GSD Podcast - Customer Success Legend Diane Gordon!
I am so excited to bring this podcast to you. Diane is one of the pioneers in Customer Success, and here we talk about early SaaS strategies, "services" DNA, who should own upsell and renewals, and lots of other great nuggets.
Transcript:
Jeff 01:14
All right, yep, it's working. All right, we're good. So I'm here with Dan Gordon, a longtime friend slash boss slash mentor. And just super happy to chat with you because this is your sweet spot. And I think one of the, I want to say founders of the Customer Success type role. But definitely when things got into the SaaS world, you became sort of one of the leaders. And so now I'm just happy to chat a little bit about your background. And we can start with sort of that indeco role where we met and we don't need to talk about, I don't think either of us need to go back. I graduated college, and then I folded jeans at the gap.
Diane Gordon 01:56
It's nice to see it's really nice to see Oh, Sam here.
Jeff 01:59
This is gonna be super loud. I'm gonna push the microphone closer to you because I have a much louder voice. Okay.
Diane Gordon 02:03
So yeah, I do think of Endeca as the place where SaaS was just in its infancy. And I specifically remember getting that interview process where they were the big concern was the reason they were looking for somebody was that it was a SaaS business. And they were coming up on their first set of big renewals, and realized that no one had really talked to the client, right? You've got a classic wine that I love to hear, you know, it's really, yeah, it was the worried our sales reps are gonna roll up in their Mercedes asking for the renewal and the clients are gonna be like, I haven't talked to him. Right? That's right. So the first
Jeff 02:40
model was just as project managers, we would go implemented everything good, good. And that was like,
Diane Gordon 02:46
the answer support calls. perfectly lovely. But we weren't reaching out to talk about hey, are you feel like you're getting your money's worth? Because it was the classic old model of, hey, if you need something. Yeah. And I remember specifically being told just, we need to call all these people now. And just make nice so that they're not surprised when salespeople show up. And that was really the first the first time I had really thought about it, because I'd always worked with software that was, you know, up to go and install it somewhere else a maintenance fee. But so we really had to start thinking about what productive touch look like, that wasn't just annoying. It wasn't just sort of calling up sick. So everything okay? Because, you know, that's, it's not really helpful, and instead starting to think about, okay, well, if we're going to hire people to do outreach to them, what do we want them to do to get these clients really engaged, make sure they're using the software? So that that was I remember forming that team? That was the first time I tried something like that.
Jeff 03:46
I remember things like paid audits and things.
Diane Gordon 03:50
Absolutely. And it worked. Yeah, absolutely. Actually, what was surprising to everyone, including me, was that that team ended up generating a bunch of revenue, that was not the intent, right? It was like, Please protect our revenue. But that team would end up happening is they built relationships that ended up helping us identify expansion opportunities, additional sales. So that was a big sort of aha moment. Like, Oh, I get it. This is this is good, not just for retention, but for expansion. So but it also I mean, since then, obviously held a number of roles were managing that CSM function, and
Jeff 04:29
what was a bullhorn where things started, like just blowing up in the like, for me, it's like, wait, they now have software for this, like Gainsight. And I know you like wrote the foreword to that and everything. I felt like it was right around that timeframe where it was like this beloved success now, is that what the role is, and yeah, because
Diane Gordon 04:45
it's actually a different role than your classic sort of implementation project manager. And I think that was a took people a while to realize that strictly the job of managing a portfolio of clients, which is, you know, if you're an implementation person you might have for five or six of those, you're running with their projects, you run on timelines, you have your scheduled things. Whereas if you're a CSM, it's it's more like you have a book of business. And your job is to keep that book of business really healthy. Yeah. And we're health is defined by not like a salesperson is defined by closing business for CSM, the metrics are different. And I think that was everybody's like, well, what are the metrics? How do you? If I have you know, I'm managing a book of 40 clients? What is my job, actually? And how do I measure whether it's going? Well, so the notion of what does a healthy client look like rain started coming up? Like, is it? Is it just that they're not calling support? They're not on fire? So therefore, they're right, where is it that there's actually a way of looking at their usage? So this the notion of, hey, any SaaS vendor has a lot of data about what their clients are doing right? Or software? Are they logging in? That's the one and then are there specific features you want them to use? That you'd be logging in? But if you're not using the sticky stuff? Yeah, right. And I think what began to happen is a lot of SaaS vendors at that time began to have those same needs, which is where vendors like games I came from, yeah, this is a, how do we provide this role with a dashboard of what's important?
