00:00 Hey everyone! Thank you for joining me for another episode of CSM Practice, the podcast for tactical advice around customer success.
00:11 What you're going to love about this podcast session is that I'm going to interview one of the fiercest executives in customer success that I have had the pleasure of working with.
00:22 Her name is Sanjit Kowabali. She's from India but had been here for many years and she is just the one to watch for.
00:30 I've seen her tread through taking a very, very small team in a very large organization and turn it into something spectacular and just to give you a sense of what you're going to learn here is not only how do you swim against the current sometimes and get people that have been doing business the same
00:51 way for 20, 30 years and change or mind about something, but also how to generate revenue from customer success in the tune of dozens of millions of dollars.
01:05 Yep, you heard me monetizing customer success, so I'm going to peel the onion for you. Stay in your seat. This is going to be amazing.
01:15 Sanjit, welcome to my show. Thank you so much for the generous introduction, so delighted to be here. Sanji, let's tell the story the way it is.
01:26 First time that you thought, huh, I might be able to do customer success was a few years back, back then, what were you doing exactly and what sparked your interest in leading the customer success initiative at the company you're in?
01:42 I think it started with my time at the movie room where we did not have the to be doing everything I was customer success and operating just like a SaaS business would do.
01:54 I was surrounded by amazing teams and you know we had leadership which was very well-oriented of what to do right for your customers, how to do right by your people.
02:03 So that was it and then I think it was in 2018 when I had joined TSI event and that's where I saw you and Chris and talk about and the world that you've done together.
02:15 That was it when I decided that someday I'm gonna work with these two people and build my CS organization. When I walked into my new organization, I think we were feeling the pressure of heightened customer expectations and also picking the challenges of our own business, which was targeted towards profitability
02:34 growth, the right customer experience, the right employees experience, the focus on reducing friction, reducing cost to time to revenue, time to value, how do you improve that?
02:45 There are all those challenges that most business faces, these were the COVID times as well. So when I joined them, I could see what was not working and what it could be.
02:57 The CS organization was already in place. Clearly, it wasn't well oriented to the goals of CS, all goals of business.
03:05 So that was something that I wanted to do, but I was too busy building technical support and professional services, operating model, And then in 2019, the opportunity came and in 2020, I was very convinced that I wasn't going to wait and I was going to raise my hand and say that I was going to do the
03:21 CS for this organization. I remember the first full call that I had with the customer success team at that time right after I actually my presentation with Chris Singh from SAP ATTUSW conference.
03:33 I believe it was 2018 if I'm not mistaken. I believe only three customer success managers in a company of tens of thousands of customers, the frustration of not getting that team to a true lift off and the vision of what the team had for themselves at that time, just stroke a chord with me.
03:52 And so when I got the call from you in 2020, I was like, okay, they're ready. So Sunji, behind the scenes, What made you raise your hand?
04:01 Anybody has paid? Does anybody want to take that on or was it clear that way you had? Was it getting to what the vision was and if so whose vision was this?
04:12 I was leading this technical support function And I could see that this was becoming a patch-out function. I was also seeing the experience of customer Which I felt it'd be optimized better could be better than what it was.
04:23 Then I was also seeing sales this company had amazing salespeople learning amazing deals and what I was seeing was that while they would land the right deal if there was not a very orchestrated play of execution.
04:36 I was also seeing the leaky bucket having come from an organization where had the full responsibility of revenue and into and delivery I knew what good business looks like.
04:47 I was very clear about the potential of this organization and management was very progressive, they wanted to do the right things, people had the right intentions.
04:56 I did offer many times to be part of the CS and be helping them to how to build it because I had done it before.
05:02 But at one point of time, it became very clear that I wasn't going to let the ABC of the organization define the path for my teams, which was saddled with a lot of broken end-off, all that's broken, lands and technical support.
05:15 And I wanted to do right by the organization. And I think there was this constant nagging caught in my mind that how to stop this negative encryption point before it hits us hard, because I could see that it would hit us hard.
05:26 And I also wanted to maximize the potential of people in this organization, I could see very talented people who could do brilliant things in the organization.
05:36 So I worked with you because I understood that just one single voice wouldn't be enough and needed some validation from outside and you were the right person, this was an opportunity to work with you.
05:48 You were very generous with your time, But you were quite driven by my passion to do what I wanted to do.
05:53 So we did the whole maturity assessment, that was the key exercise for us to build a alignment across the organization of what mattered and it was important.
06:01 And I think you got the same thing from everybody. They were all supportive, but you know it's not just enough to know the problems and talk about them, like how you build the solution around them.
