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Mickey Powell:

Cheers not a sport. Cheers not a sport.

Jon Johnson:

Hey. Listen. You’re talking to 2 cheerleaders here. Varsity letter.

Kristi Faltorusso:

I got a varsity letter for cheering. Okay?

Kristi Faltorusso:

I got a varsity letter in golf, And I

Jon Johnson:

don’t That’s not a real sport.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Yeah. Cheering

Kristi Faltorusso:

is more of a sport

Mickey Powell:

than golf.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Do we have any bowlers? Do we have any bowlers?

Jon Johnson:

No. Christy, did you miss That I also have a varsity letter in Cheery?

Kristi Faltorusso:

No. Sorry. I was really gonna allow you to explain that to me. So were you a cheerleader?

Jon Johnson:

I was a cheerleader. You were.

Mickey Powell:

Hey, guys. Welcome to the podcast.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Wait. No. No. No. Really. Stop for a second. Were you a cheerleader?

Jon Johnson:

I was. Intense free.

Kristi Faltorusso:

I’m gonna need receipts. So if you could just send me some photos

Jon Johnson:

letter on

Kristi Faltorusso:

my my jacket.

Mickey Powell:

The only reason.

Kristi Faltorusso:

I thought I couldn’t love you more.

Jon Johnson:

Yeah. My mom

[unidentified speaker]:

And I can. Story. My mom was a coach.

Jon Johnson:

Oh. And my sister was the head cheerleader Oh, to a very small private school. Uh-huh. And I had did a year, believe it or not, as the mascot. I don’t think that’s a hard stretch.

Kristi Faltorusso:

No. The mascot, I can definitely that’s a vibe for you. I’m into it. Okay.

Kristi Faltorusso:

get a letter as a mascot?

Jon Johnson:

What was that?

Kristi Faltorusso:

Can you get a letter as a

Kristi Faltorusso:

Did you get a varsity letter as a mascot?

Jon Johnson:

I I didn’t. No.

Kristi Faltorusso:

I don’t think people do. I no. No. You shouldn’t. It’s not no. You’re just like

Kristi Faltorusso:

just takes nothing. Not I’m not Of this, like, everyone gets a trophy. I’m not I’m not for that. So, like, sorry. Burn’s not giving. To, like,

Kristi Faltorusso:

the great mascots will be, like, the great villain. Right? Like, everyone just beat on them. No. Maybe. Like, show

[unidentified speaker]:

them or just

Kristi Faltorusso:

push them. Like, they’re

Kristi Faltorusso:

the ones that we can get it Let’s just give it a it’s a depends. Where’s my it’s depends hat? Anyway with

Jon Johnson:

your hat. Alright. But so Jamon

Kristi Faltorusso:

Let’s go.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Came to

Jon Johnson:

me 1 summer and was, like, John, or he they called me JJ. I was JJ in high school this year, though. John Johnson. Okay. And they’re like, hey. We got the this cheer camp coming up, and we wanna do these new stunts that makes the girls fly in the air, and we need some dudes. And I was like, I’m never gonna And my mom said the magic words, a 1,000 cheerleaders in in the same place, and I said, mother, you know me well.

Mickey Powell:

Why why was that the magic words, John?

Jon Johnson:

Because I really liked cheerleaders at the time. And I had a crush on, Caitlin Jarvis. Shout out to Kate. Still friends.

Mickey Powell:

I’m assuming she know. I I was like,

[unidentified speaker]:

I’m assuming she knows. It

Kristi Faltorusso:

was a stranger from high school who’s just No. Not a stranger.

Mickey Powell:

Yeah.

Jon Johnson:

Very, very, very,

Mickey Powell:

shout out. Well, she walked into your house last week.

Jon Johnson:

Hey, I took her to homecoming my senior year, so life goes life goes on. Right? But no. So it was literally, like, come hang out with us for a week at this cheer camp with a 1,000 cheerleaders, and there’s, like, 5 dudes. And it was, the most effort and work that I ever put into, anything. Anything. Any type

[unidentified speaker]:

of attention from the ladies.

Jon Johnson:

More than learning an instrument, more than touring, everything combined. It was, I mean, I have so much respect for the work that goes into like, people that actually cheer. Like, I mean, like, like, legit. We did some really rad stunts. I dropped a few girls on their heads. Like, it was a great all around experience for me. Yeah. And, you know, I got a lot of hate.

Jon Johnson:

I went to a very small private Christian School, and they gave they called me all of the names, and they made fun of me relentlessly. And every single time That we left the game, and then the boys got in the school bus, and I got in the the very nice stand with all the cheerleader girls. I just laughed A little bit. You know, I just was like, you guys are making fun of me, calling me all these names, and I’m hanging out with girls. Like, what?

Kristi Faltorusso:

You’re like, you’re getting on a bus with dudes, and I’m going in this luxurious van with all these ladies. So see you later.

Jon Johnson:

And I’m just gonna be there hanging out all the time. It’s great. And I’m still great friends while I’m I’ll

Kristi Faltorusso:

let your girl know that you’re thinking

[unidentified speaker]:

of her.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Okay. Bye. Yay.

Jon Johnson:

Yeah. Totally. While I’m fixing her hair, you know, foot massage in the back of the van.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Because we’re rubbing each other’s shoulders. Yep.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Uh-huh. Yeah.

Jon Johnson:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Pillow fights, you know, the whole thing. It was great. Why are we here? Ladies and gentlemen, Josh, for a brief moment. For a brief moment, I forgot that we are recording a business podcast, and I started thinking about

Kristi Faltorusso:

Are we though?

