271. Leveling Up Customer Interactions via Genuine Care w/ Angela Alea

The single most important thing you can do today is to create and deliver a better experience for your customers. Learn how sales, marketing and customer success experts create internal alignment, achieve desired outcomes, and exceed customer expectations in a personal and human way. This is the Customer Experience Podcast. Here's your host, Ethan Butte.

Why customer success is more important than customer satisfaction. How to align marketing, sales, customer success, and revops under one leader. Why to interview hundreds of customers before you write the next line of code. These are a few things we'll talk through today with the President and chief revenue officer of LASSO, the all in one platform where event companies work, Angela Alea.

Welcome to the Customer Experience Podcast. Thank you for having me, Ethan. I'm excited to be here. Yeah, me too, really looking forward to the conversation.

And we're going to start, Angela where we always do, which is customer experience. When I say customer experience, what does that mean to you? Yeah? Well, A flood of things come to me as I think about that, right, But I think about how you make the customer feel, And I don't mean like c sat, are they happy, are they satisfied?

I'm talking about what lasting impression do you leave on them? And so early on our company we decided, hey, let's kind of set a goal, right, we need to have a focus, and so with every interaction we have with our customer, we kind of say we want them to leave feeling three very specific things, and that really kind of dictates how we interact, how we service them, how we listen to them, and those things are we want them to Number one, feel understood. We work in the events and entertainment industry, and I know every industry says, oh, but we're unique.

You're different, right, We're different. Everyone says that throughout my entire career and that's true and everyone it does feel that way. And so we want them to feel like we understand them. We talk their talk, we speak their speak, we have empathy for them.

So we want them to leave feeling understood. We want them to feel genuinely cared for, like, hey, I'm not kind to you or not going to go above and beyond for the sake of you giving me a good score. I genuinely care for you, your stress levels, what you're going through. So we want them to feel genuinely cared for, and we want them to feel like it's easy, Like it doesn't need to be stressful.

It doesn't mean that every time they talk to somebody different in our organization they have to start over, right. That continuity and fluidity is really important. So that's kind of what experience means to us. It means so many different things, but we really try to boil it down and say, well, hey, let's have every interaction.

Our goal is to let them leave feeling this type of emotion. So much good stuff in there. Obviously, friction lists a theme from I don't know if it was in episode one, but basically the entire arc of this thing to date is really about identifying and removing friction. So I get why that's one of the three.

And then this idea of people feeling understood and feeling cared for. That's all we want in any healthy relationship, and so I really appreciate those go one layer deeper for me, like what was the process of dialing into that? And then how do you operationalize it? Like is this, you know, are these stated values internally or is this more of just a broad cultural ethos?

And they like bubble up as explicit language now and then like, how is this a thing that you can do? This is the key word that you can do consistently across all those interactions. Yeah, First of all, do we fall down sometimes? Yes?

Do we get one hundred percent across the board? Next, just like our friends and family. That's right, that's right. But what I will say is we do talk about it a lot, you know, like even as we roll out like rolling out new products, right, and we want you know, the feedback they're giving us.

We want them to feel again understood, cared for, listened, and like, okay, this is going to be easy, right, Okay, let's make it easy to adopt. Let's have the product kind of speak their speak. Let's listen when they have feedback. And if it's a no, we're not going to do it.

Let's not just say no. Let's bring them into our world. Right, so they do feel like, hey, your opinion matters. So it's just it's an ethos to answer your question.

We talk about it. We coached through that way, like, hey, how could we They're coming to us with something we obviously didn't make them feel like they were understood, and so how can we go back and change that right, And so it's just something we try to weave into it, and so it's just something we talk about all the time. Awesome something I've observed in the four and a half years I've been privileged to do this host these conversations. You know, I certainly we were not earlier on the language of customer experience, you know, four or five years ago, but it had an authoritative name, so people found the podcast and it grew through that naturally.

But one of the things that I observed through these conversations that I think you have a lot to say about, and we'll get even deeper into it, but i'd love your high level take here as we're kind of just getting going. I've observed that the rise in popular conversation around customer experience over the past five years is kin to and aligned with the rise in revops as a respected and organized function, as well as the rise of the position of chief revenue officer. And I think they're all pointed toward the same thing, which is, we know that this whole thing needs to be more seamless.

We know that these teams need to be aligned. We know that if we task and incentivize people in marketing in a different way than sales, in a different way than CS in a different way than product. If we're not bringing together the sales ops team with the marketing ops team with the CS ops team, that there's going to be some disjointed brokenness in the process and the customer is going to feel it. What will you say to this idea that CX is aligned with CRO, is aligned with revops around this key theme of alignment.