06:10 And that was when we also built the entire operating model. I had already rallied my team that shared the vision with them.
06:16 I told them how we will be the reason customers would buy from us because we're going to change the whole execution.
06:23 And what happened was I went to this meeting and I presented the operating model to my management. I was quite excited.
06:31 I thought, I'm going to get a big part on my back. We're going to go and roll this out. But it was very interesting.
06:37 The meeting ended with my CCO asking me a very basic question. And he said, Miss, how will you fund this?
06:45 My first reaction was the little disappointment, but I also understood the context of the organization and I think this question was very valid.
06:54 So there were two choices to make. One was, okay, it is what it is. We will wait for the budgets and then do something or the audacious side of me said, I'm not gonna let this dictate my vision and mission for this organization.
07:05 I had confidence in this management that at the time that we could get some budgets, they will enable at least my critical roles and stuff.
07:15 So that was it. We got going, I did the first thing which was answering the funding question, and I launched the premium success offer and onboarding services, even before my team was established to be honest.
07:29 And the reason was, I had very strong conviction that with the teams that we had in place with the way I wanted to run this execution, I believe in these people, and I believe that we will get there, so I just have to stop and I get that.
07:45 And this all kinds to the team, because a leader is as good as a team. So you built the offer, you built the team, a year or two later, what transpired, what kind of changes have you seen, and was I accurate in my estimates, millions of dollars in revenues for CS services?
08:01 Yes. The first deal, I did not want to just start building the practice, because ultimately objective of the process is not the process itself.
08:09 Your objective is the impact that you want to create. And these teams are already in place. So we have technical program managers in the organization.
08:16 These are brilliant people, we're domain knowledge, technical knowledge, and institutional knowledge. It just needed a different way of doing things.
08:23 So that was first thing that I did. I also utilized the technical support teams to focus on the onboarding side of things.
08:29 So that was put in place for a certain section of population. because I wanted to experiment with it while building the factors and I think you were a great help in building the factors because these people had double rules.
08:42 They were doing their routine activities as well as trying to do things in a different way. While owning huge responsibilities for what you would call the most strategic account that you will see in the industry, is a big account.
08:55 So I think what happened was 2020 was our year of establishing the entire factors, then we set out to operationalizing the CS part, which was with systems and enablement, and the structure of the organization was very, very clear.
09:09 We had a gap in onboarding, we targeted that, we targeted adoption, we targeted the regularization frameworks, we targeted the risk management, which was speech for us, and actually the expansion.
09:20 Monetization, I could easily say, was something that I knew would work, and the result of selling a success plan in that account was absolutely commensurate to the success of that account as well.
09:35 So we created millions in just probably two years for the monetizing part in terms of expansion naturally started from zero, not that those people weren't doing that expansion in some form in a bit previous roles as well, but there was no modification of that.
09:51 But the impact of how we started executing change so much that it was in double digits of millions and I would talk big millions.
10:00 And I think last year it triggered the group 300 percent of expansion closed one business as well as the pipeline.
10:09 So the steam played a great part, but I think the another part that I need to mention is the collaboration with sales.
10:16 Sales, new, hearted, utilized, this combination and this became a very good combination for us to generate the success that we created.
10:25 Amazing. So much to unpack here. Let's double down on the offering. I think everybody that's listening to this conversation is like you did what millions of dollars in customer success services.
10:36 So you said that you crafted the offer even before you're double down and operationalized the team fully. How did you structure it?
10:45 Do you mind sharing? What made you think that even customers would buy it. So was it part of a larger service offering?
10:53 And so that we just get it if they get the premium services. Look to aspects to it. One because it already started monetizing our support plans and for us the need was to now create a premium plan which included somewhat onboarding service but a dedicated CSM model.
11:08 That's what we started with and actually the evolution of that was to also do some kind of digital aspects and stuff.
11:14 So that was what started with and these accounts were already enjoying the certain level of service but we were coming and talking value realization.
11:22 We were coming and talking about adoption. We were also coming and talking about maximizing the contract. So there were a lot of aspects of it which were not just regular program and delivery management but stepping up to say here you have these domain specific value oriented, consultative ways of what
11:41 you would do things and I think what became a very big tool in this execution was the adoption of success plan.
11:49 And as you probably recall, I had full focus on that being one thing that I wanted to execute right from place sales to post sales, the gaps in discovery but not to great onboarding.
12:01 These were giving us all the indications of what we have to be taught. And when the success plan became a tool of adoption for the customers itself, it got different results.
12:11 And actually, it also rely on sellers ability to sell. So our sellers are smart people. They were able to put their accounts and be able to demonstrate value.
