Lesley Ronaldson
speaker
91 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jun 2024
last heard Jun 2024
Lesley Ronaldson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
We have the full gamut of from the SDR outreach email or call that was sent through to the full close of the deal, to the negotiation, to who the key players were within the deal and why they bought the product. And we hand that to the customer success team and our professional services team for the implementation. And we all understand why the customer bought.
So I think it's really important to kind of have everybody bought in. I think as well from a cross collaboration with the team to voice of the customer is so, so important. So wherever we get customer feedback on a sales call, after the sales call, the rep can just go into Gong, tag the product team and give them visibility of what the customer said.
As much as I trust salespeople, if you were to say something to me now about the product and then I was to go then and tell Johnny maybe two hours later, there'll be elements, but I may miss a trick. So for us, once a customer gives us product feedback, we'll absolutely tag our product team and also our product marketing team.
And then there's a couple of other ways as well, which it's important to have customer communities, etc. When I think about feedback loops, you have to listen to your customers. You can't say the product is brilliant. We use it here. Isn't it amazing? Like you can sometimes drink your own champagne and get a little drunk. So you have to be open to feedback. Like feedback is a gift.
So for us, unlike many, many customers, we have voice of the customer. So again, the customer feedback that we get. We do customer advisory forums like many other companies. So again, we love feedback. And then finally, customer communities is an amazing way to do this. So if I think about someone who does it really well in the market, it's HubSpot. They do an incredible job.
They've built out a membership base where you share ideas and tips and tricks. And actually, if you think about when someone goes to buy, they've already made their mind up. I mean, I don't go and book a holiday or book a hotel without going on TripAdvisor. I don't book an Airbnb without reading a review.
So it's your customers that are actually going to be your advocates and your evangelists, so to speak. So I think communities are really, really important. And then I think the last two things is when it comes to customers, like you need to empower your employees. You need to give them the right tech stack and tools and training to do this.
You know, you can't say, you know, sell to your customer, then fill in this spreadsheet, which I've seen in other companies. Fill in this spreadsheet and then send it to the customer success person and then make sure that you, you know, you schedule a call and then scheduling your QBRs. I think, you know, there's a lot of software out there like prolific for account plans, you know, Gong.
I think it's important that you have a really clear, we call them swim lanes, like really clear swim lanes of a customer journey. I think everybody should have roles or responsibilities. We did two-day training. We took the whole company off-site globally to talk about roles and responsibilities.
So there's none of this, it's not my job or, hey, that doesn't feel like it's my job, but I know whose job it is. So everybody owns the customer. And then lastly, data. I haven't talked about it all but I love data.
I'm numbers driven I really am but like data can tell any story so you need to be really careful I can mold data to tell a great story or a bad story but we do need to look at performance metrics like you do have to define and track indicators related to the customer satisfaction and engagement and really ensure those behaviors are being measured you know whether it's an OKR or KPI and here at Gong we are maniacal about this so we track our numbers weekly in fact
I am on a call every Monday for one hour with our head of customer success for all our renewals, two quarters out, two quarters out. And every customer success manager who owns those renewals saying, here's where we are. Here is the risk. Here's what we need. There's a flag on the product and we are we are selling impacts.
We're pulling all people in and that's to ensure that they have a good experience. Then we do monthly reviews. And then we also showcase these in QBR. So there's definitely, there's a cadence and a process to being customer centric. And as I'm listening to myself, it sounds like a heavy lift and you know something. Yeah, it is.
But if you get it wrong, you've got the sales team doing amazing, selling all these deals. It's pointless. Like you're not profitable. You're not growing. And your folks won't stay. Like you'll have a nutrition problem as well.
I think it is. I had something this morning. There was a customer issue and they went to support and the customer support person was like, hey, that's actually not my gig. That belongs to customer success manager. However, he walked over and we're lucky we're in the office to the customer success manager said, hey, I just had this feedback. Let's jump on the call together.
There's nothing in it for that part. The customer success, you know, he's busy, but we sell as a team. We sell in packs. and a customer lost, we're all shareholders as well, right? We are all on this journey together. You kind of have to hire people that will go the extra mile for you and care. You'll not hear someone on Salesforce say, my accounts, they're Gong's accounts.
My book of business, it's Gong's book of business. That's not your account, it's Gong's accounts. You just happen to be allowed prospect into it. So I do think it starts from the top down, whether, you know, from leaders, directors to managers.
And when I think about potential customers, I will use Gong and look at every single open deal in my pipeline and I can see which deals have a VP of sales as a persona, a part of the decision maker. then I will reach out to that VP of sales and I will do a peer-to-peer demo. I don't use Gong the same way an AE uses Gong. And straight away, I'm locked into that customer. We have a relationship.
When it comes to negotiation, I'm not just coming in from stage left to give the best and final. Me and that person already know each other. And that's been really helpful for me. I probably do demos of the product three to four times a week, which is really important because you've got to lead by example.
Listen, I just want to win and no AE can close it alone. Not one. Yes, you can close a 20, 30K deal, but I'm talking about the six figure deals. Let's all get in. Let's all get around it. What do you need? We do a light linearity where we should be towards the end of the month. So we have a 72 inch screen, a live gong deal board open. We go, right, 92K deal. Bobby, where are we?
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