EBR Prep using AI
Spending hours and hours on EBR prep is a thing of the past. Learn how to use AI to help speed your prep time allowing you more time to spend with you customers!
(audience laughing)
- Welcome everybody.
Can you hear my voice?
It is my pleasure to welcome you to Pulse Europe.
My name is Nathan Bartlett, I am a enterprise,
well, senior enterprise CSM at Gain site.
We'll go into briefly some of my background here in a moment,
but before we started, some of you might have already
been here for this, however, there's gonna be some Q&A
in each of these breakout sessions today,
as well, there's likely to be some slido poles
and some interactive engagement throughout these.
In order to take part in that, make sure that you are
in your Pulse app, scroll down, just slide over
to track number three, that's where we are today,
the must have skills for high performing CSMs,
and that way you'll be able to be engaged,
and then as well, as I'm going through the presentation,
please, send through as much Q&A or as many questions
as you can, I'll just as well.
So welcome, as I mentioned, this is the track three,
specifically for CSMs, a little backstory on this,
this is a brainchild of a great colleague of mine,
Tammy Dually, unfortunately not here with us in person today,
but shout out to Tammy.
What we wanted to do was we wanted to,
among these amazing events that we hold for our customers,
we as C4, the end users, the CSMs of our tool.
So a couple years back, we started this track,
it's been phenomenal, we've seen an amazing response
in attendance, as well as correspondence
and engagement afterwards, upticks and adoption,
engagement with myself and C4 to be able to leave
as an end user of our tool and as a CSM,
performing these very vital motions for your customers,
we want you to be able to leave this conference
with a number of things that you can take back to your desk
and put into practice immediately.
And the audience is a CSM, raise your hand.
Oh my goodness, this is fantastic, I love it.
I noticed that not everybody raised your hands,
so don't worry, we're gonna allow the leaders
and the ops folks and the technical administrators
to sit in on this as well too,
so it won't become completely selfish
to join us specifically for this.
So today, as you can imagine, a lot of the topics
we're gonna talk about throughout the remainder
of the Pulse Conference is gonna be around AI.
What we're gonna do today is talk about specifically
as a CSM, how can we leverage AI,
both pair for what I would argue is one of the most
critical motions in the customer lifecycle
that we can perform as CSMs.
Now there's a number of things that we're gonna jump into
around the importance of this motion
and how to do this, but really quick,
I need to give you a brief, earn the right.
Why should you even listen to me today, right?
What have I done?
So in short, I've actually been a CSM since 2015,
I sprinted from my sales job at CareerBuilder
and whenever we formed CS, I said, that's the place for me.
I, there I was a strategic CSM,
training for CS there as well,
so I got to teach the art of customer success,
very beautiful.
From there, I left and went to a company
where I was a digital program manager as well.
I came to gain site in 2021 and I have not looked back,
it's been the best career, or best career in tenure in CS.
One, I have fallen in love with this profession.
This industry has gained its place at the table
time and time again and so kudos to all of us
for helping to attain that status
and become a very critical business function and two
in each of these organizations that I'm a SIM.
So I have a ton of firsthand experience as being a CSM
that is challenged with realignment,
challenged with adoption, challenged with you name it,
broken leadership, whatever it is.
So as that relates to things that we'll talk about today,
no bus in this room and in this industry
and what it isn't we do,
but I also have a deep passion for making sure
that the end users of our tool have the best experience
possible because I have been that
in a number of instances.
You'll see over here as well to the left,
a lot of the, so little bit professionally,
you'll see pieces of this puzzle over here.
So it's my family, you'll see my,
well I'm actually from Morgantown, North Carolina,
I'll start there, so US, little jet lag,
so hopefully that won't kind of interfere
with what I'm doing up here today too much.
I think I balanced it out with enough coffee,
thus fucking whiter my children.
We actually have an amazing cast that joins us.
We have two dogs, eight chickens, a bearded dragon,
a hamster and soon we're gonna add a cat,
'cause why not?
In addition to that, just fun facts about me,
my family is literally everything.
Music is the rest of that.
I'm a drummer, if there's one thing I do
on planet earth better than anything else, it's that.
So any musicians in the room,
let's chat afterwards, why not?
It's always a fun conversation.
Okay, so enough about me, why are we here today?
So we're gonna be an EBR, but I often find that
whenever we're trying to leverage all these new technologies,
sometimes we can kind of miss the true why
behind what it is we're trying to achieve.
I wanna start with the end in mind, right?
What's the what and why of an EBR?
Before we start talking about how to do this effectively
or prepare specifically for this effectively,
what are we really trying to achieve for with less?
That's not going away anytime soon.
And what I don't want us to do, again, I mentioned,
EBR is such a critical function, a critical motion
with ensuring customer success.
We don't need to let this be diluted by the quantity less.
We don't want the output to actually be less.
So as well, we're gonna briefly go through
some of the fundamental challenges behind this motion, right?
