Women in Customer Success Podcast

104 - Crafting Your Career Path: How to Design Your Own Role - Nicky Feeney

February 14, 2024 Marija Skobe-Pilley Episode 104
104 - Crafting Your Career Path: How to Design Your Own Role - Nicky Feeney
Women in Customer Success Podcast
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Women in Customer Success Podcast
104 - Crafting Your Career Path: How to Design Your Own Role - Nicky Feeney
Feb 14, 2024 Episode 104
Marija Skobe-Pilley

Nicky Feeney, ClickUp's global success enablement manager, shares her journey from account management to crafting her unique role within the tech industry. She’s managed to get promoted to her new role in only three months. 

In this episode, you’ll hear how it happened. We focus on the importance of fine-tuning interactions with supervisors and clients, emphasising the significance of celebrating victories alongside addressing challenges.

Here's what we cover in our interview:

  • Creating your role in customer success
  • Career lessons for CSMs
  • The importance of nurturing soft skills as a CSM
  • Creating a vision and executing goals
  • The 4 pillars of customer success enablement

Tune in for an inspiring conversation - one that will motivate you to craft the best customer success story.

Follow Nicky Feeney!

__________________________________________________
About Women in Customer Success Podcast:

Women in Customer Success Podcast is the first women-only podcast for Customer Success professionals, where remarkable ladies of Customer Success connect, inspire and champion each other.


Follow:

Women in Customer Success

- Website - womenincs.co

- LinkedIn - linkedin.com/company/womenincs

- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/womenincs.co/

- Podcast page - womenincs.co/podcast

- Sign Up for PowerUp Tribe - womenincs.co/powerup

Host Marija Skobe-Pilley

- Website - https://www.marijaskobepilley.com/

- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mspilley/

- Coaching with Marija: http://marijaskobepilley.com/programs

- Get a FREE '9 Habits of Successful CSMs' guide https://www.marijaskobepilley.com/9-habits-freebie



Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

Nicky Feeney, ClickUp's global success enablement manager, shares her journey from account management to crafting her unique role within the tech industry. She’s managed to get promoted to her new role in only three months. 

In this episode, you’ll hear how it happened. We focus on the importance of fine-tuning interactions with supervisors and clients, emphasising the significance of celebrating victories alongside addressing challenges.

Here's what we cover in our interview:

  • Creating your role in customer success
  • Career lessons for CSMs
  • The importance of nurturing soft skills as a CSM
  • Creating a vision and executing goals
  • The 4 pillars of customer success enablement

Tune in for an inspiring conversation - one that will motivate you to craft the best customer success story.

Follow Nicky Feeney!

__________________________________________________
About Women in Customer Success Podcast:

Women in Customer Success Podcast is the first women-only podcast for Customer Success professionals, where remarkable ladies of Customer Success connect, inspire and champion each other.


Follow:

Women in Customer Success

- Website - womenincs.co

- LinkedIn - linkedin.com/company/womenincs

- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/womenincs.co/

- Podcast page - womenincs.co/podcast

- Sign Up for PowerUp Tribe - womenincs.co/powerup

Host Marija Skobe-Pilley

- Website - https://www.marijaskobepilley.com/

- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mspilley/

- Coaching with Marija: http://marijaskobepilley.com/programs

- Get a FREE '9 Habits of Successful CSMs' guide https://www.marijaskobepilley.com/9-habits-freebie



Speaker 1:

How do you go about your promotion? Are you patiently waiting for opportunities to come to you, or are you proactively trying to solve problems, bring solutions and, in that way, design your own role? In this episode, you will hear Nikki Feeney sharing her experience of creating her own role. I'm super excited today to introduce you to Nikki Feeney, as she is one of my favorite women in customer success Very knowledgeable, highly capable of helping customers transform their businesses. And also, she is just so lovely, such an amazing person, always ready to have a good time at work and take care of her peers. I first hired Nikki as a CSM into my team at ClickUp, but very soon it was clear that she was just excellent in finding different solutions, improving processes, constantly bringing new ideas, thinking about something new and understanding what the business needed, and rightly so. She made her business case for becoming a global success enablement manager, and she is on that position today.

