Ask Me Anything: Strategies to Improve Account Health

Good morning, everyone. We are excited to welcome you to, where presentation this morning or our interactive discussion.

This is an Ask Me Anything, Strategies to Improve Account Health. I am Julie Ocetek, and I will be your host and moderator this morning. I am a team lead here at SalesLoft, and I also am a senior CSM working with directly with customers every day. I am joined by three of my esteemed colleagues, and I will let each of them introduce themselves. Callan?

Hi, everyone. Wonderful to meet you.

Really excited to do this ask me anything about, account health. I've been a customer success manager for almost nine years now, and in the enterprise space most of my ten years. So something that I really love to work on is, really building those relationships with my customers.

Excellent. I'll go next. Hey, everybody. My name is Lindsay Narlock. I'm also an enterprise customer success manager here at Drift.

I'll echo what Callan said. Love building relationships with my customers, building trust, and ensuring that we are working towards their goals. And then Kelsey, take it away.

Awesome. Thank you. Good morning. Good afternoon to any of those of you who joined us today. My name is Kelsey Bennett. I am a CSM for our key accounts here at SalesLoft. I have been with the company for about two years, but similar to Callen, I feel like I've been doing this for nearly a lifetime.

But excited to chat with y'all today about how you think about your accounts and and the health of of your book.

Alright. So thank you. We are very excited this morning to have this conversation with you. If you do have questions, we ask that you put them in the q and a tab, and we will address them as we go along. We also have some topics for conversation.

And so why don't we get started with one of, those topics? I guess, Lindsay, why don't you start? What does account health mean to you?

Yeah. Thank you, Julie.

So when discussing this, I think one of the most important things to think about is what are their goals? I mean, obviously, we want product adoption, but I always like to ask from the get go of our relationship what is most important to you and what are you working towards. And so then on our regular syncs, we know, okay. We need to be achieving x y z. Here's what metrics or reports we're gonna look in in the platform. And so in that way, I think every customer is different, and it's important to know that from the beginning.

Oh, Michelle's from Dublin. Welcome.

Sorry. Just got excited about the international presence here.

Kelsey or Callan, anything to add on to that?

Here we go. Sorry. Couldn't find me on mute. Yeah. You know, teeing off of that, I definitely say, like, getting that deep understanding of the why behind it. You know? The why they bought the the platform, why they came to your product, that tells the story of the struggles that they had before, what they're looking to solve with your product, and how we can help them solve those problems.

Yeah. That's great. I think that, all of those things are vital. I guess, Kelsey, if you wanna build on from there, can you speak to us a little bit about how you go about assessing an account's health and what those key performance indicators are that you're looking at?

Yeah. I think you just hit the nail on the head. I think health to me is what my customers say it is. Right? So every customer is different.

For a tool like SalesLoft, we're often looking at things like productivity, how much can one person accomplish in one day, and it's not always the same KPI. So understanding what, success looks like for my customers. Right? What what why did they buy SalesLoft to begin with? And we level set a lot with our customers. We never assume that what we discussed as a key performance metric last month is going to be the same as this month.

So I think understanding what the customers are wanting to see, is it activity? Is it depth of an account? Is it customer reach? Completely depends.

But as long as I'm aligned there and constantly getting that pulse on if that's what we're still focused on, that's probably my biggest key to success so far.

That's great. Yeah. What I'm hearing you guys say is asking the tough questions. Right? Being sure that we are doing more listening than talking, really uncovering why what's important to a business, how are they from the top down looking at success criteria, and how does that criteria trickle trickle down to each individual, and who does this success make a difference for, and how are they measuring that. So those can be some really challenging things.

But overall, as customer success leaders, we are looking for our customers to have a positive experience and really, really ensure that we understand what their objectives and goals are and that we are meeting them. And the quickest way I've heard all three of you say to do that is by asking asking asking, doing discovery, asking lots of questions, and really keeping our pulse on where our customers are at.

So even doing all of those things in every single interaction, we have all been in situations where we find ourselves with customers where their health is deteriorating or they're struggling despite your efforts. So this I know is a is a really important topic. How do we handle situations where, you know, health is declining? What is it that we do? What strategies do we bring to bear? And how do we have these conversations with our customers? Callan?

Yeah. I think one of the most important things I've learned is, you know, making sure that, one, we're performing at least a quarterly or biannually business review. So doing that whole holistic view of how our how we've been performing with the platform, how are these against your expected goals, Are we getting in front of the right people at companies? You know, that makes a huge difference.

