In this Custify webinar, Irina Cismas sat down with Ramses Bossuyt, CS leadership coach and former VP of Customer Success, to tackle a common but often overlooked challenge: how Customer Success teams can effectively communicate with executives.
From overexplaining to speaking the wrong language, CS leaders often struggle to translate their value in ways that resonate with the C-suite. This session focused on reframing metrics into business impact, delivering messages with precision, and handling high-stakes conversations confidently, even in moments of pressure.
Summary points:
- Frame CS in Business Terms: Customer Success leaders must translate CS metrics (e.g. NPS, health scores) into strategic business outcomes like revenue growth, retention, and risk reduction to resonate with executives.
- Tailor Your Message by Audience: Each executive persona (CEO, CFO, Product) cares about different KPIs. Speak their language and align your message with their priorities to gain credibility and buy-in.
- Delivery > Detail: How you deliver the message matters more than how much you know. Avoid overexplaining and anecdotal detail. Focus on structure, clarity, and actionable insight.
- Lead with Confidence and Action: Be direct and confident in your proposals. Avoid tentative language like “I think…” and close with a strong call to action, invite yourself to the next decision-making meeting.
- Use Budget Pressures as Leverage: In times of cost-cutting, CS leaders can reposition themselves by proposing creative restructuring, advocating for automation/tools, and negotiating cross-functional support.
- Back Everything with Numbers: Metrics and financial impact must support every message. Execs won’t buy into CS efforts without proof of ROI, so come prepared with data that quantifies your team’s value.
Podcast transcript
Intro
Irina 0:03
Hello everyone, welcome. I’m super excited to have you all here today. I’m Irina Cismas, head of marketing at Custify, and I’ll be your host for this webinar.
Back in March, I saw a session on the agenda of a CS event that I attended. And it was, the title of the session was how to get a seat at the table, building executive presence. And that’s what actually sparked the idea for today.
The title brought back a memory from about 10 years ago when I realized the hard way that communication isn’t just about what you say, but actually how you say it. Back then, I used to think all that mattered was being well-prepared, but I’ve learned that even the best content won’t land if it’s delivered the wrong way. So I knew I had to bring this topic to the CS world and make it practical, no fluff, no theory dump.
And that’s where Ramses comes in. We met right before the CS event, and I asked him, can we make this even more hands-on and practical? And here we are.
Ramses, thank you for saying yes and for being willing to break down real messages with us today.
Ramses 1:29
Thanks for having me! Looking forward to crack down and give some insights into avoiding mistakes I made.
Irina 1:37
For sure, this would be, for those of you who are watching this live and who are not first-time attenders of my webinars, this format will be a bit different. We also prepared a live role play. And I’ll save the details for later.
But let’s say that if that’s not practical enough, I don’t know what it is. So bear with us because we have a lot of surprises during the following hour. And just to sneak this while I still have the mic, because I definitely pass it to Ramses, this hour is all about how we communicate.
But if you ever need help prepping the what to say, a tool like Custify brings you the stuff you want at your fingertips to make sure that you are well prepared when you are entering the room. I wanna address a few administrative housekeeping items. The, and I wanna address the number one question that I get is, will this webinar be recorded?
Yes, for sure. And everyone who registered will get the reply after. I encourage everyone to put questions either on the chat or on the Q&A and make sure that I’ll monitor both closely.
We’ll take out the question as we go or maybe depending on how we are with the time at the end. And now I suggest we dive in. You’ve heard my story, but I’m curious for everyone who is watching us live today, where do you land on this topic?
What’s the hardest part for you when it comes to executive conversation? What’s your biggest challenge when communicating with executives? And I’m gonna publish a poll.
Okay, what’s the distribution?
When did it hit you that how we deliver the message can matter even more than the message itself?
Common communication challenges in CS
Ramses 4:46
Yeah, I like this question because it makes me go back a trip in memory lane. So I really had to think when the aha moment was, but I think I found it again. And it was during one of my assignments, I would say five years ago, something like that.
So I was a VP customer success. I was in a leadership meeting. So CEO and the other members of the leadership team.
I’m giving my update, you know, strong results to share. NRR was up, churn was down, and customer satisfaction high. And like maybe four or five minutes into the presentation, CEO interrupted me and said, you know what?
Can we just talk about exactly what this means for valuation or expansion strategy? So we were on this path to exiting, acquiring, or being acquired. And so everything was about those metrics.
And so I was just there yapping about the rate data, but it was not at all packaged in the context of what mattered most to the people in the room. You know, talking about CSAT scores, onboarding metrics, customer success stories. But really I needed to answer this single question, you know, how does CS, your team, how does it drive the revenue?
