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John Johnson:
There he is. Mister Josh Schechter. Shach Shachter?

Josh Schachter:
What? Whenever you’re ready, John. Actually, Rachel, I don’t know how to pronounce your last name. Orson?

Rachel Orston:
Orston.

Josh Schachter:
Easy. Okay. Nailed it. Fine. John, John Johnson. Is that it?

John Johnson:
John. John Johnson.

Josh Schachter:
John Johnson. Okay. All right. Well, welcome, everybody, to this episode of Unchurned. I’m Josh Schachter, your co host with John Johnson, where we talk to the leaders of the customer success world. And we have like a real leader this time. A real real yeah. Like like, the realest of leaders.

Josh Schachter:
You know, 800 FTEs underneath her publicly traded company, 80% or something like that, market share. You know, lots of lots of things. We can keep going on the accolades. But, I would like to, introduce everybody to Rachel Orson, who is the chief customer officer at Instructure. Rachel, thank you so much for joining us.

Rachel Orston:
It’s a pleasure to be here. It’s a pleasure to be here. And I will say Instructure is an amazing company for those of you that may wonder about the market share. We’re not 80%. I wish we were, but we’re approaching that in the high ed space. You might recognize the brand Canvas. Instructure is the makers of of Canvas. If you have a kid, in k through 12 or a a high ed student or hopefully a lifelong learner at some stage, hopefully, they are using, not just our flagship product Canvas, but several of our other products including Studio and Impact and Learn.

Rachel Orston:
It’s and our recent acquisition, Parchment. We do have we are a market leader in the higher education space, but with growing market leadership in k twelve, and we’re growing our footprint internationally. So it’s an exciting time to be in education.

Josh Schachter:
John, do you see what just happened there?

John Johnson:
You see She corrected you? You were wrong.

Josh Schachter:
Well, she

John Johnson:
corrected me.

Josh Schachter:
That’s what was important. But this is this is executive training. So she knew that comms was gonna come after me right after the taping of this episode if I let it say 8 yeah. What’s that?

Rachel Orston:
I just went right into it. Just, you know

John Johnson:
Yeah. I love it. No. But our producer also told us that we needed to tighten up the intros a little bit. So you nailed it.

Josh Schachter:
I think he told you that, John. But so so Instructure, market leader, the operating system, so to speak, of of education. You’ve got 14,000 customers and, oh, wait, 40,000,000 users that use your platform? You are the 5th largest trafficked site for teens for teens 18 to 25 behind

Rachel Orston:
Yeah. Yeah. I think you’re not. Think I’ve got I’ve got, you know, my both my it was one of the things that drew me to to the company. Both my kids were k twelve Canvas kids, and now they’re both at universities that use Canvas. And I joke, like, if they’re not on TikTok or Snapchat or doing whatever, I I hope that they’re in Canvas, and and they are. I mean, that’s where they’re doing the bulk of their work. They’re communicating with their teachers.

Rachel Orston:
They’re uploading their homework. They’re taking their tests and so on and so forth. So, it’s a big deal.

Josh Schachter:
Do you have access to see if your, like, your kids

Rachel Orston:
Which I do not. I have no superpowers to change. As much as my kids would love that, I have no superpowers to change grades or anything of the sort. So absolutely.

John Johnson:
My oldest just graduated from high school and is going into higher ed, and I’m I was actually gonna ask you if you could help me out. Yeah.

Josh Schachter:
Make sure they’re in class.

Rachel Orston:
Yeah. For sure. For sure. No no magic powers when it comes to that. But it’s an amazing product in, really impacting the lives of students, globally. And and educators, look, teaching’s a hard job. Forget the students. Right? I mean, look at teachers.

Josh Schachter:
Yeah. Forget the students.

Rachel Orston:
It’s all about making it’s all about making their lives, easier and, creating an engaging, experience. I mean, COVID was really hard. I actually got to know Canvas very well during COVID. I got to know my kids a lot better through Canvas and understanding their challenges. And, I think online learning look is here to stay. As a matter of fact, we see more online learning and, you know, teachers and institutions leveraging online post COVID now than we did pre COVID. So I think it’s it’s it’s not it’s like like remote work. I think that this is a new normal, for education.

