Own your power | Lizz Harrell

[Lizz] (0:00 - 0:23)

Essentially, I think like CS can own its power in the customer relationship and selling is really around. You've got a customer portfolio. You've got folks that basically pay your company money.

So what do you need to do to make sure that they are getting their expectations met? And how do you kind of rally the company around that? Basically that net retention and growth.

[Dillon] (0:32 - 0:42)

What's up, lifers, and welcome to the Daily Standup with Lifetime Value, where we're giving you fresh new customer success perspective every single day. I got my man JP with us. JP, do you want to say hi?

[JP] (0:43 - 0:43)

What's up, folks?

[Dillon] (0:44 - 0:46)

And we have Rob with us. He's on mute.

[Rob] (0:49 - 0:50)

What's up, lifers?

[Dillon] (0:53 - 0:57)

Wow, that's a shame. And we have Lizz with us. Lizz, can you please say hi?

[Lizz] (0:57 - 0:59)

Hey, how's it going, y'all?

[Dillon] (1:00 - 1:13)

Going good. And I'm your host. My name is Dillon Young.

And Rob is going to be on mute this whole time as somebody runs a pneumatic device mere feet away from him. But anyway, Lizz, thank you so much for being here. Can you please introduce yourself?

[Lizz] (1:14 - 2:13)

Yeah, well, thank you so much for having me on, Dillon. So Lizz Harrell, I have been a revenue and customer success leader in startups my entire career. Started off as a BDR doing the good old cold calling.

All the way through, through sales, moved into post sales. Thought I was going to get out of owning a revenue number in tech. But I've been basically doing it my entire career now.

So past a couple organizations, led post sales pieces. That's everything from onboarding to support to customer success. Really, the main outcome driving net retention.

So I've been pretty fortunate to be part of some kick-ass companies. Four exits, three IPOs. One acquisition most recently, which has led me to that company, got acquired last year.

And so recently I've gone on, hung up my own shingle. And I've been doing basically consulting, helping customer success teams maximize net retention. And make it through what has been the gauntlet of the past few years in tech.

[Dillon] (2:13 - 2:26)

Oh my goodness. Lizz, I'm feeling especially nostalgic today. I was looking up my childhood home on Zillow.

And so that's where I'm at. I am curious whether you ever miss your BDR days.

[Lizz] (2:28 - 2:33)

Well, so funny enough, I signed up for this, Dillon. What do you think when you're hanging up your own shingle?

[Dillon] (2:33 - 2:34)

And you're trying to drum up business?

[Lizz] (2:34 - 2:45)

That's true. Guess what you're doing? You are now, to be fair, I'm starting with my network.

So I'm not like cold calling the CMO of Nike and getting screamed at technically these days. It's nice. But that's, I mean.

[JP] (2:46 - 2:46)

We love you, Nike.

[Lizz] (2:46 - 2:52)

Yeah. Oh, oh, yeah. He told me where to put my phone.

In so many words. I'm at least calling on friendlies these days.

[Dillon] (2:53 - 3:06)

That's that person's fault for making their information publicly available. Anyway, Lizz, 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? Why don't you tell us what that is for you?

[Lizz] (3:06 - 3:19)

Yeah, I think number one thing, customer success managers, CSers, need sales skills. That's probably the biggest topic that I've been diving into. Might be a little controversial, but that's what I believe.

[Dillon] (3:19 - 3:29)

I don't think it's controversial, but I do think it leaves a lot of CSMs out in the cold who have a different expectation about what the job is.

[Lizz] (3:30 - 5:02)

I think there's been a lot of change, right? And let's say, and look, there is no, if there's anything I've learned, sales, CS, BR, all the hats, right? It's definitely always like, it's a decision of every business based off of their customers, based off of their product, how to make sure that they are bringing on the right folks, selling that success, right?

And then making sure they deliver it. So that's always the first caveat. And so when you say left out in the cold, I think what's interesting, right?

And I am super passionate about customer success being successful. I think over the past five years, CS has become a catch-all. We've had a lot of burnout, right?

I mean, we've seen a lot of the stats on burnout. I mean, I follow the Reddit threads that almost pops up every single day. Hey, I want to quit, man.

I'm tired of this job. And so I agree with you. I think oftentimes the teams haven't been set for success.

They've taken on a lot, you know, support, product adoption, potential, you know, selling whatever's on the bus to try to figure out how to get folks in the door and then being under-resourced to make sure they're successful. So that's the state of where people, I think, have been. And I think the way to get out of it is essentially, I think like CS can own its power in the customer relationship.

And selling is really around, you've got a customer portfolio. You've got folks that basically pay your company money. So what do you need to do to make sure they're getting their expectations met?

And how do you kind of rally the company around that, basically that net retention and growth?

[Dillon] (5:02 - 5:45)

I think of things like the catch-all conversation in stages and maturity because sort of by necessity, very early stage companies, CS is that the gap between product and customer is often very large. And I don't mean the product group. I mean the product and its functionality is often, there's a huge gap there.

And that's why customer success is involved. And that eventually falls off, I think, typically. But do you think revenue responsibility ever falls off of customer success?

And I'm talking like, let's go all the way up to like Google. I've met some CSMs at Google that are not responsible for revenue. Do you agree with that?

Or do you think that's the one piece that always sticks?

[Lizz] (5:46 - 5:56)

Yeah, well, and I think probably there's two things. I think the first thing is, I love to challenge, why does that gap exist between product and the customer? Why does it exist?

Especially a small company, right?

[Dillon] (5:56 - 5:58)

I'm not taking the bait. Well, hey.

[Lizz] (5:58 - 6:28)

Yeah, I mean, if we're building a company today, right? Maybe that's the first thing is we say, hey, let's challenge the assumption. Like, does that gap need to exist?