And how does it reduce the risk? And so that was my like aha moment where I said, okay, I have these right insights, but I don’t have the storytelling. I don’t have the right frame.
So I’m giving like right answers, but in the wrong language. So that was really the narrative. So for example, changing your narrative of time to value and changing that to, you know what?
This is X amount of dollars and expansions three weeks earlier because we reduced time to value. We de-risked, I don’t know, 500K in renewables. So it’s the same data, it’s a different delivery.
And so then he got my attention and he started to lead in. So that was the aha moment, let’s say.
Irina 6:53
For our audience, for our live audience, it seems like the hardest thing is to, where they’re having, they find it challenging because they overexplain and they lose the point. And I can totally relate to this. There are so many things that you wanna say that basically you share more than the audience is able to consume.
They are losing confidence. And again, I can relate to this because I was in board meetings where they felt like a power game more than something which was constructive or they struggled to translate the CS language. Now that we know where everyone landed, is this what you usually see when you are basically interacting with other CS leaders, where in your coaching sessions, where with the people that, with the teams that you work on a day-to-day?
Ramses 8:00
I think the main categories come back every time and then depending of the company, you see a shift in the order of priorities. So my case, it was clearly I overexplain and lose the point. And I struggled to translate CS language.
So these are, I think, the two most frequent, and I think it’s a typical trait for customer success, leaders and customer success managers. We know a lot of stuff about our customers in metrics, but also like in stories, but we don’t tie that enough to the real company metrics or the real Northstar KPIs, any company is run. And so we overexplain, we take too much time, we don’t come into the right message in the first one, two minutes of the meeting.
And so we lose traction. And then as an outcome, you’re not strategic. And so maybe you’re not invited again, or you’re again perceived as the white glove support that the image we all want to get rid of.
So yes, it’s very familiar. And I can assure everyone that you’re not the only ones struggling with that. It’s I think a common trait for everyone in our space.
I do see that on the second place, we have, I freeze or lose confidence, which is interesting because that’s one of the things that is easier to solve, because that is about presence and communication skills. It’s something you can learn. So that’s, I would say an easy one to solve with the right trainings or with the right exercises, you can overcome that more easily than the rest of the categories.
Speak their language: tailoring to executives
Irina 9:49
I wanted to ask you, you mentioned, before we jump into the complete examples, you mentioned that everything is a storytelling. How do you build a story around the topics and how do you find the right angle?
Ramses 10:07
So we need to speak the language of the executive. And so first practical next step, I would say is to be a word sponge. What are words that your CFO is using?
What are words that your CEO is using? And so try to understand them and mimic them because that’s where they’re primarily concerned with. So it’s probably revenue growth and retention, cost efficiency, risk mitigation, any strategic opportunities.
And so how can you map those metrics you have to executive priorities? I think that’s number one. Translate your CS metrics into business impact.
So NPS is not NPS. It’s how to correlate that with your expansion pipeline, churn reduction, product adoption metrics. It’s linked to likelihood of renewal or upsale opportunity.
Customer health score. It’s not the customer health score. It’s the future revenue risk you are actually quantifying.
And so get rid of those anti-metrics and translate them into something that correlates with the business. And then telling a story, I would say is probably the most important. Step away from just reporting this data.
Here’s a number. So what do they tell? Here’s what’s working.
Here’s what’s at risk. Here’s what we’re blocked on. Here’s what we need to act on.
Here’s where I need collaboration from product. Here we need to work together with marketing. Here I need support from CFO in terms of a deal desk, for example, or in terms of some leniency into contractual agreements and so on.
And then, yeah, have your collaboration with other revenue functions as well. I think that you should be co-presenting with a sales leader, co-presenting with a product leader, because that shows that you’re not into just an operational supportive function as customer success, but that it’s really interconnected to other greatly important departments into the company. And so those should be your best friends.
Even if most of us don’t have a great relationship with a sales leader, it should be your best friend. Same with the product leader, by the way.
Irina 12:25
So what I hear from you is you need to identify a set of keywords and each persona. I’m a marketer, so I’m using the marketing language. So each persona has a different set of keywords.
So depending on who you have in the room, you need to adjust the message. So, and you need to speak about health scores. So it’s one way when you speak with the CEO, in another way when you speak to the CFO, and in another way when you speak to the product.
Ramses 12:58
Exactly, because it’s not only on keywords, sort of being the word sponge, but that translates into what are their priorities, what are they occupied with, right? And each of those leaders has different preoccupations. But we managing the customers, managing the existing business, managing that revenue, it’s a crucial stream for the profitability of a SaaS company.
