March 22, 2023 • 40 mins
In this episode, our host Anika Zubair chats with Jay Nathan, EVP and CCO at Higher Logic about how to manage churn in turbulent times.
If you’re currently looking for strategies to prevent and reduce customer churn - you’re not alone. With the gloomy outlook for the world economy, companies are preparing for the effects of an economic downturn. Hence increased focus on churn and how to handle it. But how do you decrease the risk of churn? How do you show ROI daily to your customers? And how are you working on expansion during renewals?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello everyone, I'm your host Anika Zub and welcome
back to the next episode of theCustomer Success Channel
podcast, brought to you by PlanHat, the Modern Customer
platform.
This podcast is created foranyone working in or interested
in the customer success field.
On this podcast, we will speakto leaders in the industry about
their experiences and theirdefinitions of customer success
(00:27):
and get their advice and bestpractices on how to run a c s
organization.
Today we are speaking to JayNathan who needs no
introduction, but for the fewpeople in the customer success
world that do not know who Jayis, he is the Chief Customer
Officer at Higher Logic and thefounder of one of the largest
(00:48):
online customer successcommunities, gain, grow, retain.
During his career, he has had anumber of functional executive
roles in customer success,product services and account
management.
He has built, LED and scaledSaaS companies over the years
and has worked at companies likeBlackboard.
People Matter and eventuallyfounded Customer Imperative,
which was sold to Higher Logic.
(01:09):
He is also a father plays theguitar, and today we will be
speaking to him about grossrevenue retention, otherwise
known as G R R and managingChurn during economically
turbulent times.
Welcome Jay to the podcast.
I'm so excited to have you heretoday.
Before we get into today'stopic, for those people who
don't know who you are, can youplease tell our listeners a
(01:30):
little bit more about yourself,how you started in customer
success, what you're doing rightnow?
Just give us a lowdown.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Thanks for having me on.
It's good to do this.
Finally, Anika, you and I haveknown each other for a long
time.
I am currently the ChiefCustomer Officer at Higher Logic
.
Higher Logic is a communityonline community software
platform company based out of onthe east coast of the US based
outta dc although we're allremote these days.
(01:57):
I joined Higher Logic in July of2020 when I sold my company to
Higher Logic and part of thattransaction was the gang brewer
Retain community became part ofHigher Logic at that point.
And if folks don't know whatthat is, the world's largest
community for customer successleaders.
And we have been running thatsince really the early days,
(02:19):
probably 2019 when we startedthe podcast and really got
active on LinkedIn and meetingwith the community and then
really launched it in earnestduring the pandemic.
And so that's been a, that'sbeen a fun part of the ride over
the past few years that we'vebeen on.
But yeah, so that's it.
I ha I live in South Carolinain, in the US I got three kids,
one wife whose birthday istoday.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Oh, happy birthday.
If she's listening to thishappy, belated birthday.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Yeah, she won't be listening to this.
She doesn't listen to mypodcasts.
,
Speaker 1 (02:49):
There's probably a lot for her to keep up with the
number of things you sharepodcast wise, webinar wise,
everything you're sharing.
I can imagine she's overwhelmedand probably ignores half the
big, she's
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Got better things to do.
She's got better things to do.
She's having customer success,but
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Awesome.
Awesome.
And you mentioned Ganger Retain,which is awesome.
It's a massive community.
I love the leadership officehours that are on Thursdays.
Anyone who wants to learn more,we'll we'll put it in the show
notes, but what kind of inspiredyou to start gain, grow, retain,
and also start your own businessand kind of focus in on the
customer success?
(03:24):
Cause I think your career has anumber of different ways it's
gone from product to accountmanagement.
What made you focus in customersuccess in gain, grow, retain?
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Yeah, I've been in the tech world for about 20
years a little over and I've hadroles and services.
I've had roles in productmanagement, like you mentioned.
In 2017 I left a company that wehad sold to another business and
decided that I wanted to try myhand at at at starting my own
company.
So I wanted to be anentrepreneur and we launched a
(03:54):
consulting business as manypeople do in that situation.
And we worked with B2B SaaScompanies, predominantly both
private equity, some VC backed,but a lot of private equity
later stage, more mature equitybacked companies.
And the cool part about that waswe got to see so many patterns,
whether it's ha with thego-to-market, looks like for
(04:14):
enterprise software with thecustomer experience was how that
was constructed post-sale.
And when you see it 50, ahundred, 200, 300 times, you
really start to recognizepatterns in in the world and how
it works in the, in those areas.
And so we did, and really backin 2018 and 2019 started just
(04:35):
sharing what we were learning onLinkedIn.
We didn't know anything abouthow to publish content on social
media back in 2018.
And when I say we, I'm talkingabout myself and Jeff, my
co-founder of getting routineand my business part partner at
the time.
And we just, we just startedsharing what we learned.
We decided to set our aside ourimposter syndrome and just start
(04:55):
writing and sharing and it justtook off And people were, I
think, excited for maybe somenew folks in the community who
were speaking out on topicsaround customer success at sas.
Fast forward, the pandemicstrikes the beginning end of
2019, early 2020 as everybodyknows.
And um, actually we got theinspiration from Anthony Canata
(05:18):
who you know yeah from Gainsightdays.
Anthony had put a post out onLinkedIn.
He said, Hey, I'm gonna start aoffice hours for marketers.
And Jeff and I were like, we'vegotta do that but for customer
success leaders.
And so we did it and that'sactually how the gang very
retained community started wasthrough the office hours that
you mentioned.
Yeah, yeah.
Which we held every Thursday at11 or 11:30 AM and we still run
(05:40):
those today.
It's every other week now, buttho those three years later are,
are still running and peopleengage and learn from one
another.
And, but yeah, it's come a longway just in, in the past three
or four years.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Love those office hours.
I still remember joining, Ithink it was either the first or
the second one in March orApril, 2020.
I think it was monthly backthen, if I remember correctly.
Or maybe it went to weekly cuzeveryone had the time to do it
weekly as well back then.
But I remember how valuable itwas connecting the larger
customer success leadershipcommunity because I think me
(06:12):
being in London, there's a lotof people out in Silicon Valley,
a lot of people all throughoutthe us all throughout the world
that were able to come togetherand share collective ideas,
which I, I loved back then.
And again, like you said, itstarted as one post, one webinar
of like let's see how manypeople we can just bring
together now.
I just think of it like yousaid, gang grow, retain is
(06:33):
everywhere on LinkedIn.
I don't go a day, maybe even anhour without saying you or Jeff
post something on LinkedIn.
So I absolutely appreciate allthe thought leadership and the
content you guys share aroundcustomer success growing into a
CS leadership position and CSleadership in general.
But now that you've, lookingback on it, hindsight's 2020 and
(06:53):
you guys have had a few years ofgrowing this community.
Are there any learnings or anysecrets or anything you wanna
share with our listeners?
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Yeah, sure.
First of all, there are a lot ofgreat customer success
communities out there that youcan learn from and they cater to
different parts of the market soto speak.
Some are more focused onindividual contributors, some
are more focused on directors inthe mid-level manager role and
then some are focused onexecutives and yeah and some are
(07:20):
focused on ops, right?
There's so many different areasand there's a community, almost
like a niche community foreverybody out there if you don't
find what you're looking for onD G R.
But I think the big thing for usalways was whether it was on
office hours or whether it's theonline community or whether
we're sending an email withcontent, it's how do we first
(07:41):
provide as much value as we canto the members?
We, we almost to a fault neverask, try not to ask for anything
in.
We don't wanna be seen as amarketer or as a marketing type
of organ organization.
This truly is for the benefit ofthe community.
And yes, we would like everybodyto know that ganger TA is
(08:03):
associated with higher logic,but I think there's a precedent
in the world right now forespecially technology companies,
they really get it to add sortof a media arm or a community
arm to what they're doing from amarketing standpoint.
Outreach bought a company calledSales Hacker, which we model our
acquisition off of.
Um, HubSpot bought the hustleand created the HubSpot podcast
(08:25):
network.
So there there's a, we're a veryteeny tiny version of some of
those acquisitions that havehappened over the past few
years.
But e even salesforce.com nowhas a full-blown media arm.
They're using media to educatetheir market and also to to
associate with with thebusinesses that they're trying
to sell too.
(08:45):
So that that's number oneprovide value.
I think the number two actuallynumber two is ask for feedback a
lot.
We were just talking about theoffice hours calls after that
first office hours call, we dida panel, I don't know if you
were on the first one or not,but there was a panel of four
like really cool guests and weasked for feedback after that
and everybody was like, oh thatwas great but we'd like a chance
(09:06):
to talk too.
And Jeff and I were like Okay,we can facilitate a discussion
instead of a panel.
We did that the next week and itgrew a little bit more.
It went from 50 people to ahundred people and then we asked
for feedback and people keptgiving us like, okay, you could
tweak this one thing and it'd bea little bit better.
And we kept making thoseadjustments along the way, some
of them subtle, some of'em notso subtle, but we iterated
quickly based on feedback fromthe people to whom we were
(09:30):
trying to provide value.
And so I think that worked.
And then the third thing I wouldsay is we've really always tried
to put other people on apedestal and to hold them up.
