Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Customer onboarding in B2B SaaS is changing fast, but the resources for onboarding teams? Not so much. That's why we're kicking off Onboarding Therapy, a podcast that tackles the real challenges onboarding teams face every day.
I think generally people know that
there is a churn and activation
problem in their businesses.
And they might not know that onboarding is
the solution, but if you can come in and
convince and convey some of that, you get
a better chance of proving that value out.
Welcome to Onboarding Therapy.
I'm Kim.
And in this episode, Cherelle and I
are talking about how to get company
leaders to support customer onboarding.
We discuss ways to show onboarding's
value and connect it to business goals.
Let's get into it.
Last time we talked about onboarding
and sales alignment, sales handoffs,
how onboarding and sales work together.
And we ended with the realization
and acknowledgement that.
All of the initiatives that we were
talking about just can't happen at a
company where leadership has not bought
into onboarding and doesn't understand
the value of onboarding and they're not
going to let you work with the sales
team in the way that we were mentioning.
If that's not the case.
Yeah it's interesting because I think
historically this is a blanket statement,
but I do feel like historically
success or like post sales motions
have been viewed almost as a secondary
or a reactive motion to we've done
the marketing, we've done the sales.
That's usually, high energy, high buzz.
It's a high dollar spend because
of CAC and how much we, it actually
costs to acquire a customer.
And I think customers feel that and
there's lots of momentum and excitement
and, customers ask all the time in sales,
what's next, how do we get started?
And then where there isn't often buy in
or investing in that space or, and to be
fair, sometimes it's even understanding.
It's not that.
Some sales leader is just like
against it or executive leaders
against the concept of onboarding.
There might just be a lack
of understanding of its value
or how it ties to revenue.
Cause again, it's.
Historically, I think generally not
viewed as a revenue driving function and
more of a, almost like a cost center.
So when that is the case, it is easy to
feel that you're not going to get budget.
You're not going to get new tools.
You're not going to get the support
you need, which then does make
it hard to onboard customers.
Whenever there is that resistance to
This is a post sales motion or it's a
reactive motion, or even gets bucketed
sometimes into like support category.
If you can convince or convey that
there is a revenue component here.
And because we are onboarding these
customers a little bit faster or more
effectively or meeting them where
they need to be met and making that
handoff smoother, can you start to
prove that motion is the reason.
Customers are sticking around
longer and not churning.
And again, none of that guarantees
all of a sudden they're going to stick
around forever and start renewing their
contracts and expanding their usage.
But it at least gives you the chance.
Whereas if they cancel on
day 30, like that's it.
You have spent that money and
yeah, you might have some clawbacks
in your process for sales.
But generally speaking, you have
spent the money, you have spent
the time, you've spent the energy,
and now you've lost that customer.
And so whenever I hear we have a churn
problem at day 30, we have a churn
problem at day 60 of the life cycle.
Even day 90, like that usually indicates.
There is some sort of implementation
or onboarding or activation problem.
Going a little further, there might
be a sales to success handoff problem,
but generally speaking, those first
moments of the life cycle, that
perception of whatever the customer
signed up for, isn't being met and now
they are canceling which is tiring.
It's exhausting.
It's obviously expensive.
It's demotivating both to
sales and success teams.
And so whenever I've worked at those types
of place and I have where, onboarding
is viewed as more of an afterthought
or kind of we'll figure it out, sales
will do it, or success will do it, or
customers will figure it out themselves
because their design is so amazingly
intuitive and turns out it's not, and
customers aren't activating right.
So I'm always of the mindset of how can
I convey that there is revenue here.
So even when we use things like
pipelines inside of HubSpot to manage
onboarding, whether it's a deal
pipeline where the amount already
exists on that record, or on tickets,
I pull over the amount from the deal.
So that in my pipeline, I can say
there is 2 million of revenue sitting
in this ready for onboarding stage.
And if we don't activate them and it
might not be directly what I'm about
to say, but you can almost start to
forecast that is lost revenue or churn
risk at least, if we don't do something.
So whenever you start to pull
money into it and you still might
run into some resistance around
certain leaders, not viewing it as
a monetary motion, which is okay.
But if you can at least convince
some people that there is
money here and because they are
churning, we are losing that money.
