Why 52% of New Revenue Now Comes From Existing Customers | Ben O Mathuin

Ben O'Mathuin: It still baffles me how in a lot of places there's no clearly defined process or if there is a process, it's just not adhered to, it's not the value of that knowledge share isn't truly understood. And I think uh, if we take a step back and we think of all the interesting kind of ah, nuggets of information that a sales individual extracts during that kind of sales process, that is what the client's expectations are when it comes to what that partnership's going to result in. And we're just throwing it across the wall to relatively, maybe junior or uh, uncoached CSM whose expectation is just to deliver. We really have to kind of ask ourselves as leaders being like are we looking at that kind of CS Org as the same commercially obsessed way we do? Uh, in our kind of post self.

Narrator: Welcome to Revenue Insights. We're joined by revenue leaders from some of the highest growth companies. Together we explore how they built their revenue teams, the journeys they've been on and the lessons they've learned along the way. Revenue Insights is brought to you by ebsta. We're an AI first revenue intelligence platform designed to help you close more deals, retain more customers and forecast better. Enjoy the podcast.

Host: Hello everybody. On today's episode of the Revenue Insights podcast, I'm thrilled to have Ben O' Uh Mahon principal consultant at Customerlift. Ben has spent his career helping SaaS companies fix, churn, unlock expansion and build scalable post sales revenue engines. Ben takes a hands on diagnostic first approach to designing commercial customer uh success systems that align teams, drive retention and turn existing customers into predictorial revenue growth levers. Ben has deep experience building go to market customer success teams for VC backed companies and is passionate about transforming customer success from a services function to into a strategic growth driver. So without further ado, welcome to the podcast Ben.

Ben O'Mathuin: Brilliant guy. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.

Host: So Ben, before we get started perhaps you could tell our audience a little bit about uh, what you focus on and really how you got there.

Ben O'Mathuin: Yeah, absolutely. So I suppose if we take all the way a step back when I was fresh out of uni, I was very lucky to join a NASDAQ listed business, um, those in the Martak space. Um, and really I spent six, seven years there where I kind of almost call it where I earn my stripes.

Narrator: Right?

Ben O'Mathuin: Um, what was very interesting about the period there, of course I was in this csorg, um, but albeit a NASDAQ listed martech solution, um, product market fit at the Time uh, although they had IPO'd martech, as you may know is an ever changing landscape between breaking changes coming from publishers and of course increased competitors that our PMF started to slip. Uh, and I was very young and new in my career and it really became in order to retain customers and expand customers, not only did you need to know our own product very well, but you really needed to understand what value meant for that customer. Um, which I think is something that was quite unique to experience quite early on in my career. So kind of took a massive amount of learnings from there. Um, I left there um, to join a kind of early stage VC backed business to build out the account management CS function, um, and did so quite well where we kind of grew that out to a team of uh, five CSMs, engagement, uh, managers, solutions architects and then ultimately stepped in to kind of own that full revenue function for them. So that was again kind of taking ownership of that full revenue suite from marketing all the way through to how we're retaining and expanding uh, customers. Um, and I suppose off the back of that being involved in various different early stage uh companies, some were just peers and partners of mine that I was happy to give my time to and then others who were kind of bringing me in uh, and uh, to my surprise were willing to pay me for some of the advice I had has led me now to kind of be the principal consultant at Customer Lift. So uh, now working primarily with kind of seed to scaling businesses who often might have their vps sales in place, product market fit is just about there but kind of the post sale engine, that customer success function is kind of like underlooked to a certain extent. And that's really my mission is to take that same energy we often give to our sales and acquisition channel and really turn that post sale ecosystem, that CS ecosystem into uh, like I said, a revenue engine or a predictable engine.

Host: You know it's funny, I don't meet that many CROs that started a customer success. So it's an interesting place to start from. And in a lot of ways it makes a lot of sense because a lot of VP sales spend their lives getting their focusing on just get deals out of the lie and rather than really focusing on what our ICP looks like and the lifetime value of a customer, um, and perhaps even how painful they are to support and service is also a big influence on whether it really matches our icp. So um, I suppose it's coming from a unique perspective owning the whole revenue engine and we're at uh, that early stage business when you started from a customer success perspective.

