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Episode #74: Supercharge Revenue Growth By Automating Renewals ft. Mathew Cagney (Renewtrak)

Send Kristi, Jon, Mickey & Josh a message – https://www.speakpipe.com/UnchurnedPodcast

Watch the banter on YouTube – https://youtu.be/N22Id931Tb4

Join our upcoming FREE Pranayama Sessions for the CS community by signing up here: https://lu.ma/updateai_breathwork

Wouldn’t life become a breeze if renewals could be automated?

Well, Renewtrak does just that!

 Mathew Cagney joins  Kristi FaltorussoJon Johnson  & Josh Schachter and they discuss
– Focusing on renewals 
– How Renewtrak works
– What’s up with renewals?
– Justifying revenues
– Predicting the likelihood of churn
– Integrating Renewtrak with other systems
– Birth of Renewtrak
– The CS team at Renewtrak

Connect with Mathew: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mathewcagney/
Checkout Renewtrak: https://www.renewtrak.com/

 

“More and more tech companies are realizing that the customers are their biggest asset and that they have to grow them, retain them, and continue to grow them again and again.” — Mathew Cagney

“How your customers interact with your brand is one of the most important retention strategies.” — Jon Johnson

 

Listening to Unchurned will lower your churn and increase your conversions.

Josh Schachter:

Hey, everybody, and welcome to this episode Of unchurned. The CS and BS version of it. I’m Josh Actor, founder and CEO of UpdateAI. I have with me here, John. Start with you.

Jon Johnson:

John Johnson, principal customer success manager at user testing, calling in from Raleigh, North Carolina. And, oh,

Kristi Faltorusso:

we’re doing a calling in now. Is that what we’re doing? Are we doing a first time, long time? Is that what we’re doing?

Jon Johnson:

Long time speaker.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Okay. Alright. Hi, everyone. Christy Faltorusso, chief customer officer at Client Success, been in customer success for the past 12 years, building, scaling, and transforming customer team’s thrilled to be here today.

Josh Schachter:

And, you know, you guys know this, but I I’m I’m not so kind. I kinda just press the the record button to because it’s fun for me. It’s become a thing. It’s become a thing. It’s become a thing. But we haven’t even really made introduction, ourselves to our guest today, which is Matthew Cagney. And, Matthew, thank you so much for being on the show. I would like to take this time to introduce you to Christie Falterusso and John Johnson.

Josh Schachter:

And, Matthew, why don’t you introduce yourself, though, to the world to, again, all 5 listeners and tell us a little bit about yourself, where you’re from.

Mathew Cagney:

Hey, Matthew Cagney, first time listener. So great to be part of this, this podcast. That that’s Matthew with one t as well, so let’s not Let’s not get that. My parents had a a thing for 2 Ts. They didn’t like 2 Ts. So, you know

Jon Johnson:

It’s unneeded.

Josh Schachter:

Yeah. I think it’s,

Mathew Cagney:

yeah, redundant. Right? Redundant. Less is more.

Jon Johnson:

Less is more.

Kristi Faltorusso:

I agree.

Mathew Cagney:

So I’m I’m the CEO I’m the CEO of a company called RenewTrack. I’ve got a very refined Australian think we might be picking that up right now.

Jon Johnson:

More recently, that was.

Mathew Cagney:

Yeah. Yeah. More recently moved to Southern San Diego, where I think it’s actually summer all year round.

Josh Schachter:

So Mhmm.

Mathew Cagney:

That’s where I’m calling in from. And I run a company called RenewTrack, and our aim is to and digitize the entire renewals process to free up time for our wonderful colleagues in customer success, renewal, sales to have more informed conversations with their customers and really get down at the nitty gritty about how do we actually, attribute our products to the value that it’s driving for you your organization.

Josh Schachter:

Democratize and digitize renewables. I love lofty start up visionary language. Yeah. Tell us

Jon Johnson:

some buzzwords too.

Kristi Faltorusso:

I wanna demo. I love buzzwords. Yeah. I’m like, wait. Hold on. Yes. I want to democratize my renewal process, and I want to Do all these percentage things that you tell me in your profile? I wanna liberate my customer success by 30 40%.

Jon Johnson:

Do a demo.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Yeah. No. I’m in I’m here for the liberation.

Jon Johnson:

One of my favorite parts of this podcast, and we actually we flipped it on its head. We usually wait, like, 10 minutes With the the guests just sitting on the the call with us before we even notice them.

Mathew Cagney:

I I listened to a couple of Yeah.

Jon Johnson:

And we just, Like, oh, there’s somebody else here. So I you still feel

Josh Schachter:

To be to be clear, those are the episodes, John, that I’m not a part of because I I because then you’re the emcee See, and they’re unstructured. But when when I’m here, it’s, like, straight to the business. No. That’s what I I’ve given you so much. Josh? He is new. Well, he already charges it.

Jon Johnson:

Yeah. So, Matthew, I feel like you’re you you you refined that pitch. It feels like you’ve been doing this for a while. Walk me through, like, where did this movement come from for you? Like, why did you focus on The renewal side of it. And I wanna be very clear here also. Renewals is a big topic. Right? So there’s so much to Are we talking about b to b, b to c, SaaS subscription memberships? Like, walk us through a little bit of the niches of, of where you’re at, and then What kind of drove you to, the space that you’re in right now?

Mathew Cagney:

Yeah. First of all, we’ll go back to the use the use of the term democratize and digitize. My wife keeps on saying, why do I keep on using that term? For some reason, I think it’s sort of relatively well known, but that really means that we wanna put the power in the hands of the end customer. Now how did I get into this?