Josh Schachter:
Yeah. Yeah. So okay. So no backdoor access. Unlike when my best friend, Stefan, when I first my first job in tech at eharmony asked me if the girl that he really liked had closed him out yet in the matching algorithm or whether he was still alive. And so when I went and kinda went into admin mode and said, nope. She hasn’t texted any hasn’t messaged anybody else. You’re still in play, and now they’re married with

Rachel Orston:
3 kids. So my gosh. That’s impressive. Yeah.

John Johnson:
And a little scary. But And

Josh Schachter:
a little scary. And a little scary. Alright. We we move on. We talk about, Instructure. But I actually you know, Rachel, we didn’t prep on this, but I wanna throw a pseudo curveball here because I was going through your LinkedIn profile.

Rachel Orston:
Sure.

Josh Schachter:
And, you you’ve got a, you know, a a wonderful background. You’ve been I mean, logo serial here. Right? Starting with with Showtime and Turner Turner Media and all these things. And then you did this, you know, 8 year stint as founder and COO of GoThrive. And when I read the the GoThrive yeah. Yeah. GoThru oh, I’m sorry. CoThrive.

Josh Schachter:
CoThrive.

Rachel Orston:
I thought restaurant.

Josh Schachter:
And so a startup that helps companies make and keep commitments, all with an email. And I thought to myself, well, like, this was before she got into to CX and CS and those aspects of her career. But there’s something maybe there because when we think about customer success, we think about accountability to customers, keeping commitments on both sides, etcetera. I actually wanna hear a little bit about about Cothrive and maybe how that kinda shaped you into your your next role, which was more customer centric.

Rachel Orston:
Gosh. Okay. I will try to make this as short as possible, but, yeah, my my early days were all in digital media. I actually CNN is what brought me to, to Atlanta, almost 30 years ago. I thought I wanted to be, like, a broadcast journalist and ended up taking a left turn in technology. But while I was at EMC, and I sold high end storage, into the film industry, I was doing a ton of cross collaboration with developers and project managers and delivering services across the world. And coordination, for large accounts was really hard. Right? You’re you own big customers and managing all the different deliverables globally, was very difficult.

Rachel Orston:
And, again, you have to remember this was like, what, 2003? This is in the early 2000s. Like, the tools that we have today, Slack, Asana, all the online project management stuff, like, you know, I use Superhuman. I’m a huge fan of that now too. Front, like, none of that existed. Right? And so, long story short, a a gentleman, and I who worked together at EMC, we left EMC to part of this company called Cothrive. We actually took EMC as our first customer, because we had created this kind of approach and methodology to coordinating work with an email. And then from there, we actually built a software that sat on top of Microsoft Outlook. I know Microsoft Outlook is like I know that dates me right there, but we did.

Rachel Orston:
And then we brought on Microsoft as a client and Sony and a couple logos, and it was, it was it was a nice run. It was a nice boutique consulting slash we had our in proprietary software business. And, it was really just in the whole future of work space, like collaboration, project management, etcetera. I loved it. It was pretty cool.

Josh Schachter:
Yeah. And then you’ve worked at some really cool places since then, in some great roles and and now being at Instructure. So, let’s talk a little bit about Instructure going back to to how you’re running, you know, post sales over there. You mentioned a little bit about, like, we’ve talked to the market share and whatnot, but tell us a little bit about the the segments of your customers at Instructure and maybe some of the the hallmarks customers that you do have.

Rachel Orston:
Yeah. I mean, we have, a a pretty, you know, diverse set of of segments. Right? We sell into the high ed space of thing, you know, both at the private and public. So we have some of the largest public institutions that you would be familiar with, everything from, you know, the UC system to, you know, Michigan, University of Florida, etcetera. Right? And to the entire, California Community College System. Right? So, higher ed is is, like I said, our we’re the largest market share leader here in the US, but we also have a global footprint with, customers like Oxford University, St. Andrews, etcetera. K 12, same thing.

Rachel Orston:
So we as another segment. So we have k 12, which is also private, but also large system wide districts. So think statewide. We’re we’re in we’re statewide systems or entire states, you know, use Canvas for their k 12 programs. And then we’ve got professional learning, which is really more like accreditation or certification. So think about certified financial accountants. Right? To become a cert we’d CFA is a customer. So to become a certified financial accountant accountant, you need to go through a certification or courseware.

