Sam Chandler 💥 Customer Success and Experience and Startups

CS teams NEED to start "managing up" with execs and the board by talking about REVENUE. Yes, you can keep talking about sentiment and feelings, but start with the $. Don't lead with churn- Bottom-line-focused execs don't like that headline, so you need to tell the story better. An informal poll had CS teams owning over 50% of the revenue of many SaaS companies. Lead with this and have it be your first talking point. From there you will be able to get more things done with other departments, as your requests will be revenue-focused Need to get a Customer Success Platform as you scale? Point to revenue and the potential to lose revenue without efficiencies Need to hire more to prevent burnout? Point to Revenue potential with renewals and upsells Talk in the language your execs and board want to hear.

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"How much space do I need?" There are a handful of considerations. --> What type of equipment / workouts do you want to use? --> Are you working out solo or with others? --> How much space do you have to build? --> What's your budget? --> Any state, town, or HOA rules? I had another meeting last week to put the finishing touches on the Backyard SHREDS building plans. We're starting with 3 sizes for folks with different space requirements and budgets. ➡️ 12x12' Shred: Great for tight back yards. Budget friendly. Room for one big piece of equipment like a squat rack or cable machine with additional floor space for 1 person's movements OR a cardio machine. ➡️ 12x16' Shred: Room for several pieces of big equipment plus floor space for at least 1 person's movement. ➡️ 12x20' Shred: Spacious to fit several pieces of equipment, cardio, and room for several people's movement. (Or make half a gym, half an office like I'm doing with my 12x20 Shred) ALSO INCLUDED: ✅ An extra guide for alternate foundations. ✅ An extra guide for rough openings to customize for different door/window options. ✅ A pre-build planning guide, cost estimator, and material list. These are the BEST building plans for home gyms. 💪🏼 Rock solid floors rated specifically for heavy lifting. 💪🏼 Taller side walls and ceiling than storage sheds for room to lift overhead. Easy to hand off to a builder to get exactly what you need. Easy to understand and follow even if you have limited experience but want to build it yourself and save $$$. The goal is to have them available on the website by the end of May. Sign up for the wait-list and be the first to know when they arrive! (Link in comments)

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ZoomInfo Copilot is working 24/7 — surfacing important updates you should know about your top accounts.  With breaking alerts delivered via Slack, you'll never miss when a buying group shifts or a key account spikes on intent. 🔔 Have a question about one of your accounts? Ask Copilot's interactive, AI-powered chat and get answers in seconds.  Ready to give Copilot a try? Request a demo: bit.ly/3Kj4myP #ZoomInfoCopilot

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The SDR-AE collaboration & relationship How should they work together? How do you define what good looks like...and what the hell DOES it look like? How do you document that, make a framework out of it, and scale it across the org? From there, how do you track & measure success? I hit on each point with Brian Dietmeyer on the CloseMode podcast 👀 Find it at all the usual spots: Spotify, YouTube, Apple, Amazon, etc. Link below in comments P.S. SDRs, AEs, Leaders - Would love to hear how you're doing this. Give it a listen & share your thoughts.

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It’s not an easy choice, but my all-time favorite burger joint is Small Cheval in Chicago (especially the Wicker Park location).  I’ll grab a double cheeseburger, fries, and a shake.  And for the rest of the day I’ll be full and content - it works every time! Keep in mind Small Cheval isn’t cheap.  There’s a spot with a “World’s Best Burger” sign down the street where I could go get 10 burgers for the price of my Small Cheval meal.  Let’s say it’s lunch time - I’m starving and I have a crazy afternoon.  I have enough money in my pocket and enough time on my hands for either burger spot.  My options are: “World’s Best Burger" - get a burger.  It's cheaper and it’ll taste good, but it’s greasy, it won’t make me feel great and I’ll still be hungry after.  Sure, it’ll fulfill my need for food, but will it really do the job? Small Cheval - get a burger.  I’ll spend more money, but it’ll taste great, I’ll feel happy, and it’ll fill me up.  Not only does it fulfill my need for food, but I’m also ready to tackle my afternoon of meetings and cold calls! Now why on earth am I talking about burgers on LinkedIn?  Because evaluating visibility providers is a similar process.  If you’re going to go spend money on lunch (or buy a visibility solution), do it right.  Fulfilling a need isn’t always as simple as finding the cheapest option.  It’s about finding the right option - the one that does the job no matter the circumstances.  Are you stuck eating from “World’s Best Burger” every day?  Schedule a demo with me and I’ll show you what your lunch could be like 😎.  #ContainerTracking #Visibility #Logistics #SupplyChain #InternationalShipping https://lnkd.in/eN9HwY5W