Ben O'Mathuin: Absolutely. I think that's having uh, spent most of my time on the CS side. We understand the pains of uh, unfortunately our partners in sales sometimes selling when it's not the right fit. Right. And that's often a result of uh, executives and often sales leaders needing to hit target to the detriment of churn. And I think when you come at it with that full 360 view and are willing to, sorry, Mr. Prospect or Mrs. Prospect, this is not the right fit, uh, really gives the business that kind of ability to go, well, who is our ICP and how are we partnering with the right customers for long term growth? And um, I think that's the fundamental part. I think once you crack that from a revenue perspective, you're in a pretty good space. But then what I'm really looking to do now is how can we take that customer success team and turn that into a revenue engine? And what I mean by that is we all know target account lists for our AES and are we really coaching our CSMs in the same way to be curious, to be inquisitive and understanding their book of business to turn that into an expansion opportunity?

Host: Yeah, I mean we did um, for the first time this year, ah, we included customer success in the BT benchmark report. And uh, what was amazing to see was, uh, over the last 12 months we saw 52% of new revenue not come from new logos but coming from existing accounts. Uh, and I've never seen the number so high and that was incredible. So it shows that investing in customer success and the customer experience is so important. The deal is just getting the deal over the line is really the first step on um, the last.

Ben O'Mathuin: Absolutely. And I think something I spend a lot of my time speaking to founders about is that time to value and often in kind of that early stage or scale up period. If you ask different folks within the business what is our time to value kind of milestones, you'll hear different pinpoints back. It's oh, when we get the data integrated or oh, when they get access to the platform. And it's trying to coach, you know, those internal teams to say time to value is when the customer realizes the value of why they're paying you guys as a partner. And not only that, but how we take that initial value and then compound that over the period of partnership.

Host: Yeah. And I think sales have got a big job to do in actually stepping up and articulating exactly what value the customer's expecting before as Part the handover and I think perhaps success need to be a bit stronger in cushing back and not accepting every customer that signs if they're not. What if the seller's hard give them a uh, clear understanding of what good looks like and how they're going to win with this customer.

Ben O'Mathuin: Absolutely.

Host: Yeah.

Ben O'Mathuin: Like you mentioned handoff there and it's one of the first things I'll ask for if I go in to support a business is you know talk me through how you currently handoff between sales and CS and it still baffles me how in a lot of places there's no clearly defined process or if there is a process it's just not adhered to. It's not the value of that knowledge share is truly understood. And I think uh, if we take a step back and we think of all the interesting kind of uh, nuggets of information that a sales individual extracts during that kind of sales process that is what the client's expectations are when it comes to what that partnership is going to result in and we're just throwing it across the wall to uh, a relatively maybe junior or uh, uncoached CSM whose expectation is just to, to deliver. We really have to kind of ask ourselves as leaders being like are we looking at that kind of CS Org as the same commercially obsessed way we do uh in our, in our kind of post sales?

Host: No. Fascinating. And one of the data points we saw in the latest report was that uh, over 40% of businesses now had sellers taking an active role after deals were signed. Um and that's relatively new. We all grew up with the, in the world of uh, Salesforce's model where we all have these single purpose vehicles that hand off. But the problem with that is while it runs a really beautiful sales process it doesn't really run a very clean consistent buying process. Uh and so for the buyer they really want to build trust with the key contact and to the point where the trust is so high they sign a contract. It seems crazy that we then stop, you know, wash our hands of our engagement with our customers. So are you seeing more and more businesses um, ah, allow the seller to take a continued role in the relationship with the customer moving forward?

Ben O'Mathuin: Yeah, I am and I also have mixed views on it actually as to what that should look like. Um because I certainly think within low ACV uh SaaS businesses where really the value is pretty clear it's a transactional buy. The kind of maybe the seller isn't as uh, it's not as complex or an Enterprise level sell as uh, some of the larger enterprise deals where we're doing complex data integrations and so on. And I think on the lower ACV plug and play type solutions, uh, I'm a real advocate of just like sell it quickly and then understand what TechTouch CS looks like and how that we're really optimizing for customer experience. I think where I'm seeing more value of course in having, you know, uh, what I often say is it's no longer sales and CS like we need to look at as one single revenue org and that becomes much more impactful and kind of true when we're talking about the larger enterprise solutions that have complex data integrations where value for customer A isn't always the same value for customer B. And I think that's where what I have done uh, with some of our partners is we've looked at kind of ah, pods where an individual seller will be partnered with an individual csm, uh, and they work in tandem. Um, and then there's you know, we could probably debate it uh, for a long time on who owns the renewal and how should compensation plans be attributed to both those. But my starting point with any leader is we need to kind of break down the walls between the idea of pre and post sale. Uh, we are one single revenue org and ultimately when we're knowledge sharing we're bouncing ideas off each other. Uh, and really CS have a lot of nuggets of information of how they're delivering value and if we're not feeding that back to kind of boots on the ground sellers, ultimately I think we're missing a trick.