How can we translate that into things that matter for our colleagues, for our peers? And we should not expect them to know that, but we should do it for them and facilitate that. And I’ve worked with teams who have done that transformation over time.
It takes time, it’s normal. I’ve been there as well. But when you do that, it gives you so much more insights, but it gives you so much more visibility as well and a seat at the table, really.
And that’s where it matters.
Gaining executive buy-in from customers
Irina 14:01
I wanna address, I promise that we’ll take questions as we go. And before we jump into our first practical example, Asha is asking, some of my customers are reluctant to share OKR KPIs goals. Are there any tips for gaining this information from the key stakeholders?
Ramses 14:23
So I suppose what she’s meaning is that, yeah, customers do not want to share what they want to achieve. It’s a difficult topic, of course, depending also on the nature of the business you’re in. Banking software, it’s probably more complicated than if you’re in marketing software, let’s say.
But yeah, just ask. And one, and two, they need to understand that in our role, we are there to help them succeed. So they bought your product at a certain period in time with a business case and assumptions, outcomes, goals they want to, KPIs they want to achieve.
So we are there to help them achieve that by leveraging product features, by leveraging our experience on how to use the product. So if they want to exceed their own goals, let us work together. I always used to tell my teams that it’s important that they understand how their key contact person gets his bonus at the end of the year.
So how is he financially rewarded? And if you know that, you know how you can contribute to his goals, and the chances are close to 100% that if he achieves his goals and goes home with a bag of money, you probably will also achieve your goals. And if that’s the case, go home with a bag of money as well.
Irina 15:54
I want to jump into the practical example. So I am going to share because that’s the first thing. So we promised the audience that it will be practical.
Practical example #1: Slack message breakdown
Irina 16:23
Okay, perfect. So while in the moment I announced the webinar and I promised that this will be a practical thing, I encouraged everyone to send me the messages that they’ve wrote on different channels in different situations to their manager, to their CEO, messages that didn’t land the right way. They didn’t get the right reaction or the reaction that the person was expecting.
I received a bunch of messages. I picked only one because we didn’t have the time to review all of them. This particular message was a Slack message sent by head of CS to his CEO, where he was basically introducing the idea of commissioning and rewarding the CS per team.
He decided to send it on Slack. He tried to back it up with all the data that he has at that point, but unfortunately the CEO basically said no way and shut it off completely the conversation. Now, Remsis, I wanna invite you to basically tear down the message.
Let us know what we could have done differently in a similar situation and how could we have obtained the outcome that we wanted it. Basically implement the commissioning schema.
Ramses 18:01
Yeah, so I think first of all, this Slack message, it has very good intent, right? So whoever sent it in wants to drive revenue, boost motivation, foster our customer success and sales alignment. But yeah, it doesn’t really hit the mark for what we call executive communication and the negative outcome.
And I think you can summarize it probably in a lack of structure, some anecdotal, is that English? Anecdotal reasoning and overly wordy, I would say it’s very long and it’s easy to skim past or dismiss because yeah, who reads it anyway? So at least I am like that as well, like this long message or long emails, like man, this is not what I will read.
And so let’s maybe break it down piece by piece, right? So if you start with the opening line, I was thinking to start giving commissions to my team and Clearview was the trigger and so on. I would say that this is very vague and casual.
I was thinking this customer was a trigger. So as if you send it to your CEO, I would not have a lot of, if I were the CEO, then I would not have a lot of confidence in this proposal because I was thinking this thing was the triggers, like I woke up at 3 a.m. night and I had like an idea and here it is. So they don’t like this custom context first things but just clarity, just say, what do you wanna do?
I was not thinking to start giving commissions. No, it’s actually, I propose to implement a commission model for CSMs so we can incentivize them on revenue generating activities. Enjoy it.
Right. So if you drill further down, Sam said yesterday, I realized something like Bianca, what if Bianca is rewarded? It’s a good anecdote, but make it more general.
We’ve seen CSMs that are constantly identifying upsell opportunities and support renewals, but they have no incentive tied to the revenue impact. It hurts motivation. So it’s very general and says, what’s the problem?
And so going further, you go into what is like a list of possible commissionable activities. What if everyone earns something when they run proactive reviews, get customers to activate key features? Sorry, it’s a bit small to read, but this feels like a brainstorm.