Is that true in your observation? And maybe what was your course into the CRO role or the motivation to create it, and perhaps when did you start aligning revops yourself. Yeah, there's a lot to unpack there, So we're going to take it little by little. But first I will say, you know, I always think back to I've been in sales for my entire career, and it is so different now than it was even five years ago, ten years ago, fIF It just continues to evolve and change so quickly.

And you know, we too were consumers, right, and so when we go to buy something, it's very different than it used to be. You know, they say eighty five percent of the sale is done before you ever talk to a salesperson, right, And that's such an important thing to remember when you are talking to a prospect. And so sure we have a VP of Marketing and VP of sales and VP of CSES. However, internally we refer to ourselves as the revenue team.

We have our own slack channel, not just management, but all the individual contributors to right, Like we all talk about revenue, it's not just CS, just sales, just marketing. They are so dependent on each other. So you know, marketing might set the stage, but that's not always the case. Sometimes sales might set the stage and sometimes CS might.

Right, it might come in as a referral, and marketing hasn't done anything with it, sales hasn't touched it yet, right, So there's all these entry points and I feel like in the past it used to be, well, the journey was very linear. It's marketing than sales than CS, and that's just not the case. I mean, now there's vertical SaaS platforms, there's multi product where so much of the revenue growth is within the customer base. Other companies their revenue growth is in referrals, you know, so it really and others are just you know, purely organic brand is kind of leading that, right, and so I think you have to be really careful to not get so laser focused on one is better than the other.

All sales, all customers journey look like this. They're all different, and you've got to be smart enough and agile enough to go meet that prospect or customer depending on what we're talking about, where they are, what does their journey look like, and how do you create an experience specific for that and where they come into it. So we try to talk more in terms of revenue because that's what we are here to do, is to drive revenue through the success of our customers, right, And if you do it with that mentality of we are going to serve first and from that revenue comes.

So we want that kind of servant leader mindset, not just internally, but we want it externally too, Like doing what's right for your customer is what's right, and it really does in there it's not. But if if this is the case, or that it's doing what's right for your customer is what's right. And when you lead that way, revenue come, churn goes down. Things just get easier, right because your customers do feel understood, they do feel cared for, and let's face it gets easier for everybody involved.

And so revops for us does sit in the middle of all three teams. Some people have revops sit in marketing, some have it in sales, some have it in CS, depending on how heavily led those organizations are some of the growth again, might be more heavily led in CS, so they put a rev ops person there. We just made the decision to kind of have them sit in the middle so they don't have a bias. It's not oh, here's marketings goal, I'm going to lean more towards that, or here's what CS.

It's what's the company trying to do? What are our customers trying to do? How do we impact that? So they sit in the middle of that.

So that's kind of been our approach to rev ops, which is, oh my gosh, changing so quick every single day, which is really fun to see. Yeah, really smart. I want to throw another idea at you just to get your thoughts or reaction or maybe tell a story around it if it's something you've experienced directly what I heard off the top of this and through the middle there of everything you just shared, which was Fantastic Sales is changing dramatically. We're meeting people deeper into their journey.

We're sometimes but we're still sometimes meeting people at the very beginning of their journey. Depending on the way they want to interact and learn. Some people want to learn from other people and be guided through and experience. Other people want to self serve, kind of do their research in the background.

Some people are very I just need to hear good things from someone I trust, and the rest is just a lay up, you know. So you know your different teams across the revenue team are interacting with different people at different stages of their relationship, and so I'm just kind of echoing back to this idea of working to understand somebody and where are they really relative to this opportunity. Do I care enough to discover that? Do I care enough to prescribe the right thing?

Do I care enough to confirm what I think is best for them, even if that includes handing them off in a clean way to somebody else who can help them get to where they want to go within the context of their relationship with our organization. It's this alignment is partly necessary. Now I'm stating something more concise that you could react to. They're interacting with us in such a diversity of ways that the alignment that we create within our team and this kind of relationship ethos of understanding and care allows us to handle the right people the right way much more consistently, no matter where they are and what they need from us.

And so you just said something really interesting. So I want to kind of say something that's probably a little counterintuitive. You said, meeting them where they are relative to the opportunity. And what if we got rid of relative to the opportunity.

What if we got rid of well, I'm in CS, how do I meet them based on where what my framework is right in CS, or what my framework is in marketing or in sales. What if we just said we just meet them where they are period. We're not coming with a preconceived agenda. We're not even coming to them trying to figure out if they're a fit for like Lasso for my company, right, We're just going to where they are right and learning how to connect with them as a human being, as an organization.

And you know, one of my favorite I always try to find areas to say this in an engagement with somebody who's checking lasso out because it's so powerful and it's very freeing as somebody if you if you again, the goal is to serve the customer. Maybe it ends in a sale, maybe it doesn't. But if you literally live that way, that's a really big unlock. And so one of my favorite things I try to weave something in, you know, as I'm just trying to get to know them, what are they trying to do, what's their company trying to do?

