The True Cost Of A Bad-Fit Customer And How To Walk Away w/ Shari Srebnick

Speaker A: And the people that we were told to reach out to had no idea. The email came back and said, I'm sorry, who are you? Or what is this? What is this tool and what is it supposed to do?

Speaker B: Welcome the customer Unsuccessful. The podcast where we cut out the noise and talk with Real Leaders about their hardest lessons in customer success and other go to Market Motions. I'm your host, Joe DeGrande, and in each episode, we're going to unpack real challenges from real leaders failed tech implementations, a strategy that didn't yield the results or difficult customers. But more importantly, we're going to take those lessons learned and share them with you so that way you can avoid those same mistakes with your team. So if you're in customer success, sales or other, go to Market Motions. Stick around to hear from the best.

Speaker C: Now let's dig into it.

Speaker B: On today's episode, I'm joined by Sherry Srebnick. We dig into a real what not to do story where a marquee deal gets sign and the AE jets off

Speaker C: to Vegas to get married.

Speaker B: And when Sherry gets the account, the

Speaker C: first reply is, who are you?

Speaker B: And what does this tool do? From there, she lays out tactics for smarter sales, CS handoffs, uh, multi threading, the retention group, measuring cost to serve, and then also knowing when to walk

Speaker C: away from a bad fit logo.

Speaker B: I really enjoyed this conversation. I hope you do too.

Speaker C: Now let's dive in. Should we kick this off?

Speaker A: Sure, let's do it.

Speaker B: Awesome.

Speaker C: Let's do it. Awesome.

Speaker B: Well, Sheri, thank you so much for

Speaker C: coming on the Customer on Success podcast.

Speaker A: Thank you for having me. I'm, um, excited to be here.

Speaker C: Yeah, no, I'm excited because I'm sure we got tons of stories. And for those of you that don't know Sherry, she's a customer success leader in the space with over 10 years of experience. Um, so we're really excited to get her perspective on the show. And then obviously, the stories, I think that's like, the key thing here. Um, and I know, like Sherry, when we were talking, you were talking a lot about, obviously this is interesting too, because customer success is at actually a pivotal point where it's becoming more of a revenue function and so on, but

Speaker B: there still needs to be that alignment

Speaker C: with the sales organization. Right. And I think, like, we've all, we've all had our fair share of stories of working with different sales leaders or sales reps. Um, but I'm curious, I know you have on the docket a pretty interesting story about, uh, your time,

Speaker B: your time when you got, ah, an account kind of thrown on your lap

Speaker C: when someone was potentially about to go on their wedding in Vegas. Is that right?

Speaker A: Oh, gosh. So, well, let's start here. I think, you know, we know that the alignment between sales and customer success is incredibly important, right? I mean, if, let's be honest, I think all of the major functions of go to market really need to be aligned. Sales, customer success, marketing, product, um, everyone should really be aligned around the customer. Uh, but we know sales and cs, especially when it comes to closing a deal, getting them in the door, you know, the handoff. And I know some people are allergic to handoffs or want to call it something else, but for lack of anything else, there is a handoff. Right. But that alignment is so important not just for internal purposes, for making sure that everyone understands what needs to happen next, but it also impacts the, the experience the customer has. Right. If they've just bought something and they're, I dare say excited, because I don't know anyone that's super excited over like a software purchase, but they're enthusiastic it's going to help they bought it. To solve a business problem, whether it's to make money, save money, mitigate risk, efficiency, whatever, all of those things tie together. Um, but you want to build on that momentum and you certainly don't want that. If they've had a good experience in their buying journey so far that now once they've signed the contract, things start to fall apart. And you know that's going to raise some eyebrows or the company that they just invested in, it looks like they're employees. Like, no one is talking to each other, you know, to one another, and there's miscommunication and they're hearing different things from different people. Um, and it didn't, like, expectations weren't properly managed. Now they're going to be like, what? Like what, what did I just invest in? And decisions to churn are often made in the first 90 days and not the last. So all of these, these things that happen, they just become, you know, another little like, tick mark in the negative box of why, you know, why they might not renew or how this is, you know, that leaves a bad taste in people's mouth. So anyhow, um, the alignment between sales and cs, it makes, like I said, it becomes a bigger issue. Like I said, customers struggle to achieve their outcomes. And you'll experience higher churn, two big things, customer and company. Right? So to get to that story, now that I've pontificated enough about all of that, which we could certainly talk about for a lot longer. Uh, yeah, this story. So this is a perfect example of what not to do.

Speaker C: Sure.