Why wouldn’t we just say, we could have activities include expansion support, reactivation of churned accounts, so bin backs, a better time to value and onboarding success, anything that leads to revenue outflow. The next chapter is probably impact section, let’s say, let’s call it like that, impact that I expect. I think this is probably the strongest part of the message because it’s outcome-focused.
What I would improve is the language as in it’s very tentative. I expect, I think about it. So it kind of weakens the message you’re doing.
It weakens also the call to action. So why not be confident and reframe it confident like it’s measurable goals. You know, I expect over the next two quarters that we can achieve the following things.
We can stay into this bullet point list, let’s say we increase the expansion revenue with certain percentage, five, seven, 10, I don’t know. We can expect higher engagement from customer success in upsell cycles, or we can have an improved collaboration with our sales colleagues on joint accounts and pull them in into crucial renewals or into joint sales tracks. And so we have a stronger story around full team revenue ownership, for example, which is cross team collaboration.
Everybody likes that. And then I think this is a crucial part as well where we’re not hitting the mark. I think it’s closer.
So there is no call to action. There is no urgency. Think about it.
But I do believe the team is ready for the next step. Think about it. The guy probably has a million things to think about like we all do.
So yeah, we’ll think about it. Okay. I will think about it.
Fine, fair enough. So it’s soft. It’s open-ended.
So why not invite yourself and turn it around and say, you know, if you’re open to it, I would love to present a draft of this new commission structure or this new incentive program and impact that you can have on the forecast at our next week leadership call. So you invite yourself. You will have that seat at the table and then you can run the show.
So you better be well prepared, of course, and have your numbers correct. But chances are high that you can convert this in the seat at the table. Who will say no to that, I would say.
Who will say no to, ah, here comes this yes leader with a program that will cost us some money on the commission side, but on the long run will bring us more money and you will impact or update the forecast. Great, so it will be number backed. CFO will also like that.
Irina 24:03
Okay.
Ramses 24:04
This is more or less how I would run this Slack message.
Irina 24:09
Okay, let’s summarize it. So what I heard from you is maybe Slack was not the right channel. Where would it make more sense to be an email rather than a Slack, or maybe a one-on-one conversation?
What would be the ideal way to deliver this type of message?
Ramses 24:32
Yeah, it depends on the communication preference of each company. I do consider Slack to be quite informal. Okay.
For messaging, so it’s like for a quick catch up. So I would try to present this in a 15 minute call and then you can use your Slack. I’ll say I have, and give the introduction on Slack and say, I need 15 minutes of your time and I will run it with you.
He will find 15 minutes. Okay.
Irina 24:59
Okay, so it would have been ideal to introduce it via one-on-one call, 15 minutes call. You said that it is too long. So whenever you are delivering executive message, do you have one ideal length when you send where do you have some barriers where what’s an ideal length?
Ramses 25:28
Subject one line, then one paragraph description, one paragraph impact, one paragraph next steps or even one sentence next step. So yeah, I don’t know how many words that are, but not a lot.
Irina 25:45
Okay, definitely fewer than what we have on the screen. You said that we should be more confident. So other than where at least this is how I sum it up based on what you said, we shouldn’t use words like, I think, I believe, where I was thinking, it’s more like, I know that this is a good thing and this is what I’m proposing and why.
So is it important how you start the message? If you don’t start it right, you are losing the interest or does it, the first line, does it count more than the rest of the content?
Ramses 26:30
Yeah, it’s a hook. So it’s a make or break.
Irina 26:34
Okay, okay.
Ramses 26:36
I think you can also always make reference and I use it in workshops a lot. You can make reference to your private life, right? When you are meeting with someone you like.
You know, you want this also to be a good conversation so you will prepare for it and you try to have a good opener or an interesting, captivating opener, I’d say.
Irina 26:59
Okay, so you need a very good icebreaker, I would say, in order to make, you need an entrance, you need to make an entrance.
Ramses 27:06
Yeah, what’s in it for me? Why would I engage in this conversation?
Irina 27:11
Okay, and I also heard you saying that the closing needs to be something very, I would say, concrete and not an open for subject or not something, and it’s more like what I can do rather than pass it to the CEO or pass it to the manager and let him do something. So it’s more like, this is what I’m gonna do.
Ramses 27:39
Yeah, invite yourself, make it always with a call to action, that’s for sure. No open end, not too soft, create a sense of urgency and or a call to action, yeah.
Practical example #2: Live role play – CS leader vs. CEO
Irina 27:53
Super, now that was our first practical example for today. And now I wanna go to the next one. And while we do that, I’m inviting the people who are live to ask questions and pick the brain of Ramses and come up with your concrete scenarios where you were put into difficulties and you didn’t know how to frame the message.