There is some sort of value
here to these customers.
Alive for lack of better
term or sticking around.
And that's how I've been able to
convince some folks to lean in a
little bit more and obviously doing
the work and proving you actually are
saving these customers by that motion.
So two things I try to do
there is one, did they churn?
If no, great, we're doing
something better here.
And then are they expanding?
So are they growing?
Are they adding seats?
Are they adding features?
Are they using other verticals
of your product that they might
not have been and where I've been
able to prove that to my leaders.
I've noticed more often than not,
I've been able to get buy in and
support and slowly with time, get
more and more budget essentially for
things like hiring either more team
members or getting the right tooling.
And then the truth is I've also been at
places where I've done all that and we've
proven it's working or starting to work
and still haven't gotten all of the buy
in I've needed or the support I've needed.
And In your role, you just love
to keep chipping away at that,
obviously, and trying to make progress
and conveying the value there.
But it just becomes a little bit
harder if you don't have that support.
So very high level, try to make it
somehow related back to business metrics.
Every business is trying to make money,
like that's what we're all doing.
So is there a correlation to that?
And it might not be the most like direct
correlation, or it might not register
that way to certain leaders, but the
more you can keep pushing on that.
Idea that there is money in
here and we did spend money
to get these customers here.
If we're so concerned about their
lifetime value and keeping them
around longer, if they turn on day
zero, that's zero lifetime value.
So like, how do we expand and extend that?
So where possible, tie it back to revenue.
Try to tell that story
over and over again.
Find champions, even in different
departments that can also see that, like
if you work with one sales rep who gets
the handoff with you, who understands
his customers or her customers are doing
better as they continue to hand them
off to onboarding and keep them going
down the journey, if you can tell that
like joint story from a few departments.
That might further increase your
chances of getting some of that.
Yeah, I agree with all of that.
I think several things come to mind.
One, I don't think we can expect
that most leaders will inherently
understand the value of onboarding.
I think that we, I think everyone
needs to go in expecting that they're
going to have to prove the value.
And I think that's fine for right now.
Sales and marketing are,
have been around forever.
Everyone knows the metrics that
sales and marketing needs to
be held to and the impact that.
Those teams have on the business
onboarding is still new.
There's still so much to learn.
And I think it's going to be
a long time before you are.
Reliably going to find leadership
that is really bought into
customer onboarding specifically.
And I think it's because
when you are looking at.
Numbers as a leader for the company,
you're thinking of new revenue
and you're thinking of churn.
Those are like the two kind
of major levers that you're
forecasting and predicting for
the health of your business.
So where does onboarding fit into that?
Yes.
If there is early churn, that's
a piece that can be measured and
that's fine within onboarding.
But I do think it is on the onboarding
team or the onboarding team's leader
to figure out how they're impacting
the business, because probably in much
bigger ways than just preventing early
churn, you have to empower yourself to
understand and make sure that you're
actually adding value in a way that
isn't just preventing early churn
and is actually contributing to the
entire post sale customer life cycle.
And I think that's just a thing
that you have to understand.
What are the metrics that
leadership cares about?
What is the actual customer journey
before and after onboarding?
And then where does onboarding fit in and
what is the maximum impact you can have?
And then onboarding has to be
responsible for creating those metrics.
I think that's the thing that we
see a lot is that nobody's ever
tracked anything in onboarding.
Nobody has any idea how long it takes
their customers to get up and running.
Nobody has any idea how many
of their customers are failing
or succeeding in onboarding.
And it's just like wild west.
You have to be responsible for tracking
and owning your metrics, and then also
conveying your wins and what's happening
to your leadership, because they're
just never going to be bought in.
It makes sense that they
wouldn't be if they weren't.
They're not made aware of that.
And they're not proactively going to
do it as much as we wish they would.
Yeah, a hundred percent.
And the other to sprinkle in some
more challenge in there, I fully agree
that needs to be owned in onboarding.
You have to in onboarding whoever's
owning that function in your organization.
And not only do you have to do everything
you just shared about owning it and
reporting on it and sharing it and
sharing it and sharing it like as
much as you can, the other challenges.
The results are actually
blagging indicators.
Like they won't show up potentially until
a year down the road, two years down.