We have a really engaged earlyadopter founding member kind of
group that's still today.
There's hundreds of people withGR on their LinkedIn profiles as
founding members and then eventoday people like Jeff and I
(09:51):
don't run office hours anymore.
Somebody from the community runsit every week.
Yes.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
I love how it's become like super user community
basically you've created peoplewho buy into the belief of Gira
as a community buy into beingthat founding member.
I still remember when everyoneannounced I'm a founding member
of Gain gro Retain and I waslike, oh how awesome that this
is becoming more lack of betterwords official and was just
signing up or not only justsigning up, people wanted to
(10:18):
take ownership.
Like you said, people wanted torun your newsletters or webinars
or podcasts.
They wanted to mess for theworld that they were doing in
customer success.
And I think Gainer retain gavethem that platform and that was
awesome to see cuz there was alot of people coming outta the
woodwork that were keen but justdidn't know how to do it.
But then there was a platformlike the online community that
(10:39):
that helped them.
So that's awesome and I totallycan back you up on the feedback
side cuz I have received anumber of feedback forms from
gain, go retain every time Iattend an office hours or
anything.
And it's never done in the senseof give us feedback now it's
more like we wanna improvethings for you so please tell us
how we can do it.
So it's awesome to see that youguys really live and breathe the
(11:00):
ethos that you say you're doing.
So that's awesome and I wannakeep going on gang grow, retain,
but I know we need to chat aboutthis topic and I think it's a
very topical discussion thatwe're gonna have today because
there's tough times in the worldright now when recording this
Silicon Valley bank just wentthrough everything that it's
going through.
We're still wondering what'sgonna happen there.
(11:20):
Tech companies are reallyfeeling it and like equally so
are the companies and customersthat we are serving as sas, B2B
tech companies.
So I think my first kind ofquestion to you is how is your
team supporting your customersright now?
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Yeah, it's just crazy to see what's happened.
The world today looks a littlebit different than it did just
last Thursday and part of it isfor us we're just continuing to
block and tackle and put ourbest foot forward.
Every company right now shouldbe focusing as much as they can
on value back to what we talkedabout with G G R.
(11:55):
Like how are you not onlyconfirming that you're providing
value but sharing that in aquantitative way.
And a lot of people talk aboutroi.
We are creating reports rightnow for our customers that help
them understand like, hey,here's what the engagement has
been in your communities overthe past 12 months.
Here's what that means to yourbusiness as far as we can tell.
(12:17):
Let's have a conversation aboutthis.
So I think a lot of times ourchampions and our customers need
support telling the storyinternally to their
stakeholders, right?
You're not always gonna get achance to have that conversation
directly as a vendor to thepeople who are making decisions
or helping make decisions behindthe scenes.
(12:37):
And we're really focused on notonly having those conversations
but having content that backsthat up in the form of, of a
brief R o ROI email or a briefROI presentation that we can
actually provide and let themcirculate and then we have a
conversation with them andenable them to go have that
conversation internally.
So I think that's one key thing.
(12:58):
We also are, from a renewalstandpoint, we are working very,
this is more of a balanced, likehow do we win together kind of
approach.
But how do we present ourcustomers with renewal options
that give them some control overtheir pricing and their, the
length of the term that they'resigning up for at their renewal,
(13:18):
their payment terms.
How do we give them some ofthose options without, without
breaking our own bank at thesame time?
So we've been working on thesort of the structure of our
renewal plans so that ourcustomers have the choice they
can renew for a year or they canrenew for three years and there
are different parametersassociated with that.
So they can do what's best fortheir business but they have
(13:38):
choice.
There's a commercial side of it.
Then there's the value, the truecustomer success side of it.
And then there's the day-to-daywe continue to provide great
support, we continue to providegreat implementation and
onboarding services to ourcustomers to help them get up
and running and live on theironline community.
A lot of it is what we allshould be doing anyway.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
Definitely.
And I think there's a lot oflearnings from a few years ago
when this kind of happened allover again and I think back of
when the pandemic first hit offand then we were all thinking
how are we gonna manage churn ina time where we're not sure
what's gonna come next?
And I think that's a thought onthe top of mind for all CS
leaders but also Boes or yourfinance team are really
(14:20):
concerned about gross revenueretention.
How do we make sure we maintainthe current amount of customers?
Of course they wanna grow it, ofcourse they want more revenue,
but how are we gonna make surethat we just don't have a whole
bunch of churn?
So you mentioned two ways thatyou guys are managing the
current situation.
Is there anything that you guysare doing to really tackle or
(14:41):
block churn actively as well?
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Yeah, it truly is.
It's an account by account, Icall it hand hand combat, right?
It's really having a plan forevery single customer.
Especially if you look at yourtop customers, you have to
segment and I think we'll talk alittle bit more about
segmentation later, but you haveto segment your customers.
And so my push and what we'redoing with our team here is
(15:04):
we're looking at who are ourmost, who are the customers that
it's gonna hurt the worst if welose it, right?
I won't say the most valuablebecause all of our customers are
valuable to us, but which arethe ones that we cannot afford
to lose?
What is your budget for churnfor the year?
Everybody's got one, right?
Every finance team knows or hasa projection for how much churn.
(15:24):
I would encourage customersuccess leaders to really try to
understand and internalize whatthat number is.
Help manage to it, right?
Be a business leader, not just acustomer leader.
And say, okay, if you've got abudget for x million dollars of
churn this year, hopefully youwon't have that much, but
depending on the size of yourbusiness you will.
Here's how we can reduce that by10%.
If you can make a just a one or2% difference in churn in the
(15:47):
course of a year, it's actuallya really powerful result for
your business.
So it's hand in hand combathaving a plan for every single
one of your larger accounts,having backup with an executive
sponsor or someone else to flankthe customer success manager.
And then making sure that valuestory gets told to every single
one of those customers.
Just super critical.
Right now we're alsoimplementing in the middle of
(16:10):
implementing a strategy that I'mtalking about a lot right now,
which is just scale customersuccess.
And what that means is we'rebuilding programs that sit
around the customer successprogram that provide enablement,
they provide networkingopportunities for your customers
and they provide lots of contentand training resources so that
customers can do more self-serveif that's the way they wanna get
(16:32):
help from your company.
So there's a combination ofthings that we're working on to
make sure that today ourcustomers are well taken care
of, but that also that that thatwill be our strategy going
forward as well.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
Definitely.
And I can completely agree aboutthe being heard or understanding
your churn or attrition number.
I think that's super importantright now and always I think
that's something that you shouldhave top of mind as a CS leader.
But one thing I'm, I would addto that is ensuring that you
have transparency with yourteams as well.
Because I think we all say hey,we wanna reduce churn by that
(17:03):
one to 2%, like you justmentioned, it'll make a huge
business difference.
But I think a lot of peopleduring these times, they wanna
find a way to support and thatincludes your customer success
managers.
They wanna know how they canhelp the business overall as
well.
And if you're transparent about,hey, if we have a million, let's
say million cuz we were usingthat number a million in churn
this year, this is what we cando to lessen that one to 2% and
(17:25):
also keep a tracker going of howmuch you've actually gone to
that churn marker.
So everyone is very clear,transparent, aware of times are
tough, but we are making everychange we can or handling each
account individually to reallysee success and reduce that
churn.
I wanna come back to yourrenewals part because we talked
a little bit about that.
You mentioned you have optionsnow to your customers, which is
(17:49):
great.
I think that you're stillputting the customer in the
driver's seat of how they chooseto work with you as a software
vendor.
But how are you implementingthat?
Tell me a little bit more aboutit.
What are like the strategicchanges that you're doing
internally to be able to havethat renewals program with
multiple options there?
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Yeah, absolutely.
So this is, uh, so actually Iwould say this is probably the,
one of the, one of the mostimpactful projects or programs
that a customer success leadercould work on with their finance
team is really to define therenewal.
Maybe like renewal go to marketis how you think about it
depending on the pricing plan.
(18:26):
So every many companies increasetheir prices every year, both
like their list prices for newcustomers and even your
day-to-day contracts will havenominal price increases every
year.
When you look at across yourentire program, you can make
some pretty significant changesthat drive retention.
If you can get a customer toretain, or I'm sorry to renew
(18:47):
for two to three years, thenthat's a renewal.
You don't have to actuallyfacilitate next year.
A lot of auto, a lot ofrenewals, autorenew, right?
So that, that's a job numberone.
But if you give a customer to doa three year, if you give them
an option to do a three yearagreement, then that's two years
you can go without having todrive a renewal.
You will get automatic lift inyour retention by having longer
(19:10):
term contracts.
That's something that the mathjust works on.
And so that's a big focus ofours.
And so if that's the case, thenwhat we wanna do is we wanna
have our customers have thechoice of going to that longer
term contract and they getbasically pricing breaks for
doing that.
And so we're putting options infront of them that give them
(19:30):
that choice.
If a customer comes to us andsays, Hey, we've been on an
annual payment plan and we'rehitting hard times, maybe we're
part of the Silicon Valley banksituation and we are unsure
about our cash flow for the nextsix months, we'd like to be on a
quarterly plan, then we'llentertain that.
One of the things, maybe alesser used tool that I think
customer success teams couldleverage more and renewal teams
(19:54):
if they're separate, is just anearly renewal.