For some of my customers, we focus on the marketing aspect. So, you know, are we working with marketing managers? Are we working with VP? Or are we at least bringing some of these measurements and these goals and these success stories to the right people?

Or, you know, are we missing the mark? And, again, it's that having those right questions flexible too with the company saying, like, hey. We've completely decided to change our approach for the year for twenty twenty five. Here's our new approach.

How are we gonna adjust to this while keeping the flow of the business going?

So for me, it's definitely been, you know, making sure that we're having those conversations and that I'm keeping that open communication with customers, and we're getting in front of the right people, making sure we're understanding the correct goals. And that's always a hard thing, especially with, you know, how what's the right word?

How rocky the market is right now. You know, everyone's time is so valuable and tight, but making sure that what you're bringing to them is exactly what they wanna see or what they need to see too. So being strategic about what you're bringing to them, but making sure that you're getting in front of the right people for sure.

So tactically speaking, Kelsey and Lindsay, what do you do when you're not in front of the right people? How do you get in front of the right people? What are the strategies that you bring to to your customers when you're maybe being road blocked or you're not you're finding you're not at the right level at the organization and you realize it's impacting your ability to drive success?

Yeah. I think for me, looking towards mutual connections is really important. So if I have a POC that perhaps, like you said, is road blocking or it's not working connecting via that avenue, I something tactical I like to do is look them up on LinkedIn, see what common connections we have. Maybe it's someone in the company that I currently work with at SalesLoft that could help me make the intro more soft or with a known face. That's something that I really like to do that I think helps, kind of bridge that gap.

I think one on ones can be a benefit too if I do reach out to that contact I'm looking to get in touch with and just do a ten, fifteen minute one on one. I can sometimes learn so much more than in a big, bigger group meeting setting and really learn from them about what their challenges are and really listen to what they need. So those are two things that I would say to enact. Kelsey, I'm not sure if you have other stuff you wanna add to.

Yeah. I, I'm thinking through this, and I think, like like Kellen had said, today's market is really tough. And I say it that from a perspective of there are teams involved on both sides. I don't know that it's necessarily a one to one relationship nor should it be, but you have an entire buying team responsible for reviewing and looking at renewals.

And all of this is indicative of the relationship you already have with your customer.

So understanding that there's risk, we might have tools. Right? We might have customer success tools that should give us flags or notifications of concerning adoption.

But when it comes down to it, I would say eighty percent of the risk or deteriorating health of a customer was on an account that looked optically like they were in good health.

But it wasn't until I had a relationship with the the customer, right, for somebody to say, like, actually, I've been meaning to tell you this, or, hey, I heard in a meeting the other day that things aren't going so well for this group. And so I would say that it's a lot about the relationships that you have and the trust that you've built with this customer by way of what Lindsay and Callan have said, is understanding exactly what they want to see from this and always going back to that and building that trust because it is within those relationships that we are going to identify and uncover so much more than we really ever could with any technology. It's that human element that I think is is key.

Hundred percent.

I think Marcel Oh, sorry to interrupt, Julie.

I was gonna say Marcel asked a really good question in the chat.

Julie, you've been doing such a good job mediating or kind of leading. I would love to get your thoughts on, Marcel asked, how do you get attention from clients who seem to be too busy and not willing willing, excuse me, to meet for a review?

Yeah. This is a challenging topic. Right?

A lot of our customers have tons of priorities, and one of our objectives on the CS side is to constantly be one of their top priorities. And this we all know in this field, this takes a lot of effort. So what do you do when someone is too busy and they're not willing to give you the time of day to share? I have a few suggestions, and then I would open it up to you guys as well.

So I think and this kinda goes into what we were talking about before when, just just a minute ago about really looking at how do you determine and how do you get in front of the right people. So I think being multithreaded is critical here. So you're not just relying on one person to open up their calendar and bring in the rest of the stakeholders. You actually have relationships with all the stakeholders.

I think multithreaded at the customer is critical, but I also think it's equally critical as the partner or the vendor that we have multiple relationships as well. So if I am not having success, getting that business review scheduled and my articulation of the value of that is falling on deaf ears, I have, you know, my professional services person say, my counterpart, or maybe I have my commercials rep, the account executive, maybe my manager, or maybe it's an executive through an executive sponsorship program. I highly advocate that we're multi threaded on both sides. I think that that can really help.

