Taylor: [00:00:00] Welcome to Success/ful, where we break down the essential elements of leading customer success strategies. This podcast is all about uncovering blind spots, pushing beyond typical best practices and tackling those out-of-bounds topics for CS leaders that are key to our success. I'm your host, Taylor Johnston, VP of Customer Success at Vitally. I love connecting with listeners. So find me on LinkedIn and say hello. And we'd also love for you to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. Today's guest is Sunil Joseph, an advisor and Chief Customer Officer. We're tapping into Sunil's experience on building customer success teams at different stages of company growth. Let's dive in. 

Taylor: Alright, well, welcome Sunil. Tell us how you got into the customer success base and what you do now. 

Sunil: So I started my career as a full-stack software engineer. And as a part of [00:01:00] building products for customers, especially on the enterprise side, I started helping customers on the side in terms of being able to solve their existing problems. And that was very interesting to me because there was one part of me that was deeply technical, solving problems, which I really enjoyed, the building side of things. The other part that I started kind of enjoying even more was working with customers, understanding their problems, and starting to solve them. 

Sunil: And I realized that was the part of the brain that, although I enjoyed, I didn't have much skills in, and I hadn't built enough of that puzzle yet. And that's what kind of led me to go to grad school. Start to learn more about the world of business. I did some externships and then finally ended up at Deloitte back in 2011. So that was kind of my start into CS, if you may. So as a builder, started to kind of solve problems, and then being in the world of advisory, got to kind of do that end to end, day in, day out. That zero-to-one journey was something that I really enjoyed. And then after consulting in mid to late 2015, I moved to the Bay [00:02:00] Area and joined a bunch of venture-backed companies. 

Sunil: I made stops at companies, everything from series A all the way through series E, and seen exits through the process in terms of what it looks like to build at different revenue stages, to build through kind of different stages of like ups and downs. And that gave me an understanding of what it means to build customer success truly because customer success is not one size fits all. As I mentioned, there is customer success when you're an engineer. There's customer success when you're a consultant, and there's customer success when you're actually working in SaaS product-led companies as well. So those are the three flavors that I've experienced throughout my career. So that's my journey in customer success, and what do I do now? 

Sunil: I actually advise companies in terms of building up the companies from early stage. To growth stages, CS being like a big part of it, but also the different aspects of company building. So I'm taking one year gap right now, trying to kind of help and kind of build out the advisory side of things and really kind of enjoy that part because when you're a full time operator, you don't get to or have the liberty or time to do a lot of that. [00:03:00] So doing that currently, but

planning to kind of jump back into either kind of an operating role or either an entrepreneurship role pretty soon. 

Taylor: Amazing. And I think you hit on something so deep within customer success, which is that it is not a function or one team, it is an entire business problem, entire area of our businesses. So I love that you bring perspective from so many different parts of the organization, and types of companies. So I know you mentioned you've worked at companies of all stages and all sizes. Educate us a bit. What are the typical funding stages of a business and what makes them fundamentally different? 

Sunil: Absolutely. The vernacular changes depending on who you ask. So this is kind of my vernacular in terms of just simplifying the universe, but there are I would say four different stages overall. One is the seed stage, which is kind of the earliest kind of germination stage of a company. And then within the seed stage, you have kind of the pre-seed and seed rounds. The next is the early investment rounds, which is [00:04:00] going into kind of the series A and B, then you have the growth stages, which is going to your series C and then the final stage is that kind of growth equity, if you may, and the kind of private equity firms come in, or kind of growth equity firms come in and give you kind of that last push through that kind of getting you to an IPO, and the exits at that particular point is either you go public, which is kind of one of the dream states, and the second state is actually being acquired by a private equity firm. 

Sunil: And the third is getting acquired by another private company. And through my experiences, I've encountered all three of them. And there's actually a lot of positives that can come out of that exit. Not just in terms of the outcome for the companies, but in terms of the overall kind of value creation pieces. The outcomes that employees and the stakeholders have as a part of the process. But more importantly is like you work on something that you feel super passionate about and actually seeing that delivered into the world and having that validation from the markets is very interesting. So I would say Overall, [00:05:00] four stages, the seed stage, early stage, growth stage, and then that kind of final push stage, if you may, kind of the mezzanine stage, and then going into the actual kind of IPO, or if you may, kind of these other exit cycles. 

Taylor: So lots of building happening at each of those stages. Should the way a company approaches its customer success strategy vary depending on the stage? 

