Gianna’s CLG Best Practices

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Thanks for tuning into this exclusive edition of GTM News Desk presented by the

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TAC Network. This show is hosted by me, Nick Bennett, and my co-host, Mark Kill

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ins.

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Now let's get to the goods on with the show.

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Time for the goodies.

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The exclusive ideas, the exclusive tips, the stuff that's deep in Gianna's

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brain

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that we're going to pull out.

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Right, Gianna?

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I think so.

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I'm at a conference.

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It's a little empty in there.

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Let's see what happens.

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How much coffee have you had today?

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Do you drink coffee?

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Number one?

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Oh, I sure do.

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That's my lifeline.

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I've had 16-ounce and before that I had a cup of crappy hotel-made coffee.

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I've already had an 8 a.m.

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Walk with one of our investors.

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So I'm fired up and a little brainless.

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So let's see.

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Let's see what goods I have in there.

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So we left off talking about the customer journey.

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You made that statement of like, hey, the best marketers, the best

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executives, the best CEOs.

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Think about the customer journey.

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When I was at HubSpot, Darmesh basically indoctrinated everyone

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into this idea of SFTC, "Solve for the customer."

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David Kansil and Elias, when I was at Drift, put the customer at the center

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of everything you do.

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It's again, easy to say, harder to actually do, especially as you scale

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and you get bigger.

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So I want to ask you, what are the ways in which you think about

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taking customer-led growth and using it to grow revenue?

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Like, what is that approach and framework that you think is

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the way to educate the company around?

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So I think first is again, alignment with business goals and outcomes.

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And so everyone's trying to get to efficient growth.

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And so this should be a no-brainer, right?

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Like, CFO should understand this concept.

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And so first I would ask the CFO, what measurements have we understood

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about retention?

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How much money does it actually save us in retaining a customer

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versus going out and trying to generate new revenue?

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Because now all of a sudden, the CFO is going to give you your numbers

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to help prove that focusing in on the customer and engagement

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is going to help the company from a profitability growth standpoint.

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And that's where everyone, that's what every investor is looking at.

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That's what every CFO, every CEO is talking about.

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And so the CFO can spoon-feed you the proof to your pudding.

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So once you have those numbers, you want to use them in your presentations

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etc. And so now it's thinking about, okay, now that we understand

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and everyone understands the value that we're going to bring

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because we deeply believe in retention and expansion as our growth lever.

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Let's talk about how customer marketing and customer-led growth can support

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that, right?

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How it's going to support that is really tactically thinking

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about the different programs you can use in the customer voice,

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in building these relationships.

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So it first starts at identification.

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Identify who your strongest advocates are.

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Identify who within your user base of, I'm sure, thousands, right?

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Of users.

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Who's talking about you when you're not in the room?

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And how can you build a relationship with them so that you can help

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build a process around it proactively to use their voice?

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And then it's thinking about all of the different ways.

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And as we said before, like really following that customer journey

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and understanding the right piece, the right touch.

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And so what I would do is really think about what would have the biggest

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bang for your buck in terms of which programs, because you want to approach it

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or I would approach it as build a program, allow it to be really strong,

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really get the buy-in of the team that you're serving and then build from there

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So whether you start with testimonials or you start with references

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or you start with tracking job changes, you really want to think about

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which one you can do well.

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Build your stories, resell it internally and always talk about.

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And this is where like my sales enablement hot comes to play.

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In order to roll out a program, you have to get people on board.

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And so you can't just build a killer kick ass.

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Let's say again, we keep going to reference easy.

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It's on my mind reference program.

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You have to think about how do you get the sales team to really buy into it.

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And you also have to get the customer success team on board

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because they feel like they own the customer.

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Because they own the revenue numbers when it comes to NRR.

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And so one, you have to share that and say, you know what, my goal is NRR too.

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Here's where we're going to use customers.

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This is why when having that strong identification of more

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referenceable customers is going to have customer success, truly believe

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that that you're going to care for their customers because they're scared,

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right?

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And so it's really about getting and taking not just the programmatic approach

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of building strong process to put it in place, but also to get

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the right buy in from your teams.

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If I to repeat that back, identify, activate, measure.

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Yes.

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Thank you.

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You like that?

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I love that.

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OK, I am.

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I am.

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I am a customer marketer.

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Anyway, I'm just I was looking up.

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I don't know if we needed other acronym.

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Marketers already have created enough of them.

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I am.

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I could do it for days.

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A little race is out for one from Barmesh.

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I'm a huge iteration person, probably to a fault.

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She's even he's the biggest one.

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But anyway, yeah, like a crawl walk, run approach seems doable.

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You know, in Iran, your company's name is champion.

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You have to identify your champions, identify people.

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But you also you said this explicitly.

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You have to have internal champions as well.

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Yeah, you absolutely do.

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You need your internal champions because you need people to buy into what you

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're

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doing, right?

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So it's again, it's kind of common sense, right?

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Like you need the people out there to believe in you.

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You need the people internally to believe in you as well.

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And at the end of the day, if you're aligning to that common goal,

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people are going to get on board.

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People want help.

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We need support.

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Life is hard.

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No one wants to feel like they're going through this alone, right?

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Support system always helps for sure.

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It's all interesting because like as a field market, I always used to say, like

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the sales team was my internal customer.

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Like that was who I was trying to make happy with it with also the CS team,

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because

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you I needed both sides of it.

