271. Leveling Up Customer Interactions via Genuine Care w/ Angela Alea

Doing what's right for your customer is what's right. It’s that simple.

Angela Alea, President and Chief Revenue Officer at LASSO shares valuable insights on the importance of teaching and learning in conversations, removing friction for a seamless customer experience, and the significance of feeling understood and cared for. In this conversation we explore the changes in sales, marketing, and customer service over the past decade, discuss the power of surveys and data analysis, and uncover the secrets to building positive relationships and successful partnerships.

Key theme: serve first — from that, revenue comes.

Join as we discuss:

• Why serving others and providing value, regardless of sales opportunities, is the ultimate game-changer
• Why it’s important to measure success — not satisfaction
• Whether your customer is seeking the best price, or the best partner
• How to make your consumers feel cared for and supported

More information about Angela Alea and today’s topics:

• LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/angelaalea/
• Company Website: https://www.lasso.io/
• Other Relevant Link: Publix Super Markets; Chick-fil-A; Delta Airline

Episode Transcript

(00:04):
The single most important thing you cando today is to create and deliver a
better experience for your customers. Learnhow sales, marketing and customer success experts
create internal alignment, achieve desired outcomes, and exceed customer expectations in a personal
and human way. This is theCustomer Experience Podcast. Here's your host,

(00:24):
Ethan Butte. Why customer success ismore important than customer satisfaction. How to
align marketing, sales, customer success, and revops under one leader. Why
to interview hundreds of customers before youwrite the next line of code. These
are a few things we'll talk throughtoday with the President and chief revenue officer

(00:45):
of LASSO, the all in oneplatform where event companies work, Angela Alea.
Welcome to the Customer Experience Podcast.Thank you for having me, Ethan.
I'm excited to be here. Yeah, me too, really looking forward
to the conversation. And we're goingto start, Angela where we always do,
which is customer experience. When Isay customer experience, what does that
mean to you? Yeah? Well, A flood of things come to me

(01:07):
as I think about that, right, But I think about how you make
the customer feel, And I don'tmean like c sat, are they happy,
are they satisfied? I'm talking aboutwhat lasting impression do you leave on
them? And so early on ourcompany we decided, hey, let's kind
of set a goal, right,we need to have a focus, and

(01:30):
so with every interaction we have withour customer, we kind of say we
want them to leave feeling three veryspecific things, and that really kind of
dictates how we interact, how weservice them, how we listen to them,
and those things are we want themto Number one, feel understood.
We work in the events and entertainmentindustry, and I know every industry says,

(01:53):
oh, but we're unique. You'redifferent, right, We're different.
Everyone says that throughout my entire careerand that's true and everyone it does feel
that way. And so we wantthem to feel like we understand them.
We talk their talk, we speaktheir speak, we have empathy for them.
So we want them to leave feelingunderstood. We want them to feel
genuinely cared for, like, hey, I'm not kind to you or not

(02:16):
going to go above and beyond forthe sake of you giving me a good
score. I genuinely care for you, your stress levels, what you're going
through. So we want them tofeel genuinely cared for, and we want
them to feel like it's easy,Like it doesn't need to be stressful.
It doesn't mean that every time theytalk to somebody different in our organization they

(02:36):
have to start over, right.That continuity and fluidity is really important.
So that's kind of what experience meansto us. It means so many different
things, but we really try toboil it down and say, well,
hey, let's have every interaction.Our goal is to let them leave feeling
this type of emotion. So muchgood stuff in there. Obviously, friction
lists a theme from I don't knowif it was in episode one, but

(02:57):
basically the entire arc of this thingto date is really about identifying and removing
friction. So I get why that'sone of the three. And then this
idea of people feeling understood and feelingcared for. That's all we want in
any healthy relationship, and so Ireally appreciate those go one layer deeper for
me, like what was the processof dialing into that? And then how

(03:19):
do you operationalize it? Like isthis, you know, are these stated
values internally or is this more ofjust a broad cultural ethos? And they
like bubble up as explicit language nowand then like, how is this a
thing that you can do? Thisis the key word that you can do
consistently across all those interactions. Yeah, First of all, do we fall
down sometimes? Yes? Do weget one hundred percent across the board?

(03:42):
Next, just like our friends andfamily. That's right, that's right.
But what I will say is wedo talk about it a lot, you
know, like even as we rollout like rolling out new products, right,
and we want you know, thefeedback they're giving us. We want
them to feel again understood, caredfor, listened, and like, okay,
this is going to be easy,right, Okay, let's make it
easy to adopt. Let's have theproduct kind of speak their speak. Let's

(04:08):
listen when they have feedback. Andif it's a no, we're not going
to do it. Let's not justsay no. Let's bring them into our
world. Right, so they dofeel like, hey, your opinion matters.
So it's just it's an ethos toanswer your question. We talk about
it. We coached through that way, like, hey, how could we
They're coming to us with something weobviously didn't make them feel like they were

(04:28):
understood, and so how can wego back and change that right, And
so it's just something we try toweave into it, and so it's just
something we talk about all the time. Awesome something I've observed in the four
and a half years I've been privilegedto do this host these conversations. You
know, I certainly we were notearlier on the language of customer experience,

(04:48):
you know, four or five yearsago, but it had an authoritative name,
so people found the podcast and itgrew through that naturally. But one
of the things that I observed throughthese conversations that I think you have a
lot to say about, and we'llget even deeper into it, but i'd
love your high level take here aswe're kind of just getting going. I've
observed that the rise in popular conversationaround customer experience over the past five years

