The draft is back | Ep. 230

(0:00 - 0:19)

You know, I've specialized in rolls for a long time. Getting injured. Sourdough rolls? Ciabatta? Man, give me some of that pumpernickel.

You know what I'm saying? Or we say pimpernickel, where I'm from. Go ahead, go ahead, Rob. Close us out.

(0:22 - 1:10)

You're gonna be rolling in the dough. Injury-wise, I sprained my thumb on an email. It's overworked.

I don't even remember what I was gonna say, honestly. 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, you wanna say hi? Cover my face with post-it notes. What's up? And we have JP with us. JP, you wanna say hi? Where you friends at? Right here on this podcast.

(1:11 - 1:18)

And I'm your host, my name is Dillon Young. It's just the three of us, gentlemen. And Rob, I think you said you had a topic you wanted to bring up.

(1:19 - 1:46)

I do, as I adjust my post-it notes. So this is not me dating the podcast, but this podcast will probably air sometime, you know, within an earshot of the NFL Draft. And the hot topic, one hot topic coming in the NFL Draft for the non-football fans out there is that there's a unique player at the top of the draft, a hot commodity who can play both offense and defense.

(1:47 - 2:09)

He goes both ways, y'all. Travis Hunter. He goes both ways.

And that's a rarity, because if you're not an American football fan, I say American football because, you know, my wife always calls it American football. And the worst part is, like, then I'll be, like, talking to my football fan friends and I'll just, like, accidentally refer to it as American football. They're like, dude, why are you calling it American football? Anyway, regardless... As an ally.

(2:11 - 2:41)

America first! Regardless, what got me thinking, and in a way that's not just like a LinkedIn post, like, what did Travis Hunter teach me about customer success? But it got me thinking, so this guy can play both offense and defense. And I'm like, well, this is interesting, because that's kind of similar to our lines of work, where we have to play offense and defense. A lot of us, you know, we're having all these bickery debate around, like, how to be strategic and whatnot.

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Hickory, bickery, bach. Yeah. How to be, quote-unquote, always arguing.

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Yeah. How to be, quote-unquote, strategic. And a lot of times when you unpack what that means for people, it's as simple... I mean, it can mean different things.

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It can mean, for some people, being more consultative. It can mean, for some people, being more commercial and sales-oriented. It can mean, for some people and for some organizations, just being proactive and not reactive.

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And I think that's, like, the offense-defense paradigm. I actually have a client. He consistently says, I'm trying to stay on the offense.

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I met this... Actually, I met this guy once. He was, like, the head of training at Enterprise Car Sales. And he was like, stay on the offense, boys.

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Don't forget it. Stay on the offense. And I'm like, well, you know, our lines of work, they really go both ways.

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So, let's unpack what offense and defense is in customer success and how to do both effectively. Because I feel like it's a good career unlock if you actually can do both. So many corporate bingo garbage.

(3:47 - 3:51)

Actionable insights. Actionable insights. Offense and defense.

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Actionable insights. It's a real career unlock. I've always wanted to deliver value.

(4:00 - 4:25)

I've always... It's my dream. JP, why don't you jump in here first? When I started to think about this, because I was watching a debate and they were saying how, to continue the Travis Hunter thing, is that your ability to sort of be valuable in one area... Sometimes we talk about, like in basketball even, you know, groups talk about two-way players. People who can score offensively and they can play defense.

(4:25 - 4:43)

Of course, in football, the reason this is special is because it's very intense. This is like the most... It's like gladiators every snap. When I think about that in terms of customer success, I'm thinking about, I'm ready to play every snap.

(4:43 - 4:58)

Meaning I'm not going to hand off to somebody if I can't help it. Everyone's worried about the wear and tear on this young man's body. And not mine.

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But I ain't no young man. Kicking those tires. In terms of success, I would say that is like the burnout.

(5:07 - 5:15)

That's equivalent to burnout. If you're worried that somebody's not playing every down, they're going to have burnout. It's like, okay, they're going to be injury prone.

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In customer success, that is. So here's the thing. Am I going to get paid like I do offense and defense? That's what they say, right? Let's say I'm somebody, I'm one of these people who started off in sales and then I come and I do customer success.

(5:34 - 5:57)

It's like when people can speak Spanish or speak Japanese or another language, unless we're hiring for that kind of role out front. And that's what I would pose back to you is, have you ever seen a role that is basically advertising for someone who can play offense and defense and customer success? Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. They do, they do.

(5:57 - 6:09)

But these analogies break down a lot, right? And I'm not poo-pooing it at all. It's a fun conversation to have. But the one way you could take this is think about like basketball.

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The big argument with Luka Doncic when he went to the Lakers was the real problem they had was defense, not offense. And he's actually not that great of a defensive player. And the rap was that he's so good offensively that he takes a break on defense.

