Jeff is joined by longtime friend and former coworker Alex Medeiros to discuss Alex's new role as Head of Enablement at Limeade . Topics discussed are : What is CSM Enablement? Importance of Success Criteria and targeting the right customers Quick impacts Build trust all along the onboarding journey Interaction with Product Marketing Handoff and Onboard Readiness And many other nuggets that Alex has picked up along the way in building this new competency!...
Apr 26, 2022•43 min
Customer Success Legend Maranda Dziekonski joins Jeff on the latest podcast. In a very open and honest conversation, Maranda talks about: - Her blue-collar work ethic and how she went from the factory to the office - Customer Success and who owns the revenue, upsells, etc - Leveraging new tech and approaches (Ops, AI) - Roles in the new Customer Success organization - Landing a role in CX as a college grad vs a career transition - How to avoid burnout Also lots of tangents on pantsuits, dog medi...
Apr 04, 2022•46 min
Jeff is joined by Top 100 Customer Success Strategist 2020 & 2021 Shari Srebnick , the Head of Customer Success at Searchmetrics. Shari educates Jeff on the best ways to listen to your customer to drive better enagement and customer relationships. Topcis include: - Why NPS isn't the best or only way to track customer sentiment - Properly segmenting your customer base to make sense of your data collection - Surveying end-users AND stakeholders - How to create your strategy around customer sen...
Feb 02, 2022•33 min
In this podcast, Jeff does a deep dive into the world of CS Ops with David Epperly of Red Canary. David put together a great post about the basics of CS Ops ( click here to read ). Topics discussed were: - Key metrics to track for CS Ops to prevent churn - Do you need CS-specific tools like Gainsight or Churn Zero to use data for understanding churn risk? - Using qualitative factors to understand churn risk - What level do you start relying on data science and more complex tools? - David describ...
Jan 18, 2022•43 min
This week we are joined by Dana Soza , of customer everything.com . Dana is an OG in Customer Success, and was named a 2021 Top 100 Customer Success Strategist. We talked about doing CS before CS was even a thing. Some topics we went over were: Creating tech and templates out of thin air Streamlining the Onboarding Process with CRM Automation Increasing Adoption by 900% (!!!) Creating a process from scratch from presales through renewal Using data to retain and upsell customers, even if they wer...
Dec 10, 2021•32 min
This week we are joined by Stephanie Kemp , of Get Bridge . Stephanie talks about her life of service, and how she took her non-CS jobs and parlayed them into her current position. Her story of how she got her current role is a great lesson in perseverance, and not taking no for an answer. Stephanie is a powerhouse and very driven, and I am sure you will enjoy her story!
Aug 23, 2021•37 min
Jeff is joined by very special guest and keynote speaker Aaron Thompson of SuccessHacker . Covered lots of ground here, including: Customer Journey Mapping and Funnel Acquisition The Trough of Disillusionment and Buyers Remorse The 3 D's of Customer Success Retention Starts with Implementation Should CSM’s manage the implementation of the project? What does an ideal implementation team look like for a SaaS B2b enterprise-focused company? Also, check out Aaron's post here with some video explanat...
Jul 29, 2021•35 min
As part of a new focus with the podcast, we kicked off our first case study with Steve of GrowthLab Finance-as-a-Service . Steve dives in and talked about the move to use CSM's when their customers asked for a different engagement model. Steve talks about how having CSM's gets him closer to his goal of "making things boring again." Some good chat here around net retention, QBR's and implementation.
Jul 12, 2021•35 min
Very happy to have James Stuart of Reed talk about how the Customer Success team is being used to help trial users get a high touch to increase success in the pre-sales phase. I love this concept! James and talk about using all the great Customer Success tools to get outcome-driven trials to convert prospects into successful and happy customers.
May 12, 2021•45 min
Very excited to bring Michael Zipursky of Consulting Success to the podcast. Michael has been helping people run their own consulting business for almost 15 years and has a huge track record of success. Michael came on the show and asked questions around: What is the overwhelming scenario of people wanting to start their own consulting business? What are the first steps? How to overcome Imposter Syndrome? the Consulting Mindset The biggest challenge most people run into How to scale your busines...