So if a customer comes to youand says, Hey, we're in
financial trouble and I need tocut back and you're like, we
could either lose the customeror we could stick to our guns,
right?
And stick to our originalpricing strategy.
And a lot of times finance teamsdon't want to do a lot of
customization, right?
Because they've got scale issuesto deal with themselves.
(20:15):
But if you go to them and say,Hey, well we'd be happy to renew
if you need a quarterly payment,let's do an early renewal, okay?
And if we can get you to committo the next two to three years,
I have a lot more sway in what Ican get done for you with my
finance team and the otherbusiness leaders within my
company because you've made alonger term commitment to me.
So I can make more commitmentsto you in exchange for that.
(20:38):
Does that make sense?
It
Speaker 1 (20:39):
Makes complete sense.
And I wanna play a little bit ofdevil's advocate here cuz we
just talked about proving valueearlier and you said a lot of
your renewal programs and thisentire strategy is to drive
long-term retention, which isagain critical.
The multi-year contract issomething that not only vendors
love because you don't have towork on the renewal next year,
but I think customers enjoy thattoo.
(21:01):
Cuz again, you don't have to gothrough procurement every year
or don't have to go through thecycle of reviewing a contract.
But I think in times like this,customers are hesitant to commit
to two to three year contractsbecause like you just said,
where is cashflow coming from?
Are we burning too much?
Should we reduce software costs,et cetera?
So how are you providing that ro I piece that we talked about
(21:24):
earlier every day or everyhowever often you're speaking to
your customers and making surethat they fully understand that
hey, if I'm committing to tohigher logic for the next two,
three years, I'm seeing valuetoday and now Yeah
Speaker 2 (21:38):
That that's the precursor everything, right?
You, there's no way to sign alonger term agreement if you
don't feel like you're gettingor you don't see the value in
the product that you'reutilizing.
So yeah, it's part of, that'swhy customer success managers
don't need to be doing support.
I talk about this all the time,right?
Because if a CSM is gettingdrawn into handling support
(21:59):
issues or even doing theimplementation, I believe those
are two separate things in mostcompanies, not all, but most
then you know you're not gonnahave the time to tell the value
story and to ensure that you'veenabled your sta your champions
and your stakeholders to, totell that value story.
If you're feeling supportissues, then you also don't have
time to strategize with yourcustomer on how to use the
(22:21):
product better to, to me it, itall begins with the value
conversation, like we said.
But the multi-year renewal isjust a, is just an, it's an
outcome of that value beingrealized.
Not every customer is gonna takeyou up on it and that's okay.
But it's good to give them thoseoptions because some will come
back and say, hey, we need adifferent pricing structure.
(22:44):
And then you have an option toautomatically go back and say, I
can do that for you.
However, it just requires you tomake a longer term commitment to
us, then I can work that out foryou.
That's a much differentconversation than saying now we
just do one year renewals andsorry, but the price uplift is
what the price uplift is.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Yeah, fair.
Those options make completesense.
And speaking tactically orsomething that someone can take
away to their own organization,I think you mentioned it earlier
in our conversation aboutdifferent ways that you're
providing value.
You mentioned a one pager orsomething you're doing with a
tactical tip.
Is there anything you can sharewith our listeners that you guys
are doing to prove value evennow when times are tough as
(23:23):
well?
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Yeah, the they using data to tell an ROI story is job
number one and with your largercustomers, you either have to do
that for them or given the dataand the tools that they need to
do it for themselves.
If they need to tailor andcustomize that.
So that, that's job number one.
Job number two is back to thisidea of scale Customer success
programs part of the value thatwe provide as vendors, almost
(23:47):
every SaaS company is aspecialist in some way, whether
you're a horizontal or avertical type of solution.
We're a vertical solution forB2B tech companies, for online
community that integrates withtheir L M S and events and
everything else.
So we know a lot about that.
We've been doing it for a longtime.
We interact with a bunch ofdifferent organizations who are
(24:09):
all the same or similarorganizations to one another
doing the same type of thingwith our products every week,
every month, every quarter.
So when we talk about scaledprograms and our own customer
community, that's also a way ofproviding value and it's value
outside of the product.
Some of it's inside, right?
You're gonna learn how to usethe product better, but some of
(24:30):
it is, hey, I'm gonna connectyou with a network of people who
sit in a similar seat to whatyou sit in and you can learn
from them, you can exchangenotes with them, you can see the
benchmarks and understand howyou're performing relative to
your peers in the same industrybecause we've helped facilitate
that.
So there there's value to beprovided on a one-to-one basis
(24:51):
and then there's a lot of valueto be private provided on a one
to mini basis as well.
Like we did when we firststarted gang grow, retain,
right?
We brought everybody together,let everybody learn from one
another.
We were just the facilitators.
And I think that concept worksin a B2B SaaS company as well
Speaker 1 (25:06):
For sure.
And I think what you just saidshould be remembered or
hopefully resonates really wellwith our listeners is around
make the math make sense foryour customer.
Because I think it's that simpleand I think that sometimes we
really get caught up in the usecase and the best practice and
everything that we always keepsharing all the time and not
(25:27):
saying don't stop doing that.
You definitely should.
That should be a part of your,your toolbox of tricks that
you're presenting to yourcustomers.
But I sometimes really find itamazing that we don't think
about the math.
If we do the math for thebusinesses that work with us, it
almost makes sense and it alsomakes sense for us to even have
(25:47):
upsell conversations possiblybecause the math makes complete
sense.
And that's what I wanted to askyou a little bit about as well.
I know we've been talking aboutmaintaining and gross revenue
retention and just trying tomake sure we're managing churn.
We don't live in a stagnantworld and businesses are always
trying to grow.
Have you guys thought aboutexpansions during renewals at
this time?
(26:08):
Everyone's watching every spendright now and every business.
So I know that it's a toughquestion to ask, but how are you
guys thinking about that whilein those renewal discussions?
Speaker 2 (26:19):
Yeah, it's at renewal and it's throughout the year as
well.
You, we have add-on servicesthat you can add into your
subscription anytime and you hitthe nail on the head.
It's really about additionalvalue.
It's not, yes, it is probablygoing to result in an additional
booking for your company, butit's really about the additional
(26:40):
value that the customer isgetting.
So if you stick with that asyou're north star, then you're
in good shape.
Customers that are buying,selling into your customer base
is a great retention strategy.
Customers that are buying morefrom you are not leaving you
anytime soon.
Okay.
So really if you have additionalservices to offer, then you
should be having thoseconversations with your customer
(27:02):
all the time in a consultativeway, just like selling should be
in my opinion period.
And that's not detracting fromthe relationship at all.
That's actually enhancing therelationship cuz you're looking
for ways to provide new value.
For
Speaker 1 (27:15):
Sure.
And you mentioned in our prepcall for this that you think
selling is a retention strategy.
And you just said that sellingshould be consultative as well.
So can you expand on this?
What do you mean by selling isconsult consultative as well as
a retention STR strategy?
Speaker 2 (27:32):
Even so I, I run our sales team for the part of the
business that I ever overseehere at Higher Logic as well.
And one of my daily pushes toour team is you need to be a
consultant here, not asalesperson.
You need to be a consultant, youneed to help teach what is it
that this customer is trying tofigure out?
What are they trying to learn?
Because even in a sales role,and not to diminish it, but
(27:53):
sales people have a uniquepurview, right?
They have a unique vantage pointin that they get to see a lot of
different companies trying to dothe same thing.
We should never forget thatwhether you're in sales, whether
you're in customer success, evenit's the customer you're talking
to only really, it's probablylooking at their own
environment, right?
And what they know.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
Very fair.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
We are all looking at the landscape, we're seeing all
the trees in the forest, right?
And how people do thingsdifferently and what works best
and what doesn't work at all.
And it doesn't matter who youare.
If you're a customer facing inany way, you have valued offer a
customer.
That's a soapbox moment there.
.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
I was like, where are we going with this Jay?
But I hear you go, I hear you onthe consultative side because I
think what, no matter what partof the business you are in, you
need to be that person that isthere to advise based on
everything, but also hone in onwhat that customer needs at that
exact moment.
Which is I think where you'regoing with this.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Absolutely.
That's right.
And sometimes your are, yourcustomers are gonna have options
to buy more for you that fill,that fit their needs.
Even now there, there's a, Iheard somebody talking the other
day and I'm sure this is publicinformation somewhere, so I
don't mind saying it out loud,but HubSpot, right?
Massive company.
They're a majority of theirsales this year will probably
(29:11):
come from their base, maybe nota majority, but a significant
portion may be more significantthan in years past because they
have tons of value to provide,they have multiple products,
right?
That could help their customersbecome more efficient and more
effective right now.
And if you could do that and youcould prove that out during
these consultative or sailingkind of discussions, then you
(29:35):
have an opportunity to expandwith your customer and it's a,
and once you do then you know,you rest assured they're
probably gonna stick around fora little while.
While, while they try that.
So it, I think selling is agreat retention strategy more so
than support.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
Being consultative can never hurt neither yourself
nor the customer.
Being consultative means beingcurious and asking the right
questions at the right time.
But also it's again, presentingyour customer with options based
on the value that they're seeingwithin your product.
