AMA: MURAL Director of Customer Success, Amara Okoli on Influencing the C-Suite

On any given day my interactions with the C-Suite could look like the following: * Proactively reaching out to new customers and keeping the customer’s C-Suite informed of who’s who and what we will do to help ensure their success * Following C-Suite on LinkedIn, news, and other media in order to learn about their objectives and business challenges * Updating my C-Suite on the status of customers: growth opportunities, at risk accounts, successful go-lives, etc * Reaching out to C-Suite to help my team drive executive alignment * Attending tradeshows, conferences, seminars and events and meeting with C-Suite * Reaching out to C-Suite during escalations and other challenges to maintain trust

I started my career in sales. As an Account Executive, my job was to gain an in-depth understanding of my customer’s business objectives and advise them as to solutions that could address their challenges. As deals progressed, the C-Suite would participate in the evaluation and often be the final decision maker. At one point I was in an inside sales role calling on prospects in a highly regulated industry in Texas. I nurtured relationships with my champions, listened to their pain points, and subsequently kicked off an evaluation with a company that had been using a competitive solution that specifically catered to their industry for over a decade. What initially started with a phone call with a technical analyst developed into several meetings with stakeholders and finally a green light from various C-level members of the organization. I helped them choose an implementation partner and stayed close to them after the sale to ensure a successful go-live. A few months later, the CHRO visited SF to take her daughter to a college orientation weekend and asked me to give them both a tour of my company’s campus. As we took a selfie together, I realized that moment that the relationship mattered more to me than just the win.

If I were to give younger me advice about influencing the C-Suite I'd say to take your time, learn as much as you can, and look for connections. More detail below: 1. Don’t be in a rush. As CSMs, we ensure our customers achieve their business objectives with our software and in order to do this we cultivate meaningful relationships high and wide. But it takes time to learn how to work with people and understand unique personalities, interests, and goals. 2. Shadow others who are skilled at this. Find out who is adept at influencing the C-Suite within your organization (fellow CSMs, Account Executives, etc) and ask to join a meeting as a silent observer. Watch their body language, listen to how they steer the discussion, and take notes on the types of questions they ask. If you do this enough times with various people, you’ll start to adopt strategies in your authentic style. 3. Always be curious. The more information you learn about your customers, their industry, their challenges, market trends, and your software, the more you will be seen as a trusted advisor at all levels within your customer’s organization as well as your own. 4. Partner with others. Leverage your customer champions to help you understand what the C-Suite cares about and how you and your company might help them. Find out who else within your own organization has relationships with the C-Suite and gather as much information as you can. Lastly, remember that your value as a CSM is not just about what you do for your customers but also your ability to partner with others to facilitate the connections needed to make your customers successful 5. Put yourself in their shoes. Consider what their day-to-day might look like and where possible ask people in a similar role to share some perspective with you. Earn their trust by being concise, assertive, and informative in all communication with them.

As CSMs we are expected to be trusted advisors to our customers. We gain trust by helping our customers address their challenges and achieve their business objectives. We become advisors when we learn to anticipate questions or concerns and we guide our customers toward successful outcomes. To gain credibility, our communication with the C-Suite must be concise, assertive, and informative. If you can explain the how and confidently tell me what to do next, that's incredibly valuable. 1. How are we doing? 1. Help me see that you understand my business, our mission, and our goals. When given the opportunity, don’t simply present adoption metrics, help me understand what they mean relative to what my business goals are and ask for clarification where needed. If we have achieved significant time to value and you have saved my business significant money or time, those are wins I’d love to know. If things are stalling, help me understand why with concrete examples and ask for my help with clear actions for me or a member of my team to take. 2. Were there any serious challenges we faced? What role did you play? Let’s face it, things don’t always go as we’d like. However, if you can keep the C-Suite informed and updated, you will earn their trust in a way that will influence how they view you as a key trusted vendor, in many cases even more so than when things go well. 2. How are we doing relative to similar customers? 1. The C-Suite regularly reviews industry and analyst reports (Ex: Gartner, Forrester) as well as intel to understand market trends and maintain a competitive edge. By regularly reviewing the same resources and providing thought leadership, you could help influence decision making throughout their organization 2. As you support customers in similar industries or business segments or share anecdotes with peers, you’ll start to see certain similarities and differences. If your customer is operating in a more innovative manner that you believe has helped them realize value with your software and supported their business goals, definitely let the C-Suite know 3. What are other things we could be doing to achieve the outcomes we desire? 1. Once you have gained credibility with your customer by supporting them through a few milestones, you have earned the right to ask for a deeper partnership. So think deeply about what this new partnership will look like. How might integrating your solution with another one of their key business tools help them operate efficiently? How might using another module of your software help them save costs from a duplicate solution? If you can hone in on a few high-impact actions your customer can take and assert your position as to why these actions will help, your C-Suite might offer the sponsorship you need to make this a reality.

Help the C-Suite understand how additional resources will achieve company goals in addition to core CS goals (retention rates, expansion targets, reduction in churn). If you can leverage a data-driven approach to help the C-Suite gain a 360 degree view into how the business is operating today and how it could be operating for the better in the future, you will be better situated to, at a minimum, have your proposal be heard. Here are a few examples of company goals: * Operate more efficiently: Perhaps you might leverage existing teams and provide mutually beneficial outcomes. Let’s say today your sales engineers and professional services teams only get involved pre-sales but you think these skills can assist in discovery for post-sales opportunities and scoping for projects. It would be helpful to review the last few quarters of successful deals and show several examples where the involvement of sales engineers alongside CSMs and AEs, shortened sales cycles and resulted in higher revenue renewals and expansions than opportunities where they were not involved. Or perhaps you can forecast out for the next several quarters where there is a competitive risk, what might be the impact of including professional services to optimize current implementations. * Deliver a best-in-class customer experience: Review the customer experience from multiple different lenses. How do customers interact with Marketing? How easy is it for customers to learn the software? Meet with various stakeholders from cross-functional departments and try to find areas of alignment. With the support of other departments and their executive sponsors, perhaps you can build a stronger case for increased resources where there are common goals (Ex: Increase customer advocacy, improve billings; exceed certification targets). In this economic climate, the reality is that unless NRR has been steadily dropping, other business priorities may take precedence. But if you can demonstrate operational improvements, cross-functional wins, and forecast significant CS gains, you will create a much stronger case for the additional resources you need such as headcount and tools.

Here are a few tried and true ways to gain greater exposure to the C-Suite: 1. Get curious about the space, not just the product, and build your knowledge base. 2. Ask to shadow meetings with other CSMs, AEs, and other teammates who are closer to the C-Suite already 3. Attend all hands/conferences/tradeshows/webinars where the C-Suite is speaking so you learn about their priorities and personality. 4. Ask thoughtful questions at the appropriate opportunities and volunteer for initiatives where your skills might shine 5. Find mentors within the organization who are close to the C-Suite and offer to help them with projects Over time, the additional information and experiences you gain will help you differentiate yourself and widen your circle of influence

* Always be clear on the purpose of the meeting and involve agendas and share relevant documentation with their EAs well in advance * Center conversations with a key headline - what is most important and the significance of that backed by relevant data * Keep communications concise and timely. Be sure to specify if updates are informative or actions are needed * For any meetings, be as prepared as possible by researching your customer/portfolio, relevant product updates, and any changes (good or bad) regarding customers' experience with your product and services * Leverage champions and sponsors who may meet more regularly with the C-Suite to get to know them indirectly * Provide something valuable and ask for something specific in return. Think of this as a ping-pong game where you can keep your audience engaged and give them a tangible action to help