[00:00:00] Speaker A: Your company, whether it be a csm, an onboarding specialist, the founder, someone needs to during the onboarding process, correct that expectation gap, close it as much as possible, and it doesn't mean that it's going to happen during one call. This might happen over the first 30, 60, 90 days, but you do have to get them to your customers to realize what they can actually expect.
And then also there's like a lot of times where you're going to notice they do have an expectation that maybe you're not currently delivering. You can work to provide them at a later date so you can get the company to rally around maybe changing a few things or changing the offer so you can meet your customers or clients halfway. You weren't born to sit in traffic, work for approval, or wait for Fridays. You were built to be free welcome to Rich and Remote, the show for the ones who dare to do life differently. Here we talk about building businesses that give you choices where you work, how you live and what you create.
This is for the entrepreneurs who crave freedom, financial freedom, location freedom, and freedom from everyone else's expectations. If you're ready to design a life on your own terms, you're in the right place.
Rich and Remote Hosted by Alex and Carla Booth.
[00:01:38] Speaker B: Hey, quick one for anyone still doing $15 an hour work when you should be doing $10,000 an hour. Thinking if you've ever tried hiring a virtual assistant and ended up with someone you had to train from scratch, I want you to check out the Hire an AI VA playbook which you can
[email protected] It's a $17 toolkit that shows you exactly how to find, vet and hire an AI savvy virtual assistant. Someone who already knows how to use ChatGPT and Claude properly so they can actually take work off your plate in as early as three hours and not in three months. It has betting checklists, masterclasses, job post templates, prompts and even done for you. AI Skill Skills Test will even guide you through the interview process so you'll truly have everything you need to land a proper AI enabled virtual assistant who can finally take these tedious everyday tasks off your plate. Link is in the show notes so go grab it and do yourself a favor. Once again it's hire an aiva.com. you deserve high quality support and you deserve an AI savvy virtual assistant. Go check out hireanaiva.com Good morning everyone and welcome to Rich and Remote. I have been begging Alex to do this episode because I know it will just help A lot of people. And let me tell you a little bit of secret. This is also inspired by my weekly or maybe monthly habit of just going on my stripe, clicking customers, looking at our top customers and looking at my running ltv, LTV or lifetime value.
So today I'm interviewing Alex, my co host and my husband. Give you a little bit of a background if you're new here. He has spent a decade in customer success. He worked at Yellow Pages and then Microsoft and then Amazon. He has always been passionate about the customer experience when he was a customer of many, many things. And now that he owns a business, he now sees customer success as something from both sides and he has become more passionate and it's more committed into making this happen for his clients. He owns Huckleberry Consulting, which is a consulting company that helps online businesses make more money by improved customer experience, satisfaction, retention and ltv. And he also owns get csm super fast growing company where he places customer success talent for fast growing companies all over the world. So hi Alex, welcome.
Hey.
[00:04:22] Speaker A: Super weird to hear your wife introduce you on a podcast. I don't know if anyone else has experienced that, but it is a weird feeling for sure. Love to hear the passion and glad you actually want to hear me talk about what a passion is about school. I'm excited.
[00:04:37] Speaker B: So all of our listeners, Alex and I, you know, we travel, we go out, and even if it's a cheap restaurant or an expensive resort, there's always something that we tell each other about our reflections on our experience as customers. And we just also like love nerding about it. But like I said, now that he is in business, it has given him a much more holistic approach on customer success.
So I'm going to ask a first question that a lot of people will really, really love to know. And I know some of them already know about this famous statement where it is more expensive to acquire a new client than to just keep the clients that you have. So most entrepreneurs are laser focused on getting new clients. I don't know if that's just like dopamine or something.
Why do you think so few are actually paying attention to the ones they already have?
[00:05:33] Speaker A: That's a great question.
To be honest, I'm going to tell you probably like a bunch of different reasons as to why I think that's the case, why other people think it's the case. But at the end of the day, I think acquisition is just sexy and retention is kind of invisible. So it's like sales is the hot girl and retention is A little bit invisible, right? It's that person you've ignored.
So I don't. I don't think people celebrate retention efforts. I don't think, like, they celebrate you making an existing client win, right? They're definitely celebrating when a new deal is closed. So I think there's like a huge aspect around culture and how we treat sales versus how we treat good delivery of a product or service. I think that plays a huge part in kind of why companies or people are just focused on the wrong thing. I do also think that a lot of founders have built their companies, and they built a product, they built a service, and yes, they did sales, but they also built this thing, right? And we always tell them, now you need to get out of your business and go be the face of it. Now you got to get out of it and go sell.
So when they do make that shift to go sell, they kind of leave behind what they built in a way, right?
And when they do that, there's two things that they typically do.
I'd say one of the things is they put people in charge to run the business, and then they either just completely separate themselves and do sales, or they hold on to managing the clients, but they let other people figure out the delivery.
[00:07:27] Speaker B: Right?
[00:07:27] Speaker A: So I do think that the founders that are holding on to the client management are the ones who are doing it the greatest. Most businesses don't even know what they're losing because they're not tracking ltv. So businesses might know that they're losing customers. That might hurt, right? But they don't realize even when they're keeping customers, that they're still losing a lot of times because their LTV really isn't great. Right? They don't see a positive trend. They don't see a downturn because they're not even tracking it. So I think that there's just also a lot of just. There's not a. There's not a lot of knowledge or metric tracking where people are aware that there's even a problem.
