How Customer Success Drives Retention, Revenue & Growth with Elizabeth Salmoun

hey everyone welcome back to make it happen mondays where we talk about sales business entrepreneurship personal growth mental health and everything in between with guests who had truly respect and i think make a positive impact on the world around us yes this week started working when she was 15 years old not because she had to but because she was dying to and her parents asked her what was wrong with her i'm actually very similar my daughter is 15 years old and she was itching at the job now for her job the job was in the back room of a t-shirt shop in carmel california putting tags on shirts every chance she got she would sneak out onto the sales floor and start selling people t-shirts until somebody noticed and sent her back because she was not 16 yet liz salman went from there to selling luxury handbags and she'll tell you that is where she learned the one thing she still runs on today that nobody was buying handbags somebody was buying an anniversary she now leads customer success at otter who is quite frankly a sponsor of mine just to be up front about that but i absolutely love their platform so in this conversation we got into why her best csms all came up through retail and hospitality when churn actually starts and why the first 90 days decide absolutely everything as it relates to renewals and about halfway through she turned the mic around and asked me a question i did not see coming so hope you enjoy this conversation as much as much as i did let's make it happen hey real quick if you heard me last year you know i stopped taking manual notes on all my sales calls yes i'm still using otter.ai but now i'm using their desktop app which means there's no bot jumping into my sales calls and honestly it's become way more than just a note taker with the desktop app otter captures all my sales calls and turns them into searchable insights that sink straight into my crm and then i can ask otter chat any question about any meeting or conversation i've ever recorded the best part chat is now connected with all the tools i use so if something's buried in tools like notion google drive gmail salesforce whatever i can still find it all without leaving on it but here's what i actually love about it the knowledge doesn't disappear when the call ends it lives in otter i can spot patterns across my pipeline remember exactly what was said and walk into my next call way more prepared the time it saves me is absolutely ridiculous and that's before you even get into what it does for teams i'm partnering with otter to give you an exclusive offer go to otter.ai forward slash jb sales to learn more and start selling smarter today liz salmone welcome to the make it happen monday podcast how are you doing today good how are you i'm doing well you know i'm still here so uh you know something to be said for that in this crazy world that keeps moving faster than i could possibly imagine but yeah it's all good there you go that's the way to look at it we'll we'll be here all week yeah right it's one of those like i think i've stopped trying i used to try to look out like five years right to say okay you know what's a five-year plan here of like where i see myself and those type of things and then back into that and okay yeah and i'm not like a hardcore goal setter right where it's like but these days i'm like five years like i i don't know if i could look five months out at this point based on how fast things are going and and i'm sure you're doing the same thing just as it relates to customer success which is what we're going to be talking about here um but uh before we do liz i always like my audience to learn a little bit about you uh that we can't read on linkedin so stuff about like where you grew up your influences your parents work all that fun stuff and then college we'll get into and then uh your journey through customer success and where you are today with otter sound like a plan yeah sounds great all all right let's dive in yeah cool um well i grew up in carmel california some people know about it because of clint eastwood some people know about it because of golf uh but i grew up there um and you know when i when i graduated high school i wanted to go to the the closest big city to family carmel is a great place to be uh but growing up it's you know it's a lot of um second third home so there's not a ton to do you know growing up there um so i uh i decided to move to san francisco for college in terms of influence um you know my parents instilled like a pretty pretty strong work ethic um but they didn't really um force me to do it i just saw what they were doing my dad was a civil engineer he worked all the time he built huge um commercial to residential and i just loved that work ethic and um i just loved watching him and that really stuck with me so much so that going backwards a little bit i started working when i was 15 oh nice there you go yeah i was like for some reason i was just dying to work and my parents were like what is wrong with you i was like i don't know i just like want to work and uh my mom's friend owned a t-shirt shop in downtown carmel and so i started working there uh in the back room just like putting tags plugging in tags to the uh the t-shirts and every opportunity i got and this is true every opportunity i got i wanted to out on the sales floor and i would start selling people like different types of t-shirts and they were like yeah yeah you're like not 16 you got to go in the back yeah you can't do that i was like all right all right uh so i kept going in retail for quite some time and um in high school i worked in retail too and anyways panned to san francisco um moved here for college didn't leave um love the city got into tech really soon after um sales background i was in sales with the retail like about 10 years maybe a little bit more uh but transitioned into tech sales when i got into san francisco and in college um did that for a while loved it uh wanted a slightly different role i liked the aspect of relationships and driving that for longer than what the sales cycle provides and so i switched over to account management and then to customer success okay so i've been in gosh tech i'm aging myself a little over 10 years uh cs when you're talking to me by the way so cs probably about the same amount of time yeah let me ask you so retail i think that that gives you a unique perspective on customer success because you're literally right there with the customer talking to them what did you what what are some of the things you learned in your retail experience that you pull through even to this day with kind of your mentality around customer success yeah the great thing about retail and i would advocate that everybody as part of like the curriculum should be in hospitality at some point the you cannot escape them they are literally in front of you right you can't just uh not respond to the email or close the zoom and pretend your your wi-fi