All about value: Moving CSMs from pitching features to selling solutions

"As the World Churns" podcast Episode 5 transcript, featuring guest Brian Nicholls:

< Listen to the full episode here >

Host:

Hey Brian, VP of Customer Success from UserIQ. It's great to have you on today. We're gonna be talking about moving CSMs from pitching features to selling solutions.

Guest:

Hey, great to be here. Thanks for having me, Justin.

Host:

Yeah. So the move from being reactive to proactive from selling features to selling solutions from the tactical to the strategic, these things sound great, but do you want your CSMs always being proactive and strategic? Let's just start off with that.

Guest:

Yeah, I think that's a great first question to talk about the common theme in the customer success space today is this idea of, "I need a CS tool to ensure that my CSMs are to your point". The two buzzwords are proactive and strategic. I think about that. I certainly want my CS team to be proactive. And I think that's a key trait for any successful CSM, whether they want to move up the ladder or not. The word strategic has an interesting connotation for me. And I don't believe I necessarily think that I want my CSMs to be strategic. I want them to think about or anticipate what the customer's going to go through. And I think there's a small difference between that and the word strategic. Strategy takes a lot of time for thought the - the what ifs, the contingency plans.

Guest:

There's a lot of time baking to just thinking about the strategy and the typical CSM, whether you're enterprise handling, you know, 10 accounts or maybe small businesses handling one hundred accounts, you don't have as much time to think about strategy from a holistic standpoint, as you would trying to figure out or, the reaction or the consequences of what you're trying to get across to your particular customer. I had a former mentor of mine, Rick Franzi, who talked about and wrote a book on unintended consequences. And so back to your original question, when I think about CSMs and as I, thought about our conversation today, I think the word strategic or, strategy is thrown around a little bit too much. There are times of course we want the CSM to be strategic, but I just don't think it's feasible to require the CSM to be strategic on every goal accounts. But you do want the CSM to be thinking about what's next for the customer. What's the consequence, both positive or negative down the road. What's the unintended consequence of what might happen? And the best CSMs are the ones that are proactive about anticipating that and guiding the customer to ultimately they're intended outcome.

Host:

What's your definition of strategic then in the terms of the customer success world?

Guest:

Well, I think strategic is painting a holistic picture. That's going to affect multiple different parties. And you think about building out a strategy, rarely do we build strategies on a singular thing. And that singular thing can be a person that singular thing can be one account. Again, I just think it's a, it's a misnomer in a way we build strategies for customer bases. We build strategies for segments. We build strategies for subsets of customers. And so I think from a strategic standpoint, if something's going to affect you multiple customers, then yeah, you can build a strategy off of that. If something's going to affect, you know, one particular customer and it's just your customer, then I want you to be proactive. And I want you to, to think about what happens before, but you may not have the time to be strategic.

Host:

Gotcha. Let's start with being proactive. What does being proactive mean in reality in practice every day? And why is it so difficult for some customer success teams?

Guest:

The term proactive for me in, in a customer success standpoint means attempting to, you're not always gonna get there, but attempting to understand the customer better than they know themselves. So taking the time when you get a customer to research what they do, who the stakeholders are, what's their background, and then understanding where they are today and where they want to get to using your tool. Because quite frankly, if they get there by themselves, they wouldn't use your tool, right? They wouldn't purchase your tool. So they're obviously trying to get somewhere that they couldn't get on their own. So that's part of it is the work that goes into knowing your customer as best you can, right? And there's different levels of that. Obviously enterprise with 10 accounts versus small business, with a hundred or 200 accounts, it's a little bit different mathematics on that, but so you should know a little bit it about your customer and have that set up.

Guest:

The second thing from being proactive is using your own experiences that you've done in the past to try to anticipate the outcome of the result of what's going to happen when, when you advise a customer or when they use your platform. For example, at UserIQ, when we're going through onboarding process, we know the areas that potentially can trip folks up just because they're a little more intricate to understand. And so the most successful CSMs here are the ones that understand that, and maybe spend a little bit more time showing the customer that maybe they have some use case stories to help the customer understand how to use that. And that's part of being proactive. So it's the work and the research that goes into it, but also the anticipation based off of your stories or other stories, both mistakes and non mistakes, and then providing that or using that information again, to help your customer who is bought your tool to get them to a place they couldn't get to, you know, otherwise.

Host:

Okay, let's get onto the selling thing. Your CSMs and most CSMs are expected to bring in expansion revenue. In addition to retaining customers, why is this a hard bridge for some CSMs to cross? Why is selling so difficult for some of these people?

Guest:

If you make selling into sell, sell is a four letter word, and it is tough for customer success practitioners who have come up in the CS industry. It's tough for a lot of them to get their mind wrapped around this idea of selling. Because quite frankly, our job as CS practitioners is to take care of the customer. And there's a perception real or imagined that selling is in conflict with that, right? As a customer, I want you to think about my needs today and tomorrow. I don't want you to be trying to sell me new features or new ideas.

Host:

When you say perception, do you think that that's not a reality at all? There is no conflict.

Guest:

I think there's a conflict, like anything, a way to handle it appropriately. You're certainly not gonna get on and try to sell a customer the first time you onboard with them. But there's appropriate ways to go about this idea of selling the pinnacle moments are one of the pivotal moments of my career in CS and dealing with this quote unquote dirty word of selling. I was sitting outside of a restaurant oh eight or nine years ago with a, a colleague of mine who was a lifelong salesperson. And now a very good friend. And I asked him about this. I said, look, I'm a CS person. I, I take care of the customer and the company wants to go. I just, I don't feel comfortable. I don't wanna be the used cars salesperson. And he gave me a piece of advice that really changed my view on selling. He looked at me and he said, you know, don't think of selling as selling. Every customer is looking for value and added value. And what you need to do from a CS perspective is figure out what that value is, and then figure out how, and if you can bring to them and everybody enjoys when they have additional value brought to them. And so if you're able to bring that additional value to them, customers are gonna be willing to pay, you know, an additional price for that. And so my recommendation and the way I try to teach, you know, all the CS folks that I've, I've had, the, the opportunity to work with is that don't think of selling as selling, think about it as, how can I bring you additional value on top of, you know, what you initially were getting from us. Um, and then, then work that into your conversations in manners that focus more on outcomes than they do features in my experience, customers will respond much better to that than if I'm just getting on the phone with 'em every time and saying, Hey, Justin, you wanna try out this feature?

Host:

It's more casual, right?

Guest:

Much more casual. Yeah.

Host:

Well, speaking of teaching teams or mentoring teams or coaching teams, rather, what has been the, the biggest thing that you've learned since coming to UserIQ, as far as managing a customer success team to success?

Like what you see? <Hear the whole "As the World Churns" interview with Brian Nicholls here.>