And then I think, last thing around why people aren't sickly is a focus on that a new client does feel like momentum, right?
But a leaky retention means that you're running on a treadmill. So I think it's really important to kind of change the perspective. Where I like to see companies, maybe because it's the industry I'm in, they're focusing on growth, but that's not just bringing in new clients, is also, you know, growing their existing clients, that the ascension of their clients I think is just as exciting. And it should also feel like momentum.
[00:08:51] Speaker B: Right. I like that. And actually, it is very understandable how it's so exciting to close a new client, to say that you close a new client, that you've welcomed 10 new clients this month. It is something that definitely makes you feel good. There's that dopamine, there's that reward feeling.
But yeah, you're right, it's like something that you do every single day. Eventually it's going to feel a little bit unsexy on autopilot and just a part of business. But the other thing that I want a lot of our listeners to remember is one of the best business models out there is a subscription. And literally the only way that you can make that work. It is one of the easiest ways to make a lot of money if you do it right, if you focus on retention. Because it. That really doesn't put. You don't need to put a lot of effort into just like retaining it doesn't actually require a lot of effort in doing that compared to finding a new client and convincing a stranger to pay you the first dollar that they're going to pay you. So give us a little bit of an idea. Alex, you are now a customer success consultant. You've helped multimillion dollar businesses do this thing. In fact, when you were at Amazon, you had a $1.3 billion book of business that you manage in customer success.
When was the first time that you heard the term ltv? And what were your initial thoughts about it? And why should we care about it more as business owners?
[00:10:23] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a great question.
So I think where I first saw it, I will be completely honest, it was not when I was at yp, which was Yellow Pages. It was kind of the opposite effect there. It was all about new customer acquisition and delivery was lack of a better word.
But when I got to Microsoft, I saw how things were supposed to work. There is an ecosystem around their customers. They bring them in one door and it might be like a Word or Excel, and then soon enough they're on Xbox and they're connecting all of their different systems. And you could see like, wow, just bringing someone in one door really gets them introduced to all of your other services.
And pretty soon, you know, they're lifelong customers. Obviously that's an extreme case because Microsoft is so big.
But where I just really got driven into my head was at Amazon. They will lose millions and millions of dollars every single day to bring in a new customer. They typically do that through the retail side of the business.
And then they get you on your prime subscription and then soon enough you're watching videos on prime video and then you got groceries coming from prime and then you're doing Amazon web services because you built a business. Like there's so many things that they get you after that. But the reason I got like a first glance at it is because one, you've learned Amazon's history. So they made us read like from A to Z. We learned all about their history of how they dominated certain markets. But also I came in working in the baby category, they call it the baby GL at Amazon.
And diapers specifically. I didn't work on diapers, but I worked on like car seats and other things. But diapers, they will to this day lose millions and millions and billions of dollars every single day.
[00:12:18] Speaker B: Why?
[00:12:18] Speaker A: Because as a shopper, one of the first things that you're going to buy at that life cycle for your kid is diapers, right? So if you are going to go to Amazon, get the best price on diapers, you're going to go to Amazon for that next thing. You have to get your kid that next thing. And then soon enough you're buying everything in your damn household from Amazon because you got comfortable there. That was an incredible concept for me to see. Like, obviously not everyone can do that at that scale, but they understand customer psychology, they understand how do I get them in the door and then how do I keep them long term. You can look at where you're potentially investing in the customer experience and look at it as a loss. Or you can look at it holistically and say, wow, I'm actually getting 10x of the return over here on these other purchases. With them staying longer, there's definitely a give and a take, right? So just being short minded with how you look at building your business and creating a good customer experience is where a lot of people lose it, right? And I think once you get strategic, you start to think of these things. You look at ltv. Holy crap. Does retention look a lot sexier than acquisition? It is super fun and strategic. I think nobody does it better than Amazon. Like in specifically go read that book A to Z, go look at diapers. Like specifically where Amazon built their empire, they were destroying industries. They put every business he used to know out of business. They like destroyed them. And it was a ruthless takeover by Jeff Bezos. And like that was a process to build where they are today where they're able to do the things that they're doing. But like a lot of those principles are applied today in their how they. How they actually still provide the best customer experience.
[00:14:06] Speaker B: I see. That's really, really good. And it's crazy how on Amazon, if you think about it, they are investing a lot in it because the only subscription they really have is Prime. Right? But for you to even want to have prime, you have to care about the other things that you can get from Amazon for you to think that signing up on prime is even worth it. Right. So they really did a good job there. And you're right about the extent of the investment that they put into knowing the life cycle of, you know, a customer. Not just life cycle as in the, of a person, but they quite literally did that. So very impressive. And you're right, not everyone can do it at that scale. And so I want to know first for our listeners, is there a simple way to calculate LTV so they can actually do this today and have something to think about?
[00:14:55] Speaker A: I mean there's a few ways of doing it I think like this. If you're just going to make it as simple as possible, look at the average monthly revenue per client, multiply it by how many months they've stayed on average.
So I think that's like the clearest cut way. So for example, let's say $2,000 a month client who stays for 12 months, that's like $24,000 LTV, right? So they spend $2,000 a month, they stay for 12 months or 24,000 for anything that's like a one time purchase, product or business.
You take the average order volume and then you multiply it by purchases and then you multiply that by the customer lifespan. So it's really simple.