That with the amount of tools that we have today, especially if you're starting from small, right? To get understanding about what your customers need. We record everything, right?

Like the data that we get, the signals that we get, right? Like how fast it is to potentially build like in-product NPS and feedback loops. Like, does a gap have to exist?

[Dillon] (6:29 - 6:37)

Do we need to throw people in the gap, right? JP, I'm just going to shove you kicking and screaming into the front of this firing line. What's your answer to that question?

[JP] (6:38 - 6:49)

You know, I haven't spent too much time at the gap. I think I'm more like a Banana Republic guy myself, you know, frankly. So, I don't know too much about this gap business, you know?

[Dillon] (6:50 - 6:52)

You know enough to know that they're sister companies.

[JP] (6:53 - 6:57)

Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. We love you, Banana Republic and gap, all right?

[Dillon] (6:57 - 6:58)

Please sponsor us.

[JP] (6:58 - 9:12)

Yeah, come on down. So, as someone who's fairly newer, in other words, my nostalgia is very different, but I have nostalgia no less because of how much customer success has moved in the short couple of years since I've been in it. I think that part of me, I'm going to just admit is it can be conflicted in the sense that if what am I, this is going to sound bad, but what's in it for me?

What is my personal goal? Am I trying to, like, I think that customer success, we always talk about the value that customer success managers are providing to their company. And I think there's maybe a lesser conversation about how our customer success professionals sort of like getting value from their roles.

Like, you know, if someone spends X amount of time in sales, we may say that, oh, wow, you know, you spent X amount of time in healthcare sales. So, you have this sort of experience, what have you. I think that with a lot of the variance that occurs in customer success, it's like, well, what's your end goal?

It's like, do you just want to stay in customer success as a whole? Then I think that that's going to take, you're going to have to be as fluid as that conversation is. If you're just trying to stay in it as a thing, I think if you are looking at customer success as sort of like a gateway into, you know, being able to figure out like how do you drive value at a company and sort of being able to touch all these different parts and then learning how you provide value and then building around that, I think that it can look actually very different in terms of your career path and then the value that you then provide as a customer success professional. So, I'm just calling out that little part of it that I think there's this unseen side where we just talk about customer success professionals like sort of like ad nauseum because this whole thing, but what about these individuals who are getting in with these different motivations and, you know, like you started off with saying, Lizz, like you're like, I'm passionate about customer success succeeding.

Like how many customer success folks share that sentiment versus are just trying to get their foot in the door, you know?

-: 10:50

Yeah, that's a great question. Well, and to that point, JP, I think like the whole what's in it for me, one of the things I've noticed just in, and I've probably interviewed like over a thousand CSMs at this point in my career as a hiring manager, right? The absolute best ones, the learning that you get when you own a relationship with a customer is huge, especially if you take the mantle of your job is to be an expert on that customer, right?

You will learn every single day, every single day, because you're going to get on the phone and you're going to be curious and ask questions. You're going to learn about who you're talking, you're learning about their business, right? And so that you can take wherever you want to go, right?

So if you're in FinTech and your job is to learn about, you know, like big payments players, right? Like you'll be in those conversations. You'll have your foot in the door, the room to grow.

And then you're like, great, like maybe now that I'm an expert on FinTech and payments, like maybe I want to go work directly with one of these companies, right? I've got former CSMs who went and became heads of payments and did that. Maybe you're like, hey, look, like I've now, you know, owned these relationships.

And so I want to go kind of like expand on the ability to do more of this type of function that I own the relationship with. And so I think that's the learning that no matter what, if you're a CSM, you would just get your foot in the door. When you own client relationships, you get that ability to get to know those businesses and how they make money and how they work.

And those functions. And that's invaluable no matter where, like where you go is those relationships and that knowledge. So that's what I'd say at least.

[Dillon] (: 10:50

Rob, we are coming up on time, but why don't you take us out of here with your closing thoughts?

[Rob] (: 10:54

Yeah, I'm happy to, as long as my drill in the background doesn't interrupt me. I hear it. It's a jackhammer outside.

[Lizz] (: 11:02

It's the people who are telling us it's time to go.

[Rob] (: 11:05

I'll give you my really quick take. Great topic. And it resonates a lot with me.

I mean, there's a presentation I give to every one of my clients. It's confessions of a reluctant salesperson because that's the journey I've been through. Someone who avoided at every cost selling until I adopted it.

Now I've adopted the dark. But I would broaden, I think Lizz, I think there's so much more here to unpack in future conversations. So it's not even just sales skills.

I would broaden that to say sales fundamentals. So that starts to include things like scripting. It includes objection rebuttal handling.

It includes methodologies for objection handling on the spot. Like the feel, felt, found method that I know we've talked about a lot on the show. Simple fundamental that all sales folks know, but CSMs mostly have never heard of.

And then closing strategies too. I haven't even begun to scratch the surface of like medic and medpick methodologies and how to sell to your economic buyer. That's all even just at the IC level.

Then at the leadership level, there's stuff like around how do you model sales efficiency? How do you manage revenue forecasts? How do you run pipeline review meetings?

And how do you build an overall culture around selling and customer success? So there are a million ways we could take this. I'll just say it's probably a conversation for another time.

And great topic though. Thank you, Lizz.

[Lizz] (: 12:18

Oh, Rob, we could probably talk for hours, plus one to all of you.

[Dillon] (: 12:23

Maybe we should. I mean, that is our time, Lizz, but we'd love to have you come back and do a round two and stay on the same topic, but just dig a little bit deeper. But for now we do have to say goodbye.

[Lizz] (: 12:33

Appreciate y'all having me on.

[Dillon] (: 12:34

Thanks, Lizz.

[Lizz] (: 12:35

Take care, y'all.

[VO] (: 13:09

Until next time.