died um you know it's really the body language connecting with people in person retail taught me that people have background stories even if it's as simple as you're selling like i was selling luxury handbags at a time and they're talking about who they're buying it for or why they're buying it and you're understanding that emotion you're building that connection and i find that my most successful csms started in some sort of a retail or hospitality right because they know exactly how to and they're great at escalations because they know exactly how to deal in the moment they have no other choice and so retail was really really a great start for me because it taught me about human emotion it taught me how to connect with people on a different level yes you're buying this very expensive handbag but why are you buying it oh it's our anniversary right yes exactly the why behind it and connecting that to emotion and value served me well in my sales ncs career i love that because i think you know it's funny um you know i had i was a waiter right so like in the sense that i think you know from a sales standpoint that's one of the most valuable things you can do is because you get to okay you understand you know what good and bad looks like and what tips are and how much tips come if you do good service versus bad service but retail is a little bit of a different animal to that right because it's it's to your point i don't really the why behind why you're here at this restaurant and you know yes i can connect with like oh it's an anniversary it's all you know and i in the moment but when you're buying something there is that essence of like why are you doing this especially when it's luxury or like anything that my first major was art in college and i always said that art is i think what my least favorite professional on the planet by the way is an art critic because like who are you to tell me that this is like it is so subjective right but the beauty of art is like you could look at something on a wall and be like that's hideous but if i tell you the story behind it all of a sudden it connects with you right like oh this is my emotion and my mom died and this is what i painted and because of it and then all of a sudden it's like oh my god that's one of the most beautiful paintings i've ever seen because it gives you context it gives you that why and i think understanding that that's what i'm a little worried about these days is that a lot of reps whether they be cs or sales or anybody they don't really understand first of all their own why like why are they here and doing this but but also why did the client buy this and and looking at them as more than the renewal that's coming up or the upsell cross sell that i have to do but as that human being that actually i'm trying to help do their job and why am i how why am i like what what's their why so i can help connect with that do you help your team or like how do you connect with that with with now in a client world a b2b sas tech world yeah how do you help your csms kind of make that connection with the client so they're not just a number that they're calling for you know whatever reason they're being told to call for yeah we have a ton of discovery calls related around just like personal experience and understanding our customer i have the three w's for my team and they need to leave every conversation understanding what do they need why do they need it and when they're going to need it with with whatever it is if it's an upsell or just why they bought the product right so they can connect we have them ask about fiscal year we have them ask about their birthday do you have kids like get to know them a little bit right you're going to understand based on the scope of their role and what they tell you maybe you're going to learn they take a little bit longer to respond or they're a little more direct they don't have time to kind of you know futz around and you know that about them and you're able to build that relationship so you're really tailoring your entire strategy um and relationship based on their needs and understanding them i love it in in retail we used to send handwritten notes yeah to clients and i had uh my first cs team i had them sending handwritten notes nice to to the admins and they loved it and yes there's a little gift attached but it's personal you know um and people appreciate that yeah and that's something you can't automate with ai right i i i felt bad a former colleague of mine you know uh she started this this own her own company and it she sent me a letter a note and it was this really beautiful note that she wrote and it was like her business and it was about handwritten notes that they can send to other people on your behalf but i could tell that it was it was it looked like handwriting but it wasn't it was handwriting that a computer did to make it look like handwriting with a very nice note to it but when i got it i like i couldn't help but give her the feedback i'm like a handwritten note is supposed to be personal so the fact that i can tell that this isn't actually written by somebody's like that person's hand is it kind of takes away the value of what this is it's the same thing with gifts like you know pick your tool to send gifts with like if you're just sending generic stupid gifts like it's it's actually i think does more harm than good but if you get hyper personalized with that gift and it's super thoughtful about something you heard them say in that what when why conversation you had with them you know six months ago it stands out by a mile these days so is that like where do you give your team the flexibility to kind of because you hear all these crazy things about customer success and retail you know nordstrom's they can you know they return their tire and all you know all those wonderful stories we've all heard in college and everything else you know what how do how do you implement that like the the creativity or the the personalization of that relationship and do you do you structure it in a way do you let the the team come up with their own ideas do you brainstorm about stuff that you can do to go the extra mile or is it kind of on a rep by rep basis where they're just you know they do their thing yeah great question we brainstorm as a team you know everyone has their own style whether it's sales or cs and it's so valuable to hear what other people are doing so in our team we have weekly team meetings and part of the agenda is what's going well what's not going well right and share what's gone well for you in terms of um you know building relationships with your clients um we really encourage them to ask a ton of questions and build that relationship and the nordstrom's example is actually one i give all the time still right um but part of that is also being in sass products are kind of just like they're they're just baseline they're table stakes yeah beyond the product because everyone's developing at a massive rate right ai is there it's just products