Rachel Orston:
So that’s a segment of ours. So that’s kind of how we look at our segments, in terms of like buying centers. And then with Parchment, we also sell diplomas and evidences of learning. So the registrar is a big buying center for us, and that spans all of our segments. Right? If you think about k twelve needs diplomas, universities need need diplomas and evidence of learning. So we sell

Josh Schachter:
I thought knowledge was evidence of learning. I’m sorry.

Rachel Orston:
Yeah. Yeah.

John Johnson:
Somebody who can’t get his diploma printed because my college went out of business, welcome to America. It’s it’s a very important part of education.

Rachel Orston:
It is. It is. It’s a huge part. And the and things like dual enrollment. Right? Just transcripts. So when we talk about evidence, it’s not just the diploma, but the transcripts. Right? That prove that you’ve taken a course so that you, you know, have these credits and whatnot. So that’s kinda how we look at, you know, our different buying centers.

Rachel Orston:
We sell to different buying centers. So think registrar, think provost chancellor, think think, you know, superintendent, and then we have our formal segments, high ed, k twelve, and then international, which is a little bit of a combination of both. You know, our our size of our deals really range. We sell to small small schools, you know, a couple 100 students, all the way to statewide systems where we’re negotiating at the you know, we have lobbyists. We work with the state levels with state legislature, you know, state officials. And so they can be quite complex, to, like, what what you guys would consider to be, like, a a mid market or small, you know, institution.

Josh Schachter:
So so it could be, like, we’re talking, like, 10000 to 10,000,000 ACV or something. I mean

Rachel Orston:
100. Yep. Right there.

Josh Schachter:
Okay. So so at at 10,000, you’re, like, you’re the principal or, you know, the headmaster or mistress or something like that, or, you know, that’s that’s or or somebody in their ops team. At the UC system, you’re what? Like, is it Janet Napolitino but Paul Tano? Like, who’s you’re you’re, like, one of the right? Wasn’t she the head of the program that you the UC system? Maybe obviously, 10 years ago.

Rachel Orston:
Many of the many of the systems have their own, CIOs. So they actually have CIOs or or digital or she or heads of tran digital transformation that are responsible for driving digital, transformation for, their part of the CIO suite, within the state to help drive that across across their institutions or participating, distress.

Josh Schachter:
So so I guess my point is, like, it it seems like it’s such a a a wide range of of who your ICP is, but then also the the folks that your team is interfacing with after the initial sale. It it could it seems to me it would be like or am I off track on that?

Rachel Orston:
I mean, yes and no. I think I don’t wanna overcomplicate it. At the end of the day, I mean, they’re they’re all educators, right, to some degree. They’ve all most of our CSMs and our post sales team, one of the things I’m really proud of is they all many of them come from education or their post campus users themselves. Right? And, you know, I I would say that, we definitely engage at the what what would be in the corporate world, like, the executive level. Right? So we have conversations and QBRs with those provosts, with those CIOs. But then our day to day is is is no different than I think a lot of other CSMs have where we’re dealing with the administrators, who administer Canvas. If you’re a large institution, you have a dedicated Canvas administrator.

Rachel Orston:
If not one, but probably many Canvas administrators, operating Canvas for us. So those kind of comprise a lot of our day to day contacts or the or the administrators that are working Canvas. And then, of course, there’s teacher education too. And so we spend a lot of time with with teachers getting them comfortable, with our software, and that’s through our training and also our professional services team.

John Johnson:
It’s one one thing that I’m I’m curious about too is when it comes to strategy, when it comes to enablement and engagement, you’re dealing with a lot of folks that I mean, if they’re instructors, they’re teaching every single day. Right? It’s hard enough for me to get as a software guy who’s sitting at their desk available for Zoom to get on an enablement call. So when you’re talking about these big, huge rocks from a program standpoint, from a strategy standpoint, how do you how do you think about just getting folks into the tool? And then what are some of those metrics that you look at, obviously, from from your high level view, that that kinda trickle down into the individual users with the admins, with the CIOs, with the folks that are actually in the tool.

Rachel Orston:
Yeah. There’s a bunch of things that we look at, without getting too into too in the weeds. We have, part of I think what makes Canvas so, compelling and why I think we are the market leader is you have to be incredibly easy to use. Like, ease of use has to be so critical. And so we have, like, a we have a lot of functionality to, to enable, educators to get up to speed very, very quickly. And we’ve even, created versions of our software. Take k through k, k through 3rd grade. Take the

John Johnson:
Oh, yeah.

