#TDSU Episode 197:

⏱️ Timestamps:

00:00:00 - Intro

00:01:32 - Who really owns the customer?

00:02:50 - The blame game in customer success

00:04:10 - Finding hope in career transitions

00:06:28 - The builder’s mentality

00:07:51 - RACI vs. RAPID: Who does what?

00:09:03 - Why CROs matter most

00:10:13 - The hidden agenda in job interviews

📺 Lifetime Value: Your Destination for GTM content

Website: https://www.lifetimevaluemedia.com

🤝 Connect with the hosts:

Dillon's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dillonryoung

JP's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeanpierrefrost/

Rob's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-zambito/

👋 Connect with Andrew Fink:

Andrew's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anfink

[Andrew] (0:00 - 0:13)

The build is is important for me. And I want to I want to make sure we're the executive teams aligned around, you know, doing the right thing for our customers, because you know what? They pay the bills.

We need them. And everybody should know that.

[Dillon] (0:22 - 0:33)

What's up, lifers, and welcome to The Daily Standup with Lifetime Value, where we're giving you fresh new customer success ideas every single day. I got my man, Rob, with us. Rob, can you say hi?

[Rob] (0:35 - 0:35)

Yo.

[Dillon] (0:35 - 0:40)

I said say hi. And I've got JP with us.

JP, can you say hi?

[JP] (0:40 - 0:40)

Hi.

[Dillon] (0:41 - 1:01)

Thank you. Thank you. And we have Andrew with us.

Andrew, can you say hi, please? Hello. Yeah.

See, see, I'll take a little more formal, not less formal. And I am your host. My name is Dillon Young.

Andrew, thank you so much for being here. Can you please introduce yourself?

[Andrew] (1:02 - 1:18)

You bet. Hey, guys. So I've been in the sort of software world for the last 20 years, all post sale, all customer facing, generally professional services, customer success, revenue generating, you name it.

So been around the block a bit. I'm an old guy, so love to chat about my experiences, especially recently.

[Dillon] (1:18 - 1:31)

All right, let's do it. You know what we do here? We ask one simple question of every single guest, and that is what is on your mind when it comes to customer success or post sales?

We can expand it out. So, Andrew, why don't you tell us what that is for you?

[Andrew] (1:32 - 2:12)

So I'm a free agent, so I'm going through some really intense interviews, just spent 15 hours with one organization, and this question came up. And, you know, it's coming up a lot more, especially with the way we're breaking up our revenue functions nowadays. The question is, who owns the customer?

And, you know, it was we had an interesting debate. I was talking to the president of the company. This company has about 150 million in revenue.

They have 800 customers and they have account management functions, post sale functions, and they want to know who's basically accountable for the customer. So to me, after thinking about it for a bit, I had to had to stew on the right answer. And for me, the answer is depends, is it depends.

[JP] (2:14 - 2:14)

Right.

[Andrew] (2:15 - 2:49)

But here's here's the interesting thing about it. I think it's a bit of a racy. I think it's also dependent on where they are on the journey.

I don't think one person owns the customer. And so we had that discussion because I felt like they're looking for and I believe this is why CCOs and senior sort of VPSCS, their tenures are so short. I think organizations are looking for one person to blame when GRR and NRR are not hit.

And I just don't think that's right. And I you know what? I've been through it.

I understand it. But I think there has to be a broader accountability. It has to be a it's a company problem.

It's a product problem. It's not just an Andrew problem.

[Dillon] (2:50 - 3:03)

Andrew, I got a question for you. So first of all, yes. First of all, a yes or no question.

Do you believe that the 15 hours you spent with one organization was a reasonable and appropriate amount of time?

[Andrew] (3:04 - 3:12)

No. So they were five hour interview segments, five hours a piece. And I'm not done.

I'm not done. I got to meet the rest.

[Dillon] (3:12 - 4:09)

I think you should be done. You should tell them you're done. It's intense.