I would argue that once your business is older, right, you can get a better look at what your LTV is. But just because your company might be like 6 months old or 1 years old and you have like customers that have been with you from day one, I don't think that it prevents you from looking at ltv. I think you should constantly be looking at it because you're going to be surprised about which customers coming in from like what background or buying what product.
Create the longest LTV or the best LTV and you can start to really figure out like which customers do I actually want? And then how did this customer even find me?
You know, did they come on with a deal? Did I solve a certain problem for them? Like that's how you figure out like is my avatar even right and am I doing the right things in order to acquire the right customer. So it actually helps with acquisition as well.
Yeah.
[00:16:36] Speaker B: And as an additional tip to that as well, we are so lucky that right now we have AI that can. You can easily do this. You can just plug in this information, you can build your own tool. And of course, don't forget our beloved payment processors. You already have a lot of this information. You just go on stripe, which is what Alex and I use for our business. They will give you, like, top customers, how much they've spent, what's the average, you know, lifespan. You can easily see it for me because I am a subscription business and Alex is as well. We are both high ticket subscription businesses. We charge four figures per client per month. I love seeing the top customers and the amount that they have paid me over the years. So I have a customer that has paid me close to six figures already. Just one customer. But it is because he has been with me for years and years.
And I love seeing that because it motivates me to strive. And so I can see literally that, oh, my God, every customer could be paying me this amount if I just do my job well in retention and if I just keep them happy.
[00:17:44] Speaker A: And Carla, like, what's more exciting, that one customer, looking at the number that one customer has paid you over the years or looking at the number of that first payment that your customers made. And that's why I think in terms of what's more attractive, like, the retention is way more attractive to me. You just got to look at the numbers and you got to know what they are.
[00:18:03] Speaker B: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. That customer has literally also introduced me to a lot of people. So I owe him a lot. He's been there since I started, since I barely have proven myself. So it's also a good way to obviously forge really good relationships that go beyond business. That person and I, we are definitely friends outside of business now. So let's talk about churn, right, because we're talking about retention. You talk a lot about Churn as you have a business in customer success.
And churn is something that we need to think about before the client even gets the service.
So what do you mean by that?
[00:18:41] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't mean to, like, hate on sales.
I'm not trying to do that because I already get ahead of this. Because where I'm going with this is when I do a lot of churn or retention sprints for my clients. In the consulting business, almost every single time a client has a, has a retention problem, you can trace it back to the onboarding process and it's usually because expectations are incorrectly set during the sales process. And I do not blame sales. I understand like you got, sometimes you gotta say what you need to say in order to get the sale. There's obviously a line to that. I'm not, I'm not advocating any lying or misconstruing. But sometimes, a lot of times customers are coming out of the sales process with these expectations that are up here. If you're, you can't see me, I, I'm looking, I'm saying over my head. And in reality what you can actually deliver is very low, low compared to what they're expecting.
And where it's, it's not the sales fault is when they get to the onboarding. Your team needs to right size those expectations. And to be completely honest, I don't think I've met one company who doesn't have this problem of an expectation gap. So your company, whether it be a csm, an onboarding specialist, the founder, someone needs to, during the onboarding process, correct that expectation gap, close it as much as possible. And it doesn't mean that it's going to happen during one call. This might happen over the first 30, 60, 90 days, but you do have to get them to your customers to realize what they can actually expect.
And then also there's like a lot of times where you're going to notice they do have an expectation that maybe you're not currently delivering, you can work to provide them at a later date so you can get the company to rally around maybe changing a few things or changing the offer so you can meet your customers or clients halfway. So when I say that it starts before the sale, it's typically around expectations being set. And then like another thing would be, I'd say like just maybe like the lead gen or SDR going after the wrong clients, right. Or the wrong leads getting outside that customer avatar. And again like this isn't all the front end's fault. This is where I think like the back end, the customer success team, they can actually be providing a lot of helpful resources to the sales team, to the SCR to figure out what potential customers to go for, right? What to actually be able to say on the sales call that's realistic. Give them case studies, give them success stories, tell them what's working and like have a really close relationship and that's the easiest way to prevent that expectation gap from remaining high or growing. But no matter what you do, there's going to be a gap at some point and you have to close that gap.
[00:21:39] Speaker B: I Love that. Yeah. I think that in the whole machine of the business marketing legion and then sales and then customer success, the breaking point or the risk is really you're right in the handoff between sales and delivery and then the customer success. And it is very common for salespeople, especially commission only salespeople to say things during the sales call in order to make the sale. But they also have to have that relationship with customer success and they need to deliver the expectation. I really always say that a large part of customer success is merely expectation management because that's really where disappointment comes from. Like in my outsourcing company when we do the recruitment, me as the salesperson of my company, I would say recruitment typically takes two to three weeks and then that's their expectation in case we don't meet that expectation. When our client success manager sees that, oh my God, this is not going to happen in two weeks in the middle of like maybe the first week, they are quick to tell the client, hey, I know this is what we promised. Let me, you know, reassess the situation. This is the new expectation. Typically the clients are actually more accepting if things change.
Right. Because they know you've done your best effort instead of just making the thing happen and then dropping the ball and then saying not owning accountability. So clients are actually more forgiving than you guys think. Even if something went out of the expectation, if you just take accountability. Yeah.
[00:23:19] Speaker A: It's a great example by the way. And like I feel like you guys figured out a long time ago and maybe you've always done this but like giving that range, like you said, of delivery expectation versus saying oh yeah, we'll definitely have someone for you in two weeks.