Speaker A: Um, and I'm still friends with this person, so we're good. So this was a story. Um, deal comes in. You know, sales is like, let's ring the bell, pop the champagne, make it rain, all the things. Right. So big logo, like major name, sounds exciting. And this person basically brought it in the door, said like, no one. Uh, somehow it was like under the radar on the pipeline. And it was like, look what I just brought in. Drop the mic. Like signed the deal, dropped the mic and walked out to go get mar. Go to Vegas and get married. Right, sure. So, okay, this deal comes in the door. No one really knew about it. Like totally flew under the radar. And I was going to assign csm, um, and figure this out. So we started the outreach to make the introduction and get the kickoff, like contract sign. Let's move, like, let's do the things that we need to do. And the people that we were told to reach out to had no idea. The email came back and said, I. I'm sorry, who are you or what is this? What is this tool and what is it supposed to do? Turns out that the AE only ever talked to one person in the deal. There wasn't even a buying group. So this is going back a few years because we know there are definitely buying groups now, right?

Speaker C: Sure.

Speaker A: One person. That person was never going to be the one to use this tool. Tool. That person never brought anybody else in. Like any, any people that would be the end users. Maybe one or two. Like power use would be power users. You know, your champion, stakeholder person brought no one else in. I would also put that responsibility on the seller. The seller did not ask to have anybody else in.

Speaker B: True.

Speaker A: Who else will be using it? Who else should we bring into these meetings? Who else would this impact? Nothing. They spoke to one person who again was only going to be the one that signed the contract, but never going to be the one to use it. Wow. Um, so as you can expect, that was not. That was not good.

Speaker C: Yeah, of course not good.

Speaker A: Um, and after lots of back and forth, a week of back and forth of trying to get the schedule because they were saying, okay, do we like. It was a lot of chaos and these people had no idea. And we had to. I was like, you know what, stop. This is this contract. This is a customer that's five business days old and it's already a mess.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: The executive sponsor was non responsive, went Completely dark to us. Would not respond. So I said, that's enough. That is absolutely enough. We are not doing this anymore because this is red flag. This is a churn.

Speaker C: Right?

Speaker A: And this is going to sit on my forecast and my books and I'm not having it. Absolutely not. It was also still, like I said, five business days old. This wasn't three months down the road. But I was like, we're taking action. We need to fix this now before this gets any bad. Now I also worked for a smaller tech company, like 250 people, you know, like in, uh. So we weren't huge. It wasn't abnormal to email the CEO.

Speaker C: Sure.

Speaker A: You know what I'm saying? You're all pretty close at that point. So I emailed, sent an email to the CEO and the VP of Sales outlining, you know, there was no. I did not want to place blame. I was very careful about that because finger pointing helps no one. This is the situation with this client. This will churn and we're going to spend and also highlighting how it would impact cost to serve and margins because we're going to be in firefighting mode from day one. Like, it shouldn't be like this. So there was a revenue impact, not just from churn. We would never make back, you know, the, um, customer acquisition cost. They would never. This customer would never be profitable. It would end up being a loss across the board. Right. Wouldn't earn back our cac. We wouldn't break even. There wouldn't be nothing. So I was like, we, there has to be something done about this. So again, I emailed the CEO, I emailed the VP of Sales and outlined the situation. And I said, we need to be able to fix this. We can't continue on this way. I'm like. Because now we're already eroding time to value. Yeah, we haven't even had a kickoff yet. Uh, let's just say my CEO was not happy. Um, it basically. And I cc like the ae. So he was aware of all of these things. Like, like nothing. Everything was done above board and no finger pointing. And it basically the CEO was like, okay, sales seller and said, you need to do X and Y and like lined up what he expected. And he's like, I want you to be reporting back to me after every single one of these things. Wow. Um, and that's. I mean, it got handled. And it also, in a way it was. This client was a mess the entire time and we should have divorced them around renewal time, but we did not. Uh, and so they had a lot of. That was also a window into how unorganized that organization was and we should have looked at it like that as well. So hindsight's 20 20, but uh, the silver lining of that was what not to do.

Speaker B: Sure.

Speaker A: And it helped us realign and revamp some, some existing processes and create process, create some guidelines that didn't exist before that led to something like this happening.

Speaker C: That's awesome. Um, and I'm taking a ton of notes because there's a lot of good nuggets that I want to kind of, kind of take apart here, I guess. Like, talk to me about, like while we're on this topic, talk to me about some of these processes. Right. Because we're talking about a number of different factors. We're talking about, you know, the, the benefits of multi threading, whether that's post sale, pre sale. Obviously we're talking pre sale in this case. But like I'm curious about like high level some of the processes that you put in place to kind of avoid, you know, this down the road from coming up.

