"When you say 'CS' that's a naughty word. So I don't believe in customer success. Because what does customer success do in most companies? They are basically either renewal people or they're guiding the customer around to how to use the product.
But if you ask the tough of customer success, can they sell the product? No. Are they technical enough to be a sales engineer? No. What are they doing?
So me, I'd rather take that money that you are spending on customer success and invest it in either professional services people that are paid for -- that you can use as free resources -- but they are technical or sales engineers or sales reps. So you're getting something. As opposed to this weird thing that you can't really quantify.
We have a business value engineering group, which they actually are more of an enablement group for the sales team to help build business value plans for the customer. 'Hey you were doing X before, you are doing Y with Snowflake; here's the benefit.' But it's an enablement. You're teaching the sales team how to fish. It's not like they are going to do this for every single sales rep across the company. The sales rep should end up doing that for themselves.
Get rid of 'em. Build a professional services organization. Hire more SEs who can do it. Customer Success-- look people think that's blasphemy -- I don't believe in it. I inherited customer success. I got rid of it. It was an expense that I didn't see the value in.
Just give the sales rep a renewal quota. It's a basic thing. 'Hey guess what, you have a renewal quota and you have a growth quota. That's easy. Here go sell. And if you're too busy to do the renewal, I'll just take away half your accounts.'"
THIS ONE REALLY BURNED ME UP. 🤬