90: Harini Gokul - How to keep things "simple" at scale
Jan 12, 2025
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Harini Gokul, CCO at Entrust with extensive experience at Microsoft and AWS, dives into the evolving landscape of sales and customer success. She discusses the shift from outdated sequential sales models to modern strategies that focus on securing and growing customers. Gokul highlights the necessity for C-level executives to prioritize cross-functional collaboration and effective communication. Simplifying metrics is crucial for decision-making, as traditional customer metrics can fall short. Transforming organizations means challenging the status quo and embracing change.
Shift from traditional sales models to a customer-centric approach that focuses on ongoing engagement and satisfaction over initial sales.
Establishing cross-functional collaboration is essential for breaking down silos and providing cohesive customer experiences across departmental interactions.
Utilize specific, actionable metrics like time to value instead of traditional metrics like NPS to drive meaningful insights and improvements.
Deep dives
Outdated Sales Models
Traditional sales models from the 90s prioritize a sequential approach, viewing the sales process as linear, which is no longer effective in today's subscription-based economy. Instead of relying on large sales forces solely for initial sales, businesses must shift to understanding ongoing customer needs and how they engage with products over time. In this context, consumers today are likely to adopt a subscription model, purchasing services on a monthly basis, which requires companies to adapt their organizational structures to support continuous engagement and value delivery. This necessitates a focus on customer success initiatives that prioritize adoption and satisfaction, rather than merely focusing on the initial sale.
Importance of Revenue Responsibility
Organizations should instill a culture of revenue responsibility across all functions rather than limiting it to sales teams, as every department influences top-line revenue. Customer success teams must clearly articulate how their activities contribute to revenue retention and growth, emphasizing their integral role in the business. Establishing measurable outcomes, such as net revenue retention, helps unify teams around common goals and aligns their activities with the overarching business objectives. By holding all functions accountable, companies can enhance accountability and ensure that everyone understands their impact on the organization's financial health.
Customer-Centric Organizational Changes
To create a truly customer-centric organization, companies must recognize and reshape outdated structures that disconnect teams like customer success, support, and sales. Instead of functioning in silos, cross-functional collaboration is essential for delivering cohesive customer experiences and understanding customers' needs comprehensively. This includes integrating systems and data across departments to facilitate shared visibility into customer interactions, enabling teams to provide better service and support. By establishing interconnectedness among functions, organizations can respond to customer inquiries more efficiently and effectively.
Metrics That Drive Action
Using actionable metrics is crucial for understanding customer success and improving overall performance within organizations. Traditional metrics, like Net Promoter Score (NPS), can provide a general sense of customer satisfaction but may not drive actionable insights for improvement; hence, more specific and immediate metrics should be prioritized. For instance, measuring time to value can give organizations a clear understanding of how quickly they meet customer needs, enabling them to make necessary adjustments to their support and engagement strategies. A streamlined focus on key metrics ensures that teams work towards improving customer experiences in practical and measurable ways.
Transformative Leadership for Change
Transformational leaders play a critical role in guiding businesses through necessary organizational changes to better serve customers and adapt to new models. They understand the importance of pushing boundaries beyond established norms, advocating for innovation while framing objectives around clear performance metrics. By fostering an environment where employees feel motivated to explore new approaches and take ownership of their roles in the broader company vision, leaders create pathways for effective change management. The willingness to disrupt the status quo, even if it requires initial investments in separate teams or systems, can lead to significant long-term improvements and competitive advantages.
The evolution of sales models, the critical role of customer success in driving revenue, and the responsibilities of C-level executives in fostering cross-functional collaboration with Harini Gokul, CCO @ Entrust, from a first principle perspective.
The challenges of implementing product-led sales strategies and the importance of simplifying metrics for effective decision-making. Why traditional customer metrics don’t work that well anymore and why it’s all about two things in business, no matter the scale:
Securing and growing customers.
Takeaways
C-level roles require a focus on company-wide outcomes, not just departmental interests.
Cross-functional problems often feel dangerous with little upside.
Sales teams often lack the skills to interpret data effectively.
Transforming organizations requires a willingness to challenge the status quo.
Sound Bites
"Revenue happens everywhere."
"What does good look like?"
Chapters
00:00 Rethinking Sales Models for Modern Business
12:04 The Role of Customer Success in Revenue Generation
24:06 Understanding C-Level Responsibilities and Cross-Functional Collaboration
28:19 Bridging Data Silos in Organizations
32:34 The Challenge of Product-Led Sales
36:47 Simplifying Metrics for Better Decision Making
39:11 Rethinking NPS and Customer Success Metrics
42:56 Time to Value: A Key Metric for Success
46:48 External Benchmarks and Customer Perspectives
49:40 Transforming Organizations for Modern Business