Rather than just going in withthat one tunnel vision mindset
of, Hey, I'm gonna present youwhat I think is best, rather
(30:10):
than coming to the table withlet's discuss what makes best
sense for you.
So I think that's a great way tolook at things in general, like
you said, across multipledifferent departments in the
business, but especially incustomer success.
And that's what we're talkingabout here today.
You mentioned earlier aroundsegmentation, which I do wanna
touch upon as well.
And I think times when times getdifficult or tricky,
(30:33):
segmentation is extremelyimportant cuz you really have to
decide where's fight or flightwhen it comes to certain
customers.
And every customer is valuable,like you said, and everyone is
important to every business.
But you really do have to figureout what makes sense for your
business when it comes tosegmentation and churn.
So how are you guys segmentingcustomers right now?
(30:54):
Is it any different to othertimes?
Are you guys doing somethingdifferent right now and how are
you dealing with potential badfit customers?
Speaker 2 (31:03):
Oh, interesting.
So no, our segmentation strategyreally hasn't changed all that
much just for this point intime.
We, our core segmentation is acombination of the size of the
business and how much they spendwith us.
I am not a big believer insegmenting only by a r r, in
fact, I don't like that at
Speaker 1 (31:20):
All.
I think there's so manydifferent verticals that you can
segment on and it should AR isthe easy way, but it shouldn't
be the only way
Speaker 2 (31:27):
That, that's exactly right and that's why most people
do, it's because they have thedata.
But what I've found to bespecially effective in my years
of doing this is that numberone, you align with the
segmentation that the sales andgo-to-market teams use.
So that's important because theneverybody is speaking the same
language.
So if I say enterprise, my salesteam knows what that is, my
(31:51):
customer team knows what thatis, we're all talking about the
same thing, right?
Then you can have differentsegmentations within their, in
enterprise, commercial,mid-market, smb, whatever
monikers you use, they actuallydescribe the size of the
organization that you're tryingto work with.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
Yeah.
That's like an external, almostexternal segmentation, just
understanding cross-functionallywhat kind a customer this is,
Speaker 2 (32:14):
What kind of business it is.
Exactly.
And then secondarily, yeah, youhave to look at the ARR too,
right?
Because the, you've gottaprioritize those accounts that
are the better, really thebiggest weights in your a r
pool, you've gotta keep themsatisfied.
Increasingly, we are looking forways to bring programs that
scale to our customers becausewhat we've learned is that you
(32:38):
can have a high-touch customersuccess program for any portion
of your customer base, right?
Usually for the enterpriseaccounts is how folks do it or
the higher end of themid-market, but it doesn't mean
it's higher quality if a, if thecustomer is only getting their
information from one person A CS M, right?
(33:00):
As to how to use the product,how to get better at it, what
the best practices are, what thebenchmarks are, that person only
has what they've seen.
And if you have somebody, Godforbid, that's not performing
well, then that actually throwsthe relationship at risk with
your, with those, with thecustomers that they manage.
So increasingly what we'relearning is that if you build
(33:22):
scaled programs for new useronboarding, for best practices,
for um, for even the value kindof workshop type thing where you
could say, Hey, here's ourmethodology.
We're gonna teach it toeverybody at the same time and
we're gonna let 25 customers beon one call and talk about it
together, how they're making thecase internally using our
(33:44):
template, right?
So if you're doing things likethat, what we're seeing is that
enterprise customers willparticipate in that just as much
as mid-market or smb, yoursmaller customer tiers.
And the benefit there is thatit, it removes a little bit of a
burden from the CSM to have todo every single one of those
conversations.
And it also increases thequality because if I'm running a
(34:05):
new user onboarding session onceevery two weeks, I'm honing that
in, I'm sorry, for multiplecustomers at a time, like a
webinar style thing, that thatprogram is getting better and
better over time.
It's getting tuned it, we knowhow to run it, we can measure
the quality of it cuz it's onlyone program, it's one session
(34:27):
that we're monitoring ratherthan a leader having to keep
track of what 40 or 50 or 60CSMs are doing individually with
their accounts.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
That makes sense though.
Having programs overarching thatare the same, that are applied
to multiple CSMs.
So you're looking at the resultsof the program rather than the
results of individual csm.
So you can tweak the program,like you said, the scaled
program that you're building.
So that makes complete sense
Speaker 2 (34:51):
Now.
Now you were talking aboutsegmentation though.
Yeah,
Speaker 1 (34:53):
Yeah.
I wanna know more about howyou're handling that when it
comes to churn as well.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
Yeah.
Okay.
So the more interesting way Ithink to segment customers, you
have to have that baselinesegmentation.
So the market that they sit inand the how much they spend with
you today, that's our coresegmentation.
Outside of that, we use othersegments, we call'em cohorts,
but what we do is we look atcustomers based on their usage
(35:19):
pattern, based on the marketthat they're in, based on their
situation that would qualify foran expansion of some sort.
So do they need to go from ourcorporate plan to our enterprise
plan or do they, are they a goodcandidate to buy or add-on
services that we do some of thework for them to manage and
operate their community?
So those are different segmentsthat we utilize for different
(35:39):
purposes.
The cool thing about that isthat not only does it help keep
you focused, if you have astrategy to go expand, you
really wanna be spinning yourenergy where that expansion is
really likely as opposed to justspreading and spraying and
praying across everybody.
And then you can also report onthose strategies very clearly
and simply to your board.
(36:00):
So if we think 10% of ourcustomer base could buy this
additional solution, then we canactually say, okay, there are a
thousand customers in thatsegment and here's how many
we've, here's the approach we'regonna go use to tackle them.
Here's how many we've talked to.
You can almost treat it like asales, like a funnel at that
point.
That way your stakeholders don'tthink there's 10,000 customers
(36:21):
that can buy that.
They know that there's just athousand and you can use'em.
Uh, you can methodically goafter that segment report on
your success rate, your failurerate, what the phenomenon are,
they're that are either helpingyou be successful or, or where
you're not being successful.
It becomes very clear, right?
So these sub-segments, based onwhere you go next from a product
(36:42):
standpoint are important afteryou get the main segmentation
down, which assign, which helpsyou assign resources to your
accounts.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
Jay, we could keep talking about this probably for
hours, and I wanna be mindfulthat we need to wrap up with the
quickfire discussion part.
So I want to ask you these nextfew questions.
And my challenge to you is tomake sure that you try to answer
them in one sentence or less.
Are you ready?
Speaker 2 (37:07):
I'm ready.
Okay,
Speaker 1 (37:08):
Let's do it.
First question is, what do youthink is next for the CS
industry?
Speaker 2 (37:12):
The CS industry is going to have to scale better
than it has in the past.
Speaker 1 (37:18):
The next question is, what is it your favorite app on
your phone or your laptop thatyou cannot live without?
Speaker 2 (37:25):
Oh my gosh, I didn't do my homework on this question.
Let's come back.
You know what, I'm just gonnasay LinkedIn just because I
probably use LinkedIn app morethan anything else on my phone.
So
Speaker 1 (37:34):
Yeah, I could see that,.
The next question is, which SaaSproduct could you not live
without as a CS professional?
Speaker 2 (37:42):
One of my favorite products is Gong.
I always talk about Gong andit's just because I have ready
access to every conversation,almost every conversation that
my team is having.
And I learned so much bylistening to those.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
And my next question is, what sort of compensation
should A C S M get?
Should it be just a base salaryor a base salary?
What's some sort of variablecommission part?
Speaker 2 (38:05):
Oh, one sentence really on that question, Anika,
you
Speaker 1 (38:09):
Gotta try.
Not everyone's successful, butyou gotta try.
Okay,
Speaker 2 (38:11):
Here we go.
I think if you don't have somekind of direct selling
responsibility in a quota, thenyou should potentially be only
on a base salary.
If you do have a quota, then Ilike base plus commission.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
Interesting.
You're the first one to bring injust base salary of my recent
guests.
So interesting that you saidthat.
And final question for today is,what is your favorite part of
customer success?
Speaker 2 (38:35):
It's customer success is really not a function as much
as it is an outcome, right?
And that outcome is the, it'sthe nation of doing a lot of
different things, right?
From providing a great product,providing great onboarding,
providing great support, andthen giving your customers best
practices, benchmarks in otherways of getting better at what
(38:57):
they do, not just using yourproduct.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Thank you so much, Shay, for sharing all your tips
and tricks around how to managegross revenue, retention, churn,
and I think the main takeawayfor me at least, was providing
value at all times to yourcustomers and make the ROI clear
as often as possible.
If our listeners have any otherquestions or wanna continue the
conversation, where's the bestplace to get ahold of you?
Speaker 2 (39:21):
Sure.
You can check me out onLinkedIn, of course.
Jay Nathan, and then I have anewsletter as well.
You can check that out.
Customer success.io is where youcan find that.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
Ooh, I'll have to, I have, I didn't know that.
I'll have to check that out.
But thank you Jay, so much foryour time.
I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
Thank you, Anika.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
Thank you for listening to the Customer
Success Channel podcast today.
We hope you learned somethingnew to take back to your team
and your company.
If you found value in ourpodcast, please make sure to
give us a positive review andmake sure you subscribe to our
channel as we release newpodcasts every month.
