AMA: RocketReach VP of Sales & Customer Success, Wynne Brown on Enterprise Customer Success

Given the cost-cutting and economic headwinds facing so many companies right now, many roles are collapsing into single roles - and there is a definite trend to have CS leaders hold responsibility for outcomes AND revenue (renewals, expansion). And it is a touch chicken or the egg: is it better to have a CS leader add to their plate revenue responsibility or have a Sales leader add outcomes to their plate? I - no surprise! - favor adding revenue to the CS plate. Why? Being customer-centric and understanding the leading indicators of outcomes and value delivery are a much better foundation for driving revenue as the lagging indicator than vice versa. The best ways to get adept enough to handle managing revenue targets: 1. Find courses in sales management you can take. You need to understand how to run forecasting, how to set standards for deal progression, get smart about any potential contract renegotiations, create a bag of tricks when it comes to expansion sales plays. 2. Find and cultivate a mentor who is a VP of Sales. The edge cases are where they get ya... you want to have a mentor who can warn you what to watch for, and to act as a sounding board when weird things happen in deals. There are very few leaders out there who have experience with both CS outcomes and Account Management leadership with revenue responsibility. So you want to be the candidate who can demonstrate the knowledge that you can bring the goods, even if you haven't done it before.

The only standard metrics or KPIs I can provide to you for tracking success with enterprise clients are meta metrics and meta KPIs: how do you measure the value of your product? All metrics and KPIs should focus on how a customer will know the ROI in your solution is worth it. Tracking activity metrics or touchpoints serves you to know your staff isn't lazy... but it does NOT measure success if you are looking at success as answering these questions: what value has the customer received? what organizational goals are supported by our solution? are we making our customer a hero or a zero in their role?

This question asks about balancing metrics focused on retention and expansion as if they're on opposite sides of a seesaw. They aren't. The path to expansion travels squarely through the metrics you would measure for retention. In other words, you have to earn the right to retain business before you should even fathom expanding. Large accounts are going to expand in two main ways: buying more product or more new teams buying what one team already bought. Both of these expansion paths can only be tread if you are delivering value to the original team for their original purchase. So green lights on retention mean you can then - and only then - run plays to expand the engagement.

Three things that you can do to begin building an Enterprise Customer Success motion: * Talk with decision makers who have bought your product. Learn everything from them about what was promised during the sales process, what implementation was like, how they will be reporting results from the engagement, how best to set up a Center of Excellence. This is not only key information in building out the motion, it is yet another thread what must be a multi-threaded relationship between your org and the customer. * Set up a documentation system and standards and then train the sales org (AEs with their SEs) on how to drive documentation during the sales process so that 1) deal risks are surfaced and resolved early and efficiently while 2) insuring that the hand off to CS is smooth after the close. * Sketch out the customer journey with product experts. This should result in clear identification of milestones that make or break the ROI. And each milestone can be broken down into checklists so that the journey to value is clear, powerful, and transparent... since you will share the CJ with the customer!

By definition, Enterprise Customer Success means that you are selling a product that becomes so fundamentally core to a large enterprise's own workflows, processes, policies, etc. that they spend a lot and have very high expectations for ROI. So if you need to quantify or justify with that quantification needing Enterprise CS, I would argue that the customer journey is complex and the customer needs a field guide. That journey is basically the path to value and all the ins and outs of what to do and how to measure doesn't just happen by itself or in a self-serve manner. If it did, it wouldn't be an enterprise-grade solution.

Enterprise Customer Success is the act of guiding enterprise customers through the customer journey to maximize ROI. It is the best and only way to fulfill the promises of the first sale, leading to renewals and earning the right to expansion. All CS practices measure things like: * Licenses assigned * Log ins * Usage of features * Tickets submitted Enterprise practices will also look at these factors to determine health: * Is the relationship multithreaded at all levels? * Is the customer reporting back their end results (which often lie outside your solution)? * Is the customer open to building a Center of Excellence? * Is the customer speaking about us to peers? * Are the results of our product in alignment with corporate goals?

The top traits of an excellent Enterprise CSM are: * Communication so flawless C-level folks are pleased * A relationship builder with deep empathy and super high EQ * Obsession with value delivery so much so that they can leverage relationships to deliver hard messages * Able to take the long view of building ROI while attending to many details at the same time

Product Management is a three-legged stool: 1. Innovation: the vision for the product that should inspire and push boundaries 2. Market: what does the market demand for a solution 3. Voice of the Customer: the market covers the needs of who hasn't bought, and the VOC represents the needs and requests of those who have It is essential that CS has a steady cadence of meeting with product and then REPORTING OUT TO CUSTOMERS on the status of their requests. That is intentionally in all caps because most Product teams fall down on building out a roadmap that can be shared with Customers. Nothing will silence the VOC quicker than giving silence back to them. Quantifying the impact of the VOC product requests is really essential. What amount of churn can you forecast if the request isn't fulfilled? How much more could be sold to the customer base if the feature is developed? Advanced version: establish a Customer Advisory Board (CAB) that meets quarterly so Product hears directly from Customers and then is forced to report back to them on what we're doing with their previous feedback.