Speaker 1:

Today, in this episode, listen to our conversation, as Nikki is sharing her strategies for career growth and crafting her career path. Let's get into it. Hi everyone, this is Maria Skobepile and you're listening to Women in Customer Success Podcast, the first women-only podcast where remarkable ladies of customer success share their stories and practical tools to help you succeed and make an impact. If you want to learn more about customer success, get career advice and be inspired, you're in the right place, so let's tune in. Welcome to the new episode of Women in Customer Success Podcast. Today, it's really, really a pleasure to welcome my wonderful guest, nikki Feeney, success Enablement Manager at ClickUp. Nikki, I've been waiting for this for a long time. Welcome to the show.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, I'm so excited to be here.

Speaker 1:

Nikki, let's get the audience get to know you a little bit better. Where are you calling from?

Speaker 2:

I live in the north of Ireland, so about three hours from Dublin in the beautiful northern Irish coast. But I am originally Canadian from Montreal. My mom is Swiss, my dad is French, so lots of European culture lived a little bit everywhere and I also speak French.

Speaker 1:

Wonderful. That's already a great background to understand where you're coming from and what do you bring to different businesses, which is awesome. Now, Nikki, what is your favorite type of exercise?

Speaker 2:

I have a horse, so I love horseback riding, riding a horse in the woods, and I don't think this counts as exercise, but I think it's really important. I love doing some breathing meditations Wonderful.

Speaker 1:

And Nikki, if you had to completely change your career tomorrow, what would that be?

Speaker 2:

I would train horses and people because I love that. So you can see the enablement theme is there for me. I love, I love with horses, I love finding so that part of their personality that I like, that that's really good at something, and bringing that out and you can see you change their confidence. And it's the same with people who learn to ride. Everybody's got little things that are really great about them and I love finding those, bringing them out and making them bigger. So same theme enablement.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely Same theme. Now I'm wondering am I even allowed to ask this question? What is easier, to train horses or train people?

Speaker 2:

Oh, they're both easier in different ways. I find people get in their own way. They're stubborn. Interesting With people you have to push through their own beliefs about themselves or how they think it is, so they tend to push back.

Speaker 1:

That's really interesting, definitely a topic of conversation because I want us to go into. You know, how do you actually train people? How do you enable them to be best that they can be at their work? Loads of great things to come in this conversation. I know about it, but let's start with a little bit of your background and how did you come into customer success.

Speaker 2:

So I started in what was used to be known as account management. The way businesses were set up was very much sales and then account management, and then software as a service started to have a new life and customer success became a thing Started out in California, I believe, and at the time at the company I was working at, we had a new American CEO and he decided that we were not account managers and he really created the split of a customer success manager and we no longer had a sales quota and traditional CSM would have said, in order to really build a relationship with the clients from a place of value, knowledge and trust, you couldn't have financial conversations. So that's where CSM started for me. So the role changed from account manager redefined to customer success manager.

Speaker 1:

And in that kind of original customer success manager role for you, if you were not focusing on financials or targets and quotas. So what was your core job? What were you focusing on?

Speaker 2:

Adoption, engagement, retention and growth. So if you focus on adoption of the product and engagement with a product, I really like separating those. So let's say, for the sake of today, that we have 100 seats. Adoption is that out of the 100 seats, 100 people are logging in and using it. Engagement means that they're getting value out of it, that it becomes something that they want to work with, that if they had to go do a survey of, does this tool bring you value? The answer is yes, we love it, we like it. And then growth is different for everybody's industry, but of course we want to renew at the same, if not better. So for growth, it's the value of add-on services or additional departments, additional seats. I think from a customer success standpoint it was always that it was presented because it added value or solved the solution and because there was no financial compensation. From a CSM standpoint felt like we were really able to have those conversations from a value add or a solution fix.