Speaker A: Yeah. Well, the first thing we did was revisit the sales to CS handoff and where were the gaps? Like was it too complicated and did we need to pare it back and make it just super specific? Think about a regular playbook in CS. Some people go crazy and there's 10 and 15 steps most of the time. You don't need it to be that scripted. Maybe you highlight. It's gotta be two or three bullet points at most and just highlighting the high level things that need to happen. Because with any of these things, you don't want to script it to the nth degree. You want to give people some flexibility to use their brain, to use critical thinking and you know, employ the thing, you know, their own knowledge. So you want to give people flexibility and also agency. So I don't think over scripting it. So we looked at it to say, and it was a good exercise to say is this over scripted where it like or is it too pared back and almost too flexible where people can decide to use their own, you know, too much of their own ideas. So there's no consistency either.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker A: Which also impedes how we measure it. Can you measure the success of these handoffs? Right. Like what does that look like? Because if you've got churn somewhere along the line or there's lack of adoption, do we want to look at onboarding? Can we trace it back to preparing them for engagement? Like 20, like as we're getting closer to the close. Like, we know this is closing. It just hasn't closed yet. So how are we setting the customer up for success before they even sign the contract? Like, all of those things and how the teams interact with one another. So it forced us to take a little bit of, um, a magnifying glass to some of that so that we could better understand where there were gaps. So that first thing was the sales to CS handoff. And the good part about it was I started scripting it myself, but then I brought in my VP of sales and I said, you take, you know, you take a look at this, make some edits. And then we collaborated on the final product. And he, um, invited me. He didn't just share it in his meeting, like, hey, team, you have to do this. And here's, here's the slide. And it goes in our big book. Right thing, like our big book of enablement.

Speaker C: Of course.

Speaker A: Um, he invited me to his team meeting and we presented it together. So it wasn't, hey, let me tell you Sellers, what you need to do now. It was a joint, um, presentation to show that we were aligned and how it actually helps both of us. So we outlined some of the things to make sure they were asking the right questions based on what we would need to know in the handoff. And really it's things that, uh, any good seller is doing no matter what. But sometimes it's a good reminder as, oh, yeah, like maybe it's just a couple of other finer points, but it does help, or it would have helped, you know, the customer success team overall. So we highlighted that it's. And you know, it was, you know, this is not adding to your work. It should actually help you get the right. Make sure you get the right information or a reminder to get it. Um, and, you know, we, we present it so that, that, that really did help. Um, and I would say that the handoffs from there were not just, um, because we did an intern, we decided to have not just here's the handoff document or here is some fields in Salesforce that you have to fill out. It was more than that. We had an internal kickoff, 30 minutes, and it was, you know, the transfer of information and really to help build not just sort of like the joint success plan for onboarding, but also to help build between that seller and the CSM to build the account plan, which is an internal document. Right, sure. What do we need to know about this account and how do we need to, like, what are the levers we can pull to grow it? Like so it was a little bit of an exercise in both, like the account plan, building the success plan, the transfer of information. And it also helped build the relationship or improve the relationship between the two teams. Because now we're. It's not just, oh, let me. It's a brain dump from the seller.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker A: It's a dialogue, it's a back and forth dialogue. And it sounds like a lot. It wasn't. It was. These are. It can be a 15 minute meeting, whatever, 30 minutes, but we have to have it. And that made things. And that was really for the strategic accounts for like your long tail stuff. We could, we scaled that, of course.

Speaker C: Yeah, of course.

Speaker A: But for the bigger accounts, there was definitely the internal kickoff that needed to happen. Um, and then as soon as that was over, the email went out, which we created templates for to make it easier for everybody from the seller to the client, introducing the CSM and scheduling, setting up the, um, the partnership kickoff. And this all happened even almost right before close, like it was starting, we were starting to put that together. So everything happened really quickly. So within 24 hours of the contract being signed. Um, and some of it was like, hey, finance doesn't want you to do anything until it's officially official and legal too. So. But it's within 24 hours of the contract being signed. The welcome email, the welcome and introduction email went out. So it was a, uh, it was a good process improvement.

Speaker C: That's awesome. No, I love this. And I think what's really interesting though, and I think we don't talk more about it sounds like it's actually two people really. least, at least from you know, hearing the story right. You, one, you had the backing your CEO to like identify, hey, this is a problem. Which, you know, takes a lot, right, like for them to acknowledge that. But also two, I think by putting these processes in place, you needed that buy in from your VP of sales. And it sounds like again, like not only, not only did he help, he or she. I didn't catch that. But the point is like as far as building out that process, they had some influence. So they had skin in the game essentially in order to like share it to the team and then gave you

Speaker A: the opportunity to kind of speak, well, the CEO. Keep in mind the CEO was only brought into that one deal. We don't need to involve him in the minutiae of the day to day.

Speaker B: Right, sure.