Jon Johnson:

Caitlin Jarvis and Tiffany Davis and Chantal and All them. Guys, I’m John Johnson. Josh Schachter is not here today, and we miss him dearly. So I’ve taken the MC role. I’m principal customer success manager, user testing. I’m also Frog Voice, today. I had a weekend full of music and singing. So, Christy, please, next.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Well, I think you sound lovely, and I love your new haircut. You look fresh. Anyway, thrilled to be back here. Christie Feltorusso, chief customer officer at client success. Where do I usually go with this? I don’t wanna spend my time on that. So

Jon Johnson:

well done

Kristi Faltorusso:

on that. The past I know. I know. I know. I spent a long weekend. I spent the past 12 years in customer success building, scaling, and transforming customer success Teams and b to b hyper growth companies, I am thrilled to be here today. Thrilled to have our guest, Eric, but Mickey, I’ll pass it over to you.

Mickey Powell:

Hey. Mickey Powell here. I’m your representative from UpdateAI because Somebody’s gotta do it since we’re paying for it. So, but I have spent the last 10 years in customer success, and I will be Chief customer officer before long, but right now I’m head of go to market and I’m your local AI enthusiast. So when the AI overlords come, you can come to me and I will happily convince them not to take you to the human dungeons, whatever those things are.

Jon Johnson:

Whatever app whatever the AI decides.

Kristi Faltorusso:

I have a real visual now about what’s happening with AI, and it got dark.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Yeah. Yeah. By the way, did you guys read this New York Times article this weekend?

Jon Johnson:

I did.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Where there was, like, the the anecdote about how, Elon Musk got all freaked out because He didn’t think that the AI, robots would follow him to Mars. Yeah. And now he’s worried about this. It’s like an existential

Mickey Powell:

Yeah. But, like

Kristi Faltorusso:

I was I wish I was so brilliant that these were the things I was worried about. I’m like, how many presents do I have to wrap this weekend? I know. I don’t know. I’m worried about trying to, like, tie bows out of ribbon that doesn’t have wire in it. Like, I have very different priorities right now.

Mickey Powell:

Yeah. It’s a thin line between brilliance and insanity.

Jon Johnson:

Hey, guys.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Hey, guys. It could be a horseshoe to

Mickey Powell:

Yeah. Who’s this

Jon Johnson:

who’s this other guy talking?

Kristi Faltorusso:

Well, he was the one that started the shitty shitty chat chat, John. So before you yell at us.

[unidentified speaker]:

Alright. We have not

Jon Johnson:

I’m yelling at our our guest this time. Eric

[unidentified speaker]:

Kingsbury, the man, the myth, the legend,

Jon Johnson:

he has He has bona fides that go for miles on LinkedIn.

Kristi Faltorusso:

I have a famous derailer.

Jon Johnson:

So just be prepared Famously known. Yeah. That’s good.

Kristi Faltorusso:

My name yeah. My name’s Eric Kingsbury. I, currently run a consulting firm called Retain Solutions that’s focused on customer success enablement. I’ve been in customer success for 9 years. I’ve been in customer success enablement for seven and a half years, and what I currently do is I work with companies, anywhere from late series a to series d to help them build out Their customer success enablement programs and to properly scope their customer success roles so that folks actually have a job that they’re not only trained in, but that they can actually thrive and succeed in.

Mickey Powell:

Hold on. I believe in being Under prepared and super miserable at work. So why, Loaded this week. So why would it We can only get

Kristi Faltorusso:

demoted if you’re underprepared. See? So, Eric, I don’t know what you’re fix here. It seems like we’re all doing just fine. Yeah.

[unidentified speaker]:

We’re doing yeah.

Kristi Faltorusso:

We’re doing great.

Jon Johnson:

Isn’t it supposed to be chaos?

Kristi Faltorusso:

Oh, it’s it’s supposed to be total chaos all the time. You’re never supposed to know, what the role actually is or what your responsibilities are, and you should definitely never have any training for that. You should just check on training. Yeah. Exactly. Only generally. Just just figure it out.

Jon Johnson:

This is what QBR stands for

Kristi Faltorusso:

Or stop doing it. Go for it.

Mickey Powell:

Yeah. 3rd check, 3 strikes?

Jon Johnson:

Yeah.

Mickey Powell:

You’re out.

Jon Johnson:

Okay. So, Eric, we we’ve had a few consultants, on this podcast. And, in the background, we’re actually planning, like, a battle royale. So just so that you know, we will be getting all of the consultants together, for some sort of cage match, whether

Kristi Faltorusso:

There’s, like, 15 of us, so we all know each other. It’ll be so much fun.

Mickey Powell:

Yep. John, treat it like you’re on tour. Be like, Eric, you’re You are the best consultant, but you say that to every consultant who comes on.

Jon Johnson:

Every single city. Cincinnati.

Mickey Powell:

Cincinnati. You’re the best.

Jon Johnson:

You, Eric, I’m already having more fun than all the other Then

Mickey Powell:

we should be. Mind.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Oh, I’m glad.

Jon Johnson:

You One thing that I love about what you do is you do have a specialized approach. I know that a lot of folks kind of have some specialized approaches. Right? So they’re either GTMs or, you know, early stage, late stage. You go all the way up to d. I feel like after d, they’re either gonna get acquired by PE or you’re doing the wrong thing.

Kristi Faltorusso:

God willing, after a d, you actually have hired somebody in house to do this. And if you have it,

Jon Johnson:

there’s That’s why you’re there. Other issues. Yeah. So walk me through the path that you took To enable it. Why Yeah. Is that the focus that you have today? Is there a story? Is there, I don’t know, Some anecdotes that you kinda tell us about what brought you from where you came from, into focusing and identifying this as a problem.

