Join us in our re-release of our episode featuring Eileen Voynick and her deep insights into the evolution of Customer Success in the enterprise software industry, from SAP to the modern Cloud era.

Eileen Voynick has held senior operating roles and board leadership roles at companies including SAP, Oracle, Siebel Systems, All Scripts, Sparta Systems, and Chair of the Board at Jefferson Health.

In this episode, Eileen shares the evolution of Customer Success, both as a function and as a focus in the enterprise software industry.

Eileen's initial foray into Customer Success was formed in part by the large SAP partner ecosystem. At SAP, Customer Success was focused on the business value that a customer can derive from the use of their software. A consistent theme across every software deployment model is that business value and satisfaction have to be understood from the C-Suite all the way down to the individual user.

Customer Experience has always been important in the software industry and has an elevated role in the "Cloud". Eileen highlight that if you look at the switching costs of Cloud deployed versus on-premise are very similar in highly regulated fields such as health care and financial services. "Customer Experience" may have a higher focus today however, that is not primarily due to the deployment model, but rather the evolution of software becoming more common across industries, functions, and processes.

Creating a "Customer Journey Map" which includes every touch from initial touchpoint to full implementation and deployment is a critical task to complete for every Cloud company. This includes ensuring that customer touchpoints are also included post successful deployment to ensure that customer engagement is maintained across every customer stakeholder beyond one to two months before a renewal discussion.

We asked Eileen, "what's next?" in the world of Customer Experience, Product Management becoming more focused on customer experience versus feature/function will become table stakes. Eilleen's example of how a vendor wowed doctors after watching how they performed specific tasks and then came back with a prototype that was met with astonishment by the potential customer.

At the end of the day, customer experience boils down to the "business value" that a software provider delivers to each customer.

When the question "who owns an account after it's closed?" was asked, co-host Ray Rike responded with some benchmarks including, CS now consumes 11% of revenue at the median in B2B Cloud companies. Ray shared that Customer Success should own customer value-based upon user engagement, the value received from using the software but CS should NOT own up-sells, and cross-sells, it should be a "team" approach to ensure customer satisfaction and thus customer retention + growth.

Eileen views the CSM as a great facilitator that orchestrates priorities across their company to ensure customer success. In the "land and expand" model, she shared that having an account management team that works closely with Customer Success to identify, nurture and close up-sells and cross-sells is a preferred model. A caveat is that based upon the maturity of the company, this approach will vary.

The CRO needs to take leadership in establishing a sales-oriented, customer value culture that centers around the customer as job 1. This will go a long way towards building cross-functional alignment.

Lastly, we covered the role of the board of directors in helping companies make the Digital Transformation? Eileen shared that over the last 10 years, her primary role as a board member has centered around product and Go-To-Market strategy which are both core to a successful digital transformation journey. Eileen shared that as a board member, understanding the investor thesis and the company objectives to ensure they are aligned is one of her key responsibilities.

Finally, Eileen shared that being a lifelong learner with strong active listening skills are critical for early career profess.

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We're revisiting this insightful episode as B2B selling continues to evolve, especially within the fast-paced world of cloud solutions.

Jamie Shanks, the founder, and CEO of Sales for Life is a true pioneer in Social Selling. Speaking to Jamie is like drinking a double shot of espresso.

Social media for selling was a discovery that Jamie first identified when he reversed engineer what B2B Sales professionals had been doing in outbound sales for years, and then apply on LinkedIn.

Social Selling was initially developed as an "inbound" sales motion focused on three core principles:

- Building an online brand

- Grow a buyer social network

- Share content 1:1 and 1:many

As social selling evolved to an outbound, account-based motion, the category evolved into "Digital Selling" using multiple channels including social networks, video, and multi-touch, multi-channel sequences.

Most recently, the category has morphed into "Modern Selling", spearheaded by companies like Microsoft and IBM which simply highlights the multi-channel aspect of outbound pipeline generation.

Immediately prior to COVID, digital selling was still an "evangelical" exercise and more time was spend on "why" to invest in Digital Selling versus investing in "how" to deploy digital selling.

Within 30 days of COVID hitting, the conversations shifted to the imperative of how do we ensure our sales organization has the basic skills to reach and engage target buyers digitally. Socially surrounding target accounts and target buyers is key to a successful digital selling program. In fact, Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft said 3 years of Digital Transformation happened in 3 months!

Jamie highlighted that the majority of success begins and ends with the buy-in, governance, and accountability of digital selling by senior and front-line sales management. First, identifying the success metrics for a digital selling program is a critical first step, under the auspice of the "expect what you inspect" mantra.

Leaders need to be enabled first, to understand the evolving coaching moments, and ensure the sales plays reflect the new digital selling motion. Jamie discussed "pipeline coverage ratio growth", which starts with quarterly milestones that drive outcomes in 90-day bursts. Then start to measure progress every quarter, as measured by pipeline coverage ratio, and then close rates.

Time-based, period over period "pipeline coverage ratio" is the number one metric to measure the return on digital selling investment. Close rates and revenue performance are lagging indicators that should be measured, but are not good leading indicators.

When asked about what leading companies have done in regards to Digital Selling over the last 12 months, Jamie mentioned that the top 20% of companies have been very progressive in investing in digital selling transformation. 80% did not aggressively invest in the digital transformation of their sales team and fell behind in both pipeline development and new account sales.

Human Capital migration play is the #1 opportunity to grow pipeline. In fact, over 50% of the new pipeline created in many of Jamie's customers came from this play. Leaders who recently joined a new company are much more prone to invest in new, higher-risk ways of growing pipeline and new customer revenue.

We discussed the pros and cons of asking B2B sellers to build a personal brand versus building their employer's brand. Jamie said it is more important to over-index personal brand building in the target buyer "segment". This will be a candidate evaluation criteria that future, potential employers will use to determine a candidate's value to their company!

Jamie is a great listen for anyone responsible for modern selling in a B2B company!

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Join us as we revisit this episode with Gerhard Gschwandtner, the founder of Selling Power Magazine and creator of the Sales 3.0 Conference has been teaching and training sales professionals for 30+ years. His insights on sales success and mindsets are more prevalent today than ever.

On this episode, Gerhard shares his insights based upon his experiences interviewing hundreds of extremely successful business people including Mark Cuban, Bill McDermott (SAP + ServiceNow), Keith Krach (DocuSign + Ariba) and training thousands of B2B Sales professionals.

The B2B Sales profession has been changed dramatically by technology, including the customer/salesperson relationship. Another change is how data impacts the profession, but an even bigger topic impacting sales success may be the "Mindset".

Gerhard shared there are three key components of B2B sales success: 1) Skill Set; 2) Tool Kit; 3) Mindset. The mindset is about how well one is functioning cognitively and emotionally. A key question every B2B Sales professional should ask themselves, "are you Mind Full or mindful?". Developing a positive mindset is an area that individual sales professionals and companies are not investing enough time, energy, or resources.

Another topic we discussed is an emerging and disturbing trend in B2B SaaS/Cloud sales performance. The latest research indicates that less than 60% of B2B Sales professionals achieved quota in 2020. Gerhard highlighted the issue rests primarily on the shoulders of the SaaS company leaders who are not investing enough in on-boarding, training, and coaching of sales professionals.

Gerhard shared an example highlighting the power of having a no-limit, positive mindset. A sales professional attended a positive mindset training session, decided to apply the envisioning, no-limit thinking to his golf game, and in his very next round, hit his first hole in one!

If you are a B2B sales professional or led and/or depend on B2B Sales professionals to drive your company performance, this is a great listen!

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