#3 | The Practice
The fundamentals matter.
“The best leaders spend less time speaking about winning the game, increasing market share, acquiring a new client, or developing a breakthrough product (all outcomes) and more time on the process goals and the associated steps and actions to get there.” – Admired Leadership
I love sports. I’ve played individual and team sports all of my life. What’s consistent in both is that the fundamentals matter. Form, discipline, consistency, habits, a playbook, and fierce coaches separate athletes from amateurs. The drills, the sprints, the long runs, the hills, a healthy diet, and sleep are all inputs to an output. When you focus on the inputs, the score takes care of itself. While I love winning the game, at this stage, it’s about being better than yesterday. You won’t get there without the fundamentals.
When we set up Customer Success 1.0 in 2019, we established Gainsight as our CS platform. We laid out guidance for building growth, retention, and defection plans. There wasn’t much to it. It was weak. The fundamentals weren’t there. It was hard for me to admit it. I wanted to win so I was focused on the score, not the inputs. When we decided to pump 1,000+ CSMs into IBM, I had to change this mindset. I read CS books and more than enough CS blogs. I realized I need a “practice” to build and scale methods, assets, and tools for CS fundamentals so I launched one.
Everything is better with a picture so let’s use one.
When you set up your CS organization, consider 3 core components of a Practice with responsibilities that enable CSMs to gain the fundamentals. If you are like me, you have a 2-pronged problem.
Problem 1: You need to train CSMs to learn what CS is all about.
Problem 2: You need CSMs to learn your products and how to drive adoption of them.
I recommend solving for each problem with 2 core teams because the skills are likely different if you are managing a large portfolio.
Problem 1 can be solved by “The CS Practice”. The CS Practice can drive your day to day operationalization of CS as a “function”. They can build your playbook framework, teach your adoption methods, manage your Gainsight instance, and drive CS as a profession in your company with specifics on roles, responsibilities, and promotions. The CS Practice should lead your hiring, onboarding, and training working with HR. The team in the CS Practice must know CS. Although not impossible, it’s hard to do the job without really knowing CS.
Problem 2 can be solved by “CS Product Practices”. These are where your product SMEs sit. We call them Practice Leaders. They know your products and fill your playbooks with all of the specifics to drive adoption for them. We automated our playbook in Gainsight to help our CSMs know what steps to do next in driving adoption. The Practice Leaders help your CSMs understand product roadmaps, they build technical assets to drive adoption, and they are the glue for the product feedback loop between your CSMs, customers, and the lab. More on that in another blog. Joining a CS Product Practice is a great way for strong employees in product development or product management to do rotations in a GTM function.
The first 2 components were inputs. The 3rd component is about your output. This is the Data and Analytics arm that drives your management system. You are working with this team to understand “the score”. The data will help you figure out where you need to optimize coverage, where you need to tweak your plays, and what the root cause of problems are. This team works closely with Finance and Operations as well as your leaders, but they must know the CS function. Remember... we’re talking NRR, consumption, deployments – terms that are not native to most Software Finance teams.
There’s no one right way to set up a Practice, but I’ve learned, is that it’s indispensable for scale. Remember our Starbucks example. You can’t have each barista change the recipe at each store. When customers show up, they want to count on a consistent, best in class experience with a SME who knows the recipe for success. The only way to get there is by establishing your fundamentals driven by your Practice.
I’d love to hear from you.
Janine