What questions should you ask during your one-on-ones with the sales team during your first month at the company?

I love this question! My top 4 thoughts:

• Every sales team is different. Find out how they work – in Eightfold, we have Account Executives (they are front end pre-sales deal closers), Account Managers (focused on install base after implementation), Sales Development Reps (responsible for lead generation and first connects), and Solution Consultants (demonstrating our platform to potential clients). Find out what your sales folks do and how that impacts you.
• Talk to more than 1 salesperson in each department – everyone is different and has unique ways of working. I was referred into Eightfold by someone in sales and had some great conversations with that person. However, that was just one person, and it was also a friend. Looking back, I should have reached out to more folks in different areas of the sales team to learn more.
• From your conversations, compile a list of what potential clients are trying to solve for – those will be the same pain points you will hear about once they go live. Do your research – take that list and run it by your leadership, professional services, product, engineering, etc. and see if it all is consistent. Learn what you can about those issues and see what ideas you might have to address some of them.
• Ask the sales team what they expect from CS. You may get very different answers, and most likely won’t be able to be everything to everyone. Listen, ask questions, talk to your leadership, and decide the best way for you to work with those on the sales team.

I am going to answer this question from the perspective of a Customer Success leader:

1. How do you measure success in your role? What metrics do you use? (Understanding how the sales team is incentivized is important because that drives behavior)
2. Who are the important competitors that we see often during the sales cycle and post-sales?
3. Are services being sold as a part of the package and how are the services and support tiered?
4. What is the process from Sales to Services and Success handover?
5. How and where are the customer pain points that were discussed in the sales cycle recorded??
6. Is sales involved throughout the customer lifecycle or only at the beginning?
7. How does the sales team work with their CS counterparts on top accounts and account planning?
8. How does the sales team identify expansion potential?
9. What are the current points of friction (if present) between sales and customer success?
10. Do sales own renewals or does CS owns renewals or is it a combined responsibility?
11. How early do sales get involved in renewal? Do you track that and is there a metric that will hold the sale team accountable (Send a quote 90 days in advance for example)?
12. Are there any auto-renewals?
13. What is the renewal term? Do we have multi-year terms? Do we have month to month?
14. How is the sales team structured? Is it at the product level, geo etc?