Speaker 1:

Having career and customer success. You changed your positions. You were a CSM on different departments, different companies, even different geographies. So you experienced lots of different environments and being in different CS teams and I do believe that your most recent CS experience was in a in a hyper growth startup in a product led company. So when you think about your role as a CSM, how did it change through all of those different environments Like, what are some, what are some core jobs of a CSM role? That definitely was, even in your latest role, even with so many different changes in the environment and different pushes for CSM to be so many different things. Like, how did that impact your role?

Speaker 2:

I mean there's always going to be a side of understanding the product and understanding your champions and what's important to them. I think there's some core soft skills that that we tend to forget as CSMs, and to me that's where the adoption goes and I always say, regardless of what your customer is needing to have adoption and engagement in, there are some some soft skills like how are you going to enable the people that are using it, how are you going to enforce the change from how it was done to how it's going to be done? How are you going to measure success? How are you going to encourage the change? How are you going to celebrate the wins? How are you going to identify internal champions that are going to continue to drive adoption and engagement of that tool? Those are things that are often forgotten because we tend to focus on the product. So I think a good CSM learns to drive those conversations and to be able to identify where it's a product knowledge and maybe it's where it's a culture, where it's other soft skills that need to be used.

Speaker 1:

So as being one of the top performing CSMs, at least at ClickUp when we used to be in the same team, I wonder what would be your kind of recipes, or do you have a top three things that really works for you always when it comes to helping customers see the value or building those champions? Why am I asking, if we have a first time CSMs listening to this episode, what are some immediate things that they could start doing today to help them build their champions and help their customers see value, regardless of the industry or the product?

Speaker 2:

CSMs, especially younger or more junior ones, tend to think that it's all about the customer and asking the customer questions and doing what the customer tells them they want. But as a CSM, you have to own what you see as being success. I call this the superpower. As a CSM, you have to remember that customer only sees their instance of whatever it is that your product is. You see many, many different examples of using that product. You know what good looks like. You know what could be better looks like and you need to own your knowledge and that superpower and guide the customer to what good looks like. So, yes, listen to them, understand what they need to achieve, but take ownership as well of what you think they need to do in order to achieve success. So I would say that that's the most important.

Speaker 1:

I really like that because in that way you can challenge them, you can provide your knowledge and insights, which is a huge role for them because otherwise they wouldn't have access to it. But you definitely need to tell them when you think they're not doing things well, when they can improve, only for their benefits, because, as you said, they don't have that perspective of even what are the possibilities, and your job is to almost unlock those possibilities for them.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I also think what's important is we need to create little bits of success to build on. We have to remember that customer has a thousand other things to do. Yes, they had time for the meeting they had with you and you might have the greatest vision, the greatest ideas of what needs to be done, but the truth is is when that calls over, they're going to go back to their busy life at work and all their deliverables. So you really need to break things down into small, bite-sized things that they can accomplish, that are going to start building towards the bigger goal and everything else. So never more than three. Otherwise, what happens is the customer agrees with everything on you on the call. Then they end up not doing them and then they'll actually start rescheduling calls or canceling calls.

Speaker 2:

They feel like, oh shoot, I had my list and I didn't do it. So always small things build success. They should want to reach out to you and be glad to have that call and have the next bit of bite-sized success.

Speaker 1:

This is a wonderful tip Help customers get successes quickly. First wins, even small wins. Let them feel good about their progress. Let them feel wanting to talk to you again to build on that right. Don't over-weld them with a to-do list of next six months in a week, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:

And, of course, that next six months plan is fantastic. That's not the question. It's just that chances are they're going to agree with you, but it's just going to be too big for them to feel good about it.

Speaker 1:

I think this is such a good point because, as we see so many more and more software being out there in the world, the chances are that your customer that you're talking to today is going to have a few more similar calls this week with different tools, and none of those tools are actually their jobs right. They do have their day job that they have to do. So, firstly, just giving you time to speak with you is amazing, so it has to be so good and valuable for them to talk to you again, right, as a CSM. I think we have to start understanding that our customers' jobs are not to talk to CSMs and do all of those things. It is really. How do we help them do little that will still continuously help them do their core job right and really see the values, because they are also absolutely overwhelmed by different tools and different things they can do in addition to their own targets.