Apr 09, 2021•43 min
Jeff is joined by John Kirkman , who has years of experience from stints at Deloitte, Nike and now Convoy. We covered ALOT of ground in this one, with the first topic being how to use your consulting chops to the enterprise when large companies are forced to change. John has a ton of experience in Large scale logistics and Executable Strategy in Supply Chain, so it was great to chat with someone who was in the trenches on complex problems Other topics are: Remote Teams and management New tools d...
Mar 24, 2021•46 min
Jeff is joined by Pat Muirragui , Senior Director of Services at Mitek Systems . Jeff and Pat talk a ton of PS and Implementation shop, and go into the details on Org structures, tools, and best practices. Pat is passionate about making sure that the customers he oversees are set up correctly, and how he uses a diagnostic approach to understand current state and desired future state. Lots of TTV, Project Profitability talk as well as we try to cover a variety of topics, including Pat's COVID hob...
Mar 10, 2021•52 min
Michael Buccellato (https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-buccellato-15419737/) is at LawGeex, where he runs manages the highest ARR clients. Michael starts talking about how he transitioned from Business development roles into post-sales success. Discussion ranges from: Customer lifecycle Onboarding to renewal, and the differences from large company to startups. Wearing multiple hats and knowing when to specialize vs generalize. Molding implementation for lawyers and non-typical users. Getting in...
Feb 03, 2021•41 min
Jeff is joined by Bradley Jones , who is the VP of Implementation at Indeavor. Brad is the first person that I have met with this title, and we had a lot of ground to cover. A list of the topics discussed are: - Applying the learnings of a Big 4 consulting background to startups - Implementing a Minimum Viable Process vs the over-processization that happens with large consulting companies - Becoming a vital asset of the B2B and B2B2C presales process and helping to close enterprise deals - Balan...
Dec 15, 2020•49 min
Jeff is joined by Cait Porte , who is leading Product and Global Services for Zmags, including Product Management, User Experience, Customer Onboarding, and Customer Support. This is a unique blend of responsibilities, and the topics discussed are: - Building Product to enable Customer Success FAST in a SaaS world that is easy to do - Getting consensus and alignment in presales and scoping to make sure that prospects and customers can get fully onboarded in less than 30 days - Working with Custo...
Nov 24, 2020•42 min
Jeff and George have worked on projects for over 10 years. Recently George's company, Intevity, has been leading a discussion about Discovery and best practices. Jeff got a chance to sit down with George and go over all the best practices for not just a discovery session, but a discovery period. Topics covered include: - best length of time for. a discovery period - Trust, empathy and how not to "lead the witness" - Best tools to use - Building trust along the way instead of the BIG REVEAL in th...
Nov 12, 2020•44 min•Season 1Ep. 16
This is a Getting "Software" Done podcast, but we made sure to touch onboarding as it relates to the creation of products and workflows. Today Jeff is joined by Shmuel Bollen, a UX practitioner, and teacher. Shmuel has been creating interfaces for over 20 years- from his time at Bose to his current teaching at Bentley and creating enterprise UX for ACI Worldwide, a billion-dollar payment company. Shmuel discusses how he started creating documentation on the new Internet in the mid 90's, and his ...
Jun 11, 2020•40 min•Season 1Ep. 15
The GSD Podcast RETURNS after a few months off. Jeff is joined by Scott Roth, SVP Global Customer Success at Medallia to talk about building a great customer lifecycle. Topics covered are Hiring for great teams, Customers for life, presales, onboarding, and funneling feature requests back into the Product organization. A quick note that the first 6 minutes are pretty free form and off-topic. This was left in, as it is nice to hear people talk a little in these times to hear the personalities inv...
Jun 03, 2020•48 min•Season 1Ep. 14
I am so excited to bring this podcast to you. Diane is one of the pioneers in Customer Success, and here we talk about early SaaS strategies, "services" DNA, who should own upsell and renewals, and lots of other great nuggets.