Depending on contract terms, it
might be three years before you
see the result of good onboarding.
Cause if someone's signing a three
year contract and they're bound
to stick around for three years,
there is no good way to say they
stuck around because of onboarding.
So it isn't as direct as we want it to be.
And I think you and I are the type of
people that want it to be very obvious
and screaming that it's working.
And the reality is that's just not true.
It takes a long time to prove this value.
If you're changing things in
onboarding and hope, hoping the goal
is to reduce churn, you're probably
not going to see that until the
year mark of customers or growth.
Sorry.
Churn, you might be able to report on a
little sooner because it's, if you had 70
percent of your customers turning before
you had an onboarding program and now
you install one, you can at least quickly
say, all right, now it's 60 percent churn.
And we can attest some of that to this.
But if you're trying to combat things
like expansion and renewing con annual
contracts or preventing long term turn
and activation, like you're not going
to see those results tell a year, 18
months, maybe even beyond that in, so
on top of everything you said, I think
you also have to be very like diligent
and consistent with the reporting.
And a lot of, I've done this myself.
A lot of that, I remember at one of
my previous jobs, I still have this
somewhere, me and the manager of the
onboarding team had a piece of paper
where we were literally tallying how
many customers did we onboard this month?
How many of them churned and
how many didn't like it was
that physical piece of paper.
And that's because we didn't have the
budget to, we didn't have the buy in or
the budget to go buy the proper tool to
manage it and track it and any of that.
And obviously that's an extreme
example, but then like I've kept
so many spreadsheets of what is
it not like, how can I prove any
sort of value internally and it's.
It's a struggle until it's not.
And once you can prove that value.
So when I have been able to actually
prove it, then it's like, all right, I
get to speak at every business QBR and I
have the attention of all the directors
of the company because it's so impactful
on their actual bottom line and bigger
business metrics that we're after.
So I would.
I would actually be careful of claiming
it's going to do its thing really
well and actually try to find other
departments and other goals that are
already there and that are business
metrics that you're thinking about
and thinking through and figure out
like, how do we support these things?
How can we go back and say, we started
working with SMB customers specifically
in Q2 of this year and six months
down the road, here's our hypothesis.
And let's figure out, can we track that
over time and just be consistent with it?
It's things like to pull in tools like
arrows as an example, it's being able
to identify, all right, these customers
did go through onboarding and they were
X level of engaged based on how much
activity we saw our task we saw done
and then drawing correlations and saying
things like we think of a customer
completes their plan and next time
they are more likely to be successful.
And then a year down the road asking
yourself was that just to your point to.
There's so much qualitative
feedback in onboarding.
And I do this myself all the time.
I'll get off a call and be like,
that person was super excited.
They're going to be around forever.
And they're going to be the
best customer in the world.
And then two months later, they're
churning because they didn't activate it.
And then you'll get feedback
that, yeah, you guys were great.
And your product is great.
And your staff is all incredibly friendly.
Our goals weren't met with your product.
So like you have to be consistent.
You have to report on the data.
Sometimes the data doesn't even
exist, or you don't even know what
it is you're writing a report on.
There's no tools for it to be measured.
Get your hands dirty, get out
the spreadsheets, get out the old
paper and start to tally stuff off.
One thing I will say that I have
seen in my own experience is.
10 years ago, I was never
actively recruited, nor did roles
exist for this type of thing.
I never saw a manager of
senior level type role.
And now at least I see some
of that out in the market.
It's far and few still, to your
point, still some time, I think,
to actually make this a more well
known motion across everything.
But I think generally people know
that there is a churn and activation
problem in their businesses.
And they might not know that onboarding is
the solution, but if you can come in and
convince and convey some of that, you get
a better chance of proving that value out.
And I think that's happening in
small pockets at places because I'm
starting to see roles like director
of onboarding, even I've even seen
VP of onboarding roles or head of
onboarding roles at bigger companies.
So it at least tells me there is
some desire to fix this problem and
start to address it and focus on it.
I'd love to see that everywhere, but
obviously that's, that it takes time.
Just like CS, CS itself, customer success
was a buzzword 10, 15 years ago and now
everyone understands it, or most people
understand it as emotion that can keep
customers around and keep them retained.