Sunil: Absolutely. It does vary. I'm going to actually. Tweak my answer a little bit. I'll say that it varies, but also there are some commonalities and there are some differences in terms of building. So let me just talk about the commonalities. The commonalities that exist across these are three. Number one is, there's always going to be shift right metrics, like what are the things you want to actually grow as a part of the business. So that's always going to remain. So especially building on the CS side, you would always have goals that you're always looking to kind of exceed. 

Sunil: So that's going to remain irrespective of building at every stage. The second piece is the customer success maturity. The maturity that you build your company in [00:06:00] would

continue to evolve. And there's a nuance here. And happy to kind of double click into this, but you can have CD's D companies or CD's E companies where your customer success can be at series A, if you may, right, which is kind of the earliest germination stages of CS, could be on the reactive side of CS, not really the proactive side, if you may, or going to predictive. So it's interesting that the stages of the company or the venture funding don't correlate with the maturity of customer success at times. And again, It is nobody's fault. It's best efforts in terms of where the company starts, what they've done through the process, but that's kind of the one thing is like, there will always be that maturity curve that doesn't correlate to funding stages to the customer success maturity. So that's the second thing that's common. 

Taylor: I'm curious. Why, why is that? Why do you see that? 

Sunil: Majority of fact, there's a lot of factors to it. If I were going to boil it down, there are two big factors to it. Number one is the kind of persona that kind of you're bringing in at every stage. I think that's [00:07:00] kind of where the differences come in. But the persona of a CS leader that comes in early stage, the skill sets you're really looking for at that particular point is not somebody that's been in CS for five or ten years, it's somebody that is more a generalist that can actually help get those customers to the door. When you get to a certain stage, then you'll get the kind of the next leader that can actually take the CS team from your team kind of a little more chaotic state to kind of more of the reactive state and then when you get to kind of a series A or B, then you'll have leaders that can take you from that reactive to proactive and then getting into series C and beyond. So the main differences that I really see is like the persona that And that really kind of starts off your CS engine, is not the persona that's gonna really kind of end up scaling this in the future. 

Sunil: And there are sometimes leaders that have actually done this whole journey from end to end, right? And there are people that kind of come and specialize at these very different stages of the journey. Uh, and everybody kind of brings their unique, uh, taste and unique skill set into 

that, right? So, and there's always a [00:08:00] handoff, like in CS, we talk about handoff from sale to implementation, implementation to customer success. There are reminiscences of things that are passed across that might not be consistent, right? So, so that's why I'm saying that building at different stages in terms of venture journey versus actually the customer success journey depends a lot on the persona who's built your V1. V2 and V3. And it's very hard to have one person do everything or have people who have seen the whole journey. 

Sunil: So there's the persona chain, uh, kind of uniqueness that comes into that. And then the second piece of the puzzle is your customers evolve, your business models evolve, right? So you might have started into a purely kind of sales-led motion and then you bring in a PLG motion into the picture, right? And all these need to be additive to your business. It's not like you're shifting completely your kind of business model in terms of how you're selling, you're kind of adding different pieces to the puzzle. You just need to be kind of intentional in terms of making sure your customer experience remains unified across all of this. And you're not creating different experiences as you're kind of going through a journey, right?

Sunil: Which also kind of goes [00:09:00] into your enterprise, mid-market, SMB, how you're kind of thinking through those different tiers as well. And what is the uniqueness that you bring in there? So, to summarize all of this. Persona is the one piece of the puzzle that kind of creates some of that kind of disjoint experiences and kind of uniqueness. I would say the con would be some of the disjoint experiences, the pros are the uniqueness that they bring to the process. And the second one is your business evolves, your customer evolves, and your products evolve. So that kind of brings this kind of changes in terms of how CS needs to be managed across these different stages as well. 

Taylor: We all are here because we love to build, and we're going to inherit a certain type of customer experience. And so it's our job to figure out, okay, as we're evolving here, how does that customer experience evolve along the way? So let's zoom in at the very beginning of the journey. What are the customer success resources that are actually required at early-stage companies? I know you mentioned it's important. It's small and it's mighty when you're at the very beginning. What needs to be in place as a foundation, even when the [00:10:00] company's not bringing in a ton of revenue yet? 

Sunil: One of the things that's kind of critical to building up that particular piece is really kind of thinking about making sure every customer that's coming through has a unique customer experience. And again, it doesn't have to be fully baked, doesn't have to be the kind of best in class, but making sure every customer that comes into the door has a value journey that they go through. And that's a big difference, right? Because the one way to think about it is every customer that goes through these 15 steps that they have to always go through, right? 