Two weeks, no problem. The last hires were all two weeks. You know, I'm going to do you better. You said it's really urgent. I'm going to get it for you in one week. Right. Like you know that you're shooting yourself in the foot and you've learned to like give that range and give like pepper in those that little bit of expectation that it could even exceed this range. But it's just being realistic. And it's back to like the that old promise of I would rather under promise and over deliver. It's that exact same concept.
[00:24:04] Speaker B: Right. Very, very famous line.
So what kind of systems do you recommend or what systems have you built to fix this issue of expectation management? What does this look like in practice? Give us a little peek behind the curtains at getcsm.
[00:24:22] Speaker A: Yeah, so I think I have an SOP and Like a process built specifically around expect expectation gap. So maybe it's something I, I can, I can give to put in this, in the bio here, Carlos. So maybe we'll figure out a way to where I can share this with people. But there's. First off, let's. I want to talk about like, what's kind of gone wrong and then I can go into like, what goes right, maybe on how, like how we fix it.
But usually where we're seeing things go wrong is there's simply just notes in the CRM or a brief slack message, or like nothing at all being passed off from sales to a account manager or a csm.
Or the delivery team is starting to.
Starting from scratch while the client assumes everything's aligned right. So like the delivery team is just starting from complete ground zero instead of preparing ahead of time.
Or like another one would be. Like there is no documentating or documentation of what was promised. This is like one that really happens all the time. So when the client gets onboarded, we're asking them the same questions over and over again. Or we're just like, we're assuming that they're just like every other client coming in, but they have goals that they talked about with sales that just were not passed along. So we don't know what to do.
So how you go about fixing this is there should be notes from the sales call and if there's multiple passed off to whoever's handling onboarding or that account. And thank God in today's world, we're not having to manually read through all those notes or be on those calls. There's AI. So leverage AI to record all the notes, hand them off to the onboarding or csm and they can look through in terms of what expectations were set, what are the primary goals.
So those things are really important.
And I think once the CSM has done that, they can literally, I'd say even ahead of the onboarding call, send them to the client that's coming to the onboarding call or put them in the agenda for the onboarding call. But going through those expectations to make sure that that's what the client is expecting, and then one by one knocking off what's realistic or what's not realistic.
So like facing it during the onboarding and when you're knocking something off that they really want, you know, that is a very difficult conversation.
So I like to say, like, if it's something that could potentially be done, if it's something that maybe can't be promised today, but we will work on you know, changing our delivery.
Let them know that, like, let them know it's a work in progress. Like, we. We might have. You might have come in assuming that we're going to get you X, Y and Z. We know we can't get you Z, but we can get you X and Y. But let me see if I can get you Z down the road. Like, let me work around that. And then you have like a. You have a working relationship with that client because you're trying to get them something you. You previously could not. So it's really just about, like, transferring the notes, figuring out what the client's expectations are, and then literally measuring the gap, Literally, like what is accomplishable, what's not. I know it sounds like super primal or basic, but that's what needs to get done. And if it doesn't get done, that gap is going to exist and then they're going to get some.
What is it? Buyers remorse. And that's where people churn.
[00:28:05] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I always also tell my CSMs that when a client signs up for our services, you lead them. You are the leader of this experience.
You are holding their hand and telling them, hey, follow me. This is where the solution is. I know about this because I work here and this is my expertise. And you came here because you need a solution. I have the solution. Follow me. And sometimes I think expectations are actually, even if customer success people have done their job properly, I noticed that some clients will still have misguided expectations. And I think it's also worth noting that it's very important for client success managers, customer success managers, to also realign. And this is what you always say, Alex, like, have a backbone, pushback and correct expectations. And of course, in Fathom, we trust document everything.
I've definitely. I talked to a client that was a challenging experience last month, and she was just claiming particular things. But thank God for fathom. We were able to find these conversations, we highlighted these transcripts, and it was very hard for her to rebot the stuff that she agreed on, you know, when we were starting to work together.
[00:29:25] Speaker A: We can also use these notes, like, coach your sales team. Right. A lot of times you're going to find that they maybe are. They're inhibiting your clients to have these expectations. So it goes two ways. Not only are you on the delivery side having to, like, face the reality with the client that you're not able to accomplish these things, but you can go to the sales team and coach them a little bit.
Like, like you said in Fathom, we trust. I absolutely love it. It's one of the most valuable tools we've ever had.
I feel like, I mean, that's an exaggeration, but in the last, like, five years, I really think it's underra.
[00:30:00] Speaker B: Yeah, it's very underrated. There's another concept that you always say that I always overhear when you talk to your clients, Alex, and it's called time to first value.
What is that? And what is a realistic first win moment for a service business?
[00:30:20] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a great question. So you might, if you listen to any of my content or have heard me talk anywhere, you might have heard me say, time the first value, or time the first win. It means the exact same thing. So it is incredibly important for you to get your client some sort of win as fast as possible. That buyer's remorse is very real. When they've paid you, they've maybe gotten a welcome email, they've gotten access to a portal, or they've had their onboarding call. And then crickets. Like, it's all on their shoulders, right? It feels like, okay, now I have to. Either now I have to do this thing or I'm going to get back to it. And a lot of us humans, we think we're just going to come back to it and get something done.
Well, when that happens, you know, a customer is going to look back and think, I purchased this product or service and that was a few weeks ago, and I have absolutely nothing to show for it. So, yes, it's important to get your clients the outcome that they want.