Jeff 06:16
Without having an email, you know, operations or engineering, like some you pull report for me? And they're like, Oh, my God, like, you and everybody else, absolutely realize,
Diane Gordon 06:26
oh, my gosh, you know, we can see that customers that stay with us do a lot of x. Well, let's now have programs to drive an X for the rest of her class. Um, so I think that the, I do think that the game sites and platforms like that are purpose built for this role, and they're super, I mean, it's unnecessary. Absolutely. As you grow, I mean, I think if you, you know, if you're a CSM that is working with very large accounts, maybe five accounts, you probably don't need something like that you're on top of it, usually those relationships, and you have all that, but for any, any reasonable portfolio size, that super record, but also what, what I began to learn is that the person in this role is pretty different from it's not a project manager, yeah, right, when it's good if they have those skills, not a salesperson, right. But it's this person who's great at building relationships and great at talking about value and impact. And so, so that sounds squishy, kind of like a salesperson, but they also have to be rigorous in their attention to the the cadence of communication, check ins and specific times and having very specific conversations. And so what ends up happening is that piece of that role is really great for like a project manager, right. But a classic project manager person is really uncomfortable with the like, yeah, about value and impact. Exactly. So it is it is it's been it turned out to be a perfect home for people who are like to be consulted, but don't want to call it out.
Jeff 08:04
Yeah, so I'm not I'm not quite a thing. Oh, my God, because, you know, I talked to Renee, and all the agents, all these people that you know, and everything, everyone has a view on everyone's view. And I've Well, I think the view is what we discussed right before a record, which is what works for the company right now. But beyond that, the view that I've seen the most divisive, not divisive, but just the difference opinions. Right in one of them is the classic, like, who gets the Commission's on the upsell, or who lost the upsell, right. And then there's some other ones, but I wanted to see your opinion on that one.
Diane Gordon 08:40
My my view on this is actually from a client perspective, which is I, I believe that as a client, you can tell when somebody's talking to you has a quota. And I know there are people that disagree with me. But you know, if you're a client and you know that the person talking to you as a quota, you behave differently with that person than you do with a person who doesn't. You just do your work, or, Oh, I know they'll say anything. Whereas if you know that they have a quota, you're like, Oh, are they telling me this? I really liked them. And I want to trust them. Yeah. But are they telling me this? Because they really care about what's good for me, or is it because they've got their q4 number to head yeah, and so it's less about I mean, it is also true that it's, it's, if you're a really awesome CSM, you're often not comfortable selling. That's true, but I think you can fix that problem. Yeah,
Jeff 09:29
for me, I have seen that work for some people. I was like, oh my god, like I love the product so much that you know, sometimes it's on that product right? Like
Diane Gordon 09:37
training and get over that discomfort Yeah, around. If you want the client to feel like this person is engaging with them around value. And they you know, if they also sort of have their hand out, it feels different.
Jeff 09:52
This is so funny in this shows where we're nothing against other people I've talked to like where your expertise comes in because You're the first person that said, this is how the customer feels. Everybody's sort of like, well, you know, the account people, we need to incentivize them. And it's about the percentage based and it's a cost center. So that's the other thing, right is it's a cost center
Diane Gordon 10:12
cost center. So I mean, you can figure out the cop stuff and all that. But if you're a client, and you got to look, your CSM is the person who's going to guide you on this journey is going to make sure when you look at the impact metrics that you hit the one you meant to hit. And then we also have this account manager, right, whose job it is to look for business to handle your renewal. And, you know, it's commercial versus non commercial. Yeah. And if you can afford to do that it's the best model for the client
Jeff 10:40
right? Now, it's the sort of next question I was going to ask, like, what's the profile of the companies because I've seen some companies try and do it with the non commercial aspect of it, and then it's like, but I do fully, you have to embrace the benefit that they're bringing in, which is your churn. If you
Diane Gordon 10:57
do that, too, like account manager can have a pretty significantly larger portfolio than a CSM. So let's say a CSM can handle, you know, depending on size of clients we're talking about, so they can handle you know, 50 clients, well, the account manager might have
Jeff 11:10
100 Wow, you know, Yeah, cuz they're just going to get in contracts. Because I mean,
Diane Gordon 11:14
so the way I think about is the account managers job. Simply put, those two people should never have to be in the same call, or the same meeting, okay. And, and what that implies is that they're, you either have systems for information sharing, or they're really good at information sharing, and they trust one another. But imagine that a CSM has their portfolio of whatever is the reason, you know, depending on you know, the account manager should be focused not on building relationships with that same set of people but with other people. Right,
Jeff 11:45
who else would you like? Would this be good for?