Speaker 2:

And it's also a good time to always remember. I always think of a pyramid. You have your main person you talk to, but you could start helping them build champions as well. So if they're like, oh yeah, I don't know if I have time for that, I'm like, hey, do you know somebody else who is really excited about this tool who might be willing to help drive adoption and engagement? It's a great way to start building other champions, and the more champions you have, the greater your adoption, engagement and possibility for renewals and growth is going to happen, and you're securing yourself right. If your main champion leaves, you've already built other champions.

Speaker 1:

Thank, you for sharing those wonderful tips that every CSM can start applying today. I wanted to go further into your career. You've been a CSM in different environments and then you became a CSM at ClickUp, which I am still so, so happy because we work together in the same team. As you were a CSM for the whole French market in EMEA initially, and then things evolved and changed. What I really like about you you came to the team.

Speaker 1:

You started immediately finding, you started to find so many opportunities for improvement, but as you were talking about them, you were also starting to find solutions constantly to any of those little gaps or improvements that we could have done, and all of it led you to basically get a promotion pretty soon I don't even know how many months after you started, but I would really like to explore that process, or your thought process, when you see problems and then you start to match the problems with solutions. And how did that open up a door for a completely new role that never existed, but we realized we probably need to have that role as part of the solution to the bigger problems or opportunities. So, yeah, what is your thought process for finding solutions?

Speaker 2:

I think before I answer that I need to go back in time a little bit to a lesson learned, and I think hopefully a few other CSMs will see that in themselves and learn from that one. So a lesson learned some years back I was a CSM for a large region and I worked remotely. The main office was five hours flight where I was living and two time zones away. If you asked me, I was killing it Like I was doing amazing. My customers loved me. I had fantastic relationships. I didn't lose any customers, great retention, adoption, engagement, amazing.

Speaker 2:

But what I didn't realize is when I had a call with my boss once every two weeks for half an hour because I needed to get things done. Right, I was getting things done and I would give her my problems. They're like this isn't working, that's not working, I need help with this. This is falling apart, right. Well, interesting, she wasn't on my customer meetings. She wasn't. So all she got was my half hour calls every two weeks telling her what wasn't working.

Speaker 2:

And then the second lesson from that is I forgot that I was part of a whole business. I forgot that I was a cog in the whole machine and I started taking things personally, I started taking it upon myself to fix things, and I think a lot of CSMs do this right. They want to fix things for their customers, they want to be there for them and they start to get personally involved. We're part of a business, we're part of a product and we have to remember that. We have to do the best we can to advocate for our customers. But we have to also stop we have to not take it personally and it's okay to say, unfortunately the business isn't able to fix that and that's okay. So those were two lessons I learned. So what ended up? Keeping the mind frame of what happened there is, I realized that, one, I wasn't portraying myself in a way of the work that I was doing and two, it's very easy to find the problems.

Speaker 1:

Finding the problems is the part?

Speaker 2:

They're everywhere, right. So then something completely different happened and I really started thinking about what's positive, if somebody said that our internal thoughts tend to be more negative than they are positive, and so starting about building and turning things into positives. So back to your question. Is I learned to say pointing out that something doesn't work is pointless, it's not good, yeah, it does nothing, right? It's the same when your customer says to you this doesn't work, I'm really unhappy. Oh, but that's okay.

Speaker 2:

But what do you want? What's the solution? Are you unhappy with the product as a whole? Are there a way to fix this so you can be happy? Is there a solution you have in mind that you would like Tell me more? Let's get out of the darkness, let's go to the light, let's go to the solution, let's go to moving forward. So exactly what you thought. I learned that if you find something that doesn't work, that's great, like good for you. But what are you going to do about it? Is it okay that it doesn't work? Is it just part of the machine and we need to let it go and find something positive, or do you have an idea? And if you have an idea, are you willing to do something about it? Or are you just going to put it out there and then mentioned again and again and then keep noticing that nothing was done about it? So are you part of the solution? Are you a contributor? Are you why things are going to get better?