12:20 Once you've done it in one, you're able to talk about it in the second and the third and the fourth.
12:27 And what was great and why I got so much confidence and execution was the validation that we were getting from the customers and sales equal themselves, which is kept replicating it.
12:37 I think the first call that I was made depending on the premium success plan was me selling it to a very good customer and I was in the call presenting it to the teams out there because I knew that it was important for me to go and talk about it with my conviction and with my belief that this is how 
12:55 this was going to add value to them and I did it in multiple ways. How many deals did you have to be involved in selling premium success plans that it just won.
13:06 That was my first one. And naturally we have regional board models and success models. So there was always a conversation, there was always a way of how to structure it.
13:15 There are certain contexts where you end up bundling it, you don't show it to the customer. There are other places where it shows very clearly.
13:22 But customers always knew that they would getting a value at its service as a part of the deal. And we already had success with launch of our support plans.
13:31 That was huge monetization that we did. And I remember that when I started, nobody believed that we could pay much out of it.
13:38 And that's where, as well, a sales GMs were the biggest support and actually the top management. To be able to create that 200, 300 million North of bookings and great revenues is something that tells you that customers understand, customers understand that they will get a certain value, which you have
13:57 to be telling your value as well. Clearly creating success plans and making sure that adoption is higher and that will be one of the value that having a CS or a customer success manager dedicated to a specific account.
14:10 I think the value proposition is highly clear, especially with a complex solution and enterprise clients. No doubt, would you recommend other enterprise companies that are looking to double down on customer success to immediately bundle it as part of the premium support services, update the cost for 
14:30 it or create a new package or a plan that includes the CSL that the customer understand that that's a resource that they're getting and there's a certain level of expectation from that new person joining that pod of team that supports the account.
14:45 I would do it by context because mostly I would want to see support and success as a line item because they need to see what they're getting and why they're paying for it.
14:54 I'm more prone to that, but there are certain contexts where the buyer has their own constraints of how they want to show it to their own team and how they want to not have that line item to make for various reasons and you don't want to go into making it difficult for sellers sometimes because the customers
15:09 may be nickel and dining on every deal. You don't want to have that kind of effort. So I think it depends, but I'm more prone to see it as a line item and actually when you have a contractual obligation for all revenue recognition aspects as well.
15:23 It's almost good to know that customer you're on this essay, so for us when we created that premium success plan and we've learned from the best, it's not that we crafted it out of nowhere.
15:34 We learned from the best, there was a school orientation of making sure that there was an essay commitment, not just from the CSM, but from the entire offer of that premium success plan, that gave the more confidence that they will get better attention, they will get timely essay, and they will get a
15:51 special kind of support which that other figures in the industry are getting. I think that's when it contagious. When you're able to go and talk about just success in one account where somebody bought it, then it's just not apply.
16:04 It is a network affected that kind of thing as well. Who was leading the charge to then upsell customers to a premium success plan?
16:13 There was a lot of places where CSM themselves were able to influence that, but then we had very clear regional targets on the monetization aspect, sellers were in tune with us, so we were basically supporting them, but sellers were very clear.
16:29 We did a lot of change management, a lot of orientation, a lot of objection handling, a of enablements. I think we sometimes think that we have come in a catered one, so you come in catered twice, it's enough.
16:41 But there's choice upwards, there's choice of how you sell it, there was a lot of that enablement that we did, multiple times across the organization.
16:50 We did not get to structure the compensation structure and that because we were planning by the time I left the organization, but it was crucial as well, that how we are deciding on the compensation strategies to influence certain behaviors and influence more upsell on support and success plans as well
17:07 . That's a very important point, compensation plans and how do you tie the incentives to what A you want the CSM team to focus on whether it's selling premium success plans, or whether it's just getting outcomes to clients.
17:22 So very well said. So with being able to sell those premium services and get the funding from the clients rather than internally, do you find that that was helpful for you to increasing the size of the team?
17:34 And if so, how much were you able to grow them by? For us, very quickly, I think from the death conversation where how would you fund CS to the find where we were executing.
17:46 First was the MOVs, and getting a lot of components from the customers, and some of us were talking about it.
17:52 So there was a lot of that momentum that we created in the organization of real execution. And then it became about selling nationally the services.
17:59 But more than that, the expansion closed one business and the pipeline that we were helping generate. There was another aspect to it where there was certain accounts where you had this fixed price for the revenue.