Kristi Faltorusso:

So there was a part of me that always thought I was gonna be a teacher. Like, I genuinely my goal was to be a public school teacher. I moved to San Francisco. I I mean, I I grew up in the Bay Area, but I moved to San Francisco. I saw the cost of living. I saw how much public school teachers got paid, and I realized that that wasn’t gonna work.

Kristi Faltorusso:

The math was a math thing. I get it.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Yeah. Exactly. I was like, I guess I could be a lawyer, and I, you know, went to go take the LSAT. I don’t

Jon Johnson:

know

Kristi Faltorusso:

that I like Not either. So I end up falling into debt, as so many do. And I actually originally was doing implementation, And I was doing implementation of this company called Zenefits, which is, it’s it’s notorious.

Mickey Powell:

Oh, how so? Tell me, Eric?

Kristi Faltorusso:

Have you

Jon Johnson:

been to the the the hallway, the stairwell? It says

Kristi Faltorusso:

The stairwell? I I know every so I actually know the real backstory to all of this.

Jon Johnson:

Okay. Give out

Kristi Faltorusso:

Do we get wait. Wait. Wait. Do we get the real backstory?

Kristi Faltorusso:

I can’t tell you the real backstory. I’ve been sworn the secrets. Maybe after we’re done recording, I

Jon Johnson:

can just say it. Like, the

Mickey Powell:

seed freeze. Zenefits cut them off.

Jon Johnson:

Yeah. They do. There was a leak. I’m telling you that that those are stories from Zenefits are notorious.

Mickey Powell:

Hold on.

Kristi Faltorusso:

It was bananas. Yep.

Jon Johnson:

Just so that everybody knows, in what 2016, was it? 2016 or 2017?

Kristi Faltorusso:

2016 was what it 2015 and 2016 was sort of the continuous implosion.

Jon Johnson:

There was a New York Times article that came out in 2016 that identified, like I mean, we’re talking employees hooking up in stairwells, Like, all kinds of, like, very, very, no no’s within software. And it and it kind of if I was a part of tech in 2016. Like, it really became this, like, all tech is bad. We’re all bros. We’re all, like there’s this Stereotype that I think the media played heavily into that wasn’t necessarily driven by Zenefits. But I think a lot of the things where it’s like, well, you mean salespeople are, like, banging the stairwells, like, Of the office building, and bosses are, like, high fiving it, and it’s like a thing. Right? Like, oh, that’s just tech. It’s not.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Well, no. It’s not. But, like, We got to the point where every time they would come every time the sales organization would come back from President’s Club, there would be an there would be an announcement

Jon Johnson:

that a

Kristi Faltorusso:

director or director had been fired

Jon Johnson:

Yeah.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Because there was, like, a fist fight. Literally, there was, like, a fist fight Like, Steve

Jon Johnson:

punched Mark. Going back. We don’t know what to do here, so they’re both gone.

Kristi Faltorusso:

They were banned from some place in Vegas, which, like, is hard. You getting banned from, like, a pool in Vegas takes effort, but it was successful. So We I started an implementation, and I just immediately took to it. And I figured out, like, a system for how I should do it, and I was like, I must be doing as well. I have to be doing this wrong because everybody else is struggling. I’m, like, nailing this. And I went and sat down with the managers, and they’re like, no. I think you just, like, have a system.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Would you be willing to train this? And sort of that was the beginning of my transition into enablement. Well, I started getting sent to Arizona to go train folks at Zenefits. I would sit and mentor them and really move them through the the path on how to be able to do their job. And when Zenefits had one of its, you know, myriad, layoffs. They also did this thing where they gave everybody a buyout if you didn’t wanna be in the company any longer, and I took the buyout. They called it the offer in all quotes, capitalized, capital t, capital o. And I went on to to a company called HANA Plan, which was where I first got my, like, formal Mhmm. Yeah.

Kristi Faltorusso:

I got my formal start in enablement, and did that for two and a half years. Absolutely loved it, like, traveled the world doing, like, a 1000 hours of live training, and then I, From there, went on to a company called Deep where I actually built, you know, the entire customer success program from scratch. And I worked with Carly Agar, which I think a lot of people now recognize. She’s gone on to be insanely famous in the customer success world.

Jon Johnson:

So and admittedly, Eric, you were at Heap. I’m actually scanning through your LinkedIn when they opted not Continue conversations with my interview cycle on the CS order. So you and I are in fights.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Oh, wow. Well, I will tell you.

Jon Johnson:

It was my second.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Go ahead.

Jon Johnson:

Go ahead.

Kristi Faltorusso:

It was my 2nd or 3rd time applying the heat that I actually got the interview. Yeah. And it is it was an insane interview loop. I think it was, like, 7 or 8 people, and you would all of them were over Zoom, and it was the most bizarre, like, you would just, One of them was in the back of somebody’s car on the way to, like, a ski resort, and another one was

Mickey Powell:

Were you did you have to be in the car too?

Kristi Faltorusso:

Yeah. I see.

Jon Johnson:

Now it’s like fake it’s like the taxi quiz show.

Kristi Faltorusso:

But I was getting peppered with all these questions with people in, like, all sorts of different places, and you’re like, 1 person’s, like, in what looks like a bathroom, another person’s in a moving car. You’re trying to get a vibe for everybody’s personality, and you’re doing this, like, 7, 8, 9 times. I had to meet with the CEO and cofounder.

Jon Johnson:

I was interviewing at Heap and Pendo at the same time, and if You don’t know they were at the same time very direct competitors. They’ve moved a little bit upmarket each. But it was a it was a really fun interview cycle to go back and forth between 2 Competitors, and then get rejected by both of them. But we’re not finding the methodology. We’re not talking about, the pandemic 2020 here. We’re talking about

Kristi Faltorusso:

In in their defense, They had other JJs on sale that I

Jon Johnson:

think The email was gone. Couldn’t create an alias.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Couldn’t do it.

