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Unturned is presented by UpdateAI.

Josh Schachter:

Tanya Earls, SVP of customer success at TEBRA, which is an amalgamation of a couple of company. Tanya leads 470 people across 16 functions in post sales.

Tanya Earles:

The restructuring of me moving out is we’re moving customer success under our CRO. I think a lot of companies are doing that. But I have a take on that.

Kristi Faltorusso:

If I if I start working on an account right now that’s on at risk, it’ll be 6 months before I maybe see the fruits of that labor. Maybe.

Jon Johnson:

Yeah.

Kristi Faltorusso:

And it may not even manifest in revenue growth. It might manifest in, like, a logo staying.

Josh Schachter:

Chrissy, should we wait for you to finish the popcorn and seltzer water?

Tanya Earles:

We don’t

Kristi Faltorusso:

have that much time. This is a pretty, like I came I came with a full book because I was, like, listen, I think it’s been interesting. I was gonna eat a little snack. I’m ready for the show.

Josh Schachter:

Do you wanna just sit on the sidelines and just, like, just put up put put your feet up and just we got the popcorn and you’re, like, ready?

Kristi Faltorusso:

I’m your a Player. No. Are

Josh Schachter:

you kidding me? You are my I was gonna be the last couple of weeks.

Jon Johnson:

We’ve been doing fine without

Tanya Earles:

you for the last

Jon Johnson:

couple of weeks.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Fine? I thought you were fine. I said

Jon Johnson:

fine. I didn’t say amazing. I didn’t say

Tanya Earles:

fantastic. I said fine.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Okay. Fine. Fine is fine.

Jon Johnson:

Are we still talking about Posh Spice?

Tanya Earles:

I mean, we could be.

Kristi Faltorusso:

I just saw the the new David Beckham cologne ads for the holiday, and I was like, Damn. That man just getting better and better looking. Like, how is it such that, like, these men that are aging? Right? This The men in their forties to fifties right now, these, like, famous celebrity I’m like, every day, I’m, like, looking at them different. Like, It’s a different different kind

Jon Johnson:

of vibe. We’ve got a I mean, we’ve gotta

Kristi Faltorusso:

fix mine. I know. Lotions and potions

Josh Schachter:

all day. Everybody to this episode of CS and BS and Omnichurn podcasts presented by UpdateAI. I’m Josh Schacter, founder and CEO of UpdateAI. We have with me John Johnson,

Jon Johnson:

principal CSM manager at User testing. I’m just thrilled to be here with everybody.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Can you just say that you’re just the principal of customer Success and just leave it at that because I think that would be

Jon Johnson:

Welcome to the principal’s office.

Tanya Earles:

Oh. That’s a show.

Jon Johnson:

Oh. No. I don’t

Kristi Faltorusso:

know if you’re working

Jon Johnson:

on it.

Kristi Faltorusso:

No. No. No. Stop. My turn. Okay. Very good. Anyway, Christy Feltorusso, chief customer officer at Client Success.

Kristi Faltorusso:

We are a customer success, management solution, helping our customers manage from new to renew, spent the past 12 years in customer success building, scaling, and transforming customer success teams And b to b hyper growth companies

Josh Schachter:

Tanya Earls, SVP of customer success at TBRA, which is an amalgamation of a couple of companies. You can tell us a little bit more about that. And, a little birdie told me that Tanya’s leaving TBRA. Can we talk about that, Tanya? Do do we know? Do others know?

Tanya Earles:

Can, but I can’t say where yet.

Josh Schachter:

That’s fine. I heard it was Gainsight, but that’s okay. We don’t have to No. I didn’t. Either confirm or deny that on this call.

Tanya Earles:

Yeah. Is it really? I it’s Sorry? No. I am denying that. Yeah. Thank you. But, yes, I have transitioned out of and it’s actually TBRA. Although, there’s a lot of customers that call it TBRA Josh and So this

Kristi Faltorusso:

is, like, TBRA and TEBA? It’s it has the same vibe. Right? We don’t know where actually things

Tanya Earles:

Tiba tells us. The same vibe. Yeah. But I was there four and a half years, and I am, Hopefully, we’ll be able to announce my new journey here shortly, but not quite yet.

Jon Johnson:

Wonderful.

Josh Schachter:

And tell tell us about TBRA, because you guys were a couple companies, came together, had some acquisition

Tanya Earles:

We were. So legacy carryout, EMR, $100,000,000, EMR business. And then we, merged with a company called PatientPop, which was also $100,000,000. So Pretty much, equal in size both in people and in revenue, and that was back in November of 2021. And we just expanded, basically went from an EMR and added on a digital growth platform, with RICP being basically small practice providers.

Jon Johnson:

Love it.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Tanya, what’s an EMR?

Tanya Earles:

Yeah. So think of it like electronical medical record. So we are your We are the system or the platform for doctors to take clinical notes, submit billing claims to payers, insurance, Patient engagement, which is where

Kristi Faltorusso:

What is the security on a platform like that look like?

Tanya Earles:

What is the security on a platform look like? Oh, it’s tight.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Yeah.

Tanya Earles:

Yeah. It’s right. There’s a lot of Okay. There’s a lot of security that has to happen so we don’t have any, you know, HIPAA violations or whatnot. Oh, yeah.