Rachel Orston:
Take the little ones, for example. We’ve kind of reskinned our products so that it’s super easy both for the educator and that little student, you know, that younger one to engage with Canvas and to create courseware. So we have, different levels of usability, which is, you know, core to kind of our our, you know, priorities in terms of student experience is at the heart of what we do, so that it’s super easy to get, you know, onboarded and get started at all levels. We have on demand training, which is pretty powerful. And we do we’ve done this enough times that, we have a whole kind of approach to how we roll Canvas out. So if you’re a university for the first time using Canvas, we have a whole program in terms of how do we train the trainer, how do we train the teachers, how do we kinda mobilize them to be, to be activated as quickly as possible. And the way that we, measure our success is in initial course creation is in initial course creation. There’s a couple big things.

Rachel Orston:
There’s also integration with what’s called the SIS, which is the student information center. That’s where all think of it as like the HR system. You know, you have to integrate with the with the HR. You know, if you’re depending on what type of system. So it’s it’s, the SIS integration is a big milestone for us. Are we integrated well there and and moving data over? And, we look at course engagement. And then finally, once things are up and running, student engagement. Right? What’s the level of students logging in? How long are they spending time in the classes? Etcetera, etcetera.

Rachel Orston:
So utilization, engagement, on a core literally down to the course level are things that that we look at. I know I’m going fast, but that’s No. No. No.

John Johnson:
You’re fine.

Rachel Orston:
You know No.

John Johnson:
And level part with all I mean, that sounds I mean, I I love the simplification. I love the idea of obviously starting simple. How do you, as the CCO, stay close to the end users, to the customers? How are you, how are you informing the decisions that you’re making broad scope, from the customer standpoint?

Rachel Orston:
Yeah. There’s a number of ways that we do that. First of all, it’s a really good question, and I’m new to Instructure. Right? I joined in January. And to be clear, like, I’m not an educator. I didn’t come from the location space. So I was really sensitive to this question and to this thing of being, you know, coming in new to a company as large as Instructure and as well established and not having that pedigree and saying to your point, like, how do I establish myself with our customers? I think a lot of it is is a was I really did that, and I’ve probably met now with probably well over a 150. Well, definitely more through our customer conferences.

Rachel Orston:
Cuss I’ve met with hundreds of customers now through a couple key areas. 1 is, QBRs. So we spend a lot of time on-site with our customers, and, and just shadowing and listening, to their needs and and using that as an opportunity to introduce myself. The second thing is we have, customer advisory boards in different regions and different segments, which is really, helpful. We also do, several big flagship events a year. We’ve got our main structure con event where we have over 3,000 attendees, and we have an executive track that we run there. And we also run what’s called Canvas cons or Canvas, events in different regions internationally. And then we have user groups called Canvas connects, and I get to attend those as well, or I get readouts, from those.

Rachel Orston:
So I can’t be everywhere. So recordings and readouts from those, from those meetings are also a way that I can stay in touch even if I can’t, like, physically be there. But I got to Diamond, let’s put this way, just from a travel perspective. I made Diamond within my first 6 months on the job.

Josh Schachter:
That’s true. Which airline? Which airline?

John Johnson:
Yeah. Which airline? That’s really Delta.

Josh Schachter:
Delta. Okay. As long as it’s not United, we’re good. Yeah. Well, she you’re she’s Atlanta. Of course.

John Johnson:
I know. I’m Raleigh too, so Delta is like Yeah.

Rachel Orston:
Delta, I’m a yeah. It’s not well, I’ve been in Atlanta for 30 years. But, you know, I think it’s for us, it’s a lot of, like, get instructors for to its credit is very much a get out of the building culture, which I love. We are getting out, getting on the ground, going to the universities.

John Johnson:
Yeah. You know, when when you’re talking about that that was actually you answered one of my questions just when it comes to virtual versus in person. You’re a you’re a remote organization as I understand. Correct?

Rachel Orston:
Correct.

John Johnson:
Okay. So there is a big drive for your folks, and they’re empowered to go on-site with customers. How do they how do you how do you think about when it comes to opportunity? So you you’re the CCO. Obviously, there are certain, you know, roles and responsibilities that you have to have, but, what’s the the opportunity for folks to kind of bring you on to those moments on-site with customers to engage value, to engage opportunity, growth even?