Speaker A: But in that deal. But again, put a spotlight on the other pieces of the puzzle. And you know, you hear all the time like, Whether we've seen the posts on LinkedIn, we've read the blog posts, um, you know, you can't, you have to. We've seen the conference presentations on, you know, how to get people in your corner. What's in it for me, the wifm, all of that. Like, this is just another example of that. It's you. This will help you. Because now you're asking the right questions. Like, we didn't have a right to veto a deal. I know there are randomly. There are some CS teams that do that most don't like. I didn't think that that was necessary nor I would have ever gotten approval to have been able to like veto a deal. But uh, bringing us into earlier and hearing those and getting that right information was also helpful to understand this customer is the right fit, but maybe they're just a little less mature. So their onboarding was scaled or looked at, not scaled, but really it was a different um, onboarding for them because we had to um, like a maturity model. For those that are a little less mature, we're going to start off at a different place because we want to get them to full maturity. So understanding the maturity level of the organization that was coming in and how many people were involved was also, um, was also helpful.

Speaker C: That's interesting. So you're saying in this particular example, because I know we're talking about it like, sound like, is it, is it a maturity issue or is it more just like it was just strictly just not a fit? I mean there was a lot of things going on obviously, but like for terms of the handoff, but like in

Speaker A: this particular instance, that customer. I don't, in that particular story, from what I can remember, because this was quite some, um, years ago at this point. Gosh, this is what, eight years ago? Maybe ish. Seven, six. Seven years. I know it was a while ago. Um, it really wasn't a matter of maturity. It was, I would say they weren't the right fitness fit because they're, they weren't a good fit because they're, they had, they were a mess internally. They weren't, no one was in, in alignment or agreement on anything. They often got into arguments with each other on our calls. Um, people didn't respond to emails and there was quite a bit of turnover and there was a lot of tension and friction within their organization. So it's very hard to work with a company that doesn't. They, they are not sitting at the table with us. Right. Like, they are not, uh, they, we can't partner with Them because they don't show up to be a partner.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker A: And yeah and when they did it was. They were just you know don't call me, I'll call you. And then they would have a random question that couldn't necessarily be answered yes or no in an email. So you know you have ways to respond at the time. Like loom video will give some context if they don't want to get on a call because who wants to get on a call for every little thing?

Speaker C: Sure.

Speaker A: Um and again this is way back before we were really talking about a lot of scale. Um but they just. They weren't the right fit because they were going to cost too much to serve M and they because we because of their own internal disaster and they were always going to be at risk no matter what and they were always. We kept them at solid red all the time and there were some heroics that needed to be gone that were. That went. That were gone through sacromatically correct. I don't know. Um there was some heroics to and to get them to renew with some work that we did that I'll just say that it cost us more to

Speaker C: keep them M. Well it's interesting right because you know I kind of like this topic a lot too in terms of not being right fit. It's been a big topic. I know. Ah I was at the turn zero conference as well as you were there as well and like that that was a hot topic right amongst the audience about like hey how do we handle that situation but actually bringing the data of like obviously there's churn risk in the future that could have a long term you know impact. The cost of serve is also I feel like it doesn't get talked about enough like I guess like talk to me a little bit more about if you if you remember just generally speaking like how you approach that like did you work with different people to kind of arrive that arrive at that metric kind of project that like it's an interesting one.

Speaker A: You didn't tell me we're going to talk about the financial stuff. It's not my favorite.

Speaker C: Uh that's okay we don't have to go too deep but like high level like if you're. If you're like project managing it like because also too right. A lot of this has to do with cross functional relationship like like who do you turn to? Or maybe in that particular scenario not less maybe about the calculation but more so about like hey like how do you approach it if someone's going to

Speaker A: do it Well, I mean, without getting too deep into it, to be honest, uh, I think you look at it as how much time needs to be spent to help this customer that's never going to really be successful. That's always going to be at risk because of who they are. Right. And how much. And then. But because they're a logo and because their ARR is high, everyone's got eyes on it, like from the CFO down. So you're almost like the resources that you're spending and you're looking at ARR per employee and uh, where they spend their time. And by spending too much time on this client trying to fix them and doing work for them that's normally, uh, not work we would do for them. We're going above and beyond, like the hours for a, uh, senior csm. I'm looking at how much, what's that costing us and the fact that we know that they're not going to renew or renewal is going to. So they renew. But we were never going to be profitable. So this was just compounding the loss already because we were never making back the cac. We were never getting the customer acquisition cost back because we actually did. They churned the second time. They renewed once and churned the second time, which was one year longer than I expected to begin with. But the. So all the time and effort, which translates into dollars. Right. How that impacted where people's. Where those resources could have been put to grow accounts that had propensity to grow and then layer that on top of what we spent to acquire them.

Speaker C: Yeah. Now it's, it's interesting because it's also bring. It goes back, especially when we're talking about like the heroics, uh, we had on the podcast, Greg, uh, Danes at TurnRx, uh, and he mentioned the same thing. Like it's these, the, the hero stories of just going above and beyond to save a customer or it's just not a right fit. It's. It's just not worth it. Like they're going to turn at some point. And I think, like, that really rings true. And then of course, what I find interesting is kind of digging that deeper piece, right. That customer acquisition costs. Right. Cac, cost to serve. You know, there's so many different things which could impact and, and inevitably they're just not profitable at the end of the day. And I think it's an important one to call out.

