#CSH Episode 1:

⏱️ Timestamps:

00:00:00 - Intro

00:02:58 - Peggy’s challenge: Replacing an executive sponsor

00:03:57 - Building relationships with new execs

00:07:27 - Leveraging titles to get a foot in the door

00:10:51 - CSM empowerment and ownership

00:14:49 - Creative ways to engage new stakeholders

00:18:13 - Rebuilding when your main contact is gone

00:20:07 - Importance of engaging executives early

00:25:10 - Different CS approaches for different tools

00:25:48 - Did we help Peggy?

📺 Lifetime Value: Your Destination for GTM content

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💁‍♀️💁‍♂️ Connect with the hosts:

Kristi Faltorusso's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristiserrano/

Kristi's website: https://www.kristifaltorusso.com/

Stijn "Stino" Smet's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stijn-smet-%F0%9F%90%B3-330435a9/

Key topics: customer champion, customer success, stakeholder mapping

[Stino] (0:00 - 0:07)

At the end of the day, you are driving the account. I'm not here responsible for the renewal nor the retention. Like, that's your job.

You are in the driving seat.

[Kristi] (0:08 - 0:24)

You don't want to undervalue your people either, right? So as the CSM, it's a slippery slope because the minute you acknowledge that, OK, I can't get the engagement here, I need to loop in my leader. Will that executive ever engage that CSM?

Maybe not.

[Voiceover] (0:27 - 1:00)

Good morning, good afternoon and good evening to all you customer success professionals. We are back with another episode of the CS Hotline, where we're answering your burning questions about the customer success profession, hosted by the effervescent Kristi Faltorusso and one of one personality, Stino Smet. Give them your best shot and they'll get it to you straight while having a good time along the way.

Now, here's the show.

[Stino] (1:17 - 1:41)

Hi, everyone, and good day to the first episode of The Customer Success Hotline. I'm so, so, so, so excited that our little baby is going to see the light of day. I'm Stino, I'm the head of customer success at Will and I'm here with the godmother, the one that basically has done it all, the amazing Kristi.

Hi, Kristi. Thank you so much for co-hosting this with me.

[Kristi] (1:41 - 2:01)

Oh my gosh, this is going to be so much fun. There are, listen, I know that you get this as well as I do, but so many people have so many questions and they don't always have a safe place to go and ask them, right? Either they don't trust who they're going to because they don't know that they're going to have the right answers or they just don't feel safe to acknowledge that they don't know something.

And so I love what we're doing.

[Stino] (2:01 - 2:50)

Yeah, same. Also, it also started from the fact that sometimes a post hits the right way and people start commenting on your post as well. But like, I don't always have the time commenting back to the questions that they ask, right?

Like you put your stuff out there and sometimes it like gets interaction and gains direction and attention, which is super, super fun. And to see for myself as well, because we put a lot of effort in the stuff that we put on to LinkedIn, then the aftermath, if it gains attraction, I'm like, I can't like, no, I can't like type any answers. So that's why I thought of a success hotline where we then can answer directly in our small 30, 20 minute podcast to cover the questions that our community has.

And way beyond CS as well, of course.

[Kristi] (2:50 - 2:57)

Yeah. All right. Well, I'm excited.

So what is, what's our first question today? What are we getting into?

[Stino] (2:58 - 3:39)

Well, I've reviewed the questions and some of them are like, sometimes I don't even know the answer. I do have my personal opinions, just like you. So let's just dive straight into it with the first question.

So the first one is from Peggy Pavides. Thank you so much for submitting the question. And she wants to know, she's working with customers at an executive level.

What would the strategy be to gain or forge a new relationship when one of the executive pucks that you've been speaking to leaves and you need to have another executive sponsor in place? Like, what would be the main strategy be? Like I, ladies first, men's first.

[Kristi] (3:39 - 3:54)

Okay, so Stino, I want to make sure that I'm following this correctly. So her main point of contact is also an executive. So she had an executive relationship.

