This week’s customer success team spotlight falls on our VP of Sales and Customer Success. We talk a lot about customer success, but what does this mean for our sales team? At TaskRay, our sales and customer success groups coexist under one roof, led by Mike Davis, an expert in driving sales and supporting customer success.
Could you discuss the relationship between sales and customer success?
Throughout the 2010s, everyone has diligently followed a similar model that’s been focused on funnel optimization for sales. That playbook has been written, it’s tried and true for at least the last decade, with maybe only three variations. With customer success coming in strong moving into the 2020s, sales is going to start operating a lot more like customer success in the coming years.
From a personnel standpoint, we’re also seeing that buyers are actively avoiding talking with salespeople. They want to deal with online bots rather than talk to an actual person who is trying to sell them something. However, people will want to talk to somebody that’s going to help them reduce their risk in any sort of purchase and really listen to their needs. So I think sales will continue to develop more of the customer success plays on the pre-sales basis.
What do you think the biggest changes in customer success will be in the next 5 years?
Until recently, business leaders had been really focused on perfecting sales and marketing playbooks. When everyone kind of came to the conclusion that these were all well-written, business leaders’ attention turned to customer retention. It started off and has continued with bodies just being thrown at the task. What’s missing has been a more formulaic approach to the entirety of customer success, including retention. I think that over the next few years there’s going to be a lot of emphasis on scaling business practices and really outlining a formulaic approach to each segment of customers. It’ll ultimately be about giving low-touch customers a high-touch experience without adding unnecessary headcount to your customer success team.
What do you find most exciting about operating within the Salesforce ecosystem?
Getting into that ecosystem! There is a ton of room for expansion within this platform and endless reach opportunities. For us, it’s really a force multiplier because we can fill a logical gap in this otherwise very comprehensive platform. It’s great finding these pockets within the greater Salesforce ecosystem in which people are asking, “So what happens to this customer after they become a customer?”
What TaskRay feature do you use the most?
The handoff technology that we’re doing is just fantastic–I use it every day. It’s going to become the standard in the sales/customer success world. It’s crucial to be able to capture critical information ahead of closing the deal so nothing falls through the cracks. Customers hate repeating themselves, so when they have to tell three different people on three different teams the same thing, it’s really frustrating. But our handoff technology allows you to hold onto all that information you collect during the sales process and pass it along down the line for the duration of your customer’s journey.