So I think onboarding
is hopefully on that.
Yeah.
I was going to mention too,
I did the same thing you did.
I didn't write my things down by hand for
onboarding, but I did, I had a spreadsheet
when I first started onboarding.
I had a spreadsheet and
there were no formulas.
This was a completely manual
spreadsheet where I wrote down
every single new customer.
We weren't backfilling the
data from anywhere else.
I manually put in every single
new customer, how much they were
paying us, how long it took them
to get through an onboarding.
And then I also had six or seven
other business metrics that I
knew the company cared about.
And I was like.
I think that onboarding is going
to impact these, but I don't know.
And so I would manually put those in
for every single new customer we got.
And we were doing high volumes.
This was not an easy task,
but I would put that in.
And then I would look at it every few
weeks and start to draw correlations.
What I noticed is, yeah, if someone
onboards in five or seven days, they
are across the board, more successful
three months in six months in.
Whatever it is, like it's
hard to measure that.
And I wouldn't recommend setting up
systems to measure that right away.
You have to do it manually and figure
it out and say, I'm noticing this
across a bunch of customers, the
ones that are taking 10 times longer.
Then.
The rest of the customers
are never activated.
That's not someone that we
need to spend our time on.
It's not someone we
need to be chasing down.
They're never going to be a successful
customer if they're not eager to
actually get in and start onboarding.
So I do think it's okay to do things
manually and figure out the value of
onboarding manually for quite some time.
And I think it's really similar
to like marketing, for example,
where you're betting on something.
Like I bet that if I make this change.
To this process, this
is going to be outcome.
And you don't find out until three
months later, whenever it is, it's
not going to be a short term when
oftentimes you might see small kinds
of things, but to really prove that it
is going to be a longer term kind of
project that you have to figure out.
Yeah, totally.
One I was going to call it a hack.
I don't know if it's hack, but one
way to prove value a little bit
faster than I've done in the past is.
When your product teams, if you're in
some sort of tech space, when your product
teams are launching a new feature, taking
that specific feature and incorporating a
little talk track about it in onboarding
calls, because then you could actually
go back and say, it's especially
when you have a large app, right?
When there's multiple features,
multiple verticals, multiple
things you can do in there.
We all know that not every customer
needs every single thing activated in
that first moment, and it's all about
ongoing activation and all that, but
whenever there's a new feature launching.
That can be a quick way to say, all
right, we're going to incorporate this
into our talk track, and we might not
do it to this depth for every single
feature, but to prove that onboarding is
impacting activation, you can say for the
next a hundred customers, we are going
to proactively talk about this specific
feature, and then let's measure over the
next three months usage of that feature.
And odds are, because it's new
and flashy and you're talking
about it with customers.
You can at least prove that the act of
describing something or talking about
something or educating on something in
onboarding, this could also, mind you,
could be one to one or in app or webinar.
Like you can build a strategy around
that specific thing in any of those
fashions and then measure that and
then go back and say, all right,
Again, here's a small hypothesis.
We talked about this feature.
All of a sudden, 90 percent of customers
are activating it and using it.
How do we do more of this for our
less used features or better yet for
those features that we know are value
adds and specific to customers goals?
Like how do you focus on that piece of it?
So you can get small
samples of data in that way.
But I love what you said about, and
I agree, don't start, don't even try
to start with the complex reports
or complex automations of reporting
of that kind of nature, because half
the time you don't even know what it
is you're looking for or measuring.
And then I love the second thing you
said, start manually there, but I
love the second thing you said too
about finding potentially some other
metrics that you can also impact.
Maybe more generic things that aren't
necessarily onboarding related.
Things like, even CSAT
six months down the road.
Are customers who talk to your team
and onboarding more satisfied than not?
And no one's, especially at the senior
level, no one's going to care about
the nitty gritty of the details.
We're looking for patterns and trends
of yes, now they are 40 percent
more likely to be satisfied or
They are 40 percent more likely to
activate this feature and use it.
And enough of those little moments
can do two things, start to prove some
value, but also hopefully give you
some confidence that you're actually
heading down the right direction.
Cause it can get I've hit my head
against the wall so many times.
I'm trying to run reports and trying to
prove thoughts that I thought were true.
