GSD Podcast - Unlocking Success: The Role of CSMs and Forecasting in Business ft. Alli Tiscornia
In this episode of the GSD podcast, host Jeff Kushmerek had the privilege of interviewing Alli Tiscornia, the Chief Customer Officer of Turner. The conversation revolved around the world of Customer Success Managers (CSMs) and shed light on their vital responsibilities. Alli shared valuable insights on risk assessments, forecasting, sales mindset, and the challenges faced by CSMs. Let's delve into the key takeaways from this engaging discussion.
Conducting Risk Assessments and Owning Numbers:
Alli emphasized the importance of CSMs conducting risk assessments as part of their role. By proactively identifying potential risks, CSMs can effectively mitigate them and ensure customer satisfaction. Moreover, Alli stressed the significance of CSMs taking ownership of forecasting numbers. Understanding the forecasted metrics enables CSMs to align their efforts with the organization's goals and provide valuable insights for decision-making.
The Sales-Minded CSM:
The conversation touched upon the need for CSMs to adopt a sales mindset. Alli highlighted how CSMs should actively participate in strategic business discussions, bringing their expertise and customer insights to the table. By doing so, CSMs can contribute to revenue generation and strengthen customer relationships. Being sales-minded allows CSMs to play a more strategic role within the organization and align their efforts with broader business objectives.
Account Management and Customer Success:
Alli discussed the consolidation of account management and customer success, emphasizing its value. By merging these functions, organizations can provide a seamless experience for their customers, ensuring consistent support and maximizing customer satisfaction. Alli also stressed the importance of CSMs acquiring forecasting skills to better understand customer needs, identify growth opportunities, and provide personalized solutions.
Building Trust in Pipeline Numbers:
Trust is crucial when it comes to pipeline numbers. Alli and Jeff discussed the cautious approach CSMs must take when estimating probabilities. By relying on accurate data, building strong relationships with customers, and conducting thorough research, CSMs can enhance the reliability of pipeline numbers. Trustworthy pipeline data serves as a foundation for making informed decisions and implementing effective strategies.
Challenges of Forecasting:
Forecasting presents its own set of challenges for CSMs. Alli and Jeff highlighted the significance of data and relationships in this process. CSMs must leverage data analytics and customer insights to make accurate forecasts. Additionally, maintaining strong relationships with customers enables CSMs to gather valuable information that contributes to more precise forecasting.
The Role of Effective Management:
The conversation emphasized the importance of attending sales pipeline meetings and the role of effective management in the success of CSMs. By actively participating in these meetings, CSMs gain valuable insights into the sales process, customer expectations, and organizational goals. Effective management supports CSMs by providing guidance, resources, and a supportive environment, enabling them to excel in their role.
The interview with Alli Tiscornia provided valuable insights into the world of Customer Success Managers. From conducting risk assessments to owning forecasting numbers, adopting a sales mindset, and building trust in pipeline data, CSMs play a crucial role in driving customer satisfaction and organizational success. By staying informed, leveraging data and relationships, and receiving effective management support, CSMs can navigate the challenges and deliver exceptional value to their customers and organizations alike.
Listen to the full podcast episode here.
Transcript:
Jeff Kushmerek 00:00
Good-dish
Alli Tiscornia 00:09
this is so good to be Between Two Ferns. This is I'm scared. You're lighting sage. What?
Jeff Kushmerek 00:20
Let's just jump into it.
Alli Tiscornia 00:22
And my crystal here, I got my crystal. So this actually I'm going to put this by, I'm going to put this by the laptop so that I'm getting positive energy. I'm going to be positive.
Jeff Kushmerek 00:35
I thought that was the like the Washington Memorial. I think that was crystal.
Alli Tiscornia 00:38
No, it's, it's, it's, it's a crystal. That does kind of look like the Washington Memorial. That's cool. I haven't done
Jeff Kushmerek 00:45
those out of the turn zero conference.
Alli Tiscornia 00:47
I have another one here too.
Jeff Kushmerek 00:49
So I'm used to seeing crystals, a variety of shapes. But those are all the same shape. Is this a certain thing?
Alli Tiscornia 00:56
Okay, here's the difference. Okay. Type, right. So that's a different shape. Yeah. All right. I have a couple. Do you want me to show you all of the crystals that I
Jeff Kushmerek 01:05
think my my five listeners would find that fascinating. But I think we're just kind of start start rolling along.
