Building customer loyalty isn’t about quick wins - it’s about delivering outcomes that matter and aligning teams for success. This week on SalesTV.live we welcome Lara Barnes, SVP of Customer Success & Renewals at Sitecore.

In this episode, we’ll explore:

* How can you deliver outcomes that matter to customers to build trust and loyalty?

* What are the keys to seamless cross-departmental collaboration for customer success?

* What strategies help identify opportunities and mitigate risks across the customer lifecycle?

* How can leaders foster a customer-focused, high-performing culture?

An award-winning leader in customer success with over 25 years of experience in technology businesses, Lara specialises in building customer-centric approaches for her teams, aligning organisations to deliver measurable outcomes, and fostering loyalty through transformational leadership and collaboration.

Facts, the latest thinking, chat, and banter about the world of sales.

Come and join us for some lively discussion and debate.

This week's Guest was -

• Lara Barnes, SVP of Customer Success & Renewals at Sitecore

This week's Host was -

• Andy Hough, Founder & Director of The Institute of Sales Professionals

Transcript of SalesTV.live Early Edition 2024-11-26

Alex Abbott [00:00:00]:

Welcome to Sales TV, where we tackle the reality that there's no easy button in sales. If you're an account executive or customer success representative striving to build relationships and pipeline while navigating the challenges of modern sales, you're in the right place. In every episode, we explore one thing that brings you closer to achieving success without stress. So I am thrilled to host Lara Barnes today, a true powerhouse in the world of leadership, customer success, and customer experience. Lara brings over 25 years of expertise in building and leading high growth customer centric technology businesses. She's been recognized with the prestigious outstanding women in customer success award recently and as team leader of the year in tech in 2020. Her leadership has transformed teams and organizations, creating end to end SaaS customer success experiences while maintaining unwavering focus on delivering value and fostering trust. Lara's passion for helping customers achieve their goals and her innovative approach to creating winning teams make makes her an inspiring figure.

Alex Abbott [00:01:21]:

And as someone I've had the pleasure of working with, please join me in welcoming a transformational leader, Lara Barnes.

Lara Barnes [00:01:30]:

Hi. What a production. That was fantastic.

Alex Abbott [00:01:34]:

Oh, brilliant. Brilliant. You've done so much. You've done so much.

Lara Barnes [00:01:38]:

Yeah. I I I have done a lot. It's it does sound amazing. You don't actually feel it yourself though. You just you feel it's exhausting listening to how much I have done. But it has been fun, and there's loads of stuff I can share.

Alex Abbott [00:01:53]:

Yeah. Yeah. I bet there's some amazing stories for you to tell. Would would you add anything to that intro? Have I missed anything that you want to let our audience know?

Lara Barnes [00:02:04]:

I won a I won a transformation leader award last year. Gamesight gave me their transformation leader award, which was fantastic because I'd done the life cycle project across the business. And, that really did provide a huge amount of value to the company across and we can talk about that. But I love that. But I love the powerhouse piece. That's just perfect. I use that. I can put that on my LinkedIn.

Lara Barnes [00:02:30]:

But I in my title.

Alex Abbott [00:02:32]:

Indeed. How do you win all these awards? Does someone just come knocking on the door and say you've done amazing stuff?

Lara Barnes [00:02:38]:

Well I'm I'm not really the person that puts themself out there for those awards. Honestly it was my team that put me forward for the 2020 women in tech one. Yeah. Lead with the year 1. And then, somebody in my team who I just adore wrote wrote the the script for that one and I said, look I really wanna go in for this women in customer success one. Would you write the script for it? Because you seem to do really well. You want me the last one. And yeah, he wrote it and I I yeah.

Lara Barnes [00:03:09]:

I was one of the spotlight winners. There was 3 of us globally and it was amazing. And he also did the other one, the Gainsight transformation leader award. So he's actually gonna be hired, when I get my next job as my PR consultant.

Alex Abbott [00:03:25]:

Brilliant. And he and he's supporting women in tech. I love it.

Lara Barnes [00:03:28]:

Yeah. Yeah.

Alex Abbott [00:03:28]:

So many men are supporting women.

Lara Barnes [00:03:31]:

You need that. You do need it. You need your advocates around the business. And, you know, most of the the senior leaders are men, so you need to have those those individuals who are, rooting for you and are are there with you the whole way.

Alex Abbott [00:03:47]:

Yeah. Yeah. Indeed. Indeed. So let let's dive in with a with a relatively bold question. Right? So, you know, you've you've run many different teams as I'm before we've had the pleasure of working together. But since we were working together world, the world has moved on, and it continues to move on at a rapid pace.