Josh Schachter:

I like that better. Yeah.

Mathew Cagney:

Perfect. Okay. Maybe I’ll use that in my pitch moving forward. Thanks, Josh.

Josh Schachter:

How do I get into this?

Mathew Cagney:

Look, to be honest, I was a customer of many many different vendors, and the renewals process sucks, to be honest. And and what that means is, a number of companies leverage time or don’t leverage time to just hope and hope that I will renew. And so what that means is I would go and notify about an upcoming renewal. I would go unquote it on priced, which meant it was really hard to budget for my expansion in my business. And a lot of the time when it goes bad, actually, the vendor would shut down my software, and I’d get woken up at 2 or 3 AM in the morning. And our platform’s down. They can’t support our largest customers, and then we’ve gotta get our devs out of bed. They’ve gotta do some fault finding, and it comes out actually a license key’s expired.

Mathew Cagney:

So bad management on our side, but also bad management on the on the vendor side not noticing by us. So that’s how I got into it. I just wanted to solve that problem, because it just really left a bad taste in my mouth. And I thought there’s a there’s gotta be a better way of providing me with visibility and transparency about my estate that’s coming up. And because I’m not the a lot of time when you’re going through a news process, we all know that you’re dealing with 2 to 3 other buyers.

Josh Schachter:

Mhmm. And we wanna be able to

Mathew Cagney:

put the information in their hands in a one one dimensional PDF, but I can’t edit change. Just doesn’t doesn’t give that to him or doesn’t cut it. So We specialize in b to b renewals, so subscriptions, auto renewals, support contracts, even hardware assets. And we do that for for a range of companies like VMware, Lenovo, HP, Cisco, but then also a large number of small SaaS companies, you know, anywhere from about 300 accounts or more. And, traditionally, we find our sweet spot in what we define as the long tail. To renewal buckets. High volume, low value, low value could be defined as anything under a 100 k. Some companies call that under 250 k, but, generally, the sweet spot’s $1,000 to $100,000.

Josh Schachter:

How does the, how does the product work, Matthew?

Mathew Cagney:

Yeah. Quick question. What we do is we help to look at what are the existing technology how does the existing tech vendor quote that opportunity. How do they get it? How do they notify their customers, and how do they provide their customers with that feedback loop? What we find is a lot of that problems thrown across to the CS teams or the renewals teams to manually create that quote in the CRM or CPQ. And that’s a time consuming process. Commute anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes on average for a quote. But then, you know, when we pass that quote to the customer, I go, Hey, Christie. Actually, what about if I take fries with that? Or if it’s my custom my base is growing.

Mathew Cagney:

Give me another 25 licenses. Actually, you know what? And you come back and Christie requotes me again. And then I say, thank you for that, Christie. But what happens if I sign up for a 24 month contract? So what we find, it’s like a game of ping pong going backwards and forwards to the customer, which is frustrating for the customer and frustrating for our CS renewals colleagues. So We auto quote all possible permutations, use automation to notify follow-up, and and really remind the customer without pissing them off in a way that’s not intrusive, but it’s front of mind. And then we drive them into what I kinda refer to as the Calendly of renewals, which is an interactive quote that I can see, interact with under the the the vendor’s rules, but I can also share that with other decision makers in my organization and making edits as well. And we we see that that provides real time feedback so people in CS or renewals can say, okay. Matt did receive the renewal.

Mathew Cagney:

He’s interacting with it. He’s looking at changing quantity or buying this next particular product that saves all the pointless phone calls or emails, follow ups, and reminders.

Jon Johnson:

I one thing that I love, as somebody who is a part of, like, a a good portion of renewals, at my org, what you just talked about is a huge pain point. And and and I love this because it’s something that we’re actively, like, talking. Not that I’m gonna come by your product. However, I should probably introduce you to our Our team,

Josh Schachter:

you gotta lead, Matthew. You gotta lead.

Jon Johnson:

We’re we’re of yeah. We’re, you know, we’re a consumption based model. Right? So what you just talked about happens all the where it’s like you bought 10,000. We’re coming up on renewal. We’re gonna, you know, up by 20%, and they’re gonna say, actually, I need I need another whatever. And we go back to CPQ, and we have to get it requoted. And then they’ve gotta do the numbers, and then it turns into 6 weeks. And we wonder why renewals are dragging.

Jon Johnson:

Right? With CPQ, John. That’s the, it stands for something quote. Okay. Get Like, get my product quoting?

Kristi Faltorusso:

Yeah. Getting away with those Salesforce. It’s in Salesforce.

Jon Johnson:

Tool. Oh, okay. I’m not sure. Salesforce guy. Configure there we go. Ask the CEO Of the company. Right? Here we go.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Configure price quote. I I never knew what it stood for either. So

Mathew Cagney:

Yeah. Make

Kristi Faltorusso:

it easy. We can we can wrap up the conversation now. I feel like I got what I needed.

Jon Johnson:

I’m gonna add that to my internal Wiki. No. But but I think I think that’s that’s that’s actually a really great thing, and and that makes sense what how you’re quoting, you know, time savings on CS. What, what are what was what’s the most interesting thing that you’re seeing in the in trends right now? This market is fucking weird. Right? It is screwed up. And I don’t get it. It doesn’t make sense. You probably feel that more so than than anybody.

Jon Johnson:

Right? You’re leading into this kind of product led growth, and you’re also Kinda powering a lot of product led growth. I know that you’ve got the renewals led growth hashtag

Mathew Cagney:

Exactly. Thank you, John. Good morning, Matt.