18:10 There was its highlight for the revenue that you were generating from the account. So there was an assumption that you could do more with those accounts, but our people went to those accounts for the perspective of maximizing the contract, making sure that whatever customer had bought, they were utilizing
18:25 all of that, and also replacing competition in certain units. So when our teams started doing that, and I was sharing these metrics at a very good cadence, I think it became very, very clear for the management of this was working, And we started getting approval for our critical resources.
18:43 In fact, for game side, as well as our CS operations, I was able to establish all of that. And I think the team grew considerably.
18:51 They need to grow more because we want to get to the digital whole model as well. But it grew considerably, I would say.
18:57 Right from where we were three to four people to then inheriting the team that we had, not springing in more talent, which was also double.
19:05 And one point I want to make, that there was a lot of talk about the success of this hinging on institutional knowledge, but we were able to bring brilliant tech people coming from tech stories, with tech skills, relationship program management, still technical program management skills, and then being
19:24 able to impart them the institutional tribal knowledge and these people created the kind of results that was just like phenomenal.
19:31 So there was no institutional, I knew we were able to generate same kind of results from new people as well.
19:37 Sanjeet, any advice for other customer success executives that are working for large companies that maybe are still working on founding those customer success teams on who should be the founding members for the CSM team?
19:53 Should you bring somebody from the outside? And if not, if you are going to hire somebody from the inside to be your first CSMs, What kind of talent skill set mindset are you looking for?
20:05 I think you need to bring builders who are bold, who are driven, who are passionate, I think that's key. But then you also need people who understand business, who have that tech orientation, who have that customer-centric mode, who have that co-founder owner mindset.
20:22 If I had to, to be honest, if I had to create teams, from internal teams, I would count more on technical support and professional services people because they come with that conservative orientation.
20:35 Sometimes your presils people can be great CSM as well. It depends, but I think there is a good mix of that domain knowledge, the technology, plus the consultative ways of doing things and also that orientation of going over and above the quality, I think that's for me that's critical.
20:52 So that's what I would suggest that you focus on. Relationships skills are absolutely critical in any spirit of life, but that doesn't part of your customers expect you to be experts in what you do, so we need to have those kind of people, especially in high touch accounts.
21:09 And for the pool model, nothing better than tech support people, because they have done it before in a 24 by 7 mode, all that you need to do is enable them with technology and data insights and knowledge.
21:21 And you can do right by your rest of your segments. I would just suggest that any customer success executive that needs to build a team from scratch would always have a mix of talent within their pool and loved what you said about get builders.
21:37 People that are not afraid of change, but also our trend setters can listen to a blog or our video for example, get some ideas and then bring them in.
21:47 Not being too concerned about getting 80% of it right and then improve up on it over time, like the mentor of mine said, first adopt, then adapt.
21:57 I think that that's so important when you just starting things out because you're not going to get it right the first time around.
22:02 What was impactful for you in having somebody such as myself that comes from outside, walking you through this experience for like but are not alone, what did that do for you and why did you choose doing that with somebody from the outside?
22:19 I think one was that I was the only person who'd see us background in the entire organization. And I needed somebody to challenge my assumptions.
22:28 I needed somebody make me think differently because I didn't want to be just comfortable saying, I know it, I know it best, I don't want to be that person.
22:35 I think you came with the credibility of having built practice because I've seen you work. The kind of meticulousness, the kind of dedication that it put into your work.
22:44 It's very rare because that's another people too. And what I wanted to do was, because I wasn't a context which was very legacy in certain ways.
22:52 There was lots to do for me to challenge the status quo, bringing people along, giving them new tools of doing things, giving them new ways of doing things.
23:00 I'm doing it for people who already have their routine jobs. So I was expecting super the right efforts. I chose to also understand that speed was crucial for me.
23:11 So I don't have luxury of time. So in that context, we need somebody who you can trust to put in as much passion as you would, success has a very different orientation.
23:22 Success has a lot of specialization, standardization, slave factors to be built and that requires methodologies, practices, playbooks. You don't want to read when you leave.
23:34 And I was also seeing new coming in as a motivation factor for these teams taking them out of it was called words of monotony, and working with him, and honing this whole thing.
23:47 Because I knew this won't succeed, because it hadn't succeeded before, I was dealing with a lot of skepticism and cynicism about this.
23:54 So I wanted to get it right, and I knew that I needed somebody who was a builder who had the right to use the new or the best practicing word, then so much benefit and you to bring in somebody like you when you're in the building face and you don't have luxury of time and you don't have luxury of people
24:14 with the same wavelength as you. I've been a footage a lot from you being the part of this. Because I could step away and do other things while you work with my team and not best talent.