Alli Tiscornia 01:13
Can we jump into the professional topic? Perhaps none of this free stuff is going in?
Jeff Kushmerek 01:19
Oh, it absolutely 100 percents going in. Right. Absolutely. So, so for people listening, Ali is a former co worker of mine from a different region. So just to be clear, we didn't we didn't sit near each other. We weren't talking about, you know,
Alli Tiscornia 01:40
very little time together. Right.
Jeff Kushmerek 01:43
And of all the people in the Western office in San Francisco, you're probably like in the middle of the pack for people that I like to work with and things like that, right?
Alli Tiscornia 01:53
There were like, you know, eight of us. So it was probably in the like, bottom to maybe bottom of
Jeff Kushmerek 02:02
the middle. So this is great. It was great. And then I know you worked at some some companies that were wracked with scandal, so I'm not gonna get into that. But
Alli Tiscornia 02:16
there was only one scandal filled company just one. We won't discuss that now is actually a really good company, though. Great people. I learned I learned a lot. I learned a lot from that company.
Jeff Kushmerek 02:27
I learned a ton from one of my scandal filled companies one of my because it's just seems to follow me for some reason, but, but
Alli Tiscornia 02:36
scandal follows you everywhere.
Jeff Kushmerek 02:38
I don't know why. But, so so are you. You are the CCO of Turner. That's That's your name still in my contact list on my phone. Just a CCO turn zero.
Alli Tiscornia 02:50
Nice. I don't even have a first name or surname. I appreciate that. I'm just the CCO. Yeah, I mean, someday going. Oh, no. Oh, thank you actually know my first name, but that's okay. Well,
Jeff Kushmerek 03:10
yeah, I mean, that that rolls off the tongue more naturally, but you always for some reason.
Alli Tiscornia 03:16
So my kids also called me Chief at home, I require that.
Jeff Kushmerek 03:25
So this podcast is brought to you by infinite renewals. I just want to state that out here. It's good.
Alli Tiscornia 03:33
Happy to be here. Jeff, thank you very much for inviting me. This is now where we're gonna officially start the podcast.
Jeff Kushmerek 03:40
Yeah, thanks for finally showing up. I appreciate that. It's good. So we're glad to have you. And we got some questions from the internet to go over.
Alli Tiscornia 03:51
I saw those. I might have a couple of challenging responses to some of those questions. So
Jeff Kushmerek 04:00
don't you have no problems rocking the boat? Before that? I want to straight up answer from you on this one question should be pretty easy answer. The GSD. Podcast. Great podcast or greatest podcast.
Alli Tiscornia 04:15
Oh, by far our greatest, our greatest. Absolutely. I mean, fantastic title. Great people, you always have really good interesting people on and
Jeff Kushmerek 04:27
expected Oh my god. So let me ask you this question. Which competitor Do you hate the most?
Alli Tiscornia 04:37
I'm not going to answer that question. Because, look, I think there is I think there's plenty of space for good tech in customer success. I think a lot of customer success teams need tech. So I think that there's room for all of us.
Jeff Kushmerek 04:57
So I saw Ali's mouth moving but only heard Hunter's voice. So for everybody listening, this is how we always chat. But we thought it would be funny to do a little bit of Between Two Ferns type of thing, because we've got a very interesting work relationship here in the fact that oh, well, I think you guys can see what's going on here. It's pretty clear. Yeah,
Alli Tiscornia 05:22
I believe I was watching. I was watching the Between Two Ferns that you sent me. The Bradley Cooper. Elephant. Yeah. And I'm trying to figure out which one of us is which here, but I'm pretty clear. I think it's pretty. It's pretty clear. I'm definitely Zack. Yes, absolutely. One of the things that I thought was fantastic about that, was that the line that Bradley Cooper said around why are you being so mean to me? Because I feel like I've said that to you. Is something we say to each other on almost a
Jeff Kushmerek 06:02
day. Well, no, you do a little bit more of a passive aggressive one, right? You say so and so is said to me, why is he so mean to you? Right? It's a very common marriage tactic. Like all my friends asked me, Are you is Jeff really like that?