product products tooling tooling tooling but what is going to differentiate you is the relationship that you build with them and that's the truth it's exactly with nordstrom i can go to bloomingdale's i can go anywhere else but nordstrom has notorious great customer service and they'll kind of return anything without asking questions so it's like who are you going to choose we are in such a in my industry specifically at otter ai we're in such a competitive landscape right everyone has very similar tools yeah so how do you how do you provide that value it's in the humans that are interacting yeah yeah that's and i think that that's my hope too is that that is is continues to be the differentiator right because i say the same thing you do like i don't care what you're selling these days i promise it's commoditized it is and whether you think it or not it doesn't matter it's what the client thinks from a perspective right so it's commoditized so that's table stakes if your product doesn't fundamentally do what it's supposed to do you're not even invited to the table at this point right so so it's like okay cool and and by the way if you fight this feature function game like good luck because today your features and functions might be better but tomorrow they won't be i promise you so it is that human connection um i want to i want to back up here and talk about the the break of uh like the the transition from sales to cs and because i'm you know part of one of my keynotes is i talk about the age of the agile sales org but you know i'd said about 2010 to 2022 is a golden age of sales and we've ruined it basically by over operationalizing it because you have the sdr who makes a generic cold call ask dumb ass band quest band questions and then flips you over to an ae who's going to ask you the same dumb ass questions and give you a generic demo and then flips you over to an se who's going to ask you the same dumb questions and maybe give you a decent demo and then if the client buys it gets dumped on cs and the champion's gone now you're dealing with a point of contact who barely probably even remembers your nose why they bought this thing and you're handing it over to a cs person who has no context to the deal and then all of a sudden it's hey your renewals coming up in 90 60 30 days right so it's kind of this like we've over operationalized this so a why first of all cs isn't it has been something that is relatively new right customer success there's account management and then there's customer success so where do you see the biggest breaks let's talk first about what are the biggest things not to do and then what what does great look like from that and we don't even have to talk about that transition like i i'm talking about like even getting cs involved early and all those different things so what are some of the biggest mistakes you see companies doing with that transition from ae to cs effectively and then let's talk about what great looks like yeah great question um the handoff between sales aes and csms is so critical and that pre-sale involving them if you're working an enterprise account the expectation is you are meeting the csm that is going to operate that account why because you want them to feel comfortable but two you need to drive time to value right so starting at that point and having the csm there also understanding the needs because there's so much that goes on in a sales cycle especially in an enterprise sales cycle you're talking about so much letting them come in and better understand the clients so that when the transition actually happens when they sign they already know this person um but you know industry research continuously consistently points to the first 90 days yeah the first 90 days is when they determine if they're going to renew or not and if you have a poor handoff i can guarantee you the likelihood of them churning is 10 times greater yeah yeah how much should the sales rep stay involved so i think that the prevailing and well one more let me back up on that when did you start to see the shift of enterprise wanting to talk to cs before they made the decision because that's relatively new as well right i know cs as well but it's really up until the past few years where it's like if i'm spending this kind of money uh i need to talk to the people who are going to be implementing it versus before you could just have a sales rep you know make all the promises in the world and then just dump it on you know account manager whoever implementations desk so when did you start to see the the proactive from the client saying i want to meet or and or was this something you started to proactively push to the client because they didn't they weren't asking for it and you knew that was a nice little linchpin yeah um i think it started probably i want to say within the last five years okay um this started probably like for me three rolls ago when a customer is spending a significant amount of money and they're buying something for the first time that they don't know they need their hand held and so they're looking for that trusted advisor to guide them and it's more predominant in in companies buying that are not familiar with the product or it's like the first type of tool that they're implementing and so they want that support um so that's where i see it the most we i started adding csms um in pre-sale conversations probably about five years ago when you're talking about seven-figure deals they need to know what this is going to look like over the next 12 months um and it's it's just so valuable and you're creating value early by doing that um you asked before about what great looks like yeah i'll give you an example uh we just stood up a new csp tool customer success platform tool i went through so many vendors and i cannot even tell you how poorly i saw some of the sales process being run because they work at these great companies the tool is amazing sure right but there's no nurturing there's no talking about long term they're like oh if you want a csm it's like a 60k minimum i'm like okay let's like talk about them first right and so we ended up going with a really great csp tool because of the way they handled pre-sale and the handoff in terms of what great looks like this company did it through and through we had our ae pre-sale ae scheduled the um meeting with the csm and the implementations individual he joined that meeting he joined like two more sessions even though he cut off early he made sure he was holding our hand and we felt comfortable moving to the next stage that is what a successful handoff looks like yeah when you just feel so comfortable i'm on a podcast talking about it like that's how successful and it made me feel so good yeah right i felt like we were in great hands yeah and how long do you suggest because and i know every org's structured differently right where what who gets comped on what and everything else but usually most sales reps which i cringe at you know they sign the deal and they thank