24:24 I'm going to take this opportunity to hang your team because without them, this is what you're being possible and that organization is so lucky, so lucky to have people like them.
24:32 So maybe you could share with whom I've heard listening to this. You talk a lot about, oh, we had to demonstrate success when we had showcase success.
24:41 I mean, from selling those premium plans, you had to track how many premium plans that you were actually responsible for.
24:48 If you had upsells, you need to track upsells separately. Systems in larger organizations are not always set up for you to quickly create a report and showcase what you're doing.
24:59 How difficult was it to showcase success And to demonstrate, yeah, this is us versus maybe somebody else in this very larger organization.
25:10 Oh, it was very difficult. You have people who do things a certain way, and then for them to go tracking these and excel files and constantly monitoring and tracking your progress.
25:21 I think what was easy was the beautiful flowery compliments coming from customers and sellers and so that was easy. But tracking metrics was very hard and it was painful.
25:31 It was laborious and I don't think I would have been able to do it If I didn't have a first of all the transformation offer that I had which I was leveraging my best talent from there But then also establishing CS operations team So one thing was very very clear.
25:44 I never want to be associated with fluff So there was no space for fluff. There was space for almost talking absolute facts and factual data So we were very meticulous about it never glorified anything that wasn't real.
25:59 So we started tracking CSQLs and expansion, close one close business, very far outcomes. We did not get close to doing the NRR and GRR part break because we had a lot of data issues.
26:11 There was time to value time to revenue. There were challenges to data but we had a key message there when we wanted to show that we were aligned with the business goals.
26:21 See, I'm going to be very bold in this forum and tell that I believe, any CS leader who's shying away from taking the responsibility of revenue, whether it's GRR, whether it's NRR, whether it's general monetization, is doing disservice to their teams and disservice to the art.
26:39 So I was very clear that irrespective of what growing statements are get from customers and sellers and everybody, the data craving out attribution would be key.
26:48 So we had very clear focus on that. And I also knew that if you get onboarding right, you've tackled at least 9% of what I go to success is.
26:58 So, we kept our focus on that and you gave us fantastic templates to utilize to be got to the system and we were creating success so we got inside the crew and I was able to implement the systems that became a little easier but then we all know garbage and garbage out.
27:15 You can have best two systems, the teams are not adopting the technology the way it's supposed to do it enough.
27:20 There was a lot of change management that was involved to make sure, and constant reiteration, John Rossman talks about chief repeatability officer, I think I was that, constantly repeating myself, like why it was important for us to be very metrics-driven and results-driven approach.
27:38 I'm sure it's still a challenge because data is challenging everywhere, but our focus was to be able to demonstrate all the time.
27:45 There was a high focus on even the that we had in our weekly reviews and then every month I was presenting to the management.
27:54 We were not getting for QVR. I had special slot with the management team, which is our sea level for demonstrating what was happening in sea as and they were gracious enough to put that on the calendar and take it seriously.
28:07 Every leader showed up on the meeting every month. Well, that's what you get when you have Sanjit, no fluff, coerbali running the show.
28:16 I'm gonna get it, get it real, and get it better consistently, and I think that's sometimes you just have to have the right leader to handle these kind of big changes in a company, somebody that's not deterred by challenges, have a laser focus on what they want to accomplish, and just go get that done
28:35 . Yeah, I think moving that, it's also about how much is your management what are to write? How are they invested?
28:42 Is this just a precious statement for them? to believe in doing right by their customers. And I think that organization always wanted to write by their customers.
28:52 And I'll tell you, if you have your sales, GMs, close their line with you, the power of CS for sales is just phenomenal.
29:00 It's a lethal combination. If you're able to write in that mix, you do very well. Of course, I'm another organization and collaboration is key for adoption and aspects as well.
29:09 But I think the exit buy-in was the biggest support that I have. Sunji, you're so lovely, you're such an inspiration and I hope to see you a lot more in my life, in the customer success community.
29:24 I think that a lot of younger women can learn so much from you. You're leading with passion, you're leading with no fluff, as you said it yourself, and that's what's so precious and unique about you.
29:36 I can thank you enough. You're one of the most impressive women had the pleasure of working with as a client.
29:42 Thank you so so much for coming to my podcast and sharing experience. All right. If you learn something, you got in a homo when you got inspired to monetize customer success.
29:53 And now you have a little bit of a better understanding of what's going on. How to first sell it, then build it, what to build, what to watch out for, the importance of communicating back to the executive team.
30:05 If all of these gave you the inspiration to do better, to do more, do this video I like. Don't forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel.
30:16 I'll see you on the next video.