Also, if you have any topicsthat you would like me to
discuss in the future or youwould like to be a guest on the
(40:01):
podcast, please feel free toreach out.
All my contact details are inthis show notes.
Thanks again for listening andtune in next time for more on
customer success.
Hello everyone, I'm your host Anika Zub and welcome
back to the next episode of theCustomer Success Channel
podcast, brought to you by PlanHat, the Modern Customer
platform.
This podcast is created foranyone working in or interested
in the customer success field.
On this podcast, we will speakto leaders in the industry about
their experiences and theirdefinitions of customer success
(00:27):
and get their advice and bestpractices on how to run a c s
organization.
Today we are speaking to JayNathan who needs no
introduction, but for the fewpeople in the customer success
world that do not know who Jayis, he is the Chief Customer
Officer at Higher Logic and thefounder of one of the largest
(00:48):
online customer successcommunities, gain, grow, retain.
During his career, he has had anumber of functional executive
roles in customer success,product services and account
management.
He has built, LED and scaledSaaS companies over the years
and has worked at companies likeBlackboard.
People Matter and eventuallyfounded Customer Imperative,
which was sold to Higher Logic.
(01:09):
He is also a father plays theguitar, and today we will be
speaking to him about grossrevenue retention, otherwise
known as G R R and managingChurn during economically
turbulent times.
Welcome Jay to the podcast.
I'm so excited to have you heretoday.
Before we get into today'stopic, for those people who
don't know who you are, can youplease tell our listeners a
(01:30):
little bit more about yourself,how you started in customer
success, what you're doing rightnow?
Just give us a lowdown.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Thanks for having me on.
It's good to do this.
Finally, Anika, you and I haveknown each other for a long
time.
I am currently the ChiefCustomer Officer at Higher Logic
.
Higher Logic is a communityonline community software
platform company based out of onthe east coast of the US based
outta dc although we're allremote these days.
(01:57):
I joined Higher Logic in July of2020 when I sold my company to
Higher Logic and part of thattransaction was the gang brewer
Retain community became part ofHigher Logic at that point.
And if folks don't know whatthat is, the world's largest
community for customer successleaders.
And we have been running thatsince really the early days,
(02:19):
probably 2019 when we startedthe podcast and really got
active on LinkedIn and meetingwith the community and then
really launched it in earnestduring the pandemic.
And so that's been a, that'sbeen a fun part of the ride over
the past few years that we'vebeen on.
But yeah, so that's it.
I ha I live in South Carolinain, in the US I got three kids,
one wife whose birthday istoday.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Oh, happy birthday
If she's listening to thishappy, belated birthday
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Yeah, she won't be listening to this.
She doesn't listen to mypodcasts.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
There's probably a lot for her to keep up with the
number of things you sharepodcast wise, webinar wise,
everything you're sharing.
I can imagine she's overwhelmedand probably ignores half the
big, she's
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Got better things to do.
She's got better things to do.
She's having customer success,but
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Awesome.
Awesome.
And you mentioned Ganger Retain,which is awesome.
It's a massive community.
I love the leadership officehours that are on Thursdays.
Anyone who wants to learn more,we'll we'll put it in the show
notes, but what kind of inspiredyou to start gain, grow, retain,
and also start your own businessand kind of focus in on the
customer success?
(03:24):
Cause I think your career has anumber of different ways it's
gone from product to accountmanagement.
What made you focus in customersuccess in gain, grow, retain?
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Yeah, I've been in the tech world for about 20
years a little over and I've hadroles and services.
I've had roles in productmanagement, like you mentioned.
In 2017 I left a company that wehad sold to another business and
decided that I wanted to try myhand at at at starting my own
company.
So I wanted to be anentrepreneur and we launched a
(03:54):
consulting business as manypeople do in that situation.
And we worked with B2B SaaScompanies, predominantly both
private equity, some VC backed,but a lot of private equity
later stage, more mature equitybacked companies.
And the cool part about that waswe got to see so many patterns,
whether it's ha with thego-to-market, looks like for
(04:14):
enterprise software with thecustomer experience was how that
was constructed post-sale.
And when you see it 50, ahundred, 200, 300 times, you
really start to recognizepatterns in in the world and how
it works in the, in those areas.
And so we did, and really backin 2018 and 2019 started just
(04:35):
sharing what we were learning onLinkedIn.
We didn't know anything abouthow to publish content on social
media back in 2018.
And when I say we, I'm talkingabout myself and Jeff, my
co-founder of getting routineand my business part partner at
the time.
And we just, we just startedsharing what we learned.
We decided to set our aside ourimposter syndrome and just start
(04:55):
writing and sharing and it justtook off And people were, I
think, excited for maybe somenew folks in the community who
were speaking out on topicsaround customer success at sas.
Fast forward, the pandemicstrikes the beginning end of
2019, early 2020 as everybodyknows.
And um, actually we got theinspiration from Anthony Canata
(05:18):
who you know yeah from Gainsightdays.
Anthony had put a post out onLinkedIn.
He said, Hey, I'm gonna start aoffice hours for marketers.
And Jeff and I were like, we'vegotta do that but for customer
success leaders.
And so we did it and that'sactually how the gang very
retained community started wasthrough the office hours that
you mentioned.
Yeah, yeah.
Which we held every Thursday at11 or 11:30 AM and we still run
(05:40):
those today.
It's every other week now, buttho those three years later are,
are still running and peopleengage and learn from one
another.
And, but yeah, it's come a longway just in, in the past three
or four years.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Love those office hours.
I still remember joining, Ithink it was either the first or
the second one in March orApril, 2020.
I think it was monthly backthen, if I remember correctly.
Or maybe it went to weekly cuzeveryone had the time to do it
weekly as well back then.
But I remember how valuable itwas connecting the larger
customer success leadershipcommunity because I think me
(06:12):
being in London, there's a lotof people out in Silicon Valley,
a lot of people all throughoutthe us all throughout the world
that were able to come togetherand share collective ideas,
which I, I loved back then.
And again, like you said, itstarted as one post, one webinar
of like let's see how manypeople we can just bring
together now.
I just think of it like yousaid, gang grow, retain is
(06:33):
everywhere on LinkedIn.
I don't go a day, maybe even anhour without saying you or Jeff
post something on LinkedIn.
So I absolutely appreciate allthe thought leadership and the
content you guys share aroundcustomer success growing into a
CS leadership position and CSleadership in general.
But now that you've, lookingback on it, hindsight's 2020 and
(06:53):
you guys have had a few years ofgrowing this community.
Are there any learnings or anysecrets or anything you wanna
share with our listeners?
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Yeah, sure.
First of all, there are a lot ofgreat customer success
communities out there that youcan learn from and they cater to
different parts of the market soto speak.
Some are more focused onindividual contributors, some
are more focused on directors inthe mid-level manager role and
then some are focused onexecutives and yeah and some are
(07:20):
focused on ops, right?
There's so many different areasand there's a community, almost
like a niche community foreverybody out there if you don't
find what you're looking for onD G R.
But I think the big thing for usalways was whether it was on
office hours or whether it's theonline community or whether
we're sending an email withcontent, it's how do we first
(07:41):
provide as much value as we canto the members?
We, we almost to a fault neverask, try not to ask for anything
in.
We don't wanna be seen as amarketer or as a marketing type
of organ organization.
This truly is for the benefit ofthe community.
And yes, we would like everybodyto know that ganger TA is
(08:03):
associated with higher logic,but I think there's a precedent
in the world right now forespecially technology companies,
they really get it to add sortof a media arm or a community
arm to what they're doing from amarketing standpoint.
Outreach bought a company calledSales Hacker, which we model our
acquisition off of.
Um, HubSpot bought the hustleand created the HubSpot podcast
(08:25):
network.
So there there's a, we're a veryteeny tiny version of some of
those acquisitions that havehappened over the past few
years.
But e even salesforce.com nowhas a full-blown media arm.
They're using media to educatetheir market and also to to
associate with with thebusinesses that they're trying
to sell too.
(08:45):
So that that's number oneprovide value.
I think the number two actuallynumber two is ask for feedback a
lot.
We were just talking about theoffice hours calls after that
first office hours call, we dida panel, I don't know if you
were on the first one or not,but there was a panel of four
like really cool guests and weasked for feedback after that
and everybody was like, oh thatwas great but we'd like a chance
(09:06):
to talk too.
And Jeff and I were like Okay,we can facilitate a discussion
instead of a panel.
We did that the next week and itgrew a little bit more.
It went from 50 people to ahundred people and then we asked
for feedback and people keptgiving us like, okay, you could
tweak this one thing and it'd bea little bit better.
And we kept making thoseadjustments along the way, some
of them subtle, some of'em notso subtle, but we iterated
quickly based on feedback fromthe people to whom we were
(09:30):
trying to provide value.
And so I think that worked.
And then the third thing I wouldsay is we've really always tried
to put other people on apedestal and to hold them up.
We have a really engaged earlyadopter founding member kind of
group that's still today.
There's hundreds of people withGR on their LinkedIn profiles as
founding members and then eventoday people like Jeff and I
(09:51):
don't run office hours anymore.
Somebody from the community runsit every week.