Anyway, that's not the point. So it's so interesting. I was going to try and stop you before you got to your answer.

And Paul, I'm sorry. No, no, it doesn't. Because you didn't actually really give an answer.

Not that that was a bad thing. I think it was the right answer. It depends.

But I wonder what everybody else thinks, because as you asked that question, my my knee jerk reaction was, well, the company owns the customer. And there's a lot of people in that company. It almost sounds like they have silos.

They're OK with silos. And like which customer do we drop that silo in? Like which?

Who cares? And that seems look, I don't know if they're going to listen to this and know that we're talking about them, but that just seems a little bit antiquated. A little bit old school.

Anyway, JP, I want to have you jump in here and share your thoughts, ask questions.

[JP] (4:10 - 5:08)

Andrew, thank you for sharing. So honestly, you can tell in the room we feel your pain. I guess I want to switch gears slightly.

I want I want to I want to talk about hope because I heard you talk about this is why 10 years are so short. And I was like, oh, gosh, you know, you're you're sort of like I try to be very optimistic, but like when you said that, I was like, like something that maybe I've been trying to put out of my mind and not really think about. I was like, I can.

So tell me about like your hope you do. You just did 15 hours of this interview. So maybe not come with this company.

That's that's a lot. So hats off to you. I'm wondering, like, what's your hope?

Like, what are you where are you hoping to land? Where are you? You have all this experience.

What are you even hoping that they'll just let you do so that you can make CS successful? I would just like to hear about that.

[Andrew] (5:08 - 6:13)

You know, you know, for me, JP, I think it's been it's been around building. And, you know, I've been fortunate. I've had the ability to sort of leverage a strategy headset.

Like I've been in sort of the planning and strategy part of the business for a while. I've been customer facing my entire career, which has been long. I was not alive when JFK got killed.

I just want to make sure everyone's aware of that. So, you know, it's a point now where you're hiding in the years experience. You have killed allegedly.

I'm sorry. But my hope is that I can join a company and and build out, you know, a strong team that cares about customers, that cares about each other. You know, a strong alignment to our customer base that, you know, they can call on anybody in the organization.

I want to build out that organization. I think where I where I failed in my past has been joining organizations where they just need someone to sort of shift paperwork around or someone to just shoot when things don't go well. And so for me, it's the build is and I just went through it, guys.

Right. So the build is is important for me. And I want to make sure we're the executive teams aligned around, you know, doing the right thing for our customers, because you know what?

They pay the bills. We need them.

[Dillon] (6:14 - 6:28)

And everybody should know that no matter how many degrees removed you are. And that's why the company owns the customer, not any one individual who in your description gets executed at the first downtick of NRR.

[Rob] (6:28 - 6:51)

Anyway, Rob, go ahead. Andrew, I love I love how you identify how you self identify as a builder, too, because I relate to that in large part because I like creating things, but in large part, too, because I don't know. I think I need that kind of external validation that comes when you finish something and, you know, somebody sticks it on the refrigerator.

One of the cool. So one of the I learned a new framework yesterday. Oh, sorry.

I didn't get it.

[JP] (6:52 - 6:54)

So you mentioned the race, hit the button, hit the button.

[Andrew] (6:56 - 6:57)

It's been around a while, right?

[Rob] (6:57 - 7:50)

Yeah. Yeah. Well, so so and I learned a different one yesterday.

So you you you mentioned a racy chart. And for anyone who's listening to this, who doesn't know what a racy chart is, it's a method to I said method to know who's responsible, are who's accountable, a who's consulted, see and who's informed. I and it's really good for like project planning.

I learned one yesterday that's apparently good for bigger picture items. And maybe this falls in that category. So it's the rapid framework.

Have you guys heard of this before? I hadn't heard of it, but it's it stands for recommend, agree, perform, input, decide. So like who is the person or group responsible for making the recommendation?