Speaker 1:

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Speaker 1:

I just love that so much because you taught us so many wonderful career lessons and I think this is so crucial for CSM. Just going back to your 30-minute conversation with your managers and as CSM, of course we constantly need to escalate things sometimes, but it's about you thinking how much of what you are portraying to your business, how much are really the problems and the escalations and of course, you have to do it right, you need to get more help but how much of your work you're presenting in terms of escalations and how much you are actually showcasing successes and good feedback from your customers and really great things that you are doing for your customers and I would say mostly in some way of customer feedback like just make sure that you do present all of it to the business, because very often it's so easy to focus on what has to be done, what we still haven't done, completely forgetting all of those good things. I'm so happy that you mentioned it. Plus, being part of the solution, and I need to tell you well, you have seen it on your own examples that also means developing your career and being a promotion material. There is a clear difference between people who bring solutions to the problem they are the ones who get that job done and get more jobs to do and get promoted versus people who are, as you said, pointing out problems constantly. Yes, everybody can do it, but if you're not willing to be part of the solution, it's very likely you will never get promoted because you're not showcasing that you're willing to do something about it. So thank you for pointing that up and that's here.

Speaker 1:

You were an amazing CSM for our French market and we realized at some point that we do need a person who is willing to take all of that further and close many of those gaps, find solutions and enable the global customer success team, because in a hyper growth, startup strategies and things the way we work can change really, really quickly from month to month, and that was the case for us as well, and you got promoted into a success enable and manager for the whole global team and I would like you to maybe give us a few pointers of, firstly, career aspect of it, like how do you go about when you see there is a solution that we could accomplish with creating a new role, from your start in that new role and it's never been there before.

Speaker 1:

And how do you go about now creating your vision and what is it that you want to accomplish, because there is so much to it when you start a new role when there was nothing done about it previously, a lot of questions, but you have done it in such a great way that I would like listeners to get some of the inputs and some of the tips.

Speaker 2:

So, first of all, I think these are things you taught me who are your champions in your business? Who have you already showcased your great work to and who thinks a little bit like you do in terms of what a success look like, what's the vision, what are we trying to achieve? So identify those. I think something you taught me that I didn't realize is we all have a brand, whether we realize it or not. We have a brand. So what's your brand? How do people see you? We talked about that before we started recording.

Speaker 2:

I had a very interesting December where people actually mentioned to me how they saw me, without me even asking, and it surprised me. They told me that, and people who didn't even know each other all said the same thing that I was the most positive person they knew and that I created so much material that was impactful. So it was very interesting that. Oh, you know, that's a brand. That's how you come across. So I would say to anybody listening if you think you don't have a brand, you're wrong. You have been creating a brand for yourself. So this is a good opportunity to check if the brand you're creating for yourself is what you actually want or the path that you're wanting. If not, it's time to course correct. And if it is what you want or maybe it surprises you, like it did me how do you continue to grow that and build that? So we've gotten our champions, we've gotten our brand, and then the next one is your vision. So why?

Speaker 2:

For me, there was a moment where I we were at SKO and they presented a whole lot of great program enablement for sales, and it ended when a customer became a customer and I thought, well, that's crazy, we're a product led growth business. We need just as much processes and enablement for a live customer as we do for somebody coming in to becoming a customer. So I had my vision. I instantly knew, because of being a CSM, what we were lacking and I got super excited and started drawing the picture of what I could accomplish, where I thought the business could grow because of what I would put in place and, of course, in that, don't ask for permission, Don't ask for somebody else to confirm that you can do it. You got to believe in yourself and you got to believe that you can deliver your vision for six months from now or a year from now, etc. Wonderful, that was a lot.

Speaker 1:

And as you jumped into your role, how did you, you know, start putting that vision in place? Because it's it's a lot of things to digest, lots of different teams to start working and getting those people on board. There is now the whole new system that you have to create to support that new role. So what are some of the lessons that you learn when you're assuming the new role? What do you do?

