How to define KPIs for CS teams? What are the consequences of choosing the wrong KPI? And how can we make sure that the KPIs we choose really cover all of our goals? 

KPIs are the growth engine of almost every startup company. A well-defined KPI can boost up revenues, while an inaccurate one can shift the focus from what’s important. 

This week Darya Wertheim spoke with Tom Ronen, Head of High Touch Customer Success, and Nir Fogel, Head of Client Services, about one of the most challenging areas to set KPIs in - Customer Success teams.

They Discuss three main dilemmas related to the topic - Is it better to define individual or team KPIs? Should you connect the KPIs to compensations? And what encourages more growth - Leading or Lagging KPIs?  

*A short clarification before you listen - we know that the term CS can relate to different teams in different companies. At monday.com, when we speak about CS teams, we mean groups that help the client implement and scale with the product, and not Customer Support. 

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More relevant episodes: 

SaaS Metrics Foundations series 

Ep. 28 - how to define and measure success with Gil Hirsch 

Ep. 53 - Leading with KPIs with Gil Hirsch 

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Product and Sales are two departments that are traditionally at odds. While sales reps request certain features in the product to close a deal, the product managers work according to a pre-defined roadmap. Even though both of the departments aim for the company’s success, they usually see different ways to get there. This miscommunication can eventually cost the company a lot.

So how do you align the sales and product departments? How do you build processes that improve workflows between departments? And why having a shared KPI isn’t enough for both parties’ success?

This week we are talking to Leah Bauman, Product Alignment Manager, and Nir Goldstein, VP of EMEA & APAC Sales at monday.com, who will share the process of creating and defining the new role of Product Alignment, the challenges in creating a bridge between potential customers needs and the product roadmap, and how having a dedicated owner for a process already generated more than 2$ million dollars in the past year, and made many customers happier.

 

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What are the most important things to focus on when building a partnership program? How to define an ideal partner profile? And how to create that initial reach with relevant partners?

Startup for Startup Unplugged: Partnerships event was held on November 18th, and in this Recap episode you’ll hear a few insights from two of the sessions.

In this week’s episode we hear Asaf Fradkin, Director of Strategic Partnerships, and Barak Zigdon, Partnerships and Global Resellers Manager at monday.com, share what are the key elements to focus on when starting a partnership program and how to initiate contact with partners in a way that will lay the foundation for a long term relationship.

 

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How to create a successful partnership with another tech company, and should you collaborate with your competitors?

In 2019 the Partnerships department at monday.com, which by then included channel partnerships, academic partnerships and strategic partnerships, expanded its activities and created the Tech Partnerships team, which is in charge of different product integrations or alliances we create with other tech companies. 

We started with one partnership with Typeform. Today, tech partnerships serve as a major growth engine for the company – not just because of the revenue they generate to the company, but also because of the actual added value they provide for our users. Today, monday.com has dozens of partnerships in the making, including with the big tech five – google, facebook, apple, amazon and microsoft.

In this week’s episode we are talking to Oren Stern, VP Partnerships and Alliances, and Amit Goldenberg, Head of Tech Partnerships at monday.com. Oren and Amit discuss the different types of tech partnerships and the value each one provides, and share what every startup has to offer to large tech companies in order to create wins for both sides.

 

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This episode was recorded especially for the upcoming Unplugged: Partnerships event, coming up on November 18th. Click here to register and to find more details about the event.

How to create channel alignment, and how can we use our internal work culture to create better partnerships?

In 2020, the Partnerships department at monday.com tripled in size. We added the department less than three years ago, and already more business partners – external companies or salespeople – offer our platform than monday.com’s Sales department. 

So how can we make sure our external partners are aligned with our brand and product just as every other employee at the company?

In a special episode recorded ahead of the upcoming Unplugged: Partnerships event, we are talking to Asaf Fradkin, Head of Partnerships and Business Development, and Dror Spindel, Director for Latin America at monday.com. Asaf and Dror share how we can use our internal work culture to create successful partnerships, how to bridge gaps with partners, and why creating channel alignment can bring value not only for the company, but also for both our partners and the customers

 

https://www.startupforstartup.com/playlists/design/ 

 

https://www.startupforstartup.com/playlists/design/ 

 

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How can we practice Impact-Driven Leadership?

 

In the first part of this topic, Eran Zinman and Lior Krengel discussed the ideas that stand at the core of our work processes at monday.com. They talked about how important it is to focus on execution in order to succeed in our tasks, and about how perfection is only attainable through iteration.