But let's focus first on getting them some sort of win almost immediately. So for us in the outsourcing world, like, one of the first things I want to do is get them candidates. It doesn't mean that they're going to hire them. It doesn't mean that the person's going to start. But I want to show them that I can get them really good candidates as soon as possible.
That lets them know that they're going the right direction, like they made a good decision. This first win can look completely different depending on what company or industry you're in. So I have a client right now on the consulting side where they help students, high school students, get into certain schools in the colleges that they want. It's almost like tutoring, but more like academic guidance. One of the first wins we decided for them was their getting their curriculum.
So part of their service is they determine which courses and which classes they should take for them to get the outcome, to get into or the outcome they're looking for or certain colleges. So it's like, really important for them to get that student that curriculum. Now, the outcome that student wants is to get into Harvard. Right. But that first win is getting them the curriculum that's curated for them.
So depending on your business, that first value, that first win is not the big outcome that everyone's hoping for. It's something small right at the front. And not only should you focus on that, you should measure it, and you should try to shrink it as fast as possible.
So one that we're working on at my company is we were averaging about three weeks to get interviews for the CSMs that we're placing. We want to shrink that to 1.5 weeks. So we're doing everything in our power to do that, but we need to do it without jeopardizing quality. So it becomes a metric that we're obsessing about that all of our decisions that we're making at my company have that in mind. Like, we have to remember, does this negatively impact us, or does it move us closer to the goal of getting our clients a win faster? So I think that's one of the most underrated, one of the most valuable metrics out there, and it is a make or break for you to retain. Retain a client.
[00:33:48] Speaker B: Absolutely. A very common example I can use for that one is, have you guys noticed that when you sit down at a restaurant, they bring you things in different, like cycles or order, Right? So you sit down, you order your food, and then the guy comes over and says, hey, do you want some water?
Now you're probably thirsty or whatever, but now there's something on your table. And then someone comes along and brings maybe the placemat and the utensils. It gives you a feeling that something is getting accomplished. Right. And even though you don't probably notice because you're talking, you're great company, that your food actually took a little longer than it should because you feel that there is some movement. Then you feel less meticulous about your experience as a customer. So think about that version for your business.
And Alex, what should a founder be thinking about during the first 90 days with a client? And does this time shrink depending on the ticket value of how much money they've spent with you?
[00:34:58] Speaker A: I think during the first 90 days, you should kind of separate it into three buckets.
I'm not speaking anything that people don't know here. I feel like this is really common, but, like, the first 30 days should look different than 30 to 60 right. And from 60 to 90 should look different than the other two. So I think founders, for the first 30 days, they should surface the expectation gap and get to their first win and then establish, like, a communication rhythm. So that's literally what the entire focus of that first 30 days should be like. What are the gaps for expectations? Let me close them. Let me get my client a first win. And then can I get my client comfortable with communicating with me in a regular cadence? Can I become kind of like part of their communication workflow? I think from day 31 to day 60, you kind of move into confirming they felt that first win. So you want to make sure that they actually felt it.
They see the value, start referencing their goals. Well, so, like, start looking at what are the bigger goals that you have and how can we meet on the progress, like, regularly. So for my company, that first 90 days, I have a monthly meeting with my client. After the three months, we're no longer meeting weekly. We're meeting monthly. And in those calls, we're discussing, not just this, the performance of the CSMs, that's kind of a smaller discussion. We're now talking about their business and what are. What are they using the CSM for? And are they actually getting what they wanted out of it? And we're talking about how to get them the most value. So you're now shifting the focus to the bigger goals. And then I'd say another thing you're trying to identify that first or in day 31 to 60 is like, are there any turn signals? Are there any indications that this client might be unhappy?
So I think those are kind of the areas I would focus on. And then from day 61 to day 90, that's where the relationship really deepens. Right?
[00:36:58] Speaker B: You.
[00:36:58] Speaker A: You start to have earned their trust. You have start.
Ideally, you have. You start having more strategic conversations, and you look for natural opportunities for expansion. So this isn't you being salesy. This is you looking for opportunities to give them strategic guidance. That could potentially be an upsell. It could be a cross sell, it could be the dreaded down sell. But at the end of the day, what you're doing is you're solidifying the earned trust. You're really showing them that this is a relationship. That was a great decision. We're on each other's team. So that's how I would look at the first 90 days. I would separate it into those three buckets. And I think if you just follow that method, Churn is going to never be a problem for you. You just Laser focus on those first 90 days. All the hard work has been done in those first 90 days. Now the relationship becomes something that you really dreamt of building, like these long term clients that aren't going to churn.
[00:37:56] Speaker B: I really love that because it's a good way to kind of plan out how it goes. And of course there's a little bit of nuances depending obviously on which industry you belong to there. If you are in the legal industry or if you know the thing at hand might be more urgent. Of course you don't need to wait for 90 days to get someone a particular win. Yeah. So, you know, there's some nuances there, but that is a really good roadmap, especially for service based businesses. Especially for subscription based service based businesses. So another statement that I love hearing from you is when you talk about someone's North Star or the North Star scorecard and for me as person in sales, this concept actually reflects a very common sales saying which is sell them what they want and give them what they need. Right.
So I think the North Star scorecard is the customer success version of that statement. Tell us a little bit about this and what you say that most businesses know what they're sold but not why the client actually bought. So what's the difference and why does it matter?