Nov 01, 2019•36 min•Season 1Ep. 14
Today Jeff was joined by Randy Syring. A deep dive into how to scope projects from a technical perspective ensued, but also how to map it back to the business needs. Topics covered: - Randy's transition from seminary to CEO - Agile v Waterfall. - Randy's 100 hour guarantee. - using Zenhub and "mockup driven development" - using MOSCOW to get priorities of deliverables - Fixed Fee vs. Team based projects
Oct 18, 2019•53 min•Season 1Ep. 13
I met Anita recently and after a few minutes of talking, I knew that I had to record a podcast with her. Anita has taken her experience as a university qualitative researcher and is now obsessed with helping companies reducing their churn. HINT- the problem is not always what you think it is. More about Anita --> https://anitatoth.ca/
Oct 11, 2019•38 min•Season 1Ep. 12
Jeff is joined by Vik Kudesia, a UX Designer that was a customer, co -worker, and now former coworker. Topics discussed were how to scope projects under pressure, pro services team vs product teams, remote working, and many obscure Seinfeld references!
Oct 03, 2019•55 min•Season 1Ep. 11
GSD is back from summer break with Luiz Figueira of Gympass. Luiz talks about how he has taken some of the lessons learned while at Boston Consulting Group and have applied them to Gympass. Luiz and team have some very innovative ways of ensuring success and satisfaction on every project that we get into, which has helped them scale fast and help utilize partners.
Sep 18, 2019•27 min•Season 1Ep. 10
Dave Witting joins me on this podcast to discuss why he never calls me back, and also both of our conversions to being sales guys. We discuss networking, content generation, methods that we saw the big salespeople do, and much more. Dave and I have a lot of history, so there are lots of jokes before this goes off the rails.
Jun 27, 2019•1 hr 3 min•Season 1Ep. 9
Jeff is joined by Andrew Fink. Andrew is an exceptional Professional Services leader that started his career at the premier consulting groups of the day - Andersen, CTP and then grew his skills at Met Life before we met at Endeca. Andrew discusses the differences in roles and the difficult decisions that we all have to face when growing (and shrinking) companies. We then transitioned into discussing both of our recent career moves and the thought process behind those changes
Jun 21, 2019•44 min•Season 1Ep. 9
Jeff is joined by one of his closest mentors, Mark Holland. Mark was Jeff's manager at Endeca and helped shape many formative ideas with his background at Accenture. Since then, Jeff and Mark worked together at Brightcove, and then Mark ran one of the largest communities in the world at Applause. Tons of best practices covered here!
May 20, 2019•57 min•Season 1Ep. 7
We cover Project Management in depth - when to use what methodology, best metrics to track project health, Agile vs Waterfall, and lots more! https://www.linkedin.com/in/randy-cox-ms-pmp-pmi-acp-csm/
May 11, 2019•52 min•Season 1Ep. 8
Jeff chats with Adriana about scaling Acquia with experience 100% growth year after year and the type of organization she needed to build to support that. Also covered: - Discussing the concept of creating product/service packages - biggest lessons learnt from working at Acquia - alignment between the sales team and the services team - how to hire an account manager that can deal with the complexities of working within a startup company...
May 03, 2019•47 min•Season 1Ep. 5
Jeff chats with industry veteran Bill Whitebone of http://www.advancevelocity.com/, to discuss how he transitioned from Services to physical product, and now to pure consulting. Bill walks through how he effectively built partner teams and also the best way to use offshore resources. http://www.advancevelocity.com/
Apr 25, 2019•1 hr 1 min•Season 1Ep. 4
Jeff is joined by Renee Bochman, VP of Customer Engagement at Salsify. Discussion on Customer Support, driving adoption, and her drive to create a better customer experience. We discussed onboarding, implementation, best models for SaaS customers to be successful from the time a customer signs. Success metrics, improving adoption, and testing and learning the best model for success while in hypergrowth mode. We also touched on Renee’s approach to management, and finished up with mentoring and me...
Apr 12, 2019•42 min•Season 1Ep. 4