Lara Barnes [00:04:08]:

Yeah.

Alex Abbott [00:04:09]:

But what what are some of the biggest challenges that you see across customer success and account executives in this fast paced b to b world?

Lara Barnes [00:04:20]:

I think from a broader scale, it's, ensuring that the customer success team have got an ability to show their value in the business, whether they're on a dashboard somewhere driving leads for the sales team to be, thinking about, and delivering upon. I think it comes down to the this how the sales team operate with the the customer success team too, how they are compensated, how they engage and work together. And I think how customer success is part of the go to market is another huge one for me. Mhmm. And, how customer success is seen and how and what they do in terms of playing in that whole process of go to market and how they're how they're measured.

Alex Abbott [00:05:20]:

Yeah.

Lara Barnes [00:05:20]:

But those are the things that I think are, you know, big challenges still in SAC businesses because everyone is just so siloed. And when you start looking at the overall process the customer goes through, there are so many different departments across that life cycle that touch that customer. That is still not seamless and pull through the cracks in those departmental silos. As well as everybody is not measured on delivering for the customer.

Alex Abbott [00:05:53]:

Yeah.

Lara Barnes [00:05:53]:

Everyone across that business, whether it's, you know, product put features out. So it's all about what features they're putting out and what deadlines they're gonna hit, and, you know, what's the road map. Then you've got marketing. They're looking at, you know, marketing leads for the sales team to go and close and and drum up business, but they're also there to help build out the brand. So they've got different metrics. And then you've got the sales team and the presales team. They're there to drive bookings. Then you've got the sales the the customer success team.

Lara Barnes [00:06:23]:

They're there for onboarding and ensuring that there's a a great onboarding. So it goes through to adoption, consumption, retention, driving NPS, advocacy, all those great stories so the sales team can use them. But then you will, you know, support. You go on. And not everybody is, like, threaded for the customer experience. And I think that's one of the main things that is so challenging to many of these SaaS businesses at the current time because we're seeing so many customers with very high expectations now. It's got worse, to be honest, over the past couple of years. Yeah.

Lara Barnes [00:07:01]:

Those customers wanting a better experience and expecting it, and it should be delivered. And that's not happening, as fast as the customer actually wants it because these organizations don't have the foundations in in order to identify those pain points, in terms of the systems and processes are not there foundationally to help those sales teams and customer success teams identify where those risks and opportunities are in the data and then in the tracking of where that customer is at any point in time in their life cycle.

Alex Abbott [00:07:38]:

Yeah. I think, you know, that's a challenge for any business. We've had the luxury, I guess, of working together in an organization that did it well. Yeah. And we've also had the, I guess, the opposite to luxury of working in an organization that didn't do it so well. And we'll I think we'll come back to that piece that, you know, that value piece, a bit later on. But in terms of, you know, customer success reps in in the field Yeah. And, actually, let me just take off go go off on a little tangent for a moment because, a a big part of what I do is around, you know, helping companies develop pipeline and doing it in a way in which they enjoy that isn't a negative experience, disruptive experience to the buyer.

Alex Abbott [00:08:33]:

You know, many salespeople have experienced high levels of stress and and some struggling with mental health as a result of being forced to do things that they don't believe will work over time.

Lara Barnes [00:08:47]:

Yeah.

Alex Abbott [00:08:48]:

And what was interesting in this study, so the state of mental health, or the state of sales and mental health 2024 is that, the guy that runs that survey from the, sales, health alliance, guy called Jeff Risley, included customer success in 2024.

Lara Barnes [00:09:11]:

Yeah.

Alex Abbott [00:09:11]:

Yeah. And the story isn't much different. It felt like this shift from okay. So new business isn't as predictable as it once was. Let's put pressure on the customer success team.

Lara Barnes [00:09:23]:

Yeah.

Alex Abbott [00:09:24]:

Oh, dear. We're putting those people under the same level of stress and pressure. And now we can see that their stress levels have rocketed, and they're suffering with their with their mental health. Do do

Lara Barnes [00:09:37]:

you Yeah. We we we had this. So we did. And and, actually, a lot of it's born out of the inefficiencies of the business and how it operates.

Alex Abbott [00:09:46]:

Mhmm.

Lara Barnes [00:09:47]:

More so than the and that puts pressure on the CSM in terms of the amount of work that is needed to be done because they're constantly reinventing the wheel. It's not a fluid process, so you're not going back and you've got the right documentation or you've got a great template, or, you know, the product's changed so much and now you need to explain to the customer and you've gotta go through more training. So you're constantly in this flywheel of over and over and over and over again. It's not as if they're these businesses invest in the systems and processes, like I said, in order to make it easy for sales and customer success and the rest of the delivery org for customers. And that really does put a lot of pressure on because you're constantly going over the same stuff for multiple different customers. Whereas, no, it's just inefficient. But the pressure that, you know, CSMs are under and the hours that they work is is exactly the same as the sales team. Yeah.

