not just quarterly, it's happening monthly, we're seeing it monthly.

Jesse Morris: So when you look at those different components, you kind of, you've identified, you know, some of the challenges. What are you doing today, um, with your teams to help enable, there's a, there's a good word for you to enable them to be able to work and optimally work in this environment.

Hayden: So, look, I'm not going to plug what my company does, um, uh, or, you know, the software that we do, but enablement is a weird word. Um, yes. 10 people, what it is. You'll get 15 answers. And traditionally a lot of your older school folks might say it's training. Um, it's not. Enablement is helping a revenue engine, a seller, a csm, whatever. It's helping them at each step of the way by taking in the signals that are coming back from your customer and turning that into actions. Um, and where that those actions come from or the recommendations come from is from others within your team that have sold similarly or succeeded. We had our sales, uh, our big annual event with our customers. And I talked about there's always that top 10% or that top 20% of your sellers that just figure it out and get it done and drive the preponderance of the bookings for the year. What is it that they're doing? They're unicorns, right? Oh, yeah, the top, top 10. They are always at President's Club. It's enablement is about looking at those actions, looking at those, uh, behaviors, while also taking in signals of how your customers are engaging with your marketing data, uh, as well as your sales data, um, engagement data, whatnot, and turning those unicorns into templates so that the other 90% or 80% of your organization is following similar patterns or workflows that your bestsellers are. The best sellers always seem to decode the problems that are at hand. They work a little harder, but they have the intuition of what are the speed bumps that are going to come. So for me, enablement, what our company does and others do is not only provide the right content with the right context for the right client at the right time, but it also starts to look at buyer behavior from your engagement with them, buyer behavior from your website, your marketing campaigns and engagement with them, and then giving recommendations to the, uh, seller or whomever of what to do next. Because if someone isn't getting new ideas or recommendations, they're going to probably follow. Humans and sellers as a whole are creatures of habit. They're going to follow the same patterns. And that, that decoding of your best people, um, and the behaviors of what's happening with your customers is, is everything. And then, ah, a point I would love to get on at some point is you think about sales methodology, sales process. We all use these internal words and processes that we follow. What we're doing here is we're turning on its head this year and thinking about buyer methodology, buyer process and mapping it to the buyer journey. Everything like our QBRs, our forecast, everything is going to be geared towards the buyer journey and understanding what's happening and what needs to happen at the stages of the buyer journey. Because everything used to be so internally focused of what we're going to do to the buyer. Um, I think there's going to be a lot of change within sales organizations of thinking more about the buyer journey and buyer enablement versus the seller journey and seller enablement.

Jesse Morris: I love that. And it's interesting because, you know, this, this obviously is much bigger than mutual action plans. But I would say mutual action plans is like one of the first forays into that concept.

Hayden: Um, from my viewpoint, we use them all the time.

Jesse Morris: And it's, it's interesting because, you know, you talk about the top 10% and I've actually, I'm a, I'm a math geek, so I've spent the last 10 years doing a lot of analysis actually on the top 10% and what is the differentiator. And there are, you know, across different companies, obviously there is nuance to each company. But generally, you know, you do have some consistent themes. And you know, weirdly enough it was, it was funny. Last year I had a sales rep that I was coaching. Um, I was looking at data. They were pretty new. They were a top. They did really well in their S and B segment. Then they moved up to mid market and they were struggling and they were trying to figure out why are they struggling? So they actually called me and they were like, hey, Jesse, you're looking at data all the time. You see these things like, what does this look like? And, you know, it was interesting because I said, well, what are you doing to win the day and win the week? And he was like, what, what does that mean? Like, what does that look like? And I was like, well, on Sunday night, like, I was like, I was telling him, like, I'm. I'm not as. You know, that. That role I was leading rev op. So I wasn't doing sales. I was like, every Sunday night I. I'd sit down and I team my week up, right? I list out what are the most important things I gotta get done. Uh, and then ultimately, even each day, I was looking at it going, okay, what are the biggest priorities for each one of these days? And if you look at the top reps, you know, generally not all of them, because you definitely have the relationship, you know, outliers, I'll call them, that just can wake up and they just, they're just oozing the ability to sell, right? The relationship, their, their jam. But that is, that is not replicable. That's not the norm from what I found at least. Um, and so what was interesting is, you know, I said, again, what are you doing to win the day when the week, and how consistent are you at doing that? Right? And it was interesting because it was funny because I essentially, I was like, my challenge to you is start thinking through that, start writing out. I was like, just send it to me. I was like, I'm not going to judge you. I'm not gonna look at it. But just so you're kind of got this accountability and you fast forward, you know, when I left six months ago, he actually went from being, you know, I think the second to last rep to the second rep.