I spend so much more time talking about them and their company, and sometimes never lasso. And sometimes I'll say, look, whether you do something with lasso or not, you should absolutely do this, like you need to change this portion or I would strongly recommend considering doing this differently. Right, And it takes the sale away, the push pull right of us trying to get them into the fold. If you just literally go and serve, forget, regardless of the opportunity or relative to the opportunity, right, just get that out of your mind and just go consult do the work before you're hired.

It is so fering and it just makes the job so much better because guess what if you do that every time you win, If you're in marketing, if you're in sales or if you're in CUS, traditionally you end a phone call with did I move them closer to my quota? Our revenue target? Scheduling a demo? Right, we're thinking in terms of it's all relative to that versus it's a win because I just help them do something and I feel good about that, right, And so I don't mean it to be totally altruistic, but there's something to that, right, and it just that's when you win and they win.

Is just just serving them, regardless of what if there's an opportunity attached or not. Because out of that, people want to work with good people. People want to work with people who are like, wow, I just learned something from them. They just gave me something valuable and I learned something, and so I bet they could teach me more about their product or these other problems I'm trying to solve.

Right that the customer will connect the dot for you. Yeah, really good on lock. I appreciate that the observation and the edit on that. I also would be remiss if I did not plus up the idea of doing what's right for the customer is right, which is not the customer is always right.

It's doing what's right for the customer is always right, and sometimes they know and sometimes they don't. That's so important, Yes, yes, because the customer isn't always right, and you know what they know that and if you can tell them or teach them something that they don't know or keep them from making that mistake, that's what people are buying, right, They're buying the expertise. Yeah, so you've mentioned Lasso a number of times. I'd love just before I get too deep, because I have a lot of other things, Like I got like ten follow ups just based on what you've shared already.

But before we go too much deeper, tell us a little bit about Lasso. Who is your ideal customer and what are some of the problems that you solve for them. Yeah, So Lasso works primarily with the event and entertainment industry. So we are the platform.

We started as a company that was focused on the crew side. So if you've ever been to a concert, a sporting event, a corporate conference, a festival, a wedding, even, right, you've got all these things that happened before the event that as consumers of these events, we have no idea, what all goes into it, and the level of technicality and the creative that goes into it. And so our platform historically has been focused as the people platform for the event entertainment industry.

Then this year we launched five more products, so we're what's called vertical SaaS company multi product platform, and we begin to focus on the entire workflow. So now we focus on the people side and the gear side. So you know, all these events, they have multiple tractor trailers full of equipment, cameras, projectors, you know, lighting and all those sorts of things. And so now we're focused on the entire workflow for event entertainment companies, everything from the RFP all the way through invoicing.

Just because our industry is so heavily focused, it takes free lancers to produce a lot of these events. So there's people constantly in that revolving door of coming on and off events and trying to make that simple for the industry. Awesome. So I can understand why customer intimacy in particular, this understanding and caring is so vital, because I'm sure I guess, I guess to turn that into a question talk about I mean, you don't need to get into the details of what these new products are, and I know you're launching several of them as we record this.

Talk a little bit about the way your customer relatesationships, and I guess customer intimacy in general informs your product builds and perhaps even the way that you position and launch them. Yeah, our customers dictate everything we do, literally everything. So when we started the company, we went out and did three hundred and fifty interviews with We had six different personas at the time, so we were traveling a lot, some online a lot. We tried to do as many in person as possible and it took us about eighteen months to do that.

So we had a one preconceived idea of the problem that needed to be solved for the industry, but we didn't want to make the mistake of going and basing that on a few people's input. So we did three hundred and fifty interviews before we write our first line of code, and that really was the starting point and we've really never stopped. We also do surveys, which we love because the industry they love. They very much have an opinion of what our industry needs.

It's been very underserved when it comes to tools, and so they have a very clear idea of what they want. So we do serve typically once a month where we're just asking questions, how do you handle this, what would you like to see, what's the biggest pain point? You know, just lots of questions, and then we also report back the answers. Here's what the industry said.

It takes twelve point eight pieces of software to produce an event. That's crazy, right, and they're all different versus what if you had kind of one integrated. So we just do a lot of asking questions. We invested heavily in product managers who are not afraid to just spend all of their time with our customers asking questions and the second level questions and then coming back and saying, hey, this is what we heard you said, this is kind of the path we're going.

We've kind of mocked up some things. What do you think? And I'm so glad that we do that extra step because so many companies they think they hear one thing and then they go build it and they invest all that time in developing it and it only got them like seventy percent of the way there versus add that extra step go ask, they will tell you. And people, again, they want to feel understood, they want to feel genuinely cared for.