Jon Johnson:

Because everybody thanks To what? Didn’t catalyst really screw everything up and turned everything into something led growth?

Mathew Cagney:

Yes.

Jon Johnson:

We all have it

Kristi Faltorusso:

now, right? Ones. I feel like a lot people jumping that bag bandwagon.

Josh Schachter:

Yeah. Well, I guess, John, we can throw away that catalyst sponsorship of this podcast.

Jon Johnson:

Led growth. It’s not a bad thing. But, yeah, walk me through, what’s interesting right now in Kind of the view that you’re seeing from from the top.

Mathew Cagney:

I I think there’s a couple of couple of core drivers. One is More and more tech companies are realizing realizing, as you know, that the customers are their biggest asset and that they have to grow them, retain them, and continue to grow them again and again. So I think that’s obviously one of the really big trends we’ve seen over the last couple of years where funding’s gone and see us. Now funding’s going into renewals and renewals automation, because these companies are gonna scale and do more with the same people or less. So they’re looking to automation to take to help with that particular conversation and journey. The other part that I find really interesting at the moment is Over the last sort of 3 years, we’ve found that found many, many vendors didn’t want to allow customers to downgrade. But now I’m starting to see some early trends now and actually allowing us to configure that in the digital interface to say, Actually, you know what if machine learning’s identified that I’m a a potential churn risk, maybe we might wanna proactively offer them a slightly smaller package, because It’s better to keep that customer to lose them completely. And if we’re starting to see that as a bit of a leading indicator in a lot of conversations of that I’m having with with big tech companies at the moment, And I think that’s probably the the most fundamental change I’ve seen over the last sort of 3 years, which they were all hard and fast.

Mathew Cagney:

If you wanna if you wanna reduce your quantity, there’s a horrible path to get it through. You gotta pick up the phone. You gotta call the one eight hundred number. You’ve gotta wait on there for 45 minutes to get to someone’s voice mail, and then you’ll never get you know? And so I’m seeing them becoming a lot more proactive in that area, which I think is a really interesting sign of the economic times and the fact that they’re starting to realize that One size interaction doesn’t fit all and that, you know, a lot of us are quite digital sadly, and we wanna control our own destiny, and just give us a self-service in the face, and let us have a crack at it.

Jon Johnson:

One thing you you, touched on, the flexibility right of contract, Sizes. I think I think that’s really intelligent. And and from your standpoint, though, as a CEO, what’s how does that feel? We used to have to like, we have to quantify revenue, right, where our job is to protect revenue. Right? And if if up until this point, Anything lower than what we renewed at is is still risk. Right? We’re seeing this in our industry too. How do you how do you justify that in the markets when you’re VC backed or when you’re, you know, fundraising, and you have this you’re actually advertising the ease, the flexibility, right, of downgrades or, you know, less revenue just to save kind of that customer. Does that make sense?

Mathew Cagney:

Yeah. It does. Look, I don’t think they’re actively advertising. A lot of it, we haven’t seen that shift yet, but there more and more of those companies are talking about providing that flexibility. And and the reason is Because if if that customer has to pick up the phone and talk to the CS team about, hey, what happens if I take, you know, 15 widgets instead of 25? That’s a time consuming process. A customer is probably might gonna be they’re gonna churn anyway, so let’s retain them. But also let’s use automation to free that workload up, because normally, that workload comes at the back end of the order. If we can free that up, let the machine do that.

Mathew Cagney:

We can apply our scarce CS and renewals resources to proactive conversations about, Hey. How do I really grow this other quote cohort of customers? So it’s really just about where do we allocate our scarce human resources more than anything, in my opinion, and how do we use automation to free those scarce resources

Josh Schachter:

up. Matthew, are you guys, forecasting likelihood of Churn in order to then power the experience with the customer whether, you know, or, you know, whether it’s an upgrade or downgrade, or are you plugging in from existing systems like you mentioned Salesforce? Of course.

Mathew Cagney:

Yeah. We we have our own propensity to churn models. We’ve developed them over the last 3 years. And so we apply a churn indicator at ingestion. And so we we’re we’re seeing a lot of companies provide us the data a 180 days out from expiring because They wanna have that informed conversation with the customer, start notifying them, talk to them about the next best product. We apply churn rating at that 1 80 days, and we proved that that was over 90% accurate, in about 2 quarters ago for one of the largest software companies in the world. So it’s it’s

Josh Schachter:

a huge improvement. Which is?

Mathew Cagney:

VMware. VMware. VMware. One of the larger ones. Yeah. And, you know, we so we proved that that score applying that at 1 80 days was well over 90% accurate. And so you could just imagine how that allows you to better allocate your human resources, which opportunities to go after, etcetera, etcetera.

Josh Schachter:

What what are some of those factors that you put into that propensity modeling?

Mathew Cagney:

Look. It’s it’s it’s kind of our CTOs are just a real purest in relation to machine learning and AI, the machine tells us. So we we we throw all this data at it. We’ve built these models over the course of the last 3 years, and it tells us the combination of all of those and what’s predictive and not and to what level of, predictability as well. Mhmm. And so that could be anything from, you know, customer type, region, products, channel, etcetera, etcetera.

Josh Schachter:

Have do you do you have any do you know any any trends of around, like, the the timing of when a customer is gonna renew or churn? Have you seen any trends around, You know, if the if the renewal has come up within, you know, x days or x weeks, you still haven’t renewed yet. There’s a increased likelihood of churn or anything like that.