The another thing you can do when you're getting extreme resistance is I love video, and so I love to create a quick video highlighting some of the key metrics and sending that along to really anyone, any stakeholder in that business, and then keeping it short, try and keep it up, you know, two minutes max. Just kind of foreshadowing what you wanna tell them in the review, generating that, wow, I really do wanna talk to her. Right? She has something to say.

Sharing strategy just a bit so that you'll get them to commit to the meeting. Those are two strategies that I typically employ.

I'm not sure. What do you think? What other strategies do you guys take to that challenging situation that we all find ourselves in?

Yeah. I mean, first of all, I see you. Right? Like, this is an experience nearly every customer success manager is going through. Right?

The first thing I think about is make sure that you have the right person. Right? So that person may not want to get on a call with you or a business review because it may not be a priority for them. Right?

Like, they might be your end user or your main point of contact, but it's not their buying decision. So I would say go wider in the account. And we we kind of talked about building trust in teams. A lot of times, Julie had mentioned it, like, get other teams involved, like your services team.

If you don't have a services team, executive contacts. So whether that be in your organization, you're a leader or your leader's leader, but having somebody else broker that desire. Right? Somebody that they can relate to.

Right? Because there's some sort of belief gap there if they truly are the person you should be working with.

The other piece of that, I would say, is make sure that you're not just checking a box. Right? We're all asked to make sure that we are giving our customers we owe it to our customers to have these quarterly, monthly, bimonthly conversations.

But if they don't want that quarterly, do they need it every six months? Can they commit to spending time with you every six months?

And then the last piece is what Julie mentioned. Right? Is do a video, three main themes or bullet points that you found. There will be somebody that cares about those big themes or those findings if they are tied back to their organizational objectives.

So right person, organizational objectives, and build a team around you to get this done. So it's not always just you that can get this accomplished and get that meeting scheduled, in my opinion.

I had one question come into the q and a that I think is a really good question in, Callan, not to put you on the spot, but I know that you've handled both, obviously, enterprise accounts, but also some low touch accounts too. And so somebody said, if the customer is a low touch account, how do you identify that their health is deteriorating before a point of no return? This can be difficult for SMB AMs who manage a ton of accounts and deal with high churn.

That's a really good question. I mean, I know that if you have a book of, you know, fifty, sixty, seventy customers, you're not gonna be able to meet with them as frequently as somebody who has a book of twenty.

Callan, not to put you on the spot, but how have you handled that in the past?

No. I saw this question. I was ready to jump on it. So yes. So I, in my past, I've had a myriad of book sizes.

So some of my book sizes have been as large as seventy accounts, some as more strategic as twelve accounts. So when I had those larger books, especially for SMB accounts, my strategy has always been and this sounds silly, but having those pretty straightforward email templates. So I know Kelsey can, like, do an amazing job of speaking to this with, within SalesLoft and and more of this the actual actioning on this. But I what I've built in the past is I have ready made links for enablement.

So I have an enablement specific email. When I go in once a month and look at the health of my accounts, I say I see, maybe their weekly active usage is down or maybe, you know, we haven't seen a lot of logins or we haven't seen a lot of usage on the platform. I have prebuilt emails that are templates that I will send out with live links of training, and I always offer, hey. Let me know what questions you have.

Here's why I wanted to reach out. I noticed x y z has dropped a little bit. Let me you know, I'd love to hear some feedback from you on why you feel like this is happening. Are you guys going through a tech change?

A lot of things have been really surprising for me that I've uncovered with some of my customers is they're going through a merger, and that is I feel like the, like, the word of the year is merger.

So I've had a lot of small, medium SMB accounts that have gone through mergers.

So that's actually been hugely beneficial for me is getting in that at least monthly setting aside. Honestly, I set aside about four hours about twice a month to go through all of my accounts more in-depth and get a better understanding of where they are at a healthy level.

I have been lucky enough to all the companies I've worked at have had some form of a health score over customers. So let's say we're talking about a company that does not have that available.

I have it, like, pulled out Excel list of the last time I caught like, I sent a message to them. I've had one company that didn't. And I would say, like, okay. Shot them an email on this day. So, essentially, what I'm sending them is, like, a recap of, hey. Here are some pain points that I see on your accounts today. Love to talk to you about it if you guys have any concerns.