Jon Johnson:

So then from there, we so you went oh, Oh, I might be getting ahead of myself. Oh, you went into Moveworks, but after that is is what’s really interesting. So give us, like, a little bit of the the vibe on on Moveworks.

Kristi Faltorusso:

So I was at Moveworks, AI company. Interesting time, it’s right when ChatGPT came out. They did a, you know, 15, 20% reduction in force, and, you know, I was one of them. But I was already at this point where I had started to think about it. As soon as I went to Moveworks, I realized I’ve seen the same problems at every single company I go to. As soon as I go there, the first thing I have to do is build out their product launch process because they just don’t have, one, to be able to communicate product, updates, or, or new products to their post sale organization. They have something for presale, sometimes, But post sale, I’d have I’d see CS is finding out about these new features as soon as they go live. They’re live.

Kristi Faltorusso:

They’re, like, they’re in product.

Jon Johnson:

Oh, what’s this do?

Kristi Faltorusso:

Yeah. And customers are like, hey, what is this? What’s going on with this? What’s a use case for this? Should I be using this? And they’re frantic, and they have no idea. The other thing I was finding was that there just was no onboarding. Like, customer success, more often than not, is getting they’re either getting something that’s left over from sales or sales enablement or they’re getting nothing at all. And I started thinking if there if if these same problems exist everywhere, why isn’t there someone who is focused on how to do this well at the same place and turning into this repeatable process. But that’s where I really started to think about getting into consulting and really the idea for routine solutions, And I actually I remember calling Carly, and Carly was, like, 3 months or 2 or 3 months into her consulting business. And, I was like, how’s it going? And she’s like, it’s unbelievable. I don’t know why everyone isn’t doing this.

Kristi Faltorusso:

This is the best thing ever. And she’s she’s She’s like, why aren’t you doing this? She goes she said every company I talk to has the same problem, which is they don’t you know, they can find people, but when they find people, who aren’t always consistently good. And it’s like the reason they’re not good is because you’re not actually offering them any support whatsoever. Like, you might be able to find someone who could be good, but you’re not offering them any support. You’re not molding them. You’re not developing them. And then you’re getting upset when they’re not able to do the job. And a lot of times, it’s because you haven’t really thought about A job should it be to begin with or what different segments should exist, what sort of specialization should exist within your customer success or your life.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Customer success is the be all, end all. It’s the solution to all of my problems. I’m just gonna find someone. I’m gonna plug them in, and they’re gonna be able to fill all the gaps and just address all the issues. It’s like, well, no. That’s not really how this should work. You’re just gonna make everything you’re gonna make everyone miserable. You’re setting them up for failure.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Customers are gonna be upset. It’s just it’s causing all sorts of downstream problems. And so that’s where I really decided, you know what? I’m gonna do this. And I was already starting to sort of plan it out before Everything went, you know, before Moveworks did their layoff, and so I decided in February of this year that I was gonna start my own thing. And it’s been so awesome and rewarding because there is just a gap when it comes to enablement for post sales. You just don’t hear anybody talk about it. There haven’t been any real methodologies that have been built out. Sales enablement, there are books, you know, you can go to a bookstore and pull a book off a shelf and you can read it and you can implement it and you’ll get yourself like 80 or 85% on the way there.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Yeah. You you still need a good a good sales enablement person to get you the rest of the way and actually, you know, run through these things, but we don’t have that for customer success. You know, we we we, like, haven’t thought about what is the best way to train somebody on this, what are the things you actually need to know, what are the things you actually need to know to do, what sort of industry knowledge do you really need? What is essential for a role? And so that’s what I’ve really been working on, and I’ve gotten the opportunity to obviously Speak on some amazing podcasts, write some really great things. I’ve been able to mentor people in the field. I’ve started some small organizations to bring people in that are working on post sales enablement to really give them an idea of what it takes, and then work with some companies and actually give them some guidance on what they should be doing to set their CS organization up for success. That’s awesome.

[unidentified speaker]:

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Jon Johnson:

So we have 1 question. So let’s say you’re coming in to your a round. It’s really easy to say to look externally and say this is what you do with customers. Right? Here’s your onboarding plan. Here’s your stages, all that kind of stuff. A little bit more difficult when you’re maybe don’t have people in place. Like, how do you work with leaders of early stage startups? So you’re coming in and you meet with the 1st time head of CS, and it’s like, I need to make sure that I’m setting myself up for success long term here. What is What’s your start?

Kristi Faltorusso:

Yeah. The first thing that I do is I’m really I ask them to dig deep on how it is that they’re gonna be delivering value for their customers. And I found that that’s something that isn’t as consistently centered in customer success as it should be. And I think this last year and a half, 2 years, we’ve really had this reckoning where this has been something that we’ve started to, see we need to focus on more. It’s like what does your solution do to provide tangible value for your customers, and how how do those, how does the value of that drive, how does that tie back to the numbers that matter to them internally? So like what am I doing that then helps to you and drives the numbers that your executives are gonna be looking at and say these are the things that matter to me. So I really have us dig down on what that is And then I figure out, okay, so what sort of function should exist, what sort of role should exist that can deliver that? So what are the touch points that need to exist for that? What are the jobs that need to be done to be able to achieve that? And then what are the check ins that need to be done with the customer regularly to be able to do that. And then from there, once you sort of scoped out what a role should look like, then it’s great. Now we know what you need to do and what this role needs to look like.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Let’s figure out what it takes to take someone who has no knowledge or very little knowledge and give them the skills they need to be able to do those check and to deliver that value for our customer in that specific way. And what I’ve noticed is that in the past, there’s been really an over reliance on, especially in in specified SaaS, is this like, we just need somebody who knows everything about this industry, and they’ll bring in some, like, industry expert who has, No clue how to actually do customer success or how to deliver value, but they can speak in the same language, as a customer, and that gets you only so far. It gets great to a customer because they’re like, oh, this person knows exactly what I need, but they don’t know what they can actually deliver or how to delivery. And so I try and focus on what is the proper amount of knowledge you need to have about the industry, in addition to what is the knowledge you need to have about your job, and about the different roles in your job and and about how to be able to work with these other teams. And so I’ll go in and I’ll build out you know, I’ll work with you to build out Not only what the role should look like and how you deliver that knowledge or that value, but, like, what is what sort of courses need to exist to be able to deliver that knowledge? What sort of onboarding or what sort of boot camp you need to get there? What should your continuing education look like? And once you get, Once you sort of move up the rung and you’re looking at companies that are series c and series d, that’s when you can start to look at, well, how do we actually map out what Sydney’s career path could look like. We can benchmark, you know, oh, they need to know all of these different discrete pieces of information. They also need to know how to do these different things. How do we measure that? So how do we build out assessments that’ll measure that objectively, and then how do we bridge that gap? How do we give them the knowledge they need to go from where they are to where they need to be to be able to move up in roles, and for me, that’s really important because that allows employees to be empowered and actually say, look, I’ve taken these courses.

Kristi Faltorusso:

I’ve done this. I wanna be promoted to this next level, or I wanna go into this next level. They could take that and have that issue with their manager, and, you know, especially during reviews, and really be able to say, I’ve done the work. I know what it takes to go to the next level, and I to get there instead of a lot of times what we see, which is like sort of an arbitrary, like, well, we do have the headcount this quarter or, Like, I’ve seen you do x, y, and z, and because I’ve seen you do x, y, and z, I know that that’s what we need. I wanna give people the ability and empower them to be able to understand What it takes to be able to get to that next level and work to get them there themselves.

Kristi Faltorusso:

So Eric, let me let me ask a question. So obviously, you Yeah. You’ve done a great job of articulating the value of the work that you do. So what’s the objective that you face and why doesn’t every company have either Customer success enablement deployed, or why aren’t they working with you?

Kristi Faltorusso:

I think the the hardest thing is that you I’ve I’ve noticed that there’s sort of Two chapters. 1 is that CS managers are off the line. This is probably part of what we should be doing, so, why do we wanna bring somebody in from the outside to do it? And a lot of times there’s this concern that CS managers aren’t offering up value. And what I always push back on is I say, Yeah, but what else are you doing? You’re you’ve got a 1000000 other things going on. Do you ever really have time to sit down and take that, you know, take that 30,000 foot view and say, here’s Here’s what onboarding should look like. Here’s what it should look like for you to be able to upskill yourself, and here’s what it should look like for or here’s what it Here’s what it will look like when somebody starts on day 1. Here’s what they will look like at, you know, week 2, week 4, week 6. Here’s what the mentorship program looks like.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Here’s what courses that they need to be taking. Here’s what it’ll look like for them to get from an l one to an l two or to go from a, an entry level to a senior or senior to a strategic, you don’t have the time or bandwidth to do that. You need somebody to come in and be able to take that view. So that’s the one of the reasons why you see a lot of pushback is that managers just feel as though it’s something they should be doing. Sometimes their managers think it’s something they should be doing. But I think the other thing is For a long time, the way that we’ve thought about customer success is we’ve just brought smart people in, and we’ve said, you can kind of figure it out. You know, we do a little bit of assessing in the interview, but we’re like, you’ll fig and everyone’s laughing because, like, all of us have been there, and we’ve even probably hired people, that were like, you’re smart, you can figure it out. And that’s just not that doesn’t work and it doesn’t scale.

Kristi Faltorusso:

You know, the first hire or the 2nd hire or the 1st few hires or, like, some random hire that you made, the 10th or 15th hire. That will work. You’ll bring in someone who’s, like, a former consultant who’s changing careers, and they have this incredible, like, this Incredible ability to do discovery with our customers, and so they know how to do it from day 1, and they get and and they’re creative building relationships, chips, and they know exactly what they need to do to be able to succeed, or they have these skills from previous roles that they’re able to transfer. But a lot of times, you’re just taking someone really smart, You’re plugging them in, and they have some level of knowledge that you think they need to have, and they don’t know what the role is or what they really need to be doing, and they just sort of flail. And you don’t really know why they’re flailing, but it seems like, the more that you try and intervene, especially as it gets later on, The worse it gets because now you’re giving them new responsibilities, and you’re telling them to go take this class, and you’re telling them to go read this book, and that’s stressing them out even more until you get you see that they just get burnt out and exhausted and they fail in this role. And because we’ve focused for so long on just hiring smart instead of assessing during the hiring process in the way that we need to, Really identifying what you need to do in the role and then giving you the tools you need to actually be able to do that role from day 1. We’ve seen this mass failure across your you know, across customer success. And we so many of these organizations, they need enablement.

Kristi Faltorusso:

They just don’t seem to realize that enablement is the solution to this ongoing customer success. Why the problem?

Kristi Faltorusso:

But when you’re working as an outside this isn’t a but. I should have started it with but. You’re obviously, you’re not part of the organization. You don’t know the industry. So when you’re coming in as a consultant, what is your learning curve look like? Right? Because how much of this are you trying to figure out on your own before you’re going to deploy or tell Somebody how to do their job.