Hayden: I love it.

Jesse Morris: Um, and, and it's again, it's not like I'm not. That's not a. Oh, um, I'm amazing. It's nothing at all. But it's interesting because I think part of that is consistency, but part of it's also this, like, level of, uh, you know, it's. It's almost a strategic thinking of, like, let me just take a step back for a second. And we all need to do that in our different roles. I'M curious, are you seeing, do you see the same things within what you're saying?

Hayden: You're seeing me smile here because I frequently talk about. And back to like forecasts and calling, calling a number. The, the biggest shift that needs to happen and it's starting to happen and you just nailed it. It's not predicting the outcomes based on, you know, your traditional measurements and metrics. What, what not. You're moving from predicting outcomes to managing execution. And if you have, I mean, everyone's got a sales process and methodology, right? You follow that stuff. But to your point about the extremely thoughtful on Sunday night of the things that I must get done that must happen, that's managing execution. And if your rhythms within the company. So from the CRO down to the sales leaders and various, uh, revenue teams, if your cadences are around those execution plans and oh, by the way, stop using KPIs, stop looking at the trailing indicators of the lagging indicators, start using the early indicators. So at my off site with my team about a month ago, we talked about, uh, the TLIs, the transformative leading indicators that we want to measure at each stage of the buyer journey. And start measuring those, you start managing execution and you're seeing the metrics that inform if that execution is working as opposed to looking at coverage and sales stage and then running your math models against that. Now, I may sound like I'm doing something revolutionary or wow, how do you do that? I don't know. We're making this up as we go. We're using some commercially available tools, we're doing some stuff internally. But I am going to challenge my team to take an approach that you just said with predictable, repeatable actions, execution and having the right measurements that tell me if that action is being done. Dashboarding is the death of sales leadership. Um, too many dashboards. Right. But if you can concentrate on the steps, those, those TLIs that are necessary in that spot of the buyer journey, I think you're going to have a better outcome. It's interesting, I've read a few of the authors that wrote like challenger sale and whatnot, they're all shift, they're all shifting from the word sell sale to buyer, um, and buyer behavior and buyer decision making. Aligning your metrics and your actions on Sunday night, Monday night, Tuesday night to those, those buyer behaviors and buyer actions, you're going to be in a better spot.

Jesse Morris: So let's, let's dig in on that where you talk about this shift, you know, sales methodology process to buyer methodology process. You know, I Handed out mutual action plans. It's something that I've been a big uh, advocate for years. You look at win rates, you know, again, I get into the data and the geek side of me, uh, you know, you look at win rates and anything that has legit mutual action plans built out, it's not even like debatable. You know, they went out, uh, a lot more than the other ones do. And that's, I would say, you know, again, that's scratching the surface. Uh, and I think that can also become methodical and still be your sales process versus a buying process. But I'm curious, when you talk in your mind, when you think buyer methodology, can you talk a little bit about like maybe a couple, like maybe mutual action plan is one of those things. But what are maybe a couple of areas that can help people that are listening to this right now when they are thinking about this? How does it, how do you help them reframe how they think about it?