[00:39:13] Speaker A: Yeah. So I, I hope I don't look at this differently than a lot of people.
[00:39:19] Speaker B: A lot.
[00:39:19] Speaker A: I feel like some people look at the North Star goal as the obvious goal, right.
Like the obvious, I want to make more money. Like that could actually be the North Star goal. But I like to dig a little deeper and figure out exactly like what is the actual reason that they're buying my product or service. Like it could be because your client wants a golf more. Right. Like he just needs, he needs to get the hours back so you can go golfing. It could be because they want to expand, they want to grow their team to a certain number or they want someone on their team take on responsibility, learn a skill and then go eventually get promoted so they can take over. Right. Like there's so many. Every, every person is different. Every person has a legitimate reason as to why they're actually buying your product or service.
So I call the North, I call these North Star goals and it's if you figure out what your client's, the actual reason is the reason behind the reason of buying your product or service and you start to measure that, I can't tell you how great of a way it is to earn trust and develop a relationship with Your client.
So, like, there's not countless. There's been quite a few clients where, you know, I knew that they were trying to, like I said, get, get more time on the golf course or spend more time with their family.
So, you know, I'll bring that up in one of the meetings, like past 90 days, ideally, and figure out, hey, did we end up getting you to that point where, you know your handicap is dropping, or did we get you to the point where, you know, you're actually spending a little bit more time with your son? Like, those types of things I think are incredibly important to understand, like your actual customer. Right.
And I think it's important to track them. And maybe not everyone's going that deep. Maybe not everyone wants to go that deep. That's completely fine.
You can also look at like a North Star as, like, what are the financial goals? But it's usually not the obvious one. That's kind of what I mean by North Star.
[00:41:29] Speaker B: Yeah, I like that. And I hope that also in sales that they can find a way to find out how to then they can just pass off the information to customer success and they can all be like a great team working at this North Star. Another thing that I would like to share about that concept is that male and female entrepreneurs typically have very common North Stars. I noticed that the men usually want to have a goal that's related to like, making more money, ambition, fulfillment, leadership. Like, even if they say, I want to spend more time with family, it is because, like, they want to be a more present father. They want to lead their family more. And then for the women, it's always related to like, peace, community, safety, emotional safety, self discovery and presence also, but in a different way. So I love that this concern of finding the North Star from the client can go from the first conversation of the discovery call until the experience that they actually have with the customer success team or the delivery team. Another thing that I like about knowing someone's North Star is that this actually makes makes up self or cross sells feel natural instead of pushy. Right. Can you walk us through how that works and how this feels, not cringe to bring up?
[00:42:53] Speaker A: Yeah, well, I mean, you've earned the trust for your client to share with you the information you need to understand what their North Star goal is. When you're giving them recommendations, your recommendations are based on getting them to that point, whatever that that North Star goal is.
Therefore, you're no longer recommending them to do something from a monetary standpoint, you're no longer recommending them to do something because commissions on the table, it's very clear, like your intentions are to get them to their goal. You've earned the ability to give strategic recommendations. And when you're able to give a strategic recommendation that just hits their North Star right on the head, like it's, it's just a no brainer for someone to like actually value what you're recommending and it just eliminates the factor of them like thinking of you as a salesperson.
[00:43:49] Speaker B: Yeah, I like that. And even if, honestly, I would even say, even if it doesn't mean that they're gonna buy another thing in your business, if you know they're North Star, help them get there, you know, and
[00:44:00] Speaker A: don't be afraid of a downsell or a cross sell. I think that's really important. What a good way to earn trust. Like, I have clients who have, they have a full time CSM with me and things got tough. They lost some clients or maybe they lost money gambling. I don't know what it is. Right. But you know, instead of me just trying to come up with ways for them to keep their full time csm, I'm wanting to be strategic with them on figuring out how can we get the most out of them. The CSM at 20 hours a week now. So you can keep them, we can still work forward. We're not completely going backwards. Right. Like, I would much rather have that conversation. And honestly, like you earn trust from the client. It's all about trust, Carla.
[00:44:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:44:46] Speaker A: At the end of the day, it's all about trust.
[00:44:48] Speaker B: Yeah. I like that experience. When we go to a restaurant and I would ask the waiter, hey, what do you recommend? And then they would like not recommend the most expensive thing, but they genuinely recommend like a dish that they, they want. And I just see their face light up like they like that dish and then.
[00:45:04] Speaker A: But you can tell the difference, right? Yes. Even without looking at the menu and seeing if it was the most expensive thing, you can genuinely tell based off of the way that they delivered it and the questions that they asked, the probing questions. Right. Of, oh, what do you like? What do you, you know, you can tell if they're being genuine or if they're not.
[00:45:25] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. Well, there's this restaurant that we go to all the time where you like their oysters and steak. And I noticed that every time I asked for a recommendation, they would always push me to the expensive one, like the steaks. And even though I would say I would like, you know, this size of steak, they would still Try to push. And if I ask which salad is the best, they always push to the. The most expensive option and even the appetizer. I kind of tested it. I'm like, I think they're just wanting me to spend the most amount of money.
Thankfully, we've gone to that restaurant so many times, so we actually now know which dishes are great. So, yeah, it doesn't have to be an upsell. It just has to be genuine. Keeping the customer is all about caring and showing them that you care genuinely. It was a great conversation about North Stars. I just think that the concept of the North Star and the time to first value me personally, I think they are the most important parts of this conversation. Yeah, about retention and something that not a lot of people talk about openly, but here's something that a lot of people talk about openly about retention. Feedback. So this is very common. Ask for feedback. Talk to your customers. Voice of the customer. Right. That's where all of these terms came from. So what do you think are most businesses getting wrong when it comes to client feedback?