That's like where I come in usually as a consultant. Agree who has to agree, perform who's actually responsible for doing the work. Input whose input do we need and then who decide who, you know, who gets to make the final decision, which I think kind of sounds like.

[Dillon] (7:51 - 8:03)

Sounds like some G.E. I don't know. Sounds like there's three or four middle managers involved in that. And then there's that that that poor S.O.B.P. who has to do the work.

[Andrew] (8:04 - 8:05)

Yeah, the doer.

[Rob] (8:05 - 8:53)

Yeah, here's me as a startup guy, where I'm like, just put my name for everything. But but but I think that like it makes me think, look, this whole idea of like who owns the customer is like I would love to say to the CEO, like maybe there's a little oversimplified, oversimplified the way you're viewing this. Maybe there isn't to your point.

Like it not only just depends, but it's actually a multifaceted tapestry of people that are involved in, quote unquote, owning the customer. And maybe even the idea of like, quote unquote, owning the customer is problematic in and of itself. Like maybe we're not owning the customer.

Maybe the idea of ownership is, you know, I don't know. Incorrect on its own. So there's a lot of things I could say, but I've I've failed out of interviews for questioning CEOs before.

So I don't recommend necessarily going about it that way. No, they don't like that.

[JP] (8:54 - 8:55)

No, I used to.

[Rob] (8:55 - 9:01)

I used to go into interviews being like, let me see your cap table. They were like, who the hell are you? And you're like applying for an SDR job.

[Andrew] (9:03 - 9:52)

Yeah. You know, and JP, I don't mean to interrupt you if you're gone, but, you know, I found, you know, the question I enjoyed in our discussion on Wednesday was, you know, who's the most important sort of relationship you had in your internally in the organization? And I said to me, it's the CRO.

I've reported to CROs, I've reported to CEOs, I've reported to COOs. And I feel like that CRO alignment is most important. I had lunch with a former boss CRO partner yesterday, and I feel like being able to look them in the eye and and agree on the right approach to supporting and aligning with your customers is the most important thing regardless if you work for them or work along with them.

And to me, you know, being able to partner with that person is the most important thing. Then you have product sales, product marketing, you know, legal, et cetera. But the CRO is right now, especially with revenue focus, is the most important alignment.

[Dillon] (9:54 - 10:13)

Andrew, before we get out of here, I have another question for you, and this one is not a trick question. What did you get any sense from the folks asking the question on the other side of the table, whether your answer was right or wrong or what answer they were actually looking for? Was it a scapegoat?

Is that what they wanted?

[Andrew] (10:13 - 10:24)

Yeah. So the CCO would own the customer and the CCO would own GRR, even though 80 percent of the effort was happening under the sales organization.

[Dillon] (10:25 - 10:28)

Nice. They said all that to you or you read that?

[Andrew] (10:28 - 10:34)

Well, yes and yes. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Interesting. I love this.

[JP] (10:34 - 10:35)

Thank you for being here.

[Andrew] (10:38 - 10:41)

Well, you know, if I was in the running, I'm not anymore. No, I'm just kidding.

[Dillon] (10:44 - 11:03)

Andrew, that is our time. This has been fantastic. I would love for you to come back and talk to us about this journey as it continues or when you when you find success, what that looked like and what sort of sacrifices you had to make or how you found the unicorn.

Because, hey, look, I'd love to hear that, too.

[JP] (11:03 - 11:06)

And I think I want to hope, Andrew, please find something.

[Dillon] (11:06 - 11:11)

Yeah, no. Hey, look, yeah, that's quite something great. But for now, we do have to say goodbye.

[Andrew] (11:11 - 11:16)

Andrew, thanks for your time. Great meeting you guys. Nice seeing you, Rob.

We'll we'll talk again.

[VO] (11:22 - 11:52)

You've been listening to The Daily Standup by Lifetime Value. Please note that the views expressed in these conversations are attributed only to those individuals on this recording and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of their respective employers. For all inquiries, please reach out via email to Dillon at Lifetime Value Media dot com.

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