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What's the pulse for Tech Sales Hiring? I think we're well past the bottom of the market. 49% of respondents are getting at least 3 approaches per month right now. Gong's CEO, Amit Bendov noted on SaaStr this week: "Businesses overspent and overbought in 2021 Over-cut and underspent the following year and rationalised. Companies are now out of the shock and back to moderate growth". IMO Hiring activity reflects that for now and will trend upwards from here.

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This concept came up at the awesome update ai design session. What is CSM drunk dialing? Only contacting your customers when you need something: - Renewals - References - Expansions You get the drift. Your customers see RIGHT THRU this. They will only take so much of your shenanigans before they kick you to the curb. What proactive activities are you doing so that your customer does not feel like an afterthought?

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Is your team effectively using your MEDDIC fields or is it a checkbox exercise? Lots of organizations have MEDDIC requirements in Salesforce that need to be filled out before advancing the deal to the next stage. The problem is for most teams this becomes a check box exercise. Reps fill out what they can quickly, so there is information in there to move the deal forward. This information never really gets used or analyzed retroactively. When more time is spent properly filling out this information in detail - it has the potential to be utilized as a high leverage tool to help understand how and why certain types of deals are closing. Learning from the MEDDIC information from similar deals is a super power that some of the best reps lean on, but can be hard to find or access in your Salesforce. Is your team analyzing and evaluating your MEDDIC information, or is it another unused field because there isn't enough information properly filled out?

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📣 Here are all the top LinkedIn posts on CS operations from 5/22 to 5/28. Marley Wagner - leveraging automation for an internal audience - https://lnkd.in/gWy7TUdF Rosalyn Santa Elena - what it means to be more strategic and less tactical in revops - https://lnkd.in/gJDDsGaj Sagar Shukla - the worst metric for CS - https://lnkd.in/gg45frsV -- 🚨 Did we miss a post? Let us know in the comments to make sure others don't miss it either ❤️ Was this helpful? Make sure to follow the Matik page to continue seeing these weekly roundups! -- What is Matik? Matik automates the personalization of content, including data-driven elements like tables, charts, and insights. Compatible with Google Slides, Microsoft PowerPoint, and emails. See it in action: https://lnkd.in/gmWedmqb #revenueoperations #revops #customersuccess #csm

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“𝗥𝗲𝘃𝗢𝗽𝘀 𝗵𝗲𝗹𝗽𝗲𝗱 𝗺𝗲 𝘀𝗲𝗲 𝘄𝗮𝘆𝘀 𝘄𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺 𝗮𝘀 𝗮𝗻 𝗼𝗿𝗴𝗮𝗻𝗶𝘇𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗮𝗱𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗰𝗲𝘀.” - Tim Strickland, Former CRO at ZoomInfo, now Advisory Partner at Summit Partners. This clip exemplifies to me what “Strategic RevOps” really means to me. In our last episode of 🎙𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗥𝗲𝘃𝗢𝗽𝘀 𝗖𝗼𝗿𝗻𝗲𝗿🎙we talked to Tim and his former VP of RevOps, Scott Sutton, about the relationship between the CRO and RevOps. Interestingly, RevOps didn’t report to the CRO - They both reported to the President Reporting aside, Tim had a third-party organization that "𝘄𝗮𝘀𝗻’𝘁 𝗻𝗲𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗮𝗿𝗶𝗹𝘆 𝗴𝗼𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗲𝗹𝗹 𝗵𝗶𝗺 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗜 𝘄𝗮𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗵𝗲𝗮𝗿, 𝗯𝘂𝘁 𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘄𝗮𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗮𝘁 𝗹𝗮𝗿𝗴𝗲." To do this, they built a team covering: - Capacity Planning - Compensation Planning - Quota Planning - Territory Planning - Sales Process - Systems Architecture - And, of course, Analytics This to me is a perfect example of why reactive systems admin is not enough to help CROs hit their revenue goals. (And this is why we’ve built our RevOps team in a similar way.) RevOps was there to build the Revenue Factory - To industrialized best practices - To create (almost) an assembly line of sales - And to operationalize their overall Go To Market In other words, finding ways to generate more revenue beyond just adding more headcount. Scott is now the CEO at Later, a $70M B2B SaaS company, and we also dove into how to scale this down for companies much smaller than ZoomInfo. Check out the full episode for more: 𝗦𝗽𝗼𝘁𝗶𝗳𝘆: https://spoti.fi/3VvpKax 𝗔𝗽𝗽𝗹𝗲: https://apple.co/4aRQoiq ✌️