Mathew Cagney:

I think if we if we flip it on a team, one of the one of the really cool things we’ve noticed is there’s just a pent up demand for proactive notification and self-service. And what that means is one of our customers can’t name them, but We notify their customers about 90 to 1 20 days. We’re seeing a very, very large cope of their customers starting to renew 89 days early. And so what that meant was their average on time renewal rate went from 15 days prior to expiry to 45 days prior to expiry. So you just imagine that, one, there’s a there’s this pent up demand to say, hey. I’ve got so many things on my plate. If I know that the vendor and I know them and I trust their pricing, Let me digitally renew self serve and get it off my plate so I can focus on the big things that I need to focus on. And so we’re seeing a growing trend in that area.

Mathew Cagney:

So I think that’s That’s a really important one. And for CSM renewals team, what that does is it reduces all that back end work to the end of the quarter, especially if you’re moving your on time renewal rate by that much.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Let me ask a question. So is your model designed off of what you guys have historically been watching And the data that you’ve been collecting, or is it unique for every single customer that you’re working with as they’re putting their data inputs into the system?

Mathew Cagney:

Yeah. It’s it’s it’s kind of it’s a combination of both. We’ve developed the models, but you have to train them. And it probably takes about 3 to 6 months’ worth of data to train those models, so they’re accurate and predictable to that company. And we can get that in an offline way prior to going live, and the model’s turned on ready to go.

Kristi Faltorusso:

And then do you guys integrate with other systems? Because I have to imagine that from a renewal standpoint, right, there’s a lot of places where this Has to get managed and where it might live today. So if someone’s considering your software, how do they make it feel integrated into their current work stream?

Mathew Cagney:

Yeah. So so we integrate into, you know, the various CRMs. I think the biggest thing, though, to take away from that is The CRMs and CPQ engines are not built for the renewals workflow. There’s there’s no consolidated view of the opportunity, who’s interacting the next step is and what the propensity to renew is. You can build a dashboard in Salesforce, but it doesn’t give you all that interactivity, etcetera, etcetera. So we’ve It’s kind of a combination of use your existing CRM, maybe your CS platform, but also you need a dashboard that normally comes in hours, or you can dive and do see where something is. You might take the next step in that CS tool or the CRM, but this might just become their daily workbench to in which they prioritize their workload until some of those CRM and umCS tools catch up from a from a dashboard and interactivity perspective.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Interesting. Cool.

Josh Schachter:

Matthew, looking at your background, you’ve Yeah. Spent you spent years At the executive level and management across a a number of number of technology companies. And you kinda went over the origin story a little bit of, And the problem you’re solving, with RenewTrack, what what made this problem personal to you as part of your origin story? You could have started a 1000000 different types of start Why and how? What’s the like, the specific origin story personal to you about starting RenewTrack?

Mathew Cagney:

Yeah. So when I was at a company called Afterpay, which helped to find or found the the buy now, pay later, model, and and that that’s really when you break a purchase up into 4 equal payments and spread that over, you know, 4 fortnights. Now One of the things I was responsible there was running a number of their technology platforms and business units. What and I used to get woken up because our biggest customer, you know, in the globe couldn’t transact. And that was because our system had been shut down by the one of the vendors that provided one of, it was a security package that run one of our services. And that this left a really bad taste in my mouth. And because I was trying to manage budgets there and technology spend and I’ll give you an example. I would get a renewals notice from my technology vendor.

Mathew Cagney:

First thing I would say is, okay. I think we still want them, but why don’t I ask my manager that still runs that side of the business? Because I don’t actually know that well. And then I’d have to chase that person up. I’d have to chase clear up pretty much daily to come back to me. Hey, clear. Come back to me. Do you still want this tool? Do you still want this tool? And I’d get her information back maybe 2 weeks later. Then I go, okay.

Mathew Cagney:

Now I just need to double check with our tech team. Are they still okay with this technical platform, or is there anything else they would like? And I have to do exactly the same thing and follow them up at the same time. And because it’s just a one dimensional PDF, I have to forward it to them, get notes back, and it it was just it was an archaic nightmare. So what I wanted to do was invest in a business that broke that down and essentially allowed me to share a secure tokenized link with everybody involved in that buying process that can interact with that renewal exactly the same time, read the Ts and Cs, accept them and a purchase order. Because then once I’ve got Clear’s approval and Jasmine’s approval, then I have to go to finance and say, okay, finance. Can you please approve this and give me a PO number? It’s like, I’m trying to run a business. I cannot be going through this process all the time to, you know, a number of different tech things. So what we’ve tried to do is create a an interactive a tokenized link that I can share with other buyers in the organization.

Mathew Cagney:

They can interact with it at real time, and we can all close that at once. Now how that manifests itself, if if you’re not engage if you’re a vendor and you’re not engaging maybe the is just if you’re disengaging the CTO or the technical buyer, they might not be aware of what other things you you should be doing as an organization. And so if if you’re communicating with me, my my technical manager, and my CPO on the one interface and showing me the appropriate upsell or transition journeys to a strategic platform, then I can help influence that as a customer and say, I’m not at self selecting, though. I’m gonna upgrade from this product to this product because that’s gonna suit where we’re going as an organization. If you’re just dealing with that 1 buyer, it’s it’s hard, and you miss things. And and that’s why, obviously, we’ve got that highly personalized approach for accounts that are over $100,000 where we can do that, where we can put people on that. We just try to break that down with technology and allow that you do that for $1,000 account and a 100,000 Yeah.