And then either not having the data
or not knowing how to present it or
not knowing how to tell that story.
Or doing all of that stuff in front
of my C suite and then it not being
correlated to the actual quarterly goals
or business metrics that we're after.
So it is a lot of trial and error.
It is a lot of, candidly, it's
a lot of guessing at times.
And, betting on yourself, like you said,
or betting on the thing and saying,
This is what I think is going to happen.
I have enough confidence to try it.
And I might not even try it with, and
that's the other thing, you don't have to
try it with every single onboarding CSM
on your team or every single customer.
Like really start small, pick one
thing, pick 10 customers, start
to find some patterns in there.
Cause I do think it will take a long
time to actually prove business value.
But you can prove small values to yourself
and small truths to yourself early on,
which can build more momentum for you
to keep going and start to get at least
some buy in from some people around you.
Yeah.
I was going to say too, if anyone is
in a company where you don't realize
revenue until your customer is activated,
then you should have leadership buy in.
Yeah.
Immediately.
I've been trying to think of like, why
did I have buy in for my leadership team?
And I think I will say, I think
part of it was that I had spent
most of my career in sales.
So I knew the metrics that
revenue leaders cared about.
And I was like used to communicating them.
I was used to communicating
my goals and how I was hitting
them and how that was going.
I think a lot of onboarding and
CS people are helpers and they're
people who are like want to support
other people and they're not so
good at speaking up for themselves.
So that's, One kind of piece of it.
The other piece of, I think why I had
buy on buy in is that we were a SAS and
marketplace product monthly revenue from
our customers, but we really made money
when they had success on our marketplace.
And so it was really advantageous for the
company to get them up and running quickly
and to get their marketplace listings.
Done really so that people would
actually purchase on the marketplace.
So I think that's like a piece of
it too, where if there, and I think,
probably half of our customers
have a business model like that.
If you're a POS system or something
like that, where you're actually making
the most of your money, once your
customer is truly activated, it's not
just a recurring monthly subscription.
And I think that is a point where you
should have access to a ton of metrics
and you should be looking at how much.
Money they're bringing in their
first 14 days, first 30 days.
And you should be trying to
get that number as big as you
can, as quickly as you can.
And I think that's like a, actually like a
really easy way to start tracking and like
really showing the value of onboarding.
Yeah, totally.
Even if you can do things like time to
first value, like we're all concerned
about value and there's plenty of
values along the way, but is there is
there one little piece of value that
you can at least measure time on, like
something to give yourself something
to latch on to, even like focusing on
unhealthy customers, people that have
churned, people that have not activated,
people that haven't used specific
features, and then going back to your
onboarding process if you have one and
saying, did we talk about those things?
If not, it's probably not a surprise
that they didn't do those things.
And if yes, And this is again, to
what you were saying earlier, like not
just the reporting, but look inward
more often than pointing fingers
at sales or marketing or support or
not having tools or even leadership.
Did we talk about that thing?
If yes, and they still didn't activate,
then we're talking about it wrong.
Did we present the value incorrectly?
Did we present it too soon?
Did we confuse customers?
Did we not really teach them what it is?
Cause it's easy to.
It's always easy to point
fingers back at sales and say
they didn't set expectations,
or they miss sold this customer.
But a lot of that is also adjustable and.
And also if you're finding that true,
then own that too, and go share feedback
with your sales teams and say, Hey,
I've actually have noticed that, these
10 customers that came from cam, they
all got hung up on this one thing.
Or is there an opportunity to talk
about that one thing differently or
bring it up sooner in the process?
So there's a lot of there's
a lot of need to look inward.
I think if you're trying to really
build this program out, it's, and I've
done both Both versions of this where
I've just complained and said, I wish
I had more tools and wish I had more
buy in and wish I had more support
and that didn't change anything.
So I was in the same place or I leaned
in and tried some things and tested
some things and measured some things and
shared those numbers over and over again,
and tried to tie it back to business
goals and business metrics where I can.
And that.
Generally has helped or has gotten the
ears of at least some folks to listen.
I think the overarching message to me
is that nobody's going to come save
you, and you have to save yourself.
Leadership is probably not going
to understand onboarding, and it is
your job to show them why it matters.