Some of the questions we received following the previous episode were about concerns we all experience regarding this topic: What if we feel we simply ‘can’t’ do something? How can we still move fast in this case?

This week Lior and Eran talk about how to practice impact-driven leadership in our day-to-day, discuss our role as leaders, and share techniques for overcoming the fear of moving fast and the “I can’t” approach.

 

 

 

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You know when you start working on a project that seems pretty small, only to end up working on it for days – sometimes even months – more than expected?

Those of you who have listened to our podcast before know that we are an impact-driven company. In practice, this means we believe in achieving perfection through iteration – investing our time in learning by executing quickly, analyzing the results, and executing again. Rather than by months on months of research.

In this week’s episode, Lior Krengel and Eran Zinman talk about impact-driven leadership and how it can help us move faster.  They discuss the reasons for analysis paralysis, how we can overcome it, and why going against our intuition can actually help us in these cases.

“Companies are moving so fast today and everything is so dynamic, and I think the ones that fail are the ones who stop innovating and making changes, and eventually slow down and die. The ability to move quickly is relevant whether you’re a small team or a big company, in order to stay in the game and be successful.” (Eran Zinman)

 

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Many of monday.com’s users join the platform without a salesperson being involved. With the company’s change in strategy and the decision to focus more on enterprise accounts, the need for salespeople rose. Each sales deal requires not only an Account Manager to be involved, but an entire team of Account Executives, security and privacy experts, Legal Counsels, and more. So when a deal closes, we all take a moment to celebrate their accomplishments and the hard work they did to get there.

But, like everything in the startup world, the sales cycle is also one big roller coaster. And when everyone puts so much effort and a major deal ends up not working out – you can get hit hard.

So how do you cope with the understanding that you may not reach your quarterly or yearly goals? How can you communicate the loss of a deal with an entire team that is waiting for you to close it successfully? And how can we make sure we are learning from every deal, even the ones who we didn’t complete?

This week we are talking to Rick Schwartz and Graham Rowe, Senior Enterprise Account Managers at monday.com, directly from our office in New York. Rick and Graham tell the story of two sales deals, each with the potential to add more than 100K to the company’s annual recurring revenue, which after significant work were simply… canceled. Rick and Graham share how to rise up after failing, and how to get a feeling of closure even on deals that did not succeed.

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Eight months ago we recorded an episode in Hebrew about our company culture (Episode 33 – ‘The Five Cultural Attributes of monday.com’). We spoke quite a lot about the importance of transparency and inclusion, but since the episode was recorded in Hebrew all of our non-Hebrew speaking employees couldn’t listen to what we had to say or feel a part of this episode.

Eran described it accurately in our latest episode: “Culture is what we do, not what we talk about.” So as we try to learn from our mistakes and move forward, we decided to record another episode about what a business culture is – this time with both of monday.com’s founders, Roy Mann and Eran Zinman. 

The five attributes we were talking about in the previous episode have turned into six well-defined attributes. This change demonstrates one of the main challenges we discuss during this episode: In what way do values change as a company grows and evolves? Should a company try and preserve its culture, or should it embrace changes that occur along the way? And what is the price it pays for choosing one approach over another?

In this week’s episode, Roy Mann and Eran Zinman, monday.com’s founders, together with Lior Krengel, break down the six cultural attributes that lie at the core of monday.com’s culture. They discuss how the culture of a company is formed, what impact does the hiring process have on a culture, and why we don’t believe in hanging ‘culture posters’ on the wall. 

00:36 – What is culture to you?
03:55 – Is the decision to hire ability over team collaboration the right one?
06:25 – What does culture look like for new people joining the company?
07:56 – How is culture formed?
09:15 – Does culture determine the success of a company?
11:14 – The six different areas we believe in.
14:35 – What decisions have we made that support us being product-centric?
16:14 – What does customer centricity really mean to us?
20:25 – How we define ownership in a sentence.
27:27 – What does inclusion mean at monday.com?
36:05 – What does impact look like in a daily setting?
42:01 – What is speed and why is it different for SaaS?

 

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Our 3rd recap revolves around being customer-centric – which sounds like a nice catchphrase, right? However it’s a huge task for any company, specifically ones that are scaling rapidly. To make this challenge more actionable we want to give you a deeper look into how we achieve this in our day-to-day practice using two examples from our previous episodes.

 

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