Alli Tiscornia 06:17
You believe you're gonna bring that up? Oh my gosh.
Jeff Kushmerek 06:25
So forecasting,
Alli Tiscornia 06:27
forecasting, actually, forecasting is one of my favorite topics. And I love talking about forecasting, because I think unfortunately, a lot of CES professionals get super intimidated by that. It's one of the reasons why I think ces professionals in the past, I think this year has proven that it's really important to own a number. But I think there has been resistance to owning a number in the past because of forecasting, right? Because it's like, Oh, my God, I can just do all this math. It's so it's hard. It's scary.
Jeff Kushmerek 06:59
So there's that. But isn't there the other thing too, which is God, ally that done that? I don't want to talk about money with my customers that violates our friendship in and you know, I feel like we have this bond, like we met at like, like apple picking, and I really liked your purse.
Alli Tiscornia 07:21
Exactly. It's a business relationship, folks, you
Jeff Kushmerek 07:25
wouldn't notice people unless they sign them contract terms in front of it.
Alli Tiscornia 07:30
Exactly. Everything is a negotiation in life. Everything is a negotiation in business. And it doesn't like that doesn't mean the relationship is transactional. It just means this is a business relationship. And we have to have these discussions. And quite frankly, your customers expect that of you. I agree, which is where I want to get into the controversial topic of CSM sentiment. Oh, because in your blog posts, or LinkedIn posts, oh, we're gonna get a little controversial. You said that you spoke to some of the greatest ces minds and they all agreed,
Jeff Kushmerek 08:12
yes, data minds, my ops friends, yes.
Alli Tiscornia 08:16
That CSM sentiment is hugely important. And I want to take a little bit of a different tack on that. In all seriousness, I sometimes think that we can over index a little bit on CSM sentiment when we consider CSM sentiment to be the CSMs gut feeling about Yes, right or about the relationship, the status of the relationship. And when I would like to encourage your plethora of listeners out there. I actually that was encouraging I wish that was a positive statement is to think about think about CSM sentiment a little differently. And think about it as CSMs risk assessment. Right of the customer. And I think of I think of risk assessment, and then I think of health score, right. And I think of risk assessment as your leading indicators and your health score as kind of your lagging indicators. Right. And so when you think about a CSM doing a risk assessment, you're thinking about, okay, how was the implementation? Right? Did everything go well in the implementation, or did it not? Are you single threaded in the account? What is the status of the business? Have they had riffs? Have they gotten funding? Right? What's the status of the data, right, was it quality data is the data poor? What about ICP, right? Was this actually a good fit in the sales process? Did you identify use cases in the sales process? that should be what the what the CSM is assessing every single time they're talking to their customer. And given a score, give it a score so that
Jeff Kushmerek 10:12
it actually very quantitative, essentially,
Alli Tiscornia 10:15
it but it is I think I think you get I think we get into too much trouble. And I personally have been caught up in this where you're relying upon a CSMs, quote unquote, relationship, right with the buyer, or maybe not the buyer but with their contact, and then a CFO comes in and says, No, right, right. And you can be caught off guard.
Jeff Kushmerek 10:41
On that note, when you're running your team and going through a forecast and everything, are you doing a like a red, yellow, green? Or are you doing a I like a more of a sales when thing which is like commit, you know, closed one, things like that, like, what are the what are the risks? What is going on here? Like, right?
Alli Tiscornia 11:03
Yeah, yeah. So we we look at it with probability and stages, right? And then we also look at how many dollars do you think you're actually going to get, we actually ask our CSMs to come up with the dollar amount they think they're gonna get for each account. I think the way we run our team is, is much more sales minded. And I think that's actually very healthy. Because I think it's a skill that a lot of people need, and I think it's a healthy skill for CSMs. To have.
Jeff Kushmerek 11:33
That's why you said all CCO should report to the CRO right.