Yes.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
I love how it's become like super user community
basically you've created peoplewho buy into the belief of Gira
as a community buy into beingthat founding member.
I still remember when everyoneannounced I'm a founding member
of Gain gro Retain and I waslike, oh how awesome that this
is becoming more lack of betterwords official and was just
signing up or not only justsigning up, people wanted to
(10:18):
take ownership.
Like you said, people wanted torun your newsletters or webinars
or podcasts.
They wanted to mess for theworld that they were doing in
customer success.
And I think Gainer retain gavethem that platform and that was
awesome to see cuz there was alot of people coming outta the
woodwork that were keen but justdidn't know how to do it.
But then there was a platformlike the online community that
(10:39):
that helped them.
So that's awesome and I totallycan back you up on the feedback
side cuz I have received anumber of feedback forms from
gain, go retain every time Iattend an office hours or
anything.
And it's never done in the senseof give us feedback now it's
more like we wanna improvethings for you so please tell us
how we can do it.
So it's awesome to see that youguys really live and breathe the
(11:00):
ethos that you say you're doing.
So that's awesome and I wannakeep going on gang grow, retain,
but I know we need to chat aboutthis topic and I think it's a
very topical discussion thatwe're gonna have today because
there's tough times in the worldright now when recording this
Silicon Valley bank just wentthrough everything that it's
going through.
We're still wondering what'sgonna happen there.
(11:20):
Tech companies are reallyfeeling it and like equally so
are the companies and customersthat we are serving as sas, B2B
tech companies.
So I think my first kind ofquestion to you is how is your
team supporting your customersright now?
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Yeah, it's just crazy to see what's happened.
The world today looks a littlebit different than it did just
last Thursday and part of it isfor us we're just continuing to
block and tackle and put ourbest foot forward.
Every company right now shouldbe focusing as much as they can
on value back to what we talkedabout with G G R.
(11:55):
Like how are you not onlyconfirming that you're providing
value but sharing that in aquantitative way.
And a lot of people talk aboutroi.
We are creating reports rightnow for our customers that help
them understand like, hey,here's what the engagement has
been in your communities overthe past 12 months.
Here's what that means to yourbusiness as far as we can tell.
(12:17):
Let's have a conversation aboutthis.
So I think a lot of times ourchampions and our customers need
support telling the storyinternally to their
stakeholders, right?
You're not always gonna get achance to have that conversation
directly as a vendor to thepeople who are making decisions
or helping make decisions behindthe scenes.
(12:37):
And we're really focused on notonly having those conversations
but having content that backsthat up in the form of, of a
brief R o ROI email or a briefROI presentation that we can
actually provide and let themcirculate and then we have a
conversation with them andenable them to go have that
conversation internally.
So I think that's one key thing.
(12:58):
We also are, from a renewalstandpoint, we are working very,
this is more of a balanced, likehow do we win together kind of
approach.
But how do we present ourcustomers with renewal options
that give them some control overtheir pricing and their, the
length of the term that they'resigning up for at their renewal,
(13:18):
their payment terms.
How do we give them some ofthose options without, without
breaking our own bank at thesame time?
So we've been working on thesort of the structure of our
renewal plans so that ourcustomers have the choice they
can renew for a year or they canrenew for three years and there
are different parametersassociated with that.
So they can do what's best fortheir business but they have
(13:38):
choice.
There's a commercial side of it.
Then there's the value, the truecustomer success side of it.
And then there's the day-to-daywe continue to provide great
support, we continue to providegreat implementation and
onboarding services to ourcustomers to help them get up
and running and live on theironline community.
A lot of it is what we allshould be doing anyway.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
Definitely.
And I think there's a lot oflearnings from a few years ago
when this kind of happened allover again and I think back of
when the pandemic first hit offand then we were all thinking
how are we gonna manage churn ina time where we're not sure
what's gonna come next?
And I think that's a thought onthe top of mind for all CS
leaders but also Boes or yourfinance team are really
(14:20):
concerned about gross revenueretention.
How do we make sure we maintainthe current amount of customers?
Of course they wanna grow it, ofcourse they want more revenue,
but how are we gonna make surethat we just don't have a whole
bunch of churn?
So you mentioned two ways thatyou guys are managing the
current situation.
Is there anything that you guysare doing to really tackle or
(14:41):
block churn actively as well?
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Yeah, it truly is.
It's an account by account, Icall it hand hand combat, right?
It's really having a plan forevery single customer.
Especially if you look at yourtop customers, you have to
segment and I think we'll talk alittle bit more about
segmentation later, but you haveto segment your customers.
And so my push and what we'redoing with our team here is
(15:04):
we're looking at who are ourmost, who are the customers that
it's gonna hurt the worst if welose it, right?
I won't say the most valuablebecause all of our customers are
valuable to us, but which arethe ones that we cannot afford
to lose?
What is your budget for churnfor the year?
Everybody's got one, right?
Every finance team knows or hasa projection for how much churn.
(15:24):
I would encourage customersuccess leaders to really try to
understand and internalize whatthat number is.
Help manage to it, right?
Be a business leader, not just acustomer leader.
And say, okay, if you've got abudget for x million dollars of
churn this year, hopefully youwon't have that much, but
depending on the size of yourbusiness you will.
Here's how we can reduce that by10%.
If you can make a just a one or2% difference in churn in the
(15:47):
course of a year, it's actuallya really powerful result for
your business.
So it's hand in hand combathaving a plan for every single
one of your larger accounts,having backup with an executive
sponsor or someone else to flankthe customer success manager.
And then making sure that valuestory gets told to every single
one of those customers.
Just super critical.
Right now we're alsoimplementing in the middle of
(16:10):
implementing a strategy that I'mtalking about a lot right now,
which is just scale customersuccess.
And what that means is we'rebuilding programs that sit
around the customer successprogram that provide enablement,
they provide networkingopportunities for your customers
and they provide lots of contentand training resources so that
customers can do more self-serveif that's the way they wanna get
(16:32):
help from your company.
So there's a combination ofthings that we're working on to
make sure that today ourcustomers are well taken care
of, but that also that that thatwill be our strategy going
forward as well.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
Definitely.
And I can completely agree aboutthe being heard or understanding
your churn or attrition number.
I think that's super importantright now and always I think
that's something that you shouldhave top of mind as a CS leader.
But one thing I'm, I would addto that is ensuring that you
have transparency with yourteams as well.
Because I think we all say hey,we wanna reduce churn by that
(17:03):
one to 2%, like you justmentioned, it'll make a huge
business difference.
But I think a lot of peopleduring these times, they wanna
find a way to support and thatincludes your customer success
managers.
They wanna know how they canhelp the business overall as
well.
And if you're transparent about,hey, if we have a million, let's
say million cuz we were usingthat number a million in churn
this year, this is what we cando to lessen that one to 2% and
(17:25):
also keep a tracker going of howmuch you've actually gone to
that churn marker.
So everyone is very clear,transparent, aware of times are
tough, but we are making everychange we can or handling each
account individually to reallysee success and reduce that
churn.
I wanna come back to yourrenewals part because we talked
a little bit about that.
You mentioned you have optionsnow to your customers, which is
(17:49):
great.
I think that you're stillputting the customer in the
driver's seat of how they chooseto work with you as a software
vendor.
But how are you implementingthat?
Tell me a little bit more aboutit.
What are like the strategicchanges that you're doing
internally to be able to havethat renewals program with
multiple options there?
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Yeah, absolutely.
So this is, uh, so actually Iwould say this is probably the,
one of the, one of the mostimpactful projects or programs
that a customer success leadercould work on with their finance
team is really to define therenewal.
Maybe like renewal go to marketis how you think about it
depending on the pricing plan.
(18:26):
So every many companies increasetheir prices every year, both
like their list prices for newcustomers and even your
day-to-day contracts will havenominal price increases every
year.
When you look at across yourentire program, you can make
some pretty significant changesthat drive retention.
If you can get a customer toretain, or I'm sorry to renew
(18:47):
for two to three years, thenthat's a renewal.
You don't have to actuallyfacilitate next year.
A lot of auto, a lot ofrenewals, autorenew, right?
So that, that's a job numberone.
But if you give a customer to doa three year, if you give them
an option to do a three yearagreement, then that's two years
you can go without having todrive a renewal.
You will get automatic lift inyour retention by having longer
(19:10):
term contracts.
That's something that the mathjust works on.
And so that's a big focus ofours.
And so if that's the case, thenwhat we wanna do is we wanna
have our customers have thechoice of going to that longer
term contract and they getbasically pricing breaks for
doing that.
And so we're putting options infront of them that give them
(19:30):
that choice.
If a customer comes to us andsays, Hey, we've been on an
annual payment plan and we'rehitting hard times, maybe we're
part of the Silicon Valley banksituation and we are unsure
about our cash flow for the nextsix months, we'd like to be on a
quarterly plan, then we'llentertain that.
One of the things, maybe alesser used tool that I think
customer success teams couldleverage more and renewal teams
(19:54):
if they're separate, is just anearly renewal.
So if a customer comes to youand says, Hey, we're in
financial trouble and I need tocut back and you're like, we
could either lose the customeror we could stick to our guns,
right?
And stick to our originalpricing strategy.