Speaker 2:

So a few things I learned in this new role. You have to work with leadership management. Your idea of what good looks like or what success looks like might be different than the stakeholders that are there, so that, to be very nimble, something that you have spent weeks creating in your mind and so on you're going to have to learn how to communicate that effectively in two minutes, three minutes maybe, to get buy-in. And then, once you have buy-in, you can you can keep building and delivering, a little bit like what we were talking about earlier. As you're working with the leaders, you also have to one take input from them, but then tell them what you think good looks like. Whiteboards, just whiteboards. Stick everything on whiteboards and then start to pick out three to four themes never more. Okay, how do you build those out? And then three to four themes under each theme and then just whiteboards.

Speaker 1:

And Niki, you had a big vision and thanks for starting to explain how many different moving paths are there to start executing on the vision. If there is somebody listening who is thinking about enabling customer success themes, what would you say are the main pillars of success enablement? Where do you even start from? Or maybe you don't even start at once. Maybe you need to have those three or four swim lanes constantly, but what are those most important parts of enabling CSM that every leader should be thinking?

Speaker 2:

of. Well, as you mentioned, the role changed very quickly at ClickUp from what I thought it was going to be to what it turned out it was going to be. So what turned out to be great is I ended up having to create enablement for new hires from scratch. So when you're looking at enablement from scratch, you start to say, well, what are the things that CSM should know? I created it into four weeks so you had sort of taking away like company, what's the company, and so on. So taking that away.

Speaker 2:

The first pillar was product. The next pillar were processes, managing your book, the tools that you need to use. Next pillar would be customer interactions. So you have a lot of soft skills.

Speaker 2:

Product knowledge tends to be a feature like do this, if that, this is how you do it. But when you're talking with customers, it's why are we doing this Right? Often I say like when you're talking to customers, you have the. They'll give you a paint by numbers. They'll be like I need the color for number seventeen and we have to be careful to not be support To me. Support is you want the color for number seventeen? Sure, here it is, it's orange.

Speaker 2:

But Kusara's success would be like why number seventeen. Have you figured out the others? Did you use the colors recommended or did you do it differently? Who else is going to be looking at that, like, paint me the picture of what we're trying to do so that I can answer it in a way that I can make that product really come together for you. So to me, that's where the product and the soft skills of a CSM come together. So that was really big. And then you've got this whole discovery how do you drive adoption and engagement? How do you do joint success plans? How do you ask good questions? How do you know it's a good question? So there's all those things that fall into that and those are the things that will drive adoption, engagement and so on. Right Product knowledge on its own doesn't either.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so wonderful. Those are kind of four pillars of customer success onboarding, and then, once you have teams in place, especially if the teams need some transitions because of changes, I remember one of the first things you put in place is how can we measure some of those progress? Right, because we have to prove to the business that this is all working well, as intended. And then you started with the product certification programs as well, because that can be measurable. And I can see that you're applying same processes or methodologies as you would with customers, like let's have small wins and then let's move on. So now, when we have a win of, we are measuring the product knowledge, what is next? What could be the next evolution of enablement? And how do you even get CSM's to again bind to the enablement right? It should be a normal part of their role, but again it's on top of their day job. So how do you manage that?

Speaker 2:

It's interesting when you're saying that, because it's true. So I think one of the challenges we had was to say, especially for ClickUp, any CSM was brought in and it was a bit up to them to decide how far they were going to go into product knowledge and so on. So if we're looking at product knowledge, so how do you draw a line to say this is the minimum of what you should know, and then how do you figure out who's above it, who's below it, and so on. So it's actually been interesting. Some of the things that I've put into place, which one could be just a basic certification, do you know how to do one, two, three.

Speaker 2:

We've done some presentations with different levels of grading them and different levels of expectations. It's been really interesting and, I think, changing that the way the managers think as well. And I would ask that I've had a manager discussion and you say, well, how do you know your CSM has good product knowledge? And well, like, oh, but they do. I've heard them on calls Like how do you know if I had to give you a grading sheet, would you be able? And not grading for pass or fail, but for evaluation, because if we're thinking about enablement, to me, that's the foundation of saying oh well, if nobody can show how to do X, then we need to develop enablement on that. How do you get buy-in from it? I think you have to make enablement consumable Interesting so instead of work. So, if enablement is done properly and presented properly by attending and participating their learning and they've consumed it, rather than go look at this SOP, read through it and now you're done, that's not enablement, that's sharing of information.