Sunil: They have to have a kickoff, they have to have training, and all that is well and good and well-intentioned. But what I'm really talking about is having specific value milestones, which means how quickly is my customer getting activated? Getting access to the instance, they are on it, and they are getting up and running, right? What's that time to value? For them to have the instance, and for them to go and configure it by themselves, right? The next time to value is, are they really using the platform, right? Which is pretty important. Post onboarding to a lot of extent, right, which is not just the launch, but what goes after that, so thinking through the different parts of the journey in terms of [00:11:00] how quickly you're activating value, how quickly you're getting customers to the onboarding of value, the growth in value, and so forth, right, so Defining your value journey early is highly critical. 

Sunil: That's the first step. The second step of the process is what are, what is the impact or success metrics at every stage of the journey. So as you're going to take customers to activation, really being measurable and kind of having a mutual agreement with the customers like Here's how we would measure success, right? Doesn't matter if it's your first customer, your second customer, or your tenth customer. Just having that consistency really kind of helps customers kind of understand that, hey, this company's got it, they understand what it means to get to success at different stages. And how are we going to measure value and high five at the end of one month, three months, six months, nine months, and so forth, right?

Sunil: That helps a lot, right? Because if you're creating the foundation of a unified customer journey and value journey, if you have clear success metrics at the end of every value stage, uh, then renewal or upsell or growth or risks, the probability of any risk in that process is highly [00:12:00] reduced, right? So the best a founder can do early in a seed stage, I would say, is really kind of being focused on how do I create a unified customer experience, the best of my ability, and I could be getting, and you're still kind of, you're working through ICP, right, but you might kind of get large customers, you might get some smaller customers, doesn't matter, I want to make sure my customers go through a unified journey. I'll figure it out later. What does white glove level service mean versus what does kind of a kind of not a white glove level service mean? Those are kind of problems to have. I would say more first-world problems to have once you get to a certain stage. But at that stage of the journey, having a unified value journey and ensuring that I have kind of clear success metrics, basic things you get it covered. And then when you get to the next stage. Then you can add on more layers to that. But I would say the fundamental thing you can do as a founder is to do those first two things. 

Taylor: That's amazing. I mean, you have to, at those early stages, really, as a customer experience leader, and to your point, whether that's you're the founder, or you are a CS persona, or an account [00:13:00] manager in those early stages, being willing to listen. You have the pro if you have a smaller number of customers, you can spend more time with them, really listen, and set that foundation of what value looks like for this platform. Also a great opportunity for CS leaders out there thinking about going into this stage. At that point, building partnerships with your partners in marketing and sales is absolutely mission-critical because guess what? They know the value of the market and they're having to have those conversations every single day. So if you're a CS leader at a company that's. Going for a funding round. So now we're moving from those early stages. What can you as a CS leader do to be most helpful in helping the organization prepare most effectively for its next funding round? 

Sunil: Absolutely. Taylor, I wanted to actually, you brought up an amazing point, by the way. I want to just address that, but actually also help answer kind of the question you had right now. You brought up a great point in terms of partnerships, right? It doesn't matter the kind of the size of the company. Partnerships are the ones that make a company or break a company, at the end of the day. [00:14:00] And partnerships between people. Because at the end of the day, companies, when they buy, you, people buy from people, right? And then that's, the extension of that is companies buying from companies. So if you're able to kind of create those partnerships with your cross-functional stakeholders, and when I talked about that unified customer experience, don't just think about the customer experience in isolation. 

Sunil: That when a customer comes through Me, as a founder, who's a CSM at a seed stage, is going to take a customer through this. In your series E stage, I'm a CSM or an implementation manager taking the customer through this journey. But who are these other stakeholders within their whole journey that are actually going to be supporting to make this successful? Because even CSMs and implementation managers are catalysts in the process, right? They're helping kind of orchestrate some of that process. But product, sales, marketing, finance, right? There are so many other teams that are like, important to make sure everything kind of works together.

So your go-to-market team is highly important, but like all the teams in the company need to be aligned. 

Sunil: What is their race here, right? This just goes back to my consulting days. [00:15:00] Who's responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed at every part of the customer journey? So even if you're a seed stage founder trying to kind of build this journey, always be aligned. Hey, my customer's getting through the initial value. They got through very quickly. Can we use them as a reference customer, right? Maybe your other co-founder is also managing marketing. Tap them on the shoulders. Hey, here's a list of three customers in this quarter that have really kind of high velocity in terms of getting to value quickly. Let's use them as our first set of case studies, right, which is going to start the flywheel of getting our new prospects through the door as well. 

