00:07 Pim Roelofsen: Welcome to The MedMen Show. This is Andy — 00:08 Andy Whyte: — and that's Pim. And in this episode we're going to talk about not throwing things over the fence — or the handover from sales to Customer Success. 00:18 Pim Roelofsen: I think we've all worked in organizations where we've seen what good looks like. We've also — I don't know about you — but I've seen the very definition of terrible. Which is, as you said, throwing it over the wall. I've actually seen worse than that. I've seen where Customer Success has to come over, knock on the door, walk round, pick it up, and walk it back. No one's even thrown it to them — meaning the customer. 00:44 Andy Whyte: Of course, we should probably explain the analogy a little bit. So the seller closes the deal and as soon as that's done, they move on to the next thing. And it's now Customer Success's baby — the onus is on them to take care of it going forward. And we are biased — but we have seen this time and time again with our customers and ourselves, where there is no better handover process than MEDDIC. There is nothing the team will want to know or need to know that MEDDIC isn't going to tell them, teach them, give them the perfect insights on. 01:29 Andy Whyte: As soon as you, as a business, start considering MEDDIC as a cross-functional common language — as well as a full customer lifecycle language and framework — you can start tapping into this and ultimately end up with the world's greatest handover. It's like something out of the Olympic relay race final. Because when you're going from selling and closing into value delivery, it's not like the value, the stakeholders, and the process knowledge you've built up is suddenly disappearing. 02:05 Pim Roelofsen: Right. Let's go into that. So — value. If I have a new business win, I can say to my colleagues in Customer Success: here's why we won this opportunity. Here's the value this customer is now expecting. This is the pain we're looking to help this customer solve. Here is the value we've promised they'll achieve when they solve that pain. So this is now your goal — your KPI. The metrics become the mutual goal between you and your customer. 02:36 Andy Whyte: Exactly right. And of course this is how we will do it. Because we're often selling technical solutions and there are many ways to do the same thing. So being clear about this is not just why we won — these are the things the customer really bought into, what separated us from the competition. But here is actually how we're going to do it. These are the integrations, this is the UI the customer expects, these are the reports they're expecting to see. All of that can be very clearly communicated. So that's value. But who are we communicating to? 03:11 Pim Roelofsen: Yeah, absolutely. Because your champion should ultimately become the hero of the story — in value delivery. Once everything is in place, the solution is in motion, they're deriving the value from it. So as a champion and stakeholder, they don't suddenly become irrelevant. There might be other people involved as well. But Customer Success should know: this is the champion persona we're working with in this initiative, and this is our champion specifically. 03:43 Andy Whyte: And one of the things we see a lot is that the deal gets closed, Customer Success picks it up, and because it's now moved from a business engagement to more of a user engagement — what tends to happen is the users become more prominent. They start using the solution. And once the champion starts to disengage, it's like — well, you need to go to your own work. And the economic buyer is long gone by this point. And the thing I always get really passionate about is this idea that Customer Success needs to remain engaged with the champion and the right buyer. Because it's not Customer Success's job alone to remain engaged — it's the entire organization's job. Everybody needs to be responsible for keeping those relationships alive, from the pre-sales team to the post-sales team. Because that's what's going to — at the very least — secure a customer success story. 04:52 Andy Whyte: Even if the AE is not involved in upsells and renewals, the very least they should want to have is the most powerful thing they can have in their locker — a success story. "I went to see this company. They had these problems that were implicating them in this way. With our solution, they solved these problems, uncovered this much value. What a great story — I can help you just the same." Every salesperson should see that as the most valuable thing they can get. So it's very much not just Customer Success's responsibility to remain engaged with their stakeholders. They are key to making sure the project stays top of mind, that all the value we've promised gets delivered because it's still a high priority. And when renewals and upsells come round, they're going to have to be involved again because it won't just be the users buying those — the champion and economic buyer will be back too. 05:52 Pim Roelofsen: Yeah. And typically when you're doing value delivery — if it's the first or even the second time you're dealing with this customer — you're still not maximizing the full potential scope you have with them. So if you consider this from a full go-to-market perspective, and you want to build as much value and success as possible — if you don't do this across functions, with selling and value delivery and revenue teams working together, you're not setting yourself up to build that with the customer. And once you do approach it that way, you're creating these little flywheels of customers who are going to refer other businesses because they've had a great experience. When you do this really well, it massively pays off. 06:40 Andy Whyte: Yeah. And then the third pillar of course is process. Maybe your first engagement with the customer is going to be more complex than the upsell or renewal. Because I've had this — in terms of throwing over the fence, you do a slightly better job than that, but then the team that had to renew the business wasn't aware of how complex the paper process was, and how much needed to happen before the next stage. And so you don't get ahead of it. The point is: by the way, this organization — this is what their processes look like. Not only should you be prepared, but perhaps you're already thinking about the renewal wrap. Let's get ahead of it. And that's going to be a good experience for the customer as well. 07:29 Andy Whyte: Customers don't actually enjoy buying that much. It's not fun. I know that might sound odd, but they really don't. And that's not a bad thing. If you're conscious of it — whether you're a salesperson approaching an engagement or a customer success person approaching a new sale or upsell — your goal should be to help them have the most efficient and diligent process possible. All they want to do is make sure they're doing their due diligence, getting the best solution, the best deal — as efficiently as possible. If you take that mindset, it's a win for everybody. 