Now that executive has left and now she's got to find a new executive to be bought into this.

[Stino] (3:54 - 3:57)

All right. That is where the question comes down to.

[Kristi] (3:57 - 7:27)

Okay. All right. Well, listen, I think if you've already established a relationship at an executive level, I think you're already like 10 steps ahead of the game.

Most customer success managers get pigeonholed at like an individual contributor level or like they're with an admin or they're with somebody who is not at that level. So if you already have had an established relationship and you were working with an executive, I think it's a little bit easier than if you're going bottom up, right? You're now you're going kind of like side to side because you already had an executive and now you're looking to partner with another.

So if that is the case, and I think you and I should hash it out. If you were lower and you're trying to go higher and then if you're higher and you're trying to go sideways, let's talk about both because I think they're both different and both interesting. So my opinion, you're already working with an executive.

They leave. Now I'm going to use all the experience that I have. If I've already been working with somebody at a senior executive level, we are already having conversations around business impact, right?

We are already talking about value realization. We're already having those high level discussions. Now it's about pivoting and trying to figure out for this new executive what the level of interest is in what we're bringing to that conversation.

Now the challenge becomes, and I'll use my example at Client Success, which is for those listening, it's a customer success management platform. So I'm working with chief customer officers. I'm working with VPs of customer success, heads of directors.

And so if one of them leave, right, I've got to find a new executive. Now the challenge for me is that there might not be another executive who is going to be equally invested and care about the partnership because they were my stakeholder. They're the one that brought us in.

And so I've got to evaluate what are my options here. And so if we're doing some org mapping, which is something I would definitely highly advise because you should be figuring out who the best executive is next in line, not just any executive, right? Who's the next right executive?

For me, we're looking at CROs. We're looking at chief operating officers or VP of ops or VP of professional services or something like that. Worst case scenario, depending on the size of the organization, it may even be the CEO.

So for us, it's trying to figure out who is the right next in command and then trying to foster a relationship based on what their perceived value of this technology could be, right? What is the partnership going to bring to that individual? And so first you're mapping, second, you're kind of aligning on what that is.

And then the third part of it is going to be now, how do we just get a dialogue going? And I feel like sometimes that is the hardest thing. I don't know about you, but my CSM struggle with that because other executives that are not bought in, they don't really care.

They didn't buy this software. It's like, who are you? Why do you, why am I giving you my time, my attention?

Like, so what, who cares? It's a lot of that. And so what we have tried to do that has been effective is actually try to map like-minded, like titles to individuals, right?

So if my CSM is struggling, their executive left, we've got to map into a new one. I might be getting involved now to try to map a like title and say, hi, I'm Kristi. I'm our chief customer officer here.

I know that so-and-so left, here's how we've been working with them in the partnership. It's my understanding that you might be the next person best suited for me to partner with in this person's absence. If that's correct, I would love to have a conversation around X, Y, and Z.

Now, X, Y, and Z should be value points, not only about the partnership in terms of how we've brought value to the current relationship, but the value that we can bring to this individual as well. So I don't know what your thoughts there, Stino, but that's kind of my three-pronged approach.

[Stino] (7:27 - 9:28)

No, like the last one was really hitting the nail on the head. I think sometimes, and I'm not a fan of it, but sometimes you need to use titles, right? And especially on that level, if you're at an executive level, sometimes people want to talk to people of the same title, right?

So if someone of my team was just like a CSM, like that sometimes isn't going to cut it. Like you were saying, sometimes on a C-level, on an executive level, people want to talk to the CEO, to the CPO, to the head of, to the director, having the same level. And I use that quote unquote because I don't believe in that necessarily, but in the end, sometimes you need to leverage the title that you're wearing at the end of the day to get a foot into the door, right?