Flipping this the other way, so looking at more of a future state, I tend to look at accounts that in the next six months have a renewal coming up as well. I think anything less than six months is, you're really cutting it close to at least give yourself that buffer to make the account healthy again to get them readopted if they haven't been adopting, and then enough time especially to have the negotiations behind a contract or negotiations behind either expansion or, getting that understanding of what the road map's gonna look like for your customer. So a lot of different moving pieces, but I definitely think having at least, like, a pretty standard template to be able to send out to customers of just, like, a plug and play and send saying, hey. X y z is something we can focus on today is super beneficial because the customer feels like you are still paying attention to it because you are. You're paying attention to their account even though they're a lower spend.

And can I have the discipline? Like, the discipline by which you're managing a bigger book, you really need to bring that to the table so that things it's too easy for accounts to fall through the cracks. So I love how you put on your calendar that time to review account health, and you you have the email templates. You're making it easier on yourself to manage a giant book of business, but you're bringing to that the discipline of focus to make it happen. Kelsey, I think you're gonna show us something.

Yeah. So I think all of all of that. Right? So the, I cannot remember the quote. But, essentially, one of my mentors has recently told me, like, if you perfect your fundamentals, you will find that the people who are at the top or who are the most successful are the ones who do the fundamentals really really well.

And what Calen just said is like managing that many accounts can be so overwhelming.

So find your fundamentals, find your process, and streamline it. And I think that's why I asked in the chat, like, who all has SalesLoft? Because there are so many ways that we can do this, and we don't need this to be like a SalesLoft promoting type of webinar, but I think it is important to kind of show you the areas that that she was talking about. So if you were going to create a template, you can do that in SalesLoft, and it can be a monthly template. It can be a product related or customer experience, whatever you need to share or promote.

And you would create it with these dynamic fields personal, when the customer or prospect is getting this from you. Right? But the value here is you don't have to work in SalesLoft in order to use this. So we have an add on with Google and with Outlook in that when you are sending a one off email to Kelsey at x y z company, you can still use that template.

So if you prefer to work out of your inbox, that's totally fine. You can do templates, which is a layover of the total email. Right? So we'll wipe whatever you have here and just put the template right on top.

A snippet is adding in one little line, whether it be like, also it sounds like you might need to submit a support case, here are your next best steps. And, if you're constantly saying that one chunk of information, you can insert a snippet into an email or you can overlay an email entirely. I don't know why my t's and s's are crossed out here in my demo instance.

But, so that's the Sorry to interrupt you.

I'm gonna turn you off stage just so that your screen's a little bit bigger for the viewers to see.

There we go.

Unfortunately, when we turn Kelsey off, we can't hear her, so you gotta put her back on. I tried that before.

Sorry. Never mind. Can you tell I'm new to this SQL platform? Sorry, Kelsey.

That's okay. So all of that to say is you have the ability to streamline your fundamentals. So slow down in order to go fast. Right?

There is like, you need to write your templates. You need to identify which customers or how you're going to categorize things. The other thing that Kellen mentioned is having in my mind, it's like tiering your customers. Right?

So eighty twenty rule, twenty percent of your customer base is going to have, like, an upsell or an opportunity to grow. Eighty percent are likely going to need to be maintained, and taken care of. Right? So that twenty percent you might want a tier one.

Right?

And so there are lots of different ways at an an account level and at a contact level that we can pull in information. If you have, like, a company tier or an engagement score that is updated within your CRM, we can bring that in to SalesLoft in the account details automatically if it already exists in your CRM, like Dynamics, Salesforce, things of that nature.

But if you don't have a CRM that we connect well or connect to that we don't have an integration with, you also can create tags.

So you don't have to do this one at a time, but you could say this is my tier one account.

And then this is a searchable field for you. When you go into your accounts, you say I want to see all of my accounts with the tag clicked on it with the tag tier one and we will pull up a list of those folks, select all of those people or accounts and get those folks moved into a cadence for your monthly email or your product update release. So lots of ways to simplify and optimize those fundamentals that will make you the most successful in keeping it simple.

I love that, Kelsey. Thanks for sharing that with us.

I think it would be great for us to talk about the complete other end of the spectrum. So you have a healthy customer. You've had this customer for such a long time.

So how do we, you know, maintain that long term relationship? How do you keep things fresh? How do you keep people invested? How do you keep people's focus and priority on whatever it is that you're supporting?

And, that can also provide account challenges. So anybody wanna touch on that as a starter?

I have something to add for that. Actually came up recently in one of my one on ones. I think when you do have, at your company those executive contacts that are happy and willing to converse with your customers, this is a perfect time to get them involved. The customer is happy. They're engaged.