Diane Gordon 11:47
Right? That's right. That's right. And so, you know, depending on deal size, the person that CSM is working with isn't the buyer, right? I mean, if it is the buyer, of course, the account manager should also have a relationship there. But they should be focused on how can I be thinking about broadening and deepening these relationships so that if that person leaves
Jeff 12:09
or you know, like, Oh, my God falls out of love with us or whatever? So,
Diane Gordon 12:14
I think, you know, the truth is that it always makes sense to split that role and the excuse of what we you know, we're too tiny to do that. I think it actually. I think it's short sighted, yeah. So
Jeff 12:31
especially if you've got churn issues, and so you decided to create a CSM group and
Diane Gordon 12:35
ally, for example, here at panorama at the very low end, we have schools that are very small, that are under save 5000
Jeff 12:43
You're going for I wish probably tell people that the three the one minute on panorama, so they get
Diane Gordon 12:48
is in the business of ensuring that all kids get have a great educational experience and are able to get to college, if that's their, that's their path or to wherever their path is, regardless of income level or skin color, or background or culture, anything at all kids get to get a fair shake and an awesome educational experience. Yeah, that's the mission. And, and so we have a set of products that, that enable teachers and school administrators and parents and kids to be able to look at that whole child to understand what's working for them, or whether it's by combining social emotional learning data, academics, behavior, grades, the whole attendance, all that stuff to kind of go hey, for Jeff, for example, you know, the way he learns is like this. And as a result, we need to think about his rap a little different songs
Jeff 13:39
like the CSM for the child, but it's the game.
Diane Gordon 13:44
So but at the end, we're but we are a business. And so, you know, at the very large end, we have, for example, Boston Public Schools, New York City School District stations, right. At the very low end, we might have a single school, buying from us a single charter school, and then we can't really afford to double staff. Yeah, so in that case, what we're doing is we are saying to the CSM, you own the renewal as well. Yeah. And the reason we do that is because if it turns Yeah, it's less of a hit. Right doesn't make it. So I think there's a financial point at which you look at what a client is spending with you. Sure. And you determine what your service delivery model is. And that's that's true. Set aside the MCS and they might even decide they don't get a CSM that what they get as a virtual. Oh, sure. Right. Yeah, community kind of thing. Yeah. So we do in some cases, don't assign account managers to some of our clients, because it costs too much. Yeah, that
Jeff 14:37
makes sense. And that's what I was. That's a part I was curious about, because I like the community aspect, or it's like, you know, we'll get you off the ground, which we're gonna cover in a second. And then it's like, you've got a forum or a learning.
Diane Gordon 14:49
That is indeed, we used to call it self service. And that was actually it was good. We've actually added a little bit of a touch now to the self service clients just because we found they were hitting a couple of bumps Okay. So we do do that we do kick off each individual client, but then we introduce them to the community. It used to be sort of like you get an email.
Jeff 15:09
There's your activation and some clients
Diane Gordon 15:11
to deal with that. And some not so much, right. But But either way, once you decide that the renewal is worth paying attention to the can of having an account manager,
Jeff 15:22
so nice natural segue, because the neck and I swear this comes up like once a week when I'm talking to people is is the whole count get signed your CSM there to the CSM? I mean, again, this depending on the product and things like that implementation, right? The the launching the path to get there. What do you think are some of the best practices that you've come across in terms of I personally uncomplicated things had an implementation team. super complicated things. And you know, when I went and talked to all the account managers in our NPS was down their internal NPS was down it was like, I've got 40 customers, I do one implementation a year. And it's like a bomb goes off in my life. I do the implementation crappy. And then I do my account management crappy. Everything's crappy. Yeah.
Diane Gordon 16:10
I shouldn't be doing implementing. Right, like ever. Yeah. So ideally, and we're not doing this here yet. Ideally, what you have is, there are career project managers who are great at standing up software, right? Like that's what they do. And then post stand up or near the end of that you transition to the CSM, right? And then they go on the implementation person goes on to their next project, right? And if you do that, they can handle a bunch of projects at one time, right? But that's, you know, then they
Jeff 16:36
Is it a clean break? Or is it because the way I did it before, I'm not saying was the best either was, is that, oh, they're there, they're around, they're the quarterback, it's just that they're handing it off to us right now to get to the implementation, there's
Diane Gordon 16:49
definitely some transition time. But ideally, the only reason they get involved again, is if the client needed to do some additional work. So for example, here, they may say, Oh, we've now bought another product from, of course, we go back to the, you know, at the moment, our CSM is doing implementation and follow on care. And the challenge with that is it's two very different kinds of work. Right? And you typically find that people in that job are good at one or the really good. They make countable. Yeah. From an implementation perspective, I think like the, the best thing I learned in the last few years is that the thing to do when it just seems so obvious, implementation is to clearly is to say back to the client, that reason why they bought, right, and that is what they're trying to accomplish. Not some, like squishy, you bought because you care about
Jeff 17:43
kids, your internal success metrics,
Diane Gordon 17:46
how will you know that this money was well spent? Right? We'll know. Because our achievement gaps between black students and white students will, will decrease. And we won't know that for two years, but we'll have indicators that look like this. And, okay, cool. Everything we do now, it's driven towards that. So great. You agree, say that or they go? Yeah, that is what we said during the sales cycle, but actually not sure about is that, you know, families feel like they don't have a voice. So we want families to feel like that. And we all know that. Because when we take a survey a year from now, they'll say that right now, our results are really bad. Restating that, and then saying it again,
Jeff 18:27
requirements changed three weeks down the road. And it's like, remember when we said that thing about what you care about,
Diane Gordon 18:33
right? Because I think what happens classically is the implementation person says, Great standing up, we have a process. Yep. It's almost like it doesn't matter. Yeah. Like why you bought? Yeah, our process is we go through these 27 steps, right? We have these check in meetings. You say whether we're red, yellow, or green, and then we're done.
Jeff 18:54
And we usually when they're like that, I found that they are their bonus percentage comes out of some type of metric.
Diane Gordon 19:02
I'm implemented, but I don't really feel like I'm alive. Right? You hear that? Oh, yeah. Like, yeah. Okay. Like, are we really, are we done? We're done here. So
Jeff 19:15
how long is your current like, Justin, on average? Like is,
Diane Gordon 19:19
is interesting. Our surveys product is totally seasonal. Okay, so we're kind of like that product. It's not SaaS in the classic sense because people schools and districts typically do surveys two or three times a year like regular in survey season right now. And we'll do it again in the spring and some schools do it in the winter as well. So there's the SaaS aspect of that is around their use case. So we running their surveys now and doing that takes you know, a couple of weeks, helping them look at their results. The next step is is the CSM piece which is okay, what do you do now that you see those are other products student success is very much SaaS it's the one that ties all the students together and they will You look at the whole child, and that standing that up takes, you know, depends on which systems they want to integrate with, but takes, you know, two to three months. Okay? And then after that it's like, okay, well, now all this data is coming in all the time, every day, you're seeing new data are you doing with that? And it definitely the setting up of that is a project management thing, right? And you don't really need somebody with CSM skills.
Jeff 20:24
Right? It sounds do you have you had to have different profiles of CSM is based on that particular use cases, I would think that
Diane Gordon 20:32
one of the things we run into is that we hire, you know, CSMs that are pretty skilled. And then two or three times a year, they're doing this really rope thing. And it is a drag for them. Yeah. And so what we're looking at now, is there a way to carve off some of that work, you know, put it into a support queue or something like that, because, you know, most of the year, they're totally happy. And then all of a sudden, they're like, survey drones. Yeah, I'm
Jeff 20:57
just doing the surveys.
Diane Gordon 20:58
And that just doesn't feel great. Yeah, exactly. But that, but what they still need to do is when this after this survey has been run, and the reports are available, that's when they kick back in and can have these consultants conversation with clients say, oh, based on the data we're seeing, here's what you want to do. And so that's, that's really interesting, too. That doesn't mean they have to then want to push the generation button. Right, right. So so my point about restating what the impact goal was, at the start of this lifecycle, and carrying that as a thread throughout, makes all the difference when renewal time comes up, right? Because now it's not just about does the client like you. And like I firmly believe with, the client will renew for the first year or two just because they like you. And after that, they'd be like, hey,
Jeff 21:53
there's some other stuff out there. And you know,
Diane Gordon 21:55
$1,000 a year with you, and I can't tell if it matters,
Jeff 21:58
right, especially now in these days, because I think we talked about like a deck and then Baltimore and then somehow after some of those timeframes, it became a lot easier to switch software vendors so
Diane Gordon 22:07
much easier. Now, I mean, I
Jeff 22:11
drop your credit card in and I mean, everybody's software is different, more
Diane Gordon 22:14
like integrated you are with other systems, the harder it is to leave. That's not the reason people stay with you. Because it's hard to your sticky
Jeff 22:21
make sure we gotta get in there because then they'll no want to pull us out like, yeah, that's we shouldn't need to rely on.
Diane Gordon 22:28
You have to you have to like Salesforce. I mean, it's really hard to unplug. That's not a great, yeah. People love it as well, some people. But but you know, that's not ideally, the way to keep clients. Yeah.
Jeff 22:41
The arm behind the back. Yeah, exactly, like, go
Diane Gordon 22:45
ahead and try to leave. So I've had
Jeff 22:48
this again, these are all interesting. And I remembered when we talked about panorama before, they had lots and lots of educational people, people who had been teachers and whatnot, have you sort of diversified the staff at all, like,
Diane Gordon 23:05
we had to grow, like, at some point, you run out of people who
Jeff 23:09
teachers don't want to,
Diane Gordon 23:10
like, I think, when I joined, well, maybe I'm the second person on the executive team that didn't come out of that space. We've We've just had to because, you know, the pool is too small, right? So now what we're what we've done is started as part of our onboarding, having a part of the onboarding, that's about learning with the space. Because the language is different. What people care about is different. The timelines are different. And, and also, just like when you think about getting in the corporate world, understanding the hierarchy like managers, Director, right, it's totally different superintendents, assistant superintendents, and it's a little bit like the military in terms of how people move through it. So now our job is when we hire people who don't come out of the space to educate them on the space.
Jeff 24:01
So so I get you on this, because in the last time we did this, like shifted into a millennial type conversation, which I don't want to but because I don't believe in any of that, but like it, you know, when you do your persona development, and things like that, if you said, Hey, I'm going to expand my count by five, you know, next quarter or something like that. And your HR manager says, Great, I want to talk about the profile of the person. I'm not trying to lead the witness because I just remembered the what the last person said, but like, when you think of the person that's best for this type of role, you're talking about Project Manager and this in like, specifically
Diane Gordon 24:33
the CSM role. Yeah, I would say generally set aside the project management stuff, although it's currently because we haven't blended okay. There's important that can do that work, right. But I don't care if they're not an awesome project.
Jeff 24:48
They can check the boxes, they understand that he needs to happen and then being the
Diane Gordon 24:53
I mean, always, of course, whoever it is out there in any job, they have to be super well organized, right? But what we're really Looking forwards people who have like clients, like think of it as client service DNA. They're the person who gets hot in the room, they get up in the window. The person who's like, something's not right here. I should fix it. Right. And so people who, honestly Super Junior people have who've been worked in retail. Yeah. And enjoyed that work or worked at a Starbucks. Yeah. You know, and like, they liked it. Yeah. And because they liked waiting on people. I think client like that service. DNA is the best CSM.
Jeff 25:36
Yeah, you know, I've worked the gap for like four years.
Diane Gordon 25:41
Versus annoying tech clients. But mostly, it's like, it makes you feel good to help people. Yeah. And, you know, there's, there's just something about Yeah, no,
Jeff 25:49
absolutely. And also, like, the empathy aspect is super important. And one, this is not to like total name drop, but for some reason stuck in my head, you know, and when I was in college, I worked the gap. I was like, the shipment guy or whatever jeans would come in overnight that stocked shelves. So I was in Burlington, and Nancy Kerrigan comes in, and she is just just hard to deal with at the time or whatever. But um, and everyone's like, Oh, you know, Josh comes in here, like, you think it'd be starstruck if you're like, I'm not dealing with her. And I'm like, I go over and I'm like, Can I help you? Is there something wrong? She's like, I just can't find what this and that. And I'm just like, she's just frustrated, right? So I'm like, listen, I started off looking into the back wall. I know exactly what you need. Here you go walk away, treat them like a normal person. Everything just like,
Diane Gordon 26:36
the ability to like, I mean, your average person without the service DNA is just like, I'm out. Servicing It's like a puzzle. Like, oh, what's going on? You turn me right. Like, I wonder what's going on?