Josh Schachter:

Tanya leads 470 people across 16 functions in post sales. That that really impresses me. Yeah. Yeah. So we this podcast is all about folks that are in post sales, CS functions, you know, finding role models that serve as aspirations, inspirations. I think aspiration would be if you’re joking. Right? Inspiration to people who wanna grow their careers. And, I mean, that’s inspirational to me, is is a female leader in a really impressive sector, leading 500 people.

Josh Schachter:

I don’t even know where to start with that, but I don’t know. Tanya, what what makes the most sense? Should we talk about

Jon Johnson:

Well, I I got a question, Josh. I

Josh Schachter:

Go ahead. Go ahead. Help me. Sorry. Spare

Jon Johnson:

me. Yeah. Absolutely. First off, hi, Tanya.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Well, hello.

Tanya Earles:

How are you today? I’m so good. Evening of yours.

Jon Johnson:

Oh, look. I’m so happy to be here. I really am.

Tanya Earles:

I bet.

Jon Johnson:

And I appreciate I appreciate the flexibility in scheduling. So Okay. But really, for real. Real talk here. One of the things that stood out to me is, you know, you haven’t always been in CS. There is something that popped out when I was kinda going through the prep of what we do, but you have always had a focus on, the customer. And the way that you wrote this, Kind of in some of our prep documents, or it was it was presented to me as, you know, it may not have always been customer success, but you as an individual have always been focused on the customer. I would love to hear I mean okay.

Jon Johnson:

First off, but I wanna know how you keep the customer at the center when you’re 4 or 5 levels away from the customer And what your thought process around and has been around bringing the customer into these very complex, very large scale organizations?

Tanya Earles:

Yeah. So I call it ivory tower syndrome is a thing. Have you ever heard of that? Yes. Ivory tower syndrome? Yeah. That’s a thing. That’s when you get so big that all your c suite and all your corporate executives get so far removed from the customer we call ivory tower syndrome. Right? So, like, you’re making decisions because you’re sitting in your ivory tower. Right? And you’re not so connected.

Tanya Earles:

So it is a thing at some companies. And I think even, Chrissy, you posted, what was it, like, a week ago or something? You posted something like, if you’re not talking to your customers, you’re doing it wrong.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Yeah. Because I talk to leaders all the time when they’re like I’m like, how often do you speak to your customers? And they’re like, oh, you know, maybe a couple meetings a week, and I’m like, that aren’t escalations. And then all of a sudden, that number drops like Yep.

Tanya Earles:

A 100%. Well, and the hard part too and I will say this, like, the higher up you go like, the hard part is, depending on how solid your product is, right, and your processes and your platform, how much of your time is being spent Talking on escalations and not actually on customer advisory boards and product advisory boards. Right? So anyways, to get back to answer your question, I think there’s a couple things. 1, customer advisory boards. They should be on there. 2, like, for me, Every customer that onboarded, I would send a welcome letter personally from me, and they had direct access to me so they could reach out to me. And then I would try to reach out to them post onboarding, saying, hey, I would love to hear about your experience. You know, would you mind setting up some time with me? Some some would bite, some wouldn’t.

Tanya Earles:

Right?

Josh Schachter:

Just to just to clarify, you you you you program sequences that sent out letters to customers.

Tanya Earles:

Yep. Well, we Okay. So we would we so at at Tera, we would launch anywhere around 350 customers a month. And so as they launched or as they graduated, that letter would gap. It would go out. Yep. And not every customer, Obviously. Like, we had a high open rates, but not every customer would reach out and say, hey, yeah, let’s have a talk.

Tanya Earles:

And then The the second one is your strat accounts. Right? Your enterprise accounts you need to have a relationship with, you should be talking with with all of them, especially. So I think those are Those are probably the fundamental just for, like, me as a leader, but my favorite, my ultimate favorite, is getting some sort of In app. I don’t care if it’s, like an NPS tool or a thumbs up, thumbs down. I don’t care how you measure it, We need to figure out if your customers love or hate a certain part of your workflow or certain parts of your product. And if it is SaaS, right, like we put ours in app, We got over, I think, in the 1st month and a half, 15 15,000 responses.

Josh Schachter:

What’d you guys use?

Jon Johnson:

Do you

Josh Schachter:

know do you know a tool you use for that?

Tanya Earles:

Yeah. We use InMoment.

Jon Johnson:

It’s a good one.

Tanya Earles:

Mhmm. Yep. Question though. And it’s been great. You know what the best part about those tools are? It’s Then you’re not relying on customer success to deliver the messaging to the broader org. So what we did is we trained every department heads Product engineering. They all had to choose someone to be on our Tiger team, on our council, on our customer, internal council, and they had to get to know the data. And they had to use it to make their decisions.

Tanya Earles:

It wasn’t like, oh, let me get with customer success and see what they say that we need to do about our product or why customer’s streaming.

Josh Schachter:

So what were the data points? So you had you had it you had in app in app surveying, and I assume it was it an NPS, or was it, like, a thumbs up, thumbs down? No.

Tanya Earles:

It was just The 1 question, MPS, and we would, put some rules around it. Right? Based on, like, if they just responded, then they couldn’t respond from the their 90 days, whatever. Sure. It might be

Josh Schachter:

What other data points were there?