I use, because we're still a small startup, right? And sometimes for our key accounts, if a C-level swoops in or we need to do that remapping a little bit, I just ask my CEO. At the end of the day, it's just having that small conversation that comes from him that opens a lot of doors.

Because at the beginning of the relationship, it was, especially because we cater a lot to small businesses, small mid-companies, and it often starts, the initial sales cycle initially started with my CEO and their CEO. And they forged a bond and it grew and it grew. And then I came in to play, and then their head of HR came in to play, and now we forged a bond.

But don't underestimate the prior. Maybe also involve your sales. Maybe your sales had another point of contact.

It's really all about that mapping, and especially also sometimes just leveraging your title at the end of the day. And again, I'm not a fan of it whatsoever, but sometimes you need to do what you've got to do.

[Kristi] (9:29 - 10:51)

Listen, I want to be clear here. I am big on empowerment. So I always encourage my team to be the first line of defense, right?

They should be the ones trying to build and broker the relationship and the conversation. Pull me in as a last resort. And so I think it's a matter of like, you want to empower people to have the right conversations, right?

Title agnostic. If you're the CSM, nobody should know the partnership better than you anyway. So you should be the best equipped to go and do this.

But the reality is, we also know executives are busy, they're overwhelmed, and they're not always going to reply and respond. So you need to make sure, though, that you're working with your leader in partnership and leveraging them strategically. The other thing I do not encourage, and I don't like as a leader, is if my team just starts throwing me softballs all the time, it's like, oh, there's a new leader.

Can you go do it? It's like, why did this become my job all of a sudden? This is your job.

You're the CSM on the account. So I think be thoughtful if you are the CSM on this account and this is happening. You should always be the person who is driving this first.

You should be the one who's mapping. You should be the one who's doing the initial reach out. If you're not getting the successful engagement, that is when you should start thinking thoughtfully about how do we leverage our entire company to rally around this and figure out who is the best suited to then help you broker that discussion.

[Stino] (10:52 - 11:37)

Yeah, because at the end of the day, if we do get a foot into the door, we're stepping out of the equation and we're giving it back to our CSM. So indeed, don't throw your manager or your direct report under the bus. In the past, I've been just CC'd into emails and I was like, background, why are we doing this?

Why do you need me? We don't want to be also aware. I'm more than happy to help out any time of the day at any given point in the customer journey.

But like you said, at the end of the day, you're driving the account. I'm not here responsible for the renewal nor the retention. That's your job.

You're in the driving seat. So yeah, nail on the hat, I really, really love that.

[Kristi] (11:37 - 12:50)

You hit something that's also interesting here is you don't want to undervalue your people either, right? So as the CSM, it's a slippery slope because the minute you acknowledge that, okay, I can't get the engagement here, I need to loop in my leader, will that executive ever engage that CSM? Maybe not.

And so I know that as a leader, like to your point, I get looped into things all the time. I get CC'd on things daily. I don't ever respond.

I'm never the first to respond unless I feel like in that moment, it requires my engagement and I'm very thoughtful about it. I don't want to reply. I don't want to be the one responding because I don't want to undermine the value that my CSMs bring to that partnership.

And the minute I jump in, I think it kind of undercuts their value a little bit, right? Like, oh, they couldn't do this. They couldn't handle it or they didn't have the answer.

I would rather behind the scenes coach my CSMs on what to do and what to say and tell them and then say, you go and do it. I'm here. I'm like your backup dancer.

I'm here all day to support you. So you go, you lead out, you shine and if something goes wrong or it's not going the way we need it to go, I'm here for you.

[Stino] (12:50 - 14:49)

Yeah. Because I think the insecurities work on both ways, right? Like one, your CSM is going to go into this new partnership very, very insecure because maybe they depended a little bit too much on their manager.

Those on the other side, the executive, like you said, is like, okay, well, who is now my CSM? Is it the leader that I talk to or the CSM that asks for help? There isn't a bad thing about asking help, but still be in that driver's seat.