It's hard on top of onboarding already
typically has a super busy job, but that's
just the reality of the position and it's
going to be for the next 5 to 10 years.
I think 1 thing I would love to talk
about if we do have any executives or
members of leadership that are watching.
Do you have any tips for how they
can better support or empower
their onboarding teams to.
Take ownership of the higher level
business metrics and their impact.
Yeah.
I think one thing that I've always had
our executives do at most places I've
worked at when I've actually got to own
the program or own the teams is have
them join calls, have them sit in on
a onboarding call front to end with a
customer, not only will that customer feel
incredibly special that your leadership is
sitting there, but it is very eyeopening
what actually gets talked about,
how much work goes into those calls.
Cause I think part of the battle is.
And this is to no one's fault, but if you
don't know what's going on in those calls
or in the day to day of an onboarding rep,
you also don't know actually what is going
on in the day to day of an onboarding rep.
And so I've been in, I've been in that
middle position of trying to protect
the integrity of the team and their
wellbeing and their actual time.
When I have a leader telling
me, why can't we do more?
You're doing 25 a month per person.
Why can't you do 30 of there
are more hours in the day.
So it's also helping them understand
What actually goes into a 30 minute call.
There's some prep ahead of that.
There's notes after that.
There's talking to customers.
There's feedback that gets collected.
There's all that information
that gets shared.
So I think the biggest thing you can do
as an executive is join some of those
calls, sit in on some of those meetings,
actually hear from the reps and from
the customers, their actual words get
some of that firsthand experience.
And anytime I've done that.
One of two things has happened.
If the person has already bought in to
the concept, they are even more bought
in and then it's easier to then have
conversations and follow up and say,
Hey, we're going to try this because
of X, Y, Z, because they have some
context as to how that call went down.
And then the other version of that
is people that haven't been bought
in have literally come back and told
me or make comments of wow, that is
a lot harder than I thought it was.
I had a design executive
one time come and.
It was one of the coolest moments of
my life where, or not my life, but of
my career, maybe of my life, but of my
career and come back and tell me like,
yeah, we actually need to do some design
work and because they thought it was so
intuitive and so easy to click around, but
actually watching a customer get confused
and stuck and not being able to progress
and then wondering why aren't they
activating this part of our application?
So there are oftentimes things like
design feedback, marketing feedback,
sales feedback, onboarding feedback.
Again, it's not pointing
directions any one way.
It's looking at all of that and
building a more cohesive journey.
And then another thing that as a like
manager of an onboarding team that you
could do is really share your goals
with those executives and ask more
importantly, Do these goals align with
where you want this business to go?
Or are we heading in the
right direction together?
Because I also don't want to just be
setting arbitrary goals for my team, or
metrics, or KPIs that aren't impacting
the business, because then you're
risking this team being dissolved,
or not having the resources it needs.
Plus, When that team, at least in my
experience, when that team senses that
they are impacting the business, I think
they get more excited about their job.
They get more excited to talk to customers
like that emotion really presents
itself to customers and internally.
And that energy I think is exciting.
And I've had this comment from other,
especially when I used to work in
office, in pods and everyone's there.
I've had other sales leaders and other
CS leaders come and tell me we love
the energy from your teams and from
that section of the office and it's fun
hearing them talk to customers and have
a good time in those initial moments.
And again, that's some of that
qualitative stuff, but I do believe
that initial impression that's left
and that experience that customer gets.
Does matter in addition to obviously
activating and using the features and
products and services, but that coupled
with that powerful experience upfront
and that streamlined handoff and feeling
special, even beyond sales and marketing,
I think does have an impact on longterm
retention and customer satisfaction.
Yeah, I definitely agree with that.
I would also say if you
are a leader, invite.
Your onboarding leaders to
your executive meetings.
I think a lot of times it's sales,
marketing product and onboarding.
And that's the whole, I
think it's a persona thing.
I really do think that's a huge part.
That's the problem is onboarding
has a really hard time advocating
for themselves, generally the type
of people who are in onboarding
or customer success generally.
And so as a leader.
These people are not going to be
like your VP of revenue and your VP
of sales who are going to be asking
for a seat at the table all the time.
You have to empower these people.
And let them know that you care about
their role and you care about their impact
and you actually want to hear about it.