Speaker A: Um, yeah, Greg has some great, you know, he has some great information. And it's funny because one of the things we like to clap For. Or we have in the past, I think that's changed significantly is, you know, where we would clap and ring the bell and pop the champagne for a new. Like when sales closes a deal. But we were doing it on the other side for the deals we saved. And if you think about that in hindsight, like, was it worth it?

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker A: Were we clapping for the wrong things? Because, you know, it's. It's kind of like my analogies are pretty bad usually. But you don't reward behavior you don't want to continue to see. Right. Like, if you have a kid and they're cursing up a storm, which, quite frankly, is funny from, like, a toddler, because amazingly, they always seem to use the words in the right context in the right con.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Which shows you that they're not, you know, they're smarter than we may think they are at that age. But nevertheless, it's, um. We don't want them to keep using those words. You know, you can't. You don't want to laugh in their face all the time. And, like, you don't want to. You don't want to egg it on. You don't want to enable the behavior anymore. Oh, uh, so it's. It's kind of. It's the same thing. I don't want to. You don't want to continue to enable that. I don't want to enable. If it's one thing, if it was a client we know has propensity to grow and something happened and we had to do something, and this. It was, sure, what do we learn from it? But if that's what's happening all the time, One, what's going on with your strategy? Number two, do you. Who's your icp and are you attracting the right people? Like, uh, you know, because this is how CS becomes a dumping ground. And, like, then they're blamed for all of the wrong customers churn. But, you know, that's just a symptom of a larger problem. So, uh, without getting into that, it's like, you just don't want to. I don't want to keep clapping for the heroics because ideally, the, uh, heroics are the exception and not the rule.

Speaker C: Yeah, no, I 100% agree. I'm laughing because, you know, it's always funny when I hear my nephews, when whatever they do, whether it's. It's just so funny because you got to turn away and just.

Speaker B: If you're.

Speaker C: If you're going to laugh. Otherwise, you're starting to encourage that behavior. But it's you have to.

Speaker A: You have to turn away because you're like, oh, my gosh. There's this. They're. And it's because they're saying it the right context.

Speaker C: Oh, yeah.

Speaker A: Okay. Can't look. Cannot look. Cannot look.

Speaker C: No, it's great. But it's a good analogy. I think you got to give you credit where credit's due. I think it's a great analogy because you're 100. Right. Right. You don't want to continue to enable and encourage bad behavior. And I think looking at strategy of why things are happening, digging deeper to kind of avoid that, um, it's. It's crucial you actually, before anybody comes

Speaker A: for me that listens to this, I think cursing is okay. Isn't there research that says that, like, it's a sign of intelligence? As a New Yorker, I have a very, um, vast, uh, vocabulary of inappropriate words, as I'm sure. But I won't obviously use them here, so I don't necessarily think they're bad, but we can use other words. We don't want to have our toddlers, like, have a litany of F bombs coming out of their mouth. But for sure, I just wanted to make sure everybody that's listening, that will listen to this is not thinking that I am, you know, above using a good curse word.

Speaker C: Good F. No, for sure. No. I think it's, uh. There's. There's definitely. There's definitely studies that support it as far as. Even for good working relationships and so on. Or better. Better mental. Mental health, as they say. Um, as a fellow, you know, Northeastern and, you know, over here in New Jersey, I could definitely relate to, uh, but totally get it. Um, actually, like, now I kind of almost even want to double back a bit as far as you brought up. Also, another good point that we didn't tap into is actually multi threading. And I think it's something that, you know, obviously with sales, right. Like, and there was definitely a mishap here in this particular story. Right. Like, they should have looked at a proper buying community. Dug a little bit deeper. But also, I feel like even just based on conversations I have, like, cs, kind of just literally, they just don't really dig into that. They don't realize the impact as well, I guess. Like, you know, like, what's your take as far as, like, just like, in CS in general? Like, obviously sales as well. We've. We've seen the impact, but what about even just cs, you know, as a

Speaker A: whole, for, like, post sales in terms of. That's a Broad question.

Speaker C: Uh, yeah, like as far as, like, like I guess like the importance of just like multi threading in general. I guess like in this particular scenario obviously the downstream impact is like you had one person that wasn't an end user but, but I guess like, I don't know if you have any other additional stories or like thoughts or candor on that as far as for just

Speaker A: post sales, what I would say is I think things have for the most part that I can see, uh, you know, things have changed quite a bit from then where you. It's very rare that you will have an enterprise business come in with one buyer at this point in 2025, almost 2026. There are buying groups every, every technology or service purchase involves a few people, right? More than a few people, in some cases.

Speaker C: Fair.