Those are things that you can do to invest and say, hey, we're doing this for you. Tell us what you want. And again some of the things we do have to say no, well that doesn't that's really just specific for your workflow. But a best practice could be this, so this is why we're not going to build this particular thing.

So we really try to embed that in all that we do and just asking questions NonStop awesome something that is a challenge for everyone who listens to a show like this, and it's probably a particular interest to them, particular maybe even their responsibility. How do you balance all of that customer feedback? I mean some of it, A lot of it's qualitative, and of course we can record our calls, we have transcripts, we can do sentiment analysis, you're doing surveys. Sometimes there's just the quant layer to it, and sometimes you get like that good sounds like you're asking like open ended questions.

How do you accomplish this? How do you do that? Like it sounds like you have a lot of data qualitative and quantitative. It sounds like it's an important that the whole team knows.

Certainly the whole revenue team needs to understand this. Obviously, a lot of it is right at the product level as well, like what are we building? More importantly, how and why are we building it? But that also needs to come into the revenue teams so that we can you know, position it, have conversations around it, match it up to the right people, you know, support it, and serve it the right way, et cetera.

So's it's intimately tied to what you're doing to the degree that you can talk about this just from a functional or a practical standpoint, like how do you manage all of this qualitative and quantitative data and make sure that everyone gets as much as they need and maybe not anymore because we could be overwhelmed by it as well, Like how do you anything you've got on that would be super helpful? Yeah, I think our product team. Kudos to our VP of Product, to Jay Breenberg. He has done a really good job of training our company, which then in turn allows us to train our customers and prospects in the industry of it's not the how it's the why.

And if they start talking about the how the how, you know, there's you know, too many cooks in the kitchen, right, But we want to focus on the why. What is the problem that we need to solve, and we're going to figure out the best how. At the end of the day, people just want their problem solved, and they want it to be easy, good, UI modern, not clunky, less clicks right, all those kind of basic table stakes. But focusing on the why and not the how is really important.

That can help you really distill it down very quickly. And then yes, of course we certainly have all the tools that record and help transcribe and bubble up the right things, and then that helps us generate rfaqs and all those sorts of things too. But I think they've done a really good job just ingraining it in all of us of get them to talk about the why, not the how. Yeah, super helpful.

I mentioned off the top something that you said in our first conversation. I was like, I'm familiar with this idea, but I can't wait to hear Angela tell me more about this. It was all I could do not to ask you to to speak to it when we were connecting initially, But it's this idea of you know, customers will tolerate our imperfections and our failures certainly if they feel like we understand and care about them. But happy customers leave all the time.

Successful customers generally don't talk about this tension between success and satisfaction. I think a lot of the metricing and the high fives and the you know, the big boards that we look to to say we're doing a good job, it's really a lot more oriented towards satisfaction. Although success shows up in revenue, I guess, but speak to this idea in general, and how do you manage it within the revenue team? Yeah, so, yeah, this is something I'm pretty passionate about.

I mean, CE SAT scores. Yes, it's an indicator, but it can be misleading for sure. And customer success doesn't always end up in revenue either, Right, that's another false positive. Yeah, your revenue can be going up because they're tied into an annual contract where they're paying license fees.

Right, So your revenues are going up, but it doesn't mean you're making them any more successful. And same with a lot of people think, well, gosh, I've got a great relation to my customers. They're happy, they're satisfied, but unless you can make them successful, it's just different. And let's face it, now, post pandemic in the world we live in today, turn people are pulling back.

They're very, very maniacal with their spend right, and they're wanting to make sure that they can see a tangible difference. And so I know I've received the notices with hey, Angel, we love you, we love your team, we love the product, love love, love love, but we unfortunately have to end our contract next month, right, And it's like, well, wait a second, but you're satisfied, You've been a reference for us what happened And it's because we didn't make them successful. So it would be so great if we started measuring success, not happiness, not satisfaction, not revenue success.

And why it's hard to measure is because it's different for every company, and it can be different for each user within each company, and let's face it, that's a much harder path to say, I've got five different personas that can use my platform. I need to understand not just from the owner, what does success look like, because I could hit it for him, But if all four of the influencers, all four other people on his team are saying, but I'm not I don't feel it. I don't feel it. Guess who's leaving that we're not going to win?

Right, even if the owner, the decision maker says well, I feel like it's successful. Right, And so don't lose sight of the individual success and not just professionally but personally, right, Like, that's one of my favorite questions is spend selling is one of my favorite methodologies. And we always talk about you know, so many times people live in the situation and the problem, but the implication like and people go to, well, how would that make you you know the company better?

How would that affect your role? But how does that impact you personally? What would it mean to you personally? Right?