Alli Tiscornia 11:40
No, but I don't think that I don't think
Jeff Kushmerek 11:43
I'm not all the way joking on that one like,
Alli Tiscornia 11:46
and I want to answer that actually, seriously, I don't think it is problematic for a chief customer officer to be paired with a CRO or to report into a CRO I think we are actually going to see Customer Success move more in a direction of owning those numbers, owning those dollars. You know, we've got to stop shying away from account management is so different than customer success. I think you're gonna see a lot more of consolidation in the next couple of years. We're already seeing it, I think you're gonna see more of it. So embrace the change, get good at forecasting, understand what tools are out there, not just Salesforce, there are other tools. CSPs good CS, why
Jeff Kushmerek 12:33
It's like Salesforce is like Kleenex. Right? It's like you're using the brand name instead of the actual facial tissue. Right. Exactly. Right. Right. But everybody says CSP. So so there we go. So that, isn't it. And I know we're getting a little off topic there. But you know, I've always said that. Why, you know, so the whole report into the CEO is, so you can have a seat at the table. And if you report to somebody, you're probably not at the table, which is a lie, and things like that. But if you've got some CEO type who's never run sales, and never in does not know how to run like a good forecast and a good pipeline, they're not going to do you any good. If you've not been if you've not gone through this either. Right.
Alli Tiscornia 13:22
Exactly, exactly. It's really important to learn that skill set and to learn it quickly. Because quite frankly, I think, if you're at the chief customer officer level, you're going to be expected to know how to forecast. Right? So you're gonna have to learn it somewhere. So the idea that we're having these teams report into sales, again, it's healthy to embrace that, because you're gonna learn a lot. And I think you also, I think you're also going to have a lot more respect for what sales teams do, right? Because there's always that there's always that struggle between pre sales and post sales. Right. And I think we need to let go of that. About a CRO relationship is that you have that right?
Jeff Kushmerek 14:11
Oh, no, absolutely. I was curious. To make an analogy here. You know, how when you're a project manager, and you're doing some estimates on a project, and the dev says 20 hours, you're like, I'm gonna pad that up a little bit, right? How do you approach that with your teams when they're like, oh, yeah, like, absolutely gonna crush this quarter 95% probability? We're good to go?
Alli Tiscornia 14:33
Well, that's the I think that's, that's why I struggle with the CSM sentiment, right? You have to balance it with the data. And we certainly you know, I certainly have people on my team who love to do that. Right. And then you say, Okay, well, this is what the the health score or the churn score that we use, it turns zero. This is what the data is actually showing, right? How are you going to say that you're going to you know, you're going The knockout this account when your customer hasn't logged in for a month, right, like you're guaranteeing me the renewal but your customer hasn't logged in for a month. So
Jeff Kushmerek 15:10
we're going to double down on this because that's an easy one. But let's get into the ones where you really want to kick over some rocks and get into the Do we really think are there there several other smaller ones as death by 1000, paper cuts approach or sort of how, like, I'm just very untrusting on pipeline numbers right now. Like, just like, I like to go and ask these questions, right? Like, can you can you get stained early and get your six weeks out? What are the things that are gonna happen? What would happen if you Why don't you put a contract in front of them right now then, like all those types of things? Well, but I'm not coming from the data background that you're coming from like so I'm curious about Zillow. I feel like the Logins like people always use to two ones that I think aren't the easiest ones to go off of one's logging in and one support tickets, which can mean a totally dramatic, totally
Alli Tiscornia 15:58
different things. Yeah, totally different things. I think login is a start, right? But you actually need to know usage, you actually need to know who is using what feature, right? And so specifically, do you have somebody who is more of an administrator, depending on what type of product you have, right? Do you have somebody who's just more of an administrator, and they're, you know, logging in, and maybe they're doing some reporting, that doesn't necessarily guarantee right, that you're gonna get the renewal from that, you need to know that there is license utilization across the board? Is everybody going in and using different features? Right. So I think that is the critical piece. And then I think the other critical piece is, you know, how multi threaded Are you in the account, like if you are a CSM, and you're only having one discussion with your quote unquote, champion, or you're having multiple discussions with your quote, unquote, champion, but you're not talking to end users, or you're not talking to your champions boss, or the economic buyer? Like those are pretty big risks. And
Jeff Kushmerek 17:13
let me ask you this, especially since you work for a company whose name has churn in it, what are the three biggest factors of churn because it gets back to what you were just saying, I'm just trying to bubble it up a little bit.
Alli Tiscornia 17:24
The biggest factors for churn is to me are really, how did the implementation go? Right? And then it's what kind of adoption you have in the product. And then I think the next is, do you understand why the customer bought your product? And are they achieving what they set out to achieve with your product? Almost Correct. I'm always correct, Jeff, but okay, what's your opinion?