Speaker 1:

Which is boring and absolutely not inspiring for anyone Exactly.

Speaker 2:

Exactly. I think if you start to do it in a way that by attending and participating they're inevitably learning and consuming and therefore changing in their mindset, then that's been successful. And then I think, when it's done well, it's increasing their confidence, it's increasing their ability to have client conversations, it's increasing their way of feeling good, so it's a positive.

Speaker 1:

Nikki, thank you so much for sharing this. Sometimes, if I was to do everything from the scratch or if I'm starting anew as a leader, I have learned that enablement is such a big piece that you want to invest in enablement as much as you want to invest in operations at the beginning. It's just because those are the roles that absolutely support CSMs to do their best work. And now just last question on it for me is really, if you're a leader in a no position to invest in enablement resources, what could you do or how you should invest that little time that you have to enable CSMs? What would be the first two or three things that you should stay care of? And it's a huge question because there is so, so much but like, if you do those one, two, three that can make first wins to CSM, like what would those wins be? Or where do you focus?

Speaker 2:

I'm going to have to say soft skills, like assuming there's a certain product. Now it depends where you're starting from. If you have no processes, you need processes, because if it's not repeatable, you can't measure it and you can't improve it. So we need to have repeatable processes. Second, there needs to be a level of product knowledge. If there isn't a certification or a way to evaluate product knowledge, you need that. So I think those are two pillars that, if they're not there whether it comes from enablement or a different part of the business like that needs to be there.

Speaker 2:

And then the thing that I would say that most businesses don't invest in is the soft skills. And I'll say that because I have had CSMs do some of the exercises I put together, where they get the product knowledge wrong, but they've made me feel good and they've had so much confidence that I'm like that's amazing, I totally believe you. And then I have others who have fantastic product knowledge but their delivery is terrible. Their intonation is really hard to follow, the way they demonstrate things. They lose me completely and I think, well, yeah, you have great product knowledge. However, I don't really want to contact you again the next time I have a problem because I couldn't follow, or so on. I think the soft skills are so important and it's the hardest one to evaluate and to put together. I think that's where you're going to have the most impact soft skills and discovery, having that confidence to discover. I would say that most of the time, csms are afraid to ask questions or go deeper, and to me those are soft skills, yeah.

Speaker 1:

I'm really glad that you mentioned it, because those soft skills also come from, somehow, internal confidence and having the confidence to say, yeah, I'm not sure, but ask those questions regardless and find out the answers later on. But just go deeper and deeper, having, almost firstly, curiosity to find out about customers' business without thinking, oh my gosh, what if they talk about something I don't understand? There's recordings. Write the notes, you'll learn it. But just go deeper. That's certainly been some of the lessons that I have always learned through your work Constantly ask deeper and deeper questions. There is never a deep enough question that you shouldn't go into. Just keep on discovering customers in every single interaction with them.

Speaker 2:

On that note, I love putting things into analogies, so I use this one. I said, okay, your customer is asking you for a scarf. Where's the scarf? So we have a tendency to say, well, I'm not sure I'll look for you, let me look. But why do they want a scarf? We're looking for it because we've assumed that maybe it's cold outside, maybe it's part of their outfit and so on. And I love to bring out the picture that they're building a snowman and they need the scarf for the snowman, which nobody would have thought of. But if you don't ask, how do you know? How do you know what it's for?

Speaker 1:

Keep on discovering, and I love your analogy, niky. This has been wonderful. Where can our listeners?

Speaker 2:

find you online LinkedIn. I'm terrible at updating LinkedIn, but I'm there, you're there.

Speaker 1:

It's wonderful. Well, thank you so much for coming to the show. Thank you.

Speaker 2:

Maria, I'm talking to you, as always.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for listening. Next week new episode, Subscribe to the podcast and connect with me on LinkedIn so you're up to date with all the new episodes and the content I'm curating for you. Have a great day and talk to you soon.

Create Your Role in Customer Success
Career Lessons for CSMs
Creating a Vision and Executing Goals
The Pillars of Customer Success Enablement