Speaker A: And then when they become a customer you can look at it. I mean lots of people like to call the post sale, next sale, whatever, whatever. Um, it's fine. But then is there a retention group? Because some people that were in the buying group you won't see again. So I think it's important one for the seller to identify whoever, everybody that's in the buying group who will then be part of the retention group. Like is the executive sponsor still exactly the same? Most likely who switches in and out, who's going to be important? Like who are your power users? Who are your champions? Who are the people? Like are we. Do we have a relationship with them? Like those are things that we need to know. We need to know and then it is important for customer success and anyone else that's going to be on the account. Because let's be honest, in a lot of organizations there are account teams. You may have account management, right? Perhaps you have a project, you know, you have implementation or you have onboarding. Like there, there are other folks or other. Like no, uh, CS doesn't run the post sale alone. There's customer marketing, right? Like, yep. So you need to know who your every. Who. Who is the right person for who and who's going to be involved. And then who out of those people who's got influence over the renewal, right? Who's the one that signs the renewal? Who are the people that have influence? Maybe you know, and then who are the people who don't? Because sometimes, and I've seen this before, CSMs get caught up with the person that talks to them the most and is friendliest and they have absolutely zero pull when it comes to the renewal and they spend too much time with the wrong people. So I Think it's important from as early on as possible to understand who those are. And if you are using a customer success platform, um, they have most all of the tool, almost all of the vendors have some really smart multi threading capabilities so that you can see who your, you know, who your contacts are. But having like AI enabled like heat maps where you have engagement gaps, um, where you know if people change jobs, some of them are pulling data from you know, external sources.

Speaker C: Yep.

Speaker A: So it's good to understand um those pieces so you can make sure you have the right people in play and a lot of those executives you're not talking to all the time. M. Anyway. Right. Um, maybe they're just included like the ebr. But it's so important because all of these buying decisions because again the renewal is a repurchase. Right. You are repurchasing something. It's another sale. It is really another sale and you need to know who the players are and who's important and who can push things forward and who's going to sign those things. Like you, you have to know the people involved 100%.

Speaker C: Yeah, I think it's definitely uh, the best way to put it like I think you just said at the end is just like hey, it's another sale. And I think a lot of either CS professionals can, can forget that. I think the other key point too, and I've seen this a lot as well where you'll have CSMs working single threaded with the day to day contact and in reality they don't have the pull in order to get that deal across the line like they might have say but you know again how much uh it goes back to like the CEO or whoever's signing off. What is the revenue impact is, has it. What are those key KPIs as far as like that drive the value and what's those customer outcomes that are impacting the business and that person that day to day contact might not have that information and then it's setting up that trap with a csm. So now this is great. Um, and I know we're coming to the end here. I'm trying to like there's so many different good nuggets here I guess like based on like and obviously we're talking about multi threading. We're talking about you know I thought also too you brought up like no finger pointing when working with key stakeholders. Right. Like kind of working collaborative as a team. But I guess like what's, what are like the top takeaways to kind of leave with the audience related to the story. Kind of what we talked about, you know, today, as far as if you kind of had to wrap it all up, It's a loaded one.

