"One Continuous Conversation"

Jeff Breunsbach

We just recorded a podcast for the community with Justin Welsh (he's a Sales leader that focuses on B2B SaaS companies up to $50MM ARR). 

One concept that stuck with me is he mentioned that he's tried to rally his peer leadership group (Marketing, Customer Success, Product) around the idea of creating 'One Continuous Conversation' with the customer. 

He mentioned specifically this starting with the CEO with the narrative of the company and then It driving down. This narrative then becomes the common language and vernacular that all teams should be using. Tactically we need to be capturing information that we know the next 'party' will need to use --> I.e. Sales captures information Implementation will need, Implementation capturing information CS will need, and so forth.

Anybody currently experiencing something like this? Getting your company to adopt the same language and continuous conversation mindset? 

Jeff Breunsbach

@Sara Bochino and @Jung Kim - You both popped up as potentially having experience around this.

Sara Bochino

@Jeff Breunsbach I sponsor a Voice of the Customer counsel monthly with leaders from sales (pre-sales and growth), marketing (customer/product), product management, and services to review feedback we gather from executive touch points, scorecards, QBR's and support to ensure we are all working towards one goal. 

Since implementing this meeting we've been able to not only address customer needs, but also our own white-space in process. It's making us better and we are talking about the customer more vs our own needs. Is this what you were referencing? Happy to dive deeper if you have any questions. 

Jung Kim

We sponsor 2 rotating account review meetings (with COO, CEO optional, VP product, Clinical ops) to review key customers. Review MRR at-risk, risk mitigations, CPR (customer pulse reports), and residual feature requests/needs/customer convos. Outline of the meeting typically revolves around: 

• quick wins (always important)
• cross-departmental needs
• customer use-case
• action items

We are small enough to split this between SMB and enterprise right now, and always iterating. 

Additionally, I also have a marketing/sales/CS weekly sync up to discuss more customer-facing messaging and alignment and utilize our amazing brand guidelines developed by our creative director for actual brand (not just content and voice and messaging). 

Happy to pick up on other ideas - I think there's always power in documenting in confluence or internal knowledge base the decisions that we make as one unified voice to the customer. 

For overall customer-facing voice and tone, I'm a big fan of intercom and how colloquial/effective their messaging and voice is. 

Kevin Mitchell Leonor

Yes, we have streamlined a conversation track at RingCentral called Selling Through Curiosity.

Using principles, we are conducting our marketing, sales, implementation, and customer success around this ideal of being naturally curious allows us to open the customer up to strategic questioning that leads to aha moments..

Jeff Breunsbach

This is great - puts the customer front and center. How do you think about initiatives that come out of this meeting? 

Jeff Breunsbach

Tell me more about this marketing/sales/CS weekly sync - how does it generally work? Is there a meeting owner who drives topics/discussions? How do items get documented for accountability? Curious some of the tactical details!