Hayden: I'll give you one example. Um, let's go really early in the sales stage and then I'll go a little bit later. So I'll give you two. Um, so first of all, those, those TLIs versus KPIs you're looking at, ah, engagement data. How much engagement am I getting? Both directly with me as well as other assets. And that's by the way, we're great enablement software providers like us, um, provide the tools to get the telemetry on engagement. But uh, in the past, my SDR or BDR, our folks that are pounding the phones, the emails, LinkedIn, we almost had 2x the size team, um, three years ago than what we have now. This team now is way outpacing volume and value and velocity of the opportunities they're harvesting. And how do we do that? Um, of course we're using AI signaling based on being able to harvest like information that's relevant to that person or that org. So you're hitting those really key points. But we're marrying that up, uh, with a lot of the marketing signals and the intent signals and that sort of engagement. So we're using the marketing metrics, um, all the, the standard leading indicators for marketing. We're using all of the relevant information that makes it personal and on point. And then what we're doing is we're giving our, our sellers a, our SDRs, a multimodal, multimodal approach of LinkedIn, of phone, of uh, email, the multi engagement with relevant sound, um, bites, relevant videos to engage that target. So the one to many is Hyper personalized. It's at that point of need where they're showing the signals and what we're finding from that. We're using a lot of AI to then keep nurturing. You know, you read about qualified one mind, all these different companies, but using those AI virtual SDRs that to then continually nurture while the AE is also nurturing. Combined with your marketing, how did this happen? We took a draconian step year and a half ago of moving the SDRs out of my org and under our chief business officer who owns Rev Ops and data modeling and all that and marketing and by putting it, making it a data oriented activity for our selling teams, um, the signals that we were getting as well as the reaction from all the breadcrumbs we were putting out there, huge. Our cancellation rates have dropped significantly. Our coverage is much better now. I got this problem with too much pipe and not enough capacity to go prosecute it. Fast forward, um, again, engagement data is everything. It's one of the biggest signals. We're in late stage now, large deal. Um, we use our own technology of course. Um, and when we're engaging customers we're using a lot of the insights from prior calls. So a lot of the tacit and explicit signals that come. Those signals translate into messaging that is populated in the content that I share and I share it to my customer via, uh, we have digital sales rooms. There's other things you can do now. You look at what they're engaging with. They keep looking at the competitive differentiation part. So now I know I can activate my customer marketing. I can build my sales mission around competitive positioning. Um, and I see who they're passing it to. Whoa. They just passed it to Jesse Morris. He wasn't even anywhere in our view. So now we're going to begin kind of a drip campaign into Jesse Morris. When you're hitting the things that, the signals that they're giving off of what they care most about, you're going to be more on point when you talk to them, ready for that conversation. And you're not going to blow the moment by talking about pricing when they're still caught on competitive differentiation. Does that make sense? Did that answer your question?

Jesse Morris: I mean it makes a lot of sense and I think a lot of what, uh, you know, even what we're focused on right now is it's providing that relevant information. Right? It's not the, uh, everybody gets the same thing, right? Like I was, I was talking to uh, one of my co founders last night about this and uh, you know, and Ultimately I think we were talking about the financial industry and how behind the financial industry is in and anything to do with tech and kind of talking through where I think AI is shifting things and, and ultimately I think where AI can help. Um, which. Is this exactly what you talked about? Right. It's like looking at these signals and saying okay, Jesse's pain point or areas that he keeps double clicking on, he's asking very intentional questions about are in these areas. Okay, let's kind of focus our messaging and time around that not our hey, I have this checklist as an AE and I got to get through my checklist and I have this 10 slide PowerPoint and you know, Jesse doesn't care about the eight out of the 10 slides about two. Right.

Hayden: Relevance. I said it earlier. The right content with the right context for the right client. And the client isn't a company, it's in, it's individual. Um, you know that one other thing Jesse that I would encourage your, your listeners to think about. Um, this may be basic and they're going to say well this guy's in the old ages. But when you think about ICP in your ICP study, um, you typically think of an industry or a profile of company size. Um, what we have gotten pretty good at over the last couple years is taking it down further and further. So industry to sub industry, but then down to workloads, then down to Persona. So we have really found, for example, I'm making this up, uh, we've really found that this product that does this thing really works for marketing in mid tier wealth managers. So the ICP work beyond vertical or segment and getting down into person and the actual technology you're trying to position and the fit. We have found that to be a major contributor to this pipeline paradox that we've had, um, pipeline volume and, and quality. But now I've got to start working on the progression side and um, I don't have all the answers there but starting to work on it.