Sunil: So amazing point, I appreciate you really bringing that over because partnerships are highly critical and that kind of also translates into what you need to do for different stages of funding. So, bring these partnerships early and as you're thinking towards, say, series A to series B, how are we going to bring the team together, what are our shift right metrics, What is the ownership for Taylor in the process? What is the ownership for Sunil? What's the ownership for Ann? How are we going to kind of bring this all together and make this happen as a [00:16:00] team is highly important. And CS being the, playing kind of a major role in terms of driving, in my experience, three things. Number one is that elevated customer experience, right? 

Sunil: So the customer experience is as consistent as possible. We're going to evolve the customer experience as you kind of grow and scale in your journey. But the first thing you need to do is, how am I moving my customer experience and my customer journey from being reactive to being proactive, right? So that's kind of the first step in the process. So the first thing is customer experience, um, how do I, how am I able to kind of influence those metrics and how I'm able to show not just qualitatively, but quantitatively how that impacts the business. Number two is revenue. Highly important. And I've been fortunate to be. part of CS teams that have owned revenue from the start and have been leading teams that have owned revenue. 

Sunil: So it just gives me this perspective in terms of the revenue is at the end of the day an outcome, right? But you also need to kind of tie the dots between the activities that your team does, the outcomes your team creates, [00:17:00] the ROI we create for the customers ends up being translating into revenue. So really kind of having the team understand each part of the business and all these stakeholders that we mentioned, right? What is their role in each part of that? to be able to kind of drive towards the outcome? So, revenue is, I would say, the second thing, and revenue predictability, in terms of how you're able to predict revenue as early as possible, because when you're reactive, right, the revenue predictability window is probably, like, two months before the renewal, maybe, but as you get to kind of more proactive, it gets to more six months, right? 

Sunil: So, how are you going to be able to move that needle up and down? and up in terms of renewal predictability, upsell predictability, uh, ability to kind of understand which playbooks to run as early as possible. So I'd say that would be the second piece. And the third piece of the

puzzle is the persona and the skill sets of the team, right? How am I making sure that everybody on my team is successful and is able to kind of up-level, up-skill themselves to be able to kind of meet the needs of the business at the next stage of growth? And sometimes people, and I think this is like a notion which I don't think is, is I do not completely kinda agree with it. 

Sunil: There is a leader [00:18:00] for every stage of the journey. If you have a leader who has actually seen a certain stage, you can actually upskill them to drive the next stage as well. Or if you have a CSM that is, that's been with you from, I Dunno, series A to series B, that same C sm can be upskilled now into kind of driving your next stage of the journey, either in a leadership capacity. Or kind of upskilling their role and taking on much larger accounts and so forth. So rethinking what it means to upskill and create success metrics for my existing team to grow so they can actually take on more challenges and continue to grow with Journey. And who are the, what are the skill sets that I need to augment on the team, right? 

It shouldn't always be like, hey, I'm going to my next stage of journey. I just need a completely different person to either run the team or, you know, kind of replace the existing CSMs. It's actually a first look at how can I upskill my existing team and leaders on my team and then what are the skills that I need to bring into the business and then augment with that. So, so those would be the kind of the three things I would think about. 

Taylor: And how I'm curious as you're talking sort of about the [00:19:00] growth when you are preparing for a funding round how much of it As, as a functional leader is talking about the patterns in the past and the proving of the metrics matched with the vision of the future, what's the balance between sort of looking back and looking forward? 

Sunil: Yeah, great question. Looking back, thinking about what's worked, what's not worked, and what are the action plan based on that is highly important because just looking at what's worked and not worked is not enough, but what are our learnings and what can we apply forward from that is highly important. A very kind of simple example is like, what's been our churn for the last quarter, right? Who are the accounts that we've lost last quarter? Why have we lost it, right? Because the usual kind of answer is that It's kind of easy to say it's for budget cuts, right? But budget cuts are a very high-level reason, like what's the next level kind of leading indicator that we can really kind of apply and learn from that, right? 