You have to empower this department,
all departments, but this department
specifically, you can't wait for them to
ask for a seat at the table and you have
to invite them and give them the space
and then actually listen to them when
they're speaking and give them a real
opportunity to speak rather than just
like having them sit on the sidelines.
Yeah, that is such a good one.
I've had to fight for my way to
that table from time to time.
I'll share this story because I think
it's very related to what you're
saying, but even like I was in, I was
traveling to another office for a leader
meeting one time and I was a leader on
an onboarding function and we had our
like, so I was like, cool I've made it.
I've been invited to at least
be in the discussion and in the
conference rooms and we did all that.
And then unbeknownst to me, there
was another invite that had gone out
to the, to those leaders to go out
to dinner that night and everyone
but me went to that dinner to the
point where like my own counterparts
were like, sure, are you coming?
And I was confused as to coming where?
And then we both connected the dots.
And I was like, Oh, yeah, I'm not invited
to that thing, which candidly hurt.
And, I put on a face and was
like, that's not a big deal.
I was going to go eat
something else anyway.
And then I left and I
was like, that sucks.
Like I'm still not even, and it's, it
sounds silly and dumb, but it's things
like not being even included on that
email alias, and it wasn't intentional.
I just wasn't on the
CS leaders at whatever.
com and it's things like that.
It took, and again, it took
a while at this specific job.
It took me about a year to get to
that point of, all right, now I'm
actually, and when, once it worked.
Then I was presenting monthly to
the CRO and the CMO and all of
their VPs across all functions.
So like it did get buy in.
But man, clawing my way up
to get a seat at that table.
And part of how I did that is.
I remember leading into like
business reviews internally.
I'd be asked to put together
data on the onboarding program.
I wasn't invited into those QBRs
initially and leading up to them.
I'm getting asked questions about
the data literally during them.
I'm getting Slack messages about the
data and asking questions about the data.
And after that, I'm getting
post work about the data.
How do you, we need to change this or
we need to think about it this way.
And then I have no context to how
those questions went down or what the
conversation looked and felt like.
And I had, before this job, I had
worked at one where I was on the
senior leadership team and was
included in all those meetings.
So my kind of passive aggressive
feedback was, I don't even actually,
like I've sat in these meetings.
I know there's nothing that special
happening in these closed doors,
but what's actually a waste of
my time and your time is that.
I could have just been in there
and answer this in real time and
we would have moved on from this.
Or I could have had a better sense of
what senior leadership is looking for.
And now we're playing this back and
forth game and you're just messaging me.
And it is causing so
much work for both of us.
Why don't you just invite
me to this meeting and I can
present for five minutes.
And it took two rounds of that.
And then I finally got
invited to the next QBR.
And I was like, yes, we're
making some progress here.
But that was like a tangible way
where I found an opportunity.
And again, this kind of ties
to what you were saying.
I found an opportunity to weasel
my way into the business metrics
and into the business goal.
And it's if you guys are already talking
about this at a high level and you
think this program impacts that, let
me just hear that so I can quickly turn
around and put together the type of
reporting and the type of data, but I
love that you said that cause that's
such a pain and it's demotivating and
it's such an easy thing that a, at
least from our lens, it feels like an
easy thing that an executive can do.
And if it's not valuable, fine,
talk about that, but at least
give that person a chance.
Totally.
Yeah.
I had an almost identical experience to
you and to the story that you just shared.
So it must be a thing that happens
often to teams, but yeah, I had
to claw my way into those meetings
and what was really frustrating for
me was that we were, people were
constantly talking about onboarding.
Onboarding was on everyone's mouth.
Everyone's talking about it all the time.
I was the onboarding leader.
And I was never invited
to those conversations.
And then it would get back to me about,
Oh we talked all about this for an hour.
I'm going to summarize it
to you in two sentences.
Can you go do that?
It's okay, I have no context.
I have absolutely no idea what
you guys are talking about.
What's the business goal.
What are the new features that
are going to be coming out?
Cause I need to build
that into my process.
I need to know, not only do I need to
be able to have a seat so I can voice.
The impact that onboarding is
having, but also I need to know
every Thing that's happening.