(05:15):
is kin to and aligned with therise in revops as a respected and organized
function, as well as the riseof the position of chief revenue officer.
And I think they're all pointed towardthe same thing, which is, we
know that this whole thing needs tobe more seamless. We know that these
teams need to be aligned. Weknow that if we task and incentivize people

(05:42):
in marketing in a different way thansales, in a different way than CS
in a different way than product.If we're not bringing together the sales ops
team with the marketing ops team withthe CS ops team, that there's going
to be some disjointed brokenness in theprocess and the customer is going to feel
it. What will you say tothis idea that CX is aligned with CRO,

(06:05):
is aligned with revops around this keytheme of alignment. Is that true
in your observation? And maybe whatwas your course into the CRO role or
the motivation to create it, andperhaps when did you start aligning revops yourself.
Yeah, there's a lot to unpackthere, So we're going to take

(06:26):
it little by little. But firstI will say, you know, I
always think back to I've been insales for my entire career, and it
is so different now than it waseven five years ago, ten years ago,
fIF It just continues to evolve andchange so quickly. And you know,
we too were consumers, right,and so when we go to buy
something, it's very different than itused to be. You know, they

(06:47):
say eighty five percent of the saleis done before you ever talk to a
salesperson, right, And that's suchan important thing to remember when you are
talking to a prospect. And sosure we have a VP of Marketing and
VP of sales and VP of CSES. However, internally we refer to ourselves
as the revenue team. We haveour own slack channel, not just management,

(07:08):
but all the individual contributors to right, Like we all talk about revenue,
it's not just CS, just sales, just marketing. They are so
dependent on each other. So youknow, marketing might set the stage,
but that's not always the case.Sometimes sales might set the stage and sometimes
CS might. Right, it mightcome in as a referral, and marketing

(07:29):
hasn't done anything with it, saleshasn't touched it yet, right, So
there's all these entry points and Ifeel like in the past it used to
be, well, the journey wasvery linear. It's marketing than sales than
CS, and that's just not thecase. I mean, now there's vertical
SaaS platforms, there's multi product whereso much of the revenue growth is within
the customer base. Other companies theirrevenue growth is in referrals, you know,

(07:50):
so it really and others are justyou know, purely organic brand is
kind of leading that, right,and so I think you have to be
really careful to not get so laserfocused on one is better than the other.
All sales, all customers journey looklike this. They're all different,
and you've got to be smart enoughand agile enough to go meet that prospect

(08:11):
or customer depending on what we're talkingabout, where they are, what does
their journey look like, and howdo you create an experience specific for that
and where they come into it.So we try to talk more in terms
of revenue because that's what we arehere to do, is to drive revenue
through the success of our customers,right, And if you do it with

(08:31):
that mentality of we are going toserve first and from that revenue comes.
So we want that kind of servantleader mindset, not just internally, but
we want it externally too, Likedoing what's right for your customer is what's
right, and it really does inthere it's not. But if if this

(08:52):
is the case, or that it'sdoing what's right for your customer is what's
right. And when you lead thatway, revenue come, churn goes down.
Things just get easier, right becauseyour customers do feel understood, they
do feel cared for, and let'sface it gets easier for everybody involved.
And so revops for us does sitin the middle of all three teams.

(09:13):
Some people have revops sit in marketing, some have it in sales, some
have it in CS, depending onhow heavily led those organizations are some of
the growth again, might be moreheavily led in CS, so they put
a rev ops person there. Wejust made the decision to kind of have
them sit in the middle so theydon't have a bias. It's not oh,
here's marketings goal, I'm going tolean more towards that, or here's

(09:35):
what CS. It's what's the companytrying to do? What are our customers
trying to do? How do weimpact that? So they sit in the
middle of that. So that's kindof been our approach to rev ops,
which is, oh my gosh,changing so quick every single day, which
is really fun to see. Yeah, really smart. I want to throw
another idea at you just to getyour thoughts or reaction or maybe tell a

(09:56):
story around it if it's something you'veexperienced directly what I heard off the top
of this and through the middle thereof everything you just shared, which was
Fantastic Sales is changing dramatically. We'remeeting people deeper into their journey. We're
sometimes but we're still sometimes meeting peopleat the very beginning of their journey.

(10:18):
Depending on the way they want tointeract and learn. Some people want to
learn from other people and be guidedthrough and experience. Other people want to
self serve, kind of do theirresearch in the background. Some people are
very I just need to hear goodthings from someone I trust, and the
rest is just a lay up,you know. So you know your different
teams across the revenue team are interactingwith different people at different stages of their

(10:41):
relationship, and so I'm just kindof echoing back to this idea of working
to understand somebody and where are theyreally relative to this opportunity. Do I
care enough to discover that? DoI care enough to prescribe the right thing?
Do I care enough to confirm whatI think is best for them,

(11:03):
even if that includes handing them offin a clean way to somebody else who
can help them get to where theywant to go within the context of their
relationship with our organization. It's thisalignment is partly necessary. Now I'm stating
something more concise that you could reactto. They're interacting with us in such
a diversity of ways that the alignmentthat we create within our team and this

(11:28):
kind of relationship ethos of understanding andcare allows us to handle the right people
the right way much more consistently,no matter where they are and what they
need from us. And so youjust said something really interesting. So I
want to kind of say something that'sprobably a little counterintuitive. You said,
meeting them where they are relative tothe opportunity. And what if we got