Sunil: Maybe it's like customers didn't get to value as quickly, right? The reason we were not able to get to value as quickly is that maybe our [00:20:00] certain kind of product functionality where a customer could kind of get started very quickly just wasn't there, right? Or we as a team, didn't kind of accelerate on the things that we should have to get customers to activate as quickly, right? So just being honest to ourselves and not just kind of Saying, oh, this is this person's fault or that person's fault, what can we do as a company individually, and what actually worked and what didn't work, right, individually, so that we can actually go and correct those things on the CS side, sales side, product side, marketing, and so forth, to unify, go together, and make sure that we are not repeating those mistakes again.

Sunil: So it's highly important to have a very blameless discussion as a part of the retrospective, and then when, as you're planning towards the future, bring those learnings in. But when you're thinking about the future, also thinking about not just your kind of numbers and metrics you're thinking about, but what's the path, right? What's the A plus B plus C equals to D? And it's important to kind of understand that. And that's kind of why I mentioned it's the, at the end of the day, if you want to drive revenue, there's three things you need to really think about. [00:21:00] Number one is like, what's my operating rhythm? What are the things I'm focusing on today as a part of helping my customers through that journey? 

Sunil: What are the outcomes I'm creating and measuring? The mutual kind of success metrics that I talked about. And in total metrics that we are measuring for our business. What is the ROI we are creating for customers that, hey, when we, the customer bought us for 100, 000, and the value we are creating is actually worth a million dollars, right, just in the first three months of the journey, right? So here's kind of the 10x value, right, in just the first three months, and then as 

the value journey kind of grows, the value is going to be worth 10 million dollars, right? So being able to substantiate that in terms of dollars, ROI, and which translates into revenue at the end of the day, right? Because if you're able to showcase the ROI impact in terms of productivity, savings, in terms of actually driving additional revenue for customers, then that translates back into revenue for your own business. 

Sunil: So, so there are two kinds of ways of thought. One is to have a target and just try to kind of figure out how we kind of sell more seats or drive more consumption just based on that. And [00:22:00] the second one is kind of just having those targets. But kind of translating it back into the activities you can do to drive those outcomes right into the ROI and earn the right to actually 

ask the customer to earn the revenue at the end of the day, right? So, earning the right is important, and those first three things kind of lead into the earning the revenue piece as well. 

Taylor: That is incredible. I love everything you just said. So, let's hit on and I'll zoom back to one of the things you said that really resonated, which is taking radical ownership of the churn number. If we're going to own it, let's take accountability and true ownership of it. And that means things like learning from experience here. Don't sit in a boardroom and talk about how you can't control the churn. Instead, walk in with a vision. We have isolated what we can control here to your point. Here's the plan. Here's the action plan. Here's how my partnerships with other teammates are going to help drive this forward as well. And show that path to how you get there to your point, both through the consumption and adoption, but also the strategic path that you are [00:23:00] laying out. We really do have an incredible ability to push the company forward. 

Taylor: And you take that kind of mindset of ownership and laying out the path. So thank you for that. That was really insightful. And, uh, Spoiler alert for anyone out there who is maybe a CSM or a manager, this idea of managing up, learning how to effectively manage up and outside of your own role, it goes on forever. Well, we're all still learning how to do that forever, but it's a critical skill to make your team successful.

Sunil: The point you mentioned around, Thinking about what can I do to kind of prevent churn? What are the novel ways that I can think about in terms of moving the needle in the right direction? So let's assume that you are predicting your kind of maybe your biggest account or your third biggest account and your Sixth biggest account to kind of churn in the next quarter, right? Okay, you've done everything, you've run all the playbooks, but that's kind of where you're seeing that in the next quarter, maybe in the next two quarters, right? So what can I do as a CSM in that particular point? Or what can I do as a leader? Really [00:24:00] thinking through what are my other accounts, right? 

Sunil: Where I have some growth potential, right? Maybe additional seats, additional consumption, upsell levers, additional products that I can think about. And those customers might not be coming up for renewal in the next quarter or two quarters. But where can I add value as quickly as possible? And again, it's not going and saying, Hey customer, can you buy 20, 000 worth of like additional seats? It's like, how can I start having conversations? Or what can I do today to earn the right to have that conversation three months from now, where can I kind of impact my customer's business with all the other accounts that I have in my book, and be able to do that? So really kind of creating a pipeline view, very similar to kind of how a new business rep would run their business, thinking about what's my top of funnel, what's the end of the day that my targets are. 