Jesse Morris: Well, I think this also ties into something you and I talked about before, which you know, a big initiative I think you mentioned for your company is all around retention, uh, and mitigating churn. Right. And how do we perpetuate that forward and interestingly enough I think everybody you know, thinks about that typically through the lens of a reactive approach. Right. It's this. Okay, you know, churn now is that, you know, 8%. Uh, we really need to get it back up to 5%. How do we do that? Let's go look at our current customers Try to flag at risk. And that's not a bad approach. Don't be wrong. Like that's probably where you guys are spending a lot of time as well. But I think what's interesting, and you talk a lot about ICP and you know, Personas and these things. And I think this is where I think the difference can be made with uh, with AI too is it's not just answering. Obviously we all want to get deals done. You and I were talking about it like every quarter is the most important quarter and you got to get deals done. So I get the pressure. And what I'm about to say is going to kind of go against the grain of that. But I think as companies get more mature and as, as revenue go to market becomes a company wide motion versus a siloed approach. Right. In the past it's been new business kind of versus cs, you know, versus the rest of, you know, everything. I don't want to say versus, but that's kind of how it's felt.

Hayden: Yeah, of course it's true.

Jesse Morris: This new world, right, Is this kind of end to end ownership of all of revenue. And so if that's in the reason for that is exactly what we're talking about here. It's because we don't want to just get a bad customer, right? It's like, are they a good fit? And good fit is to find not only do they have a need pain point, all the things we talk about to buy today, but also a year from now, are they going to be raving fans? Are they going to buy more from us? Right. Like that's the bigger question.

Hayden: That's right.

Jesse Morris: So when you think about, um, you know, where you guys are heading as a company initiative, you think about this ICP and Personas and all that, how do you feel like those two things can kind of meld together? And how are you guys tackling that?

Hayden: Great question. I think probably everybody right now is almost more focused on retention than growth. Broad statement, but certainly within my space, my industry, retention is gold. You can't grow if you're shrinking. Right? I mean, matter of fact, and I feel like we've always had a very good um, gross and net retention metric here in the company. However, as you begin to roll out new products, is the product team customer obsessed? Are they thinking about icp? Are they, how are they building new products? How are they getting that signal from the customer that it's not just voice of customer, it's also what's happening in the market and how they're acting with our products, um, to indicate what new pieces to build or go buy. So we as a company, so the ICP work is not just product marketing and sales at all. It's your product team, it's pricing. You position pricing based on price sensitivity and how customers are buying and churning in those different ICPs. Um, but ah, we as a company and we have a new CEO, we had a new CEO that started in October. Um, and he has brought some really strong new thinking into the business. Not new, new for us. Um, but he has said folks, we as a company have to have a mindset of an absolute system of customer obsession. Now what does that mean? Right. Churn and retention. People typically think, well that's CS's problem. Well, if my product isn't being built to what is wanted or needed or what's going to be wanted, um, then you're not customer obsessed. The seller, if the seller is selling something to make their quota, um, and not really worried about how it's going to get implemented or if it's vapor or they're not customer obsessed. Your services team, if they're just following a checklist of onboarding and implementation steps, they're not as obsessed. And then who has to deal with the problem afterwards? Your support desk and your customer success team. Um, and they are the end recipient of a non system of customer obsession within your company. So for us, um, we have really, we've kicked off the only cross company initiative which we are calling a system of customer obsession. And that is the entire company's responsibility within satisfying the needs of ricp.

Jesse Morris: I love it when you, when you think about that and just the implications. Again, you know, focusing on customers isn't a new concept in itself to your point. It's, it's, it's not just, it's not just CS's problem and I think that's where either the, either you're starting to A, you're starting to see a shift and B, I also think the companies that aren't moving in that direction, they'll be the ones that are going to struggle the most over the next five years.