Rachel Orston:
Ask the question again, John Lewis.

Josh Schachter:
I didn’t understand the question either, Rachel, just to be fair. It’s not you.

John Johnson:
Can edit this out or not.

Josh Schachter:
No. No. No. No. No.

Rachel Orston:
No. No. No. No.

Josh Schachter:
No. No. We’re keeping this. We’re keeping this.

John Johnson:
I mean, one of one of my favorite things is bringing my leaders on-site, is is engaging with my executives when there’s opportunity for growth, when there’s opportunity for expansion. How are how are your teams engaging with you to identify where those opportunities are outside of perhaps the conference or the the one offs?

Rachel Orston:
I have a philosophy on this one. I’m I’m gonna take this one a little bit of a different direction. I actually I actually think people bring in leaders at the wrong times. Typically, when stuff stuff’s gone south and they need, like, save a deal or, like, to close something. And I think the best time to actually bring a leader is when you’re just building a relationship, like, when there’s no agenda. And so I actually that’s why I was struggling with your question, John, is that I’m I’m more of a I’m more of a you I wanna get to know people when it’s just getting to know them, and there’s absolutely no agenda. So typically, the things that I like to do is like and I’ve done this a couple times even just in the short time I’ve been with Instructure is when a new provost starts or new chancellor. Because we have a lot of, you know, changes in our in our landscape and the I’ve learned this actually in the education space.

Rachel Orston:
There’s more turnover than I would expect, like superintendents move around and provost move around. I’m like, wow. This is a people hop around. There’s a lot of movement in the in different different institutions. So anytime that there’s a new executive, I think that’s a great opportunity. Just build a relationship, get to know them. Hopefully, they came from a school that they’re already familiar with us and they’ve used us. But it’s a great opportunity to introduce myself and just honestly have zero agenda.

Rachel Orston:
That way, when an opportunity does come up or there is an issue, we’re not meeting for the first time. Like, I hate to meet with a customer, a under especially at an executive level under bad circumstances. That’s just a horrible experience.

John Johnson:
Yeah. I I love that.

Rachel Orston:
I don’t like to meet them for the first time too when we’re trying to, like, get them to, you know, throw a dollar at us. I think both of those feel very disingenuous, and I just don’t feel like it’s the best experience for for them or for us. Right?

John Johnson:
Yeah. I I agree with you completely on that. And for the listeners, we’ll define what a provost is in our in our show notes. I’m gonna have to look that up too.

Josh Schachter:
Let’s let’s Rachel, what’s a provost? They’re they’re like the they’re the CEO of of the university. Is that effectively it?

Rachel Orston:
Yes. Or their school. Right? You could have the different you know, a university could have different schools, and schools can actually there could be more than 1 provost, but depending on them.

Josh Schachter:
But usually, there aren’t they also usually, like, educators as well? They’re not just pure business people.

Rachel Orston:
Yeah. Yeah. My colleague, Melissa Loebel, is amazing. I’m also very lucky that I, have a chief academic officer who owns, like, the pedagogy and a lot of the academic thought leadership because she and she is an educator as well. She teaches, at UC Irvine as well in in in and works at Instructure. So I wish Melissa was with me because she could probably correct me and answer that question much better than I was.

John Johnson:
That’s okay.

Josh Schachter:
So, Rachel, you’ve been there for almost a year. By the time this episode comes out, it’ll probably be about a year. Yeah. And you’ve got 800 people underneath you. You’ve got a 100 CSMs, plus you have professional services, global support, renewals, community, etcetera. We talked a little bit before about some of the big things that have occurred in the I mean, sounds like it’s been a very busy 2024 for you. You’ve you’ve shifted, the CS org in a way to variable comp, and now there’s more focus on retention, cross sell, upsell, pipe generation, like, the revenue bearing functions. You’ve got this drive team model.

Josh Schachter:
You you finished building out an entire new digital team.

Rachel Orston:
Yep. In the Philippines. Very excited.

Josh Schachter:
Yeah. In the Philippines. And then you’ve also got this new to you, like, the seasonality behind, you know, a business, which has never happened before. Right? But we know the seasonality of the school year. Let’s dive into 1 or 2 of those. I don’t know. Do you have a preference?