And he will definitely come up with the suggestion. So we are waiting for your questions on the chat tab for Q&A. And while you guys are thinking of different scenarios where you had a hard time communicating what you wanted to say, I wanna go to the next practical example that we’ve prepared.
And I was mentioning at the beginning of the webinar that we have a role play. And basically we wanna show you what it looks when you have to clearly communicate with confidence in that particular moment, when you don’t have the time to think about, to draft the perfect message. And here’s the setup.
I will invite a volunteer on stage. Give me one sec to invite. Where is it?
Okay, perfect. I’m gonna invite Teo on stage. And she will be…
Welcome. And thanks for accepting our invitation. Teo will play the role of the head of CS and Ramses will be stepping in as the CEO.
Now, a bit of context for this role play. The CS leader walks into a meeting and finds out that her team needs to be cut in half due to budget pressure. And her job is to push back, make her case and try to change the CEO’s mind, Ramses in this case.
I’m curious how this is gonna play out in terms of logistics. Both of them, they will have more or less 10 minutes to have this tough conversation. And afterwards Ramses will comment there was performance on stage.
And we’ll see how it goes. Teo, Ramses, you have the stage. I’m gonna mute myself and see how this conversation goes.
Ramses 30:40
I’m looking forward at least because for once I can place you as well. A nice experience, even if it’s in a role play.
Irina 30:50
Earlier, you were talking about confidence and not freezing.
Ramses 30:55
Exactly. So let’s continue on that vibe, right? Teo, you know, as we look at the next quarter, and beyond, I think we need to have an honest conversation about efficiency in our operations.
You have the leadership team and the board. We need to be leaner in our economics, especially I would say in post-sales functions. So here’s what I think I need from you.
So we need your team to one, absorb more responsibility. So it’s either specifically around more expansion or more support or more onboarding. So taking that responsibility as well into the buckets of CSMs. Or on the other hand, we might need to consider a headcount reduction over the next planning cycle. So that’s actually a task that we have ahead of us. And I wanna be clear, I’m not questioning the value of customer success, right? But, and the things you are doing with your team, but the ROI needs to be clearer.
So if you could just walk me through what areas we can streamline, what can we automate? Can we segment differently? And what if I give you zero headcount for this year?
How would you still meet your KPIs? So let’s have this conversation together, right?
Teo 32:16
Okay. First of all, I want to thank you for being honest with me and telling me straight the issue at hand. I’m a bit surprised, but allow me to give my full perspective.
I’m already thankful to you that you considered one solution before cutting the team. I think that would be a way to do it at least for some time, but I will be straight with you. Cutting the team, that’s not a solution.
If my pants don’t fit, I’m not going to cut a leg in order to fit in those pants. I’m going to find a way where I can improve and make those pants fit me again. It might seem like, okay, I’m cutting my leg now and for Q1, that’s going to look great, but let’s see how that will look at the end of the year.
Ramses 33:21
Are we maybe over delivering? I mean, do we have too many high touch accounts? Are we doing maybe too much?
We should do less? Is that an idea we could consider?
Teo 33:32
That is an idea we could consider, especially when it comes to high touch customers. We can automate some of the things that we have over there and make good use of the tools that we have. Maybe have the low touch customers on an email flow and remove that pressure from the CS.
But right now, I know for sure that the team is doing their best in order to prove value to the customers.
Ramses 34:03
How can we make that more quantifiable? How can we show that I need those numbers to be able to be very visible? I’m sure they’re doing their best.
I think everyone does in this company, but where are we moving the needle? What is our financial impact? Do you have that calculated somewhere?
Teo 34:20
Well, I can check on the numbers and see exactly what would happen if we’re going to reduce headcounts. For now, I can tell you for sure that the CSMs are in charge of the renewals. So I know for sure that their role is really impactful when it comes to our revenue.
Also, they’ve been managing challenging situations where customers wanted to churn because we didn’t have some features or we didn’t match the expectations that they had in sales, but the CSM team was the one that saved those customers. And of course, yeah, maybe- We didn’t share that enough.
Ramses 34:57
Do we share that enough with product? Do we share that enough with sales?
And what’s their opinion on that?
Teo 35:06
Well, product is aware of the shortcomings, but at the same time, they are doing their best. And with sales, while we know that some of the customers, they are not an ideal fit, we will keep those numbers.
Ramses 35:20
Right. What if you look into the revenue per CSM right now? I just got here a report from a consultancy firm that says about the benchmark for our category in SaaS of the revenue each CSM should have.
Where are we? So we can compare that with the benchmark.