Hayden: Yeah, you know something Jesse, we did this year, I was stunned how well it has worked and we started with it in the upper end of our like strategic global enterprise accounts. I've never done this before. Um, we have what we call pods and they are true pods. I mean we've got almost perfect alignment between our sales engineers, our sellers, our CSMs. They carry the exact same territory, same set of customers and prospects. But what we did was first time ever. I have everyone on an NRR number. Net retention just the waiting is different. Um, and reinforcing the behaviors with comp. That's nothing new for anyone that's listening. But sellers carrying a retention number and a healthy sized retention number. Um, some folks in my company thought we were crazy. Like my God, you're, you're gonna limit some of the seller upside by taking a big chunk, not like 2% or 5% and putting it towards retention. Well, I ain't going to be building a system of customer obsession if the front end isn't customer obsessed. So um, there's, I think there's a lot of things you can do with the telemetry, the signaling kind of just your messaging in general, um, your measurements that go into performance management around this obsession. But also comp. Um, and the traditional view that a seller only carries a growth number, I think that's dead in the world where retention is king.

Jesse Morris: I love it. And you hit on a couple of things. I'll summarize. And then I got one last question for you. You know you talked about the pod concept and it's interesting because my last company, uh, in the US for the US team, we really, we kind of did almost a trial pilot concept of the pod approach. And what we saw was, was, I mean it was impressive. I mean it was like you know, we were very partner led which I think even, it makes even more sense in that environment especially because it's all about creating this motion and momentum to get things going forward. But that is huge. And then actually you're right on the NRR number. I roll that out two companies ago and you know it was, I was almost a revolution. I thought like, I thought so too. We're going to lose so many reps and this is going to be terrible. And I mean I remember that day very vividly in my head of like. And it was me, right? I'm the bad. I'm the, I'm the head of Rev Ops. So it's. You know, the cop guy is going to come down on me right as

Hayden: we were rolling it out I was like, are we really doing this? I'm going to lose people. They're going to take their. Yeah. Ah, yeah.

Jesse Morris: I love it. And I think, I think you know what was interesting is probably similar to what you found was like it did then actually create more of this team environment and that translated into a lot of different like I don't know, it was almost like micro behaviors that I wasn't expecting that really had a positive impact. Even product. I actually saw some positive changes in products because now it was alignment. It wasn't. CS is asking over here going, product, give me this. And you've got the AE over here going, give me this. Right. It's this whole alignment across it. I really love.

Hayden: Uh, interject real quick there, keep going. But, um, it's gotten to. It's only when you're in and you know, there's. We're kind of debating is it successful because we picked our biggest accounts and best managers and people, or is it because what we did. Don't know. It's a year in. But when your AES are talking about retention and your CSMs are talking about growth during MBRs and QBRs, that. That's a big shift. That is a huge shift. Sorry to cut you off.

Jesse Morris: No, and I think it's exactly it. And I think, you know, exactly to that point. One of the other things is you might lose a few people doing that. We definitely. I think we lost two doing it. But you know, I think there is something to be said for short term and this is tough in private equity especially because everything is short term, very little long term. But there is that something to be said for like. Yeah, it's painful, don't get me wrong, it's very painful to lose top reps, but it's also painful to not have a team that feel like. I always think of, uh, you know, the analogy of like the coxswain and you know, rowing, right? And this idea of like, we're all rowing in the same direction and that actually that's where you get true momentum. Right. Is. And to your point, like doing more with less, that's, you know, that's where a lot of companies are at right now, is they're trying to do more or less. How do you continue to deliver at a level you've never delivered at with that few of resources? And in my mind, the only way you get there is if you are all rowing in the same direction.