Sunil: Really driving a business from a funnel perspective. So you are already predicting what my churn is going to be two quarters from now. And how am I looking at what's my upsell pipeline where I can start creating value six months early so I can earn the right to have the conversation in the next three months? [00:25:00] And I can close that within kind of the, the quarter that I'm thinking to close it in. So really have a very intentional view of the business and have a very kind of pragmatic view. And because there is, there are times, right? Like we've all been in our careers, you see a big churn and then we feel paralyzed. 

Sunil: So what do I do about it, right? That's a great opportunity to think about, okay, I know there's a churn coming. What are the other accounts that I can take to not just negate the churn, but actually add 20 to 30 points over that to kind of grow my business overall, right? So really taking that ownership to drive that. And if every team member does that, every manager, every leader does that. Then you won't have a business where the NRR is going to be less than 120 or 130%, right? So I think that's kind of the attitude that I feel differentiates a high-performing team from a team that's kind of purely bogged down on churn. It's like thinking through how can I earn the right to kind of bring additional revenue to the business, and how can I start creating value starting today? 

Taylor: I just feel like anyone who is looking to put their career on 10x needs to listen to that whole [00:26:00] statement and follow it. I love the word you used paralyzed by churn because I think historically CS teams and it's easy to feel set back by that, but instead, see it as an opportunity to set yourself up for success in the future quarters. So I love that. Well, let's talk about some learnings because you certainly, you mentioned it earlier, but you're someone who has seen a lot and therefore, to your point, had some wins, had some misses, but it's those Failures and learnings that really drive you into the future. So looking back on all the

experiences that you have, can you share with us a time when you didn't get it right? Or you had an assumption that didn't quite pan out the way you expected, and how you reflected and used that in the future? 

Sunil: In the context of our conversation, right, being able to build at different stages, because I've seen everything from the building at a seed stage, series A, series C, series E, and seeing kind of exits through kind of all those parts of the journey. The three things that kind of stand out to me: number one is the [00:27:00] processes, right? Because when I started my career, I worked as an engineer, like, I worked on enterprise products, right? So I had a high-level view in terms of what it meant to build really complex products, but also like understanding what does best in class look like. 

Sunil: And being in consulting, you have to start from zero to one, but you learn from the best in business. So you always have these processes in your head, right? Like the RACI that I mentioned, and things of that sort, right? Some of these things are, like, important, but it's also important to know when to use a process and the right process in the journey. When you're at a seed stage, as I mentioned, like having a customer experience that's unified and having success metrics, if you do those two things, great, right? That's the amount of process you need, right? Again, you can keep adding more things to kind of make it better, but you don't need like a, you know, 15-page racy to make this successful when you have three people on your team. 

Sunil: So I would say that's my first learning and mistakes I've made, thankfully early in my career that I was able to kind of learn from and kind of correct. Number two is thinking about upskilling every team member on the team [00:28:00] and thinking about what success means for Every team member, not just within your team, but cross-functional partners as well. And I think it's important to kind of open up that worldview, because as CS leaders, and being any leader, like a product leader, marketing leader, you have your own remit, and you have kind of your own numbers and targets, or if I'm a CSM, I have my own numbers, and it's very hard to empathize sometimes, because you're like so focused on driving your number, even though you like love everybody in your team, and you want to kind of work together. 

Sunil: You kind of have your own things and targets to kind of deal with. So, I would say the second, uh, mistake is like being just hyper-focused on your part of the business, your metrics. You cannot make your business successful unless you have your cross-functional partners, unless you have other stakeholders, uh, within even your own team that you can learn from. So we used to do this thing called Friday learnings where we learn from each of our team members. I've done this at kind of every stage of the company I've been in, where we would meet as a team on Fridays, we would talk about our failures, first of all, hey, what did we fail [00:29:00] at this week, but what we learn from that, right? 

Sunil: And somebody else would say, actually, that's a great learning. I was actually going to talk to a customer, I'm just going to run into that same landmine and create that we just talked about, right? Completely unrelated could be an enterprise, CSM, and an implementation manager that's kind of scaling up SMB customers. But those learnings kind of help each other,

right? So just always share learnings, always kind of understand what are the shared success criteria that you can kind of go with each other. And I think the final piece is impact. What is the impact that I can add to the business today, this week, this month, this quarter, right? 

Sunil: Always thinking about. Just beyond yourself and kind of thinking about kind of the company's success. It's a little bit of a translation of the second point that I mentioned, but what can I do today to drive the overall value for my customers, which is going to drive the valuation for our stakeholders and for our company? And at the end of the day, it's going to be positive for everybody, right? So the best I can do in my role as an individual is to do the best impact that I can drive, but keep it measurable. So I would say that's kind of the third [00:30:00] learning that I have is sometimes you think about impact in terms of just like hitting your quarterly metrics or hitting your yearly number, but it's important to control those leading indicators, like practice what we breach to our customers. 