Teo 35:39
Well, if we look at the revenue per CSM, even though for some CSMs, it might not look like they’re bringing in enough revenue, I can tell you for sure that if one CSM, just one CSM will be removed from the team right now, we will see that impact over the entire team. If you’re going to remove one CSM from the team, the accounts will be reassigned to the rest of the colleagues. You’re going to see a lack of trust in the rest of the CSMs. They’re going to be going into burnout because they’re going over on a number of companies, a number of accounts larger than their capacity. And also, you’re breaking the trust with the customers. Each CSM is not just a friendly face in the customer. Each CSM knows the struggles of those accounts and knows how to manage issues with those accounts.
Ramses 36:35
And what if we leave those accounts to like other teams? Like, why do we need these CSMs? I mean, we have product, we have marketing, we have support and professional services.
They’re all touching the customer’s soul. Yeah, but right now- Wouldn’t that be a good solution, at least to stabilize, for example?
Irina 36:56
That would be a solution, but I will be really honest with you. Right now, if I’m asking someone from marketing or someone from the product team to join a call with the customer, and if the customer has any doubts in regards to the product, because the person from the product team, the person from the sales team doesn’t know the customer well enough, they will not see any warning sign in there. While a CSM that has a relationship with that account will see the sign over there.
Maybe it’s a different setup. Maybe a different person will join the meeting. Maybe a different issue will be brought up out of a sudden.
A CSM will realize that there is a risk there. Something that your metrics and something that the product team or the marketing team will not realize because they don’t have the whole story.
Ramses 37:49
All right, okay, but fair enough. But I think we really need to make this exercise stick and this exercise work for our next leadership meeting. So I remember you just said, maybe we can go into TechTouch for the bottom percentage of our accounts.
So it would be good if you could identify what’s the percentage there. Are we talking 5% of our bottom accounts, 30% of our bottom accounts? And what’s the churn risk?
There, if you would go into that way, so that’s, I think, one. And maybe two, I would say, what if you were starting this team from scratch today? Blank sheet of paper with a newly joined head of CSA can build it out.
How would it look differently? Because we used to do things like this. Maybe we should not do it like this anymore.
So that might be an interesting exercise as well to try to do for next leadership call. What do you think?
Teo 38:49
No, I’m thinking if the wheels on a car work, I’m not going to replace them with blocks.
Ramses 38:55
Yes, but maybe we can have better wheels.
Irina 39:01
You can have better wheels, but you’re going to go through a period of testing where you don’t know if you’re going to succeed or if you’re going to fail. And right now, things are going all right. Maybe we’re not in the place that we desired to be, but at the same time, we’re seeing value from the CSM.
We’re seeing constant renewals. The churn rates are lower than the expansion rates. So I would still look into accounts and say maybe 20% out of the accounts to move them on a low touch approach and to see how we can intervene in there.
Look at some of the accounts and especially when it comes to mid-value clients to move them on a medium touch approach and only keep the high touch with constant meetings.
Ramses 39:51
You know, let’s do that. Let’s come forward with your proposal and try to be creative. So that’s one, but secondly, it needs to be number-backed.
I, we cannot have the conversation based on we’re doing all right. And so we don’t need to change anything. So that’s definitely not a conversation we can have.
So when we have our next call, think about these three things I just mentioned. Blank sheet of paper, if you need to rebuild this team from scratch today, how would it look differently? The tech touch, low touch for the medium accounts, I would say.
And then are we maybe over delivering and how could we leverage product support, marketing, maybe offload a bit of the responsibilities your team is doing and charge them a little bit more. So think of it as a positive message because we can also try to offload stuff to other teams, right?
Teo 40:44
I can do even better than that. If you allow me, if you give me a bit of time, we can go through different scenarios and put the companies that we currently have on a medium touch to put them on the low. How much time do you need?
Give me 24 hours and to look into it and also discuss with my team and see exactly how things would look if we change this process and also how things would look if only one member of the team would leave.
Ramses 41:13
Okay, no, that’s good. How much presentation time would you need? Can we do it in a half an hour?
Teo 41:19
Yes.
Ramses 41:20
Good. I’ll have my assistant reach out and to lock it in on Friday or somewhere in the afternoon. Right?
Awesome.
Teo 41:26
Thank you so much.
Ramses 41:27
Appreciate your collaboration. Have a great day.
Irina 41:33
Thank you. Thank you both. First of all, I say that both of you are on time.
So I said 10 minutes. Basically, you are there. Not sure how you managed to wrap it up in 10 minutes, but you definitely, definitely did.