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Either because he's not well conditioned, that was a knock on him. Or he thinks he's so good at offense that he can take a break when the defense is needed on the floor, right? But it's not like football, like you said, football is intense, both mentally and physically. I mean, there's a new play being run every single time, right? But the payment piece is interesting because the, what I immediately went to, well, there's only 40 hours in a work week, right? Now there are going to be some companies that ask you to work more than that.

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Let's just take that off the table. That's absurd. There's only 40 hours in the week.

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So what actually ends up happening is when they ask you to do all of these different things, not just offense and defense, but all of the ancillary pieces as well, like having to learn the product and understand value props so that you can deliver that to your customers and you can demo new features to your customers and this and that and whatever, that takes away from your ability to strategize with your customers. I know how much you love that word, Rob. It just means your pie is the same size.

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You're just making the slices smaller. So you actually, in many ways, less effective at each slice of that operational pie, which is different than a Travis Hunter who might say, well, I'm going to bastardize the hell out of this. But there's this idea of wins above replacement in baseball, where if you take somebody, the average of the player in this, at that person's position, how many more wins can you earn with this person you're analyzing? Well, Travis Hunter can probably make the argument of, I have a significant wins above replacement metric versus some of these other guys, particularly because I can play both sides of the ball.

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Not necessarily the case in customer success. So I just threw a ton of crap out there. Who wants to just blanket agree with me? Because I'm right.

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I'll do it. I just think it's funny. The customer success analogy is like, they're like, oh, this guy plays offense and defense.

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Let's have him do ticket sales. He could do it. Why doesn't he manage our newsletter? Let's do that too.

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Ripping tickets, see you inside. The all-time generalist, right? It's funny because we're punished by our own versatility at times. There's opportunity, but I don't think it, I bet it's not versatility.

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I bet it's ambiguity. Ambiguity. Yeah.

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We're just the all-you-can-eat buffet. And you're like, I don't know whether to go for the lo mein or the... I love how it was Chinese. Well, hey, look, I pay you to talk to customers.

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It shouldn't matter what the message is. Go talk to the customer about this new feature. Go ask this customer for product feedback, which we are learning as we get more mature, that is not actually what customer success should do, but is often, particularly in cash-strapped early organizations, exactly what we need them to do.

-: 10:05

And that's what I was going to say. That's where I was sort of getting at when I said in the job description, because it's like, well, is that what a lot of people expect you to do in customer success is they are not expecting... I guess we've talked about that. I don't want to get too much in there, but we talked about the whole pure CS, right? Which would be just like, I guess that's like little to no sales or it's like you're just focused on this sort of relationship building thing.

(: 10:06

But Dillon, the reality is, like you said, it's like that can really depend on where the organization is. To bring it back to the Travis Hunter, if you're an organization, you have a lot of position needs and you have someone that can fulfill both of those needs, like the generalist usually fits in at the startups, then you probably are looking for more of a Travis Hunter. But if you have more of those bases already covered, you're looking for something specific.

(: 10:33

Well, maybe you're looking for Cam Scatterboat. But why do we reach the point of role specialization? It's because there is this assumption based on a lot of historical data that role specialization allows you to run faster in the direction of your destination, whatever that might be. And so that's why there's a lot of teams out there saying they're not going to let Travis Hunter play both ways.

(: 10:59

Because you also have to factor in, we call it burnout and customer success. For him, it's injury risk. He might get hurt serving as a wide receiver and kill their chances on defense.

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Whereas they might have a serviceable wide receiver to slot in instead of him and they need him on defense. And that's role specialization. He doesn't want to specialize in his role.

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And damn it, if every CSM doesn't crave role specialization, I just want to do this one thing that I do very well. I don't want to answer tickets. I don't want to have to troubleshoot the product every single day.

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I don't want to have to, oh, I almost said also do sales. Rob, why don't you know? I've specialized in roles for a long time. Getting injured, sourdough rolls, ciabatta.

(: 11:54

Man, give me some of that pumpernickel, you know what I'm saying? Or we say pimpernickel, where I'm from. Go ahead. Go ahead, Rob.

(: 12:03

Close this out. You're going to be rolling in the dough, man. Yeah, keep it going.

(: 12:11

You and Travis Hunter. Injury-wise, I sprained my thumb on an email. It's overworked.

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I don't even remember what I was going to say, honestly. The thumb. The only thing I use the thumb for is the space bar.

(: 12:23

What are you doing? That space bar, yeah. Oh my God, you hit the space bar like that? I don't know. I think there's a bar in New York City called Space Bar.

(: 12:34

It's a karaoke lounge. What are you doing? Went there once. That's our time, folks.

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Boys, that's it. Come back soon. You've been listening to The Daily Standup by Lifetime Value.

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