Representation matters | Clare Knight

[Clare] (0:00 - 0:19)

My topic is about the importance of having some sort of onboarding representation in the sales cycle, which I think is a bit of a controversial topic. I think there's resistance to it in general because the default, and I understand why, is what if this impacts negatively on my deal closing?

[Dillon] (0:20 - 0:20)

Yeah.

[Clare] (0:20 - 0:22)

And I can understand that.

[Dillon] (0:30 - 0:44)

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

[JP] (0:44 - 0:47)

Better to be onboarded than waterboarded.

[Dillon] (0:48 - 0:56)

That's true. That is true. All right.

And Rob, say hi.

[Rob] (0:56 - 0:58)

This show is torture sometimes.

[Dillon] (1:02 - 1:06)

And we have Clare with us. Clare, can you say hi, please?

[Clare] (1:08 - 1:10)

Hi. I'm not sure what I've gotten myself into here, but hi.

[Dillon] (1:11 - 1:23)

Yes. It really isn't supposed to be this way. Thank you.

Thank you for not immediately logging off. And I am your host. My name is Dylan Young.

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

[Clare] (1:24 - 1:38)

Yes. My name is Clare Knight. I am the founder and writer of the newsletter, The Onboarding Lab, where each week I create a project for people to implement easily with a few steps to level up their onboarding each week, bit by bit.

[Dillon] (1:39 - 1:43)

Can you tell me a little bit about the inspiration for The Onboarding Lab before we move forward?

[Clare] (1:43 - 2:17)

I've been in SaaS for over 10 years. And early on in a startup I was in, we were like 10 people. I was one of the first 10 employees.

We split out onboarding really early. I think it's quite unusual to do that, especially in a startup. And I was given the reins to figure onboarding out.

And I think from then, I just realized it's a really important piece that there's just not enough content about it. There's just not enough people talking about it specifically. It's always lumped in with CS, and it's kind of a task to do.

So I kind of wanted to dive into it a bit more.

[Dillon] (2:17 - 2:37)

It's fun. It's exciting. It's like a little puzzle to figure out every single time.

And sometimes it's super easy, but a lot of times you're missing pieces and you got to figure it out. And anyway, Clare, you know what we do here? We ask one question of every single guest, and that is what is on your mind when it comes to customer success?

So can you please tell us what that is for you?

[Clare] (2:37 - 3:35)

Yes, I think, as I've just explained, I kind of preach about onboarding. It's going to surprisingly be about onboarding. But my topic is about the importance of having some sort of onboarding representation in the sales cycle, which I think is a bit of a controversial topic.

I think there's resistance to it in general, because the default, and I understand why, is what if this impacts negatively on my deal closing? And I can understand that from that perspective completely. But I think my take on it is bringing onboarding to the end of the sales cycle.

So you're pretty much sure it's a done deal. I don't think it needs to be something that's present for the whole of the cycle, because I do think it just adds, it muddies the waters. But if you know that it's closing, why not get ahead of the game and start aligning things and start figuring some stuff out before it gets to kick off, because it makes sense for everyone involved.

[Dillon] (3:35 - 4:29)

It's quite the balancing act. I think both parties, let's say sales and onboarding, have to be willing to play ball. Onboarding shouldn't say anything that they think is going to kill the deal, even if they think there are some wrinkles to it that are going to be a problem.

Don't say it to the customer. Maybe you flag it to sales later and you're like, hey. But I think a part of that is making sure that the incentives are properly aligned.

I always talk about clawbacks and making sure that sales is properly incentivized for onboarding to be successful and to be able to succeed on time, as well as we know how important onboarding is for retention. So does sales have an incentive for the customer to sign more than one contract period with a company? Anyway, JP, I want you to jump in here.

And you were pointing at me emphatically. So just tell me I'm right, and we can move on.

[JP] (4:29 - 6:31)

You love this. Yes, yes. That is absolutely right.

I think aligning sales as they're very incentive-driven can for just... Shout out to all my sales piece, but keep them honest. We've talked about this quote or this maxim, which is, don't let the customer feel your org chart.

Where's one of the number one places they're going to feel it? Subscribe. When they're going from the promise of what this product represents, the pain is going to solve, to the post-sales motion, right?

And so who's in customer success? And I think that it's actually a really good idea to, as you said, Clare, to really position someone who's in onboarding to really just make that process a whole lot smoother. Because it's definitely...

Even just them getting to meet who's onboarding them or getting to meet who's going to be on that next team, it just really makes that easier. Because it can almost feel like, at least from personal experience, that if I get an email handoff, it's not quite as warm. So it feels sort of like you've had this sales rep, you've been having calls and meeting, and then all of a sudden it's like, yeah, and now I'm done with you.

So here, go talk to these people. And it's sort of then the customer, depending on the process, they may feel this... We could talk about buyer's remorse, people feeling buyer's remorse, which is right after they may close that deal.

And I think having that stronger, sort of that mellifluous continuance is going to be way better than if you are, especially if the CS team is tasked with a lot of accounts, you're asking an awful lot and you're leaving more things to chance. I feel like what you're saying can really provide a more seamless and consistent experience, which is something we talk about often as well.