Tanya Earles:

Surveying them. That was it. It was do you would you recommend us? Yes or no. And what we did is we would put it under certain parts certain sections of the workflow. So clinical had theirs, billing had theirs, And then depending on what they responded, there was always, like, a follow-up question, where then we would reach out and say, hey, are you are you open to hearing about more?

Josh Schachter:

And that was I mean, this this this really interests interests me because I think, like, cross functional alignment, that CS really of the voice of the customer CS should be at the heart of center of and a lot of times in organization, it gets it gets lost, so I love the fact that you’re putting together a tiger team. So you guys would commune sorry. Did you say monthly to look at the data?

Tanya Earles:

Yeah. They would commit they would meet monthly.

Josh Schachter:

Mhmm. Okay. Oh, they? Oh, you’re not on this tiger team?

Tanya Earles:

So no. I was on the tiger team on the senior council, but there is a That we call l twos. Right? So once you’re a 1000 people,

Josh Schachter:

then also leveled Tiger teams.

Tanya Earles:

Yes. We had levels of

Josh Schachter:

Oh, you were really in a ivory tower. Okay. Wait, like, literally. Your your office was made out of ivory. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. This is legit.

Josh Schachter:

Like long acting. Yeah. Old school healthcare ivory tower stuff. Okay. I got it.

Tanya Earles:

Well, listen, when you got a 150,000 customers, you gotta be on it. Right?

Jon Johnson:

We do.

Tanya Earles:

So that team, the The l two teams, so it was VPs, at the VP level. They would be in it creating it, and then they would have to come to our executive teams and we would all, go through the data, talk about the data, what should be on the road map, what shouldn’t be, why are

Josh Schachter:

customers entirely based on that data point of the survey information at different parts of the product in 3 different segments. What what other types of inputs were there?

Tanya Earles:

Yeah. So there was customer satisfaction scores. Right. So CSAT, your typical, like, at the end of every interaction with whichever. There was also product usage And adoption. There, we were starting to integrate some full story stuff, and then we had also launched, the provider health scorecard Through Gainsight. So it wasn’t adoption. It was outcomes based, which is where I’m a really big believer.

Tanya Earles:

I know you guys are too. Which is is the customer actually seeing the outcomes that they expect? And then it also had, like, your your typical, like, tickets, how many calls, stuff like that. So all of that would be aggregated, into, like, a readout to say which of our customers are loving us, hating us, which part. Like, There were some there was a lot of really great data that came out on our clinical workflows that we ended up changing, switching a partner vendor. So Yeah.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Tanya, I gotta ask so we get asked this all the time.

Josh Schachter:

John started talking first, but just because you talked louder, you get to

Kristi Faltorusso:

go. I literally did it. I was my was moving first. You know, there’s a delay. I was going first. I waited for her to put your sentence.

Jon Johnson:

I Josh. I hand you the speaking stick.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Thank you. John, congratulations back. You both asked a question, and I didn’t ask a question yet, and I have a very important question. And now, Josh, you’re gonna make me forget it. Anyway, Tanya, I love I love the formula like approach you’re taking here. When you’re capturing customer goals and outcomes for the the volume of customers that you are, How are you doing that? How are you ensuring that they are good, that they are measurable, that they are SMART goals? How are you keeping track of them as they change? Like, Who is responsible for owning that and validating if that’s correct? So much so that you feel confident in putting that into a scored mechanism that you’re using to drive the business.

Tanya Earles:

Yeah. That’s a good question, Christina. In fact, I would say it’s forever evolving. Right? Like, so you you think you do you create on what you think is best. You get your customer advisory board To to give you input. Right? Like, one of the biggest, I think, that was most challenging for us was your leading indicators for churn. Right? There’s so there sure. Okay.

Tanya Earles:

You you have this many tickets. You created this many, you know, negative MPS. So we’re assuming you’re probably gonna churn, but you’d find sometimes those customers would never churn. So I would say this. Number 1, it’s ever evolving. 2, I think as you scale so on my on my team, one of my leaders was our VP of ops and strategy and technology enablement. So she would oversee all of the technology enablement whether it was the IVR, the Salesforce, or Gainsight. Right? And so part of her role was to organize and create all that with product and, right, with all of the different functional leaders.

Tanya Earles:

And especially with your CSM, right, your client leadership. Right? They need to be at the table with that product, and I think your your CSMs are the most important. And then to answer your question, Chrissy, it’s ever evolving. You gotta keep looking at the data. Is it true? Is it not true? Are those customers that you think are gonna churn, are they churning? Are they not churning? Oh, by the way, the ones that were really happy, they’re not churning now because we turned it around because we created a 360 loop. Right? Where if they gave us a thumbs down, we called them immediately. We fixed Now we’re noticing that they’re not churning. So I would just tell you there I don’t know that there is ever an end game, but What I would say, like, in our world, for example, like, one of the cleanest that’s easiest to explain is, So you’re a doctor, and you’re going to submit, let’s just say $100,000 in claims to a payer.

Tanya Earles:

Well, how much of that gets denied on the 1st pass? That is a customer outcome. Right? You’re using my product, so adoption doesn’t matter. You have to use my product to submit the claim. So, right, adoption, but how well are you doing it? How much of that money, which is revenue in your pocket, are you actually getting back? That is the difference. And then that’s where the CSMs need to lean in and start saying, okay, did you get a new biller? Do you have somebody new in the system that we need to train that should go through Teberry University? Stuff like that. So some are easier. Right? Like, 1 and done, we know they’re the right things, and then others, they’re just continuously evolving.

