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Digital Panel - May 19, 2021

Let’s Talk: Sales and cs alignment

Why it’s time to stop throwing your customers over the fence.

Historically, the sales discipline was here to create closed-won business. What happens after that? Not their problem, that's what customer success is for - right?

This mindset leaves onboarding and customer success teams to pick up the pieces, dance around previously set expectations, and move mountains to get customers onboarded and expectations reset. And, while CS teams are being measured on things like time-to-value, expansion, and retention, the sales team goes back to selling - regardless of how their newly onboarded customers were actually doing.

Reality check: this doesn't work anymore. In today’s customer-focused era, it's more important than ever to ensure all customer-facing teams are aligned around shared goals. These goals, at minimum, should include expansion, retention, and customer advocacy.

In 2021 it's not unheard of for all revenue teams to sit in one department - yes, that includes sales, cs, and marketing. The entire revenue org is responsible for the entire customer lifecycle. It is time to look at the customer journey holistically- from initial outreach to renewal.

Topics

  • Keep your cool during the handoff process 😎

  • Managing expectations across teams 🤝

  • Keeping roles and responsibilities clearly defined 🧐

  • Quicker time-to-value 🕒

Key takeaways

  • Pete’s Pro Tip: Templatize as much as humans possible. Use whatever you have available, whether it’s Google Docs or Guru Cards. This helps solve for any ambiguity. 

  • Jackie’s Pro Tip: The customer and employee experience are more intertwined than you think. A good employee experience equals a good customer experience and vice versa. 

  • Gemma’s Pro Tip: +1 one to what Jackie said and do what you can to make this whole process easier - automate, automate, automate. There’s a lot of moving parts and holding your teams accountable with automation is a great way to ensure nothing falls through the cracks.

Another huge thank you to Chili Piper for sponsoring this session!