I think oftentimes we use that exec contact when things may be on the rockier side or not going well, but also making sure to involve them when things are going well. Have those connections between the exec at your customer and the exec at your company to continue building those relationships, and, ultimately, I think just learn from each other, right, and get insights.

So that's something that I've been trying to do with healthy customers as well as customers who may be needing them a little extra love.

Team, other things that you wanna add to that? That's just been a top of mind for me lately in my conversations.

Honestly, I would say I would double down on that.

It it goes back to, you know, Kelsey really hammering home earlier about building that relationship and building that trust. It's and bring and Julie as well. You're bringing in the whole team to enable to do that for, you know, bringing QBRs. When you already are in a healthy place with a customer and and building that relationship, I've found numerous times that the customer is more likely to renew because, one, they're familiar with you, and, two, they they know a trusted you know, they know your trusted execs. They trust the exec at an exec level that they've come to the table. They've had a frank conversation with them about where we're going, and that relationship just becomes much more solidified for the long term.

I've also found that it's become really beneficial where if issues do come up, you know, I again, you know, you have these point of contacts that you talk to at whatever frequency you do, but, you know, maybe on the back end, there are some complaints that are making it up the chain that, for some reason, we haven't heard.

Having another outlet to hear about those feature requests or issues that they're experiencing and bringing it back to us just helps us get way ahead of it being, you know, at go time when we're gonna miss that deadline. But all of a sudden, they're bringing up all this stuff where we already knew about it. We've already been working on it. So it just opens up another avenue of conversation. So, yeah, I'm definitely doubling down on what Lindsay said there.

A critical component I find is don't assume. You've had a customer for a really long time, and it is really easy to assume you know everything about their business. You know everything about them. You remember their birthday.

You, you know, you've got the little things down. You've built this, like, trusted advisor slash friend relationship, and yet it's so easy to not what is that expression? Not to see the forest when you're so close to the trees. Right?

So you have to for it's comes back to the discipline that Callan was talking about before. You have to force yourself. Maybe you wanna set Google alerts for each customer so you know if something's changed in their business. You wanna not assume because you know them so well, they're not interested in a piece of functionality that you're rolling out.

You'd really have to force yourself into, kind of always being in that discovery mode, always challenging, always just learning more about their business, introducing, getting yourself invested and involved with new stakeholders. Right? Use every opportunity you have to learn more about that company so that it stays fresh for you and it stays fresh for them. That would just be another, like, suggestion that I have in terms of keeping things fresh when you've had a customer for two, three, four, upwards five years.

It can really you know, it has the potential to get a little dry.

Well and then even the reverse too. Right? So what about those customers or those accounts that you have eight hundred of and and you don't really get to know them that well or you haven't had them for two years.

Trust equals consistency over time. So we talk on our side about do what you say you're going to do. Right? So we we talk through that.

The fundamentals, be very consistent, but it's all about being able to build trust quickly, and you do that through a relationship. So I think, Julie, you actually touched on it. You're like, you know, you're you you even know their birthday. You're that close. And so taking little nuggets of information and remembering them, you don't naturally you don't actually have to remember them. But SalesLoft is a tool where you could put in a note, pin it to the top, and just keep that top of mind. I do you mind if I show it quick, Julie?

Yeah. That'd be great.

Okay.

Let me pull up the screen here. So many of you may know this, but for folks, new users possibly on this, as a CSM, we use the add a note section and put in any things we should know. And and you can put things like lives in Nashville, Tennessee, has three daughters, and the oldest is trying out gymnastics. So that the next time I reach out or if I'm sending my monthly email, that's my tidbit of personalization.

Like, hey, Carl. Hope you're well. Wanted to send our product updates. Also, how's your oldest liking gymnastics?

That is a really nice touch, and all you had to do was just, like, make a little note of it. And and you and your account team will see this, and it will make the relationship that much, I guess, building the trust that much quicker when you're able to drop those really thoughtful things that we as humans may not innately remember every single time. We've got a lot going on and it's a helpful place to just put your little thoughts.

I love that, Kelsey. That's such a good, use case for the platform and to aid us in just really elevating our relationship.

Alright. We've talked a lot about relationship building. Let's talk about we all work for a company, and these customers are all, you know, customers of a given product or service. So let's talk about promoting product adoption, and feature utilization among your customers.

What, you know, what how do we do this? What are the most successful ways to get customers to expand their adoption to be interested in new features?