Host: Yeah, I absolutely buy into that. And what's amazing is when you go into these larger organizations and you ask the marketing team, the sales team, the success team, the partnership scene, now it's rev ops as well. You ask them about what ICP looks like and the types of organizations and deals that we should be doing. And it's crazy how often you get so many different answers to that question. Um, and so aligning the T's is really vital. So are there any thoughts you've got or any ideas around how you kind of have you got a step by step playbook for uh, kind of connecting CS with rev ops and sales? Is there a journey or a playbook that you tend to use?

Ben O'Mathuin: Yeah, it always starts with me with kind of philosophy and like a cultural movement within that organization where we start speaking about the collective of a revenue org and even that simple change within a business of how we're no Longer two departments. Yeah, maybe we are, but we're under one cohesive revenue org. That simple switch of language can start to have a compounding effect. Other very simple things I implement uh, when I work at various uh, different partners is to have a recurring revenue meeting where uh, AES will speak through their pipeline and talk about the challenges or blockers or whatever the case may be and CSMs will talk about their upcoming renewals. And that's typically where the kind of revenue leader will cherry pick those that he or she wants to focus on. So we might have you know, five deals from new business and five deals from CS and we discuss them as a revenue team. Um, and what I find really interesting is when we start to understand ae, Bob, let's say is working through this fintech op he has and he feels like it's going the right direction and the next thing you know you've got a CSM popping up being like oh hey, I work with a client like that and how we've delivered value for them is X, Y and Z. And next thing you know you've got ping pong going across of where CSMs are sharing internal case studies and that kind of nugget of information and also vice versa. Right. Where CSMs are maybe struggling with a renewal because we're seeing some shift or stakeholder leave. Whatever the case is. You've got your AE saying oh I actually saw that deal, I know somebody else within the business and I think small little things like that on a recurring basis to break down those silos and like I said, really emphasize that one single revenue team uh, is a very simple change within kind uh, of within the individuals week or month to bring that together. That can have a compounding effect.

Host: Yeah, I absolutely buy into that. I think marketing is part of that go to market team as well. And if we could, and partnerships and rev ops. Right. We've all got to, we're all part of one unit and if you can get it working as a single function, special things start to happen.

Ben O'Mathuin: For sure, for sure. And you mentioned rev ops there as well, which I think is something that I uh, emphasize more and more on the data. Again we enable our kind of business development team and our marketing team with so much data and then often we overlook what, what our renewal pipelines and expansion opportunities and so on which really we always have the data available to us but often revops focus is on that net new business side. And again a drum I'm always beating is we're one single revenue team and let's make sure we're all getting the data we need to be able to optimize effectively.

Host: Yeah, and I think leadership can be a problem as well. Um, a lot of times we see leadership teams um, in a mindset where success is really just a retention safety. Yes. Rather than a strategic growth lever that they can lean into. So can you talk us a little bit about what work you do with the leadership to help them understand the opportunity with success and how important it

Ben O'Mathuin: is for me, when CS is a pure play retention team, I always question product as well. Uh, because if CSMs are working their ass off to purely retain, we've got a little bit of a problem there. Whether that's missed expectations because our sellers are not uh, equipping the customer for the reality or the expectation or we've got some issues from a product perspective. And I always will look at that first and we have to diagnose and see what's going on because uh, for the most part CS teams are incredibly powerful at what they do. They're incredibly passionate about solving problems for customers. But if they're purely scrambling to retain, to me that's a larger issue with product market fit, icp and that really focus plays into that kind of GTM motion and product. Now once we diagnose that and understand that, yeah, okay, our focus is on retention because we've never really had that conversation of expansion or how we can kind of take that commercial uh, acumen that we would have within a target account list on the new business side and enable our CSMs to do so. Well that's a lovely problem to have. Right. Because it just plays into all the stuff we know as kind of sales leaders and uh, we're kind of enabling our post sale team to be just as commercially tight as our sellers.