Jon Johnson:

I wanna just change shift Just a little bit on topics, but about the way that you kinda think about customer success. Obviously, like, we talk a lot about customer success. I think renewals are a huge, obviously, huge part of this. There’s a lot of, like, of the Venn diagram of what we do. It’s a pretty big center spot. Right? Walk me through what customer success looks like at your organization. Obviously, you’re using this tool for your customers. What does Your CSM and and RM process look like.

Jon Johnson:

Do you have a CCO? Are you, you know, director? What is your, reporting structure look like for customer success?

Mathew Cagney:

Yeah. We’ve got a we’ve got a CCO, and he’s on he’s obviously on our executive team. So we we treat customer success really, really important here at RenewTrack. His name is Paul Dunn. And one of the things I I I thought was unique, and I was googling it before here, but we also make sure that our customer success reps are invited involved in every single sales process to make sure that when we’re signing up to a program, that they are comfortable that they can deliver the outcome that the salesperson is signing up to. And I think I thought that was one of the unique things about us, until I googled it on, on the interweb before we joined this podcast. But so we treat customer success very, very importantly, and we involve them very early up in that presales process to make sure that they

Jon Johnson:

Can I ask what stage you do? I’m gonna interrupt you. What what stage do you in involve Yes, and we had we talked about this, like, on every podcast. Yeah.

Josh Schachter:

But it’s unique to you.

Jon Johnson:

But it’s unique. Yeah.

Mathew Cagney:

Damn. Damn. Damn. Okay. Yeah.

Jon Johnson:

So But you’re a special snowflake and everything you do is wonderful. Yeah.

Mathew Cagney:

Yeah. So we involved them at, just before proposal stage, helping to create the pros all the way through the contracting. So when an opportunity gets to about 50, 60% probability. That’s awesome.

Kristi Faltorusso:

On every on every deal you said? You did this? Oh, I’m sorry, John. I’m gonna interrupt you. Regardless of deal size, there’s no threshold, Told or do you are your average deal size is large enough to warrant that motion?

Josh Schachter:

What’s your average deal size?

Kristi Faltorusso:

Looks like I don’t wanna ask that. We’re recording.

Mathew Cagney:

We’re doing

Josh Schachter:

lots. I’m turning into Nathan Latka here. We’re we’re we’re going after the hard, tough,

Kristi Faltorusso:

tough, tough,

Josh Schachter:

tough, tough, tough, tough, tough, tough, tough, tough, tough, tough, tough, tough, tough, tough, tough, tough, tough, tough, tough, tough, tough, tough, tough, tough,

Kristi Faltorusso:

tough. Average deal size.

Mathew Cagney:

Some of them are down as low as 10 k a year. So they’re they’re quite small.

Josh Schachter:

Don’t give that face, Christie.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Right. I just

Josh Schachter:

I’m joking. I’m joking.

Kristi Faltorusso:

I wasn’t commenting on the deal size. I think that that Might be low depending on the volume of deals that you have coming in at that deal size. Right? So I do see that there are a lot of folks that definitely advocate for that. I would myself. I don’t have the team size to justify including them in every single deal below a certain threshold. Quite frankly, I like be more involved in the deal process anyway than my CSMs, because I want to hear firsthand what’s going on, make sure that I feel like we can deliver on it. But no. That’s what I was asking.

Kristi Faltorusso:

So There’s

Josh Schachter:

a tool for that. I mean, I think Matthew

Kristi Faltorusso:

Interesting. Wow.

Josh Schachter:

I I think I I think Matthew, is a start up founder, and he he’s rolling up the sleeves using saying we are positioning customers first because we are I love that. In the business of customer experience and renewals and customer success, and so we’re gonna Drink our own champagne as, as the other Christie in my life recently reminded me better than eat our eat our own dog food.

Jon Johnson:

I’m gonna interrupt Josh

Kristi Faltorusso:

from wants to eat the dog food. You always drink the champagne.

Jon Johnson:

I’m gonna interrupt Josh from complimenting our guest too much. But, one thing that I do love about this, though, what is your feedback loop look like? Right? So you’ve got your at a most specifically about, when to bring folks in. Right? Are you do you have a conversation with sales and CS At that 50 to 60% for deals, a, that close, that go to closed won, and that go to closed lost. Are are you identifying Some of those trends in and maybe adjusting what that deployment looks like, from a, you know, from a standpoint of of headcount or or resource management?

Mathew Cagney:

God, that’s a broad question. So

Jon Johnson:

Yes. Move on.

Mathew Cagney:

Yeah. So catalogs, we we kind of have a a sales and CS interlock once a week where we kinda review the pipeline. We’re going through each one that’s moving forward, what who’s gonna get involved in the next call, the next proposal, and then who’s actually churned from from the pipeline this month, and what are we gonna take away and learn from that, from a vernacular perspective, and and what motivated that client to to not proceed, and how do we make sure that’s baked into everything we do. And I guess the other reason we want to see us involved, especially in the small opportunities now, so we’re still, you know, we’re still a small company, is every customer means the world to us. And we want to be able to tell their story to help us, you know, acquire new customers. So we just wanna wrap our arms around everybody at the moment, while we can until we’ve created, I guess, replicatable stories across all these different verticals. Every software vendor seems to right, differently, have a different cohort of customers and so forth. So that’s what we’re that’s kind of the stage we’re at at the moment.

Jon Johnson:

I love that.

Josh Schachter:

Matthew, from a start up entrepreneur perspective, we all know that starting A startup founding a startup is a roller coaster to say the very least. Mhmm. There’s highs and there’s lows, and then there’s loop de loops.