Lara Barnes [00:10:52]:

Because they, if you're in an organization where you're there to deliver the leads, we would we did an exceptional job in doing that, and we worked very closely, with the sales team and had a great relationship with them because they could see that our leads were closing, you know, half the time that their leads were closing. So it was just easy to to close those so that we could all win by hitting the quarterly targets because you're up against those targets. Mhmm. And it's a it's a stressful place to be when you haven't got the new business that closes that isn't closing as fast as it used to be.

Alex Abbott [00:11:29]:

Yeah. Yeah.

Lara Barnes [00:11:30]:

Indeed. Yeah. So the things that we used to do to help the CSMs was you you needed to be pretty empathetic. You know, it's not you you couldn't just say, you know, keep getting the whip out and say let's just keep going, keep going. You need to ensure that you gave them those breaks, and you gave them those duvet days when they need them. Or, yeah, we worked really hard at the end of a quarter. Go and have a day or 2 off. Mhmm.

Lara Barnes [00:11:57]:

I literally I mean, I never used to record this stuff, but in the holiday or any anywhere, I say just go and do it. Because otherwise, you know, you you have to use the things that you had as a leader, the opportunity to use. And luckily, I had the opportunity to just give somebody some time out.

Alex Abbott [00:12:18]:

Do the right thing.

Lara Barnes [00:12:19]:

Yeah. And you have to do the right thing by people. Otherwise, they don't stay with you. And, you know, you've got you spend a lot of time hiring amazing people, and you need to look after them within the org. And they know that you care about them. Yeah. Because otherwise, why else would they want to work with you and get up in the morning and do those hours again and again and again when they they're not getting anything back from it. Yeah.

Lara Barnes [00:12:46]:

The other thing is is development. You need to be able to give them that view and give them those extra projects where they can see that they're moving forward and developing rather than staying in the same job and doing thing for months.

Alex Abbott [00:13:00]:

And and on that doing the right thing and, you know, I guess why you've, you know, you've been so successful over the years. If we, you know, you you you've talked about, the importance of setting customer promises. Can you share how you've turned promises into measurable outcomes and how that builds trust and loyalty with customers?

Lara Barnes [00:13:23]:

Yeah. It was all part of how we bought 4 companies, and, during that time, it was pretty chaotic. Mhmm. They all had different provisioning requirements. You know, we were still trying to upscale everyone. We were out there all selling it. It was pretty hard to manage. And so when we could see the customers were falling through different cracks in the organization, different departments were and we had no real one system that everyone could see to track where a customer was at any point in time in their life cycle.

Lara Barnes [00:14:00]:

So this life cycle project was really important and how we tied all that data together is really important. Mhmm. So what we did was, we really focused in on how we built, the the insights to those, across every single department, but we also then built out a framework with marketing because we started right at the beginning of the cycle. So we went to marketing and we said, like, we've got we've gone from 3 to 12 products. How are we going to show the user cases? Like, you're working on the user cases. You're working on the sales pitch. How are we gonna show from, like, end to end that you've sold that this product can do a specific user case to solve a problem for a customer. How are we gonna show that we can actually deliver it? And everyone sat back and they were like, oh, yeah.

Lara Barnes [00:14:57]:

It's like genius. And so we what we did was we we did it quite in a linear way, and we worked very closely with a very engaged product manager initially on one of the products. So we took it as 1. Not you know, don't bite the whole elephant, but take little bites. So we went to 1 product leader, and he was very, very good. And he worked with it. He's actually he's now the chief product officer, but he was exceptional because he worked with us to, to really help in how we can identify from end to end across the product. What does it mean to adopt? Like, how do you get to 25, 50, 75 percent adoption? And then what is what are those user cases, and then how can we track that? So that really helped in terms of understanding how we could deliver on the customer promise because we would set, you know, maybe 3 objectives for the CFM along that whole process to adoption.

Lara Barnes [00:16:02]:

And that would be identified by the CSM and what needed to be done during that process, and they would measure themselves on that because it was hitting the customer's objectives. But what we called this was a value realization framework.

Alex Abbott [00:16:16]:

Right.