you very much see you later and they go off hunting for another one um where i'm like wait a minute forget about customer success for a minute like why why wouldn't you stay involved with that client to get testimonials to get referrals to get all these things that you can find more business if they're happy right um and to learn that they're happy so regardless of that component of it what is the best practice here for the sales rep to to like once that handoff happens right i think at first it's the sales rep bringing cs in to say hey you know help with the process make the client feel comfortable reduce the risk all that fun stuff sales process happens that you know the transition occurs what what have you seen as the a way for a sales rep to stay involved without getting in the way mm-hmm such a good question you know every cs sales team will deal with this exact same scenario communication communication communication and base level respect and understanding of overarching goals we're all here for the same reason we want our equity to mean something customer success core fundamentals are retention and growth sales core fundamentals new business and sometimes expansion right and so it is so important that they're communicating and they're respecting each other's roles right so we know first 90 days like we talked about that's the the most at risk the client will be what we don't want is um aes continue to continue to sell at that time while we're trying to onboard right so communicating with your csm your csm is your leverage they're going to get you warm intros everywhere they're going to keep you in the loop and vice versa you know with the csm it's welcoming the ae acknowledging they've done a ton of hard work to get to this point let's work as a team right and in their discovery they're asking if it's if it's a land and expand motion what other teams do you guys work with who do you work with cross functionally can you introduce me and then looping them in together you know yeah i think that's the the and ultimately whose responsibility is that is that the cro's responsibility to set those kind of roles responsibilities guidelines and or or or is it you know kind of at the the vp level or the director level like where are you seeing success especially even otter right like and you guys are moving a million miles an hour there's a million things going on so it's very easy to get segmented and just like hey we're just over here doing our own thing so you know in the orders that you've worked for including otter what does good look like uh from an expectation setting standpoint so everybody kind of knows their roles and and where they can and cannot uh interact yeah everything starts from the top down yeah you need c-suite alignment then vp director manage frontline managers ices and it has to be consistent and it has to be written the only way you're going to get people to follow directive and buy-in is a explaining the why behind it ensuring we all have the same clear and aligned on the same overarching goal and then putting it in writing for them so they can reference it so roes are so important and then continuing to hold to those roes the second you start like diverting from that one team feels it right it's on it's either one side or the other or both depending on what we're doing but once we start kind of diverting from that it's hard to come back we treat you know the pareto principle 80 of your business comes from 20 of your install base the way i operate with my team is my team is my 20 right and that's how in my opinion it should level up right our people are 20 let's nurture them set them up for success because that's where we're going to get the most value in the business why do you think cs has become such uh uh a focal point for organizations especially now compared to in his right because i think in the in the heyday of sass it didn't matter as much right because money was free grow at all costs who gives a shit you know what i mean whatever we got churn numbers but you know um we're gonna top line we're just we're just cramming stuff into that pipeline but now with ai you know what i'm reading at least is that nrr is literally the number one indicator because you know everybody can sign up early on something because it looks sexy the question is is do they use it and do they renew and so why do you think cs has become such a focal point for organizations um in the past call it five years like you said yeah um the economics of sass have fundamentally changed yeah so it used to be that most of the value was created when the deal closed but today the contract is just the beginning so customers expect continuous value throughout their partnership especially enterprise whatever amount they're spending truly they could be spending a thousand or a hundred thousand right products are evolving faster than ever we just talked about that ai has accelerated that so that creates even more expectation that furthers expectation around that so companies aren't just the ones that companies that grow aren't just the ones that sell well they're the ones that help customers successfully adopt that's key that's what's changed they're not going to renew if they're not adopting um expanding and realizing business outcomes so that's where customer success has kind of changed and where there's more value every conversation in cs is a revenue conversation if you're focused on business outcomes so cs has become so much more of a strategic function than it was before right by nature with a little more transactional more support now just based on where we are and truly where ai is yeah you can't sub that on the cs side like you can automate things and whatnot but people want the person how do you continue to drive value how do you understand their needs and then correlate it with what they just purchased from you so i think that's really what's changed sass has changed totally well and sass isn't talking about in trouble uh yeah we talk about an industry that's getting smacked by ai um yeah well with that though it's funny because you know i do a lot of trainings and i'll do um you know say a negotiation training for aes and there'll be a few seats open right and so inevitably they'll come to me and say the crl come and say hey john you know can i throw a few cs in there right or account managers and yeah sure no problem and and throughout the training i will do my best to like talk about whatever the topic is and then relate it to cs right or or ams and um but inevitably what happens when i walk out of those trainings is cs says well it was really good but you know i just wish it was a little bit more cs focused but then i will do the exact same training to just cs and i will literally change one thing i will just take the word sales out of the equation and i'll talk to them and they walk out going oh my god that was the best training i've ever had that's exactly what we needed so i i feel like a lot of people get into cs because they don't want to