And a lot of times finance teamsdon't want to do a lot of
customization, right?
Because they've got scale issuesto deal with themselves.
(20:15):
But if you go to them and say,Hey, well we'd be happy to renew
if you need a quarterly payment,let's do an early renewal, okay?
And if we can get you to committo the next two to three years,
I have a lot more sway in what Ican get done for you with my
finance team and the otherbusiness leaders within my
company because you've made alonger term commitment to me.
So I can make more commitmentsto you in exchange for that.
(20:38):
Does that make sense?
It
Speaker 1 (20:39):
Makes complete sense.
And I wanna play a little bit ofdevil's advocate here cuz we
just talked about proving valueearlier and you said a lot of
your renewal programs and thisentire strategy is to drive
long-term retention, which isagain critical.
The multi-year contract issomething that not only vendors
love because you don't have towork on the renewal next year,
but I think customers enjoy thattoo.
(21:01):
Cuz again, you don't have to gothrough procurement every year
or don't have to go through thecycle of reviewing a contract.
But I think in times like this,customers are hesitant to commit
to two to three year contractsbecause like you just said,
where is cashflow coming from?
Are we burning too much?
Should we reduce software costs,et cetera?
So how are you providing that ro I piece that we talked about
(21:24):
earlier every day or everyhowever often you're speaking to
your customers and making surethat they fully understand that
hey, if I'm committing to tohigher logic for the next two,
three years, I'm seeing valuetoday and now Yeah
Speaker 2 (21:38):
That that's the precursor everything, right?
You, there's no way to sign alonger term agreement if you
don't feel like you're gettingor you don't see the value in
the product that you'reutilizing.
So yeah, it's part of, that'swhy customer success managers
don't need to be doing support.
I talk about this all the time,right?
Because if a CSM is gettingdrawn into handling support
(21:59):
issues or even doing theimplementation, I believe those
are two separate things in mostcompanies, not all, but most
then you know you're not gonnahave the time to tell the value
story and to ensure that you'veenabled your sta your champions
and your stakeholders to, totell that value story.
If you're feeling supportissues, then you also don't have
time to strategize with yourcustomer on how to use the
(22:21):
product better to, to me it, itall begins with the value
conversation, like we said.
But the multi-year renewal isjust a, is just an, it's an
outcome of that value beingrealized.
Not every customer is gonna takeyou up on it and that's okay.
But it's good to give them thoseoptions because some will come
back and say, hey, we need adifferent pricing structure.
(22:44):
And then you have an option toautomatically go back and say, I
can do that for you.
However, it just requires you tomake a longer term commitment to
us, then I can work that out foryou.
That's a much differentconversation than saying now we
just do one year renewals andsorry, but the price uplift is
what the price uplift is.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Yeah, fair.
Those options make completesense.
And speaking tactically orsomething that someone can take
away to their own organization,I think you mentioned it earlier
in our conversation aboutdifferent ways that you're
providing value.
You mentioned a one pager orsomething you're doing with a
tactical tip.
Is there anything you can sharewith our listeners that you guys
are doing to prove value evennow when times are tough as
(23:23):
well?
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Yeah, the they using data to tell an ROI story is job
number one and with your largercustomers, you either have to do
that for them or given the dataand the tools that they need to
do it for themselves.
If they need to tailor andcustomize that.
So that, that's job number one.
Job number two is back to thisidea of scale Customer success
programs part of the value thatwe provide as vendors, almost
(23:47):
every SaaS company is aspecialist in some way, whether
you're a horizontal or avertical type of solution.
We're a vertical solution forB2B tech companies, for online
community that integrates withtheir L M S and events and
everything else.
So we know a lot about that.
We've been doing it for a longtime.
We interact with a bunch ofdifferent organizations who are
(24:09):
all the same or similarorganizations to one another
doing the same type of thingwith our products every week,
every month, every quarter.
So when we talk about scaledprograms and our own customer
community, that's also a way ofproviding value and it's value
outside of the product.
Some of it's inside, right?
You're gonna learn how to usethe product better, but some of
(24:30):
it is, hey, I'm gonna connectyou with a network of people who
sit in a similar seat to whatyou sit in and you can learn
from them, you can exchangenotes with them, you can see the
benchmarks and understand howyou're performing relative to
your peers in the same industrybecause we've helped facilitate
that.
So there there's value to beprovided on a one-to-one basis
(24:51):
and then there's a lot of valueto be private provided on a one
to mini basis as well.
Like we did when we firststarted gang grow, retain,
right?
We brought everybody together,let everybody learn from one
another.
We were just the facilitators.
And I think that concept worksin a B2B SaaS company as well
Speaker 1 (25:06):
For sure.
And I think what you just saidshould be remembered or
hopefully resonates really wellwith our listeners is around
make the math make sense foryour customer.
Because I think it's that simpleand I think that sometimes we
really get caught up in the usecase and the best practice and
everything that we always keepsharing all the time and not
(25:27):
saying don't stop doing that.
You definitely should.
That should be a part of your,your toolbox of tricks that
you're presenting to yourcustomers.
But I sometimes really find itamazing that we don't think
about the math.
If we do the math for thebusinesses that work with us, it
almost makes sense and it alsomakes sense for us to even have
(25:47):
upsell conversations possiblybecause the math makes complete
sense.
And that's what I wanted to askyou a little bit about as well.
I know we've been talking aboutmaintaining and gross revenue
retention and just trying tomake sure we're managing churn.
We don't live in a stagnantworld and businesses are always
trying to grow.
Have you guys thought aboutexpansions during renewals at
this time?
(26:08):
Everyone's watching every spendright now and every business.
So I know that it's a toughquestion to ask, but how are you
guys thinking about that whilein those renewal discussions?
Speaker 2 (26:19):
Yeah, it's at renewal and it's throughout the year as
well.
You, we have add-on servicesthat you can add into your
subscription anytime and you hitthe nail on the head.
It's really about additionalvalue.
It's not, yes, it is probablygoing to result in an additional
booking for your company, butit's really about the additional
(26:40):
value that the customer isgetting.
So if you stick with that asyou're north star, then you're
in good shape.
Customers that are buying,selling into your customer base
is a great retention strategy.
Customers that are buying morefrom you are not leaving you
anytime soon.
Okay.
So really if you have additionalservices to offer, then you
should be having thoseconversations with your customer
(27:02):
all the time in a consultativeway, just like selling should be
in my opinion period.
And that's not detracting fromthe relationship at all.
That's actually enhancing therelationship cuz you're looking
for ways to provide new value.
For
Speaker 1 (27:15):
Sure.
And you mentioned in our prepcall for this that you think
selling is a retention strategy.
And you just said that sellingshould be consultative as well.
So can you expand on this?
What do you mean by selling isconsult consultative as well as
a retention STR strategy?
Speaker 2 (27:32):
Even so I, I run our sales team for the part of the
business that I ever overseehere at Higher Logic as well.
And one of my daily pushes toour team is you need to be a
consultant here, not asalesperson.
You need to be a consultant, youneed to help teach what is it
that this customer is trying tofigure out?
What are they trying to learn?
Because even in a sales role,and not to diminish it, but
(27:53):
sales people have a uniquepurview, right?
They have a unique vantage pointin that they get to see a lot of
different companies trying to dothe same thing.
We should never forget thatwhether you're in sales, whether
you're in customer success, evenit's the customer you're talking
to only really, it's probablylooking at their own
environment, right?
And what they know.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
Very fair.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
We are all looking at the landscape, we're seeing all
the trees in the forest, right?
And how people do thingsdifferently and what works best
and what doesn't work at all.
And it doesn't matter who youare.
If you're a customer facing inany way, you have valued offer a
customer.
That's a soapbox moment there.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
I was like, where are we going with this Jay?
But I hear you go, I hear you onthe consultative side because I
think what, no matter what partof the business you are in, you
need to be that person that isthere to advise based on
everything, but also hone in onwhat that customer needs at that
exact moment.
Which is I think where you'regoing with this.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Absolutely.
That's right.
And sometimes your are, yourcustomers are gonna have options
to buy more for you that fill,that fit their needs.
Even now there, there's a, Iheard somebody talking the other
day and I'm sure this is publicinformation somewhere, so I
don't mind saying it out loud,but HubSpot, right?
Massive company.
They're a majority of theirsales this year will probably
(29:11):
come from their base, maybe nota majority, but a significant
portion may be more significantthan in years past because they
have tons of value to provide,they have multiple products,
right?
That could help their customersbecome more efficient and more
effective right now.
And if you could do that and youcould prove that out during
these consultative or sailingkind of discussions, then you
(29:35):
have an opportunity to expandwith your customer and it's a,
and once you do then you know,you rest assured they're
probably gonna stick around fora little while.
While, while they try that.
So it, I think selling is agreat retention strategy more so
than support.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
Being consultative can never hurt neither yourself
nor the customer.
Being consultative means beingcurious and asking the right
questions at the right time.
But also it's again, presentingyour customer with options based
on the value that they're seeingwithin your product.
Rather than just going in withthat one tunnel vision mindset
of, Hey, I'm gonna present youwhat I think is best, rather
(30:10):
than coming to the table withlet's discuss what makes best
sense for you.