We need to tee this up to understand how we can leverage
current and future technologies to enable us
to be able to effectively pull this motion through
and do this, I would argue more effectively
and get a net net on this.
And I would like to leave some room at the end for,
so a quick recap and some Q and A as well.
So please feel free to shoot questions
through as we're going through.
So I want to begin with a poll.
I would like to hear from the audience.
Why do we do EBRs?
Why would you say, we're gonna give this a couple of seconds
and perhaps one word, a phrase,
personal experiences, relationship building, I love this.
I love the word bubbles, these are fantastic.
Objectives, highlight value, S, amen,
colder management, drive success.
Ah, I see a word in there that somebody
is on the same page, I love, oh, boom.
I am so thankful, keep going, keep going.
Y'all are amazing, fantastic, okay, I'm loving this.
Okay, so I will argue that the main drive and alignment,
I think all of these amazing,
not today these other ideas are wrong.
These are all parts of the whole,
but if you think at the end of an executive business review,
if I and my customer and the main stakeholders
and my customer are not in the tightest alignment possible,
then this was a miss.
I know that we oftentimes will have
kind of like types of EBRs and things like that.
I get it, we're trying to save a renewal,
we're trying to get the account back to green
or whatever that might be,
but we're swinging and missing
if we're not achieving an alignment.
Wonderful, thank you so very much.
And again, value, I love it.
All of these things really drive through that through line.
One, all right, so the what and the why of the EBR,
again, the idea here is to make sure
that we're delivering a line,
talk about what this is and what this is not.
Go back to the quality versus quantity, right?
Again, as those of us who are being asked to do more
with less, more coverage, again,
we don't wanna sacrifice the quality of what we're doing.
We don't wanna just be checking a box,
sufficing a KPI, CS leaders in the room.
Do you have any CSMs who, you wonder if the EBRs
that they're doing and logging are actually
netting any value, are they quality?
Yeah, we ran a SPF to make sure
that all of our CSMs are logging EBRs
and doing so within a timely fashion.
Are they quality, are they delivering alignment?
Are they delivering value? Do we know?
So what are we sacrificing if we're driving this motion
kind of arbitrarily innocent?
I would like to remind everybody in my personal opinion,
these are a form, whether these are scaled
or whether these are onsite, three hour displays
of dog and pony show, as we say in the US, right?
Either way, this is a form for reflecting on success.
We need to highlight the progress
and the value that's being achieved.
Address roadblocks and challenges.
Again, you're not gonna achieve an alignment
unless you're being very candid, very clear on
what do we share, macroeconomic,
individual like company challenges, whatever that may be,
whatever your industry is, getting those for us,
realigning on strategic goals.
Can't re-emphasize the word alignment enough in this.
And I've been planning the path forward
with a shared success plan.
One of my favorite things to do is to include
the success plan in the pre-EBR.
I let them know, before we even get on the call,
you click into this link
and I'm sharing our active success plan with you.
No surprises, transparency.
However, what I will say is that,
yeah, that's a little challenge to scale that one,
but all of this, and I love, so much of this is illustrated
by this very simple, and some of you
who've been in CS for a while,
have been working with Gainside for a while,
I've probably seen Nick's old equation here.
I love Humps plus customer experience.
And so, going through what the EBR can achieve for,
again, without the alignment,
and my humble professional opinion,
without the alignment, true customer success is not possible.
You run the risk of either suficing for an experience,
you're reacting to all the fires and putting those out,
you're making sure your customer's happy,
but at the end of the day, if you're not in alignment
and truly driving the value that they're looking for,
there's simply too many competitors in the space right now.
We cannot run the risk of not making sure
that we are suficing for the value
that our customers achieve, and vice versa, right?
If we're value driven, however,
we don't have the ability to get back into product
and understand what we're running
at a mature rate at this point in time,
well, we're not sacrificing this for our customers,
but again, the genesis of this alignment
and this true value and true ultimate customer success,
and my opinion comes from being able to have
and suffice for this motion
of the executive business review, bless you.
All right, so briefly fundamental challenges to the EBR, right?
So whenever we talk about the challenge of this,
you're all probably, again, we've all been faced with,
okay, we've got an upcoming EBR.
There's scheduling, there's data gathering,
there's, oh my goodness, this is a brand new customer,
there's, I mean, there's tons of challenges for this.
So traditional EBR pain points,
this is not gonna reflect every last one of them.
It's a demise if I were to just kind of categorize
what are these challenges
and what are ways that potentially
we might be able to lean into some technology to help.
So traditional pain points, data gathering,
hey, where does the truth live?
How many systems are you navigating?
We all love to say that gain sight is the one source of truth.
I know that that's not reality in a lot of senses,
and I know that even the most well-oiled,
well-functioning gain sight instance,
if that's the system you're leveraging,
oftentimes there can be data dependency
for different places, a huge challenge.
How do we get the full holistic understanding
of what the customer is?