sell they they really just want to help the customer be successful and and they have this perception that sales is some slick thing that i got to say to convince somebody to do something so how does that how do you deal with that balance and and and get them to have a different lens when it comes to quote unquote selling right because really ultimately i'd say customer success and sales is pretty much the same thing we're helping people solve problems or achieve goals that's it you know we try to do it on the front end to uncover what those are and you know then once they're it's like okay get the most out of this so so where is your head at with the sales component of customer success because that's what a lot of cro's are looking at right now saying my sales team is dying over here you know conversions are down close rates are down forecast is terrible you know that type of stuff so our existing install base holy i think you even said like your next billion dollar client or million dollar client is actually sitting in your customer base yep so how do you facilitate the sale mentality wise and tactically with a group who historically doesn't almost has an aversion to sales yeah such a good question in my um in my tenure i've actually only managed revenue generating cs teams but what i will say is uh there are certainly those who come in that did not have that sales background and they have zero interest in it and the conversations we have are sales are not just numbers every conversation you have as a sale every value realization is a sale every ebr in sales the only thing that makes you happy is that sale right on the cs side what makes my team so excited is crushing an ebr you got all the key stakeholders you got c-suite you ran through you didn't run through metrics you ran through their life cycle with us you pulled up a slide that said these were your objectives when you first signed on here's how you define success and here's where we met let's talk strategic alignment what is the next six months 12 months look like for you that's all selling they just don't realize it right it's running that discovery process um so in in those instances where you have folks that are not sales inclined it's really getting them to understand um what value is right and how you actually how that is actually a sale in and of itself right you're providing value you're getting them to say yes this is what we wanted right we know sales three yeses yes um but they're doing the same thing you know and it doesn't need to be focused on on the revenue side retention in itself is a sale yeah and we don't celebrate that enough we have a hundred thousand dollar contract that renewed let's celebrate that just like we would a hundred thousand dollar new business sale especially if you didn't use a massive discount to get it to get it closed right it's the same thing on the sales side of us and and i guess that you know therein lies the the the answer to the question i'm about to ask which is you know obviously renewals every company right now is you know trying to cut costs and you know renewals coming up i don't want to pay the full price and obviously as organizations trying to get them to we're trying to up you know get them to spend more because our costs went up and everything else what's your best uh approach to avoiding the discount conversation at the end of the year or whatever it is so that it's it is more strategic it does and that's just kind of the the renewal does happen early or it it isn't this battle are there tactics that you use to make sure that it doesn't come down to day 365 and offering some huge discount just to renew a hundred percent um you got to start the conversation early we start the conversation 120 days out um then finance is involved with starting to send automated things so it's very much on the customer's radar this is what's happening in terms of the customer life cycle we're going through implementation onboarding graduation and then you have your milestone moments with them so they should be touching their book once uh once a quarter each customer so it should not be a surprise for them they should have the pain points already defined okay pricing is a pain point so we know that going into this and so we're saying okay let's make sure we really understand the value and the why behind why you why you bought the product let's connect how we've checked those things off on our side how you've received value and let's talk through it and then there comes negotiation i mean there's always ahead of discounting there's uh multi-year agreements there are case studies there are things you can negotiate you know within that beyond pricing um but it's first and foremost it is so important to drive the value at inception prior to inception right bringing them in pre-sale and continuing to deliver that value um but having a very clear renewal process is also key 120 days 90 days 60 days 30 days here are your assignments and making sure you understand um exactly what to expect what well let me ask for you how many what's the average amount of clients that a typical cs somebody on cs manages right because i'm trying to figure out like what's too much what's not enough what allows them to do all that stuff and engage and do you tear them out so like they get a certain amount of these versus a certain amount of these versus certain like tier one tier two tier three what's what's their book look like and and you know how how do they know who to apply the right amount of time because not unfortunately not all clients are created equal just like not all prospects are created equal but a lot of times you see cs they treat every renewal like it's gold and it's and i and i try to tell them like you know we have leadership conversations beforehand i'm like you know please don't make them think that a 500 renewal is the same as a five thousand dollar renewal or you know fifty thousand how do you um like what's that book look like for them and then how do you make sure that they're spending the right time with the right clients yep um every customer is value valuable but we also value efficiency yes right and so when it comes to book a business smb mid-market for us they're around like 100 up to 150 accounts okay and then enterprise for us is about 20 or less okay um so in terms of distribution we have exactly what you just mentioned we tear it out one two three um at the beginning of each quarter my csms identify their top 10 accounts and so they're pulling from their list regardless of segmentation what their top 10 accounts are in terms of highest value accounts accounts you you want to develop a relationship with that are high risk you want to move them from red to green or yellow to green um or if if you just understand that the renewal is going to be difficult or there's expansion opportunity whatever it is they identify their top 10 accounts and then they say they they goal set in terms of what they want to happen in that quarter and then we plan around