Lindsay, you wanna you wanna kick us off?

Yeah. This is something that I'm super passionate about because well, I'm one of the drift expert, CSMs at SalesLoft, but I was actually a customer before. And, I think as a customer for me, what was always really important was not only seeing the slide of the new releases or the release notes, but also how I could actually implement that for my business. And so for those accounts that you may have a higher touch with, what I like to do is, like Kelsey said, bring the new feature releases that we have to date to our monthly, but then also say, I think that this relates to what we talked about last month, and here's, like, a tactical way that we could actually implement it.

So I'm trying to bring both the strategic or, those higher level recommendations with a few tactical nuggets of how it could actually be brought to their business. And I think that helps get the ball moving faster in terms of execution. If it's a high level idea, sometimes they're like, well, yeah, that sounds good, but I don't really know how to use that for x y z business. And then maybe they won't implement it ever or as fast.

So making it real, like Kelsey said, I think is something that I try to bring into those new release conversations, frequently.

I love that. Kelsey, Callan, either of you have additional, ways in which that you find it easier to introduce new features or get platform expansion?

Yeah.

Especially for so, like, toggling back to, you know, from the SMB perspective of, you know, we have all these great features coming out. We have all these great product releases coming out. This is where when I talk about looking at, you know, the next six month of renewals and Kelsey's point of, you know, that eighty twenty rule. Like, what customers are we gonna really focus on right now?

This is where I start, pulling in once a month. You know? Hey. Here's our some of our product releases.

Here's some great links to them. Please let me know if you have any additional questions. Any of those top customers that have the renewals coming up, I always add a couple little extra details in there. Hey.

For, you know, for this specific product release, I noticed that x, y z is lower with adoption in the platform. This would actually help it naturally or this would help drive it. So trying to figure out how it pieces it together in that email format. So doing a little bit more customization with those renewals that are coming up in the next six months.

So starting to really gauge interest there.

In addition to, you know, talking about any new product features, maybe it's just for the SMB or some of the the lower product purchase customers, you know, taking a view at, what would be helpful for at, like, a company level. Like, where is your company going? So all the way back to Julie's point of setting up Google alerts is I can I found the best thing ever? You go in any news on your list of customers. I get a digest once a week of if anything's been in the news about any of my customers, and I can build off there. So I can say, hey.

You know, I noticed that you guys are gonna go through I keep going back to merger, but, obviously, that's top of mind right now for all my customers. I noticed you guys are going through a merger. I know that that can be really difficult for any tech consolidation. Let me know if we wanna do a workshop around integrations or a workshop around enablement just to make sure your admins feel fully trained.

And so pulling out those little pieces, making it a little bit more personalized is incredibly helpful, and I think it makes them feel seen too. So that's my little two cents with SMB, I would say.

Yeah. I think that's that's relevant across every every customer. Right? So it's easy to think about introducing customers to new products, new features.

Think about it this way. I'm a big demo gal. Like, I'm constant as you can see, I'm constantly sharing my screen. I'm ready to go at all times just because that excites me.

But I think too, having the permission to talk to other groups. Right? So, Calen, to your point, the Google alerts are awesome. Because if a team is growing or acquiring another organization that may not have used your your product before, you need to know about it and have the permission to ask to speak to that group.

Right? We're kind of talking a lot about relationships and being able to ask questions that you're like, gosh, that feels bullish or that's bold. Well, ask the bold questions.

I think that's Be bold.

Be bold and ask the question what like, I I that is a huge opportunity, and the only person telling you no is yourself until you ask. Right?

But expanding your footprint within your customer's organization is also a huge opportunity. Right? So not so much just sharing with them new ideas and new concepts, but, hey. What about this team? Are they customer facing? This might be really helpful.

So not so much introducing something new, but taking the existing concept and going wide with it.

I love these. All these suggestions are fantastic. I just wanna drill down on or kind of recap some of the three of the critical things I heard and saw in the chat. So one is use cases.

Right? When it comes to feature adoption and just, you know, expansion of your platform, being able to paint that picture, making it visual, making you knowing their business and you coming up with it doesn't have to be the cookie cutter perfect use case for them. But if you get in the ballpark, they start thinking and marinating on what you said, and you'll be surprised how many times they'll come to the next meeting and say, you know what? I remember last week you you were talking about how maybe we could do this.

How would how do you think it would work if we did x or y? So use cases, painting that visual. Don't assume they can draw the connection from your feature to how they might use it. Draw that line for them.