Host: Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. So how do you balance retention focused metrics with expansion focused metrics without creating that kind of internal conflict in the team?

Ben O'Mathuin: Yeah, absolutely. So my philosophy is typically uh, despite having one single revenue function, um, there are individuals purely focused on net new business and that traditional AE model who are partnered closely with their CSMs. And once that deal is done and it's onboarded that CSM or account director or whatever the case is, they are solely responsible for that partnership. And compensation plans are built specifically around uh, net revenue retention and ultimately they're kind of incentivized to retain but also hefty true ups for expansion. Um, and that's where we look at uh, naturally that's inquisitive then From a CSM perspective, where you're going, okay, I'm going to retain this customer, but if I can, if I can expand a little bit here, the true up on my comp plan is going to be quite considerable. Um, so I really do see it that way, um, that it is still kind of very much two departments. Um, and I know we could debate this a lot because I know some folks, uh, uh, are completely of the opposite opinion. But I do think that when sellers purely focus on selling but have that close relationship to that post, uh, sale team and allow that CS folk to be able to look uh, at that expansion and so on really, because the CSM has the relationship, they are speaking to that customer on a regular cadence. They starting to understand the politics, the true nature of what's going on within that business behind the curtain. And I think often a question I get is, should we hand off to the AE or to kind of sales to manage that expansion? And I think if we ask ourselves, well, who has more context today? It's more than likely the CSM who's speaking to them on a regular basis. The question is, are we willing to coach and train the commercial acumen to those ESMs? And I firmly believe that that is possible. With the right rev ops, giving them the right data, giving them the right playbooks, we can have just as commercially powerful CSMs as we do AES.

Host: Okay, um, I'm going to respectfully disagree with Amon, but, uh, that's okay. Um, that's a healthy debate we can certainly jump into.

Ben O'Mathuin: Absolutely.

Host: Okay, well, um, let's talk a bit more about QBRs. So um, for me, a QBR has to be a strategic engagement with the customer. And I think one of the reasons perhaps that I don't agree with that previous statement is um, more often than not the CSMs are much more tactical, um, than strategic. They end up using QBRs as a way of talking about training or how butters need to work or you know, fixing a bug or whatever it is. Rather there's uh, a strategic conversation. And the challenge there of course is, um, if the C suite are not attending the QBRs, then you just have no wood to power. Um, and so we got to add value to the C suite in those sessions. It's got to be a strategic session. It has to show them you need to leave them with something they can take to their board, something they could use, uh, to articulate how they're going to run faster or reduce costs or be more efficient. Whatever it is you're thinking to guts. Right. Um, and I think sometimes we fall down, we make the mistake or a lot of times I see CSN spending the time in those kind of tactical weeds rather than actually delivering value at the C suite. Um, any thoughts on how we could kind of uh, raise up our css?

Ben O'Mathuin: Absolutely. No, I totally agree with uh, that guy and I think that's actually one of the real frustrations I have and it's that us as leaders, I really feel like we're doing our CSMs a disservice in not enabling them and coaching them to be strategic. And you're absolutely right. The role of CS is to offer uh, trainings and show them the buttons and so on. But uh, an exceptional CSM and a good commercially focused post sale team will understand when to dial up training versus dial up that strategic commercial conversation. And I think for them again it really depends on your ACVs and the nature of the business. For the most part QBRs for me are pretty much redundant now to be honest. I don't think sellers or uh, buyers don't really want to be there. Uh, if they are, they're distracted, they're disengaged. And what I often focus on with kind of that post sale team is a very simple question of if your customer had to renew today, would they? And if you can't say yes or no, it's a binary, it's yes or no, then ask yourself why. And if that's because you haven't articulated value to C suite in the last three to four weeks, then we're not commercially focused, we're not looking at the ah, strategic value that we're delivering to the account. And it's not about having a conversation with your C suite uh, on a monthly basis. Right. That's never going to be the case but it's understanding how can we communicate in a way that's effective and something I often kind of uh, for the most part I've ditched QBRs to be very transparent because I think people CSMs don't want to deliver them and kind of C suite don't want to join but C suite do and understand well why am I paying you guys and what is the value you're delivering? And often what I work on is a very simple one to two page executive summary, uh, as a PDF that can be worked with the kind of key and core stakeholder on client side. So it's worked in tandem with both CSM and that kind of day to day contact looking at the value that we're delivering and it's a polished document then that's shared on a monthly or quarterly basis to opco, uh, within client side to say this is what you're paying us, this is the value that you're delivering. And often then what I'm kind of really pushing CS folks to do more and more is like manage up internally. Right. So if you have this beautifully polished value statement that's like ready to go to C Suite on client side, why not ping whether it be your vp, a cs, whether it be your CEO to kind of use that as an opportunity to say CEO to CEO. This is the value that we're doing and again it's an easy thing to do for your C suite internally, but also we'll bang you the credit as well. Uh, it's a nice way to manage up and build your own personal brand within the business.