Jeff Kushmerek 18:01
I think I think you got a 98.5 on that answer.
Alli Tiscornia 18:05
Oh, yeah. Unacceptable. I'm only 99. and above. So what do you what, in your opinion? Do you think I would just?
Jeff Kushmerek 18:15
Well, obviously, you know, if you go out for drinks, that's that's another thing, but no. On the value thing, right? Is that does that business owner? Are they getting the feedback that they're getting the value, right? I get these three things. You could be looking at the data saying like, Oh, yeah, we're good to go. Are you actually having those conversations, and showing like you wanted these three outcomes, and we've delivering them, or you're, we're four months out from renewing, and we're two out of three right now. So let's go work on that third one,
Alli Tiscornia 18:52
figure out how to Yeah, absolutely. But I think that kind of goes back to the concept of, you know, multithreaded in an account, you can't just be relying on your hands, because I don't know that no, seriously, I don't know that. You know, just because I think a lot of CSMs have really good relationships with one or two people in an account. And they rely way too heavily on that.
Jeff Kushmerek 19:16
Well, yeah, what I see is sales signs up with this business owner, they push it down implementation and CSM it to some other admin persons. And that's it, right?
Alli Tiscornia 19:28
That's it and they never go back and speak to that economic buyer. They never go back and speak to that business owner around, you know, hey, this is what we've actually opposed.
Jeff Kushmerek 19:37
And exactly, you know, hey, listen, Joe, Bob, we got to go through all the vendors that you have here. What about this? And they're like, you haven't heard from them at all? I'm gonna say no, I'm gonna say No, exactly. That's like the number one. The number one thing I see out there like that lack of touch to the people who actually, you know, sign the checks, essentially sign
Alli Tiscornia 19:57
the checks, yes.
Jeff Kushmerek 19:59
Boom. and send those QBRs to the CFO to like they can only not read them. Right. So
Alli Tiscornia 20:06
yes, yeah. Did we actually agree on something?
Jeff Kushmerek 20:10
Almost you tried to catch on the fact but it's fine. It's fine. We're almost there. It's good. It wasn't. I have some questions here for you. I wanted to make sure we got from the internet, right. Yes. All right. Because Ali was concerned, we didn't have any questions for her. So. So here we go. So
Alli Tiscornia 20:30
no, I was concerned that you didn't prep the questions ahead of time, which is very common practice with podcasts.
Jeff Kushmerek 20:40
Oh, so you're saying they usually get fed a list of questions. So you can just ace it and come out. And just I'm
Alli Tiscornia 20:45
just saying that it's common to, you know, it's common practice to be like, Okay, we're gonna go over a couple of these things. I've noticed, I believe
Jeff Kushmerek 20:52
we sat down over drinks in person. And we talked about what we would talk about on this on this on this.
Alli Tiscornia 20:58
We didn't specifically I just I think it was more like, when are you going to do this podcast? I've been asking you forever to do this podcast. And I'm like, I told you, I would do it. Jeff, what do we want to talk about? Yeah, forecast specifically go into forecasting,
Jeff Kushmerek 21:14
I respect to do on a level that we're I think, like, we don't need to have extensive prep, like, you know, this shit down cold, and you should just be able to answer it. Like we were to humans conversing.
Alli Tiscornia 21:27
Oh, okay. All right. Well, that was that was well done. Okay. All right. So the internet questions, how can I be helpful?
Jeff Kushmerek 21:35
I do have to apologize because they use your full birth name on this. So don't do your normal thing that you do to me when I say this. Okay. Okay. I'd be interested in learning Alison's thoughts on the impact of automated communications about renewal in the 90 to 150 days ahead of the renewal deadline, would also be intrigued to hear Allison's thoughts in the status while I can speak, the statistical impact of accounting turnover, both CS and sales on renewal rates.