Lara Barnes [00:16:16]:

And we then identified what are those golden features to get to 25% adoption to 50 to 75. And then we tracked those three objectives quite in a linear way through telemetry because we put telemetry in to ensure that we were on that right road for that customer. Because a customer will stay with you if they're getting value. But if they're not getting value or they're not achieving any more than they did before with the previous technology, you know, they're they're not seeing that value. So you need to be able to show them what's the next step, what's the next road in order to adopt or get to their user case. So we have quite a linear way of operating.

Alex Abbott [00:16:57]:

And how how much of the customer getting value, feeling the value was, you know, the customer success rep responsible for in terms of how they got them there, how they positioned the value articulated, you know, that path to

Lara Barnes [00:17:19]:

And it's really that was yeah. The CSM was really was really important, but how does the AE pitched and, you know, talked to that customer around what they were gonna get from it. So the positioning the positioning is really important because, you know, that it kind of flows from ideal customer profile ideal customer profile into, you know, the positioning and the expectation is so important. So you've got

Alex Abbott [00:17:52]:

the AE working alongside your customer success team, the account executive.

Lara Barnes [00:17:57]:

Yeah. Right at the beginning. Yeah. And then what we did was we it was really trying to understand what their expectation was from that customer and then how we would then replicate that. So that handover is obviously always so important. And then when we needed that AE, we would bring them in. So if we identified an opportunity or we needed them to perhaps there was a I don't know. An op a a risk or anything on the account, we would bring that AE in in order to help assist us.

Alex Abbott [00:18:29]:

Yeah.

Lara Barnes [00:18:29]:

So there was a very clear collaboration. Yeah.

Alex Abbott [00:18:32]:

Yeah. But that path to value, that value proposition and that path to value, that that overall strategy in terms of how the customer got from a to b or a to z was driven by your team, you and your team. Yeah.

Lara Barnes [00:18:48]:

Yeah. Yeah. It was. Because we we held that, responsibility in order to even just navigate for the customer across the organization. It was our responsibility to make sure that things happened for that customer. Even if it was working with professional services or engineering or working with the product team and feeding things back to the product, we would we would go to the marketing team and say we've got this customer that could be a prospect for, you know, prospect calls or a case study or so we have very clear KPIs in terms of what we needed to deliver.

Alex Abbott [00:19:25]:

Yeah. And

Lara Barnes [00:19:25]:

then guys were, you know, net retention, gross retention, overall retention of book of business, NPS Yeah. Advocacy and leads. Yeah.

Alex Abbott [00:19:38]:

Yeah. It, it strikes me that that will bring, you know, that will bring so much value across so many teams, not just the customer success team by having that and driving that to, you know, that approach.

Lara Barnes [00:19:53]:

I think it's really taking what what I did was with the culture of the team was we took accountability. And there there were many times over the years where we would not see the accountability from other teams, but I I'd always just turn around and say, we own it. Run it. And make it happen. You've got the responsibility of making that happen for the customer.

Alex Abbott [00:20:18]:

Yeah. Yeah. Victoria agreeing there. 100% agree, Lara. It all starts with sales and a seamless handover to CS. You know, it's an interesting one because, you know, we assume it all starts with sales. But I think what you're describing there in terms of creating that value proposition and that path to value for customers, it really starts with you. And then and then sales can be trained and enabled on that value proposition and how to articulate that value.

Alex Abbott [00:20:54]:

So they're more likely to win the right customers, and you're more likely to make those customers successful.

Lara Barnes [00:21:00]:

And, you know, as a CS leader, I think it I really take accountability for seeing the business as a whole, not just being a CS leader in my silo. And I think because I represent the customer. So the opportunity to educate the rest of the organization on how customers are being serviced, what customers need, and how we can make things better, grow, show risk, work more cohesively across the business is a is a big part of, like, how I think about my role Mhmm. And how I influence the rest of the organization. And I think a lot of the time, CS is very, very privileged to see everything end to end. Like, from how you go to market with the product, how the product works, all the way through to how you renew that business or don't. And so because you have so many insights and you can pick up a lot of the data across the business in order to validate what is happening, there is a real I think it's a real responsibility from a customer success leader to assume that responsibility across the business to help everybody else because otherwise, who else is doing it? Nobody.

Alex Abbott [00:22:14]:

Yeah. Yeah. Otherwise, we live in this transactional world where it's just this constant hand to mouth to

Lara Barnes [00:22:22]:

Exactly. And everyone is and I think there's a real fluidity that a CS leader can bring in engaging with the other teams to provide them with that data and those insights so that the rest of the business can grow. And otherwise, you're just sitting in your silo. Right? And And you feel a victim in your silo. And I think that's that's where I've the positioning and how I I think about my role in businesses is that it's not about being the victim partner team, the sales team, the marketing team, with all their leads, and how and what your leads are delivering. And when you're sitting there and you can see all the other teams and how your team is screaming along with 45% conversion rate and driving, you know, an incredible amount of leads and closing within 45 days versus 90 to a 120, Those are the numbers that you can say I am delivering value and impact in this organization.

