In this 10-minute trumpet, Jeff Breunsbach shares his views on how CSMs should be preparing for career growth. Instead of the Enterprise-level CSM being the goal, focusing on building scaled CS skills is going to give you the biggest bang for your buck. How? Leveraging a 1:many focus in areas that increase your reach Focus on writing skills Identifying self-service opportunities Large-scale impact on customers instead of a 1:1 focus with limited reach --- Gain Grow Retain exists to connect...

In this Vault episode from October, 2020, Joe Huber, formerly the Customer Community Strategist at Sprout Social joins Jeff to talk about the impact of community as a part of your organization. Not only can community provide space for customers to share best practices, create sub-groups based on focus, needs, and company type, share processes and templates, but it brings value to your brand just by providing this space. Learn the steps necessary to prepare your community launch (or relaunch)...

First aired on Leadership Masterclass on June 4, 2023, Jay Nathan joins Subha Shriniivasan to discuss multiple aspects of Customer Success. From the start of Gain Grow Retain to Jay's thoughts on Customer Success's role in a variety of organizational goals, this episode dives into some of the common questions being asked. Why do we need CS? How is CS different from other go-to-market functions? How can companies drive customer experience to build credibility for new customers? How do...

Events are no longer a 'nice to have' for companies. Instead, they are opening the doors to stronger relationships and engaging with customers to become a massive opportunity in a people-first Go-to-Market' plan. This week, Mark Kilens, CMO at Airmeet joins Jay to talk about how they are using events as a catalyst for understanding and ultimately supporting customers through thoughtful, scalable events that are creating two-way experiences in a fast-moving and dynamic way. Connect with...

This week GGR dusts off another gem from the past, this one from December 4, 2019.  A strong CS Ops team can make a huge difference within an organization and be a force multiplier for the entire CS team. Jennifer Kirkland (formerly VP of CS Ops and Professional Services at Conversica, currently Executive VP of Client Success at Axero) joins Jeff and Jay to talk about how Jennifer used her account and product management experience to create a process that made a difference and helped the CS...

Where should renewals live, and why it doesn't really matter... That's the focus of a conversation between Julie Fox, Senior Manager of CS at FloQast and Jeff Breunsbach this week. Regardless of which department owns the renewal process, it really has to be a team sport, where success is based on the involvement of everyone.  Customers do not renew (or not) based on single experiences or relationships, so making sure a strong customer experience exists across all departments is going to be...

Are your customer meetings focusing on your product or your customer? If you are spending time talking about your product, you are leaving a lot of value on the table (and probably finding it difficult to get your customers to keep coming back for more). This week, Bob London and Jeff Breunsbach spend some time talking about how a shift from a product focus to a more strategic role that supports the high level goals and needs of your customer can increase the impact and alignment you...

Your customer won't wake up tomorrow thinking "I cannot wait to use XX product more today!" Jeff Breunsbach takes some time to look at the role change management plays in product adoption. Look for ways to reduce customer effort Identify business problems to solve Update processes where necessary Identify customer stakeholders who will be impacted Integrate into their existing tech stack Moving into helping customers through change management with a new product adoption can help you be seen...

Are you making sure your meetings are 'Can't Miss'? In this week's 10-minute trumpet, Jeff talks through some simple ideas for not only using meetings strategically, but adding simple before and after processes that can hep you make a lasting impression and stand out. 'Do the simple things really well' ----- Gain Grow Retain exists to connect people, knowledge, and ideas to advance the state of customer success. We're on a mission to connect B2B SaaS customer success leaders so that we can...

Rod Cherkas, CEO and founder of HelloCCO, joins Jeff Bruensbach this week to talk about creating predictability and stability through consistence processes, which come from building consistent skills. In order to make this happen, CCOs (or those who aspire to become one) should focus on: Building cross-functional relationships Communicating effectively Segmenting customers and building plans for each segment Use 1:many processes for repetive CSM work Help stakeholders learn customer...

CSMs are really in the business of helping our customer champions become really great change management experts. Let's prepare our customers for the people, process, and technology updates necessary to adopt our product Connect with Garrett here Connect with Michael here ----- Gain Grow Retain exists to connect people, knowledge, and ideas to advance the state of customer success. We're on a mission to connect B2B SaaS customer success leaders so that we can learn from one another. Check out...

Customer success teams aren’t here to simply train the customer on using a product.

This week, Greg Daines, CEO of ChurnRX joins Jay and Jeff to talk about churn benchmarks. Some key highlights: no statistical alignment between whether satisfied customers stay (CSAT) inertia is real - make sure you aren't giving your customers a reason to leave story telling the history of your relationship is a good thing measurable results is one of the largest factors in longer retention make sure your customers are measuring results bridge the gap here, especially if results measuring is...