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And at some point, you know, equally important as like the customers and

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prospects themselves.

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And it was something that I strived and I think it goes back to like building

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strong relationships.

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Like as a marketer, it's like, how do you be looked at as a tool in someone's

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arsenal versus a marketer that's just in corporate that's jamming stuff down,

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you know, CS or the sales team's mouth.

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I love that neck.

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Yeah.

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That's about the alignment, right?

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Like it's the difference in saying like, this is my program and I need you to

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do

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this because I need to look good.

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And this is my program versus, Hey, I am building this because I know you have

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really hard metrics to get to.

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And I believe this is going to impact this.

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So what do you say?

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Are you on board?

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Can I help you?

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Very different approach because it's again, tying it to the outcome of the

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business and other people's targets as opposed to your own self-serving need.

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100%.

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Let's let's talk about customer reference programs as someone that has built

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them

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before.

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I'm a big fan of them.

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I've probably not built anything like too extravagant.

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So don't, you know, no, I don't want to.

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I'm not going to have this one, but I have this one.

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But like, how do you design a proper one?

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Like, what does that, what does that look like from, from start to finish?

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Yeah.

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So again, it starts with making sure that you have the right customer

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representation.

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What's in it for the customer is everyone today is worried about one job

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security.

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So they're trying to network and they're trying to build their brands.

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And so when you think about what's in it for the customer, one, you want to top

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the people who are truly happy so that it doesn't feel like a stretch so that

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they really feel like they can have a very easy conversation.

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And second, you want to align it so that the person they're talking to is going

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to be of value to them, right?

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Someone that makes sense.

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So you're helping them build their network.

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You're helping them be a thought leader.

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And so you want to highly contextualize an relevant conversation.

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And so I'd really again think about the diversity and who you have of your

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referenceable pool so that you could really curate very specific and targeted

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interactions.

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That's, I think the first key to it.

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The second key to it is more on the internal side, which is understanding what

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you're trying to get to with a reference program.

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Is it the metric of increasing win rate?

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Is it time to close?

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Is it the harder deals that you're trying to close or just trying to close

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those,

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you know, very closeable deals faster?

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So the nuance in what the objective is of the sales team is going to be very

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critical to how you build your program to again, make sure that you're aligning

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to what the VP of sales is trying to get to.

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Because that's how you maintain buy-in.

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Solve that.

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See, Mark, that's we could have done this in the path.

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This is so much good stuff there that like, I don't know, I just took away a

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ton of

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values.

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So thanks, Nick.

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So, but the reference program is, is like one small sliver of customer led

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growth,

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right, Gianna?

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Like, I just want to make sure we call that out.

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That's like, yes.

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It's a tactical program.

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That's part of the strategy that is this growth channel.

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Agreed.

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So when you, when you talk about this growth channel to your leadership team,

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and you already made some great comments and suggestions on how to get the CFO

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to buy in, like, because CFOs are so data driven, like just talking their

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language data, numbers, dollars, cents, how do you and who should you?

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Two-part question and then we can wrap up because this is going to be, I think,

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a good amount to unpack.

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Who should you get to be one of your internal champions?

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You already talked about the CFO and how you can get that CFO to be a champion,

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numbers, cents, dollars.

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They love that stuff.

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Who else do you need to get to become a champion and how do you align with them

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unite with them to help you retain and expand revenue using customer led growth

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as a channel?

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I feel like I'm going to prove your earlier point when you said that customer

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market should roll into the CCO, but, you know, getting the CCO on board is

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critical

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because you are, after all, touching the customer, right?

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And part of the influence that you're driving to the business is on the

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retention

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and expansion measure.

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However, it is also generating new business, right?

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Like the customer is a flywheel and you want to once a champion, always a

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champion.

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And so you really want to think about it in this holistic journey.

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So I think there's not just one internal champion, but it really is the C suite

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And if companies truly want to be customer obsessed, then they need a very

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strong customer marketing strategy with this idea of customer led growth and

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really

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thinking about how it impacts each of the growth teams and growth team is right

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Customer success as well, but the impact is going to be on both sides.

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You really need alignment across the C suite and even product.

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Think about how much power and value you get from the customer voice in helping

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to dictate roadmap, helping to dictate growth strategy and what new markets you

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may want to go to, how you want to evolve, how you want to change.

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And so the customer is your growth strategy from literally every facet of the

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business and it's exciting to hear that everyone from VCs to PEs.

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Well, P's have always been there, but now C suite, right?

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Everyone is ready for this true, true effort in customer led growth.

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I think that mindset is finally caught up, but the how is where people are

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still

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getting stuck? The what is where people are still getting stuck.

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And this is really where customer marketing should now have that seat up

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and say, no, we drive this impact and we are ready and here's how we're going

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to

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do it. We'll leave it at that customer led growth is your growth strategy.

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Period or the customer is your growth strategy.

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I forget exactly what you said.

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I might have my mind and misspoke.

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Sorry. The brilliance that I said before.

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I'm a one hit wonder.

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I say it once and then it's out my brain.

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I don't know, but that was brilliant.

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I am brilliant.

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I need more coffee too.

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You are brilliant.

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Nick, and you are super talented.

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You drive the best programs.

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Oh, well winners.

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Gianna, thank you so much.

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Thank you.

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We'll get you on the next one.

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All right, folks. Thank you so much.

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Hope you enjoyed it.

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See you on the next episode.

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Peace.

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And until next time, heap of people first, everybody.