Kristi Faltorusso:

It’s so nice to have, like, data that you can measure To say like, and to go back to your customer and quantify the value. I like Right. I’m envious of the companies that can easily do that. So I miss marketing Where I’m like, no. Look. We did this thing, and it did that thing, and it did that thing, and then, look, all the monies.

Tanya Earles:

Right?

Kristi Faltorusso:

Missed that.

Tanya Earles:

Yeah. Well and even then, things change. By the time you create that shit, sometimes it’s already antiquated and somebody else might be

Kristi Faltorusso:

I know. But I wanna

Josh Schachter:

get Sorry. We can’t swear on this podcast.

Kristi Faltorusso:

I wanna Stop it, Josh.

Josh Schachter:

Josh.

Kristi Faltorusso:

I wanna he’s such a liar. Tanya, please do not listen to him. But, like, even creating it until it gets stale, I don’t even care. I just wanna be able to have it. So the fact that you can do it, I think, is awesome. John, I think that you’re on the edge of your seat waiting to ask a really thoughtful question. So

Jon Johnson:

So I will say that I’m still living in the moment, after breath work today, so I’m very relaxed and calm. Thank you, Josh. I’m leaning back comfortably in my seat waiting patiently. But one of the things that I wanted to ask,

Josh Schachter:

you guys are I I think John John, sorry. Time out. You need to that that that like, we need some context for that. This is also an advertisement, but but tell them about the breath work.

Tanya Earles:

Meditation or something exercises you learned. Okay.

Jon Johnson:

Monday for the next 6 weeks, I believe. 6, Josh. We did 2. No.

Josh Schachter:

No. Indefinite.

Jon Johnson:

Indefinite. Okay.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Also, why are you guys doing this without me? Why wasn’t I invited?

Jon Johnson:

You are.

Josh Schachter:

Because my emails go to your spam.

Jon Johnson:

Yeah. That’s right. Okay. Can I please explain what this is, Christie? We have 25 minutes left. Oh, gosh. So Josh, has launched this initiative, addressing a lot of stuff. Right? So we live in a world that’s overworked. We live in an industry that is just fucking crazy Right now.

Jon Johnson:

Right? And, I think all of us are juggling a ton of different things. So Josh, through a partnership with an incredible woman, Solki, Runs, a 30 minute breath work session every Monday. It’s virtual. I actually did it with my, 18 year old son this afternoon. It was really fun. He fell asleep, during, but I did not. I

Tanya Earles:

That’s awesome.

Jon Johnson:

But I’ve enjoyed it. It’s been it’s actually something that my therapist and my doctors have been like, you Do this thing. Right? So, you know, kudos to Josh. But every Monday, 2:30 EST, there’s a link. Yeah. You know, we’ll post it in the show show notes. But it’s been It’s been so much fun. And, you know, there’s probably 10 or 15 folks who join us every week, and we just kinda zen out for a little bit.

Jon Johnson:

And it’s it’s pretty great, just to kinda block the brain off. Anyways and, spiel spiel there. The question that I have for you, we’ve talked a lot of, like, early stage folks. We’ve talked a lot of people that are coming in, not with a 150,000 customers or, you know, 500 people underneath them. Right? So you live in a world we talked about the ivory tower a little bit, but you live in a a little bit of a bigger world. See things a little bit farther than, early stage founder like Josh. Where do you see customer success Going. Like, what what is the maturity that you’re seeing? How is the landscape shifting? Give give me kind of, like, your perspective.

Jon Johnson:

You’re looking into a new role too. Right? So I I do wanna hear some about the successes that you’ve had in the past. But as you’re looking forward, where do you see what you know and and what you need to learn?

Tanya Earles:

Well, I think you guys are gonna find there’s a lot of this debate on LinkedIn that I’m gonna talk about. And I bet you all have an opinion, and I would

Jon Johnson:

love to hear started because of shitty takes on LinkedIn. So

Tanya Earles:

Okay. Well, good. I bet I would love to hear your opinion on this. But Yeah. So a couple things. So part of the restructuring of me moving out is We’re moving customer success under our CRO. Mhmm. I think a lot of companies are doing that.

Tanya Earles:

Yep. But I have a take on that. I posted I don’t know. I I there’s this belief out there, and I don’t know where it comes from, that if you do customer success, you can’t do new logo sales, but new logo sales can do customer success. So I think that’s a debate.

Jon Johnson:

Yeah.

Tanya Earles:

And I think that’s bullshit. Because I think once like, the new logo sale, first off, your leads are getting qualified. Sometimes 2 or 3 times before you even get it. You have a demo. They’re already shopping. Right? Think of tires. They’re already shopping for tires, so they’re in the market. Not always.

Tanya Earles:

Right? Like, AI and stuff like that’s a little different. But in our world, and so I actually think there’s a couple of things I will answer to that. I think companies are doing 1 of 2 things. They are shifting customer success under under revenue, And that concerns me a little bit because then I think and and I’ve seen it happen. Your customer success team’s now become just based monetization.

Jon Johnson:

Yep.