Now I am curious, Ramses, what you thought about the whole conversation. And yeah, tell us how did Teo do?
Ramses 42:00
I think first of all, we should applaud Teo for doing this, because doing this live in front of a hundred participants, it’s probably not an easy thing to do. So first of all, that’s already that. And second, because this is unscripted, right?
It’s not that we have prepared the whole role play that you’re just reading out. It’s like on stage, having the conversation with the minimum of preparation, right? A minimum of context.
So I think in that, if you take that into account, it’s very well done. I think not going too much into details, because that’s not the point. You know, when you have these conversations, it’s what is the other person evaluating?
And so in fact, what he wants you to do is create or have this ability to think commercially. How can you tie CS to efficiency? How can you tie it to growth?
And I’ve had this question in the past. What happens if we cut in half your team or we reduce with 30% your team? And the honest part is that probably in the first 12 months, nothing will happen.
So that’s the part I would disagree with because yeah, you know, on the short term, nothing will happen. So you need to play the long-term game. What happens with renewals at risk, competitive renewals, competitors who are also doing their jobs.
And at every company, your customers are being chased by your competitors because they’re doing their job and we do the same. So you cannot blame them for doing their job. So that’s the longer term, right?
They might be incentivized to accept a call or to go to a demo or to go to a sponsored event or I don’t know. So that’s one. I think the second is, it’s how can you have like a solution mindset, right?
Not just defending the status quo because that’s something that you need to let go as a leader. You get this request, something needs to happen anyway. So how can you transform this challenge and this unwillingness to change because that’s what we hate change, right?
Everybody does it. It’s the nature of human beings. How can we have this solution mindset and transform it into something positive and try to use it?
And I think here in the conversation, I try to give it a few hooks, like saying, how can we offload to marketing? For example, we could ditch customer marketing, referrals, positive reviews, customer cases. We could give it to marketing.
How can support play a role? How can we have like feedback loop maybe owned by products and offload parts of the responsibilities there if we need to cut down in resources? Giving a few hooks that can be picked up for the meeting that will be sent out because then I wanted to act also as a Poshy CEO who has an assistant to reach out to book a meeting.
That’s not the case in every company, of course, right? And then I think the third one is as an evaluation, you’re also looking to, can you make a clear plan about working smarter, enablement? One of the things I would also say, okay, if you want my team to do more, we need more enablement.
So you pull in another team that you probably have or enablement function or you create, okay, that, but then we need someone who can, gives us more proficiency into prompting so we can prepare our QBRs with AI, or we may need an AI agent to analyze our data, or we need some smart tooling to give us more insight into the data like a customer platform. I don’t know, things like that. So yeah, how can you leverage the things that are on the table and make a puzzle with that and present that to the leader?
That’s something that, that’s more or less what I was planning to say.
When budgets are tight: Pitching tools, not people
Teo 46:00
I know this is an extra question from my part, but I’m really interested to know if the CEO, if your executives already come up to you with cutting costs and you’re proposing another tool how should you go to the CEO and to the executive team and propose that tool when they’re already set up on cutting costs?
Ramses 46:26
Yeah, because cutting costs is mostly on the payroll. So it’s a different line in your budget. Payroll or people, it’s another expense post than software.
And with software, it’s easier to make a business case. We invest because it’s stable, you know what you will pay as a license fee. And so you have that offset by either productivity improvement, we save X amount of hours or mandates per year.
For example, you could use, I don’t know, customer care with 15%. These people can maybe go because they’re probably the experts that could go into product or into engineering. I don’t know.
So it’s easier to invest in software than to invest in people.
Irina 47:09
So basically, whenever you are hearing that we need to cut costs, that doesn’t mean that we are not willing to invest. It’s just a matter of how do we basically optimize what we have. What do we move from one line to another line?
Is this okay?
Ramses 47:26
Yes, or you could use it as a negotiation tactic. Okay, if I cannot have more people or I need to let go people, fine. Then, okay, sometimes it just needs to happen because it needs to happen.
But then I need, it’s the moment to put also some cards on the table and say, okay, if that needs to happen, then I need this and I need that. I need that tool and I need some enablement there. I need some more collaboration from marketing.
Let’s say I need more of Irina’s team to support me in customer marketing and not only going on after new business, for example.
Irina 47:59
Okay, so it’s just a matter of saying, is it always a matter of saying yes. Only if, for instance, this part goes to product, this part goes to support, this part goes to, and it’s a matter of basically you are no longer negotiating with your CEO.
Basically, you are negotiating with your peers on how do we reshuffle things.