Misalignment of schedules.
So this goes in a lot of directions.
So fiscal years.
So, you know, it's like, what's important to me,
and my Q4 is actually Q1 for my customer.
So A, are my business objectives interfering
with what I should be more attentive to
in terms of my customer's business objectives?
And then we start to look at things
in terms as far as market shifts.
Again, referencing the macroeconomic situation,
things that are bigger than just my calendar
and my stakeholders calendar,
and the KPI regimen or the time associated to the CTA
that launches, that tells me I need to
run an executive business review.
Strategic cadences, they get shuffled around.
Again, I mean, I wanna all within the last year and a half,
at least, experience a number of key stakeholder changes.
And so those strategic cadences that we're used to having
and being able to make sure
that we're making incremental changes
in between these big rock EBR instances,
some of those are getting off track a little bit,
or very tough to adhere to,
because let's face it,
if we're having to do more with less so are our customers,
everyone's bandwidth is stretching,
and suddenly, lowly old little CSM here,
trying to get on your calendar
to continue the strategic cadence,
might as well, what specifically does my stakeholder want?
Whether this is a current stakeholder that has changed,
or just the same one, and maybe their objectives have changed,
and I'm simply not aware of this,
how can I be aware of all of these things?
Luckily, we've got some technology
that can help us stay the part of my job
that I don't think I'll ever,
if someone can come up with the AI,
to solve for this one, please, somebody do this.
I'll tell you right now, spoiler alert,
we don't have that happening in Gainsa right now,
but the calendar roulette, right?
We have to admit that it's actually tough
to just simply get everybody's calendars aligned
so that we can do these things,
whether, again, whether it's a 60 minute phone call,
or an on-site three hour all day affair.
As well, internal.
Now, there was, harkening back to a couple of the things
that Georgia had mentioned in the opening keynote,
aren't just specific to our customers.
We need to be aware of what does our account team,
in terms of their priorities relative to this customer,
what do they have?
Do we have open opportunities?
Again, I'm not gonna ask for a show of hands,
but CSM's in the room, probably had some sales personas,
or sales counterparts wanting to join your EBRs.
You're just like, hey, look, I'm trying to drive alignment,
I'm trying to drive value,
I don't need someone stepping in here and pitching right now.
However, the reality is we as an account team
need to also act within a symbiotic manner,
so that whenever we are presenting
the true holistic value to our customer,
if we're truly going to align on this,
we need to be aware of, well, what are the conversations
that our account team is having?
What cadence is internally do we have?
How are we making sure that we're on the same page?
Very fundamental, very simple, and again,
y'all can probably think of a ton of other challenges,
or fundamental just difficulties as it relates to.
One way I like to put this is, honestly, today's reality,
we are on an exciting journey to the grocery store,
and at this point you're like, good grief, the jet lag,
definitely has this guy, because that makes no sense whatsoever.
I do like this, and I do like the idea
that specific to an EBR, we've all lived in the reality
of feeling like any time we have to put together
this presentation, it's stressful,
we feel like we're having to go out more and so hunt
and gather this information across.
And so being able to go from that reality
into legitimately changing this from going and being very
limited and making it very difficult to access
the things that we're limited to,
to much like a supermarket, much like a grocery store,
we can go and not only get the things that we need,
we're probably gonna be privy to a lot of other things
that we didn't realize were even there,
and that's what I love so much about,
a lot of the new components,
and specifically how AI is allowing us to surface
insights with respect to our customers,
that's a huge one.
So again, we're going to the grocery store,
so I just, I love analogies.
All right, so as it relates to leveraging the AI
to suffice for any of these things,
I like to think about AI,
forget the fear uncertainty and doubt,
it's here, it's here to stay,
and I don't think it's gonna take her jobs anytime soon.
You've probably heard a lot of people say however,
AI won't take your job, somebody who knows how to use AI,
well, probably, you know, and that's fine,
it's not a threat, right, it's just a reality
of where we live.
However, I like to look at AI as being something
that will multiply your abilities.
This is gonna make you more efficient,
it makes me more efficient,
I can speak from, you know,
speak from the heart as it relates to that.
Harking back to the opening keynote,
we're gonna look at specifically how to leverage technology,
AI specifically within the tool today
to prepare for this motion of an EBR.
We're gonna focus on the top three of these pillars,
if you will.
Like how, again, it's broken into specifically
how can our human first AI playbook address teams,
all of us, leveraging the tool,
and then also as well, surfacing,
or suficing rather as well for
what needs to be able to happen for our customers.
We're gonna look at specifically eliminating blind spots.
I love this because blind spots,
oftentimes we think about that in the context
of like a health score, you know,
oh, I didn't see that coming.
But now as well, go back to some of the fundamental challenges
of preparing for an executive business review.
Blind spots are, what if my account team
even hold as a priority?
Are they talking to my customer?
Do I know the true own company with my customer?