Rachel Orston:
No. I’ll let you I’ll I’ll dealer’s choice. Go for it.

Josh Schachter:
Okay. John, what do you think? Variable comp? Drive team?

John Johnson:
Curious about variable comp.

Josh Schachter:
Okay.

Rachel Orston:
Of course we are.

John Johnson:
Oh, so, Josh, you you this was a transition. Right? So you just kind of threw me threw me on the bus there, Josh. I love it.

Josh Schachter:
Exactly.

John Johnson:
You know, comp comp has been a big conversation around CS. So when you’re talking about variable, are you looking at give me your thought process

Rachel Orston:
on on

John Johnson:
where you came from versus where you’re going.

Rachel Orston:
Okay. Well, I’ve actually feel like I’ve innovated quite a bit in this one. I mean, I’ve always been consistent on a couple things. I’ve tried a bunch of different things. I actually put a LinkedIn blog around this, which you could link in there if you want to, Josh. At some point, you could look at it.

Josh Schachter:
We will.

Rachel Orston:
But, I, look, I think I’m big on aligning CS to other functions of the business. And I think Instructure is doing that very well with this thing this concept that we call the drive team, which is, a pod. Think of it as like a pod, where, within a territory, and within a segment that we talked about before, whether that’s higher ed or k twelve, you have an account executive, you have a CSM, you have a renewal specialist. You know, everybody’s kind of working together and singing off the same sheet of music. And so when I think about comp design, I always look at it as I wanna make sure whatever the components are that they’re aligning to the other roles in the business, and everybody feels like they’re they’re, the incentives are not, they’re not creating friction. Right? They’re doing the exact opposite. So for our CSMs, they’re actually comped on 3 components of which every other member of the drive team, including our sales, are comped on as well. That is renewal rate, is a component, pipe, and pipe conversion.

Rachel Orston:
So our CSMs have pipe targets. And I think, actually, one of the biggest objectives of a CSM is to drive and identify opportunities. And

Josh Schachter:
So that would be like a CSQL setup. So

Rachel Orston:
yeah. And, actually, I spoke and brought coined the CSQL when I spoke at Gainsight. I came from marketing and did a presentation about Oh, wait. On the CSQL. Yes.

John Johnson:
I’ll bury the lead on that one. Are you kidding me?

Rachel Orston:
I feel like I take credit for CSQL. And, and then lastly, actually, new sales, which is very I bet, probably, controversial. But I think CS

John Johnson:
Not in this group. They

Rachel Orston:
have a very small they have a small a very small component of their compass on, on driving, ARR or new bookings. So there you go.

Josh Schachter:
That that sounds great.

John Johnson:
I got a bunch of educators as CSMs into that mindset. I know that’s not a you question. I know you’ve got the directors and the VPs below you, but that that just something that jumps out when you bring so many educators in. Obviously, it makes sense in the space, but then getting them to kind of think revenue wise, like, that’s What?

Josh Schachter:
They don’t wanna miss money?

John Johnson:
Well, conversations around revenue are different than making money.

Josh Schachter:
I don’t know. It sounds like a slam dunk. She she’s got them, like, greatly motivated to to sell Yeah. To find leads and to and to upsell and renew. It sounds amazing to me.

John Johnson:
I love it.

Rachel Orston:
But I but but but, actually, John, I’m glad you brought it up because it’s not I think moving anybody from a variable from a not variable to a variable comp is always a transition whether they’re an educator or not. I just think mentally, like, going from a like, now I’m I’ve got you know, you’ve got the opportunity to make more money, but just thinking that way, that mentality of base to base plus variable, I’ve seen it be hard for people regardless of what industry they come with or they come from. And I think what it’s hard, and I’ll be honest with you. It’s not a fit for everybody. And I actually think that’s what distinguishes I think a good CSM should be comfortable with variable comp period regardless of the background. And if you’re not, you’re probably not gonna be a good profile for a CSM, at least a CSM in my org you know, in in my profile of organizations. It’s not to say you wouldn’t be successful in another company that maybe doesn’t have that, but I I firmly believe that that’s part of being a CSM is is having that performance kind of mindset, in your in your in in the profile of a CSM. Maybe that’s another conversation for another time.

Rachel Orston:
Yeah. It’s like 2 sentences.