Second thing, enablement. I heard Callan talking about enablement. Enabled educated buyers, sophisticated. They they understand more.

They do more when you show them it resonates. Never miss an opportunity to teach your customers and elevate their knowledge of your product. And then lastly, Kelsey, I love that you are always ready to demo. When you can show them in the platform, again, you are just drawing that line and you are closing the circle, so to speak.

Right? And those are three really great just account management strategies that we bring to our customers every single day. And, I just thought it was important for us to sort of spend a little another moment just really reinforcing those because I think those are three tactics that can just really make a difference with relationship management.

Okay. Let's talk a little bit about how frequently we are engaging with our customers and what methods of communication we consider the most, valuable. And I know this is gonna vary based on book size, and it'll vary somewhat customer to customer. But, ladies, let's have a little conversation about, you know, this. How often, when, what methods, etcetera. Callan, you wanna get us started?

Yeah.

So, you guys are lucky in this call. We have a good variety of, how many each how much, how my gosh. How many customers each of us own. So I own the largest book of the people on the call today. So what I focus on, again, I'm gonna I'm gonna keep driving this home, is that six month rule. My top priority customers are generally I take, you know, the top fifteen of my book, and I spend the most time on them. And then on top of that, I look at that six month rule of engagement for renewals.

That does not mean that for six months out of the year, I am not talking to customers. I wanna make that very clear as well. But they are lower touch in that rest of the year. I wanna make sure that I keep my communication open with them. They know who to reach out, to if they have questions, if they're having issues with the platform.

So I I do still do that monthly email reach out. I have the four hour block of just going through and pulling some of those templates, especially what Kelsey showed. It it goes so fast, and it enables me to add in some of those personal details that I had mentioned, especially when it comes to the next rules in the next six months.

And then those top fifteen customers depending on, you know, the need of those customers as well. I have some customers that, are just cruising. So and to make sure that I keep in front of them, still having that conversation, that I'm not letting it get stale to Julie's point. I meet with them at least on a monthly or bimonthly basis. And then, I try to do QBRs at minimum for a lot of for all of my customers once a year, at absolute minimum. Otherwise, twice a year is where I'd like to go.

So it's it is it's a variety of what your customers need. So to Kelsey's point as well, maybe they don't need a QBR every quarter, but having it at least once every six months, you're showing that growth over the six month, and you're making sure that you're staying on top of those goals that are ever changing within a company.

I think verbiage is huge there too, Callan. So Yeah. When we're talking about the QBR and when one of the questions posed, like, what if they don't want to connect? We owe it to them.

And and that is how I phrase it. I owe you an update on how things have been going, you know, whether it be adoption, utilization, feature enablement, things things of that. We owe it to them. It is not a, can we connect?

It's I owe you this update. When can when when can we find time to do this?

I think the other thing that I'll note, and then there's a question in the q and a that I wanna make sure we get to. But, this seems so simple, but it was something for at me for me at first, like, making sure I had the discipline is sending that agenda well in advance of the call, not same day even, you know, days ahead to be like, hey. Here's the things that are at top of mind. We're gonna go through the standard x y z metrics you care about, this, that, and then maybe there's some top, projects that they're working on or things we discussed in our last call.

I always like to send that agenda at least a few days in advance because of what I find is people will reply and be like, yep. That sounds good, but I also wanted to talk about this, that, or the other thing. I like to know that in advance when possible in case I need to go talk to the product team or do additional research in our knowledge base or anything that I can bring to the table because, as we talked about, it was a common theme. Everyone is so busy, and we only have so much time with our customers.

I wanna make sure that I'm making the most of our half hour together or a hour together.

So that's something that I'm always trying to do. Easier said than done when you have a really busy schedule, but something that I prioritize.

I love that too, Lindsay, because getting out ahead of them, assuming they read your message, which is always questionable, but it gets them thinking about how they wanna spend the time. Right? I love I love how you say I owe you this, Kelsey. I also love to remind them in every call, this is your time.

Right? This is you've made this investment. I am here to ensure that you get the most out of it, but you want them to feel that ownership, that investment. You want them to be excited about the opportunity and the value that you bring, the opportunity they have to learn more or to hear something new or to advance their implementation when they're talking to you.

So sending that agenda, recapping with a follow-up. Some of the basics are critical. Lindsay, you're right. We have a question in the chat, and we are, you know, coming to the end of our session.