Blind spots internally, I would say,
are probably a little more humble
and a little more embarrassing,
certainly in the form of an executive business review,
whenever it comes across at all,
that me and my account team are not aligned
in bringing that same truth to our customers.
We're moving the grunt work.
This one, I would argue,
probably lands front and center as it relates to
the challenge of an EBR and the preparing for it.
EBR is for the longest time, I've always been this.
And I know that there's competing opinions around EBRs, right?
It goes from one end of the spectrum of being like,
well, EBRs are dead too.
You know, they're absolutely necessary
and they must scale and they should exist at all points.
I agree that it's something that's kind of archaic in a sense,
if you will, I understand that.
But it's always been this big rock, big deal,
high pressure situation and these need to have conversations
at these critical junctures of the customer lifecycle
in a way that we can bring confidence, knowledge,
and understanding and a preparedness
that likely was a stressor just simply,
I mean, maybe even months ago,
I was joking with my own advancing,
we live in a world of breakneck speed technology advancements.
And then you start to talk about specifically AI
within the realm that we all work in.
And I was telling my wife, I was like,
by the time I get done preparing this
and presenting this, it's gonna be obsolete.
Which that's kind of that's hyperbolic, that's a joke.
'Cause I mean, some of these things as well too,
are gonna allude to what we have on the roadmap.
But the reality is however,
this is all moving very quickly.
So while that can be a little daunting,
it's a lot to take on.
Also think about how quickly we were advancing past
the archaic ways of old, if you will, right?
So it's very encouraging and very fun to think about,
especially whenever it comes to grunt work.
If you are not operating in an environment
where your calls that you are having with your customer
are being automatically routed
into your timeline and gain site,
let's have a conversation.
The technology needs to be allowing us
to be able to effectively in the moment,
engage with our customers,
talk with our hands like I like to do,
and not have to be troubled with,
am I getting all the last notes possible?
So please, as we're moving forward in technology,
make sure that your workflow
incorporates something where you can have
a conversation with your customer
and leverage one of our integrations
to be able to get that directly into your timeline.
We're talking about leveraging gain site timeline
as a single source of truth
and a more powerful and confident manner
than I ever have been able to
in the three plus years that I've been at gain site.
Because now I know personally,
from my own day to day usage of it,
conversations that I have in my account team,
Nick Meda has with my customers,
they're all incorporated in the truth,
eliminating that blind spot.
And we're gonna talk here in a moment about how, yeah,
if it's all in the timeline,
there's probably a few of us in here too
that are like, great, it's in the timeline.
Now I gotta go freaking search for it.
Wait, this is gonna be so much fun.
And you saw a little shades of this
whenever Georgia was like,
let's talk about like reality,
like we didn't come here to do all of this.
We came here to be interactive.
Like we're all probably pretty outgoing individuals.
We love making human connections.
Let's focus more on how we can do that.
And just like we were talking about on the keynote,
leverage this technology to make,
turn every teammate into your best teammate, this one here.
So I know that in the product keynote,
turning every teammate into your best teammate
was kind of put in that perspective of,
oh, well, maybe you're a new CSM joining an account,
you need to get brought up to speed on some things.
What I can tell you,
and I'll actually go on to the next slide here,
'cause I'm gonna use this as a personal anecdote, if you will,
in the keynote, we're talking about being able to have
a Gen AI conversation within the context
of your gain site instance.
So if we're talking about how this effectively
preparing for your EBR is done in gain site today,
I actually, I joke too as well, if you didn't mind,
I don't know if you're in Shenzhou and Tatyana,
I don't know if I haven't joked about this with you all yet.
But I oftentimes joke with my customers
that I live in a beta instance of gain site,
which is fun sometimes, it's a little troubling
whenever I'm trying to find apples to apples,
whenever I'm navigating my customer's instances.
This one's fun, co-pilot.
So whenever it comes to eliminating blind spots,
removing the grunt work,
and also making every teammate your best teammate,
this has literally changed my life as a CSM.
Personal story, three weeks ago,
I had to go on site for an executive business review.
This executive business review took place
with a brand new chief customer officer at this customer.
Three months after launching, completely re-worked.
So we're talking about executive stakeholder change,
we're talking about executive sponsorship,
who actually signed the PO4 gain site,
no longer their teams are even using it.
Literally everything changed.
So even though I was the CSU, so that should be enough time,
however, all of these things changed
and how did I not lose my mind,
it's called co-pilot.
And it was really cool because just like in the example
that Georgia went through,
and just like I have outlined in here today,
simply say, hey, what's up co-pilot?
I'm preparing for an executive business review,
got a brand new stakeholder coming in.
I need to be able to bring them up to speed on
the things that are most priority,
what are the top priorities within the last six months?
This eliminated blind spots because it brought about things
that even I wasn't aware of based on,
because again, I would love to think that I'm one of the best
CSMs ever to live, I'm actually not.
Anyways, I'm good at my job at least.