[00:46:44] Speaker A: It's so simple. It is incredibly simple. They ask too much or they never ask at all. Okay, maybe people have heard us bring this one up, but I saw Carla on an airplane. Her and I were sitting down and we. We got a feedback form.
And Carla's two minutes in, super excited to get positive feedback. She's around five to six minutes in, starting to question herself as to why she started giving feedback in the first place. Minute 10 and 12, she is abandoned and giving feedback. No one's getting feedback anymore. It went from me, excite her, excited to give feedback, to completely abandoning the thing.
It's ridiculous. Guys, stop asking your clients to fill out these massive forms. Like, make it painless and simple for them. I'm to the point where I'm asking two questions so I can collect my two metrics. I'm asking, on a scale of 1 to 10, how satisfied are you? And then on a scale of 1 to 10, how likely are you to refer to a friend or colleague? So number one is my csat. Number two is my nps.
Now, occasionally I will throw in a third question, but it is optional. And I say, do you have any suggestions for us? Just simple as can be. Now, where I do take it a step further, because whoever's listening, who does these questioning, they might think, okay, that's just ridiculously too simple. You're never going to get, you know, answers out of them if you're just doing a score.
But I leave an option for the underneath each question for them to provide more context. So underneath the CSAT question, it's optional, it's not required for them to provide more context if they want and trust me, if they want to, they will. The same thing with why if they would refer us to a friend or colleague, this an option for them to provide more that is sufficient enough. And timing is really important. How many times, Carla, I'm sure you've experienced this, you have just bought a product or service, right? And then you get hit with a survey immediately. Like, I haven't had any time to experience if this was a good experience or not. Like I have no clue. Don't ask me for it right now. Like that alone creates a bad experience and lets me know, like, you're not taking my feedback serious. You're trying to pad a number, right?
[00:48:59] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
[00:49:00] Speaker A: So don't ask too often. I personally like to do every quarter and I make a big deal out of it. I let them know it's coming a few weeks in advance.
I send, we send them the survey, we tell them what we're going to do with the data. We tell them this is our opportunity to make big changes for you. It's our opportunity to bonus our team. And they don't answer. We do a few follow ups. If they don't answer after a few follow ups, unfortunately we didn't get them. We remind them that we're going to be doing it again in a quarter and how important it is for our team. That's it. Pretty soon, once they've actually done the feedback survey, they see that it's painless. They see that the feedback is actually being put into use, which is another important thing. Once you actually do use their feedback to change things, let them know what you've done. It's important for you to like share what you're doing with the feedback and what has actually changed. They want to participate, they're excited to participate.
So for everyone out there thinking, oh, I send those surveys and they don't work. I ask my clients this information and they just blindly score it. I'm telling you, you're doing it wrong.
[00:50:08] Speaker B: You're.
[00:50:09] Speaker A: Yeah, you're hitting them over the head with it. You're asking them at the wrong time and you're asking them too often.
[00:50:13] Speaker B: Yeah. And at the end of the day it's like you don't want feedback you can't use. Also, like the quality of the feedback is also really important.
This is something funny that I've seen Alex as a girl buying skincare online.
So it's so funny because when I would try a new product I would look at the reviews, right. And I noticed that there are certain brands they would have these weird reviews that said product arrived in good packaging. I'm happy with the speed that it has taken, but I don't know if it works. That's the review exactly. Yeah. And then I've been seeing like, why are there so many useless, literally useless reviews? I don't want to know if it arrives on time. I want to know if it's going to be good for my skin. And then so I bought this product, it wasn't that expensive. And here's what I discovered at the COVID of this skincare box. This cream, this night cream, they put a QR code there that gave the customers like a five dollar rebate if they write five star review.
And this is from Amazon actually, but they want you to write the review somewhere else. So that was funny because it's like, like all the good intentions, they just wanted the review but the reviews were actually useless. The reviews that you want to see or read when you're buying a skincare product is hey, I've used this for 20 straight days and now my skin is clear.
[00:51:31] Speaker A: Yep. Honestly, I think I challenge brands the way to provide some trust in your reviews because like reviews are king. Right. That's how you're gonna honestly get a make or break if you buy a product at least e commerce wise and even in service based business.
But put a purchase date and a review date from, from the user. I challenge, I challenge you to do that.
As a consumer I would love to see it because I have to now decipher right if this information is valid or not.
[00:52:01] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:52:01] Speaker A: I'm a snowboarder. I love shopping for snowboards even though I don't need any. And I'm. The industry is so bad with this. I don't know why you go to slash any lease. Snowboard company look on their site, you're going to see a lot of people saying, oh, I just got my snowboard five stars. It's incredible. They literally have the box in front of them. There's still a wrap around this board. They have not tested it, they have no clue.
[00:52:26] Speaker B: Right.