If we are changing our positioning and
marketing, if we are changing our sales
process, if we're changing the product,
all of that directly impacts my job,
which directly impacts our customers.
I have to know that.
And I can't find out about
that afterward in a summary.
When there's really, there's no
reason for me to not be there.
There's absolutely no reason to not have
your onboarding leaders in your calls.
And if anything, it's such a
value add to have them there.
Yeah.
And when it's been like the opposite
of that is when I have been able to get
that buy in, not just me as a person, but
then my teams and the people supporting
my teams feel so empowered when you.
When you're literally listening to
your company's investor call and
they're talking about how onboarding
is impacting the business and the
bottom line because of customers going
through onboarding, like XYZ is true.
And so even though you and I
have both shared stories where
it's, it has been challenging
and it's been an uphill battle.
And quite frankly, I've also quit a
job because I didn't get that level
of buy in and it wasn't from like a.
It was more from the standpoint of you
hired me to do something and you're
inhibiting me from actually doing that
thing by not including me in these
conversations or in these, and it's not
like from a place of anger or frustration.
It's just I can't do my job.
So then you need to find, you need to
do something else or find somebody else,
because at some point I'm going to be
held accountable for metrics rightfully.
So I do agree.
I should be held accountable, but if I
can't have any input or any say or any
conversation or even any foresight into
it, to your point, how can you expect
me to then go convey that to customers
and convey that to my team and so on.
But yeah you said something that
resonated really well, which was
like, make it about the customer.
If I don't know this, the customer
is going to suffer because of this.
If I don't know that this
update's coming, the customer's
not going to be able to do that.
If I know our sales targets are
changing, or if I don't know our sales
forecast or targets are changing, and
now all of a sudden there's an influx
of onboardings that we can't get to.
That's a negative customer
experience because we can't
help all those customers out.
So wherever possible make it about
the customer and then make it about
revenue and do that in tandem and
hopefully You get through to somebody
and you can break some make some
breakthroughs and Start to convey that
value and you have to do it ongoing.
It's not a one and done thing.
It's not a, we did good one
quarter and all of a sudden I'm
a director of onboarding and I
get all the budget in the world.
Absolutely not.
Doesn't work that way.
You have to stick with it.
You gotta be consistent.
You have to keep trying
and changing and evolving.
And we say.
Onboarding never ends for that reason.
It's not just the act of the
onboarding with a customer.
It's all those things around it.
It's what is working, what's not working.
It's tweaking the program.
It's making tiny little changes.
It's, and that doesn't mean we say
this to our customers, the heroes.
That doesn't mean sit and overhaul your
entire template and process every month
and spend hours upon hours doing it.
That is literally, we tried one thing.
It worked to this degree.
Great.
Let's keep doing that.
We also ask customers to do this 10
task and nine of them didn't do it.
What's wrong with that task?
What can I do differently?
What, start with, what
can I do differently?
And if you do that.
And then go share feedback with,
your sales or marketing or product
team, as long as you can convey that
you did something and then ask for
help or then ask for them to change
something again you're increasing your
chances of getting some buy in and
some collaboration, because those are
going to be your champions to those
leadership meetings, to those QBRs
that you might not get invited to.
At least if you have other people
that can vouch for you or say your
name or say your program's name enough
times, that might also then trigger
something in a future person's head.
Head to say, you know what, Kim's name
comes up every time we have these things.
Where is Kim?
Why isn't she sitting at this table?
We would think again, try
not advising to quit your job
without anything else lined up.
Sometimes you got to get extreme and
no joking aside though, I think it's
cool to see it is selfishly cool to see
directors of onboarding and onboarding
being prioritized that places, The
fact that you and I work at a company
that is building onboarding software
is a Testament in and of itself.
Yeah, cool.
This is great.
This is a lot.
One thing that came up much earlier
that fits into this conversation
that I think we could talk about
next is leadership product, believing
that onboarding can be solved by.
Product entirely and believing that
basically onboarding is just like
an onboarding team or an onboarding
process is just like a stop gap until
the product gets so intuitive that you
don't need an onboarding team and you
don't need a person to guide customers.
So we won't talk about it yet, but I think
that is a topic that we probably both
have a lot to say about, but probably
most onboarding teams come across to.
That's a great one.
That's a great one to get into next time.