That's the emotion, that's the success. And sometimes it's something that's subjective, Like success to us means if you can get us to have schedule this many more demos or this many more events or whatever it might be depending on what you're selling. But you've got to figure out that personal component too, And so success it's just it's just a it's just a different indicator than happiness or satisfaction or even revenue increase, and so don't don't get caught in the trap of that faulse positive of tracking the wrong things.

Yeah, so good. You remind me of two conversations we've had among many, but I'm thinking of like Larry Levine, whose kind of brand in methodology is selling from the heart, shared in his conversation with me on the show, going high, wide and deep in your accounts, you know, go as high up in the organization as you can go across, not just like your your user bab to like understand how their business is set up and structured, and then go deep into these teams. So in the case of that you offered there, you know, hi is the owner.

Deep is all four of the people, not just the one who is the you know, the persona or the representative of the avatar for the rest of the people. And probably a lot of people would extend that to say, well, they're like that in this company and that company in that company too. So this idea of truly going high, wide and deep in your accounts to create understanding. And then Matt Dixon, who co authored Challenger Sale, Challenger Customer, more recently Jolt Effect, as you're talking about kind of what does it mean to this person personally?

One of the greatest drivers of indecision per his research that's rounded up in the jolt effect is he calls it FAMU. Fear of messing up, you know, like we're selling to fomo, Like fear of missing out, like well, you know six months from now you will have missed out on this percent of savings or whatever. It's fear of messing up. I want to look good to my team, I want to look good to my peers.

I want to look good to my boss or supervisor or whatever. Like, fear of messing up is a thing. And so this idea that someone feels cared for and supported is a big deal. Do you have any do you have any guidance or advice?

First of all, does that language of high, wide and deep resonate with you at all? And do you actively coach your salespeople or to any of your leaders or your perhaps your account managers or CSMs in terms of that, I very often I can't believe I asked you a question. I'm gonna keep talking. That's what I do, so for better or for worse.

For example, I think just I'm especially interested in your in anything you have to share on that, because I think in a lot of cases we go high and wide in an account in a defensive mechanism, like well, what if this person leaves or what if that person leaves? I need to like hedge my bets and spread myself out versus you know, when Larry talks about it and I feel like it's the way you tell you talk about it too. Is No, we actually want to understand these people. We want to know if we can help them.

If so, how in what other ways? Etc. Like any thoughts on any of that. Yeah, No, that definitely res out.

I'm actually going to use that. The high, wide, and deep, we just talk about a little different terms. Yours is so much more concise. So I'm going to steal that from you.

I stole it from Larry. I love it, and I love the foam moo too. I'm totally stealing that. I will totally give credit to Larry.

But I love that too, especially for our industry. But yeah, I mean we kind of talk with with cs. So we do these road shows where we want to go sit in front of our customers and we kind of have three objectives in this order, teach something, right, go and tell make a recommendation about how they're using it, missed opportunities, you know, correct something, Teach them something, and then we want you to learn something. And typically that's more organizational.

Right that that kind of resonu with me. We talked about, like the organizational structure, how does it work? What is their workflow today? So teach something, learn something, and then last and sometimes not ever ask something.

Right, So if it's something where it's a referral, it's you're making a suggestion to look at one of our products. But many times it's never that, So have it in the back of your mind if the conversation lends itself that way. But always two out of three, right, go and teach something, and go and learn something, because it just it's a better engagement, it's a better relationship. So yeah, that that absolutely resonates.

Awesome. And when I heard there in the way that you talked about teach something is teach something specific to them, do some homework. What's working for them? What is what are they doing that is good a best practice?

What are they doing that maybe we could improve, like it's customed to them. Yep, absolutely yeah, again, teaching them how to be successful. Speak a little bit to maybe how your space has changed. You talked a little bit about how sales has changed people meeting us perhaps later in their journey.

But I'm interested in kind of two layers here. One is high level, as you think now about what's happening today. You know, in light of these product launches and how we're going to introduce them to our customers, how are we going to introduce these ideas to the market. In general, I'd love for you to reflect on other changes from a sales, from a marketing or from a CS perspective, say over the past decade or so.

I mean you observed a lot of change. I think that was in the context earlier in this conversation around tools and how fast the tools and our capabilities are growing and expanding. But in general, because you're so pro human in your approach, I feel like that was out of vogue for some periods somehow, not everywhere, but in general, like there's like this essentially like a worship of the operating model, and it's about this machine and this mechanism, and if we can build this machine and make it predictable and repeatable, versus kind of thisiness of I'm going to go into a conversation.

I'm going to go in with curiosity. I'm going to demonstrate that I understand this person or want to understand this person. I'm going to come with a level of care and interest, and I'm gonna win no matter what the outcome is. I frankly what I think is that, as is the case in almost every situation, the truth is in the middle.