And it's all about communication. One tip that I do want to give that I've been trying out for the last year, since the beginning of this year, whenever a new, whether it's executive or not, but if you know that there is someone new coming, do something sweet, do something fun. Give them a gift card, send them a token of appreciation like, hey, I just heard that you stepped up to the plate, that you newly got hired within this company.

Here is a voucher. This is my phone number. Let's just have like 10 minutes on your journey, how your onboarding went with the company.

Don't go in straight away with like, okay, in full panic mode and go like, I need a new puck. You are my new puck. Let's jump on a call and let's talk about goals with our platform for the next six months.

That person doesn't have any message to it. Like you said, they aren't bought in just yet. They don't know what the tool does.

They don't know. Your tool is not the only tool that they need to learn. Your tool is not the only strategy that they need to think about.

They are new in the role or they stepped up internally or they come from externally. Like be a person. Think about yourself also, like if you stepped into a new role, like you wouldn't appreciate it as well that you got like pressured into jumping on a call.

Give that person a little bit of a breathing room. And then you don't need your manager because you were creating a new room for that new exec, right?

[Kristi] (14:49 - 15:54)

All right. So something else that I kind of I feel like I'm faced with often that I think is an important thing to call out. I think it's also when you're looping in your leadership team to help support you on this, you should still be in the driver's seat.

So here's a great example. Right. I can't tell you how many times I get looped in to go have conversations with the executive.

But why is the CSM not part of that engagement? Right. Now, listen, there are moments where it is appropriate for two leaders to have a private dialogue.

Absolutely. But there are moments where if you're using your your leader to get leveraged to facilitate a conversation, if I'm the CSM, I want to be on that call. I want to drive the conversation.

I want to set the agenda. I want to make sure that I'm in the driver's seat. Right.

I might be facilitated like I should be the facilitator. Right. But I shouldn't be absent and I shouldn't be riding the coattails of my leader because those are the moments that actually, again, I think kind of undermine the value that you bring to the partnerships.

You've got to be thoughtful about all of those little things because those things all leave an impression to whom you're engaging with, with what role you play.

[Stino] (15:56 - 16:48)

Yeah, 100 percent. And also see it as a little bit of a re-onboarding, a re-onboarding of the same client, but it has a new champion maybe or a new puck. And if you approach it from a new onboarding kind of fight, that worked the best for me.

If you approach it as new onboarding, that always works because also when you're doing a normal onboarding, you're not stressing anyone out. You're just doing your job. So instead of like going in full panic mode, try to use the tactics that you've been using in just any other normal onboarding.

And in the end of the day, you have always those customers, right, that are looking at the title, are not bought in. And that's the moment where you need to swoop in your manager, your other like higher leadership. But try it yourself first.

Like don't go in full panic mode because no one will benefit from that. Like there's really no one.

[Kristi] (16:48 - 16:48)

All right.

[Stino] (16:49 - 16:50)

Now let's take... I talk from experience.

[Kristi] (16:50 - 18:12)

Yeah, you and I both. So let's flip this on its head for a second because we talked about like if we came in, we have a relationship with an executive. Now that executive leaves and we're trying to build a new relationship with a different executive.

Now let's talk about it in the sense of we know that this happens all the time, right? But you're brought in customer success into a partnership. And we'll talk about why this shouldn't be the case.

But you've now been mapped to somebody lower in the organization, right? You had an executive sign the contract and then all of a sudden they're like, OK, great. Here, Amy, the admin, you go take the lead on this.

And now you as the CSM, you're working with the admin, but you haven't built that relationship with the executive. Now Amy leaves and now you have not talked to the executive since the initial email, let's just say. So I think that's another challenge that I see from a lot of CSMs is that they haven't actually built a relationship with the executive through the entire partnership.

Now someone leaves and they're panicked. And like, how do you build a relationship out of thin air? Which, you know, we could do a whole other podcast on like why this is so critical, why you need to build a relationship with the executive from day one.