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We love highlighting some of what our dexters have raved about us !!   Lindsey Meyl 💚, CoFounder at RevAmp, I love what Dextego is doing. Sales enablement is one of the hardest jobs out there and it can be difficult for them to provide their AEs all the coaching that will make them an A player. Dextego empowers organizations to finally give their AEs the help needed.   Are you ready to enable your revenue teams to become their best selves? #AE #SDR #revenueai

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We've all been there - sitting through a dense meeting or call, trying to capture all the key details amid a flurry of conversation. “How do I distill all of this into something the customer cares about?” Enter the #PortableRecap email. A well-crafted recap is like a lighthouse beam cutting through the fog, illuminating the meeting's purpose, commitments made, and next steps. Many sellers send recaps but their not #portable. The follow up email is littered with product jargon and breezy generalities around the conversation. Elite value sellers purposely design the whole recap email so that their key contact forwards it to other members in the buying committee. How? Here are steps to create portable recaps that shine: 🔹Implement a consistent structure Open with a brief meeting overview that recaps the purpose and attendees. Then, use clear sections with numbering to delineate: 1) Key discussion points 2) Decisions 3) Action items 4) Next steps This logical framework makes it easy for the recipient to navigate and extract the most pertinent information. 🔹Provide sufficient context While the recipient attended the meeting, their colleagues did not. Ensure your recap provides enough background and context so it can stand alone when forwarded. Avoid insider language or abbreviations that would confuse those not privy to the original conversation. A value seller in our Customer Value Community shared this actual customer email response to her #PortableRecap: “Thank you for this! I am going to send as-is to my colleagues.” 💥 This value seller not only framed the thinking of her key contact but helped frame the thoughts of the rest of the buying committee. Come join us in the Customer Value Community for access to templates and examples of winning #PortableRecaps. Your value made clear.

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For the solo RevOps Teams out there, managing everything on your own can be daunting. Here's how to keep your head above water.... 🎯 Focus on What Matters. Not everything needs to be done now. Identify projects that align with your revenue goals—those that improve the customer journey or increase efficiency should be top of your list. ⏰ Organize Your Time. Create a routine that allocates specific days or parts of your day to certain tasks. This can help ensure you're making progress on all fronts without spreading yourself too thin. 💡 Know Your Limits. It's crucial to be realistic about your capacity. If you're overloaded, it's better to delegate, outsource, or consider bringing in extra help for particular projects. Pushing something off the roadmap might be necessary if it's not immediately feasible. Running a one-person RevOps show is tough but manageable with the right approach. And if you hit a wall, JayOh - Fractional RevOps offers Expert RevOps Bandwidth to provide the support you need, allowing you to scale your efforts without committing to a full-time position. #RevOps #RevenueOperations