08:08 Pim Roelofsen: And customer experience is also something MEDDIC does incredibly well. Because the way we do MEDDIC — and not all MEDDIC is equal — is that we talk about metrics being M1, M2 and M3. The idea is we engage with a new prospective customer and instead of interrogating them in discovery by asking "what keeps you awake at night?" and trying to find pain that way — we come in prepared. We talk about how we've helped organizations just like them to solve pains they probably have, and our goal is to find pain via consensus — them agreeing they have those pains by seeing how we've helped other organizations solve them. And then we pivot to the M2, which is where we personalize the metrics — what value they'll get from solving those pains. It's their version of the same story. 09:28 Andy Whyte: I love that. And when you sell like that and you're qualifying properly, it should close. And the M2 becomes an M3 — which is exactly the same thing. The only difference is we're now passing it to our friends in Customer Success, and it becomes the goals and KPIs we're aiming to achieve together. So for the customer it's a great experience — the salesperson came in and instead of bashing them over the head with discovery questions, showed them how they've helped organizations like them, adapted the conversation to "this is how we'd help you with that same story," and then we've become partners. Now the Customer Success team is engaged. They know exactly what's been promised — and better still, they're working to help the customer achieve it. 10:26 Andy Whyte: It's the best customer experience: this is the value you could get, because this is the value we've helped other organizations get. Let me personalize that for you. Now let's deliver that value for you. And of course the best thing for the whole go-to-market team is that once you achieve those M3s, they become M1s for other prospective customers. Everybody wins. Imagine — you're my prospective customer. I come in and say to Pim: "You work for Cisco Meraki. Let me talk to you about how I've helped organizations at the same size as you." You say that's interesting — you have those problems. I therefore say: "Let's now personalize what this would look like for you if we were to bring the same value we brought to that customer." You say great, let's do it. We become partners. The Customer Success team engages and helps you achieve those KPIs. Together we're achieving them. 11:18 Andy Whyte: And then I launch a software platform that helps you even further to do more with MEDDIC — to better implement it, better operationalize it. And instead of coming in and saying "look at all these bells and whistles and features," I come in and say: "Hey, remember that organization I told you about where we introduced you to all the value you could get? Well, they've been using the software. Look at how it's helped them." So even though you're an existing customer, I'm still using an M1 to introduce you to new value you could get. So it works for the full cycle. It's a flywheel — connecting value discovery to value delivery. That's never really been done before in quite this way. 12:01 Pim Roelofsen: Yeah — that's amazing. And I think underpinning value delivery with value, stakeholders and process, the way you do in selling, is very powerful. And one thing I specifically want to add to the process piece: imagine not being assumptive — not thinking "it's going to be the same next time." So if we've done that initial deal, the handover has been great, value delivery is in motion and aiming for the realization of that M3 — then when you introduce that new M1, there's no assumption things are going to play out the same way. It's about partnering with your customer and saying: "The last time we did this, here's how we went about it. What's changed, if anything?" 12:55 Andy Whyte: Where do I sign up! So in summary — MEDDIC is the perfect common language for the whole go-to-market team. Specifically once you've closed the deal, the sales team can introduce the post-sales and Customer Success team to exactly what value we're promising to deliver — via pain, metrics and decision criteria. Making sure we're engaging with the right stakeholders. The champion becoming — let's not forget — why we won. And it's really important we talk to our post-sales friends about the competition we've beaten, because those rivals can be knocking on the door nine months later when the renewal is on the horizon. Make sure we're ahead of them. 13:35 Andy Whyte: But also — if there was competition in the mix, there might be a detractor in the customer's business, whether it's a rival, a build-themselves option, or their own project that got pushed down the priority list. It's really important we let our friends in Customer Success know that person exists so they can at least be aware of them and work on building that relationship. And then of course the process elements — decision process and paper process — to make sure we're prepared for that renewal and that upsell. We're on the front foot, being proactive. And all of this leads to a great customer experience, particularly if you use the M1, M2 and M3 process to guide that customer through every new opportunity. 14:19 Pim Roelofsen: Here's to the world's best handover! 14:22 Andy Whyte: Cheers to that!
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