It's kind of a both and but to your winning every time, i may not win this deal, but I'm going to win over somebody in a way that leaves them with an impression that's going to result in a return conversation or an introduction or these other things that happen when people feel favorably towards you. Kind of talk about anything there that resonates. Yeah, So that's kind of center to just kind of where we are as a company and specific to who we call on. So in our world events and entertainment, we always say every event experience is only as good as the people who make it happen.

Right, It's not the coolest gear, it's not the ven it's the people who are making that experience. Happen. And yet our platform is designed to help automate, right, and so, but it's not taking the human out of it, right, it's enabling things. So it's high touch and high tech, and I do think a lot of softwares fall down because they miss that human element.

When I go to a website, it is very clear if I'm talking to a bot in a chat or if I'm talking to a real human being. And guess who wins. The people who win are the ones who humanize it. And I know AI is we've got to adopt and we and there are great use cases for that.

I know that's the latest and greatest, sexiest thing right now, and that's awesome, but be careful because you will lose your audience because people, we were made to connect as human beings and community and you can't replace that with just pure automate. And yes, there are ways to streamline the sales process, and yes we can. Well if this workflow, if these three conditions they go into this workflow right and people catch up on that, right that they catch on to that, And so it's important to automate and streamline and have the workflows, but look for ways to be intentional to add the human aspect of it, because at the end of the day, that's what people want.

They want to connect with a human being who hears them, understands them, cares about them. A robot and a workflow can't care for them. A workflow and a robot can't understand them, they can make it easy for them. Right, So we can't check that box.

But you got to have all three. And so I think we just we as a society, we just need to be careful. Automation is important, it always will be, and there's a place for it, but just be intentional on how you can add back the human element of it. Really good caution in reminder in that And you know it's so often I think this conversation is around, well, we can't afford to put a human there, when I think, really the better observations can or better questions like can we afford not to put a human there?

And so the way this comes up a lot in this show is off ramps. Right, So some people are going to be good. They do have simple questions that a bot that maybe if it's especially if it's trained on your data and actually has some level of intelligence, can you know, observe the question formulated and typed in in a variety of different ways or maybe even spoken in a variety of it can recognize that this is what they're looking for, Like the intelligence can make some of the easy lay up stuff better.

But having off ramps either in like like at the at any point of frustration. I think this is like rage clicks or like, I don't know about you, but when I'm in a loop with a stupid chat bot, you know, I'll usually just start mashing numbers the same as I do if I'm in like a te the phone menu. Hell, I'll just start smashing zero and be like, seems like I need to get you to an operator, yes please, Like hell, yeah, that's exactly what I want. Like the idea of not letting people get to the rage moment and having off ramps for people like again both and it's somewhere in between.

And so this this I don't know if we can afford not to. I think in so many cases, especially in a case like yours, so that I'm kind of like, tell me if this is true or not. An add to it, The choice isn't always price driven. In fact, price might very often be a second, third, fourth, fifth layer decision.

And so this idea of investing in a something that serves people the best, the fastest, the most specifically, people are willing to pay for that. I mean, we're not looking to save ten percent. We're looking for like, but who is the best partner, because it sounds like you're also fundamental to a lot of these organizations, like I'm looking for the best partner. I'm not looking for the best price one hundred percent true, right, and even with you know the momentum that product led growth companies have, which there is a place for that, right, but again, you're automating the whole thing, right, if it's product led growth.

I want to talk to human being. I want to I want to have a conversation. I want to tell them what my world looks like so they can tell me how I can get better. A lot of PLG.

I mean, again, there's there's a time and place for that. But yeah, to your point, they it's not price, it's they want to know that you're moving the needle and it's not just saving money. Right. If you're leading with I'll save you money, you should differentiate yourself because that's just old, old thinking if you've built a product to just save money, you've got to move the needle.

You've got to say, how does that affect that business owner? How does it affect the value of their company? If you're calling on SMB companies, that's a huge driver, right. Anything you can do to add to that enterprise value of that organization is massive.

Anything you can do to add to the work life balance, which is huge in our industry because events happen three hundred and sixty five days a year, twenty four hours a day, and these people who are attached to these events, they can never get away. So anything we can do to balance that, right, And if they're at dinner with their family and the crew calls out, they don't want to have to deal with that in that moment, right, And guess what, They're not looking to save money in that moment.

They want time, they want their family. That's what's important to them. And it's different for every persona and that takes intentionality to stop and get to know the individual and what does success look like to them? What is it they're driving towards again personally and professionally, and again, you can't automate that.

The only way you get to that is having that human connection, so automate what should be automated and dive deep on the things. To your point, you can't afford not to have human beings do that because that's how you win, is you connect and solve problems, not just save the money. No one's looking for just that. Yeah, what I heard partly as you were toward the end there, I'm thinking that you probably approach your team the same way.