Tanya Earles:

And they’re cold calling, right, customers instead of driving growth and expansion through relationships. I’ve seen it happen in other companies. And so for me, personally, that’s not my preferred model.

Josh Schachter:

What what what what is, like when you say you’ve seen it happen, like, what’s the first signal that it’s happening? Like, how does that manifest itself?

Tanya Earles:

Yeah. That’s a good question. So your what used to be your your CSMs that have a portfolio book of business, right, and I’m supposed to build relationships. I keep up to date on you, I care about your success. Maybe I’m just checking in. It depends. Right? Are you 700 customers to 1, or are you 30 to 1? Right? So I think depending on the size of your company, it’s different. But to me, how I’ve seen it manifest is now I no longer care about the relationship.

Tanya Earles:

Here’s a call list. And you’re gonna call our current base, And you’re just going to try to sell some sort of expansion bolt on or add on offer, and the relationship is kind of out the door. Or, and then your your older if there’s still a CSM present, they now become support Yep. Because you’ve created a base sales team. Right? And so that’s why I’ve seen it manifest itself, personally, and I like, that’s not the way I would do it if I was CEO for a day, but, Yeah. Yeah. That’s the same.

Jon Johnson:

So I agree with you. I do. I think your take is is is valid. And I remember I think we were all, Except for Josh, a part of Orgs when CS used to always report to CRO. We were revenue we’re part of the revenue team, right, when I first started. We didn’t have CCOs. We didn’t have we barely had a VP of CS. Right? It was just like whatever.

Jon Johnson:

And I and I actually really celebrated when we moved CS under product And then moved to CS under CC or, you know, whatever we’re calling it these days.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Yeah.

Jon Johnson:

And I really love the product, but the thing that I noticed, And and I’ve used this analogy before as it really felt like we went, you know, from offense to defense, where as soon as you take your eyes off the revenue that CSMs are driving. You start questioning the value of CSMs. And this is something that I’ve been very vocal on about is that I think that the industry is devaluing CS Not on purpose. I think customer led growth is huge. I think product led growth makes a lot of sense. You know, what the catalyst and the Pendos are doing, with these terms. But I think, like, the heart of everything is we’ve really taken our eye off the fact that if we’re not proving that The the things that we’re doing every single day equal bottom line revenue, either retention or growth, and we’re not rep we’re not responsible for that dollar, Then you will forget and leadership will forget that you are important to retain that dollar. And we’ve seen it the last 2 years where CS teams are getting slaughtered, And then NRR and GRR goes down substantially.

Jon Johnson:

And I I think Mark from Catalyst talked about this where it’s like post sales life is a different animal, and revenue folks can’t act the same way as they do in presales. But they act they absolutely need the intelligence of moving stages of of driving the ball forward. And it’s not just We go from pushing revenue through the sales process to pulling customers after close to renewal. And it’s like, we’ve gotta flip that coin around where we are constantly driving and pushing people to outcomes and revenues and then dequeuing folks that don’t fit And just moving forward. Like, it’s gotta be that. And we just we’re just kinda sitting there holding the plates, and we don’t know how to spin them.

Tanya Earles:

Yep. Yeah. I think that’s a good I think that’s a great analogy. And I think

Kristi Faltorusso:

I will say documents. Can I can I wanna take a different side because listen?

Jon Johnson:

Let the CCOs

Kristi Faltorusso:

I don’t no. No. No. Listen. I don’t I I didn’t love my time under a CRO. That was not my favorite time in my career. But I had a CRO who knew he knew nothing about post sales, and he understood revenue, let me do my job, and leaned in strategically To help me just drive the revenue the way I recommended we approach it. Right? So he helped me with my sales skill development So that I can execute, I can I can have the right business acumen, I can I can manage the numbers effectively, but he knew that he didn’t know How to run the motions? Right? Just like I wouldn’t know if you put me in a sales seat.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Like, could I go sell client success? Sure. But would I would I follow Their strategy to a t? No. I’d probably go running havoc. Right? I’d do it the way that I want to, the way I think I should. Well, we both both sides of that process have a process. Right? And so I do think there are some CROs out there, and maybe it depends on the stage of the company or the leader, that know that they don’t know Anything about this and will empower the right person to go do the right work. So I do think there that that will happen in some situations. But like I said, I’ve also seen, Tanya, what you’re describing, right, which is like, you know nothing about what’s gonna happen.

Kristi Faltorusso:

You’re gonna go force this commercial motion, And that is why I left another company was I did report to our president who ran all of revenue. And in that organization, they wanted me to just be a salesperson. I was like, well, we are Morally and philosophically misaligned here, so I’m gonna go, but good luck with that, and peace be with you. And I left because I’m like, that’s not how you go and do this. Right. I I can tell you for a fact that’s not gonna work, but I don’t wanna be a part of that burning on the house. John, to your point, though, I think what’s happening is that GRR, NRR, all those things are lagging indicators. Right? So because we are so far removed and if you’re in an organization where you’re selling multiyear deals Mhmm.

Kristi Faltorusso:

It’s so hard. Right? Like, because you’re you don’t have a direct correlation to any short sight of revenue. If you’ve got deals that are 3, 4, 5 years long And you’re a CSM today, and you’re like, well, no. I promise the work I’m doing in 5 years

Jon Johnson:

from now. CSM will

Kristi Faltorusso:

never see that work.