[00:52:27] Speaker A: So on like the consumer end of purchasing, like there's definitely something that needs to be fixed there. But I do have, I do have like some useful information for like the company side on how to use them. Use the feedback because I think that's equally as important. Carla is like how do I actually take the feedback and put it into place. I think some of the entrepreneurs listening to this, they should hear this and put it into practice right away. So when you're asking just those few questions, like I mentioned, this doesn't mean that it's the end of the road. You're just going to have to deal with the five stars or the two stars, whatever it may be. If someone has a low CSAT score or an NPS score, that lets me know that I need to go ask them a follow up question like, hey, I saw that you scored low on, on your satisfaction and aren't likely to refer us. Can I ask, well, you know, what's causing this? So we can make some changes. Like it opens up the door for you to have that conversation, whereas you might be expecting this. But it's kind of difficult to ask those questions, right, because you don't want to like, cause your client to leave by just asking that question. This gives you the ground to stand on to go ask those questions. And the same thing is true if it's a high score. So if it's a high score and someone's completely satisfied, I'm going to be reaching out for a testimonial and say, hey, by the way, we have a really easy way to give testimonials. Helps our business a lot. And another way would be asking for a case study. My, my absolute favorite. When it's a customer that you know has gotten success, like you see that they've achieved their North Star goal or their other goals, let them know about your affiliate program. Let them know like, hey, I, I pay, I pay you for any referrals that come in. I would love to have 10 of you as clients. Right. If you know anybody. So like these are indicators for you to go and ask for a testimonial, case study or referral and it not be awkward.
[00:54:28] Speaker B: I love that. I have other ideas, but I think that that will warrant another episode about just feedback reviews, testimonials, affiliate programs. I love that. How ultimately it all goes back to one thing and it's retention. Retention and customer experience.
Right? It helps you make more money, it helps you help more people, it helps grow your business, provide more jobs, it helps improve the lives of your customers and make new friends. Honestly, a lot of Alex and I, a lot of our clients are now our friends. We play golf with them, we celebrate our birthdays with some of them and you know, they become our friends throughout the years. And that's also another bonus with great retention and satisfaction. And by the way. Alex, tell us about the free audits that you're doing, Huckleberry. It might be very interesting for a lot of our listeners that may want a quick word or a quick conversation with you about things that they can improve in their business in terms of customer satisfaction, retention, and ltv.
[00:55:31] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. We do secret shopper audits. That's no secret.
Everyone knows that we do those. We do the retention sprints, these big, you know, activities where we're going into your business, dissecting it. And not everyone has either the time or, you know, the money to do that right away, or they're just not sure. Right.
So we decided, like, I honestly, I'm a nerd for this stuff. I love doing it and I love proving that we can change your business by focusing on creating a better experience for your clients. So we're now offering a free mini audit is what we're calling it. You fill out a form. These questions are designed specifically to give me the insight. I know I can send you back in 48 hours exactly what I would do. It's going to be a guaranteed three takeaways that will change your business. I promise you that. It will increase your retention, it will impact your satisfaction, and it's all because you're being truthful to me. If I see that the answers are vague, I don't get enough information, I'm definitely going to message back and say, hey, I need a little bit more color here. I need some more context. But you give me the truth, you give me some. You answer the questions honestly, and I will give you 100%. Some. Some strategies to apply to your team that a lot of the people are getting in these bigger audits where I'm spending, you know, a month with them, two months with them, and I'm dissecting their business. I can do that in a smaller scale, and we're offering it for free.
[00:57:00] Speaker B: I love that. It has been very helpful, I think, if you guys have followed my personal journey as well. Alex has helped me a lot in really improving. He even coached my customer success teams, and we're very, very happy. It has been incredibly helpful in retaining our customers and having a business that honestly doesn't need me to be around all the time. And I think that's really the biggest benefit of improved retention, improved ltv. And of course, if you guys obviously don't want to do this all by yourself, you can always hit him up or visit getcsm.com this is very easy. Get CSM if you want to hire amazing customer Success managers that are more than just your basic generic customer support support reps. You don't want those people. You want someone that's more higher level and that's really thinking about your customers. Experience their success, how to solve their problems better and how your business can grow with improved LTV and retention. All right, so thank you so much, Alex. This has been a great conversation. Actually, I just thought, I think I'm going to send this episode to my CSMS just to give them a little bit of a refresher and I'll also even share this on my YouTube. So thank you so much for being here and for indulging me.
[00:58:12] Speaker A: Yeah, thanks for having me on our show. I appreciate it.
No on it, but legitimately, thank you for letting me talk about my industry. I obviously very passionate about it. So it's really nice to be able to talk for an hour about what I do.
[00:58:28] Speaker B: Exactly. All right, thank you guys. And to everyone, we will drop the links for the mini audit. Take advantage of it. That's three takeaways that you can immediately take and do take it to your team, make the improvements and when you make the all of the wins, come back to us and say thank you.
And that would make our day. Honestly, genuinely. And of course, if you are struggling to find amazing customer success talent, we'll also drop the link to get csm or if there is something about your customer success team right now that you are unhappy about, that is kind of a challenge for you. If you're churning some customers, come have a conversation with Alex. He will be able to give you advice and honestly maybe even improve your team with his help. So thank you so much and I'll see you guys next week for another episode of Rich and Remote.
Thanks for listening to Rich and Remote where freedom isn't a dream, it's a decision.
This is Carla, this is Alex Booth, and this is our journey to our dream rich and remote life.
[00:59:32] Speaker A: If this episode inspired you, share with a friend who's ready to live life differently too. This is perfect for entrepreneurs who crave financial freedom, location freedom and freedom from the opinions of others.
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[00:59:58] Speaker A: See you in the next episode and check out our online hangout spot, richandremote.com.