that so yeah to your point i mean every every renewal is super important but we're also a business and we have to operate right and so the key to that is creating structured automated work streams right so you're dividing your time if you have a five thousand dollar renewal um sure we can do an ebr but the touch points with them are primarily going to be around their needs and features and are probably going to be a little more automated yeah right and so it's really understanding first and foremost what the uh opportunity is there and then kind of going from there okay so let's talk about ai for a second here because i think it's there's that it can help a lot with this automation and personalization but it can be also do more harm than good because you think you're personalizing it and the person doesn't feel like it's personalizing they actually get turned off by it i want to take this from two different angles though one is your cs team i mean you you're you're in the ai world without it right you're you're using ai the mcp connector the whole thing otter itself you can ask it questions it can bring up anything um how much are your um clients how much of yours is your cs team like turning into almost ai consultants for the customers that they work with and and how do you make sure that that your reps are staying even slightly ahead of your client base so that they can be seen as that thought leader trusted advisor that they want to work with and engage with yeah csms are evolving from relationship managers in our industry into ai advisors into workflow consultants into business outcome leaders so our install base is not just asking us to be trusted advisors on the product they're asking us to be trusted advisors and ai this is like through and through it's new for everyone everybody is building the plane while we're flying it from otter to claude right i mean like truly and so they're looking for those uh folks to really guide them we really encourage ai on our inside of our business um ai helps in so many ways like from account briefs things that would take a really long time they can automate so our team leans into claude uh with otter super hard chat gpt obviously our own tool in otter and so i would say we're probably in like the top 10 percent in terms of ai adoption that said my team knows that i have a very strict rule on ai ai does not sub your work ai is something that helps you excel in your role so if you're pulling together some collateral that's not going out that's coming to me first or one of your managers and we're looking at it to make sure because i do not want to see any more presentations with a guy with three arms anymore like it's just it's just it's ai slop like no one wants to see it like you obviously just this is obviously ai generated and it totally takes away from it so it's like leaning in in a good healthy way but you're never sending anything that claude just generated you have to read through it you have to make your edits there has to be human in the loop there mm-hmm yeah i think that's uh that's kind of last mile at the very least right like let claude do a lot of the heavy lifting but please review it before it goes out whether it's the email the deck any of that stuff um do you have like ai initiative how are you handling that kind of the because there's sales training there's cs training but then there's ai training are you kind of just um dealing with that yourself internally as far as like you know just work groups and getting people together and banging stuff out or are you looking for you know other people outside vendors for instance to come in and teach on on ai how how are you working with that internally yeah we do a mixture of both so our company is really great at bringing on guest speakers that are just super relevant to the industry and they're there to teach us um and then we also have like dedicated office hours so i encourage the team the parents won't be there not me or any of the other managers will be there this is your guys's time share what's working well for you and they get so pumped up about it you know uh whether they're like this it's really like a prompting session and then we have slack channels that are like prompt wins you know where they're sharing all that stuff and they're sharing they're like so amazed we're in this industry and we're always so amazed by output so yeah it's exciting like every day i'm like wait a minute what what can it do are you are you serious and that you know and that's a blessing and a curse because it is you know it is insane it's incredible what it can do but then it's also frightening about okay well what does that where does that leave me yeah and that's that's you know i'm worried on the sales side of the house i'm not gonna lie that you know if there's any gtm function i think is is in trouble i think it's the sales one um because and and not for any other reason than not because sales isn't necessary or guiding the client through and asking questions isn't necessary it's just we've turned it into a process and it's like okay you have to go from this to this to this to this so a lot of sales right now is friction right because the rep the client can go see and learn and go to you know claude and ask its own questions and so if we force them through our selling process oh wait a minute i have to ask you my bank questions oh wait a minute we have to wait a week for a demo like that type of thing so i'm really worried about the sales profession not you know you brought up pareto's principle right uh yeah look the 20 of every industry every role every persona they're going to be great right but it's the 80 that i'm worried about but that means that with with and i think you've probably seen it there's less and less people gartner came out with that report now that you know 67 of people don't want to talk to a sales rep they'd much rather talk to cs they'd much rather talk to engineering and implementation because they can educate themselves all the way down that path and then they need they still need to validate it right because they they just still don't trust ai for the ultimate answers but they don't want some douchebag sales rep in there you know asking them salesy type questions so they can qualify it to get to stage four they want to talk to somebody who knows it so so taking the sales challenges aside what do you see as the future of customer success as it evolves here right and and yeah and help me understand the relationship between customer success and account management as we evolve through this yeah um i think you know the evolution of cs is um you know we're not just looking at nps csat health score grr nrr we're looking at value and what we talked about earlier we're looking at value realization and we're looking at adoption and so cs has changed in that sense where it's not just an ndr number or a churn number it's like truly what have you done to impact this client right how has that helped and benefited the business um the