Jon Johnson:

Feel it.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Right. Right. So I think that organizations like, it’s difficult. Right? When you can there’s this this need for immediacy, especially in this economy right now where it’s like everything is just hurting, that people need to see and feel an impact. And when you’re telling people to wait, right, the work that we do, we know. If I if I start working on an account right now that’s on at risk, It’ll be 6 months before I maybe see the 1st out labor. Maybe.

Jon Johnson:

Yeah.

Kristi Faltorusso:

And it may not even manifest in revenue growth. It might manifest in, like, a logo staying. Right. But even with down sell and contraction. So it’s like there there’s a whole bunch of things you have to consider and outweigh, but I think it’s the organization’s Understanding of what we do and how we do it.

Jon Johnson:

One one thing that I and I this act I this is the question, and it’s gonna like I said, it’s gonna take a minute. I’ll get there. I promise. But what I’ve seen with CSMs is that we are the we are in the spotlight. We are the main characters of our own stories. Right? And we are Celebrating and telling the customer success stories and meetings, and we are the individual contributor who’s, like, championing. Right? And I think I’m I’m still processing this a little bit, so some grace when I when I walk through this and and the question. I don’t most CSMs don’t go through more than 1 or 2 renewal cycles with their book before they get promoted, before they get, into leadership, before they leave their company.

Jon Johnson:

I I actually think that we have shot ourselves in the foot because we have not built sustainability into our motions. And I know that’s one Christy’s favorite words, sustainable revenue. But this is something that I’m trying to unpack where how do we ensure the success of the company and the customer, separated from the individual that is assigned to it as a CSM. And what does that hand off and pick up and drop and All of that stuff that happens when people move on or people leave or they change segments or they change regions and you have a new salesperson. I mean, it happens so often. There actually is no stability. Let me back that up. We demand stability and revenue from our customers, but very rarely on in the enterprise do we, as a company, provide stability for our customers.

Jon Johnson:

That’s what I’m seeing unpacked.

Tanya Earles:

Which could almost be an argument against what you and I were saying Earlier, which is right? Almost saying that, like, hey. You’re not even gonna be around in 2 years if humans are Attached to relationships, and there is loyalty in relationships. Right? But we’re not sticking around long enough to even see it, then Are we should we just be base sales?

Jon Johnson:

Yeah. I I mean, I completely agree with you. I think but the I do think that there’s proven Revenue retention when relationships are in place. What I don’t think that we’ve really nailed is we always talk about the handoff from sales. We always bitch when we about sales leaders doing things that we don’t like, but very rarely do these podcasts talk about Intra handoff between CS teams or segments depending on how our leadership is segmenting our customers. We’re we’re going through a bunch of stuff. And I know you went through an acquisition, you went through a merger, you went to all of these things, and you went through chaos. Right? So One of the things that that we, you know, we talked about in our prep, let me pull up my notes, is that you like, you had You had chaos in your hands.

Jon Johnson:

Right? But you had to make an impact. You were the leader and you had these big teams. How do you view making an impact when you’re an individual person Kinda steering a pretty big ship that is also on fire and maybe sinking at the same time in one Aspect or another. Right?

Tanya Earles:

Yeah. No. That’s a good question. It’s about

Jon Johnson:

have an example of, Like, maybe the 1st time you realized that you had the ability to make these impacts.

Tanya Earles:

Yes. I think as soon as the merger happened, right, I had the leaders of both sides Together for an off-site. Like, you have to start integrating the teams right away, learning about what each company offers, what What the products are from each of the different companies, how they complement each other. Right? Help instill the vision of why, in this case, we brought 2 companies together. Right? And what we thought the future success is and to kinda get buy in and then talk about what’s the chaos for the employees? How are they feeling? Are they feeling unstable? Like, how do we, now as a leadership team, take the next, you know, 6, 9, 12 months and figure out How to make them feel stable, comfortable, but knowing never at least never in my history, And I’ve been through many mergers and acquisitions. There’s always synergies, right, that are created, and there’s technology that’s cut. There’s headcount that is lost. That’s just the that just happens.

Tanya Earles:

Right? It’s par for the horse with it. So how do you do all that without making sure to promise to somebody that They’re gonna have a job, because you can’t really fundamentally do that. Right? But yeah. I mean, it’s just how do you organize chaos? And for me, it was getting my group of leaders together, and we gotta figure that out, and we gotta steer the ship in the right direction the best we can.

Josh Schachter:

Tanya, can you tell us a little bit about post merger? I I know there’s a story behind how you were steering the ship for your onboarding experience.

Kristi Faltorusso:

That Yeah.

Josh Schachter:

In particular was fragmented. Tell us a little bit about what you did to bring the the group and the experience together.

Tanya Earles:

Yeah. I am I have this I have a common thread, and I always say siloed functions create a fragmented experience. I’m sure you all would agree. Writing that down. Completely agree. Right? And it still amazes me to this day how many functions don’t talk to each other. And, like, how many products go live without even someone from customer success’s eyes on it to say, hey, from a customer’s view, they’re gonna hate this. Let me tell you why.