Speaker A: I'm trying. Like, what would, what would I, um, what would I say? Well, I think, you know, we all know that we need to be aligned with these other, with the other teams and because when, when you're effectively aligned, you really like you, you're going to help drive positive business outcomes for both the customer and the company. And that's the goal at the end of the day, right? We want our company to succeed and we want our customers to succeed. They're kind of connected, you know. Yeah, of course there's a little bit of connection there. So I think it's important to outline, um, make sure. Do you have. Are you really rowing in the right direction? Right. Um, are you aligned on goals and metrics? Um, I won't talk about things like compensation because that's a whole other conversation, but I do think part of alignment on those things does involve conversations. Um, but you can look at processes, right? Like, do you have to establish a new one? Do you have to upgrade, like revise, like the one I did, like relook at some of our, like our sales to CS handoff and some other pieces of that puzzle, um, to make sure it's doing what it's supposed to do. And also what's the outcome we're looking for from it? Because we want to be able to measure the success of it. Right? Like, what does that look like? Always tie it back, start with the outcome and work backwards and tie it to some kind of pillar of value, like what is supposed to happen. And um, establish a raci. Like every. Like, what are the swim lanes for folks? Because there's nothing worse too for a customer for have cross lines or people having. Asking them to repeat themselves. Um, you want to provide a seamless experience, especially in those early days, right. Um, have clear objectives for both teams that align with that North Star or whatever they're trying to achieve. I'm going to try to narrow this down. Um, again, metrics, we talked about compensation, having the right aligned metrics and KPIs, um, that are also aligned to the company's objectives and goals. Right. They shouldn't be disconnected to what you're trying to achieve as an organization. Um, sharing insights back and forth. Um, sales, that's part of the handoff. What are the insights? What did they learn from the buyer's journey and in those conversations to help CS build that Joint, like the onboarding, like the initial success plan and the account, like, how do you build that account plan? How are we going to grow this account? Um, and also I would say look at your systems, your technology, what tech teams are using, how are you aligned on that? Like if you have a CSP and you have your CRM, they are, obviously they should be integrated with one another. So both teams can still work in their respective tools, but the data is now flowing back and forth so they're both looking at the same thing. So you want to make sure, and that also helps with consistency of the processes. Where are you aligned, what tools are you all using to make sure that the data isn't so disparate and everyone's looking at different pieces of the puzzle? Um, it also helps to report, it helps with forecasting, it helps with all of these things looking like. Um, and then I would say you also want to think about it from an enablement perspective. Sales gets a ton of enablement, right. All year long, all sorts of enablement. You name it, they have it. And CS doesn't always get that. Um, I saw a statistic earlier today and I don't remember it offhand, but it was like something like less than 30%. So don't quote me on this. Less than 30% of CS teams don't get enablement or something like that. And it was really eye opening. I don't know where it came from. I think I saw it on LinkedIn. Um, so I can't, don't hold me to these things. But it was just interesting because they don't or maybe they get included for like a two week course, you know. And, uh, so I think having the proper enablement, but it's not just CS enablement. I think there should be shared enablement and also sharing. Like have CS join sales meetings to share a success story and how they work together with a seller and what the customer look like. Because we did X, Y and Z early on. Um, and have a salesperson join a CS meeting. Right. Or, you know, have for the really good sellers, your top sellers. That's great enablement. Have CS listen to their calls, you know, how did they handle a difficult situation? How do they handle objections like your top sellers are a gold mine to help CS with good discovery questions and how to handle situations. Um, because I find that a lot of CSMs, you know, they get uncomfortable with the difficult conversations.

Speaker B: True.

Speaker A: Um, and a lot of people do. It's, it's a difficult, it's called difficult conversation for a reason.

Speaker C: For sure. It's human nature.

Speaker A: So I think enablement, not just from your enablement, your internal enablement teams, but back and forth with each other.

Speaker C: Makes sense. I love it. This is lots of. I was jotting them all down. This is great. Well, we'll kind of recap it in the show notes and I guess, like, you know, obviously have a wealth of experience. Cherry, like, you know, truly, this has been awesome. It's great conversation, I guess.

Speaker B: Like, where do you go to learn?

Speaker C: Is there any books that you recommend? You know, I'm always, like, interested in like, you know, non traditional methods of learning. I'm, um, always m curious as to kind of where you got like, your knowledge or even like what you're currently checking out.

Speaker A: Okay, well, for those that listen that are CSMs, and if you're a strategic CSM or you want to be, um, this is a little bit of a plug because this author is a friend, but I will tell you the story. So first, the book is called, um, Becoming. Becoming a Strategic csm. It's by Chad Hornfeld. Um, Chad is an OG CS leader. When I was a baby CS person many years ago, he was one of the first people that when I started saying I wanted to be more involved in this community and learn more, I was seeking out those on LinkedIn. And Chad was one of the first people that I ever followed. And I'll never forget and I've told him this, um, years later when I met him in person, it was almost a little fan girl. I was like, this guy is great. And now he's one of my friends. Um, and I'm so proud of him for his book. But. And I'm so. I'm not endorsing the book because he's my friend. I'm endorsing it because it's freaking great. And he speaks directly from experience. There are even tips. Doesn't matter how long you've done something doesn't mean you can't learn something new. So I think it's a really fabulous resource. Um, a lot of things I learned on my own. Like some of the books that I read in the past were like the customer success books by like, Nick Mehta. There are still great resources. Some of them, like, obviously things have evolved, but some of the fundamentals and foundations, um, foundational pieces are still there. Um, I'm trying to think where I, at this point I learn more because I found that I dug too deep into the CS stuff and I wasn't like, I almost had blinders on. I didn't use my peripheral vision to see outside. And I think one of the pieces to being a strategic CSM is to understand your entire business. You need to understand how the business runs. What's your business model? How does your company make money? How does sales market? Like, it's so important to understand that it will serve you well in general in your career, but it'll also help you understand your customers better. So I think, um, books that you know or anything that gives you more information, like around the business, if you want to understand, like I follow some VCs, I think Kyle Poyar is really great. CJ Gustafson, um, Dave Kellogg. That may be higher level, but sometimes reading things that I don't exactly understand all of it, I take notes and then I look, I look up stuff later.

Speaker B: Sure.

Speaker A: Um, books on, like, I've read stuff on change management. Um, there's a book called, that was just recommended to me called Lean analytics to help you better understand, like, financial, the financial stuff.

Speaker C: Okay.