Alli Tiscornia 22:08
So let's let's address the automated emails, you know, 120 days out, it's great. You absolutely need to do them. You can't rely on them to be the only form of communication that you're talking about auto renew, fly out good to go move on. Oh, I mean, you have to do them. And I actually recommend that people do them even sooner than they think they should, right. Like a lot of times, customers will think they need to our companies will think that they need to do it at like 90 days out. I think 90 days out is way too late. You should be prepping those conversations much earlier. I think at the six month mark, you should be really having conversations with customers about the renewal you got to get understand. To your point, if there were three reasons why the customer bought your product, and you've only accomplished two, you need extra time to figure out how to get to three, right? So the sooner you can start sending
Jeff Kushmerek 23:08
invitations bad you're still in implementation. Absolutely. My friend sucks. That's not fun. That is all I should say. If it's beyond what you say, if you've got a complicated product, not like yours, that takes over six months to get out there then absolutely. Okay. It's good. Good, good.
Alli Tiscornia 23:28
So but there was a second part of the question that was around
Jeff Kushmerek 23:32
drone team turnover, like how that impacts renewal, right.
Alli Tiscornia 23:34
So look, it is not comfortable. It is not comfortable for any company to have to transition to a new CSM. But this is the reality of the world and we're not going to escape it. At the end of the day. Companies and customers don't churn because of a CSM. They churn it because they are lacking value from the product and from the experience. That's why customers churn got it? Super profound, wasn't it? I mean, you were like you were silent there. You were like, wow, I was thinking about the massage that I have booked after this. So you're so mean to me.
Jeff Kushmerek 24:23
I've heard that from your friends. All right. So sorry, I super apologize to the five worst
Alli Tiscornia 24:31
audience. Anybody that's gonna listen to this poor thing.
Jeff Kushmerek 24:36
The way that just a little inflection on anybody that you put there. It's so that is a pro move. The fact that you don't even know what's coming out is just amazing. Just I applaud you. I only hope to get to that level someday my 80s or something. Okay, for Alison Discordian about regular check. Using customer feedback, can you dial up the accuracy more depending on the level of customers you're interacting with? Outside of the economic or tech buyer? Do you get a better sense of renewal from talking to the people actively using their product or managing the initiative that we kind of?
Alli Tiscornia 25:14
We can cover that one? Yeah. Yes. And the answer is yes. Please do have as many conversations with as many people as you possibly can, you're gonna get a better sense of what's going on with the account.
Jeff Kushmerek 25:25
Yes. And I think I think what Ali is saying here is, that's a conversation. That's not, we have 60 minutes. So I have 58 slides put together here. Oh,
Alli Tiscornia 25:35
yeah, absolutely not. Absolutely not. It's a conversation.
Jeff Kushmerek 25:41
So Ellie, do you if you were to go talk to some startups versus mid sized companies versus
Alli Tiscornia 25:48
and I love startups? Yes. Yeah.
Jeff Kushmerek 25:54
Sure, so does your approach change? Right? We think about your three CSMs versus the team of 15 versus the team of 50. Right?
Alli Tiscornia 26:05
Right. Of course, I mean, you're gonna have, you're gonna have a much more automated digital experience. If you've got three CSMs. And you've got, you know, hundreds of accounts, that's fine. But that I think, actually, those touch points, and it becomes even more critical for you to be showing the value through that automation, right? You actually have to be providing the data around what value they're getting out of it. And then, but I think that what's interesting about the digital experience is that you can have more reach, right? If I'm talking about how important multithreading is in an account, if you have a digital experience, you are going to be able to reach more people. And again, not just with emails, you're not trying to email them to death or having you know, a 56 slide PowerPoint, it's more of that, you know, it's more of sending them a video or talking to them about a webinar or, you know, talking to them about the three things that you've been able to accomplish with the product, or they've been able to accomplish with the product.
Jeff Kushmerek 27:09
But how do you do that at scale? When you're scale CSM, you've got 400 to 1000 accounts, you know, is it like record one video and then splice in the name 1000 times or?
Alli Tiscornia 27:23
No, no, I think personalization is important. I think personalization is key. But I think that there's ways that you can kind of hack the personalization, right through things, you know, like, like videos, like, you know, like webinars,
Jeff Kushmerek 27:47
I bored you, I saw your the No, no,
Alli Tiscornia 27:49
I've always, I think I struggle sometimes in a question like this, because I know people want super concrete answers. And I, and I, you know, I hate to say things like that. See, I tried to clear I try to steer clear of that. But I think unfortunately, you do have to kind of unpack, you know, what is the product? You know, what can you do with personalization specific to that product? What is the product doing for that customer? It is a little hard to answer that in a, you know, all encompassing
Jeff Kushmerek 28:25
Yeah, I'm gonna do the same thing. I'm gonna ask another very specific question, then, just just for that.