(11:52):
rid of relative to the opportunity.What if we got rid of well,
I'm in CS, how do Imeet them based on where what my framework
is right in CS, or whatmy framework is in marketing or in sales.
What if we just said we justmeet them where they are period.
We're not coming with a preconceived agenda. We're not even coming to them trying

(12:15):
to figure out if they're a fitfor like Lasso for my company, right,
We're just going to where they areright and learning how to connect with
them as a human being, asan organization. And you know, one
of my favorite I always try tofind areas to say this in an engagement
with somebody who's checking lasso out becauseit's so powerful and it's very freeing as

(12:39):
somebody if you if you again,the goal is to serve the customer.
Maybe it ends in a sale,maybe it doesn't. But if you literally
live that way, that's a reallybig unlock. And so one of my
favorite things I try to weave somethingin, you know, as I'm just
trying to get to know them,what are they trying to do, what's
their company trying to do? Ispend so much more time talking about them
and their company, and sometimes neverlasso. And sometimes I'll say, look,

(13:03):
whether you do something with lasso ornot, you should absolutely do this,
like you need to change this portionor I would strongly recommend considering doing
this differently. Right, And ittakes the sale away, the push pull
right of us trying to get theminto the fold. If you just literally
go and serve, forget, regardlessof the opportunity or relative to the opportunity,

(13:26):
right, just get that out ofyour mind and just go consult do
the work before you're hired. Itis so fering and it just makes the
job so much better because guess whatif you do that every time you win,
If you're in marketing, if you'rein sales or if you're in CUS,
traditionally you end a phone call withdid I move them closer to my

(13:48):
quota? Our revenue target? Schedulinga demo? Right, we're thinking in
terms of it's all relative to thatversus it's a win because I just help
them do something and I feel goodabout that, right, And so I
don't mean it to be totally altruistic, but there's something to that, right,
and it just that's when you winand they win. Is just just

(14:09):
serving them, regardless of what ifthere's an opportunity attached or not. Because
out of that, people want towork with good people. People want to
work with people who are like,wow, I just learned something from them.
They just gave me something valuable andI learned something, and so I
bet they could teach me more abouttheir product or these other problems I'm trying
to solve. Right that the customerwill connect the dot for you. Yeah,
really good on lock. I appreciatethat the observation and the edit on

(14:35):
that. I also would be remissif I did not plus up the idea
of doing what's right for the customeris right, which is not the customer
is always right. It's doing what'sright for the customer is always right,
and sometimes they know and sometimes theydon't. That's so important, Yes,
yes, because the customer isn't alwaysright, and you know what they know
that and if you can tell themor teach them something that they don't know

(14:58):
or keep them from making that mistake, that's what people are buying, right,
They're buying the expertise. Yeah,so you've mentioned Lasso a number of
times. I'd love just before Iget too deep, because I have a
lot of other things, Like Igot like ten follow ups just based on
what you've shared already. But beforewe go too much deeper, tell us
a little bit about Lasso. Whois your ideal customer and what are some
of the problems that you solve forthem. Yeah, So Lasso works primarily

(15:24):
with the event and entertainment industry.So we are the platform. We started
as a company that was focused onthe crew side. So if you've ever
been to a concert, a sportingevent, a corporate conference, a festival,
a wedding, even, right,you've got all these things that happened
before the event that as consumers ofthese events, we have no idea,
what all goes into it, andthe level of technicality and the creative that

(15:48):
goes into it. And so ourplatform historically has been focused as the people
platform for the event entertainment industry.Then this year we launched five more products,
so we're what's called vertical SaaS companymulti product platform, and we begin
to focus on the entire workflow.So now we focus on the people side
and the gear side. So youknow, all these events, they have

(16:10):
multiple tractor trailers full of equipment,cameras, projectors, you know, lighting
and all those sorts of things.And so now we're focused on the entire
workflow for event entertainment companies, everythingfrom the RFP all the way through invoicing.
Just because our industry is so heavilyfocused, it takes free lancers to
produce a lot of these events.So there's people constantly in that revolving door

(16:32):
of coming on and off events andtrying to make that simple for the industry.
Awesome. So I can understand whycustomer intimacy in particular, this understanding
and caring is so vital, becauseI'm sure I guess, I guess to
turn that into a question talk aboutI mean, you don't need to get
into the details of what these newproducts are, and I know you're launching

(16:52):
several of them as we record this. Talk a little bit about the way
your customer relatesationships, and I guesscustomer intimacy in general informs your product builds
and perhaps even the way that youposition and launch them. Yeah, our
customers dictate everything we do, literallyeverything. So when we started the company,

(17:15):
we went out and did three hundredand fifty interviews with We had six
different personas at the time, sowe were traveling a lot, some online
a lot. We tried to doas many in person as possible and it
took us about eighteen months to dothat. So we had a one preconceived
idea of the problem that needed tobe solved for the industry, but we
didn't want to make the mistake ofgoing and basing that on a few people's

(17:37):
input. So we did three hundredand fifty interviews before we write our first
line of code, and that reallywas the starting point and we've really never
stopped. We also do surveys,which we love because the industry they love.
They very much have an opinion ofwhat our industry needs. It's been
very underserved when it comes to tools, and so they have a very clear
idea of what they want. Sowe do serve typically once a month where

