Subscribed Podcast

Wayne McCulloch, author of The Seven Pillars of Customer Success, has more than 25 years experience in the software industry educating companies on the building blocks for Customer Success. He is a two time Chief Customer Officer, and ran global customer education services at HPE, IBM and Salesforce, and now he's the Global Head of Customer Success at Google Cloud.

Wayne's book is a manual for Customer Success teams - it gives the modern software company all the info on the best people, policies, and practices used to satisfy and delight customers at scale.

Tune in to hear how customer success strategy, framework and metrics need to adapt in the Subscription Economy.

Marco Bertini is rewriting the rules of commerce. Instead of selling the "means" (products and services), he believes companies should adopt innovative revenue models to pursue the "ends" (actual outcomes). The key: reflect the value that customers actually derive from their purchases.

Bertini is a professor of marketing at Esade and a visiting professor at the Harvard Business School. He is also a senior advisor to the marketing, sales, and pricing practice at the Boston Consulting Group. Marco is the co-author of the book The Ends Game: How Smart Companies Stop Selling Products and Start Delivering Value. He received his doctorate from Harvard Business School and has previously served on the faculty at London Business School.

Georgiana Laudi is a SaaS growth advisor and marketing executive. She's a strategic advisor at Elevate where she helps high-growth SaaS companies scale, and the co-founder of Forget the Funnel which helps SaaS marketing and growth leaders build customer-led strategies that result in revenue-generating outcomes. Before that, Georgiana was the former VP of Marketing at Unbounce and has nearly two decades of experience in marketing and growth, from early-stage startups to big brands like Yellow Pages and AskMen.

We talk to Georgiana on what constitutes customer-led growth and the mindset shift required from subscription business leaders to operationalize it.

Michael Wolf is the Co-founder and CEO of Activate, the leading strategy and technology consulting firm for media, technology, and entertainment companies worldwide. He is a business strategist whose focus is on helping senior executives exploit growth opportunities and define the future of their businesses – all aimed at helping them win in the dynamic media and tech ecosystem. Previously, Michael was President and COO of MTV Networks and a managing partner at McKinsey & Company.

We talk to Michael about Activate's research on the impact of Covid-19 on media and technology businesses. We dig into the recently released Technology & Media Outlook 2021 report and the Rewire to Restart report which came out over the summer.

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John Pineda is Partner-Director at the Boston Consulting Group. He's a core member of BCG's Technology, Media, and Telecom as well as Marketing, Sales, and Pricing practices.

John is an expert in pricing model transformation, monetization of digital platforms, and pricing to value to improve core business profitability. He has helped clients in implementing large-scale pricing programs, applying pricing quick hits tactics, and developing new subscription-as-a-service revenue models. John's clients come from a range of industries including technology, data/business services, life sciences, industrial goods, and financial institutions.

We talk to John about pricing strategies for the Covid era, challenges faced by technology companies, and subscription growth levers. And we also try to find out if the list price is really extinct!

Ken Doctor is a writer, analyst, and consultant in the news media industry. His work focuses on the transformation of consumer media in the digital age and connects the dots between the news and entertainment we consume with the changing business of media organizations. He is the author of Newsonomics: Twelve New Trends That Will Shape the News You Get, and he writes a popular weekly column called "Newsonomics Of" for the Nieman Journalism Lab.

We talk to Ken about the impact of COVID-19 on publishing, the balance between advertising and subscriptions, and the path to more sustainable business models.

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Amy Konary, VP of Customer Business Innovation and Chair of the Subscribed Institute, brings over 20 years of experience advising companies on subscription business strategies.

JJ Xia is Zuora's Director of Customer Strategy and oversees messaging, positioning, and strategic initiatives around the Zuora customer experience.

We talk to Amy and JJ about how COVID-19 has impacted the growth of subscription businesses and what companies are doing to respond to the changing market.

Chuck is a New York Times Business Bestselling author and has been a leader in emerging digital technologies for more than two decades. Considered to be one of the foremost experts on IoT, Chuck is a keynote speaker and has authored several books including Digital Transformation 3.0: The New Business -to-Consumer Connections of Internet of Things. Chuck also serves as the Editor of the MediaPost AI & IoT Daily, and hosts a podcast called "The Voices of the Internet of Things with Chuck Martin." He is also the CEO of the Net Future Institute.

We talk to Chuck about monetizing IoT, the impact of COVID-19 epidemic on IoT businesses, and a future with drones and robotics.

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Lincoln Murphy is a customer-centric growth expert, consultant, and thought leader. Based in Dallas, Lincoln helps SaaS companies with his "Exponential Growth Framework" which helps companies improve customer retention, turn customers into advocates, drive revenue growth, and scale their business in a customer-centric way.

We talk to Lincoln about the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic on subscription businesses, how it's changing customer success, and how to keep pace with that change.

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Arun Sundararajan is the Harold Price Professor of Entrepreneurship and Professor of Technology, Operations and Statistics at New York University's Leonard N. Stern School of Business, and an affiliated faculty member at NYU's Center for Data Science and NYU's Center for Urban Science & Progress.

His best-selling book, "The Sharing Economy," published by the MIT Press, was the winner of a 2017 Axiom Best Business Books Award, and has been translated into five languages. Arun has also published over 50 peer-reviewed scientific papers and over 35 op-eds.

We talk to Arun about the Sharing Economy, the end of ownership, and the trouble with GDP.

For previous episodes, head over to www.zuora.com/podcast