Reflecting on Customer Success and Its Competitive Advantage

Dan Barrett is the Senior Vice President of Customer Success at MongoDB. With a background in sales, Dan has held various leadership roles in the technology industry. He started his career at IBM before moving on to Q Associates, Symantec, and ServiceNow. Dan joined MongoDB as a Regional Director for the UK and Ireland and has since been promoted to Vice President of Northern Europe and then to his current role as Senior Vice President of Customer Success.

In this episode, Dan discusses his transition from sales to customer success and the importance of aligning sales and customer success teams. Dan shares insights on reducing churn, proactive customer success strategies, and the changing expectations of customers in a consumption-driven world. He emphasizes the need for measuring and demonstrating the impact of customer success and the role of customer success in driving business outcomes. Dan also highlights the significance of cultivating advocates and engaging economic buyers throughout the customer journey.

Tune in to this conversation with John McMahon and John Kaplan on the Revenue Builders podcast.

HERE ARE SOME KEY SECTIONS TO CHECK OUT

[00:02:40] Dan's initial thoughts on transitioning from sales to customer success
[00:06:41] Organization structure: customer success, product-led sales, account management, and renewal
[00:09:19] Challenges of silos and lack of alignment between teams
[00:12:18] Building skills, trust, and impact in customer success
[00:15:14] Reviewing and addressing risks on a weekly basis
[00:17:48] Promoting internal talent and maintaining company culture
[00:19:59] Challenges in selecting and developing customer success leaders
[00:22:10] Understanding the complex root causes of churn
[00:26:00] Moving to a consumption-based model is the ultimate test of value
[00:29:47] Customer success is often the first to be cut due to lack of impact measurement
[00:32:00] A good customer success team should be able to pay for itself
[00:36:24] The importance of a positive customer experience and the potential impact on future projects
[00:39:00] Economic buyer engagement and the changing dynamics of the sales process
[00:47:09] The importance of aligning the customer journey with the software development lifecycle
[00:51:53] Being data-driven and analytical

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Learn more about aligning customer-facing teams to improve execution: 
https://forc.mx/48o1jyP

Learn more about Dan Barrett and about their company.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/newbusinesssales/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/mongodbinc/

HIGHLIGHT QUOTES

[00:54:26] "If I can't self-identify on how that makes me feel, I call it the indignity of the close. If I'm not understanding what that means, that the sale really begins with probably an objection or a no or somewhere, and I'm not comfortable with that, then I'm probably not gonna do so well in that sales career."
[00:55:41] "I wanna understand someone's character more so than anything. So I think those, As part of our structured interview framework, we're trying to focus more in the early stages of that process of identifying what are the aspects of someone's character and capability that we're looking for."
[01:01:41] "I think if the sales reps need to remember where they came from and help invest in that SDR 'cause it's gonna lead to success for them if they make those investments."