So I think that's a great way tolook at things in general, like
you said, across multipledifferent departments in the
business, but especially incustomer success.
And that's what we're talkingabout here today.
You mentioned earlier aroundsegmentation, which I do wanna
touch upon as well.
And I think times when times getdifficult or tricky,
(30:33):
segmentation is extremelyimportant cuz you really have to
decide where's fight or flightwhen it comes to certain
customers.
And every customer is valuable,like you said, and everyone is
important to every business.
But you really do have to figureout what makes sense for your
business when it comes tosegmentation and churn.
So how are you guys segmentingcustomers right now?
(30:54):
Is it any different to othertimes?
Are you guys doing somethingdifferent right now and how are
you dealing with potential badfit customers?
Speaker 2 (31:03):
Oh, interesting.
So no, our segmentation strategyreally hasn't changed all that
much just for this point intime.
We, our core segmentation is acombination of the size of the
business and how much they spendwith us.
I am not a big believer insegmenting only by a r r, in
fact, I don't like that at
Speaker 1 (31:20):
All.
I think there's so manydifferent verticals that you can
segment on and it should AR isthe easy way, but it shouldn't
be the only way
Speaker 2 (31:27):
That, that's exactly right and that's why most people
do, it's because they have thedata.
But what I've found to bespecially effective in my years
of doing this is that numberone, you align with the
segmentation that the sales andgo-to-market teams use.
So that's important because theneverybody is speaking the same
language.
So if I say enterprise, my salesteam knows what that is, my
(31:51):
customer team knows what thatis, we're all talking about the
same thing, right?
Then you can have differentsegmentations within their, in
enterprise, commercial,mid-market, smb, whatever
monikers you use, they actuallydescribe the size of the
organization that you're tryingto work with.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
Yeah.
That's like an external, almostexternal segmentation, just
understanding cross-functionallywhat kind a customer this is,
Speaker 2 (32:14):
What kind of business it is.
Exactly.
And then secondarily, yeah, youhave to look at the ARR too,
right?
Because the, you've gottaprioritize those accounts that
are the better, really thebiggest weights in your a r
pool, you've gotta keep themsatisfied.
Increasingly, we are looking forways to bring programs that
scale to our customers becausewhat we've learned is that you
(32:38):
can have a high-touch customersuccess program for any portion
of your customer base, right?
Usually for the enterpriseaccounts is how folks do it or
the higher end of themid-market, but it doesn't mean
it's higher quality if a, if thecustomer is only getting their
information from one person A CS M, right?
(33:00):
As to how to use the product,how to get better at it, what
the best practices are, what thebenchmarks are, that person only
has what they've seen.
And if you have somebody, Godforbid, that's not performing
well, then that actually throwsthe relationship at risk with
your, with those, with thecustomers that they manage.
So increasingly what we'relearning is that if you build
(33:22):
scaled programs for new useronboarding, for best practices,
for um, for even the value kindof workshop type thing where you
could say, Hey, here's ourmethodology.
We're gonna teach it toeverybody at the same time and
we're gonna let 25 customers beon one call and talk about it
together, how they're making thecase internally using our
(33:44):
template, right?
So if you're doing things likethat, what we're seeing is that
enterprise customers willparticipate in that just as much
as mid-market or smb, yoursmaller customer tiers.
And the benefit there is thatit, it removes a little bit of a
burden from the CSM to have todo every single one of those
conversations.
And it also increases thequality because if I'm running a
(34:05):
new user onboarding session onceevery two weeks, I'm honing that
in, I'm sorry, for multiplecustomers at a time, like a
webinar style thing, that thatprogram is getting better and
better over time.
It's getting tuned it, we knowhow to run it, we can measure
the quality of it cuz it's onlyone program, it's one session
(34:27):
that we're monitoring ratherthan a leader having to keep
track of what 40 or 50 or 60CSMs are doing individually with
their accounts.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
That makes sense though.
Having programs overarching thatare the same, that are applied
to multiple CSMs.
So you're looking at the resultsof the program rather than the
results of individual csm.
So you can tweak the program,like you said, the scaled
program that you're building.
So that makes complete sense
Speaker 2 (34:51):
Now.
Now you were talking aboutsegmentation though.
Yeah,
Speaker 1 (34:53):
Yeah.
I wanna know more about howyou're handling that when it
comes to churn as well.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
Yeah.
Okay.
So the more interesting way Ithink to segment customers, you
have to have that baselinesegmentation.
So the market that they sit inand the how much they spend with
you today, that's our coresegmentation.
Outside of that, we use othersegments, we call'em cohorts,
but what we do is we look atcustomers based on their usage
(35:19):
pattern, based on the marketthat they're in, based on their
situation that would qualify foran expansion of some sort.
So do they need to go from ourcorporate plan to our enterprise
plan or do they, are they a goodcandidate to buy or add-on
services that we do some of thework for them to manage and
operate their community?
So those are different segmentsthat we utilize for different
(35:39):
purposes.
The cool thing about that isthat not only does it help keep
you focused, if you have astrategy to go expand, you
really wanna be spinning yourenergy where that expansion is
really likely as opposed to justspreading and spraying and
praying across everybody.
And then you can also report onthose strategies very clearly
and simply to your board.
(36:00):
So if we think 10% of ourcustomer base could buy this
additional solution, then we canactually say, okay, there are a
thousand customers in thatsegment and here's how many
we've, here's the approach we'regonna go use to tackle them.
Here's how many we've talked to.
You can almost treat it like asales, like a funnel at that
point.
That way your stakeholders don'tthink there's 10,000 customers
(36:21):
that can buy that.
They know that there's just athousand and you can use'em.
Uh, you can methodically goafter that segment report on
your success rate, your failurerate, what the phenomenon are,
they're that are either helpingyou be successful or, or where
you're not being successful.
It becomes very clear, right?
So these sub-segments, based onwhere you go next from a product
(36:42):
standpoint are important afteryou get the main segmentation
down, which assign, which helpsyou assign resources to your
accounts.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
Jay, we could keep talking about this probably for
hours, and I wanna be mindfulthat we need to wrap up with the
quickfire discussion part.
So I want to ask you these nextfew questions.
And my challenge to you is tomake sure that you try to answer
them in one sentence or less.
Are you ready?
Speaker 2 (37:07):
I'm ready.
Okay,
Speaker 1 (37:08):
Let's do it.
First question is, what do youthink is next for the CS
industry?
Speaker 2 (37:12):
The CS industry is going to have to scale better
than it has in the past.
Speaker 1 (37:18):
The next question is, what is it your favorite app on
your phone or your laptop thatyou cannot live without?
Speaker 2 (37:25):
Oh my gosh, I didn't do my homework on this question.
Let's come back.
You know what, I'm just gonnasay LinkedIn just because I
probably use LinkedIn app morethan anything else on my phone.
So
Speaker 1 (37:34):
Yeah, I could see that
The next question is, which SaaSproduct could you not live
without as a CS professional?
Speaker 2 (37:42):
One of my favorite products is Gong.
I always talk about Gong andit's just because I have ready
access to every conversation,almost every conversation that
my team is having.
And I learned so much bylistening to those.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
And my next question is, what sort of compensation
should A C S M get?
Should it be just a base salaryor a base salary?
What's some sort of variablecommission part?
Speaker 2 (38:05):
Oh, one sentence really on that question, Anika,
you
Speaker 1 (38:09):
Gotta try.
Not everyone's successful, butyou gotta try.
Okay,
Speaker 2 (38:11):
Here we go.
I think if you don't have somekind of direct selling
responsibility in a quota, thenyou should potentially be only
on a base salary.
If you do have a quota, then Ilike base plus commission.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
Interesting.
You're the first one to bring injust base salary of my recent
guests.
So interesting that you saidthat.
And final question for today is,what is your favorite part of
customer success?
Speaker 2 (38:35):
It's customer success is really not a function as much
as it is an outcome, right?
And that outcome is the, it'sthe nation of doing a lot of
different things, right?
From providing a great product,providing great onboarding,
providing great support, andthen giving your customers best
practices, benchmarks in otherways of getting better at what
(38:57):
they do, not just using yourproduct.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Thank you so much, Shay, for sharing all your tips
and tricks around how to managegross revenue, retention, churn,
and I think the main takeawayfor me at least, was providing
value at all times to yourcustomers and make the ROI clear
as often as possible.
If our listeners have any otherquestions or wanna continue the
conversation, where's the bestplace to get ahold of you?
Speaker 2 (39:21):
Sure.
You can check me out onLinkedIn, of course.
Jay Nathan, and then I have anewsletter as well.
You can check that out.
Customer success.io is where youcan find that.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
Ooh, I'll have to, I have, I didn't know that.
I'll have to check that out.
But thank you Jay, so much foryour time.
I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
Thank you, Anika.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
Thank you for listening to the Customer
Success Channel podcast today.
We hope you learned somethingnew to take back to your team
and your company.
If you found value in ourpodcast, please make sure to
give us a positive review andmake sure you subscribe to our
channel as we release newpodcasts every month.
Also, if you have any topicsthat you would like me to
discuss in the future or youwould like to be a guest on the
(40:01):
podcast, please feel free toreach out.
All my contact details are inthis show notes.
Thanks again for listening andtune in next time for more on
customer success.
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