[Clare] (6:32 - 8:52)

Yeah, I just want to jump in there, because I feel like something you were saying reminds me of the Gartner hype cycle graph. Have you seen that? Where it's like, you kind of have a big, it goes up to, I think it's something about the peak of expectations, and then it drops drastically down into the trough of disillusionment.

And then it goes way slowly back up to this productivity stage. And most cycles from sales into onboarding has that real drop-off, where we've sold it and it sounds amazing, and it's going to solve all their problems. And then there's this sharp drop-off, where it's even on the customer side, where they haven't told their end users anything about this product they've just bought, and they've just told them they have to use it.

That's a big part of it as well. So the way I think about onboarding being in the sales cycle, it's kind of like three reasons. So one is to get them excited and help with that graph, and just be like, get excited about the next steps.

Yes, this is all great, and we're going to make sure that dip doesn't go real drop, real low. It might drop a bit, but we're going to keep it high, because we're explaining to you the next steps. We're giving you the traction on what's coming next.

The second one is, in that stage, you can highlight any potential issues and red flags. You don't have to mention it to the customer or the potential customer, but you can note it down, so that you can proactively be prepped for that as soon as you're in onboarding. It's not a surprise to you when you get to onboarding, and then you have to backtrack on what you're doing.

And the third one is, you're setting expectations and you're aligning the team. Whether that's, again, have you told your end users that they're going to be using this? Did they understand the benefits of it?

How do we mitigate any adoption issues by helping you communicate that to your team? Or integration issues. How is this going to impact your workflow?

Have you thought about that? Can I help you plan that? And that's before you even do any training.

It's before you do anything around putting the solution in place. And I think that's such a huge part of onboarding that is really important. And if you're not going to do it in the sales cycle, you have to do that when they're kind of expecting to just get straight into the product and you're already on the back foot a bit.

So that's kind of how I think about it in that sense.

[Dillon] (8:52 - 9:11)

So you answered my question, Clare, which was how much of a cheerleader is the onboarding team supposed to be? And it sounds like, yeah, we don't want them to be sales, but they do have to be a team player in fighting against that trough of disillusionment. Rob, why don't you jump in here and give us our parting words?

-: 11:21

Parting words. I'm not going to disagree or play the devil's advocate, but I will peel back the layers of the onion because sometimes this onion stinks. Sometimes it doesn't go as well.

Like, so if I could take you back to a moment in my career, I used to want to be involved in that tail end of the sales cycle until I just had no bandwidth, no time. And eventually I realized I was also not helping myself, not just in bandwidth, but I was becoming a crutch to the sales team. So there's those three risks that any team considering this method should be looking out for.

It's number one, what you all said, which is this risk of killing the deal. Number two, bandwidth risk. Number three, becoming a crutch for the sales team.

And so there's a lot you can do to mitigate that risk. And there are alternative strategies. For example, instead of CS joining the end of the sales process, hey, maybe sales could join the beginning of the kickoff process with the customer.

That's another method I've seen work. There's also this strategy, this like good fences make good neighbors strategy, where you actually draw a very hard line between the sales process and the onboarding process. And there is no interplay between the two.

I worked with a sales VP once and he said, after I swiped their credit card, I never want to hear from them again. And I was like, that sounds terrible, but I kind of get what you're going for here. And we set certain mechanisms in place.

We set a really good handoff form in place. We set a really good call review process in place. We set a really good document around what not to say in the sales process.

We called it our 10 commandments document, became 18 commandments or so within near time. And there were lots of little nuances we added over time. Like for example, in the sales handoff process, my favorite question to ask the sales team was, let's imagine this deal fails in six months.

Just for a second, just imagine worst case scenario, this deal fails in six months. Why do you think that happened? And they would eventually start to concede, well, there's this detractor in accounting or, oh, you know, they have this feature request.

We got over it, but they might bring that up again. Like we found the real truth in that. And so I think there are many strategies to achieve this outcome.

Overall, I do love the strategy of like removing the handoff almost entirely, but there are other options on the menu for the listeners out there.

[Dillon] (: 11:21

Clare, anything to say before we get out of here?

[Clare] (: 11:24

No, I think I kind of covered it. I also agree with Rob. And I also, I'm just saying, this is not replacing the handover.

[Dillon] (: 11:32

Totally.

[Clare] (: 11:33

There's like some proactive work that can be done. And maybe it falls into a different timeline, but.

[Dillon] (: 11:38

I think just thinking about it is super valuable, right? I think it's going to change for every org. We know that we've beat that horse to death, but thinking about it.

And I love visualizing it as that hype cycle. I think that's a phenomenal way of doing it. And how do we flatten that curve?

Or how do we just keep it high? How do we just keep it high and always growing? Clare, thank you so much.

It's clear why you are an onboarding expert. So thank you so much for coming and sharing that with us. We'd love to have you back in the future, but for now we have to say goodbye.

[Clare] (: 12:10

Thank you guys. Appreciate it.