GSD Podcast - Kristi Faltorusso - Step up, own your role, and be a force in the Board Room

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

Key topics include:

- CS leaders playing the victim instead of leading from the front
- "Asking" for a seat at the executive table
- Owning revenue and renewals
- Budget wars
- USE THE DATA to win your battles - bring the right data insights to make informed decisions
- How to battle proof your org during this economic situation
- Is the QBR dead? Kristi gives her perspective and ideas
- NPS and your Board

and a ton more. This list does not do justice to all of the knowledge drops Kristi did! You can also get more Kristi knowledge here:
https://www.keepingcssimple.com/listen-to-kristi

Transcript:

Jeff  01:14

Hey, it's Jeff. Just wanted to thank you for tuning in. Again, I think most of you know Kristi Faltorusso does a ton in the community, she had a ton of experience as well also, just as a great opinion, not afraid to hold, say around, she doesn't hold back. And this is a great episode. It was it was like a Monday morning, it was Tuesday after vacation. It was nine o'clock and Kristi brought the heat. So there's a lot of great stuff in here. I have some captured in the notes. But Kristi and I and some others, we just want people to bring their game up a little bit and be a force in the boardroom as we say. And in get recognized for all that we do and all that our departments and organizations do. So definitely give this a listen, bring your notebook, there's there's tons of great tips. It's not just fire, there's also like, and this is how you solve the problem. And, and I loved it. And there's like a million quotes out of this when I was reviewing the transcript. So enjoy. And we'll see you on the next one. All right. So as usual, we've been talking for a while and all warmed up. But I should probably now hit record and introduce Kristi Faltorusso. So from client success, and many other which I will know, let her talk about in a second here. And we're here to talk about a concept that's pretty near and dear to our hearts. And we're already fired up to talk about it. But Kristi, give us the three minutes on on why you an expert in this field to talk about this particular subject.

Kristi Faltorusso  02:54

Oh gosh. All right, give a quick background. So been in the Customer Success space for the past decade, a little just over a decade, I guess now have worked at five different organizations where I build scale or transform customer success. That's kind of my sweet spot. I love a hyper growth company anywhere from 20 million to 85 million, I'm older. So love to be a part of establishing what great customer success could look like and the impact it could have been a business. I am already so pumped for this conversation. Okay, more about myself. I am currently the Chief Customer Officer at client success. We are a customer success management software. So we help our customers from new to renew, manage that entire post initial sales lifecycle. So really excited to be here today, Jeff and I can't wait to get started. Oh, I

Jeff  03:39

know. So. So some background for this conversation. Kristi and I were at a super spreader event. Sorry, we were against a pulse. super spreader for the non COVID. Although I think if I told people I have COVID I get more more. Yeah, so there's lots of drinking and pausing and I've got like my cough drops all lined up, even though it's been like three weeks since polls. But you know, we I think we all really enjoyed the conversations that were happening everything. But this is one theme that just kept popping up. Because, you know, I feel like all of the presentations at polls were like, show value to your customers show value to your customers, which I think is great for your, you know, hey, you're three to five years in and you got sent out to a conference and you need to hear some of this stuff. But then for all of us who are, let's just say having side conversations and things like that, we're like, we really need to tell these people to get their game on. Right. And then we started talking about podcast topics. And I always say what's something that you're passionate about and and we just dove right into this, which is essentially you have to step up your game and and be a leader for your team. And there's a couple concepts around that. So I'm gonna stop Christine because I'm gonna let you just like launch into it because you're just itching to go right now.

Kristi Faltorusso  04:53

All right, well, listen here. We'll start with this concept checks. I think you and I are on the same page with this but the one thing I keep hearing that drives me crazy, is we need customer success to get a seat at the table. Jeff, I mean, listen, if people aren't looking around and realizing that we have a seat, they are not taking advantage of their spot there. That is a bigger, that's a bigger issue. Have a seat. We if you look at it, right, I think somebody I don't remember what company did it, they did a survey, and to study on how many chief customer officers there are now, what that growth has looked like over the past five years, we we have a seat, right? There are more chief customer officers, there are more revenue, titled people that are owning customer success in the C suite had been before. So we have our seat, I think, Jeff, we need to tell people what they need to do not there. That's

Jeff  05:45

the honest the ownership, right? Because I feel I hear these two things all the time when we bought selling to see us leaders. So we hear oh, I don't have the budget, or I have an even worse one. And I have one customer that listen to this is not you, there's four of you. So don't think it's just you, but it's like I have a budget approved. But then I have to go ask the CTO to spend that budget. And I'm like, You're responsible for like, I'll just say a percent of like, 60% of the revenue right now. Right? So as sales begging you to go ask for something like does this dev say Oh, please? Can we just have like, no, it does not like so there's, there's that aspect of things, right? Which is like, you just need to step up and own it. And and say, No, we are a revenue producing group. And we need this software, where these hires, or whatever to be able to get successful is what we need to do with this group.

Kristi Faltorusso  06:36

So Jeff, let me just tell you, before joining clients success, right, I had to purchase Customer Success software. Fortunately, here, I don't have to I get to use my own. Yep. But for other companies, over the past decade, I have been able to secure North well north of six figures to get customer success software in place and every company. Yeah, the last two, within my first four months in the company, as a new leader in a new function that hadn't been there before. Jeff, you have to all the CS leaders, they have to be able to understand the math behind what we actually own. And that's the thing and I am the last math person out there like seriously, my husband is a math guy, I am not. But I will tell you, you need to know your numbers. Your numbers are everything right? The amount of revenue you own the amount of revenue you influence, because I have been able to go get this money, no questions asked multiple questions asked, but just to find easy to explain, because I was able to articulate how these things these resources, whether it be technology, whether it be headcount, are going to contribute to the maintenance of what is usually 70% of maybe more of the company's revenue already, and then being able to grow that. So if you can't tell the story, using data and using your revenue metrics to go and make the justifications for your software for your people for your training and enablement all of these things. You're doing it wrong. It's right it's all gonna be justified.