Host: Yeah, I absolutely buy into that. In fact we made our change eternally. So we've recently sold the business. So EBSTA is now part of Forkast. Um, but uh, when a year ago, uh, we had this challenge and um, we deliver huge amounts. EBSTA is a revenue intelligence platform so really we focus on how can we get more sellers quota, that's how big focus that and forecast accuracy. Um, and we deliver our whole customer experience inside Salesforce. That's kind of one of our USPs. The problem is that the C suite don't go into Salesforce. So we're delivering all this value to their team and they're all becoming a lot more consistent in the way they go to market. But the C suite just had no visibility of that and they were hearing good things but it wasn't kind of front of mind for them. So we took a strategic uh, approach to the QBRs and we took all of the insights within our platform and invested in turning it into uh, a very pretty uh, kind of PDF where we are walking, where we can walk the C suite through it, effectively audit that whole go to market motion. So a really strategic session highlighting what's changed since last quarter and if it was in and what we would suggest they need to prioritize to get more of their seller seat quota to introduce that consistency. And it covers everything from top of funnel all the way to renewals, cross sell, upsell. And what was fascinating was it was an absolute game changer. Now we weren't doing anything we weren't already doing. We were just taking that data and reveal a different format and, and again C suite to C suite and each quarter more of the C levels turn up at the QBRs, uh, because now they want that data. They're using it to educate their leaders, uh, and their managers and their sellers. But they're also using it at the board to help them understand where they need to invest more and where they need to invest less. And that strategic approach has transformed our business. And we've now set that up as a standalone product we call RIAs, uh, which is Revenue Insights as a service. Um, and it transformed our relationships with our customers. We now, all of them tier one accounts, we've got close relationships with the C suite and they lean into us as the subject matter expert. And there's a world of difference to the old QBRs where we were talking about training and buttons and features.

Ben O'Mathuin: Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Because, hey, who wants to show off to be told, uh, how to suck X, Right?

Host: Well, um, I want to talk a bit more about bottlenecks, um, in particular around the way that customer success drives revenue. Do you see anything specific that time and time again is stopping and slowing down the CST to achieving their potential?

Ben O'Mathuin: Yeah, I think, um, one of the biggest quirks we kind of touched on it is that, um, as sales leaders and revenue leaders, we kind of position CS in our mind as the team that just look after the customer and they keep customers happy and they teach them how to push the buttons and how the products really works. Um, and I think I, There's a massive shift happening and I think the true value of CS is becoming more realized every day. But I do think there's still kind of in the. As we're just going through the motions of general day to day in business, there's still that kind of sentiment, uh, within sales leaders. And I think, uh, if we can really start to make that shift a little bit more and start to ask ourselves, well, how can we stop having happy customers and turn them into valuable customers that are actually not just like, okay, we might retain them, but are we using them as a referral engine? Like, is each valuable customer now generating pipeline for us? Because if it's not, again, we're missing a large component of it. So the bottleneck there I'm seeing is more just not enabling that CS function to have that commercial mindset or that strategic mindset. Um, on top of that, I think additional bottlenecks will be the likes of, of getting the appropriate data. Um, and that's kind of again, plays into revops. Um, I think that's an area that is often underlooked where again, feeding data massively to our new Business function, um, perhaps not a third bottleneck but always a pillar I focus on is how CS holds so much information from customers, how they're using the platform, what value they're receiving from it. And often product teams are building features and functionality in silo. And I really see a bottleneck to growth is that often product teams are not listening enough and collaborating enough with those on the front lines day in, day out. And often CS are seen as a little bit as a thorn in products ass because often CS come looking for stuff or we've got bugs to fix and often we're perceived as perhaps uh, uh, the moany child within the organization. But when I see teams that product teams and CS teams that collaborate incredibly well and really have a very commercially uh, focused roadmap capacity and how they're building features and building functionality, that's not just enhancing product, it actually is a revenue enabler as well. So although maybe slightly complex to weave it within the organization, it is an area that I think is certainly bottlenecking growth.