Josh Schachter:
Well, did you also

John Johnson:
won’t find any arguments from us on that too? Because we all we we’ve had many of those conversations. So I love that.

Rachel Orston:
Even the whole CSM sales and where do they say we can that’s, you know, the debate that keeps going. That’s the gift that keeps giving. But I think that regardless of that, I think that that’s just a hallmark of a good CSM.

Josh Schachter:
So so how how are your how are the CSMs in your org then maybe, like, how is their constitution a little different than CSMs in other orgs? Do you find Because maybe there is different motivations for them.

Rachel Orston:
I think there is different motivations. I think the variable was, to be honest with you, a tough transition. So I think it it has been hard for them. But I think what underpins it is I think they really care about making an impact. And, when they see that the work that they’re doing in driving an impact can actually help make them more money, and they can see that essentially they’re getting paid for doing a lot of the stuff that they were doing before. Seriously, I think it started to click and get very exciting for them. And I think too, aligning with their sales peers, because actually, I think they they are collaborating more than they ever have with their sales peers, whereas I think previously, there was probably not as much of that collaboration. Or let let’s put this way.

Rachel Orston:
I think collaboration was probably more inconsistent. I think now it’s, it’s definitely increased and a lot more consistent across all of our territories and drive teams. So I think it’s been a great outcome.

Josh Schachter:
Was this a a tough case for you to build? Did you have any obstacles in building this case?

Rachel Orston:
No. No. The case was actually already developed when I joined, so the decision was was made. I made some of the changes to, like, the plan details, but the decision to do variable was made when I joined. It was already budgeted for and made.

Josh Schachter:
And and so when you talk about the benefits of sales and CS getting a little bit closer together, can you double click into that a little bit in what vivid ways has that occurred that you see tighter alignment?

Rachel Orston:
We actually just rolled out something called the opportunity grid, and maybe I could see if I could snag a a template if I’m have permission to share, but think of it as like white space analysis. Right? So if you’re trying to identify opportunities, we we’ve created this template called the opportunity grid. And then we do QBRs together. So we just did QBRs in San Francisco where our CS leaders present with our sales leaders. So, you know, those they work on things, and then they they they walk through their opportunity grids, you know, for the quarter, etcetera. So I think we’ve created it’s not just about putting people together and saying, hey. You guys are part of a drive team. Good luck.

Rachel Orston:
But I think it’s also equipping them with the right, you know, tools and templates, and processes so that they come together thoughtfully in the right ways. Right? And so I think we’re starting to do that with things like, you know, joint QBRs, opportunity grids, things of that nature.

Josh Schachter:
And what tools you you hear a lot about how, you know, sales is in Salesforce and CS doesn’t take advantage of Salesforce as much and CS is in Gainsight or or in a a CS platform and sales isn’t there. What tools are you using to bring these folks together closer?

Rachel Orston:
We are and by the way, I should do a plug. We, are moving forward with winning by design also in doing a common methodology and language. I’ve used winning by design in my last two companies, and they’ll be working with Instructure on our methodology moving forward. Because I also think that’s a big unifying. It’s like, are you all speaking the same language from, like, a a methodology and approach? I think winning by design does a really good job. So that’s a, you know, just a plug for them on that. But tool wise, obviously, Salesforce, Gainsight, CS uses Gainsight. Our renewals team uses Gainsight.

Rachel Orston:
We use Clari. We use, Front in email collab.

John Johnson:
Oh, yeah.

Rachel Orston:
That’s probably, the biggest probably the most predominant tools today. Salesforce, Clari, Gainsight, and Front. And then, of course, I use Chorus, and there’s other things for services and support. But if we’re just talking customer successes, would be Yeah. Mean Okay.

Josh Schachter:
So no magic between the drive teams is, like, the systems that are are universally, you know

Rachel Orston:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Josh Schachter:
Cool. Well, I actually think we made it to our time. So, Rachel, we wanna let you get going. I can only imagine what your schedule looks like, but we are super honored to have had you on the show today.

Rachel Orston:
Yeah. Absolutely. Appreciate it.

Josh Schachter:
We’d love to have you back sometime, maybe in the new year. We can talk about year 2 in the role and and, the evolution of driving more of these things with your CS team. And, thank you so much for being on the show today.

Rachel Orston:
It was my pleasure. Thank you both.

John Johnson:
Thank you, Rachel. Thanks.