Kristi Faltorusso:

I’m a big, proponent of doing an extensive discovery upfront. So I spend the first, You know, 2 weeks, depending on how complex the, engagement is gonna be up to 4 weeks, just digging in all their documents and engaging with individual, you know, ICs all the way up to directors to really understand what it is that we’re currently seeing and what the struggles are. I don’t pretend like I’m the expert on any, on on any of these industries. I’m the expert on enablement. You know, it’s the same way that when you’re talking about CSMs, You’re like, you’re the expert on your solution. You’re not necessarily the expert on their company. So I don’t try and be the expert on, you know, everything about your industry, but I am gonna come in and I’m going to actually ask a lot of questions, sit down, really dig through everything, come up with a framework that’s gonna work, make sure that I run it past the appropriate people so they can say, like, this is something that’s missing or this is something we need, This is a problem we didn’t even know we had, and then go from there. So I I don’t try and jump in from day 1 and say, like, I already know what the problem is, and I’m gonna tell you.

Kristi Faltorusso:

I might have a pretty strong sense, but I do wanna actually take the time to get to know you, and that’s why it’s a bespoke approach. That’s why I can’t just like Hand you a guide and tell you go do these exact things.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Right. Because then you’d be doing exactly what they probably did initially to onboard these individuals. Right? Then it’s just more of the same.

Kristi Faltorusso:

And customer success is it’s not like sales where, you know, I’m not I don’t wanna make it sound like I’m saying that all sales is the same, but it’s sort of agreed upon which sales were well, but it’s it’s agreed upon across the industry, like, which sales roles exist, you know, what you do in those sales roles. They’re defined

Jon Johnson:

You got a BDR. You got an AE. You got a

Kristi Faltorusso:

There’s 3 to 4 defined methodologies for sales. We don’t have that for customer success. We don’t have, like, here’s exactly what this role does. Here’s the methodology on how to do this. We we’re trying. We’re working on it, but we don’t have the, like yeah. We don’t have the this is what the post sale journey is always gonna look like. We definitely can tell you this is what the sales journey is always gonna look like, at every organization.

Kristi Faltorusso:

You know, it’s gonna fall into 1 of 3 or 5 cap, you know, buckets, but that’s not the case with customer success. So you do They’ll have to take that more hands on bespoke approach, and there’s certain things you can keep in mind and questions you can ask that are gonna go across every CS organization. But it’s not as easy as just here’s a guide. Go do it.

Jon Johnson:

Yeah. This is something we’ve talked about with a lot of our guests, really, is kinda like the state of the customer It does feel like, parts of it are flailing. I don’t think people are trying to figure out revenue models. I think people are trying to figure out Should we charge? Should they be consultants? Are they having drivers? Are they, you know, cost centers? Things like that. Right? A lot of trying to understand what the best approach For CSMs is. And I think the problem that I’m seeing is there isn’t one size fits all, or should there be? Almost like When you have somebody who’s really good at selling b to b, they may not be the best at selling b to c, you know, and they may people that sell really good in mid market may not be able to crush an enterprise. Different level of specificity. And I think we have enterprise CSMs.

Jon Johnson:

We have principal CSMs. We have all these other things that actually aren’t segmented in the same way that our sales folks Right? It’s just kinda arbitrary, and there is no kinda standard. And I would love to see more more folks like you that are kinda talking Through, like, what what are, like, where are all of the different segments? Like, how do we actually standardize these things? Where have your CSM that is what what are they calling a full stack CSM now, right, where You come in at an a rate, you know, a a stage, and you do everything from renewals to product training to adoption to the late stage that you’re talking about, BCD round funding where you’re into specialization. And then how do you segment from that? So I’m backing myself into a question When you’re bring when you’re brought on to set the tempo of the CS work from a or a seed stage, right, how how does that differ for you, Experience at that to going to a company that has 50 or 60 CSMs or whatever number you wanna come up with. Right? That, you you’re you need to learn how to train people net new, and And then you also need to come into an organization that maybe has been failing. How do you how do you unlearn so that they can learn? Right?

Kristi Faltorusso:

Yeah. It’s a completely different experience because when you’re going into that big organization, there already has been there have been a bunch of attempts at training, and there’s all sorts of knowledge that’s buried everywhere, but it’s, of course, not centralized, and it’s not easy to digest for anybody. So you’re going, okay, have they tried this before? Is this something that’s already gonna fail? As they all have in their minds. Yeah, we did this this one time, it didn’t work, everyone’s got this negative outlook. So that’s when you’re really starting to think about and personalities, what’s actually gone on in the past, what you already have that you can draw off of, and how you can take all of that and turn it into something a little bit more and really focus on upskilling the existing folks in addition to building out this new hire program. When it comes to the c and the a, I won’t say that’s easier. It’s just a very different set of problems. You’re really thinking about What is this role they’re gonna look like? How are they gonna do it? What are they gonna need to be successful? What is the future of this role look like? We’re hiring somebody full stack right now, but is that person gonna be is that what we want the role to look like moving forward? I always Set the expectation.

Kristi Faltorusso:

This is not what this role should look like moving forward. You’re gonna have somebody that’s gonna come in where their job’s gonna be literally doing anything a customer wants. It’s true. I mean, like,

Jon Johnson:

you put it in it’s

Kristi Faltorusso:

in, like, seed or series a, and, like, they’re just the customer person. They’re the catchall customer person. A customer says jump, you go how high? A customer, you know, a customer says, I need these numbers. You’re like, great. I gotta work with the engineer, but I can get them for you. And and then you have to actually learn how to set healthy boundaries as the organization grows and set what the CS is actually gonna do. So you’re thinking about, What is this person gonna do now? But also, when we have 5 people, what are they gonna do? Because what you’re doing right now is not replicable, you know? And you can do it knowing that the person you’re bringing in is somebody who is a superstar or somebody who is, like, switching industries and will literally do anything to make this successful, and their expectation is that they’re gonna be the 1st manager of the team, maybe the 1st director of the team, maybe the 1st VP of the team because they wanna get early stage equity. They really wanna be Somebody they wanna make a name for themselves in the industry.