Host: Oh, it's great to hear but have you got any specific examples where you've actually seen by removing those bottlenecks you've actually seen measurable growth or reduction in churn?

Ben O'Mathuin: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So um, where I was a ah, CRO and kind of built out that revenue function, we were in the marketing analytics space of a very kind of technical uh, marketing product. And what the journey we went on when I had joined product was definitely just been kind of built in silo and we weren't really listening effectively to our customers. And what we heard from our customers when we really listened was guys, we know theoretically what you're building but we just don't understand how to use this. And what the onboarding um, of the data was incredibly complex and so on. So the kind of core takeaway after really doing a lot of customer discovery and getting a lot of customer feedback was your solution is cool, but too complex. So we worked very closely with product and how we could just simplify the overall time to value and value delivery. So insights were being delivered not across lost 60 days of a time to value but we reduced that all the way down to kind of three to four days which is quite impressive from a product development perspective. Um, and the result of that was that from a new business perspective when we were saying we're going to give you data in seven days, they're going that's not possible. We're like no, no. We've put so much energy into this that we saw our kind of close rate from pilot perspective, increase kind of 3, 400% because we could actually say no, no. So trust us, you're going to get this data quickly. And the wow factor was to be able to have a reference list of customers who had just got the data a couple of weeks back to go. Would you mind just saying, yeah, you got the data and we're not this complex solution that's going to take weeks and months to get you the output that was compounding now in transparency. The true value of that was still a little bit difficult post pilot and I can speak to that in a little bit more detail. But that was one area where we decided if we can really, really optimize that integration onboarding and that initial data output, we will see an increase in close rates. And it uh, certainly worked.

Host: Oh, fantastic. Uh, I'll give you one of the stories that we lean into sometimes a lot. One of the data points we looked at a lot was for those that are doing QBRs, um, the Personas they're engaging with app the QBR and the impact that has on renewals or cross sell upsell. And what we saw was if the last two QBRs before the renewal are done at sea level, you're seven times more likely to open up a cross sell upsell opportunity with a 45% win rate. But if you're two QBRs before the renewal are done below the C suite, you're four times more likely to churn the customer. And just knowing which Personas are giving us, um, that outcome means, uh, that we can really focus and incentivize the CS team to make sure they're engaging with the right Personas within the accounts and that leads to it makes the renewal or the upsell opportunity just so much easier. If you've got that relationship that's built up through the whole customer life cycle, rather than calling them out six weeks before the renewal and ask if they want to buy some more stuff.

Ben O'Mathuin: Absolutely, absolutely. I think what I would add to that is often as well I see particularly in early stage, ah, founders like to spend more time on the new business side of the house, uh, because it's fun, it's sexy, we're hunting and we're looking for logos. Um, and I just always encourage founders to spend and split their time between net new business and also their current active customers. And they always will. The instinct is oh no, I do know my customers and so on. That's always true for the first period. But then as you start to scale and you've got a couple of CSMs and you've got a couple of AES. We naturally tend to lean towards a new business side because like I said it's sexy, it's cool and we're haunting new logos. Um, but the a mantra I always kind of will instill within that post sale team is manage up to your leaders, whether that's a founding team, like I said, a vpcs or a CEO because they should be equal owners of the partnership as you. Yes, the book stops with you from the broader part of the relationship but really we should be managing up the best we can to ensure that all stakeholders from an OPCO perspective on uh, our side are equally as connected on client side.

Host: I love that, I love that that um, I'm now in this kind of scale up mode with uh, the new business uh, that we've recently joined. Um, and when I think about scaling companies cultural alignment between customer success and sales is often overlooked. So how do you create that culture where CS is seen as a revenue partner, not just a services team?

Ben O'Mathuin: Yeah, absolutely. I think um, step one like I said kind of uh, a few minutes ago is around just the cultural component of we are one single revenue team. And it sounds very light and maybe a little bit fluffy but there is something and I've experienced it as an individual contributor and then I've also kind of implemented it across, across a couple of businesses is that when you are sat there with your partners across marketing, sales and CS and you're kind of brought together so you own revenue, you own different components of revenue but each of that is of equal importance. It is that shift that starts to really we no longer see each other as others but as one. Um, so I think that's albeit a very simple and light touch type of uh, message to instill that on a daily basis is not as easy. Right. And I think it has to shift through all the different kind of layers of the business that it needs to come all the way from opco down to individual contributors. And I think different layers within that. I think compensation plans need to be orientated towards that as well. Uh, and again there's many ways to skin a cat and there isn't one silver bullet. I think, I think we're all still testing the right compensation plans to incentivize um, that one single kind of revenue org that is clear is fair and also unambiguous to the various different kind of uh, stakeholders. Because that can be complex. But yeah.