Alli Tiscornia 28:30
Fantastic. I'm sure I will stumble over this one as well. Yes.
Jeff Kushmerek 28:36
Makes you Human Fish. So what, what do you do about for the customers that made it completely clear, like, I'm good, I don't want to hear from you. I'm using the product. Just don't reach out to me.
Alli Tiscornia 28:53
I think that's where you get your marketing department involved with creative ways to come up with content that's going to be important to them and interesting to them. So, and I totally respect that from certain, you know, customers who are like, Hey, we got this, we don't need, you know, we don't need a status meeting. We don't have a weekly meeting. So it's like, Okay, we got to figure out what's going to be interesting and relevant to that customer, to just continue to kind of, you know, nudge them along and let them know that you are actually making progress. So I would, I would definitely reach out to marketing to
Jeff Kushmerek 29:37
bring it back to the original topic for the show. How are you forecasting these high touch these customers, high volume customers? Yeah,
Alli Tiscornia 29:47
yeah, I think that's where you really do have to rely very heavily on those health scores. Right. And you have to understand you have to have a health score built out. It's gonna be pretty hard for you not to To be able to forecast without a health score without an automation tool, right to see what your customer is doing in your product.
Jeff Kushmerek 30:10
Yeah. Which also then would totally invalidate my statement about CSM sentiment, especially when you've got a plethora of customers,
Alli Tiscornia 30:20
right? You're not going to be able to rely on that, right? You're gonna have to rely on the data.
Jeff Kushmerek 30:25
Yeah. What do you think are the biggest mistakes that CSMs make around this around? When they're giving you the forecast? Is it around trusting their
Alli Tiscornia 30:36
gut? It's Yes. It's around trusting their gut and relying on one relationship. Yeah, to have a really good relationship, they have gone out for drinks with this particular person. Right? Yeah. And they are not understanding the the economic conditions of the company, the the customers company, or what other impacts there might be to that person's job, you know, that person, maybe they do have a great relationship, but they don't understand that maybe that person is being put into a different role. Maybe that person is looking to leave the company, right? And you can't be You can't be so reliant upon your relationship with just one person.
Jeff Kushmerek 31:24
So how would you classify it as data points? Like, imagine, you're asking the good questions like, Hey, how are things going? Are you have you had any layoffs? Or how are these layoffs affecting you and stuff like that? I feel like those would give me a more educated CSM sentiment point.
Alli Tiscornia 31:46
It would, but it it wouldn't just be about asking the questions right, then you gotta go back. And I think do a little bit of research and see not just what your what that person is telling you internally, but then go see if it marries up with what you're seeing on LinkedIn. Right? And what you're seeing in terms of alerts, news alerts that you're getting on what's going on with that company? Yes, lots of easy information to go out there and find out. Yeah, awesome.
Jeff Kushmerek 32:15
What are we missing here? What are we not covering?
Alli Tiscornia 32:19
I do I do want to go back to the fact that forecasting is very much reliant on data. But it is still a little bit of an art as well. So you do have to, you know, like you said, around if you were talking about scoping out a project, right and relying upon one person's your developers assessment of how long something is going to take. Oh, yeah, it takes three minutes to install Java done
Jeff Kushmerek 32:50
in two hours. 20 hours. Gotcha.
Alli Tiscornia 32:54
Yeah, the more sophisticated than the better you get at forecasting you know, you pad that a little bit, right? Yeah. You don't want to
Jeff Kushmerek 33:02
you bluebird your way through. Through forecasts with your senior team.
Alli Tiscornia 33:07
I do not blue bird my way. I do like blue birds. I will take the blue birds, but I never count the blue birds. I never forecast my blue birds. Those are two extra
Jeff Kushmerek 33:19
do. Yeah, absolutely.
Alli Tiscornia 33:20
Right. Those little extra things that come in. We're excited about but yeah, became real
Jeff Kushmerek 33:27
out there. And suddenly they said, Wait, add 20 seats in there. I'm like, Oh, my God, what a surprise.