Tanya Earles:

Right? And so, like, there’s still so much work to be done there, but, I’m a big believer of journey mapping. And so we, locked ourselves in a room. We did a journey map of what the current process was, and the amount of pain points And friction points and handoffs was ridiculous. And so then we recreated it, and we got rid of a good portion of that. And at the time, it was taking our customers I mean, we had a backlog. I mean, 100, I’m gonna say. At that time, they were on average launching within 75 to 100 days, and we got most of them to launch in under 30 days. And the customers that couldn’t launch in under 30 days was by customer choice.

Tanya Earles:

Right? Either they were a large customer and they had, you know, 90 providers Or, I mean, they they just were an enterprise customer award. They just had very specific things that they wanted done a little bit unique and different. But in general, for the both both, we’ve got them. So my my motto there, Josh, is always start with the customer journey. Every company I join, I do an enterprise customer journey framework, and then I start doing the functional one, and you can quickly see and tell where the Where the break points are and the friction points that we’re causing not only on our employees, but on our customers. Right? And so I I feel like anybody, if I could, like if there was any and I don’t know, Christy, what you think about this, but if there’s anything I would ever share to people, it’s Do a journey map. Look at how you’re currently doing and and the friction points. You’d be amazed at what you could find.

Josh Schachter:

What what were some of the things that you changed?

Tanya Earles:

A perfect example would be this, like, the biggest moment. So we were building websites, right, for providers, and it was to drive Practice growth. It was like a digital marketing extension. Well, the CSM was collecting the requirements from the customer versus the web designer.

Jon Johnson:

Mhmm.

Tanya Earles:

Who would be best to gather those requirements? Ask

Jon Johnson:

Probably not the guy who doesn’t speak the language of the web designer.

Tanya Earles:

Right. And then, so what was happening is the c m’s the CSM is filling this out and they’re sending it to the website designer and they’re going back and forth and the CSM stomping telephone Calling the cut what a horrible customer experience. Right? So finally, we had to say no. We’re gonna you’re gonna have a kickoff call. And on that kickoff Kickoff call, you’re gonna have 5 people present. 1 of them is gonna be a web designer. We’re gonna gather your web requirements, and that’s your time to ask questions. And, So it’s just simple stuff like that that we that you’re like, why would the web designer not be on the call with the customer to start with? And then, of course, you have web designers who are very much like, well, going back Office.

Tanya Earles:

I don’t talk to customers. Well, now that’s a different company culture problem. Right? So now it’s like, well, you know, we’re in the business for customers and, You know, so anyways, I won’t go too too too far into details on that. You ask me that in, like, 3 months. We can take a podcast on that.

Jon Johnson:

Alright. I wanna

Josh Schachter:

Are Are you inviting yourself back to our podcast?

Tanya Earles:

Part 2. As a big exhale.

Josh Schachter:

That’s presumptuous. Yeah. Yeah.

Jon Johnson:

Alright. 1 Josh, you have

Kristi Faltorusso:

a really, really fantastic way of making people feel special.

Josh Schachter:

Yeah. I have a way. I know. I have a way.

Kristi Faltorusso:

You do have a way. We’ll just leave it at that. Yeah.

Jon Johnson:

Go away. Alright. So

Kristi Faltorusso:

you’re Natasha’s way.

Jon Johnson:

You’re closing down this role, and you’re looking at your new role, which is super exciting. I’m thrilled for you.

Tanya Earles:

Which is completely different. Like, I might be

Kristi Faltorusso:

Is it a small company? Tonya, can I ask? Because, like, I’m looking at your okay. So my thing for you is as I’m looking at your career trajectory, which is super impressive, by the way, like, honestly, like, I’d love to just shadow you for a day and just understand what you navigated because it’s so different than my own experience. Right? Like, I’ve done, you know, smaller scaled companies from as small as where I am now, client success, like, a 100,000,000, but, like, Only up to, like, 400 people in a in a company, right, in customer success. So watching your journey, so different. I was gonna ask you, Did you like, if you had a choice now, would you pivot to go try something new and go to a smaller organization where you’re building out something at a different scale? So is that what you’re gonna do without telling us the company?

Tanya Earles:

Yeah. I’m being very specific. So the 2 companies that I’m currently and I should hopefully Figure it out by the end of this week or next week. Our smaller scale, are looking to make an exit, which is what I want. And then, I would say, I’ll probably Chrissy, one company would be under 30 people, and the other one would be under 50. So for me, I get to I’m actually really excited because in either, I will be able to build it from scratch And kind of be more that builder versus coming in, inheriting, and having to transform, which is more of if you saw my background, my background Yes. Larger companies already at scale doing transformation, and now I get to build, and I wanna do exits.

Jon Johnson:

I love that.

Tanya Earles:

So that’s exactly specifically what I’m going after.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Well, I think we need to revisit this in, like,

Tanya Earles:

a year because I wanna hear

Kristi Faltorusso:

your perspective on, like, how this journey compares to the previous one you want. It is the devil you know versus the devil you don’t, and I know that this Work won’t be easier. It’ll just be different.

Tanya Earles:

Yeah.

Kristi Faltorusso:

But I’m getting a vibe from you that tells me that you’ll really love this work. Like, you probably like the work that you’re doing now, but I think that you might actually really love this work. There is something about building that is really special and unique. I never worked for a company as small as I am right now, and it is it’s so different, and every day is a a beautiful nightmare. But But it’s special work. Right? Because you get to build it, and it’s your thing. It’s your creation based off of your experience and knowledge.