(18:02):
we're just asking questions, how doyou handle this, what would you like
to see, what's the biggest painpoint? You know, just lots of
questions, and then we also reportback the answers. Here's what the industry
said. It takes twelve point eightpieces of software to produce an event.
That's crazy, right, and they'reall different versus what if you had kind
of one integrated. So we justdo a lot of asking questions. We

(18:22):
invested heavily in product managers who arenot afraid to just spend all of their
time with our customers asking questions andthe second level questions and then coming back
and saying, hey, this iswhat we heard you said, this is
kind of the path we're going.We've kind of mocked up some things.
What do you think? And I'mso glad that we do that extra step
because so many companies they think theyhear one thing and then they go build

(18:45):
it and they invest all that timein developing it and it only got them
like seventy percent of the way thereversus add that extra step go ask,
they will tell you. And people, again, they want to feel understood,
they want to feel genuinely cared for. Those are things that you can
do to invest and say, hey, we're doing this for you. Tell
us what you want. And againsome of the things we do have to

(19:07):
say no, well that doesn't that'sreally just specific for your workflow. But
a best practice could be this,so this is why we're not going to
build this particular thing. So wereally try to embed that in all that
we do and just asking questions NonStopawesome something that is a challenge for everyone
who listens to a show like this, and it's probably a particular interest to

(19:29):
them, particular maybe even their responsibility. How do you balance all of that
customer feedback? I mean some ofit, A lot of it's qualitative,
and of course we can record ourcalls, we have transcripts, we can
do sentiment analysis, you're doing surveys. Sometimes there's just the quant layer to
it, and sometimes you get likethat good sounds like you're asking like open

(19:49):
ended questions. How do you accomplishthis? How do you do that?
Like it sounds like you have alot of data qualitative and quantitative. It
sounds like it's an important that thewhole team knows. Certainly the whole revenue
team needs to understand this. Obviously, a lot of it is right at
the product level as well, likewhat are we building? More importantly,

(20:10):
how and why are we building it? But that also needs to come into
the revenue teams so that we canyou know, position it, have conversations
around it, match it up tothe right people, you know, support
it, and serve it the rightway, et cetera. So's it's intimately
tied to what you're doing to thedegree that you can talk about this just
from a functional or a practical standpoint, like how do you manage all of

(20:33):
this qualitative and quantitative data and makesure that everyone gets as much as they
need and maybe not anymore because wecould be overwhelmed by it as well,
Like how do you anything you've goton that would be super helpful? Yeah,
I think our product team. Kudosto our VP of Product, to
Jay Breenberg. He has done areally good job of training our company,
which then in turn allows us totrain our customers and prospects in the industry

(20:57):
of it's not the how it's thewhy. And if they start talking about
the how the how, you know, there's you know, too many cooks
in the kitchen, right, Butwe want to focus on the why.
What is the problem that we needto solve, and we're going to figure
out the best how. At theend of the day, people just want

(21:17):
their problem solved, and they wantit to be easy, good, UI
modern, not clunky, less clicksright, all those kind of basic table
stakes. But focusing on the whyand not the how is really important.
That can help you really distill itdown very quickly. And then yes,
of course we certainly have all thetools that record and help transcribe and bubble
up the right things, and thenthat helps us generate rfaqs and all those

(21:40):
sorts of things too. But Ithink they've done a really good job just
ingraining it in all of us ofget them to talk about the why,
not the how. Yeah, superhelpful. I mentioned off the top something
that you said in our first conversation. I was like, I'm familiar with
this idea, but I can't waitto hear Angela tell me more about this.
It was all I could do notto ask you to to speak to

(22:00):
it when we were connecting initially,But it's this idea of you know,
customers will tolerate our imperfections and ourfailures certainly if they feel like we understand
and care about them. But happycustomers leave all the time. Successful customers
generally don't talk about this tension betweensuccess and satisfaction. I think a lot

(22:22):
of the metricing and the high fivesand the you know, the big boards
that we look to to say we'redoing a good job, it's really a
lot more oriented towards satisfaction. Althoughsuccess shows up in revenue, I guess,
but speak to this idea in general, and how do you manage it
within the revenue team? Yeah,so, yeah, this is something I'm

(22:42):
pretty passionate about. I mean,CE SAT scores. Yes, it's an
indicator, but it can be misleadingfor sure. And customer success doesn't always
end up in revenue either, Right, that's another false positive. Yeah,
your revenue can be going up becausethey're tied into an annual contract where they're
paying license fees. Right, Soyour revenues are going up, but it

(23:04):
doesn't mean you're making them any moresuccessful. And same with a lot of
people think, well, gosh,I've got a great relation to my customers.
They're happy, they're satisfied, butunless you can make them successful,
it's just different. And let's faceit, now, post pandemic in the
world we live in today, turnpeople are pulling back. They're very,

(23:26):
very maniacal with their spend right,and they're wanting to make sure that they
can see a tangible difference. Andso I know I've received the notices with
hey, Angel, we love you, we love your team, we love
the product, love love, lovelove, but we unfortunately have to end
our contract next month, right,And it's like, well, wait a
second, but you're satisfied, You'vebeen a reference for us what happened And

(23:52):
it's because we didn't make them successful. So it would be so great if
we started measuring success, not happiness, not satisfaction, not revenue success.
And why it's hard to measure isbecause it's different for every company, and
it can be different for each userwithin each company, and let's face it,
that's a much harder path to say, I've got five different personas that

(24:15):
can use my platform. I needto understand not just from the owner,
what does success look like, becauseI could hit it for him, But
if all four of the influencers,all four other people on his team are
saying, but I'm not I don'tfeel it. I don't feel it.
Guess who's leaving that we're not goingto win? Right, even if the
owner, the decision maker says well, I feel like it's successful. Right,