Enterprise CSMs need to master quite a few things to be able to drive the highest ROI for their customers: 1. Product: the extent of how technical a CSM should be will vary, but a CSM should be a master of using your solution 2. Value: nobody should know more about the value the Customer wants than a CSM. And the CSM should be given clear tools and methods for calculating that value. 3. Vision: matching the long term organizational goals of the Customer to the value of our product and the roadmap forward is something the CSM must always be attending to and adjusting

Everyone always wants to know a baseline for ARR or number of accounts for CSMs, no matter what the segment. I think it is more important to understand how to model that based on your own business! I'm not going to say that an ECSM needs to have 10 accounts because it might be 20 or it might be 1... so here's how you figure it out! You will recognize this as bottoms-up capacity planning. 1. Create a spreadsheet with the first section being internal overhead (team meetings, updating an CSP or CRM, trainings, supporting sales, etc.) hours per month 2. Subtract that internal overhead to calculate how much time remains for customer work (most models will use a 200 hour month) 3. Create sections for these time periods: weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually 4. Within each section, list out the expectations for work for the customer segment. For example, weekly might be the CSM looking at usage metrics, quarterly might be gathering product feedback and reporting out on where their feature requests are falling in the product roadmap. 5. Don't forget to add in ad hoc time you know on average is needed for each customer; you can ask your top CSM to look at their calendar and recommend an average. Likely it is something like 8 hours a month. 6. Assign time to each line item and build the formula to show the amount of hours per month for that activity 7. Add up all the monthly hours 8. Now do the simple math. Let's say after internal overhead, you have 180 hours left. If an Enterprise Customer needs, on average, 20 hours a month, 9 customers is the maximum. This type of modeling also helps you cut down on internal overhead and recalibrate if all the scheduled events are essential to making a customer successful.

If you already have a solid Enterprise Customer Success team, you can up-level by looking at: * Do you have a Customer Advisory Board formed? Is it productive such that Customers are clamoring to be included? * Are you providing to your Customers speaking opportunities to showcase them as a thought leader? * If churn is not an issue, how are you maximizing expansion opportunities? Do you have a solid referral program for your champion to internally refer you to their colleagues? To their peers in other companies who are not yet customers? * Is the product ready to go down market into Mid Market? How can your success in Enterprise be done at a larger scale for smaller customers?

My favorite interview question for an Enterprise Customer Success Manager is to ask their favorite failure. It is kind of an oddball question and it teaches me everything about: * how they think on their feet * how they learn from mistakes * how they take accountability * what they value in their work life * if they're collaborative and classy

A top-notch sales enablement leader has a few characteristics that make them so awesome: * A broad knowledge of sales methodologies and techniques without being attached to any... a melting-pot of best ideas will likely be best * An obsession with iteration: measure, improve, measure again, improve again, and so on * A personable nature where sellers view them as a resource and not another TPS-report-demanding 8th boss These characteristics can then lead to their core contributions: * Run a cadence of sales trainings that sellers welcome (rare) since what is taught will clearly impact them making money (which leads to that rare embrace from sellers) * Follow up on the trainings: sales managers have too many things on their plate and will want a partner in the sales enablement leader and team to surface what is working and what isn't and for whom on their team

I love the idea of a product marketer pivoting into a sales enablement role and here is why: much of sales enablement is about improving messaging and measurement of trainings so they can be reinforced or iterated. A product marketer has those skills! Here are the transferrable skills you can brag about: * Deep understanding of products and how to translate product features into strong pitches of value * An obsession with measurement to know where things need to improve * Success partnering with sales leaders and AEs What you will need to get smart about, but it isn't hard to show you've done the homework: * Research sales enablement platforms / learning platforms for running programs at scale * Especially in SMB, form an opinion on sales coaching via AI-powered call recording systems so you could be a valuable coach to sales managers on how to improve call performance * Design an enablement program from planning through building through delivery into measurement and iteration * Deeply learn the KPIs a sales leader cares about and get smart about how you would support improvements. Generally those KPIs are pipeline volume (are there enough deals to support success?), stage conversion rates (which part of the sales funnel falls short of benchmarks so the AE can improve where they are weak), ACV (sell more licenses per deal? discount less? sell more of the suite?).