I'd say we probably wanna wrap up in about five minutes so that we can let folks get an extra cup of coffee or maybe even on their way to lunch. So we'll try and wrap this up in a couple minutes. But, Callan, I think this question is perfect for you because you've addressed it, already. But help us understand how you determine your, you know, the accounts you're prioritizing and your top accounts.

Yeah. Absolutely. So this is a little bit of a weighted question. I would say transparently, you know, you wanna work with your leadership with your accounts.

So you wanna work with your managers on what your top account looks like. For some people, it is. It's what are the top spend accounts in your book? What are the ones that spend the most, that need the most attention because they're putting in the most value into your or they're investing the most, I should say, into your company?

Flip side, there are other factors that come into the top fifteen accounts for me. So are they a partner? Are they, are they an account that we know has potential large expansion because they're parent company in the next year or two years? So there's a lot of factors that come into that come into play there.

I would say step one is you going through your book and getting a good understanding. And, again, I know there's the really large books, but getting the understanding of, okay, what customers really feel like they need they they're going to be the most valuable for me to spend my time as well. Are they engaging back with me? Are they are they also making commitments to me?

So I think that's a big thing that, I missed on mentioning earlier is it's it's a two way relationship as well. We're doing a lot for our customers, but we wanna make sure our customers are investing in us too. So it's it's that, hey. Can you complete x y z so I can complete this?

So it's having that continuing conversation of relationship, making sure that there's actionable items on both sides. Do you have accounts that are being actionable that you can see that growth, that are continuing to make those adoption features, and that you can see are investing in your platform.

So there's a lot of of variables that come into play for my top accounts, but I it might sound like a little bit of a coward's way out, but I I do tend to default to talking to my manager and saying, hey. Here's my account book. How do you need me to prioritize this per the company values?

And then taking it from there. I generally add on accounts to what I prioritize just because I see additional accounts that are investing with me as well.

So I think another layer of that too, Kellen, is for folks who have a lot of accounts, maybe working with a lot of sales reps as well.

Right?

Mhmm.

So building those internal relationships is huge. Right? So I am I am of the group that has much fewer accounts, more contacts within within a single account. However, I think having that internal relationship and understanding what that sales rep might see too, it is their job to seek out opportunity.

And so having them flag you too, like, hey, Kelsey. This account just did a merger or is buying, x y z company. And I think that that's gonna create an opportunity for us in the next year at the next renewal. You make a note for yourself, build that relationship, ask for introductions, and start kind of working the the relationship a little bit, to afford the opportunity to present for that expansion. So internal partnerships, I think, is huge too. It's not a coward's way out to talk to your manager, and it's definitely not a coward's way out way out to build that internal dialogue and relationship too.

Right. I agree. I think that relying on your management and leadership is is an incredible strategy.

And then, of course, we are looking at things based on renewal date. Of course, we are looking at things based on ARR, and, of course, we are looking at escalations. Right? There is a fire that you need to pay attention, and that is not to leave out the customers who are just, you know, highly educated and do great on their own.

We gotta find time for them too. But in terms of prioritizing, oftentimes, let's take the lead from management. Let's be sure we're cognizant of our internal partners and what our overall business strategy is for that account. Look at ARR, look at renewal date, and look at escalations.

I think those are probably the five most, relevant factors in how you can set a priority list. And then, Calen, you said this, and I couldn't agree more. It changes day to day, week to week. I mean, you know, we're constantly doing this shift because that's what this job is all about.

It is it is juggling lots of plates, many balls in the air at once. Right? So, alright, we can't thank you enough. We have had a great session.

I wanna leave it the floor open for my three colleagues if anybody has any closing remarks, but I'll I'll say goodbye from here. And, I wanna leave it to them to see what else they wanna share right before we wrap up, but thanks again for being with us this morning. Lindsay, any last comments?

Just wanted to echo. Thank you everybody for joining today.

Loved the questions that were asked and great engagement. And I know, like we talked about, everyone's day is busy, so thanks for taking time out of yours to hang out with us.

Kelsey or Carolyn, anything to add?

I definitely second that. Thank you everyone for joining today.

We obviously are very passionate about what we do, so we could talk about this for another two hours. So thank you guys so much for joining us for the fifteen minutes today and letting us just talk nonstop.

I'm sure I'm sure there will be a follow-up, and and this was recorded if there were any nuggets that you all wanna come back to. We are absolutely thrilled to have you here. Such a such a gift to have time with you, and I hope this was the brightest spot of your day.

Thank you, everyone.