(24:37):
And so don't lose sight of theindividual success and not just professionally but
personally, right, Like, that'sone of my favorite questions is spend selling
is one of my favorite methodologies.And we always talk about you know,
so many times people live in thesituation and the problem, but the implication
like and people go to, well, how would that make you you know

(25:00):
the company better? How would thataffect your role? But how does that
impact you personally? What would itmean to you personally? Right? That's
the emotion, that's the success.And sometimes it's something that's subjective, Like
success to us means if you canget us to have schedule this many more
demos or this many more events orwhatever it might be depending on what you're
selling. But you've got to figureout that personal component too, And so

(25:23):
success it's just it's just a it'sjust a different indicator than happiness or satisfaction
or even revenue increase, and sodon't don't get caught in the trap of
that faulse positive of tracking the wrongthings. Yeah, so good. You
remind me of two conversations we've hadamong many, but I'm thinking of like
Larry Levine, whose kind of brandin methodology is selling from the heart,

(25:47):
shared in his conversation with me onthe show, going high, wide and
deep in your accounts, you know, go as high up in the organization
as you can go across, notjust like your your user bab to like
understand how their business is set upand structured, and then go deep into
these teams. So in the caseof that you offered there, you know,
hi is the owner. Deep isall four of the people, not

(26:11):
just the one who is the youknow, the persona or the representative of
the avatar for the rest of thepeople. And probably a lot of people
would extend that to say, well, they're like that in this company and
that company in that company too.So this idea of truly going high,
wide and deep in your accounts tocreate understanding. And then Matt Dixon,
who co authored Challenger Sale, ChallengerCustomer, more recently Jolt Effect, as

(26:34):
you're talking about kind of what doesit mean to this person personally? One
of the greatest drivers of indecision perhis research that's rounded up in the jolt
effect is he calls it FAMU.Fear of messing up, you know,
like we're selling to fomo, Likefear of missing out, like well,
you know six months from now youwill have missed out on this percent of
savings or whatever. It's fear ofmessing up. I want to look good

(26:57):
to my team, I want tolook good to my peers. I want
to look good to my boss orsupervisor or whatever. Like, fear of
messing up is a thing. Andso this idea that someone feels cared for
and supported is a big deal.Do you have any do you have any
guidance or advice? First of all, does that language of high, wide

(27:18):
and deep resonate with you at all? And do you actively coach your salespeople
or to any of your leaders oryour perhaps your account managers or CSMs in
terms of that, I very oftenI can't believe I asked you a question.
I'm gonna keep talking. That's whatI do, so for better or
for worse. For example, Ithink just I'm especially interested in your in

(27:42):
anything you have to share on that, because I think in a lot of
cases we go high and wide inan account in a defensive mechanism, like
well, what if this person leavesor what if that person leaves? I
need to like hedge my bets andspread myself out versus you know, when
Larry talks about it and I feellike it's the way you tell you talk

(28:03):
about it too. Is No,we actually want to understand these people.
We want to know if we canhelp them. If so, how in
what other ways? Etc. Likeany thoughts on any of that. Yeah,
No, that definitely res out.I'm actually going to use that.
The high, wide, and deep, we just talk about a little different
terms. Yours is so much moreconcise. So I'm going to steal that
from you. I stole it fromLarry. I love it, and I

(28:23):
love the foam moo too. I'mtotally stealing that. I will totally give
credit to Larry. But I lovethat too, especially for our industry.
But yeah, I mean we kindof talk with with cs. So we
do these road shows where we wantto go sit in front of our customers
and we kind of have three objectivesin this order, teach something, right,

(28:44):
go and tell make a recommendation abouthow they're using it, missed opportunities,
you know, correct something, Teachthem something, and then we want
you to learn something. And typicallythat's more organizational. Right that that kind
of resonu with me. We talkedabout, like the organizational structure, how
does it work? What is theirworkflow today? So teach something, learn

(29:06):
something, and then last and sometimesnot ever ask something. Right, So
if it's something where it's a referral, it's you're making a suggestion to look
at one of our products. Butmany times it's never that, So have
it in the back of your mindif the conversation lends itself that way.
But always two out of three,right, go and teach something, and

(29:29):
go and learn something, because itjust it's a better engagement, it's a
better relationship. So yeah, thatthat absolutely resonates. Awesome. And when
I heard there in the way thatyou talked about teach something is teach something
specific to them, do some homework. What's working for them? What is
what are they doing that is gooda best practice? What are they doing
that maybe we could improve, likeit's customed to them. Yep, absolutely

(29:51):
yeah, again, teaching them howto be successful. Speak a little bit
to maybe how your space has changed. You talked a little bit about how
sales has changed people meeting us perhapslater in their journey. But I'm interested
in kind of two layers here.One is high level, as you think
now about what's happening today. Youknow, in light of these product launches

(30:12):
and how we're going to introduce themto our customers, how are we going
to introduce these ideas to the market. In general, I'd love for you
to reflect on other changes from asales, from a marketing or from a
CS perspective, say over the pastdecade or so. I mean you observed
a lot of change. I thinkthat was in the context earlier in this
conversation around tools and how fast thetools and our capabilities are growing and expanding.