Jon Johnson:

Really lows. Yeah.

Josh Schachter:

What has been how long have you guys been around?

Mathew Cagney:

We’ve been around 6 years. I took them over 4 years ago.

Josh Schachter:

6 years, so 4 years. What’s been like a very memorable narrative style high that you can share And what’s been one of the biggest lows. And if you wanna reframe that, you could say, like, maybe something you didn’t expect or learning opportunity, we can call it.

Mathew Cagney:

Yeah. I think one of the biggest highs was, you know, when I came into the business, I looked at where we’re spending all of our time and, you know, for a bit especially from an engineering perspective because resource is scarce. We were spending 95% of our time putting out bugs and sup dealing with support issues. And that meant we can only apply 5% to r and d. You can’t grow a business that way. You can’t listen to my customers and take and, you know, create a compelling roadmap for them for the couple of years, so we had to address that and free that up. So one of the things I’m really proud of is we managed to turn that around and that, you know, you’ve got to do that by working with your customers to figure out what’s the noisiest problem I need to solve first. So, eventually, over the course of the next 6 months, I can turn our engineering team around to be focusing on more feature requests and pure r and d and get ahead of those feature requests actually, because Ideally, you wanna be ahead of your customers and and thinking about that.

Mathew Cagney:

How do I set my product up in a productized way that will cater for all those requirements rather than just waiting for feature requests to come in. And so I think that’s probably one of the proudest moments.

Josh Schachter:

For you as for you as for you as the leader, One one of the problems is getting the the trains running on time, getting the proper rhythm and cadence of your product development effectively and and being able to take impact Input from your users and be predictive of what your customers want. That’s what you’re saying.

Mathew Cagney:

Yeah. And even even getting predictive of what they want and starting to lead the conversation.

Josh Schachter:

How are you doing that? Do you have a systematic way that you that you launched into that?

Mathew Cagney:

I I use a framework called, not sure if you guys have heard pragmatic marketing. It’s essentially a I mean, it’s a framework designed for product management, and it and it allows you to there’s a whole lot of feature prioritization stuff in there, which allows you to actually reduce the noise and and start to quantifiably define the value of that feature to your organization based on retiring technical debt, costing, you know, churn of winning new business and so forth. So that’s the framework I use, and I’d recommend Anybody who hasn’t heard about it to check it out, it’s awesome. It’s it takes in takes into consideration technical debt, strategic fit, time to get that feature in the market, time for it to add value and maybe monetary, return for, you know, winning new customers.

Josh Schachter:

Cool. And what about the lows?

Mathew Cagney:

Below probably, it’s just it’s just a relentless grind. You know? Like, sales is hard. Like, you know, It’s it’s it’s just up and down like a goddamn roller coaster, and the highs are absolutely amazing. You know, like, everybody I don’t know. I get I get really motivated when we’re selling and our customers are and loving us, telling the case studies, etcetera, etcetera. But then when you’re losing deals, they’re just it’s like just you’re at this bottom of a trough and think, shit, what have I done? When am I doing it right? So The 1st couple of years, we had to really get into our rhythm. Now it seems to be high after high, but for the 1st couple of years, it was really tough. Just that grind and continue to pick yourself up after no after no after no.

Jon Johnson:

It’s It’s interesting. You have any questions for us?

Josh Schachter:

I got more. I got more. Nesli, I got I got another one.

Kristi Faltorusso:

So Sean.

Jon Johnson:

No. I know. But, Well, you know, I always like to see what people have to I don’t know.

Mathew Cagney:

We’re cool too.

Josh Schachter:

So so, a lot of the the CS brands Out there, client success, UpdateAI, all of them are very engaged with the community, You know, throwing these Mhmm. Conferences and and doing these online webinars and podcasts and so on and so forth. I haven’t seen RenewTrack out there, and that’s not judgment. That’s just I haven’t come across you guys. Maybe, a, why is that, and b, where are you focusing Some of your go to market energy, your sales and marketing energy, if it’s not in those, you know, forums that that I at least am mostly aware of in CS.

Mathew Cagney:

Yeah. Look. We’ve we’ve sort of mostly focused our advertising on, you know, software vendors where we’re trying to actually describe and and give away sort of ebooklets on how to be how to run your best renewals practice, It’s had a manager long tail, how to write your email notifications, those type of things. I guess what we’d like to we’re going through a process now. We’re gonna redesign our website, and you know what it’s like. We’ve gotta have your website and content right before you can spend your money in certain areas. So we’re at the moment, we’re focused on Let’s do a grand up website, do, redesign focused on content search engine optimization first. Then the next phase is to continue to build content that we can I did create some thought leadership around and start telling our story and why people should actually think about this to complement their CSM renewal strategy? That’s where we’re spending our time at the moment.

Mathew Cagney:

Would love to be involved in some of these more, thought leadership based conversations on where the market’s heading. Love what you guys are doing at UpdateAI, AI. Sharing that knowledge about how do you use AI and how do you just simplify the whole word practice and how do we how do we get more efficient. We would love to be part of that program. We’ve set up the bandwidth up until now.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Yeah. No. I get it. Tell you, I I get where you’re coming from. Don’t wait. Don’t wait. Like, I I mean, like, I listen. I’m not a CEO, so why should you listen to me? Right? Like, I’ve never founded a company.

Kristi Faltorusso:

I’m sure you have a ton of competing resources, projects, whatever. Don’t wait. What you guys are doing could be super disruptive to the world that we’re all operating in. And if you have something to say, go say it. Like, I mean, everyone else is saying whatever’s on their mind, and it’s not always useful. So, like, if you got something useful to say, go go out there and share. Right? Go after the earned media. That’s what I would advise you to do because I think waiting for you to get your website and build thought leadership content, you’re just gonna be spinning your wheels.