Host: Have you seen a specific or change or a particular type of incentive that's helped to bring the team together as one unit.

Ben O'Mathuin: Well I can speak to my own experience uh, as an individual contributor where we went through this, where uh, we were a uh, very, very complex uh, data heavy solution um, where value for customer A wasn't always the same for value customer B. And uh, we went from being a traditional sales to CS team um, to uh, one single revenue owner. So if uh, the traditional account director uh, type role would often kind of traditionally find itself maybe in the agency world where, where you sold it, you managed it um, and that was enabled then through the different uh, kind of support functions within cs. So there were kind of engagement managers and professional services to focus on the data and implementation side. But the commercial and strategic aspect was owned by one single individual. And I think what that resulted in was this shift of what value really meant for that customer. And you almost became a pseudo expert in this type of customer. That allowed you to then go and kind of prospect into very specific uh, kind of verticals or examples of verticals because you had replicated this out for two or three very similar businesses. You knew what kind of data they had, you knew what time to value would look like. And I think that was a shift for me as an individual going the power of the knowing a lot about a very niche space uh, can be compounding from a new business perspective.

Host: I love that, really appreciate that. So just before we wind up um, uh, if you're a new founder or a CEO, uh and you're focused on just one metric, ah, around cs, I'm going to be completely unreasonable now. Um, what would you say is the North Star metric that you're seeing from our focus, all that? I mean, I mean there's obviously there's NRR that we're hearing. That is a big focus. What I've seen a lot recently is revenue per employee being a really interesting focus. Are you seeing a specific North Star metric that everyone's dialing into?

Ben O'Mathuin: Yes, it's a great question and the honesty is I'm still trying to figure out the answer to that because there's so much. Is it nrr, is it grr, Is it revenue per employee? Honestly for me I think particularly early stage founders you just got to keep it simple.

Narrator: Simple.

Ben O'Mathuin: Right. And I think NRR is a number that, that works and I think we need to, to kind of hold onto that. I think if you start over complicating it but just it, it becomes too hard to measure. Right. Particularly for early stage.

Host: Right.

Ben O'Mathuin: If you don't have rev ops, if it's founder, that sales. You just need to be looking at what you have. And are they, uh, staying, staying with you? I think as businesses grow, we certainly do need to look at, uh, adding in additional kind of metrics around that, the guardrails. Right. So that is the likes of gross revenue retention. So we're looking at, we're trying to find that leaky bucket because often what I see is that like, growth can hide churn. And I think that's really important, particularly for maybe first time founders who think they're growing, uh, because, yes, they might be. And when we look at overall revenue, it's an upward trajectory. We really need to look into that leaky bucket and start to understand actually, you know, our customers just coming in and walking out the door. And I think that's an important metric to really hone in on.

Host: Ben, we're out of time, but I've learned so much from today. Really appreciate your energy. Uh, if our audience wants to get in touch with you, how would I go about doing that?

Ben O'Mathuin: Yeah, absolutely. So they can find me on LinkedIn, uh, Ben Omahun, um, or Customerlift co. Uh, is where I kind of house, uh, a lot of my musings as well. Um, so, yeah, people can find me there.

Host: Very good. If they mention the podcast, I'm sure you'll accept the invite.

Ben O'Mathuin: Oh, of course, Absolutely.

Host: Ben, thank you so much for all your energy today. Uh, again, we don't get the opportunity to spend much time, uh, strategically thinking about customer success as much as we should. So I really enjoyed this session and, uh, I look forward to our paths crossing again soon.

Ben O'Mathuin: Absolutely. Thank you guys. Appreciate it.

Host: Everyone.

Narrator: Thanks for listening to Revenue Insights from ebsta. If you want to learn more from some of the brightest minds on how to predictably and efficiently grow revenue, then subscribe to our newsletter. We'll deliver actionable insights straight to your inbox box. Go to ebsta. Com Newsletter See you soon.