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Speed to lead might sound simple, but the architecture behind it is anything but. ZoomInfo's demo routing is powered by Zoominfo Enrich, which we used to create a system of models and workflows for SDRs to connect prospects with closers (AEs). As always, our goal is to optimize outcomes while maintaining equitability for reps. Let's break it down: ⚖️ Balancing Model: Designed within Salesforce, this system prioritizes demo allocation by evaluating the number of eligible events over their event quota over a rolling period to ensure a fair distribution of leads among AE cohorts. 📏 5 Tier Prospect Scoring Model: Dynamically assesses and assigns prospects to a tier based on channel, segment, win rate model, and title department rating collected and enriched at the time a prospect fills out a form via ZI form complete.. 🏆 Win Rate Model: Leveraging ZI enriched data points, this model refines demo allocation by categorizing prospects and accounts into win rate cohorts based on thousands of ZoomInfo’s industry-specific and title data points, such as # of sales employees and recent funding activity all help pinpoint the best meeting. ✅ AE Tiering Eligibility: Based on segment and ACV quota, AEs are eligible from anywhere from 1 to 4 tiers of demos. The demo router matches eligible AEs to a prospect tier to determine whether or not an AE is best suited for this particular meeting. 🗓️ Availability Integration: Through direct integration with Google Free/Busy API, we prioritize speed to lead by matching AE availability with the time the SDR coordinated with the prospect. This way we can book more same-day and next day meetings. The magic is that an SDR simply has to hit a button to initiate this process and schedule a meeting, making the handoff and tracking practically seamless We're continuously refining our model to adapt to nuances like PTO, market changes, and shifting demands to keep our leads flowing as quickly and smoothly as possible. See what Steven Bryerton, our SVP of New Sales has to say about Speed to Lead 👉 https://lnkd.in/gSQ5JyrD 

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Top 5 key metrics I recommend CROs use for inside sales professionals: 1. Speed of response 2. Efficiency of progression through the process 3. Number of calls per day 4. Number of positive outcomes 5. Demo sets As a CRO leader, these are five metrics that I live by. 

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When I first started as a CSM I didn't "get" health scores. I didn't really understand the value of one score, because other than telling you something was at risk, it didn't really tell me anything else. CSMs are running blind without a health score, but they're also running blind with ONLY a health score, and no suggested actions. I want to know where my risk is, but I also want to know exactly how to go and fix it! Hook 👀 #customersuccess #risk #healthscore #revenue

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Sales people make the money. Sales Ops / Rev Ops / Biz Ops count the money. Sales Enablement explain the missing money 😏 . Building and leading a Sales Enablement function from the ground up is extremely challenging for C-Level Executives who succumb to the mainstream practices because of lack of time and understanding of what the role is all about. Doing more of the same doesn't fit today's economic climate, especially for early-stage startups with limited resources and high demands for fast outcomes. Put simply, Leaders today have a shorter runway. Don't waste it on trial & errors. I've introduced the Moneyball approach back in 2017 and have implemented it successfully ever since. Project Moneyball in a nutshell is a Revenue Intelligence approach to Sales Enablement, exactly what scaling businesses need in times of uncertainty. Hit "Book an appointment" and let's take it from here.

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This is why you don't get demos or meetings. What early-stage companies can do about messaging: Message-to-Market-Fit. MMF is the relationship between 1) the words in your value prop and 2) how RELATABLE those words are to your market. It's similar to Product-Market-Fit. 1️⃣ PMF is about solving for customer retention. 2️⃣ MMF is having customers stick around to hear everything you have to say. Imagine your acquisition funnel as an upside-down pyramid. What you do exactly in your funnel is irrelevant, to some degree. As long as that funnel is a nicely sloped pyramid. ❌ When your MMF is poor, your pyramid looks jagged. • Fewer people stick around to hear your full message, how it works, and why it's better. • Your value proposition doesn't resonate. It's not relatable. • They drop off more frequently as you share more messaging with them. • Before they get to the core of your offering, you already missed out on potential leads, demos, and meetings. • You are safe to ignore. ✅ A healthy MMF creates a smooth, nicely sloped pyramid. • More people are interested in what you have to say next. • Your message is clear and relatable. • They see themselves in your words, feel understood, and want to click to learn more. • Your funnel is fuller at each subsequent stage. • This leads to better conversion rates and ultimately more customers. The best driver of healthy MMF is, in a strange way, the things that are hardest to keep up with. - Customer interviews - Engaging and listening on social media - Attending niche events - Building relationships with influencers - In-person visits - Customer advisory boards Doing these things might take time and effort, but they can make your message fit your market better.

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ZoomInfo Copilot is working 24/7 — surfacing important updates you should know about your top accounts. With breaking alerts delivered via Slack, you'll never miss when a buying group shifts or a key account spikes on intent. 🔔 Have a question about one of your accounts? Ask Copilot's interactive, AI-powered chat and get answers in seconds. Ready to give Copilot a try? Message me today ! #ZoomInfoCopilot #zoominfo

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