Kristi Faltorusso:

But that’s again, that doesn’t work in series b. That doesn’t work in series c. That doesn’t work in series d. So While we’re looking at what we need to know now and how we can put that together, you’re thinking about, okay, but what’s it gonna need to look like in the future? You know, what’s it gonna need to look like when you get to a series b? And what is the role actually gonna Like, is this role gonna be 2 roles or 3 roles? Are we gonna split these up so that we can really make sure that we turn this into A job that somebody can reasonably do and reasonably be trained on as opposed to, you know, like when I first started at Zenefits, and they were like, oh, we don’t have product managers. And if you wanna be able to be an implementation manager, you’re also doing everything a customer success manager would do. We just didn’t call it that then. If you wanna get information, you go sit with the engineers and you ask them to walk you through the product to the point where there would be features that sales would sell that we didn’t even know about that had special links to get to them, that the engineers would have to spend, like, 4 hours explaining to me. That doesn’t work when you get to series b.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Doesn’t work when you get to series c. That never scales. So figuring out how you’re gonna be able to deliver that type of knowledge or set the expectations that a customer might not be getting that type treatment moving forward is important even as you’re still thinking about, well, how do we even get somebody trained right now in this role? I

Kristi Faltorusso:

love that. Do you feel like there’s any like, I I understand the idea to want to kinda foreshadow what the future might look like as companies evolve, the reality of it is, and you’re gonna hear me say this all the time, is it does depend. And as that evolution goes on, it’s not a standard to say that it is linear in the sense.

Jon Johnson:

Put on a hat,

Kristi Faltorusso:

I I I put on a hat. It’s on my website. You can go to christyfaltruiser.com. Go check it out. It’s in the it’s under merch. No, but then it’s true. Right? Like, you’re gonna see an evolution. It’s gonna look different in every organization.

Kristi Faltorusso:

I’ve been at companies that have you know, I came in at a a a 100 you know, we started off with, like, a 100 people in the organization. I exited when we had 500 people in the organization. I came in different stages of funding and different rounds and maturation, But the the market, the product, our customers, all of these things impacted what the CS role did and didn’t do. And so I feel like it’s difficult to foreshadow what the future might look like and just say it’s isolated by an evolution determined by the stage of the company, right, because there’s so many other factors at play here. And so, yes, I think it’s fine to say that the CS role, you know, you’re not gonna have a catch all CSM when you get to a series d or later stage, but I think it’s hard to say with certainty other things will absolute will be absolute. Right?

Kristi Faltorusso:

Right. And you’re never saying that this is exactly what the role is gonna look like in a series c when you’re talking to somebody at a seed stage. But if you’re talking to somebody in a series a and you’re saying, hey. Just so you know, as you start to scale and hire, this is what we should be thinking about for this role, and it’s not saying exactly this is what it’s gonna be doing, but this is what we should be thinking about what we should be doing, then that’s, I think, very different. And you do wanna start thinking about, well, how can we start to pair down this role so it is something reasonable when we’re making hires in the future, because you just don’t have it’s not sustainable to do that catch all role. So I wouldn’t I would never say that you should have exactly what the role should look like in series b, in series c. Let’s say, we need to consider what what roles you know, which responsibilities, should exist within this role when we’re hiring for it as we start to scale as opposed to now when it’s like you, the 1st hire, the 2nd And I referred to higher, just doing everything and can sit with product and do all that.

Jon Johnson:

Well and, you know, not to put words in your mouth, but one of the things that I’ve seen as a threat to this our conversation. And then this this will be the last questions. I know we’ve we’ve taken up a a good portion of your time today. Sure. But, it’s it sounds like instead of saying, I’m gonna give you, like, a template that you follow for every stage. It is more I want to instill in the companies that I work at, like, a a Culture of empowerment for my individual contributors that doesn’t exist right now in CS. Is that correct?

Kristi Faltorusso:

Exactly. Yes. Okay.

Jon Johnson:

So no at that point, with that if That culture is built from a head up that is their 1st person, and they’re not only setting process, but they’re also keeping an eye on the fact that I’m gonna hire the next 10 people over the next 3 or 4 years. I need to make sure every single one of those people understand the culture that we’re building here and that, You know, we’ll train you on x, y, and z. We expect you to know a, b, and c, but we’re gonna continually make sure that we’re upscaling and upskilling our individual Which is the hardest thing because CSFs are so busy, and we’re just building the plane as it flies. Right? We’re, like Exactly. The Challenger shuttle.

Kristi Faltorusso:

So sad.

Jon Johnson:

The best quote the best quote of a of a of a startup rocket ship I’ve ever seen.

Mickey Powell:

It’s unfortunately true.

Jon Johnson:

Yeah. Okay. In closing, what, what do you do? You’re a solopreneur. You are your own. You run your own business. Mhmm. You also are, investor with CCS Angel. Christie, I I believe you’re a

[unidentified speaker]:

That is correct. Correct?

Kristi Faltorusso:

Yep.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Perfect. I’m the chief of the company, actually.

Jon Johnson:

How do you stay up when You as an individual person are trying to run this business. Right? We live in a society that is always telling people to be more and everything into a side hustle. You have done that. You are, You’re supporting yourself with this job. How do you keep yourself motivated? How do you fight the blue?