What motivates them, what does success look like for them, where are they trying to go, etc. So I'd love to flip this a little bit. Internally, you have a lot of responsibility, You have a lot of functions and outcomes under your purview and responsibility. How do you keep everyone aligned?

And again this is I'm thinking a little bit kind of like that qualitative and quantitative data question is like there's a lot you could share across a revenue team, Like how do you manage what does everyone need to know? What does some people need to know? How often do I need to bring these people together? Like, just talk a little bit about how you keep your revenue team organized, perhaps even getting to the level of communication or meeting cadence.

Yeah, so this is something I will forever be evolving on and working to improve on. I can share some of the things that we've put into place that I do think help. But to your point, everybody is different, some people depending on just their personality or maybe role. They're all in on the business, right, you know, they want to know everything about the business, and we're an open book.

We share everything with our employees and our company, good or bad, I don't know, that's that's out for debate, but that's just our personal opinion. Like we share the good and the bad with them, and we do it on roundups as a company wide. From a revenue team perspective, the revenue leaders do meet once a week with the rev ops as well. I also am invited to the marketing meetings we meet every week, the sales meetings, the CS meetings, So I'm invited and I attend those often, not every single time, but I would say probably eighty percent of the time I'm attending those.

And that's really just to kind of connect any dots that they may have also to understand you know, like one person on the team, everybody in the revenue team, they kind of have three goals tied to their bonus. They have individual goals, which are things they are one hundred percent in control of, Right, these are my objectives this quarter, and those objectives needs to tie into the team goal. What's the team goal trying to do? And then the team goal rolls up into the revenue goals.

So they're kind of bonused on those three different things. Some they have one hundred percent control over, which again leads to the team and the company. But it's different, you know, everybody is interested in different things. Some people, like I personally get we just did this product launch this week, as example, and I must refresh HubSpot every five minutes to see what the red because I just am jazz by that we set a goal and it was big and hairy and aggressive and scary for everyone on the team, like, oh my god, that's big.

I'm like, I know, I said, don't worry, your bonus isn't tied to it, but like, let's aim big and let's get like really laser focused on this. And I'm the one that's like every day like, oh my god, we hit this right. And I'm realizing some of them really care and some of them they don't care. They did their job, they felt good about what they put together and they're excited about it, right, but maybe at different levels of excitement, and so I constantly have to kind of do like a reality check of but hey, Angel, this is what they're really excited about, so you need to get on board with that, right and kind of build that momentum with them.

So it's constantly changing. Look, we're human beings. It's not one process works for everybody because we're all different and we all respond to different things, and we all have to respond to what's going on in our environment, which changes in a fast growing company all the time. So it's a lot.

It's a lot of just adapting. Yeah, flexibility and adaptation one hundred percent with you completely on that. I also really appreciate this aggressive goal setting and the need to refresh, like are we doing It's funny we've been over the years here inside Bombbomb we very often set really really aggressive goals and gotten like eighty percent of the way there, which is, you know, well beyond one hundred percent of a more reasonable goal. But so like this tension of like setting it big so that we can really see what we're capable of, but then also making sure that you don't set yourself up to have like a culture of successful failure.

I guess. So it's you know, it's like it's just this constant push pull tension, and your point, like different team members respond to that differently. I mean a lot of us are like, man, we just absolutely murdered that situation, like in a good way. You know, we got to eighty five percent a goal which was just insanely ambitious.

It's like forty percent bigger than any reasonable person would have set it. So it's successful, but to a lot of people it feels like failure. It's really it's an interesting set of tensions to manage. Yeah, it is that.

That is a great different sets of tensions. That's exactly right, because as a leader, you want you want everybody to be at a good place. And and to your point, that doesn't mean like not recognizing when something didn't work and like talking through it. But there's a lot of good that can come from it.

Not all failures are bad, and I mean everyone knows that. Sometimes we forget that in the moment when we're in a moment where we failed. But it is a lot of tensions because you know, you want you want your team to be excited. You want everyone to be moving in the same direction.

You want them all to care about the right things. But sometimes they care about different things and that's okay, and I'm having to learn that. It doesn't mean they shouldn't care about the things that I care about, right because there are certain things we need to do and I need you to care about it, but I also need to care about the things that they care about. Yeah, so good.

I have really really enjoyed this conversation. We're not quite done yet, but I want to let folks know if you've enjoyed this conversation with Angela as I have, I've got a couple other really great CRO conversations if you're interested in this alignment piece, the revops piece, et cetera. Episode one was Sterling Snow When I interviewed him, he was cro at Divvy. They've since been acquired by Bill and that was really around aligning sales, marketing and CS under a cro Since one eighty eight with Sterling and then the only episode where I ever interviewed three people at the same time was episode one sixty seven with Brandy Starr, Mike Geller, and Rolli Keenan of Tegrita.