And I'll give you a whole list of things you should be doing. But in that scenario, how do you then go from being kind of punted down that totem pole and like try to get back and map up in the relationship? So what are your thoughts on that?

[Stino] (18:13 - 20:06)

Everything starts with like on day zero, even like even pre-onboarding, like your sales knows who the executives are. Like what I'm very adamant about with our sales team already loop us in into that pre-onboarding, into the closing cycle, like introduces already like sales often of times have the best relationship. It's a short term relationship, but often have the best relationship with the execs because they need to have the deal they want to have, like their commission and all of that stuff.

So that is the best relationship to start from. So if your sales team helps you out basically and introduces you whenever the account, like the deal is closed, like, Hey, this is your CSM. This is already a very great introduction.

It's and forges you the best foundation on building that relationship. Not that you don't need to be best buds, but it gives you the perfect opportunity to already forge somewhat of a communication plan. Will that exec be on every call?

No. If you just ask a simple question, would you like to be communicated towards to that says it all. If it's once a month in a call, a weekly roundup, if it's just a phone call every two weeks, like if you know their preference of communication, it again, it shouldn't be a relationship where you should be like best buds and like talking tea over the phone whatsoever.

But if you have that initial way of communication that you know, they like from the very get go. It's a very great foundation to build forward upon, I would say, and sales for that. And again, sales, NCS, brother sister relationship, whatever you want to call it.

But that helped us very, very much as also with the bigger accounts that we have, like that is the best way if someone introduces you before the entire project kicks off.

[Kristi] (20:07 - 21:41)

So one thing I love that you talked about is asking how people want to be engaged in the partnership. And that's something that we do in our partnership kickoff calls. And I'm always a big advocate of that.

Like, let's establish some kind of what will that look like and how do you want to be engaged with? I will also say some executives are so quick to step out of the partnership because they feel they don't need to be involved. Something we've also found effective is while asking them their preference around what is their cadence of communication, what is their method of communication?

Those are all critical. But I think it's also important to establish what the requirements might be from your end. Right.

I think so easily, you know, we see CSMs kind of like play, oh, yeah, yeah, whatever you need, whatever you say, whatever you think is best. But like, let's be honest, in order for this relationship to be a success, this has to be a partnership. And so I'm also going to show up and tell my customers, here is my expectation of you in this partnership and vice versa.

Like, let's establish both sides of what that looks like. But I would definitely come into there and recommend very strongly, like the best customers, the best relationships, the customers who are most successful. This is how their teams show up for this partnership.

Now, you've communicated that you want to achieve X, Y and Z. That's wonderful. And here's how we're going to help you.

But here's what I need from you. Can you commit to that? And I think having that direct dialogue early, I think also establishes their accountability.

And I feel like we don't often hold the executives accountable for the success of the partnership.

[Stino] (21:42 - 21:51)

Yeah, I think we're, I try to counter that a little, little, little, little, little bit, because it also depends on the company that you work for, right?

[Kristi] (21:51 - 22:05)

Like, for example, if you're Calendly, yes, I'm confident that an executive, I'm not going to get my executives to be like, oh, yes, I want to go and participate in conversations about my calendar link. Yes, you have to know who you are and recognize that.

[Stino] (22:06 - 23:26)

For example, our customers are not a one fits all. And I would do like I do some recommendations like this is how our best customers are using Will as a tool, for example. But I don't have a blueprint whatsoever.

So in that sense, I always start from the question, whatever you would like and not necessarily what like on how I can hold you accountable. I use that part a little later, once we are like, took off with the product that's Will, but in that sense, it really depends from, from tool to tool, because Will is a very, God forbid, very broad tool, like something for client success, I would say like you, that you can have a blueprint on what works, what doesn't work, but Will it's a little different. So it also depends on the product that you're working for, like know your customers.