And so I would be aware of things that I would believe
would be important to this customer,
even though they were relatively new,
but also it brought to light a lot of things
that potentially I might not have understood
about integrations, about business challenges
and things that whenever I have a conversation internally
with my instance, and it allows me to then be proactive
and suggestive and allows me to,
if you will, be prescriptive to this new stakeholder
based on what I know about their business.
It changes the tone of the overall partnership
and relationship.
And so here I was, again, if I had the same instance,
even eight months ago, I've had the same challenge,
I probably would have lost my mind and I don't know,
who knows, but at the end of the day,
I was able to, with a week's notice,
prepare for that situation, deliver an on-site,
we were there for four hours,
an executive business review that was largely fueled
by insight that I was able to garner from my own instance.
It's this right here in terms of being able
to force multiply your abilities as a CSM,
making room for the things that we're good at.
I cannot say enough about co-pilot,
it is currently in beta right now, it's a limited beta,
and I don't know specifically,
I don't wanna go too over my skis,
but just keep your eyes out for that to go GA
within a relatively short period of time.
What I was gonna say as well too,
I don't know, there was another slide
that I thought about putting in here,
but I think it would be a bit redundant
based on the keynote, however, what I wanted to do was,
specifically functionality in GAIN site
that's in there today, however, also,
I like to give audiences, especially,
again, this is the audience in my peers,
for the most part, all the leaders and everybody else in here,
but I like for you all to know,
how it is that we're doing these things at GAIN site.
Of course, we're trying to lead the industry
and the technology that we're bringing about
to be able to do these things,
however, I like to also say, look,
we are also building the plane while we're flying in,
kind of, in a sense, and I love this
because I like to share this
because I know that sometimes,
as a CS organization, if you hear best practices,
or if you hear like who's doing it great,
it might make you feel like you're light years away
from making that a reality for your organization,
ways to kind of inch into some of these amazing things,
again, Copilot's gonna go GA here pretty soon,
anyway, so if you've got GAIN site, you're gonna love that.
However, as it relates to today,
raise your hand if you've used chat GPT in the last weeks.
Same question, again, yeah, perfect.
So these are things we're all used to doing.
So we actually have in my current EBR-CTA,
there is a GPT-EBR prep is the name of this task.
Sends me to an external GPT,
and this is actually the series of questions,
and then lastly, it prompts me to take each of the questions,
and this is kind of almost like having like a mentor,
someone, you know, well, it's a GPT,
but not like a mentor, or like someone's playing devil's advocate
a little bit in terms of, tell me this about your customer,
well, did you think about this?
Well, tell me this about the key opportunities
for product alignment, have you pointed this out?
Ooh, thank you.
So as we've all found within chat GPT interactions
and any other LLMs and things,
it's not so much giving us new ideas,
it's allowing us to expand on and accelerate
the value of the idea we're having.
So even having something like this,
I would strongly suggest if you don't have,
or if you don't have specifically a GPT or anything
built into what your current workflow is,
leverage something like this.
This is allowing me as well in the steps
of preparing for an EBR, go in and make sure
that I'm covering all the bases.
It's helping me to fully vet the process,
and also as well as created by Brady Bloom,
who is also a fantastic human being.
As well, not to keep it all business, right?
Like we like to lead with childlike joy.
We're human first.
So whenever it comes to making executive business reviews,
something that everyone can enjoy,
I find oftentimes, and you'll,
and if you've been in a meeting with any of us at Gainsite,
it probably let off with an icebreaker.
So leverage these GPTs perhaps to give you some ideas
as to how to engage your audience.
I also did this on a (audio cuts out)
So I mentioned Tammy Dually, my teammate,
she had a meeting with Nick not long ago,
and I told her, I was like, what you need to do?
So you need to take your objectives for your meeting.
Run them through chat GPT and get them to spit out
Taylor Swift versions of all of those,
which is amazing though, which is hilarious,
because in this instance here,
I know, I apologize, the screen's pretty small.
What I did was I actually took my executive meeting,
or executive business review objectives,
which never changed.
You can copy these straight up.
I'm gonna provide a sense of confirmation,
inspiration, and a sense of relief.
We all need that right now.
We're gonna strengthen the overall alignment
through a value-driven dialogue,
implying that we're gonna have a conversation.
As well, we're gonna leave with action items
from the success plan, I mentioned before,
that even prior to the meeting,
I went ahead and sent them a link to the success plan,
Total Ball Remove,
and then we're gonna have some fun.
So I love to make sure that we're incorporating
the personal interests of our executives,
and all of our sponsors and things in these meetings as well.
So one of the things I like to do
with a lot of my ice-branchors is,
I will allude to music somehow.
Again, I mentioned I'm a musician.
If you can get an idea as to the type of music
that your executive sponsor enjoys,
follow up with a playlist.
You know, again, you're following up an email
after your meeting, " Cinema Spotify" playlist
of specifically that type of music or that artist.