Speaker A: I know I'm all over the place and I'm not giving, you know, um, those are the things that I read early on. Um, and I think there are some great people to follow. LinkedIn can be a little noisy, but there are some great follows out there. Christy Falterusso. Everyone's shocked that I said that. Rachel Provan, Jan Young, Dan Ennis. Um, oh, gosh, I'm gonna miss so many people. I mean, look at all the 20, the top 25 influencers you post. Um, there are just so many super smart people, um, that you could follow. But I would say try to understand the business.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: I did not give you any specific books or anything.

Speaker C: No, you did. No, this is great.

Speaker B: Great leaders.

Speaker A: I'm also not a big fan of a business book in the sense of like, I'm not curling up on my couch on a Saturday night with a glass of wine reading a business book. That's just not happening. I will get three sentences in, read them 74 times and close it.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: So I use those books and I read chapters where it, um, applies to me for sure. And how it applies to me and where it might be. And that's how I use them. I use them as a reference guide.

Speaker C: Yeah, no, and I think, I think it's a good point though because, like a good example of that digital cs, you know, digital, uh, customer success book and even the customer success success book from Nick Meta. Uh, uh, both of them little nuggets here and there. Whatever's relevant to you and. Go ahead.

Speaker A: I'm m going to give you one more book. I was just Googling because I was like, what's the. Who's the author?

Speaker B: Sure.

Speaker A: I love this book. And this isn't specifically about business, but this was, um, it's kind of a management. It is a management book. Um, it's called Impact Players. It was a Wall Street Journal bestseller. I've had it for years. And it says. It's called Impact how to take the lead, Play bigger and multiply your impact. And it says, increase your leadership, influence and impact at work. And it's by Liz Wiseman. She also wrote a book called Multipliers. Uh, she was an executive. Um, I forget where. Uh, but she answers like it's. She talks about what impact players are. Uh, she's now a researcher and her executive advisor. She's CEO of her Wiseman Group. Um, I mean, she's at. Her website is Impact Players Players book dot com. Um, but this is a great book because it's a quiz you can take and it helps you understand perhaps where you have gaps and how to have better impact at work. So I think it's twofold. I think it's understanding how to have impact so you're not, You m. Know, the jack of all trades and master of none.

Speaker B: Sure.

Speaker A: Right. And how to advance your career and then learning more about the business, the business model, and thinking about it from that perspective. It's not just what you do every day, how what your job impacts your team, impacts the company. Understand where you sit in all of that. And I think that's really important. I think there's plenty of information out there for anybody on customer success. But I would say don't silo yourself into that and expand outwards.

Speaker C: No, I think it's a good point. I think there's a lot of. A lot of other business books that could be relevant, um, you know, to customer success. And, uh, yeah, we'll definitely add this to the show notes. Impact Players by Liz Wiseman and a few others that you mentioned. I know the Strategic Customer Success Manager by Chad. And this is great. All great recommendations. We'll be sure to include it for the audience. But, um, I guess without, you know, to wrap up, where could everybody find you? Sherry?

Speaker A: They want to connect in my apartment. No, that's weird. That's weird. Um, no, you can find me on LinkedIn. Shari Srebnick, s R E B N I C K. I know that spelling throws people off. Um, I am there. I almost always respond to my DMs. Maybe not as timely as you would like. I'm getting bad about that, but I always respond no matter what. Um, you can connect with me there. I love connecting with, um, new folks, um, and expanding my horizon. You don't have to be in CS to connect with me because I don't limit myself to just that. Uh, so expand your feed on LinkedIn. I would give you that advice too. So you can find me. That's where you can find me.

Speaker C: Awesome. No good stuff. Well, I really enjoyed the conversation today, Shari. Um, you know, we'll add that those links into the description as well, but thanks so much for the awesome conversation. This is awesome.

Speaker A: Thank you. Thank you. I'm excited to have been, um, come on the podcast and talk about stuff that I actually like to talk about.

Speaker C: It's always nice, right? It's always reassuring.

Speaker A: This was fun.

Speaker C: That's a wrap for today's episode.

Speaker B: Thanks so much for listening. If you got some value from this conversation, hit subscribe, leave a rating and review, and share it with someone who's also out there trying to build a better customer success or go to market strategy, even if it's messy along the way. And if you want more frameworks, tools, automated playbooks, check out jodastechtouch.com and subscribe to our newsletter. That link is in the description. Thanks so much for being here. Keep building, keep learning, and I'll catch you on the next. One quick note before we wrap. This podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. The ideas and opinions shared here are of my own or those of my guests and don't reflect the views of any current or former employers, clients, or partners. We might reference tools, platforms, or companies, but nothing shared here should be taken as fact, endorsement, or criticism. Do your own research and always consult your team or legal counsel when making any business decisions. This content is not legal, financial, or business advice. It's just us, uh, sharing what's worked, what hasn't, and how we've learned from both. So thanks again for joining us.

Speaker C: We'll see you next time.