contract is just a foot in the door the actual relationship that's where you're going to generate the most revenue um but uh yeah you know you i'm so interested in what you said because that was actually my question for you around how you think ai is impacting sales and i have a question for you if you don't mind yeah please um scs i feel are such a critical role now or essays yeah yeah scs are essays pre-sale what is your thought around them and then potentially subbing the ae role so i think it's dangerous um and the reason being is because the reason scs and essays have credibility is because they don't sell a sales rep historically and i think still part of the value is the perception from the client of who we are like whether i could be the most genuine sales rep in the world that would never sell you anything you didn't need right but walking into a conversation you're still going to believe how less than half the shit that comes out of my mouth you know what i mean just because i'm in sales because of the perception of sales and it's going to take me a long time to get you to trust me and everything else whereas if i bring in an se or an essay there's a media like they're they're not like i used to have when i was selling it services um you know this is smb and i would go always with with my se and he was my cto at the time we were whatever 23 years old so that's tells you titles don't really matter much but but my point was like he would get like i would i would quarterback right and i would you know bring him in and and then control that conversation because the problem with what i find with se's and sa's is they're problem solvers and so they'll sit down and consult with the client during a sales call and answer all their questions and solve a lot of their problems in some ways and the sales rep should be there to be like let's let's let's hold off you know we got yes that's all valuable stuff but let's take this step by step right so there's one control factor there but then my se cto he he caught the sales bug like he you could tell like because he just loved that that meeting and so you know engaging and all this other stuff and you would start to see him start to sell the client and as i noticed that happen i would watch the client almost physically retract from from them because they were like wait a minute i like i feel like you're trying to sell me on this idea versus just helping me understand it and so i think there's a couple of components to it one it's it's having them yes as a resource but only if it is past a certain point right like so sure take over sales if the client has educated themselves all the way to a certain point they really just need to talk to and it's not a sales thing it's just a validation thing before i move forward but that's kind of hard to gauge a little bit there with type of buyer that you're dealing with um and then the the idea of you know the when to bring them in and how to leverage them because otherwise if you put them in the sales seat they're going to get sucked away from what they do best they are a piece of the puzzle and i think they need to be strategically leveraged that's what i think the sales the best sales reps do they they know enough about the product so they can answer a lot of questions and i actually think the flip side would be better i would think i think every client should have an internal se gpt basically or se you know so it's like all your technical knowledge obviously it's not going to customize a demo obviously it's not going to do like those type of things but it needs to be in the point where if i'm selling to you right now and you bring up a question that is technical in nature and i don't know the answer to it instead of me being like hey you know what hold on why don't we schedule another meeting in a week to get my se in here it's you know what that's a great question liz um look we have our own internal system here that has all our technical knowledge in it let's let's learn this together and do a screen share and then ask the questions together right and then when it gets to a point where it's like yep we need now bring the se in to be super like this is what the situation set them up for success so there's a lot of layers to it but i i still do think the segmentation of that role from sales is the heart is is necessary because the other one more part to that one is it's just funny that dylan who's the cto that i brought up after i left my first thing we sold at the staples and i got fired whatever uh he calls me like he calls me a couple years later and he's like dude he's like john i think uh you know i think i want to be a sales engineer like i you know because as a cto of a small business i think i've kind of run my course i can get to us high but i really think se's like that's fun and i really enjoy it and i think i can make a lot more money i'm like yeah dylan i think it's fantastic i think you'd be great you were great with me right and he goes and then he says yeah because i think if i could just have somebody like set me up on these meetings and then do the follow-up i think i could be really good at sales do you mean the sales part i was like dylan dude i'm like do you know like your experience of this part of the sales process of me sitting in front of the client like that is the easiest part of this whole fucking process i'm like do you have any idea what it took me to get this meeting and do you have any idea what it's going to take me to get this thing closed like you walk out and you get that great feeling and then you go about your your merry way i get that great feeling but in the back of my head i'm like i've had that great feeling a million times before and 99 of the time it doesn't take to that next step so now what do i need to do to make so i don't think you want a sales engineer dealing with all that shit right because it because it really takes away from what their their specialty is what they what gives them joy um so i i i'm a a little conflicted i still think sales is an extremely necessary part of the equation i just think that it's a value part you said it before like if i am not bringing value to this conversation if you are just a process person where it goes from step a to you know stage one to stage two to stage three to stage four i think you're irrelevant in this new world but if you're dynamic enough to and know enough or or resourceful enough to be able to leverage your internal ai stuff and your resources i think the sales rep is still one of the more critical parts of the process to tie it all together yeah i love that it's such an interesting take and it it really is striking that balance right um between sc and sales and how they complement each other in the sales process it's like nothing's worse than you know an sc demoing and not hearing from the ae like they've taken all all their thunder is gone they just demoed the whole product right and so it's it's really this beautiful relationship um where you have someone