Or if you know preemptively,
if you're having a business review with Nick Mater,
you know that he's a huge Swiftie.
So you can just simply take in reformat
your objectives for your meeting
in the version of what T-Swift would do.
So just a couple of things to touch on in terms of, again,
eliminating blind spots,
leveraging information that's in our instance
to help garner the need to knows,
so that whenever it comes to the things
that the technology's not helping us do today,
schedule the meeting,
I mean, there are, right?
If you get Cal and Lee and all these types of things,
but let's face it, if you're trying to get a room
of executives, that scheduling experience
definitely needs some AI to lean in on that one.
But the things we can control for,
understanding our customer to the fullest,
knowing of the full partnership to our customers
in these instances,
and as well making sure that,
I mean, if something needs to take place tomorrow,
perhaps you get surprised with the business review,
you can come up to speed on the need to knows of the account
and what will resonate with that executive audience,
literally within minutes.
I know that, again, if someone says literally,
and then the next thing is too hyperbolic to believe,
but that's legitimately what's happened.
But I found this really funny because
what I was preparing for the presentation,
I wanted to chat GPD, I was like, okay, preparing,
using AI to prepare for an executive business review,
I was like, give me a basic flow chart of an EBR.
I had to present this 'cause I laughed my head off like,
I was like, so whenever it comes to the things that AI can do,
it's not going to supplement us, y'all.
I think that it's gonna need us to help make sense
of even the executive business review motion,
but this was also kind of confirming to me,
I was like, okay, well, we make a big deal out of this,
we're, some of us in the room at CSN, myself included,
probably KPI'd on executive business reviews.
And as well, even if you're not,
these are a big part of whatever we aren't called to do
to engage with our customers.
So whenever it comes to making sure
that we can wrap our head around them
and do them effectively, it's a big deal,
it's a challenge, but like even, again, even AI
kind of like seems to be a bit of a head scratcher.
So before we get into the Q&A, just a brief recap, right?
So first off, go back to the beginning, EBRs,
and more importantly, the alignment that is achieved
in these will always be a critical piece of making sure
that we're driving the proper partnership
and the proper value and ultimately customer success
for our customers.
And in moving into the AI,
it's not just a productivity booster,
I used the term earlier, it's a force multiplier, right?
This is not giving us new ideas,
it's challenging our current thoughts,
it takes us putting into this information
coming into our instance so we can leverage
that conversational piece within CoPilot.
Perhaps a GPT externally within a CTA for your EBR goodness,
gracious that was a lot of acronyms.
But something that's going to allow you to walk through
and kind of almost vet and kind of question
and challenge your ways of understanding the customer
and ultimately making sure we're bringing
what's important back to that conversation.
With AICSMs, aren't just saving time,
they're adding value by focusing on the insights
that matter most.
So this shifts the EBR prep from a data heavy,
kind of just like drag it in
and kind of like it's a laborious effort
to more of a strategic engagement.
And I also know that a number of times
I've had an EBR where by the time I was on prep and for it,
I just didn't have the energy to do it.
Now you talk about coffee, man, I needed that,
I'm not really a jet lag, like the EBR was,
or the prep was enough to kind of drain me.
And the result, more meaningful insight rich
and forward looking EBR that's going to drive that alignment.
And ultimately that's all we're really trying
to achieve with this.
So again, not supplanting our abilities,
but making it simply better at the things that we do.
All right, so some Q and A.
I don't know if anyone's put anything through
throughout the course of this.
Okay, perfect.
How do you approach getting confirmation from customers
to record the conversation?
That's a great question.
This is also one where we have to,
we have to abide in the moment by what, you know,
again, I'm not verticalized,
so therefore I don't have the same set of industry standards
that governs each of my conversations.
There's realistically a number of customers
that whenever I have conversations,
they have requested that we do not record.
This does present a little bit of a blind spot
as it relates to the information,
because I mentioned, right, best case scenario,
you're having conversations,
talking with your hands and all this information
is going to your timeline.
There are those challenges.
I do see kind of equal parts of sometimes,
it's not so much, 'cause if we're on a call
with a customer, we're trying to make sure
that we are adapting to their way of talking,
their way of thinking the way they're presenting
to us in a sense.
So if they tell us that we can't do something,
we kind of take that as the gospel truth, right?
Sometimes it's okay to challenge that a little bit,
not in the sense of, are you sure about that,
but maybe perhaps lean into,
and I've done this a number of times with my customers,
which was like, well, you know,
we can't really record this, I'm like, well, you know what?
Because, and I'm fortunate, when I do my job,
I'm kind of doing this, this kind of,
it's an example of how to use our tool
and in an effective and responsible way.
So I can simply say, well, look,
in order for me to be able to make sure
I'm getting the full truth,
and honestly, for your teams as well,
I would suggest that we do record this
so that we can get all the details and nuances in this.