(30:37):
But in general, because you're sopro human in your approach, I
feel like that was out of voguefor some periods somehow, not everywhere,
but in general, like there's likethis essentially like a worship of the operating
model, and it's about this machineand this mechanism, and if we can
build this machine and make it predictableand repeatable, versus kind of thisiness of

(31:00):
I'm going to go into a conversation. I'm going to go in with curiosity.
I'm going to demonstrate that I understandthis person or want to understand this
person. I'm going to come witha level of care and interest, and
I'm gonna win no matter what theoutcome is. I frankly what I think
is that, as is the casein almost every situation, the truth is
in the middle. It's kind ofa both and but to your winning every

(31:23):
time, i may not win thisdeal, but I'm going to win over
somebody in a way that leaves themwith an impression that's going to result in
a return conversation or an introduction orthese other things that happen when people feel
favorably towards you. Kind of talkabout anything there that resonates. Yeah,
So that's kind of center to justkind of where we are as a company

(31:47):
and specific to who we call on. So in our world events and entertainment,
we always say every event experience isonly as good as the people who
make it happen. Right, It'snot the coolest gear, it's not the
ven it's the people who are makingthat experience. Happen. And yet our
platform is designed to help automate,right, and so, but it's not

(32:13):
taking the human out of it,right, it's enabling things. So it's
high touch and high tech, andI do think a lot of softwares fall
down because they miss that human element. When I go to a website,
it is very clear if I'm talkingto a bot in a chat or if
I'm talking to a real human being. And guess who wins. The people

(32:35):
who win are the ones who humanizeit. And I know AI is we've
got to adopt and we and thereare great use cases for that. I
know that's the latest and greatest,sexiest thing right now, and that's awesome,
but be careful because you will loseyour audience because people, we were
made to connect as human beings andcommunity and you can't replace that with just

(32:59):
pure automate. And yes, thereare ways to streamline the sales process,
and yes we can. Well ifthis workflow, if these three conditions they
go into this workflow right and peoplecatch up on that, right that they
catch on to that, And soit's important to automate and streamline and have
the workflows, but look for waysto be intentional to add the human aspect

(33:22):
of it, because at the endof the day, that's what people want.
They want to connect with a humanbeing who hears them, understands them,
cares about them. A robot anda workflow can't care for them.
A workflow and a robot can't understandthem, they can make it easy for
them. Right, So we can'tcheck that box. But you got to
have all three. And so Ithink we just we as a society,

(33:45):
we just need to be careful.Automation is important, it always will be,
and there's a place for it,but just be intentional on how you
can add back the human element ofit. Really good caution in reminder in
that And you know it's so oftenI think this conversation is around, well,
we can't afford to put a humanthere, when I think, really

(34:07):
the better observations can or better questionslike can we afford not to put a
human there? And so the waythis comes up a lot in this show
is off ramps. Right, Sosome people are going to be good.
They do have simple questions that abot that maybe if it's especially if it's
trained on your data and actually hassome level of intelligence, can you know,

(34:29):
observe the question formulated and typed inin a variety of different ways or
maybe even spoken in a variety ofit can recognize that this is what they're
looking for, Like the intelligence canmake some of the easy lay up stuff
better. But having off ramps eitherin like like at the at any point
of frustration. I think this islike rage clicks or like, I don't

(34:50):
know about you, but when I'min a loop with a stupid chat bot,
you know, I'll usually just startmashing numbers the same as I do
if I'm in like a te thephone menu. Hell, I'll just start
smashing zero and be like, seemslike I need to get you to an
operator, yes please, Like hell, yeah, that's exactly what I want.
Like the idea of not letting peopleget to the rage moment and having

(35:13):
off ramps for people like again bothand it's somewhere in between. And so
this this I don't know if wecan afford not to. I think in
so many cases, especially in acase like yours, so that I'm kind
of like, tell me if thisis true or not. An add to
it, The choice isn't always pricedriven. In fact, price might very

(35:37):
often be a second, third,fourth, fifth layer decision. And so
this idea of investing in a somethingthat serves people the best, the fastest,
the most specifically, people are willingto pay for that. I mean,
we're not looking to save ten percent. We're looking for like, but

(36:00):
who is the best partner, becauseit sounds like you're also fundamental to a
lot of these organizations, like I'mlooking for the best partner. I'm not
looking for the best price one hundredpercent true, right, and even with
you know the momentum that product ledgrowth companies have, which there is a
place for that, right, butagain, you're automating the whole thing,
right, if it's product led growth. I want to talk to human being.

(36:22):
I want to I want to havea conversation. I want to tell
them what my world looks like sothey can tell me how I can get
better. A lot of PLG.I mean, again, there's there's a
time and place for that. Butyeah, to your point, they it's
not price, it's they want toknow that you're moving the needle and it's
not just saving money. Right.If you're leading with I'll save you money,

(36:45):
you should differentiate yourself because that's justold, old thinking if you've built
a product to just save money,you've got to move the needle. You've
got to say, how does thataffect that business owner? How does it
affect the value of their company?If you're calling on SMB companies, that's
a huge driver, right. Anythingyou can do to add to that enterprise

(37:06):
value of that organization is massive.Anything you can do to add to the
work life balance, which is hugein our industry because events happen three hundred
and sixty five days a year,twenty four hours a day, and these
people who are attached to these events, they can never get away. So
anything we can do to balance that, right, And if they're at dinner
with their family and the crew callsout, they don't want to have to

(37:29):
deal with that in that moment,right, And guess what, They're not
looking to save money in that moment. They want time, they want their
family. That's what's important to them. And it's different for every persona and
that takes intentionality to stop and getto know the individual and what does success
look like to them? What isit they're driving towards again personally and professionally,