And if you know that you can segment your customers in, for example, industries, and then you can say like, hey, this is what worked for industry X, same industry that you're working in. And this is what I need from you. And that's something that we're evolving to for me and my team.

But it's not it's not the easiest, I must say, from an executing way, especially if you're like a fluffy husband like me. Sometimes I have some troubles like banging onto the table and be like, this is what I need from you, you bee.

[Kristi] (23:27 - 25:09)

Listen, there's definitely a fine line between being overly assertive and, you know, kind of just making sure that we're holding our side of the partnership here. And to your point, I think the bigger thing here is that like we got to emphasize very clearly for anybody who's listening. It depends.

That's always going to be the first response. I have my mug. Where is it?

I don't even know. Says it depends. And I stand by this because customer success looks different in every single business.

It does. It needs to. So everything that we're even saying here depends.

It depends on so many things. There's so many nuances that we need to just consider. But I'd say once you understand who you are as a product, as a company, as their partner and understand what the relationship should be in order for it to be success, anchor on that, right?

So to your point, and I always use Calendly and not because I don't love Calendly. I do love Calendly. So for anybody who's listening, I use it every day, but it's a tool, right?

Like, and as an executive, guess what I'm not doing? I'm not having a business review conversation with Calendly, but if it was Salesforce or HubSpot, right. And it's a mission critical part of your tech stack, it is a very different level of engagement because the value and the contributions and the really kind of like again, the importance of it in your tech stack to drive your business.

It has different weight. So you've got to assess who you are and where you fit in before you start making demands, because I'm telling you again, Calendly came to me and we're like, you have to get on these calls and like, you need to be engaged. I'd be like, okay, we're all crazy.

Right. Um, so yes, I think there's a little bit of that.

[Stino] (25:10 - 25:17)

I would like to know how QBR would be from Calendly. It'd be like, how many meetings did you put together?

[Kristi] (25:17 - 25:20)

I have no idea. It'd be curious. I'd be curious.

[Stino] (25:20 - 25:32)

Like imagine that if someone would, their CSM would be like, this is like industry best practice that you need to have 200 meetings a month and you're just at 100. You're not getting the return on investment. I would be like, what?

[Kristi] (25:33 - 25:45)

I'd be like, really, really? I'm actually going to counter that and say that I have 400 meetings in my calendar. So what are you doing to make my life better?

Because right now all I do is sit in meetings. I have my Calendly links out there in the wild.

[Stino] (25:48 - 25:59)

Great. Uh, I would say this was a very great first episode with a very first question. We went a little berserk, but Peggy, if you're listening, I hope this answers your question.

[Kristi] (25:59 - 26:03)

I know. I hope she was able to find an answer in there somewhere. I don't even know if we helped Peggy.

[Stino] (26:04 - 26:06)

We, do you think we helped her? Peggy, if we helped you.

[Kristi] (26:06 - 26:07)

Let us know.

[Stino] (26:08 - 26:41)

Let us know. Use the time for Morgana and Peggy. Please let us know if we helped you out.

Uh, if not, also maybe reiterate on the question. I would more than happy to take some other questions. In the next episode, we're going to cover some questions of Victoria and Andrew.

Um, so stay tuned. And if you have any questions, real life questions regarding customer success or anything revenue driven or anything SaaS for that matter, please submit them into the type form. And I'm so happy that we, the first episode is done.

Kristi, how? I know I'm listening.

[Kristi] (26:42 - 26:47)

I'm pumped. I loved this to your point. I think it was a great place for us to start.

I'm excited to see what the next questions are.

[Stino] (26:48 - 26:52)

Awesome. Well, see you and hear you at our next episode, everyone.

[Voiceover] (27:04 - 27:22)

You've been listening to The Customer Success Hotline produced by Lifetime Value Media, and a member of the Lifetime Value Media network visit the show at lifetime value dot link slash CSH for links to each episode, show notes and instructions on how to submit your burning question.