Sometimes even just suggesting that as a best practice
in an efficiency booster,
can change it away from a hard and fast note,
now granted, there's some industries
that just aren't gonna do it.
But at the end of the day,
I have found that to be somewhat of anization
as an agent of change.
Imagine any, I mean, I'm sure all of us have AIs coming out
and our new technology is coming out
in all of our respective platforms
that we sell to our customers.
With that, each of our customers,
they're kind of like reacting to this whole new reality
of like, I have customers who have had AI on the shelf
since we have put it out over a year ago
because they're having to go through
an internal red tape review that didn't exist eight months ago.
So they're talking about flying the plane while you're flying it.
Even the internal reviews and kind of red tapes
and yeses and noes, those are some things
that some companies are guessing at,
some companies are moving and shifting with.
So I would encourage you in those moments
where if you know it's gonna be an impediment
to the overall value of the partnership,
perhaps just very, you know,
in the interest of strengthening the partnership,
yes, this would be great to be able to record this.
But again, certainly, certainly tread lightly on that
but unfortunately no silver bullet answer to that one
but it is kind of fun that there is,
there's a little more wiggle room in there
than I think might have been assumed for.
Pain Point, EBR.
How do you make sure the right stakeholders are in the room?
This one starts, honestly, ideally,
we'll start with when your customer is onboarded,
you have the stakeholders that are necessary,
the executive sponsorship,
we're tracking these things throughout the customer lifecycle.
I also know that that's a perfect case scenario,
that's rainbows and unicorns
and probably not the reality that a lot of us live in.
This comes to changing our tone
and not to go into kind of,
I gave a presentation a couple of years ago at Pulse
on how to really effectively deliver an EBR,
not just specifically prepare for some of the pieces of it.
In that presentation,
I talk about leveraging the EBR as a stage in a sense,
for you as the CSM to level up your presence
in the partnership.
Sometimes that change in tone is necessary
and making sure that what you're saying
and what you're driving for your customers
is resonating and being heard.
However, sometimes it is as simple as,
look, I respect you like first line leaders
that I'm talking to, however,
if we're gonna make,
if we're really gonna have this conversation,
if this conversation is to truly benefit
the partnership long term,
we need a broader audience.
Like I understand that ABC and CDF
are both individuals who are either co-sponsors
or whatever that is or I understand their objectives
are the ones fueling your strategic endeavors,
we need to make sure that they're a part of this conversation.
And just simply assuming that that is who needs to be there,
being assertive with your tone,
a sumpthive and who should be there
and honestly pushing back.
If they're saying our executive
is not gonna make this a priority,
say, okay, well, actually here's another thing too,
if you're in an organization
where you can bring in your executive with you,
that also too, I would say,
in terms of a best practice around this.
I oftentimes don't mention this
because I know we do this at GainSight.
If we have an executive business for you,
my leadership's there.
Nick made us on half of my EBRs that I run.
I know that that is unique to our organization,
we're relatively small and flat
and relative to a lot of other companies.
However, speaking of being an agent of change,
maybe there is an opportunity,
whether it's simply making sure
you've got the right stakeholders in the room
because this isn't just for the optics sake
of having the conversation,
why would we want the right stakeholders in the room?
Do you truly forge an alignment
if the right stakeholders aren't in the room?
Absolutely not.
All the rest of that,
you're depending on your stakeholders
or whatever person counterpart you meet with,
going back to them and kind of managing up
what you just talked to.
Bring an executive with you.
That's one of the best ways to make sure,
sorry, I should have gone right there.
So we'll chalk that one up to jet lag.
But that one too, again,
I know it's not a super,
it's not a reality, it's not scalable in a lot of senses,
but realistically,
probably not also unique to us.
There's probably a lot of us
who have brought executives to our business reviews.
If it is perhaps an account that's on fire,
11th hour, renewing those types of things.
Creating a deck takes a lot of,
ooh yes most certainly.
Is there a way to feed the output from co-pilot
into a QBR template, not yet?
And so that's why I can confidently,
usually if I say not yet,
it's kind of like, oh, oh, oh, oh.
But again, the rate at which these things
are progressing,
and not just the rate at which I see this technology
and co-pilot that I can go in
and leverage in my instance today
to be able to pull these things out.
Now what I will say is getting to those answers
and co-pilot a lot quicker
makes that deck creation very, very, very easy.
'Cause I still have to create decks, don't worry.
Gain site, we don't have a,
it spits out the deck,
I've got to create that.
I work in a strategic space as well too.
So very little of what I do is cookie cutter.
However, that also makes it kind of pretty open-ended
and the possibilities and laborious
whenever we talk about putting a deck together.
What I will say,
we're at a point in this transformation of technology
coming into and increase our abilities
and enhance our workflows
to where it might not create the deck for.
I know there's some, you know,
GPT out there that will create the slides.
I don't like that one, it looks terrible.
Anyways, but whenever it comes to
the things that we still do have to do today,
I'm banking on the fact that the technology
is gonna help us out with that one in the meantime.