(37:51):
and again, you can't automate that. The only way you get to
that is having that human connection,so automate what should be automated and dive
deep on the things. To yourpoint, you can't afford not to have
human beings do that because that's howyou win, is you connect and solve
problems, not just save the money. No one's looking for just that.
Yeah, what I heard partly asyou were toward the end there, I'm

(38:12):
thinking that you probably approach your teamthe same way. What motivates them,
what does success look like for them, where are they trying to go,
etc. So I'd love to flipthis a little bit. Internally, you
have a lot of responsibility, Youhave a lot of functions and outcomes under
your purview and responsibility. How doyou keep everyone aligned? And again this

(38:34):
is I'm thinking a little bit kindof like that qualitative and quantitative data question
is like there's a lot you couldshare across a revenue team, Like how
do you manage what does everyone needto know? What does some people need
to know? How often do Ineed to bring these people together? Like,
just talk a little bit about howyou keep your revenue team organized,
perhaps even getting to the level ofcommunication or meeting cadence. Yeah, so

(39:00):
this is something I will forever beevolving on and working to improve on.
I can share some of the thingsthat we've put into place that I do
think help. But to your point, everybody is different, some people depending
on just their personality or maybe role. They're all in on the business,
right, you know, they wantto know everything about the business, and

(39:22):
we're an open book. We shareeverything with our employees and our company,
good or bad, I don't know, that's that's out for debate, but
that's just our personal opinion. Likewe share the good and the bad with
them, and we do it onroundups as a company wide. From a
revenue team perspective, the revenue leadersdo meet once a week with the rev
ops as well. I also aminvited to the marketing meetings we meet every

(39:45):
week, the sales meetings, theCS meetings, So I'm invited and I
attend those often, not every singletime, but I would say probably eighty
percent of the time I'm attending those. And that's really just to kind of
connect any dots that they may havealso to understand you know, like one
person on the team, everybody inthe revenue team, they kind of have

(40:06):
three goals tied to their bonus.They have individual goals, which are things
they are one hundred percent in controlof, Right, these are my objectives
this quarter, and those objectives needsto tie into the team goal. What's
the team goal trying to do?And then the team goal rolls up into
the revenue goals. So they're kindof bonused on those three different things.
Some they have one hundred percent controlover, which again leads to the team

(40:28):
and the company. But it's different, you know, everybody is interested in
different things. Some people, likeI personally get we just did this product
launch this week, as example,and I must refresh HubSpot every five minutes
to see what the red because Ijust am jazz by that we set a
goal and it was big and hairyand aggressive and scary for everyone on the
team, like, oh my god, that's big. I'm like, I
know, I said, don't worry, your bonus isn't tied to it,

(40:50):
but like, let's aim big andlet's get like really laser focused on this.
And I'm the one that's like everyday like, oh my god,
we hit this right. And I'mrealizing some of them really care and some
of them they don't care. Theydid their job, they felt good about
what they put together and they're excitedabout it, right, but maybe at
different levels of excitement, and soI constantly have to kind of do like

(41:13):
a reality check of but hey,Angel, this is what they're really excited
about, so you need to geton board with that, right and kind
of build that momentum with them.So it's constantly changing. Look, we're
human beings. It's not one processworks for everybody because we're all different and
we all respond to different things,and we all have to respond to what's
going on in our environment, whichchanges in a fast growing company all the

(41:35):
time. So it's a lot.It's a lot of just adapting. Yeah,
flexibility and adaptation one hundred percent withyou completely on that. I also
really appreciate this aggressive goal setting andthe need to refresh, like are we
doing It's funny we've been over theyears here inside Bombbomb we very often set

(41:55):
really really aggressive goals and gotten likeeighty percent of the way there, which
is, you know, well beyondone hundred percent of a more reasonable goal.
But so like this tension of likesetting it big so that we can
really see what we're capable of,but then also making sure that you don't
set yourself up to have like aculture of successful failure. I guess.
So it's you know, it's likeit's just this constant push pull tension,

(42:20):
and your point, like different teammembers respond to that differently. I mean
a lot of us are like,man, we just absolutely murdered that situation,
like in a good way. Youknow, we got to eighty five
percent a goal which was just insanelyambitious. It's like forty percent bigger than
any reasonable person would have set it. So it's successful, but to a
lot of people it feels like failure. It's really it's an interesting set of

(42:40):
tensions to manage. Yeah, itis that. That is a great different
sets of tensions. That's exactly right, because as a leader, you want
you want everybody to be at agood place. And and to your point,
that doesn't mean like not recognizing whensomething didn't work and like talking through
it. But there's a lot ofgood that can come from it. Not

(43:01):
all failures are bad, and Imean everyone knows that. Sometimes we forget
that in the moment when we're ina moment where we failed. But it
is a lot of tensions because youknow, you want you want your team
to be excited. You want everyoneto be moving in the same direction.
You want them all to care aboutthe right things. But sometimes they care
about different things and that's okay,and I'm having to learn that. It

(43:22):
doesn't mean they shouldn't care about thethings that I care about, right because
there are certain things we need todo and I need you to care about
it, but I also need tocare about the things that they care about.
Yeah, so good. I havereally really enjoyed this conversation. We're
not quite done yet, but Iwant to let folks know if you've enjoyed
this conversation with Angela as I have, I've got a couple other really great