Tanya Earles:

Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I’m excited.

Josh Schachter:

Christy wants to be friends. I think, I think you guys should

Kristi Faltorusso:

have a good

Tanya Earles:

time to be away.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Because I’m nice to them, Josh.

Tanya Earles:

Okay. You can be friends

Kristi Faltorusso:

with our guests too.

Jon Johnson:

And then we’ll let you go

Josh Schachter:

If I were to

Jon Johnson:

ask that is this podcast. I’m just gonna talk over them because I wanna ask this question. Yes. If you could give advice to your entry level self, if you could go back in time and say, oh my god, you need to know this, What would you say?

Tanya Earles:

Oh. It’s not about you.

Josh Schachter:

Oh.

Tanya Earles:

So I

Jon Johnson:

I’m snapping. Entry level, people

Tanya Earles:

make a mistake by thinking it’s actually about them. And I like, 9 times out of 10 when I’m coaching people or mentoring people, the ones who don’t make it about them and they’re more the servant And they’re about others and genuinely care about other people’s success, they reap the rewards of the karma and the success. It comes to them naturally. Right? And so don’t make it about you. Just come in to, like, Christie’s point about being a hard worker. I listened to your podcast, by the way, Christie, earlier, the one that you guys just did on Friday. But, like,

Josh Schachter:

our our

Kristi Faltorusso:

speed dating It it went fast. It went fast. I had 30 minutes, so Josh just, like, bulldozed the conversation.

Tanya Earles:

You covered a lot, and I had no idea that you’re a baby model, but I love that. And, I think I saw the posting, and I thought it was

Jon Johnson:

worth it. Around LinkedIn today, just so You know? Yeah.

Tanya Earles:

It is. It’s going viral. It’s, like, on viral. It’s or it’s on viral. That’s a meme word. It’s going viral.

Josh Schachter:

Mission accomplished.

Tanya Earles:

But, yeah, don’t make it about you. So 2 things. To Chrissy’s point on hers, hard work gets you noticed, but that’s not what gets you promoted. What gets you promoted is, making it genuinely about others in in my heart and having an advocacy above you, like an advocate about you.

Jon Johnson:

That’s so good. That’s a great, great way to end. Thank you so much, Tanya. Josh, do you have any kinda follow final final thoughts?

Josh Schachter:

No. I I I wanted to because we were talking earlier off the recording, and you had said that you need an advocate also to support you through your professional growth. So I wanna give you the opportunity maybe to recognize Anybody who’s been in your corner throughout your journey.

Tanya Earles:

Me? Yeah. Oh, yeah. I got so many. But I would tell you a couple names that would come to heart would Kristen Simmons. She was my CMO at, Experian. She was amazing, still is. She has Just changed my life in a paradigm shift completely. There’s also Janet Clardy who was a HR SVP at one point when I couldn’t.

Tanya Earles:

I didn’t understand why I wasn’t getting a VP title. Like, I was frustrated. I was doing the work. I was showing up. Like, I just don’t understand why I’m not getting promoted. Like, my numbers are good. Like, the Results are there, and she did a great job of, it ain’t about you. And a really good wake up call for me to, like, How I was looking at things.

Tanya Earles:

Those are probably be the 2 most pivotal, but I have I have so many mentors, like, along the way. But those would probably be the 2 that were character changing for me.

Josh Schachter:

Love it. Well, Tanya, thank you so much. Your Growth has been an inspiration to so many, and, I really can’t wait to hear about your next part of your Adventure, the Next Chapter. I would love to invite you on to this episode again to the show again in all the data. Yes. Yes. You’re welcome back.

Tanya Earles:

All the data. No. I was gonna say, no, I’d be honored especially since Christy invited me back officially.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Yeah. See, we don’t even want your pity invite, Josh, because me and Tanya have a Spinoff show that we’ve already coordinated behind the scenes right now, and it’s called Sassy Ladies, and we’re gonna go do some fun stuff.

Josh Schachter:

You you didn’t just come up with that on the fly, did you?

Kristi Faltorusso:

I actually have a podcast that I’m working on, hence my text to you earlier today.

Tanya Earles:

So So

Josh Schachter:

I didn’t I don’t I didn’t read it.

Tanya Earles:

Didn’t I

Kristi Faltorusso:

ask for very specific females in roles?

Josh Schachter:

Oh, I thought you were just trying to hire.

Jon Johnson:

That’s what that was. That actually I have some ideas now.

Kristi Faltorusso:

I am looking for I’m looking for a a female sales leader, a female marketing leader, and a female product leader. VP or above, Good personalities, smart, and opinionated. If you know anybody or anybody who’s listening to this episode and can drop me a couple, I’m working on a project that I’d love to partner with some fantastic women doing some cool stuff.

Josh Schachter:

Alright. Christy, this is a good time to remind you that you have a noncompete with this podcast.

Kristi Faltorusso:

It’s not gonna be like this At all.

Tanya Earles:

This will obviously be where my heart is. It’s so fun. Josh, at any time, you can put on a a wig and dress up and and partake. Okay. It’s

Josh Schachter:

Thank you. Thank you.

Kristi Faltorusso:

I’ll take the week. Bossy CEO barking at me all day. We’re all good. Thank you.

Josh Schachter:

Thanks, Tanya. Thank you, guys.