Kristi Faltorusso:

I’m trying to think who it was that I met with. It It might have been Donna Weber, and I love Donna. Yeah. And I think one thing she told me, which was really good advice, is, never get too high, never get too low. Highs are always high, but the lows can be very low. And so try and keep all of that in perspective, that when you have these lows, you’re gonna have these highs. So if I’m really speaking with the seasonal effect of this order, it’s it’s that, and then it’s really making sure that you Have plotted out what your days and your time are gonna look like. It’s very easy to, when you’re running your own business, to just sort of let the day get away from you or, like, let 1 task linger and take much longer than it needs to take.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Really think about what your week is going to look like and schedule it in the way that you would just if you had a day to day job. Don’t allow yourself to drift for days or for weeks. Really focus on creating that structure, And then know that there is down what you might consider downtime that is still part of Google working hours. When you are reading about customer success, When you are sometimes when you are surfing LinkedIn, and when you’re making these connections and when you’re doing this networking, you are still working. That is are important to your growth, to your personal development, and to your ability to, to really be able to make your business Thrive. So know that you’re spending a lot of time investing in yourself that is also work. Make sure that the time you’re spending is I won’t say that the time is productive because I think there’s sort of like a cult of productivity, but the the the time that you’re spending is, is intentional.

Jon Johnson:

I’m spending a lot of my productivity time making sure that I get through, Adam’s secretary for the 3rd time

Kristi Faltorusso:

on on Netflix.

Jon Johnson:

So

Kristi Faltorusso:

I love that. I love

Kristi Faltorusso:

that for you, John. Rock, The Office, you know, you watch it 3 or 4 times. Why not? Yeah.

Jon Johnson:

Micky, you, didn’t say anything again this time. So what do you got for us?

Mickey Powell:

Well, it’s because you filled the time.

Kristi Faltorusso:

I I didn’t wanna say it, Mickey, but I’m glad you did. I’m glad someone said it had to be said.

Jon Johnson:

Are we hating on me? Yeah. I thought they were great questions. I thought they were great questions. Since? I thought there were great questions.

Mickey Powell:

The unwritten rule is whoever the host is, it has to be the butt of the joke. It’s agreed.

Jon Johnson:

I’m I’m here for it. I’ll take it.

Mickey Powell:

No. So, Eric, I was, you know, when I’m not talking, I’m thinking, which is why I should talk less And listen more. And what I kinda realize is what you’re describing is like Evolution where, like, we went through like, CSMs were born out of the need that the the ecosystem had. We needed somebody in that role. And you’re right. We did all the things that worked like hiring smart people, Just throwing money at the problem, throwing people at the problem. And then when things got tough, when there wasn’t as much resources to go around, Now people are having to reckon with what’s what actually matters. So just like, you know, As species evolve like birds, we’ll use bird as the birds as the example.

Mickey Powell:

Some fly, some don’t. Some fly really fast, some fly really far, some are big, some are small. They evolve the traits that lead to their survival. So what I think you’re doing is you are stepping into a role that the ecosystem needs To help them survive and to grow. So, you know, they say that that growth is not linear. I think we did this big curve and then we’re regressing a little bit. Yeah. And now I think we’re gonna go even higher.

Mickey Powell:

Thanks to people like you. And for those that are interested in like the science behind this, go read Adam Grant’s Hidden Potential. It is a really, really good book and he talks about this a lot. But Eric, thank you for coming on. After we Yeah.

Jon Johnson:

Where can we find you? Yeah. Where can we find you?

Kristi Faltorusso:

You can find me at retain dot solutions. So it’s yeah. Right?

Jon Johnson:

Yeah. We’ll add that to the show notes as well. LinkedIn, people. LinkedIn.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Yeah. Eric Kingsbury on LinkedIn.

Jon Johnson:

What’s your home address?

Kristi Faltorusso:

Social Security number, but what’s

Mickey Powell:

your maiden name? What’s your maiden name?

Kristi Faltorusso:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Mickey Powell:

1st thing.

Jon Johnson:

Well, this has been Okay.

[unidentified speaker]:

The show’s not funny anymore. Mickey style. Mickey. Jeez.

Jon Johnson:

Even though Christie and Mickey are bitter that I talked the whole time, I had a really good time talking to you, Eric.

[unidentified speaker]:

Please come back.

Jon Johnson:

Please come

Kristi Faltorusso:

back. Please come back.

[unidentified speaker]:

Please let us know how it goes. Tell your friends that it was great.

Mickey Powell:

We’ll call you. Yeah.

[unidentified speaker]:

I’ll have we’ll have Daniella reach out.

Kristi Faltorusso:

We’ll have our people call your people.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Yep.

[unidentified speaker]:

Do we have people? Eric. I think

Jon Johnson:

this is we do now. Yeah. I’ve tried to say goodbye, guys. Okay.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Sorry. Sorry.

[unidentified speaker]:

Eric, we love you. Alright. And, ladies and gentlemen, it has been so great. It didn’t work. I tried to hit the end button. I tried to do it, Josh.

Jon Johnson:

Hold on.

Josh Schachter:

Hey, guys. It’s Josh. Don’t hang up. If you enjoyed this episode you know what? Even if you didn’t, I’d love for you to give us a rating in iTunes or Spotify. And after you do, email me josh@update.ai with the name of your favorite charity, and my company, UpdateAI, will make a donation on your behalf. I’d love to connect with each of our listeners. Send me a LinkedIn request, and I’ll accept it immediately. Just go to www dotupdate.ai/LinkedIn, and it’ll redirect to my profile.Thanks.