Sunil: Sometimes, sometimes we just look at leading indicators just in part of our like QBR conversations or like CSM conversations, leadership conversations, and we bring these, but we really don't control that in our daily conversations in terms of how we're driving value. So, the final piece that I, on the impact side is, how are you able to drive value to your customers and break it down? What does value mean to you and your role? How do you make it quantifiable? How are you able to report that individually to yourself, to your team, and to your cross-functional partners and make sure you're able to use that to drive towards the shift right for your business, right? Which is going to shift right for your customers, ship right for the company, and move us all in the right direction. 

Taylor: Well, thank you so much for this. I personally have learned a ton, and I love where we sort of landed there on the impact front because [00:31:00] anyone who's listening, if a quarter feels daunting, knows that you can start today. Think about your day. Think about your week and how that is driving value. And let's all be honest, what is our calendar doing to help support us in achieving the value that we're providing? So thank you so much, Sunil. This has been a fabulous conversation. So before we let you go, we're going to have some fun with some quick hits. Are you ready? 

Sunil: Let's do it. 

Taylor: What do you wish you could spend more time on in life or in work? 

Sunil: It would be really impacting others on a daily basis. That kind of translates across both life and work, which is what can, what's the one thing I can do today that can improve somebody else's life in any positive way? Just the conversation I'm having, right? If nothing, if there's one nugget that somebody takes at the end of the day and is like, hey, that was a great point, I'm going to kind of take that, that's a win for me. One person, one nugget is a win for me. So I kind of use that as my kind of daily mantra, [00:32:00] if you may. I try to smile everywhere I go, even if it doesn't matter, like I might be in a bad mood, but if that smile elevates somebody's day, Great.

Sunil: If there's kind of one thing I can do to help somebody else, a colleague, a friend, somebody that I don't know, right, I'll just kind of put the ask out there and be like, hey, I'm here to help. If there's anything, just let me know, right? And I think that's kind of the one thing I want to do more of, which I feel like I was very much blinders only in my career, but that has kind of changed and changed my perspective in the last few years. 

Taylor: That's awesome. So on the very opposite end of the spectrum then, what part of your work life would you automate, if you could? At 

Sunil: At any point in time, there's only one, two, or three things that are important. Everything else can be automated. So I feel like, maybe I'll answer your question in a different way. Knowing that one, two, or three for you are at every point in time. Like if you asked me today, what's the one, two, or three, I'll say health is number one for me. Uh, number two is like, my ability to have, um, wellness and peace, um, not just for me, but for everybody around [00:33:00] me, um, and then number three would be adding an impact to everybody, right? 

Sunil: You seem like very high level, like, philosophy, if you asked me 20 years back, even 10 years, even 5 years back, that wouldn't be my answer. I'll give you, like, every three tactical things that, like, at work, right, or, like, the to-do list, but I think that's changed for me and I think knowing the three, and then everything else can be automated, right? Automated or doesn't matter today, right? It can wait. So, like, how do you containerize those things that really don't matter today? And how do you figure that out is like knowing what are the three things that are important for you, and then everything else can be automated, can be containerized. Can happen tomorrow, right? And you can kind of go and focus on that on a different day. 

Taylor: I love that. I love that. Well, what is one habit or routine that you follow that's had a positive impact on your life? 

Sunil: Great. Given I've been doing threes, I'll give you three things. Number one is HIIT workouts. So that's one thing that I've really changed my perspective on things. The ability to push myself and know my own [00:34:00] limits in terms of what I can or cannot do. Sometimes your ability to kind of push yourself physically has a translation mainly and vice versa. So that's the one thing. The number two is being able to spend more time with my pups. So I have two pups. We don't have kids, but we have two pups. 

Sunil: So we spend, they are like our kids. And spending more time with them, having an understanding of the empathy, the happiness they bring in, like when they see you and it's very unconditional. So. Just kind of, that's kind of the second thing is being able to spend more time with people, pets, animals that are around you. I live very close to, although I'm in the city, I have a lot of deer and foxes and things around the house. So just being able to kind of enjoy nature, enjoy birds. So that's another kind of habit is like being aware of. What's going on around you and not just be focused on what you're doing all the time. 