that's just like the tech brain and then you have the sales brain that's driving it too um thanks for answering that i'm just so interested you know and then you very beautifully set us up and you were talking about otter's actual live assist yeah yeah is that what you're again that's that's what i was going to go to next as far as some of the cool shit that you guys got coming out right now because you know the there's the you know there's the insights that i you know gained from all the different conversations um there's the ask anything and it's recording and summary emails and all that fun stuff and recording it and dumping it into crm but now you're starting to layer in with this hey uh here's a few things you should probably be bringing up in live call which i'm gonna be straight up with you and i i don't know if you saw my post on this last week but you know i've been very anti don't tell me what to do especially in a live call like please because it's more distracting now i'm an old man here though you know what i mean and like i got my vibe i i kind of know what you know i think i know what i'm doing whatever um and so like scripting out questions or scripting out anything is absolutely not like to me it'd be way more distracting than helpful but the way that otter does it is it's more about like suggestions at certain points of time during the conversation not necessarily exactly what to say or exactly what to ask but like key talking points like that that pop up so that's where i've been like playing around with a little bit and be like all right yeah and i the post that i made is like i have this sticky note that reminded me of like oh shit i used otter to analyze every single one of my calls and realized i was missing something and so i wrote these down on a sticky note and then you go came out with live assist and that sticky note is basically now in line in context with the conversation so uh it's been it's been pretty cool to experience yeah no i did see your post on that i companies are so excited about it and it makes sense like and it's usable from every angle like even when you um when you think about onboarding new hires like that time is being reduced because you're really um uploading all of your like company information right so if they're running demos and someone says they're asking about otter tell us about your security it's popping up on the side and saying otter is sock two type two compliant right and so you just to your point you don't have to say let me check on that and i'll get back to you it's feeding that in so from a sales process from a onboarding if your onboarding takes 12 months maybe it reduces it to nine you know and that's all it's huge revenue like money or you know money that you're saving there absolutely but yeah it's definitely cool it's definitely cool what are you let's finish with like what are you fired up for next like especially as it relates to cs not necessarily you know otter yes but like yeah what are you excited about the future of customer success yeah i what excites me about cs is it's becoming more and more strategic and i'm having less conversations where they're calling us customer support or customer service it's people know what cs is and they know the value of it and you know i love a revenue generating function and that's probably because i was in sales for for so long but i also know where the growth is you know and truly you mentioned it yes your next million in arr is probably already with an existing customer you just have to build that strategic relationship with them um so for me i'm excited that and support and customer service are so important but i'm excited that people are understanding the differentiation between us and the strategy of csms around life cycle around driving value time to value retention growth all of that that's what i'm most excited excited about and it's becoming less a org that is kind of pushed to the side right it's like here at otter it's the forefront if you care about your customers long term you will understand what functions drive their retention and it's all functions it's sales and cs but investing in them equally love it yeah awesome well i think there's a lot to be excited about i mean a lot of people are scared you know about what the future holds but i think you know the optimist in me says that there's a lot of opportunity for those who uh care enough uh to to put in the work and and uh and give a shit about the client right and i think that's ultimately what it's all about so i agree well thank you so much for coming on it's been a pleasure uh having you on here where can people find out more about you what were you working on i know you're high like the team's hiring and everything so yes otter where where can people where you want to send people yes uh you can go to my linkedin you can go to the otter ai careers page i have i'm standing up a strat ae function on the cs side of the house for expansion um i'm hiring for senior manager i mean there's so many open roles on the revenue side so um yeah you can my linkedin or whatever it is and thank you so much for having me i love chatting with you and i love your posts and i'm excited we got to connect and thank you for opening the door to to see us yeah we appreciate it i love it so i i keep saying that the the only orgs that i think are going to survive moving forward into this crazy world are the ones that are aligned you know the whole silo days of sales over here marketing over here customer 6.04 like those companies are going to die fast and and now the ones who are actually working together and seeing those threads between say you know what i mean using tools like otter to gain the insights across the entire life cycle of the client and figuring out how a way to leverage the different teams to to work together on those those are the ones that i think are going to be massively successful and it looks like 100 percent 100 gtm everyone every piece of that is a gtm function exactly yeah thank you so much i really appreciate it yeah my pleasure thanks john absolutely and everybody hopefully enjoy the conversation as much as i did and like i always say at the end of all these podcasts go out there and make somebody smile today because no matter how bad your day is going or how bad you think it went if you make somebody smile today you know you had a good day and the world needs a lot more of that right now so thank you all very much and i will see you on the other side hey thanks again for listening to the show and for all your support throughout the years this is one last reminder to check out my training programs at jbarrows.com or leave a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform or g2 if you've already gone through my training or sign up for my newsletter any of those will help ensure i can continue to bring you free content and great conversations like the ones you just heard without having to know you with sponsors again let's make it happen in 2026 together you