(43:45):
CRO conversations if you're interested in thisalignment piece, the revops piece, et
cetera. Episode one was Sterling SnowWhen I interviewed him, he was cro
at Divvy. They've since been acquiredby Bill and that was really around aligning
sales, marketing and CS under acro Since one eighty eight with Sterling and

(44:07):
then the only episode where I everinterviewed three people at the same time was
episode one sixty seven with Brandy Starr, Mike Geller, and Rolli Keenan of
Tegrita. They wrote a book together, so I interviewed them about it and
we called that one the essential traitsof the next Generation CRO. So if
you're wondering if this type of alignmentis right for your organization, you're looking

(44:30):
around at who you have in house, maybe who's around in your immediate network,
they'll certainly give you some helpful ideasfor how to select and set up
that role a little bit. Sothat's episode one sixty seven with Brandy,
Mike and Raleigh. Before I letyou go, Angela, first, thank
you so much. This has beenan absolute joy. I love the way

(44:51):
that you approach your business. Ilove the way that you approach your team.
I love the way that you approachyour relationships with your customers. And
so with that, I'd love tohear a couple things from you. And
the first is to hear from youon someone you'd like to thank or mention
for having a positive impact on yourlife or career. Yeah, there are

(45:12):
so many people that have done that. You know, when I think about
mentors, I kind of put theminto buckets. Right. It's like,
if I had to think about theperson that had the biggest impact on my
life as me as a human being. It's my sweet dad who is no
longer here, but like he isin my head all day every day.
Right. If I think about somebodywhen it comes to how to manage money

(45:36):
and finances, I think of myuncle who has been investing in me,
like literally since I was little andteaching me how to do that. But
when I think about my career,there are so many people here, my
team that I work with, Theyinfluence who I am, They make me
better. My business partner Klay Sifford, previous employers that I worked with a

(46:00):
company called Inspirity, who just nailsthe understanding the human connection and servant leaderships.
I mean, there's so many differentpeople, and I lean on different
people for different aspects of my life. There are certain friends I lean into
who are like, hey, here'ssome mom advice, which I need all
the time raising kids. Right,So it's not just one. There's just
so many different people who've influenced differentaspects of my life. Really well done,

(46:23):
good round up, And that's reallya representation of what I've heard over
the two hundred and seventy ish episodesthat I've had the privilege of hosting from
family, to current team members,to know early mentors and people that were
anyway, that's really well done.I like that roundup. How about a
company or brand that delivers a greatexperience for you as a customer, that's

(46:45):
easy. I feel like I tellsomebody this at least once a week.
There are three brands that I amin love with, in love with and
for the same reason as I thoughtabout it, I don't know a few
months ago. I'm like, whyam I so like in everyone's face about
these brands, Like I'm offended ifthey don't love them like I do.
And it's because it's again, it'sthe way they make me feel. Each

(47:07):
of these companies. They make mefeel special. They make me feel important.
And that's that's a skill that youknow, whether you're whether it's a
colleague, a customer. If youcan leave somebody feeling special and feeling like
they were important, that's a that'sa good thing. I always tell my

(47:27):
daughter when picking her friends, I'mlike, pay attention to how you feel
after you're in a friend's presence.Do you feel more confident, happy,
joyful or are you leaving feeling insecureand frustrated? Lean into those that make
you feel that way, right,especially when you're picking your friends when you're
a teenager. But the three brandsthat I absolutely love are publics. And
yes, I pay more for mygroceries. To your point, I know

(47:50):
Kroger and Walmart and Albertson's and allthose are cheaper. I don't care.
I love it. They make mefeel special, they carry out my groceries,
They're kind to me, they're they'rejust good. Chick fil A,
same thing, and then same withDelta because I travel all the time.
They make me feel special and important. And the brands that do that for
their consumers, those are the onesthat win. Awesome. I love the
way that you rolled some mom advicein which is something you confess to needing,

(48:13):
but you also just provided and ina great context too. That was
really well done. I've heard Deltahere before, I've heard Chick fil A
several times here before. I havenot heard Publics. But I also appreciate
your call back to price being atertiary factor. Will pay more for things,
and I recognize that there's some privilegein that, but a lot of

(48:35):
us have that level of privilege insome aspect of our lives. So really
well done, Angela. If peoplehave reached it to this point in our
conversation, they may want to learnmore about you or learn more about Lasso.
Where would you send people who've enjoyedthis? Yeah, so I'm on
LinkedIn. That's probably where I amthe most so LinkedIn, and then obviously
our website, which is Lasso dotio. Awesome. I link all this

(48:57):
stuff up. I try to getall of it into your podcast player immediately
adjacent to this, and we certainlydo full write ups with video highlights at
bombomb dot com slash podcast. Thisis episode two seventy one with Angela Aleya.
Her last name is spelled A lEa. Find her on LinkedIn.
I am Ethan, butte last nameis spelled be eu t. Find me
on LinkedIn. We'd be happy toconnect, Angela. You're awesome and I

(49:20):
really enjoyed this conversation. I didtoo, Thanks so much for having me.
Ethan really enjoyed it. A marketingfuturist from Salesforce, the first salesperson
at HubSpot, an emotional intelligence expertwith seven US patents in the analysis of
facial coding data. These are justthree of more than a dozen experts featured
in the Wall Street Journal bestseller HumanCentered Communication, a Business Case against Digital

(49:45):
Pollution. The purpose of the bookto give you frameworks, strategies, and
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(50:08):
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