Hayden: 100. Is your point about the coxswain? Um, at the start of the year, I do twice a year. My leadership team does off sites twice a year. Um, beginning in middle. Um, middle is kind of the course correct. How we doing? Uh, beginning of the year, uh, what I did for kind of the illusion and um, you know, get across the metaphor. We went to Boston, we have a big office there and we went on the Charles river, which is for those listeners that don't know the Charles River. It is the head of The Charles is one of the biggest, uh, crew races in the world. Um, we as a leadership team went and spent a day out on the water learning how to row together. And it was comical because you get it wrong. You're going to take an ore right into your chest and even potentially flip the boat. Uh, it's an excellent point. And I use that as an analogy for my team that if we don't work together, we will not get the lift we need, um, because we are thin. I mean, traditional. Think about, like, I don't know, Jesse, five, six, seven years ago, you'd model an assumed attainment rate. You do your modeling of, you know, what the blueprint would look like.65%. That's probably where you'd be. Um, I mean, I won't say the number we're at, but it's north of that. And we're at numbers that are, in a world I've never worked out of, assumed attainment rates. And we're doing it. We're doing it. And we're doing it because we're getting lift out of the CSMs. We're getting. Our services team are incentivized to find new, uh, sales opportunities and CS is incentivized to find new services oper. And when all of them are working together, you can have higher assumed attainment rates, um, within the business as opposed to each function operating off their own metrics and silos.

Jesse Morris: I love it. And I think, you know, you're right. 65% actually was generous at a couple of the companies I worked at. Uh, you know, I think the best I ever saw was 70. But, you know, I, I think you hit the nail on the head. It's. It ultimately is like, how do you get people aligned? And not only aligned, like from. I think everybody thinks comp. That's all they think about. But actually it's not just comp. It's, you know, I think. And again, I'm just tying back to your company. But it's also the enablement side. It's also like the over. I mean, to your point, hey, your main company's initiative is this thing. It's not the 5x5. It's not, you know, product has this thing and, you know, CS has this thing and support has this thing. No, it's like we're all, as a company are nor it was. I was funny, one of my, uh, old colleagues, I saw a post today about the Northstar and this idea of like, you know, we putting that out there and just that level of focus can drive a lot of, yeah, you

Hayden: know, not to give a plug for enablement, but I'll do it anyway. And I didn't have this appreciation before I joined. I thought of it more as the place to get the right things and get your onboarding and your ramping and materials for a new product launch you built. If you think about your enablement, and I'm not talking seismic, I'm talking about the enablement function within any company. If the metrics that your enablement leader are measured on are aligned to metrics that are relevant to each of the functions, you are now starting to move from sales enablement to revenue enablement. So I challenge everyone to think about revenue enablement, not sales enablement. Um, and then of course the next step, as we said earlier in the call, buyer enablement. Um, and uh, those metrics that matter are, and those TLIs are the common unifying thing almost as a Rosetta stone for the different functions to talk the same language.

Jesse Morris: Love it. And I, and I do like the idea of moving towards that buyer enablement. And I think, you know, a lot of that ties into value. And you know, it's interesting you have people in organizations that are so resistant to change, but sometimes I think if we step back, even if you're an ae, that's like, I just got an NRR number. Like, you got to be kidding me. It's like, take a step back for a second and think about not only how does this impact. And again, this is short term versus long term thinking. Not only does that impact your paycheck in the next quarter, maybe it does have a negative effect. I'm sorry, uh, but also like when you think about your career and what you can actually, hey, you can go to your next prospective company and say, hey, not only did I drive X amount of new business, but I actually was able to impact, you know, net retention by, you know, X wyz. Again, it's not just this angle, it's not just good. I think there's this talk track that like NRR is just good for the company or this is just. I actually think it's trickle down effect across it.

Hayden: You know, uh, the interesting symmetry of this call we've had with one another. Before we got on the podcast part, we were talking about CROs and does a CRO is a better CRO someone who's just been in sales their whole life or someone who's had different roles. Think about that for the development of an individual if they want to grow into more of a GM type function just by doing that and thinking about nrr, you, uh, have now carried at the very least a post sale and a sale responsibility. And if you start thinking about services as a key indicator of customer health now you've just had three arms, uh, or three legs of the three legged stool of revenue within a company and you've had experience with it. So it's great for a personal development standpoint as well. Well rounded employees.

Jesse Morris: Well, Hayden, this has been fun. Thanks again for taking the time and sharing the insights and it's, it's always a good, good conversation. And I think, you know, for those out there, if you haven't followed Hayden, check them out on LinkedIn. Uh, if you haven't liked and follow the podcast, you know, feel free to do that. But Hayden, really appreciate you joining today.

Hayden: Hey, it's my pleasure, Jesse. Thank you. Appreciate it.