In a new weekly segment we've asked Kristi Faltorusso, VP of Customer Success at IntelliShift, to join us as we tackle Q&A that come Inbound. Our goal: to give tactical, direct advice to customer success leaders. Today's segment: Relationship mapping at organizationsToo dependent on relationshipsHow does your customer make money? Freemium, proof of concept and pilot - how are you onboarding customers and applying customer success resources?Customer success and customer support In B2B SaaS--This podcast is brought to you by Jay Nathan and Jeff Breunsbach of Customer Imperative, where we help B2B SaaS organizations build growth & retention strategies. Learn more at https://customerimperative.com/Jay Nathan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaynathan/Jeff Breunsbach: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreybreunsbach

In a new weekly segment we've asked Kristi Faltorusso, VP of Customer Success at IntelliShift, to join us as we tackle Q&A that come Inbound. Our goal: to give tactical, direct advice to customer success leaders. Today's segment: Coming In as a new leader at an organizationBusiness-case with the CFOGainsight Pulse: how do you execute so fast on your 120-day plan?Evaluating talent and presenting current employees with new job offersManagement frameworks for teamsBig goal: developing the customer journeyTransactional mindsets versus retention mindsets--This podcast is brought to you by Jay Nathan and Jeff Breunsbach of Customer Imperative, where we help B2B SaaS organizations build growth & retention strategies. Learn more at https://customerimperative.com/Jay Nathan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaynathan/Jeff Breunsbach: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreybreunsbach

Justin Welsh joins us on the podcast, and he has a number of fantastic Insights to learn from his experience In sales roles at a number of B2B SaaS organizations. Justin coaches SMB SaaS founders and sales leaders to accelerate recurring revenue toward $50M.In our discussion we cover: We need to consider how we can listen better to our customersHis concept of One Continuous ConversationCompensation could be shifting among the disciplines In a SaaS businessJustin doesn't like subjectivity In his ICPBusinesses need to find ways to run tests and have hypothesis In order to thriveEach discipline needs to be thinking "What Information can I capture that will be useful for the next person?"Leaders need to understand they're on the 'Executive' team firstIf your sales people aren't selling the right things, then they don't know how a SaaS business becomes healthy--Check out more on Justin's website: https://www.theofficialjustin.com/--This podcast is brought to you by Jay Nathan and Jeff Breunsbach of Customer Imperative, where we help B2B SaaS organizations build growth & retention strategies. Learn more at https://customerimperative.com/Jay Nathan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaynathan/Jeff Breunsbach: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreybreunsbach

In a new weekly segment we've asked Kristi Faltorusso, VP of Customer Success at IntelliShift, to join us as we tackle Q&A that come Inbound. Our goal: to give tactical, direct advice to customer success leaders. Today's segment: Joint Success PlansCustomer MarketingCustomer HealthExecutive SponsorsTop Qualities In CSMs--This podcast is brought to you by Jay Nathan and Jeff Breunsbach of Customer Imperative, where we help B2B SaaS organizations build growth & retention strategies. Learn more at https://customerimperative.com/Jay Nathan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaynathan/Jeff Breunsbach: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreybreunsbach

We have Chris Walker, the CEO of Refine Labs, who has focused his career around the future of demand generation. His firm takes a firm approach to leading growth-stage SaaS companies. We sat down to talk through the relationship between marketing and sales within this environment. Some key highlights: -- Retention is generally a metric that is placed upon the CSM (who may not have much control over it). This should really become a business metric that even sales and marketing are held to.-- Companies have to change their mindset about creating content that is valuable instead of creating content to try to drive leads. If you create valuable content then It can be used In multiple channels. -- We're hindering the performance of our marketing teams because of the metrics we put on them. This leads to designing a sales and marketing process that aligns more with our process rather than the buyer's experience. -- Big companies have not been adopting new marketing strategies because of 3 main reasons: (1) Companies are resistant to try new things (2) legal concerns with what your employees post (use it as an excuse rather than figure it out) (3) current content is garbage and their teams don't want to leverage It--This podcast is brought to you by Jay Nathan and Jeff Breunsbach of Customer Imperative, where we help B2B SaaS organizations build growth & retention strategies. Learn more at https://customerimperative.com/Jay Nathan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaynathan/Jeff Breunsbach: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreybreunsbach

We're joined by Jane Graham, Vice President, Customer Success and Renewals at Kronos, to talk more deeply about the relationship between customer success and finance. Building the relationship early allowed for 'speed' and effectiveness when putting a plan In place during COVIDTracking key metrics - especially the Revenue and Cash-flow Impacts that will be realized during this situationThis relationship (learning more about the financials) benefits you and the types of conversations you can have with your customers - understanding the situation they might be facing given that this Is a B2B environmentMarketing, especially customer marketing, has been critical to driving value for the customer success team. Example: Learning about how to update pay-codes and packaging marketing material can be used by every CSM"If you're talking about your customers' problems, ultimately you should be talking about the market problems" Playbook design needs to be function over form - give your team flexibility to react to the situationHot tip: Meet with your procurement team to share procurement plays back and forth - help understand the techniques that may be used In the Enterprise software buying spaceGive your customers access to Information that expands beyond your software and ultimately they will start to think of you as a partner--This podcast is brought to you by Jay Nathan and Jeff Breunsbach of Customer Imperative, where we help B2B SaaS organizations build growth & retention strategies. Learn more at https://customerimperative.com/Jay Nathan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaynathan/Jeff Breunsbach: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreybreunsbach

--If you'd like to join CS Leadership Office Hours, sign up here:https://tiny.cc/csofficehours--What are the leading Indicators of churn that you're looking to Identify? Relationship breadthRelationship qualityEngagement (product, community, content)Industry / Use Case FitBusiness HealthPresence of CompetitorProduct & Support PerformanceHow are you tracking customer health and risk? Mainly built Into tools like Salesforce with custom objectsAutomated aspects Include product-level data and survey responses to a particular contact or account recordCSMs are Inputting notes from calls and tracking engagement from key stakeholdersHow have they changed In the past 60 days?Looking at daily trends of data rather than rolling averages to understand very quickly what Industries may be affectedCOVID-Risk assessment to assess the risk within each Industry - then deploying playbooks for each of the IndustriesExecutive sponsor outreach has led to productive conversations--This podcast is brought to you by Jay Nathan and Jeff Breunsbach of Customer Imperative, where we help B2B SaaS organizations build growth & retention strategies. Learn more at https://customerimperative.com/Jay Nathan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaynathan/Jeff Breunsbach: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreybreunsbach

Donna Weber of Springboard Solutions joins Jay to talk about Donna's recent webinar around onboarding and enablement. First Impressions, confirmation bias and buyer's remorse are all concepts we need to pay attention to. When customers adopt quickly they renew forever - we can no longer use 'hope' as a strategy after the deal closesOnboarding becomes the most critical milestone within the journeyThe audience during onboarding becomes critical - who are executive sponsors, champions, users, buyers, etc. - they all need to have a planCustomers can rethink "have I made the right choice" - don't let them feel that regret If you can stay proactiveBuild a connection - take a moment to try and get personal - the connection can help you through hard times--This podcast is brought to you by Jay Nathan and Jeff Breunsbach of Customer Imperative, where we help B2B SaaS organizations build growth & retention strategies. Learn more at https://customerimperative.com/Jay Nathan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaynathan/Jeff Breunsbach: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreybreunsbach