GSD Podcast - Onboarding Yourself: The 30-60-90 Day Guide with Erika Villarreal

Jeff is joined by Erika Villarreal, author of The 30-60-90 day guide to Onboard Yourself which has been downloaded more than 3000 times by customer success professionals.

The guide is intended to help new employees with their onboarding process and succeed during the first 90 days of a job.

It is divided into four sections: getting ready for your first day which focuses on getting to know the team, manager, product, and sales perspective; understanding team members and product/role; transitioning accounts; and diving deep into customer details.

Jeff and Erika discussed how important it is for employers to have a well-structured plan for onboarding new employees, just as they would do when onboarding customers.

They also discussed why it's important to have a structured plan when onboarding employees just like customers, so they can learn about the company quickly and become successful in their roles.

Erika's guide lives online so anyone can access it easily when needed: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/erivillarreal_the-30-60-90-day-guide-to-onboard-yourself-activity-6917442274154958848-Gqw1?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

Transcript:

Jeff Kushmerek  00:00

All right, great, Erika, thanks for joining me, it's like the end of my day, and you've got so much energy. When you come into this. It's fantastic. So, so, quick note, always, if a May, God forbid, if they listen to the first podcast or so we were just discussing that. I was always saying, all I'm doing is interviewing people in my network. You know, I worked at a bunch of Boston companies. And I just kept interviewing people from those companies. So I'm so glad that I'm able to talk to new people and hear their stories and things like that. So I felt I found Erika just from like, the comments that she was writing on, on, on stuff, like, that's what we do like to read. For me, I like doing it because, you know, I'm, I'm pretty convinced that I'm have one way of thinking, and I like to see how other people think. And I, you know, this is how I know to do it. And then people come in with all these dramatically different takes on things. And so I reached out to you, I said, What would you like to talk about neuro like, boom, we're gonna talk about how ces starts with employee success, which is fantastic, because we get so tactical, on how to do the, you know, the very technical aspects of the job, but we don't get into and we've talked about enablement as a higher thing, like you need to have enablement, right, you need, but getting into the actual thing. And we can talk about your article, and I'll post it in the show notes. So people can go read it. But this thing is like been amazing for you. So we're gonna get into it, because we haven't covered it here on the podcast. And I know a lot of people would like to talk about, I should have done this right out and released right after Carly's because it was like, she's gonna help you get the job.

Erika Villarreal  01:40

And then when I help you in your first 90 days, right,

Jeff Kushmerek  01:43

exactly. So let's talk about this. Because let's talk about your first 90 days and what I think we can take it from the employer and the employee or the manager and the whatever the person is, perspective, and you are the expert. I'll ask you a couple of questions in fire away. This is great.

Erika Villarreal  02:01

You're saying? Well, first of all, thank you very much, Jeff, for having me here. I'm super excited to talk about this. I wrote an article called on Berger self to success in April of 2021, he has been a huge success, he has been downloaded more than 3000 times for many different customer success professionals out there. I wrote that guide.

Jeff Kushmerek  02:23

In that way, just to help like,

Erika Villarreal  02:26

exactly, it's completely free. I'm not getting anything but putting out my knowledge about it, and how I was able to do my onboarding for multiple companies and succeed during the first 90 days, which are critical for anyone who's looking to join a new company or start a customer success role, right? So I figured that every time that I joined the company, I found that the onboarding for the employee was not as thorough as it should be, like we talk about, well, in customer success, we talk a lot about onboarding our customers for success. And we talked about onboarding journey. And we and we say how important it should be to have a very well thought onboarding process for for your customers. So that's what I was thinking. It's exactly the same thing when you're onboarding a new employee, right? You bring someone to your company, and you expect them to learn as soon as possible. Everything about your product, everything about your company, your customers and everything. And sometimes that plan is not as structured as it is for a customer, right? You know, in a company you have this first week with HR, they sit you down and give you the all about the company. And then basically, you're off to learn everything by yourself, right? So you're trying to figure out what what matters, what doesn't matter what I should be doing first, where do I focus my energy? How do I get to learn this product as soon as possible, so I can help my customers achieve the success that they want? Right? So during that process, I realized that it has been a challenging processes every time I don't, I joined a new company. So I thought, this time in this, talking about my last company comeback go up to Ryan is the same company. But when he was recently joining that company, I realized like, Well, I'm gonna start documenting everything that I'm doing, right? What I'm doing in my first 30 days, and my second 30 days, and until my 90 days, so next time I'm onboarding a new company, I understand, like the step by step process for it, right. So I started writing about and

Jeff Kushmerek  04:31

we dispatched out. Some, as I said, this time of day, very demo, white light bulb, maybe the video people can put that on top me. You wrote this as in this is what I'm expecting to get out of this versus the versus every time I've talked to somebody from enablement, it's like I'm going to write the process for my new employees. But this is like, it's kind of like What to Expect When You're Expecting but for

Erika Villarreal  04:57

so I wrote it for me, but then whatever you realizes that my company was hiring for other employees, right? And then I had to be onboarding those employees because there was no plan, right? So you got to do what you did over and over again, as you hire more employees into your company or into your customer success team. So I thought, if I'm, if I document this in a way, where I say, hey, the first 30 days, these are the things that I'm expecting from from a new new employee or a new hire. Second, 30 days, this is what I'm expecting. And then a 90 days, when you sign off and say, Hey, you're officially part of the team, you've met your goals and everything, you should already be capable of understanding what the product does, talking to your customers and all that. I thought it would make it easier for my team when that happened, right? And it sure did, because after I was hired, we hired other three more customer success managers. And they went through that guidance that hey, wow, this is amazing. Like, now I understand what I need to be doing in which part of the process, right. And so what it helps is actually having a well thought process of what do we expect from them. And they helped us learn faster, and implement that those learnings with their customers at a faster rate, rather than be trying to figure out what to do, who to contact? Who is the Owner of which information? And so on. Right. So I wrote that for me, then for my team, and then realize that many other professionals should be experiencing the same struggle, right? Like if I am struggling with this, and it's not the first time that I've struggled. I bet many more other people are struggling with this too, right? Yeah. So you know, me, I like creating a lot of content. I put myself out there on LinkedIn, I share every learning that I've had as a CSM. And for landing my my first year role, right? Yeah, I've shared everything online, I had the chance to talk to CES Insider, and they were like, Well, this sounds like a really great topic. Like if we can collaborate together, release this guide, share it with shared with the rest of the community, this could be super helpful for other CS professionals. So then we kind of give it like a twist my my document that was meant for me, that then ended up being a document for my team, then ended up being a document for the whole customer success community. It was just really impressive how well received it, it got. And then one of the things that I felt very wording is that not only it helped customer success managers on the first roll, but it also was helping people land the customer success role for first time. That's, you know, how often you get in interviews and they start asking questions about okay, why did we hire you? What would be your 3060 90 day plan, right? So they just went to my guide, hey, this is what I would do. People reached out and said, hey, thanks to this guide, I was able to learn this role. And I am doing great in my first 90 days. And that's awesome. So it was it was a big win, I would say for the community. And I think it's helpful. Document.

Jeff Kushmerek  08:17

Well, let's do this. Let's talk about month one, like table stakes. Can't get a month two unless you do these steps. Well, what are we talking here in month one?

Erika Villarreal  08:26

Okay, that's fair enough. So for month one, I think one of the guy talks about three main things. The first thing is getting to know your team and your manager, right? Because you need to get personal and well, I like to get personal with the people that I work with, like really understand what they like how they work, their leadership type of role. Because if you don't understand how your manager is, maybe they like talking to you every two weeks, maybe they're just like, left alone, like you

Jeff Kushmerek  08:58

don't know the problem. Otherwise, you're over here and good to go.

Erika Villarreal  09:02

Exactly right. So you need kind of like to get a better feeling of how your team works. And that's step one. And then step two, that's also happening month one is when you're introducing a new product, a new platform, the first thing that you need to do is kind of like deep dive into how it works, right? So reading as much as you can, from the Help Center documents understanding and watching the videos of the demos, for example. Getting to all to know a lot more from the sales perspective, like understanding how the sales rep sale, what's important to the customers, what are the challenges they're looking to solve, why they're why the people who get your your software are interested in a solution like yours, right? And that can like is the first step even in customer success, like identifying customer outcomes, identifying challenges, right? So that's that's first month and it also talks talks about the journey as well like getting to know the customer journey from beginning to end, whether it's for marketing sales, and an a project implementation professional services, then the customer success side of it, like, which are the touch points that us as a customer success manager will have with your customers up until their renewal of that account? For me, it's a lot still one month. Yeah, but people expect you to do like really well in your first 90 days. So you have to, basically you're kind of like a sponge absorbing as much information as you can to jump into minefield.

Jeff Kushmerek  10:39

Yeah, that's funny, because and I think you talked about this in month two, but I've seen some startups where they might be on a transition call and their first two or three days. I know, that's part of what you wanted to talk about, too. So.

Erika Villarreal  10:55

Exactly. Exactly. Because you know what, like, that's, that's, I don't think that's a successful onboarding, right? Like, you can expect to hire someone and have them jump on calls on day three, because they are going to fail, you know, it's not,

Jeff Kushmerek  11:11

like sitting in but not being not even being introduces their new one, because then they're just gonna jump right on. Hey, we've got a new person, they're just sitting in and listening. Like, that's the only way to do it, I believe. Yeah,

Erika Villarreal  11:22

exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And you want your your people to be successful as much as you want your customers to be successful, right? Because that when when, when an employee is successful, or they're looking forward to continue to grow your company, they they are even more productive and more happy to do things for you if they're enabled. Right. So that's a really big part of the onboarding process for your new hire.

Jeff Kushmerek  11:51

Yeah. No, that's, that's, that's good. It's critical. What are some other months to it? Because this is why I'm so glad we're talking like I'm blank. I can't think of anything like I'm sure when you say I'm smart. But I'd love to hear sort of these other sort of, you know, you've gone in you've orange people you're talking to you find out what love languages, you're managing

Erika Villarreal  12:12

your manager and your team, of course, team.

Jeff Kushmerek  12:15

And then you're you're learning about the product, you're figuring it out, in actually a quick note on that, how deep do you think the CSM should get because I've seen some people were, you know, they're looking at like API calls. And I'm like, No, you cannot. Or any value stuff if you're doing that. But I appreciate the fact that you want to do that. I don't know if there's a wrong or right and some jobs are different. But I was just curious, on a generalized level, how you felt about that. For me,

Erika Villarreal  12:43

customer success managers, from my perspective, don't need to be super technical. From what I've learned so far, in my experience, like knowing as much as you can, from what your product can do, and can't do is really important. But you don't have to get, like deep into the detail for technical stuff, like companies should have your technical expert, where you can reach out to him if something like is very technical, you can answer to that. So I wouldn't say get super technical, but I would recommend, like if you have a chance to learn a little bit more of how it works, it definitely helps on with conversations with identifying upselling opportunities, understanding what the needs are and how your product can solve for that. Which is, which you can only do you have you kind of like understand the basics of how it works.

Jeff Kushmerek  13:39

Yeah, absolutely. No, I'm with you on that. Because if you go too far down the path, then you know, then suddenly, you're just not doing the value work. Oh, let me go research that and then two hours goes by and so

Erika Villarreal  13:54

you end up wasting more time than that helping out with your customer. So yeah, yeah,

Jeff Kushmerek  13:59

yeah, absolutely. That's great. Also, or do you feel you know, if you were doing this at a new company now, does this live inside? Like, like an LMS? Or is this like on Confluence or something like that? Like, how do you? How do you, you know, especially when you're watching videos, and I'm just curious, again, no, right or wrong, every company from series A through, you know, public companies will have a different way of doing this.

Erika Villarreal  14:24

Yeah, well, the guide is written in a way that guides you to understand the concepts that you should be looking into more than learn more than an LMS or specific videos, right? So it refers to different journeys in your onboarding process, right? So if you're learning about a product, for example, it directs you to okay go to the Help Center or go to if you if your company has, I don't know learning a learning system for example, in Mike company, we do have one where you kind of like, watch videos from product and understand what the products updates product features that we're releasing their recently in the recent year, for example, so it directs you to where you should be looking to find the information that you need more than It's a living document for each part of the journey. Yeah,

Jeff Kushmerek  15:20

yeah, awesome. Awesome. Do we miss anything, and I hope I didn't just like fly through month to like,

Erika Villarreal  15:27

month to month to is focus really on account transitions, right? Because on month, one, you're learning as much as possible about a company and about the product month two, you're learning as much as possible about your customers, right? By time, by day, by day, I'm sorry, by that time, you get the least of what will be your business portfolio, you understand which customers are going to be targeting. And month two is all about doing the research, right? Understanding what's what do you have from that customer? reading notes from sales, understanding what was their? What were their challenges, what their success outcomes look like? Who are your main contacts, everything that you can learn from the customer support cases that were submitted in the last six months? NPS surveys, for example, if they have one? So it's basically a lot of research and kind of putting together what would be some sort of sales transition in a way trying to pinpoint which is the information that you don't have. So you can reach out to sales get that information if if they have it or not. And if not probably conducted discovery with a customer to get more about the things that you don't know, right? Yeah, account transitions can be very tricky, because we, in theory, notional and very emotional. Yeah, cuz we, in theory, know how they should happen. But many times they don't happen, how they should write. People don't often write notes. During those transitions, some a lot of information is lost in that process. Right. So sometimes you end up working with a customer that you basically need to conduct the whole discovery because there's nothing there.

Jeff Kushmerek  17:11

Yeah. So so if you were to do I have my own, which I'll talk about, but I want to hear what yours is first, like if you had to set up the ideal transition? How would that work? This doesn't have to be in the guide or anything, but just like, okay, you know, let's say, you know, somebody's transitioning to management, right. And so they've got 18 accounts, and they need to transition them sometime, because we're not gonna put a timeline. With Walker, let's talk about what that would be, in your ideal state,

Erika Villarreal  17:40

in my ideal state of transition is, first of all, before you are leaving to that manager position and leaving your accounts to be transitioned to someone else. The first thing to make sure that is done is that that person updates everything from that customer that needs to be updated. So for example, that should be done during the whole process, right. But sometimes, that doesn't happen. So before making that transition, for example, making sure that all of your contacts are updated, if there was a new person coming in another person left the company or whatever that those are in place, so that the new person knows who their main point of contact are. Then after reviewing the contacts, you review all the notes from the customer and making sure that there's notes for understanding why they got in that why they bought your solution, what challenges they were facing at the beginning when they decided to purchase your product. And then any transition or recommendation that you have from the customer, whether it's business reviews that have been conducted with a customer success plans, anything related, that gives you the information that you need to continue to build towards that and plan forward, right? Like what is what does the customer need from this point on. And once that's done, I transition out to be locked like this. transition now to be logged with all of the latest updates. Finally, one of the things that I would also add is having a call like, hey, these, I'm going to have a call to transition this customer, this is what I have, this is what we need. This is something that's missing, you will need to find this information from someone else or whatever it needs to happen. But I am not. I am not a fan of just sending an email Hey, this is your news. And wash hands and have you got

Jeff Kushmerek  19:31

your version if you want to hear it.

Erika Villarreal  19:34

Because that

Jeff Kushmerek  19:36

I do this for everything. So only if you can't if you've got the time. So I well my approach is this is more for your major accounts where they're bigger. They are ours high emotions and things like that. But let's say let's use this use same use case we're talking about with the person who's going to be a manager hire somebody on board, I would say hey, got that same this person's here, they're auditing and this and that. And then slowly let them just answer the questions back, right? And then slowly, you're not answering as many questions. And I'm like, if say, I'm the person who's going to be a manager, actually, you're going to be the manager, and I'm the new person. You're like, oh, Jeff, can you take care of that? And am I here? And then, you know, start getting you all that detail. Maybe somebody else wrote it, and they're like, Wow, this Jeff persons really get their act together and everything, and then suddenly air flow, no way.

Erika Villarreal  20:30

I love that

Jeff Kushmerek  20:31

story. I don't know passive growth. I don't know what the word is used, but it's very passive sort of way of doing it, where suddenly they wake up. And they're like, you know,

Erika Villarreal  20:39

I don't need the other person.

Jeff Kushmerek  20:42

When you send that note, they're like, hey, that is fine by me, because this guy is

Erika Villarreal  20:47

already up to them. Yeah, so that's the important part. Like, it's just feeling like the person who's taking over is up to date with your latest conversations with whatever discussions or challenges the company was facing. Right? And, and I do love that idea of making it like a smooth transition where two people are at the same time, but only one breaks away. The problem with that is, although I love that approach, many times

Jeff Kushmerek  21:15

great, not a sprain. Sounds great.

Erika Villarreal  21:19

But the problem is that many times, it's hard to do that because a manager has already other responsibilities. And they're asking, I don't know, XYZ from the manager, right? It's like, well, I can't do two roles at the same time. And then they kind of like, have a hard time. During that process. Ideally, every transition should be like that, you know, like, in a way that no one feels the pain of the transition. So 100% there with you? Yeah. Yeah. Difficult to execute, though.

Jeff Kushmerek  21:48

I think the interesting part about that is, those are, as I was saying, it's usually for the strategic customers. So you have a little bit more planning that goes into it. And if this is going to happen, it's got to be done in this way. But before I've seen it, where it's somebody, they only give a week's notice. It's a big disaster.

Erika Villarreal  22:09

Yes, it is.

Jeff Kushmerek  22:10

Oh, and then the stuff you find out after the oh my god,

Erika Villarreal  22:14

wow, no, no, been there.

Jeff Kushmerek  22:17

Me the bad guy, they'd be like, they're gonna jump to nothing. Like we kept sending him emails we didn't get. I've seen some situations I've helped out on where, where, you know, we're a mess. Well, even worse, like the managers, like I think I had to release this person. And, um, because they're not getting the job done. And I'm like, I'm just gonna let you away. Like, your first two weeks after that can be your worst two weeks, because you're gonna uncover so much crap. Oh, my

Erika Villarreal  22:45

God. Yeah. People not doing their job. You know, like the customers reaching out. They don't reply. And I don't know like IT staff, IT staff. And there's people who want to do their work and people who don't and I don't know, I haven't run into situations like that. Like, it's that bad. Yeah, but yeah, it's, it's, I can see that happening.

Jeff Kushmerek  23:09

Yeah. Hopefully, I've only seen it a few times. But like, it's, it's enough to leave a mark. Right? Yeah. Yeah. So let's do this. Um, we talked about getting to know your people around you, your managers, and everything that we talked about getting to know your customers, I've got no idea what month three would mean.

Erika Villarreal  23:27

For me, one, month three is the best month, because by month three, you already sort of get around your product, do you mind kind of like understand how it works? As you know who your customers are? Their names, you probably introduced to yourself with them. For me, month three, and this is the guide is about making an impact. So how do you make an impact is you understand where your customers are at, because you already conductor conducted meetings with them understood what situations they're facing, with during a month to someone three is about setting expectations and, and reaching a goal, right? So for me, it's all about product product adoption, identifying upsell, opportunities, expansion, opportunities, showcasing I don't know any product features, or new product features, something that might be of interest for the customer. And one other thing that's really important, it's learning from what worked and what didn't work, right. What didn't work might be a customer churning, or what worked very well as a customer who decided to buy more from you, right? So it's really for me, it's a month of analyzing a lot. Data analysis, back and forth, understanding your health scores and how you can improve those health scores. And it's basically a way for you to end your 90 days and say to your manager, hey, I accomplish this month one this month two, by month three, I already absolved these five customers so you make an impact. Like that. Wow cents type of thing. You're like, Yeah, I did this you know.

Jeff Kushmerek  25:05

And for people just not watching the video, smile or smile in a way that's how much you love

Erika Villarreal  25:11

it love my three.

Jeff Kushmerek  25:12

It's also great because it's before your 90 day review period ends.

Erika Villarreal  25:17

Exactly. You got it perfectly Jeff. It's a way to say hey, I nailed this. Look how amazing I am. And this is what I'm gonna do next, right? Yeah, yeah. Awesome.

Jeff Kushmerek  25:27

Awesome. Well, that's fantastic. Let's see Let's do this. That's a very neat and wrapped up in a ball. We're gonna link to an article sorry about this. So what is your so it's wintertime here so as you can see, there's a snowstorm behind me and everything. So it's probably not as applicable to you. But like, what is your big winter time non Customer Success thing that you're planning on doing? You know, for this this winter?

Erika Villarreal  25:52

Well, you don't know these about me, Jeff. And probably most people don't know this about me. But I started learning snowboarding last year, January. Not there's no snow here in the US. But I went to Denver for the first time and snowboarding for the first time after my 30 something years in life. Yeah. And I like How come did I not do this before like I fell completely in love with the sport like the adrenaline of being there seeing everything white. By the way, Monterrey Mexico knows now that closes just know that I been like in my home life was that first year that I went to Denver and from that point on, I'm like, I can't pass another winter without me in snow, doing something fun with snow. Now that's awesome. So something fun about these year in the winter is actually thinking of probably moving to not moving like for a short period of time booking an Airbnb or something for three weeks. Salt Lake City, Denver, I don't know where to do

Jeff Kushmerek  27:03

this. I can tell you I always said I was gonna do that for different purposes, not not what you're doing, but and I didn't do it. And then suddenly all the kids yeah, no, you gotta do it. It's amazing. Because you couldn't do that back, you know, you know, this whole virtual aspects of everything. So if you can do it. Absolutely. Yeah,

Erika Villarreal  27:24

I am 100% remote. And I did this. Last summer, I spent 45 days in Europe working from Europe in the US timezone. So you can imagine how fun

Jeff Kushmerek  27:37

until one o'clock on your emails and slack.

Erika Villarreal  27:43

Super fun. So I think I'm thinking that finally this is gonna happen this year, either February or March. So yeah, I'm looking forward to that.

Jeff Kushmerek  27:54

That's great. No, that's amazing. So listen, we're gonna post a link to your LinkedIn profile as well. Any other place for people to find you follow what you're doing?

Erika Villarreal  28:03

Yes, I actually have a newsletter. People can sign up to that newsletter, Erika vrl.co. Also, most of my content and I and everything that I put out there is around being at better CFM than the day before, right? Like it's about upskilling and your CSM game. Making sure that you progress in your career, that you accomplish impressive things that you can show off to your manager, right. So my newsletter is all about that. So I share my tips tricks on sorry tips and tricks on how to excel in your CSM role. So you can find me there too. LinkedIn is another way and I think those are the main two options. So yeah, oh, that's awesome.

Jeff Kushmerek  28:47

It's just doing this all for like you don't have to, you know what I mean? So

Erika Villarreal  28:52

yeah, I don't have to but Jeff, to be really honest, it gives me a huge sense of reward hearing when someone read something about the population and reach out and say hey, this helped me do this or overcome a barrier or something you know, like I really enjoy that feeling.

Jeff Kushmerek  29:14

I know and I because I you know, I do I do the same exact stuff. But it's to get business right and so that's the big difference but that being said, you know, always looking for feedback and when I get it as in like, Hey, you're stupid, you need to add x y&z and thanks so much for telling me and occasionally people are like, this helps so much like it shaved an hour off my day, every day or something like Oh, that's awesome. Like, see, I definitely know what you're talking about that it's an uplifting feeling. Tell everybody out there. You should do it. Most people feel they that Oh, who am I or whatever. It doesn't matter who you are like to

Erika Villarreal  29:49

share your experiences. That's all Yeah, everyone. What I've learned is that everyone has something to share and someone will listen and it will be it won't be of benefit to someone else. Whether it's one person to person 10,000 or whatever, you know, like it's about helping other people out maybe you're going through a challenge, figuring out a way to overcome that challenge someone might be going through that same challenge right? So putting it out there telling people how you fix that or what you did to improve that situation like it's always helpful for me just oh yeah, I love content. It's

Jeff Kushmerek  30:24

great. Do that like join the what the CES leadership swag that's a great one. I'm there's probably others, but that's the one where I sort of know from Miranda and did you know you can just help people on Slack or something like that or just posting? It's great. So awesome. Well, thanks so much for taking time out of your day for the for the podcast. I'm going to have you hold on for one quick second. So so I know where to send the check. I'm just getting Of course. And I'll hit stop and it will hopefully chat again. So hold on one second.

Erika Villarreal  30:57

Yep.