Are your churn benchmarks telling you what you think they are? Jay Nathan takes a look at the Churn benchmarks for SaaS leaders by Greg Daines, CEO of ChurnRX and some of the results might surprise you! Jay shares some key takeaways for 5 of the 10 benchmarks reviewed in the report. CSAT - no statistical correlation between customer reported satisfaction and customer lifespan. Customer Results - is your customer achieving measurable results and is your CS team including this in...

Are your CSMs operating with a single point of contact? Damien Howley, CCO of Whip Around shares how having a Strategic, Tactical, and Operational focus in your customer relationships not only prevents that single point of failure when a main contact leaves, it strengthens your customer knowledge in a way that cannot be done with a single relationship. Learn what this looks like in real life, and how to effectively ensure your CSMs are utilizing this process well. Connect with Damien here Buy...

Are you using scaled CS as a universal engagement strategy? If not, you are missing out on giving your team the chance to build out their roles due to lack of bandwidth. In building relevant and actionable content, it is important that you: know the persona know the product know the market share best practices have a variety of content types webinars workshops 5-7 minute recordings in-product guies templates social media The result of a strategically planned content library that is easy to...

This week, Karessa Parish, Growth Marketing Manager at ClassTag joins Jeff to talk about the connection between scaled CS and marketing. Here are some of the key takeaways: Look for ways to automate things that you do over and over Evaluate your content to align with customer self-service needs CSMs should be facilitators rather than information keepers Give a space for customers to talk to each other Examples of scaled ways to grab your customer's attention Connect with Karessa...

QBRs are a topic of conversation almost any place that CS professionals gather. That is because they are a vital tool in helping customers understand how your product aligns with their business goals. The problem is these meetings have become another task, and one that many customers are skipping. So how do you move from the old way to a new, more engaging way of talking to customers? Make it more about them instead of you Share metrics and slides ahead of time - bonus points for recording a...

Going above and beyond for your customers seems like a no-brainer, but is it really? Data shows that performing 'Hail Mary's' for your customer doesn't have any greater impact than simply meeting their needs. Matt Dixon shares some tips on what you should be focusing on, and the good news is it is relatively inexpensive in terms of money, time, and resources. We need to move our customers from signature to value as quickly and efficiently as possible. Allowing your CS team to focus on making...

It seems intuitive: you increase retention by delighting your customers. However, data exposes the fact that something that takes a lot of effort and often the increased expense doesn't bring the results you are looking for in terms of loyalty, retention, or even advocacy. Instead, strong value and ROI come when companies look for ways to reduce the effort our customer have to expend to be our customers. Jay takes a look at how teams can work to make reductions in efforts that equip our...

Jay is joined by Christina Lock, Founder and CEO of Catch Talent. We talked about trends in the labor market and what she’s seeing across the tech companies her team works with. Here are the questions we went over: What are the trends you see in both the job market and the labor market? How are employers responding to shifts in the labor market? What roles are most in demand right now from your perspective? How have the requirements changed over the past several quarters? There is a downward...

We need our CSM's to become more "strategic".(What that really means, no one will ever know)BUT, here's an easy way to *start*...Coaching your CSMs to get better at asking open-ended questions AND listening.Open-ended questions often begin with words such as "Why" and "How."Or they can use phrases such as "Tell me about..."💩 Did you accomplish your goals in Q1 2020?➡️ Tell me more about your goals from Q1 2020...💩 Has your business been affected by the recent recession concerns?➡️ What...

Today we are joined by Michael Tuso of Callypso as he brings his experience from sales and account management to share practices that customer success leaders can use: Building account maps can help you identify the right people Sets the stage for consistent account practices Finding ways to build maps at scale and community-driven techniques ----- Gain Grow Retain exists to connect people, knowledge, and ideas to advance the state of customer success. We're on a mission to connect B2B SaaS...

Make your champion the hero of the story when dealing with their finance partners.Here are 3 ways you can do that:1) Help prepare them around how to defend the ROI of your product - remember to think about inputs and variables to the model. Think like a lawyer - you have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt.2) Beyond ROI, help them understand the downside of not using your tool. Think in terms of cost (particularly labor) and lost efficiency - the story/narrative is important here.3) Make sure...

This week, Jon Johnson, Principle Customer Success Manager at UserTesting joined Gain Grow Retain to talk about how to scale in an enterprise environment. Building trust and showing value is a foundational part of the process but segmentation becomes the key to success. Create buckets to segment Get specific Simplify Scale can help you identify the right conversation with the right person at the right time. Connect with Jon ----- Gain Grow Retain exists to connect people, knowledge, and ideas...