In this episode, Jeff interviews Bernadette Risley about using good sales tactics to be better CSMs. They discuss the importance of having a strategy in place before executing any customer success initiatives and how to review original objectives.

In this podcast, Jay Nathan, EVP of Higher Logic, talks about how to use Community as a way of scaling customer success.

He also talks about :

- How Community increases NRR

- The community ROI story to the CFO

- Creating an Ecosystem customers feel great about

- Building Self service with Community

- Monitoring your communities will give you an effective product in behavior insights better than anything else

Video version here: https://youtube.com/@infiniterenewals

Jeff is joined by Carly Agar, who helps people land jobs in Customer Success. Carly spent many years as a high-performing CSM before starting her own practice. In this chat, Carly discusses:

This was a blast to record! Follow Carly at https://www.carlyagar.com/

Jeff is joined by Mike Molinet of Branch. Mike had written this article on how Branch uses Slack to Retain and Grow $100k+ accounts. This was such a different perspective that we needed to get Mike on the podcast to explain. Listen has Mike describes:

 - How Branch uses Channels to keep engagement high with Branch's power users and Champions

- Expectation management and guardrails needed to prevent CSM burnout with customers actively engaging with Slack

- Building organic communities with customers using Slack

- Sending Product updates and marketing to customers in Slack

- Tiering customers for level of slack engagement

- Using Slack engagement analytics to be leading indicators of churn and renewal. 

And a ton more! 

Jeff sits down with the legendary Bob London  to discuss Strategic Conversations. Bob has over 2600 customer conversations analyzed among sales and CS, and has put together a framework for talking to customers called the Five Customer Love languages. Jeff and Bob dive deep into the 5 love languages and talk about how to use the framework to get your customers to open up about what's important to them. We discuss how these interact with customer calls, 45 minute zombie QBR's, and also how to overcome imposter syndrome. 

Additional topics include: working with Covid, schadenfreude as a Red Sox fan, getting fired and finding your own path. 

You can find more about Bob here - https://www.strategiccustomerconvos.com/

This week we were joined by Bruce Daley of S&P Global 451 Research. Bruce is an industry analyst following revenue generation software companies with a particular interest in Customer Success vendors. He is a long-time student of the software industry and is considered minor nobility in it by some. We talked about how to make a buck in this business, spending a little time making jokes. Some of the questions we discussed were:

Bruce also shared his billion-dollar business idea only 12 years too late.

Jeff is joined by Rachel Provan, a Top 50 Women Leaders In Customer Success 2022 and Top 100 CS Strategist 2022! Rachel and Jeff discuss:

- Time Management boundaries in CS and how to get people to respect them and stop the pattern of interruption

- Rachel's career advice about "Heads of CS" positions

- The problem with the "player coach" role

- The  Eisenhower matrix, the urgent important and how to use it to get your life back

- Strategies for getting that raise and promotion. 

There is a lot more as well. Listen in and also check out Rachel at https://provansuccess.com/

Jeff is joined by an ALL FIRED UP top 25 CS Influencer Kristi Faltorusso of Client Success  to go over a few items that were hot topics in the hallways and bars of Gainsight Pulse. Kristi wants CS leaders to uplevel their game and protect their team by being powerful executives. Key topics include:

- CS leaders playing the victim instead of leading from the front

- "Asking" for a seat at the executive table

- Owning revenue and renewals

- Budget wars

- USE THE DATA to win your battles - bring the right data insights to make informed decisions

- How to battle proof your org during this economic situation

- Is the QBR dead? Kristi gives her perspective and ideas

- NPS and your Board

and a ton more. This list does not do justice to all of the knowledge drops Kristi did! You can also get more Kristi knowledge here:

Jeff talks with Jan Young every few months to go over Customer Success topics. for this time, we decided to tape it! We were inspired to catch up to discuss the differences in approach between Frank Slootman's new book (where he says CS is not needed) compared to a post from Jason Lemkin. We covered that, and  then in our usual style talked about everything on our minds that day! 

Topics include:

Meg Lovell of Everbridge is a ninja when it comes to all things implementation. We chatted and had a fast paced conversation about everything you need to know about implementation, including 

- turning 9 month implementations into 3

- Customers not getting any value from your product and needing to renew

- Approaching implementations with a psychology standpoint and human behavior point of view

- Eliminating the status call

- Charging Professional Services for things the customer is asking you to do

- Using Project Managers to run Implementation Projects