Sunil: And I think the third habit is really thinking through drinking more water because that's one thing a lot of us can actually do, which I hadn't done early in my career and in my life. And I

feel like just kind of [00:35:00] knowing and taking those breaks. Because I think it's not so much the act of drinking water, which is obviously a great thing, but it's also like taking a moment to yourself, right? And also translating into work life can mean that if you have an hour-long meeting, doing smart meetings, right? Doing a 15-minute meeting, right? Which Google Calendar, a lot of these things kind of help us, right? Or your 30-minute meetings are now 25 minutes, right? Take that five-minute break to just drink water. 

Sunil: Recollect yourself, like thinking through, focusing, and being intentional on my next conversation is highly important, so you're present, right? I don't have any distractions, I'm absolutely present for you, and I feel like on a leadership front, that's the one thing also I've learned is being present for people, not just professionally, but personally. So I think the act of drinking water, It's great because it kind of gives you that moment to be focused, but then when you're in a conversation, be 100 percent there, right? And other things can wait. 

Taylor: Such great advice. And you mentioned this a little bit earlier, but delivering nuggets of advice and driving an impact, I would just want to say, personally and [00:36:00] professionally, I have taken a lot of nuggets from this conversation. 

Sunil: Absolutely. Taylor, I want to put a question back to you now that you asked me so many questions. Thanks. And I've spoken nonstop. You inspire me. I've learned so much from you in just in our kind of conversation so far. Not just in this conversation, but in a couple of conversations we've had. I have one question for you, right? If there's one thing you want to leave the audience with, based on your learnings, not just kind of, I would say, maybe two learnings. One professionally, right, in terms of customer success, you've seen kind of teams at different scales, different sizes, either from a customer success perspective or company building perspective. 

Sunil: What would be one nugget or one learning you want to give? to the world out there. And then personally, right, and I'd relate to you. I think I'm, I'm just speaking on your behalf, but I feel like you're very similar where work fits into your life. And what is that life perspective you want to give to others? Because sometimes it's easy to kind of be very kind of focused on what you're doing and kind of, but not going to think about things that are outside of what is highly important. [00:37:00] So work nugget, professional nugget, and personal nugget from your perspective. 

Taylor: Yeah. The work nugget would be, I have essentially grown up in customer success, started in account management, but then moved into customer success. And so I think that early in my career, through much of the middle part of it, the pressure on customer success teams was to react and to be, the sort of general tone was a defensive one. Things are going to 

happen to us and we are going to talk about the things that happen to us, whether that be churn or whatever it may be. 

Taylor: A customer who didn't have a perfect experience. And now we're answering for that. And I really. I have stepped into a new part of my personal career journey where I see the opportunity for customer success teams to not just react, but drive the entire conversation and step into different dialogues that we've never been in before. We had an episode on pricing and

packaging. No one would, Typically think about customer success in that conversation. [00:38:00] We have an opportunity to step up and to step into that, how we present ourselves in board meetings, how we really drive the conversation around the product and with other departments and ask more of our partners. 

Taylor: I see that as something that I'm constantly working on, but, you know, I would just say, Tell everyone and empower everyone that now is the time. Two, you know, we talked about this a little bit, take ownership and as a part of that ownership, drive the conversation. Don't just report on data. Tell the organization what we need to do with it. So that's my biggest career nugget. I'd say that especially nowadays. Tenure at companies is short, but our relationships with the people that we come into contact with can be really long. So I always tell folks that I work with once on the team, always on the team. For me, coming into an organization, moving organizations, it's all about, did I establish real connections with people. 

Taylor: Did I help them find their superpower and use it a little bit better? And at the next organization, how can I learn from them? Or others, I think it's [00:39:00] really developing those deep relationships is the most important part to me. This world is small, but the relationships can be really big and deep, and so I try to focus on that primarily. And I find that by doing that, it drives incredible outcomes, but it's just, you build your community over time. 

Sunil: That's amazing. I really appreciate you sharing that. 

Taylor: Yeah, thank you for asking. I appreciate that. Thank you so much for joining us today, Sunil. 

Sunil: Thanks, Taylor. It was amazing speaking with you. 

Taylor: Big thanks to Sunil for sharing his insights with us today, and a special thanks to all of you who tuned in. If you enjoyed this episode and found value in our conversation, don't forget to spread the word to your CS friends. Before you go, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Find me on LinkedIn at Taylor Johnston or LinkedIn.com. Leave us a rating and review on your favorite podcast platform and check us out on YouTube. Your feedback means the world to us. See you next [00:40:00] time.

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