They wrote a book together, so I interviewed them about it and we called that one the essential traits of the next Generation CRO. So if you're wondering if this type of alignment is right for your organization, you're looking around at who you have in house, maybe who's around in your immediate network, they'll certainly give you some helpful ideas for how to select and set up that role a little bit. So that's episode one sixty seven with Brandy, Mike and Raleigh. Before I let you go, Angela, first, thank you so much.

This has been an absolute joy. I love the way that you approach your business. I love the way that you approach your team. I love the way that you approach your relationships with your customers.

And so with that, I'd love to hear a couple things from you. And the first is to hear from you on someone you'd like to thank or mention for having a positive impact on your life or career. Yeah, there are so many people that have done that. You know, when I think about mentors, I kind of put them into buckets.

Right. It's like, if I had to think about the person that had the biggest impact on my life as me as a human being. It's my sweet dad who is no longer here, but like he is in my head all day every day. Right.

If I think about somebody when it comes to how to manage money and finances, I think of my uncle who has been investing in me, like literally since I was little and teaching me how to do that. But when I think about my career, there are so many people here, my team that I work with, They influence who I am, They make me better. My business partner Klay Sifford, previous employers that I worked with a company called Inspirity, who just nails the understanding the human connection and servant leaderships.

I mean, there's so many different people, and I lean on different people for different aspects of my life. There are certain friends I lean into who are like, hey, here's some mom advice, which I need all the time raising kids. Right, So it's not just one. There's just so many different people who've influenced different aspects of my life.

Really well done, good round up, And that's really a representation of what I've heard over the two hundred and seventy ish episodes that I've had the privilege of hosting from family, to current team members, to know early mentors and people that were anyway, that's really well done. I like that roundup. How about a company or brand that delivers a great experience for you as a customer, that's easy. I feel like I tell somebody this at least once a week.

There are three brands that I am in love with, in love with and for the same reason as I thought about it, I don't know a few months ago. I'm like, why am I so like in everyone's face about these brands, Like I'm offended if they don't love them like I do. And it's because it's again, it's the way they make me feel. Each of these companies.

They make me feel special. They make me feel important. And that's that's a skill that you know, whether you're whether it's a colleague, a customer. If you can leave somebody feeling special and feeling like they were important, that's a that's a good thing.

I always tell my daughter when picking her friends, I'm like, pay attention to how you feel after you're in a friend's presence. Do you feel more confident, happy, joyful or are you leaving feeling insecure and frustrated? Lean into those that make you feel that way, right, especially when you're picking your friends when you're a teenager. But the three brands that I absolutely love are publics.

And yes, I pay more for my groceries. To your point, I know Kroger and Walmart and Albertson's and all those are cheaper. I don't care. I love it.

They make me feel special, they carry out my groceries, They're kind to me, they're they're just good. Chick fil A, same thing, and then same with Delta because I travel all the time. They make me feel special and important. And the brands that do that for their consumers, those are the ones that win.

Awesome. I love the way that you rolled some mom advice in which is something you confess to needing, but you also just provided and in a great context too. That was really well done. I've heard Delta here before, I've heard Chick fil A several times here before.

I have not heard Publics. But I also appreciate your call back to price being a tertiary factor. Will pay more for things, and I recognize that there's some privilege in that, but a lot of us have that level of privilege in some aspect of our lives. So really well done, Angela.

If people have reached it to this point in our conversation, they may want to learn more about you or learn more about Lasso. Where would you send people who've enjoyed this? Yeah, so I'm on LinkedIn. That's probably where I am the most so LinkedIn, and then obviously our website, which is Lasso dot io.

Awesome. I link all this stuff up. I try to get all of it into your podcast player immediately adjacent to this, and we certainly do full write ups with video highlights at bombomb dot com slash podcast. This is episode two seventy one with Angela Aleya.

Her last name is spelled A l Ea. Find her on LinkedIn. I am Ethan, butte last name is spelled be eu t. Find me on LinkedIn.

We'd be happy to connect, Angela. You're awesome and I really enjoyed this conversation. I did too, Thanks so much for having me. Ethan really enjoyed it.

A marketing futurist from Salesforce, the first salesperson at HubSpot, an emotional intelligence expert with seven US patents in the analysis of facial coding data. These are just three of more than a dozen experts featured in the Wall Street Journal bestseller Human Centered Communication, a Business Case against Digital Pollution. The purpose of the book to give you frameworks, strategies, and specific tactics to create human connection across the digital divide. Learn to break through the noise, build trust, and enhance.

It's your reputation and revenue despite the ever increasing digital noise and pollution that separates us all. Get your copy of Human Centered Communication absolutely free at bombbomb dot com slash free book. That's bomb bomb dot com slash free book.