Jeff 26:49
It's fine. Because I even junior project managers when I train them, I'm like, That person when they're super upset on the phone. They're worried about getting fired, right? It's not you. It's not because you couldn't get the zoom up in everything fast. It's because they're like, Oh, my God, I am running this thing. And it's gonna be a disaster.
Diane Gordon 27:07
And like, just really putting yourself in their shoes. Yeah. You know, if it was on a call with a client two days ago, and she's just like, I his report just isn't working. I just, I could feel like she's on deadline. Her superintendent needs this. Yeah, I might, we will fix this for you. Yeah, I just like, I wouldn't want to be like, I could feel exactly the phone. But that's what I mean. Like, I'm sort of built for this. Yeah. And even after all this time, and you know, the more senior you get in these roles, as you probably know, you tend to only talk to unhappy because, you know, Oh, happy ones never get to you. It's alright. So I
Jeff 27:43
never took on that classic like, oh, no, by the way, here's the support team, right. I'm like,
Diane Gordon 27:48
zactly. But I mean, my instinct is, I would love everybody to be happy, right? So so primarily, we look for that we look for evidence of empathy, evidence of sort of that service, DNA, creative problem solving. And we look for examples of, you know, tell us a time when, you know, you had to get multiple people that didn't work for you to do something right. A time when that worked in a time when it totally did not work. And what did you learn from that? Right? We're looking for people who have made mistakes and learn from them. Right. Some technical experience is good, but not totally required. Right? So it's for us it's a it's a profile. But but they do have to be like pretty well organized great at using you know, and spy
Jeff 28:36
on the well organized I can't remember was Renee if it was a Rambo, it was basically said, I will take a mom that can only work 30 hours because she's got to get the hell out and to pick up her kids and like, you know, her schedule is. Yeah.
Diane Gordon 28:51
I don't know if you I mean, when I was little went to the circus. I remember these guys.
Jeff 28:55
Absolutely. Yeah.
Diane Gordon 28:57
12 plates. That's the job. You know, when to go over and get one on top? Right?
Jeff 29:03
Yep. I think I've seen this couple CSMs that their job title they put in as like professional plates.
Diane Gordon 29:10
So it's that, but in a sort of intentional way, right. It shouldn't feel like chaos. And, you know, definitely I've seen CSMs that are love talking to clients but can't manage the calendar can't manage a task list. You know, and then they're constantly being suppressed now. That won't work. Yeah. So it's it's kind of a really kind of old person.
Jeff 29:34
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So where do you see the this this role, this title, this whole thing? I've seen some crazy consolidation, right? I've seen some places where Customer Access is the overarching umbrella. We've got services and support and all of these things. There's no as just wondering your opinion or what you're seeing,
Diane Gordon 29:55
what's we call a client success. Here we are. And in that Is everything about wholesale? And and I just think generally, that's a good way to structure because, you know, the client goes through all parts of the organization. And there's this common thread. And, you know, it's not like some other group in the company is onboarding them, and then we get, right. So there's, you know, our, our norms, our standards for dealing with clients are the same across the CS organization. I think the CSM role, I think is evolving into a much more consultative role than it used to be. And I think ultimately clients, especially enterprise software, companies will have CSM roles that evolve into like, consulting architect kinds of roles, a super high level, because they wouldn't be the right people to do that. Because
Jeff 30:44
they understand the business problem that they're trying to solve. And the software,
Diane Gordon 30:49
the client, yeah, so you go from like, CSM with a portfolio of 30 clients to senior CSM to you know, now I'm dealing with really strategic clients. And now maybe I'm actually embedded with clients. Yes, their CSM. So extended
Jeff 31:04
an acute couple hours a week and stuff like that.
Diane Gordon 31:06
Exactly. But it's it's not quite consulting services. But it's close.
