AMA: Hook VP, Customer Growth, Natasha Evans on Customer Success / Sales Alignment

I think all of the above can be great for this. Most companies us their CRM and a handover doc. Ideally in that handover doc is the business case they worked on with the customer, which becomes your success plan. At Hook we have a handover doc which links all the key information including the business case. We built the template for this and we iterate on it regularly to make sure we're always improving our handovers. This gives us a starting point and the ability to get a handover before the de ...Read More

I LOVE this question!!If I had the resource, I'd involved CS in every deal pre-sales. But sadly, I don't think any of us do. So we try to get involved in as many of the Enterprise deals as we possibly can. This usually looks like 1 of 2 things, occasionally both:1. An overview of post-sales partnership. Run by me, or by a CSM/AM in my team. This helps the customer get a feel for what the experience will be like with us after becoming a customer, but also helps us with building a connection and r ...Read More

We regularly discuss this at LT meetings. I'll quite often do a churn retro or an overview of what's causing us risk, pull out the themes and present them back to the LT so that we can discuss how we avoid these in the future. This of course, influences how/what we sell and who to. This starts with the leadership. If you're struggling to get your point across on the impact of these themes, back it up with data. What % or how many $ of ARR is at risk because of this theme - that will show the bus ...Read More

Our set-up is a little different here as we don't have Solutions Engineering right now (actually our technical implementation team take on this role). Context: Our CSMs own a customer as soon as the contract is signed and we have Technical Implementation Consultants (TICs) who own the delivery of the technical components of an implementation.But an implementation is bigger than the delivery of the technical requirements, we need to understand HOW the customer will use it, how they'll drive the c ...Read More

This is tricky to answer, because it will look and feel really different in every organisation. For us it looks like this:Pre-close: Sales team are to set up an internal handover once the contracts are with legal, so there's no delay in my team getting the info. We've created a template of key information that the sales person fills out in advance, and walks us through live on a 30 minute call. This template includes all of the info that we think we need to know, links to key calls that are impo ...Read More

We each run our own motion, but then we come together at the LT to present a combined number. I have 3 core components to how I run my renewals:1. Forecast call - bi-weekly - what's our forecast and what are the swing deals that will make/break it. What's the plan on these to bring our number home. 2. Risk call - bi-weekly - for the full year ahead what are our biggest risks and how are we tracking against our plan to turn them around.3. Deal/risk reviews - more focused sessions on a specific cu ...Read More