Alli Tiscornia 33:34
But you can't sandbag either. Right. You can also say nothing was gonna come in, right? Yeah.
Jeff Kushmerek 33:41
Clever line, right? What's the healthy percentage you you're shooting for? For accuracy?
Alli Tiscornia 33:47
So I think if you can get within 2% of your number.
Jeff Kushmerek 33:52
Wow, look at you public company. Ally. Wow,
Alli Tiscornia 33:55
hey, come on. And the better you get at it, the better you get at it. If you can get within two points. Like come on.
Jeff Kushmerek 34:02
It's gotta be tough. And this is gonna sound like I'm poking fun. But I'm not. But it's got to be tough when you have this like, mistrusting of the team to not like sandbag. Right. I will admit, I'm pretty much pessimistic around these areas.
Alli Tiscornia 34:19
Yeah, I think in all seriousness, I think that's why really good ces leaders are going to go through that for a cast. Why am I right? And one of the things that I have done, not just I do today, but at previous companies is you gotta have a forecast meeting just like sales as a forecast meeting. It's got to be a weekly meeting. You're gonna book you're gonna go through every
Jeff Kushmerek 34:45
single meeting, when you talk about stuff
Alli Tiscornia 34:50
that's meeting this totally different meeting,
Jeff Kushmerek 34:53
really advise anybody, especially the ones who have never been in a sales pipeline to go sit in The sales pipeline, because you'll be like, you'll see, when's this deal? Closing? I sent this email to them. Like, did you follow up on that? No, it's like, you learn some very this is how it gets done. Not like, Oh, I'll send the renewal out. Then they said, it'll be fine. Those are the ones you know, unexpected churn starts coming up, right?
Alli Tiscornia 35:21
Yeah, I think that is a really good point, Jeff, is that I think you should go if you've never done forecasting, and you're being asked to do it, go sit in your sales leaders pipeline meeting, and go no really brutal, brutal, brutal, but you will learn so much and you will understand the right questions to be asking your CSMs or your CSM managers about what the book looks like. Yeah.
Jeff Kushmerek 35:50
Awesome. Awesome. Is there more? I think we covered a lot. Right, good.
Alli Tiscornia 35:55
We did cover a lot.
Jeff Kushmerek 35:57
Yeah. Amazing. For an unprepared podcast so much we went through
Alli Tiscornia 36:00
how much of this are you going to actually edit though? I'm
Jeff Kushmerek 36:04
pretty much just gonna hit stop and upload.
Alli Tiscornia 36:07
I know that you can't do that. There has to be like, there's got to be some of this that you edit out, right? Because
Jeff Kushmerek 36:12
I mean, I don't do any of this. I send it over to to a foreign country and let them have at it, but I will tell them to make you look really smart and to make me look stupid, and they do a really good job. So Ali, fill in this question here. Blank taught me everything about blank.
Alli Tiscornia 36:36
Chris comprado taught me everything I know about being a really good manager.
Jeff Kushmerek 36:42
So what's what's what are you doing for fun this summer in Phoenix besides like bunkering down with the AC cranked.
Alli Tiscornia 36:50
So we have a little cabin up in the mountains. And so we like to kind of hang out at the cabin during the summertime. lucky enough to be able to do that. Because here in Phoenix in July, when it's 120 degrees, you're
Jeff Kushmerek 37:07
playing Jenga.
Alli Tiscornia 37:10
Or you're in the pool, you're in the pool with all the umbrellas over the pool. Yeah, yeah, that's that's the margaritas.
Jeff Kushmerek 37:16
I've heard speaking of margaritas, I will see you next week. A few days. It's amazing.
Alli Tiscornia 37:23
You days. That's right. I'm excited about the band.
Jeff Kushmerek 37:27
Yeah, that's good. Yeah, I'm talking about that. Yeah, I think I've talked about that one time, too many. So. So, Ali, I'm going to I'm going to stop the recording. Right. And then we're going to chat for a moment after that. Right. Okay. Okay. Thanks so much for having you on. We'll put all your LinkedIn stuff because you're super active on LinkedIn. So we'll make sure people get to catch all of your updates. Your daily stuff. We'll go from there.
Alli Tiscornia 37:51
Bye, everyone. Thank you.