Kristi Faltorusso:

It’ll never be the right time. I I gotta say just, like, get out there and be present. Get your sales people

Josh Schachter:

out there and be running your rules. This could be a lot of fun, Chrissy. Let’s let’s all go around, you, me, and John, and let’s Help. Let let’s let’s be really, like, what

Jon Johnson:

he needs to do.

Josh Schachter:

Presumptuous here, and let’s let’s come up with Matthew’s 2024 go to market plan. I think that’s totally

Kristi Faltorusso:

fine. Say all that, Josh. I’m over here trying to, like, build my my 2024, like, game

Josh Schachter:

I think this would be fun. I think this would be fun. What’s your top what are your top 3? And this is tactical. This isn’t, like, go on a webinar. No. No. No. This is, like, Jan Young’s office hours, Thursday afternoons.

Josh Schachter:

Right? Like, I want, like, what’s, like, the top 2. We’ll each give 2. What are the top 2 tactical, get your name out there in the CS community, things that you would do? Christy, you start.

Kristi Faltorusso:

One, get on the client success webinar. Come talk about what you’re doing and how you feel like you’re changing renewal stuff. No. I’m not saying that from my standpoint. Like, giving him an

Josh Schachter:

easy Christie. I just vomited a little bit.

Kristi Faltorusso:

No. I’m giving him I’m giving him an easy place to go start. He doesn’t need to, like, audition and come and, like, Go through all these hoops. I’m telling you, I would like to I would love to host you to come talk about the work that your world is doing. Honestly, be present on LinkedIn. All of the people that are Operating in our world, not all of them. Right? There’s a billion that aren’t. But so many people that are out here, whether they’re consultants or practitioners, be present for them so they can either use your product or recommend your product.

Kristi Faltorusso:

So you yourself or get folks you you said you have a chief customer officer. Get your chief customer officer engaged in these communities. Like, I would say get them present on LinkedIn. Get them building their brand and their visibility. Start talking about the great work you’re doing. You also mentioned these customer stories and all these testimonials. Great. Showcase some of the work that your your customers are doing with your product.

Kristi Faltorusso:

I would love to hear about it because this is the 1st time hearing about your product, and it sounds really interesting.

Josh Schachter:

Oh my god. You guys are so mean to me. Wait, Matthew, before we we no. Josh is mean. Before we go on to John, Matthew, do you have any response to Christie?

Mathew Cagney:

Now I think you’re right. Look. It’s it’s sometimes the Australian in us is just a little bit more conservative and and to to be successful in in America.

Josh Schachter:

Australians are conservative. I’m gonna call bullshit on that.

Mathew Cagney:

Agree. To know to a degree. To a degree.

Jon Johnson:

They’re not as

Kristi Faltorusso:

say I know somebody that was It’s not very

Jon Johnson:

Woah. Woah. We don’t Really? Anyway. We we just had another Aussie that

Mathew Cagney:

Oh, did you? You know.

Jon Johnson:

It was a great it was a great conversation. I don’t I don’t know. I’ve never I don’t do this with you guys. You guys are, like, 8 levels above me. I just talk about, Like the trenches over here. CCOs and CEOs. I’m just in IC. I don’t have an opinion.

Josh Schachter:

Just come up with an 2 ideas, John.

Jon Johnson:

Sell sell more, churn less.

Josh Schachter:

No. John, you have it. Like, you you you were part

Kristi Faltorusso:

of so many stuff. Come on.

Josh Schachter:

Tactical stuff. Come on. Yeah.

Jon Johnson:

Let’s see.

Kristi Faltorusso:

You go first and CS insider. Come on, John. Like, you’re you’re part of you’re so enriched in our community, and you do so many things. You participate in all these groups. Tell him where to go. He doesn’t know where to go.

Jon Johnson:

Yeah. I mean, I think that’s a great opportunity. We do a bunch of, we have a newsletter called CS insider that focuses on, a lot of folks that are in the market for this kind of stuff. So we do a a newsletter. We do events. I think I I like what Christie says about getting in front of people. I also think, you know, like, right now, the CEO mindset is the marketing model. Every CEO is Being told by their marketing person to go out and do podcasts and go out and share their opinions and kinda tell their stories, some of them to ill effect.

Jon Johnson:

I would Just really urge you to be very, very authentic and not just put content out for content’s sake. I think you have a really natural perspective. I really love your your, your energy. Your hairline is perfect for, for for the web. Agree.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Agree. Agree.

Jon Johnson:

You need a face for radio. No. No. No. But, also, like, you’re talking about this shit in a way that that makes a lot of sense. And every single person in my organization needs to hear the way that you talk about frictionless renewals. And I I think not just getting in front of CS, but also, like, Really positioning yourself as as the experience of the customer with the brand. Not maybe not customer experience, like, as the industry, but, like, How your customers interact with your brand is one of the most important retention strategies.

Jon Johnson:

And and if we make it difficult for them to buy and renew Or downgrade or change, then that is causing pain that CSMs don’t usually own. Right? That’s a RM or an AM or somebody else.

Josh Schachter:

What’s the second tactical thing, John?

Jon Johnson:

I don’t I don’t have a second tactical thing.

Josh Schachter:

That’s that’s not no. No. No.

Jon Johnson:

You’re not another podcast.