Jeff 31:11
Right? Yeah, that's interest. That's a nice career path. Because I'm sure people are like, well, it's my, what is it? Do I just handle more customers that are harder to deal with? Or
Diane Gordon 31:19
I hear you know, we have this leveling, so I'm a CSM level one level two. All right, so and then what? I think the truth is, and we have a group of, we have strategic engagements, clients would like New York City schools massive, and the CSMs on those names of very small portfolio, but you can almost imagine a very large client. So you know what, I want a full time person I'm willing to pay for that. That's the career
Jeff 31:42
Right, right. Yeah. And we actually had some of that, at Virgin when we would deploy our sort of healthcare solutions to very large employers, right, like Raytheon. They're like, one person, and they actually wanted that person to do the implementation. Like, this is our person, you know, you're like, Okay, well, then this is what that costs and everything like that. Yeah, you're right. There is there's a lot of value in that, I think. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, other stuff. Okay. So my, my next sort of thing was that I like to talk about is what's the 2020 initiative that's got you excited that you're planning for for next year?
Diane Gordon 32:16
So we're rolling out for 2020? Something that we have a duck tour outside? Yeah, this is well, the year in like,
Jeff 32:22
downtown Boston, this is where?
Diane Gordon 32:28
Yeah, people dressed up in the clothing. You got to grab a sandwich or something.
Jeff 32:34
Which by the way, before we get into that, you're the matrix. We're sweet green and Starbucks are like right here.
Diane Gordon 32:41
Yeah. Yeah, I know, I ordered my salad on my way in on the tee and then pop across the street. That so for us, the big initiative is because right now, we don't actually come from a place of talking about the impact, like what what, what was it you set out to do and making sure we're carrying Madison thread? And I think that we need to do that. Because while our clients love us with very high renewal rates, resting on the they love us, and we're really nice, doesn't it? is a little scary? Yeah. So we're rolling out in 2020, the single calling impact framework, which is the idea is, hey, if a call, let's say a client says, we invest in in panorama, because we care deeply about college and career readiness, that's our thing. Okay, well, that can mean a lot of different things, right? Are we invested because we care about equity? That can mean a lot of flow? Let's, let's talk specifically, what you mean by that. By equity? Do you mean that all students feel equally engaged? Or do you mean that you're academics? between students of color and white students? That gap is small? Yeah. So the idea is to guide them to like, what is it specifically you're looking to achieve? And then let's carry that all the way through the lifecycle. So we've developed this impact framework for all the use cases that we think our clients care about. And there's lots about them. And the idea is to introduce that during the sales cycle, and then and one of the beauties of it is if you introduce it in the sales cycle, they're also seeing all the things they haven't thought about. Right? So it's a great expansion,
Jeff 34:12
sort of like, oh, yeah, here's some things to plan for. Absolutely. We
Diane Gordon 34:15
built that 2020. It's about rolling that out into everything that we do so that the CSM, when they're having a conversation, that's okay. You said you cared about decreasing, you know, discipline gaps. For example, we ran these surveys, let's look at the result of that, or Now let's bring in academics data and see how that everything is around that impact, which is going to be a very new way for us to work. But I'm really excited about it. That's awesome.
Jeff 34:44
That's great. And I've been trying to keep these a little shorter, but I do like to wrap up with sort of like in what's one non work thing that you've been doing that you show up, especially now that your daughter's graduating, so
Diane Gordon 34:54
Wow. So my husband and I are doing more traveling. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, did have an awesome day. We just like to say Okay, climate change is a little too close to water. We've been doing some traveling. I'm also I am an amateur silversmith.
Jeff 35:07
I used to I now remember this, but I totally forgotten about
Diane Gordon 35:12
a full studio in my house.
Jeff 35:14
Oh my god. So in my daughter's bedroom
Diane Gordon 35:15
first. And so now I can, you know, turn on the torch. And that's amazing for a few hours. Yeah. So I don't I don't really do it at night during the week because I'm too tired. Yeah. So that's a that's a big thing.
Jeff 35:31
Well, that's I mean, is you know, because I play guitar and your husband is a professional musician, that just something about the routine. It's like when the metronome is on, like, there's no work that can be thought about. That's right. And when you love your job, it's just
Diane Gordon 35:44
yeah, it's like, I can just pop upstairs and like, do one thing.
Jeff 35:48
Right? Right. Do a little bit every day. Exactly. And then you so that's, yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. Well, thanks so much. I'm gonna I'm gonna hit stop unless there's other pearls of wisdom. I feel honored that you did. Oh, please. No, this is like the like the prime. The one I've been waiting for for a while. Oh, awesome. I'm gonna hit stop and we'll go from there.