Ramses 48:29
That really depends on the situation, of course. Here, I would assume that if you take this case, that it’s like a top-down decision that probably benchmarking by the investors, they might see that the headcount is too big or like the total payroll is too big and which are two different things. So either the budget needs to go down or the headcount needs to go down.
So I took this exercise as like needs to happen. Okay. But feel free, of course, if you see, if you think that there is room to say bluntly no, because these are my arguments and think again, what is important for your peers and the leadership team.
So this is what will happen if we do that. And then you’ve done, as a departmental leader, I think you have done your job. You have flagged the risks, you have flagged the opportunities, and then somebody needs to own that decision.
It’s usually the captain of the ship. So if it goes south, bad, you took a decision.
Irina 49:33
Thank you. Thank you both one more time. And before we start wrapping up things, Ramses, I want to pull out a few takeaways and I want to leave the audience with some concrete things that they can start implementing from tomorrow on.
So if you had to sum it up, what are those, I don’t know, two or three things CS leaders should actually keep in mind when preparing for high stakes conversation like the one that we had?
Final takeaways: What to do and avoid
Ramses 50:07
First is come prepared with numbers. And so if you’re not prepared, because let’s say this call here, you are called by surprise, right? So part of the conversation say, okay, thank you for that.
I need to get to work, analyze data, I’ll come back with you. So you can back your arguments who could be either emotional or could be gut feeling. So how can you back it with data?
Metrics, always. And then metrics that are tied to your business impact. We talked earlier about NPS and how we do, can correlate that with the expansion pipeline or product adoption.
It’s absolute opportunity, health score was, what is it, future revenue that is at risk. So that’s one. And two, it’s your storytelling.
I think, you know, creating the story more than just the facts. So what’s really behind that and what does it say? So it’s insights and not data attempts between brackets.
And speaking dollars, I would say, or currency, you know, it’s monetizing. What’s the impact, the monetizing impact of the CS initiatives that we are doing? You could work on an automated onboarding.
So we have less onboarding activities time to value would be reduced with X days, but that means that we have the first key KPI sooner. And so we close, I don’t know, 1 million faster in expansion, something like that. And then again, I will repeat it, involve your other revenue functions.
Be best buddies or create best buddies relationships with your product leader, with your sales leader, for sure. And because Rina’s on the call, I will say marketing leader as well.
Irina 51:54
Thank you. One more question. What’s one thing CS leaders should stop doing in those executive conversation?
Something that hurts their credibility without them even realizing it. And maybe we also think about the poll distribution at the beginning.
Ramses 52:18
Well, let me have a look back at the poll then. Yeah, over explaining, that’s definitely one. Yeah, giving too much real life examples.
No, stay to the numbers, stay to the bigger picture. I think that’s the main thing to keep in mind and not go into this specific customer from that specific CSM exceptions. You don’t run the business with exceptions or special cases.
What’s the general trend? What’s the overarching team? What’s the bigger picture?
And not this one specific case of this specific CSM in that region who had that specific account with that specific product bug or what’s one results with a specific procedure. Nobody cares.
Irina 53:06
For me, after listening everything that you shared, it’s clear that it’s important on how you deliver the message. And okay, you also need to come prepared, but you also need to think of the way you’re packaging it. And as a marketer, so at least for the…
As a marketer, I think it’s a bit easier because you basically need to think that you are delivering the message to an audience. So you need to think who is your audience and what do they care about it? And what’s the job they hired you to do and they expect you to do?
And in some cases, the how you do it, it’s even more important than what you basically say.
Ramses 54:01
But yeah, think back again to real life. So think when you were young and children, the package or the wrapping of the gift, the gift bag is as important as the gift that is inside it. It’s the same for messaging, same for communication.
It’s the how and the story you tell is equally important as the message that’s behind it. I firmly believe that. That’s why you read books, it tells a story.
Irina 54:29
And Ramsys, thank you for being here with us.
Ramses 54:34
Thanks for having me!
Irina 54:35
Thanks for breaking things down and for jumping into the fire with that role play, even though I think you liked to be a CEO even for 10 minutes.
Ramses 54:45
For the role play, it was fine, yeah. I like to stick to customer success though.
Irina 54:51
Okay, and a big shout out for Teo for taking the heat and holding her ground. Thank you for bringing that scenario to life. And thank you all for joining, for voting, for listening and for being open to something a bit different today.
And as always, the recording will land in your inbox pretty, pretty soon. And if you like this format and you want more sessions like this, just reply and tell me. I actually read all the emails that you guys are sending me.
Take care and see you at the next webinar.