Josh Schachter:

You’re not wiggling on this. Okay. What other podcast?

Jon Johnson:

I don’t listen to CS podcasts. You’re putting me on the spot here, and I don’t I don’t I would

Kristi Faltorusso:

say go on go on fixes. Right? The digital CS? Because if you’re talking about, like, kinda automating this renewal process Oh. And digitizing that Experience, that feels like a natural one for you to go sync up with our friend, Alex.

Jon Johnson:

I agree. That’s a great idea.

Josh Schachter:

Alex is a good guy. Matthew, I I, First of all, you you you would you do have a hairline for for, what was it?

Jon Johnson:

Television. Radio. No.

Josh Schachter:

No. No. No. No. I have a hairline for for radio.

Jon Johnson:

Yeah. We wanna show it off, Matthew.

Josh Schachter:

Yeah. You have a hairline for television. You have an actual hairline. So, Let me tell you a story. There’s this guy named Mickey Powell, who is the head of go to market at UpdateAI. He’s not on our session today, but generally, he’s a cohost. And, he has just this passion and curiosity for AI and now generative AI. And he dove straight into becoming a thought leader in JAT g p t 9 months ago when it was still a little bit, you know, unknown.

Josh Schachter:

And he he wrote, You know, he and I had planned to write, like, a 10 page white paper on chat gbt for customer success. He came back a few weeks later with a 70 page white paper. But then but it was it was really well done and really well thought out. And then what he started doing is he established himself through that white paper because it was real content. He went on to the whole circuit of podcasts and webinars, started talking about it, started getting people more started plugging our company into those conversations, Mhmm. Started offering follow-up 1 on ones with teams to educate them on on how they could use chat gpt for customer success. It was really light on referencing UpdateAI actually, But, naturally, it just started to create this groundswell of of of of branding for us. And it sounds like you have, like, A niche there with what you’re doing.

Josh Schachter:

You know, there’s always onboarding softwares. There’s, you know, Rocketlane and and GuideCX and Baton, all these things. And they they do all these, like, webinars and stuff around and even, you know, these ebooks and stuff around onboarding. But you can own renewal, and I mean, that’s really cool. And so you should you already mentioned this is already on your plan. Right? So I’m not giving you this idea. This this is already yours. But I would like Christy said, I would quickly get out there with some content.

Mathew Cagney:

And I

Josh Schachter:

would I would not only make it your content. I would make it content that you glean also from the community. So put some surveys out there, maybe even get some workshops or whatever, and you

Kristi Faltorusso:

get the code. Data, use the data.

Josh Schachter:

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Your data. Yeah. Of course.

Kristi Faltorusso:

But you probably have so much cool data. We use it.

Josh Schachter:

Yeah. I mean, Gong did that, right, like, back in the day with with their talk ratios and stuff for salespeople. And, I would, I would create that content quickly, And then I would get on a circuit of all of these community forums and webinars and podcasts and all that kind of stuff and become the thought leader in renewals.

Mathew Cagney:

Love it. Well, I should’ve I was I must have been I was having this conversation with our, digital marketer Probably about a month ago, and I drew this triangle, and I said, right, we’re doing at the moment, we’re focused on the base things, but we’ve also gotta have this other thing at the top of the triangle, which is this kind of influencer partnership kind of thing about how do we get our name out there. So I think it was just jogged my my memory and approach, and I’m gonna double down on this over the next I hope

Kristi Faltorusso:

we didn’t get anyone fired.

Mathew Cagney:

No. No. No. Not at all. No.

Kristi Faltorusso:

I mean, are you looking to hire somebody?

Josh Schachter:

Chrissy. You want a 4th job, Chrissy?

Kristi Faltorusso:

Good start. Yeah.

Josh Schachter:

You know,

Kristi Faltorusso:

I have nothing to do Saturday between, like, you know, 8 PM and 12. So

Jon Johnson:

Yep. Well, this is great.

Josh Schachter:

Well, Matthew, do you have any questions for us?

Mathew Cagney:

No. I think just just your advice and and and and just it’s like a it’s like a short circuit. Right? It’s it’s hard to you get Stuck on this sort of merry-go-round when you focus on the next thing, the next thing. It’s nice to just have that short circuit message across the bar, hey. To continue to get your story out there. This is what you need to do. And and, Christy, to your point, you don’t need to wait. I think and on all the advices is spot on perfect.

Mathew Cagney:

Resonates with me. And I’ve just gotta kick it up a gear.

Josh Schachter:

Yeah. I think you’re doing great. Sounds like you have a product that really drives value. Congratulations on that. I like the path you’re on, and I I thank you for I hope we didn’t come across too too strongly here, which we often do oh, we always do, in in volunteering our opinions. But, wishing you the best. Everybody go and check out RenewTrack, which by the way, like, you help people track renewals. And so I love your name.

Josh Schachter:

I didn’t quite get it at first, but now it’s like, yeah. It’s just, like, very literal, and that’s exactly, you know, what it should be.

Kristi Faltorusso:

We need more of those.

Josh Schachter:

Yeah. We got all those.

Mathew Cagney:

There’s nothing worse than an obscure product name. Right? You go Right.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Or the ones that they spell it away, and then I have to say it phonetically, like, 10 times to figure out how I actually say it. Mhmm.

Josh Schachter:

Yeah. Exactly. Yes. I love it. Have a great day, everybody. Thank you for listening to our episode. Thank you, Matthew.

Jon Johnson:

Thanks, guys.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Thanks, Matthew.

Mathew Cagney:

Awesome, guys. Thank you very much. Lovely to meet you.