What I'm focusing on today, however,
is the elbow room that I have now to create that deck
and spend the time to do that.
That's been created for me
because I'm not doing 80% of the research
that I used to have to do,
or data gathering or internal alignment meetings
to make sure that everything that goes into the deck
is going to be effective.
Getting all of that that goes into it,
now, honestly, it becomes a little bit more,
I just like creating decks, so it becomes more fun.
But not yet.
Now, we do have things like snapshots
and things that you can export
from your Gainside instance.
This oftentimes is utilized for these,
and where I went with kind of the not yet part of that,
I know that, and I've seen potential roadmap,
and we're talking like Q7 stuff,
so not like anytime soon.
But I could see potentially, again,
we also had a point where technology
is making things today possible
that we didn't quite understand
would have been possible.
Staircase blew my mind when I first saw that.
It's active in my instance.
So again, if we're able to assess this data,
now we're at a point where it's like,
"Whoa, six months ago, we weren't really preparing
"to have to put through the near future."
It's really amazing.
Whenever it comes to simply making the deck
and actually doing the thing, unfortunately,
there's still a manual effort getting to that point,
however, is a lot more fun,
and then creating the deck becomes a lot more fun
because I'm not scratching my head about it.
I'm a bit more positive or a bit more confident
in what it is I'm putting in there.
Does co-pilot look at timeline,
or can it look at success?
Currently, it is timeline, again, living in a beta instance.
I know that there was talk of expanding that out
'cause again, yes, what ultimately is important
to our customer, if it's lives in gain site or term,
I don't know, I imagine that co-pilot
is going to be something very, very near future
that is assessing the entirety of the accounts,
CTAs that are open, all that type of stuff.
Don't quote me on that in terms of, again, safe harbor,
don't quote me on that in terms of what the roadmap is.
All I'm saying is whenever I think
of where we are today, to me, I get more excited
about what I know is right around the corner.
That being specifically where in the instance,
success plan, CTAs anywhere else,
that co-pilot will be able to go and garner
those answers, if you will, or insights.
Can you take work with Gong?
If you ask, can it perform the same function as Copa?
Views, so my calls, if I have a call with any of you,
it would be automatically, it is integrated,
so it's gonna be automatically routed into my timeline.
There will be a Gong summary now.
There is a difference, however, if any of those,
those are all in the room who are using Gong,
those really goes into the timeline and gain site.
We actually apply a little bit of a different nuanced
CS specific type of rules of what goes.
I have gone in and actually leveraged transcripts
directly out of Gong, and run those through GPTs,
or included highlights and things like that,
so there's some wiggle room.
But the same function as co-pilot, no,
because co-pilot is something that is set up
to operate within the constraints of how a CSM,
and how CS would think about things.
So much like, but why would staircase make sense
in order to assess the engagement,
and all these things with your customers?
Because of the nuance.
I know that that word gets thrown around quite a bit,
however, the nuance really is the critical
kind of difference there, of why the output
within specifically timeline, or within specifically
co-pilot rather, would be more effective
and more pertinent than something that would come from
something that is not CS specific based, that nuance.
Data from where?
Primarily now from timeline.
However, this also is not relegated
to just my book of business.
Now we are working with ways to be able to
kind of singularity or single that out rather,
but what's awesome is even, I take it even into
the preparing for executive business reviews example,
if you want to not only be able to go into a review
specifically with what's important to your customer,
but what are some examples of other customers
in your base that are overcoming similar challenges?
Ask that question.
Show of hands, you don't have to, but I would love to,
I'd love to talk to another customer of yours
that's doing X, Y, and Z, wonderful.
That used to be get a litany of communications internally.
Who's a referenceable customer?
Now granted, before we go publishing
these as case studies, that's one thing.
However, other customer is leveraging your tool
in a way that suffices for something
they're challenged with today.
You can ask copilot that, it'll give you a list of them.
And if you don't like that list,
you can ask it another question, more qualifying.
Just like, again, it's conversational,
so you don't have to just, it's not just running
a report and getting raw data,
you can really zero in on specifically,
I'm pretty stoked about copilot, I don't even tell.
How much access do your account executives have to CS?
Do they also use timeline to log their activities,
taking terms of most certainly?
We do operate in a very unique manner,
in terms of our, my sales counterparts do have
direct access to CS.
However, the reality of an, anywhere else,
their job is not to post sales manage the relationship.
They're there to identify how to grow this account,
how to go and sell more things.
So the fun part is we do have specifically,
they have access, however, they can much like
the rest of your sales counterparts,
hopefully do have access to be able to,
where do they live, likely sales force.
So perhaps, perhaps, you know, being able to put that,
you know, gain sight team to, however,
not have to navigate outside of where they live,
in order to be able to understand and engage with
the information that's at the account level.
All right, just hit 0, 0, 0 on the clock and another zero.
Thank you all so very much.