Alex Abbott [00:23:30]:

And how how much, from your perspective, how how much did the numbers do the talking versus your transformational leadership expertise kind of collaborating and bringing the other leaders along on the ride?

Lara Barnes [00:23:45]:

Yeah. Advice would be start with the data. Because if you haven't got data, no one's gonna no one's gonna listen to you if you don't have some numbers to really guide you. And in fact, your CFO is also a very, influential person in the organization too because they're the ones that are looking at the performance and productivity of all teams across the business. And if you can show them that in investing in not in a new AE that, you know, may not deliver any more than x percentage of their number, But putting a CS person on more accounts to drive more growth in accounts and drive better NPS, and drive, you know, more leads that close than, another AE, let's just say. Mhmm. Because that's where, you know, more when you see new new employee headcount, it's always in sales. But if you know that the productivity of other areas of the business could drive more than that because it is a no brainer.

Lara Barnes [00:24:52]:

And I had that conversation with my CFO where he said, this is a no brainer. Instead of putting this amount of headcount, here, we're gonna put it in your team because I I could show the numbers. I did one chart with it was just a a slide with lots of boxes on it with loads of numbers in terms of what we were driving, in terms of increased NPS if we had a CSM on accounts, the amount of CSQLs that would close. So therefore, that a that CSM would earn the the money that we would invest in the CSM. Yeah. Yeah. It was across all of those different metrics that retention. It was across all of them.

Lara Barnes [00:25:34]:

And, it was, yeah, it was brilliant. It was Yeah. Relationship really helped me.

Alex Abbott [00:25:39]:

Yeah. So so you you've built high performing teams with some of the lowest attrition rates. Yeah. What's you know, not everybody's got the luxury of of having a leader like you. What advice would you give to CS teams out there that, you know, agree with what you're saying. They want the same in their organization, but it's not quite there yet. Is is it can it can it be changed from the ground up convincing leadership to change?

Lara Barnes [00:26:13]:

I think, you don't need to start with trying to convince people. I think it's important to be monitoring and measuring how you're performing. I think the the biggest thing somebody was a company I worked for, and it it was Facebook, actually. And the measure of your success was what impact are you having? And it was massive on me because I'm huge on accountability and responsibility. How can I measure my impact daily? How can I do that? And I think by thinking about what measures and showing what you are doing in a constructive way and then trying to as a leader, looking at that at scale is really one of the things that I would suggest to any leader in how you start to drive high performing teams. You start with the data. But I think how people feel about coming to work is you just you can't, underestimate that.

Alex Abbott [00:27:19]:

You

Lara Barnes [00:27:20]:

have to have the right principles. You have to lead by example, and I think it's important that they can see you care about them.

Alex Abbott [00:27:31]:

Yeah.

Lara Barnes [00:27:32]:

You want to do the right thing by people.

Alex Abbott [00:27:34]:

Yeah. And, you know, if we kinda take it down a level and look practically at what some of those things are that CS folks could actually measure if if they don't have that guidance within their organization, what what are the things that you think they should measure, I guess, from a tactical perspective?

Lara Barnes [00:27:51]:

I think that a lot of CSMs provide sales teams or an AE that they're working with with a lead, but they don't actually record it anywhere.

Alex Abbott [00:28:03]:

Right.

Lara Barnes [00:28:03]:

Then they don't record how much that lead, how long it took to close it, and how long, and they might have been involved in, you know, additional conversations with that customer, but they're they're not getting anything themselves from that either. The salesperson gets compensated on going and closing it because that's what they're really good at. And they're you know, I think sales individuals are exceptional at negotiation and going in and doing that. And that should not be a CSM job. But what I do think, practically, you can monitor and measure. You can see Salesforce, or any sales tool that you're working within. You can see how long that lead started. So that CSM might not put that sales lead in.

Lara Barnes [00:28:52]:

Right? But the salesperson will. And then you can just measure and monitor that in an Excel sheet, but show that as well as a manager that multiple people people within your team are doing this. And from x date to x date, it took, you know, 45 days or whatever to close, and it brought in a 180,000 or whatever it was. Then you've got a business case to say, actually, even if my CSMs got 1% of, you know, that Yeah. That that's a a sum of money that they didn't have before. And that's how I started. We started with an Excel sheet.

Alex Abbott [00:29:30]:

Wow. Yeah.

Lara Barnes [00:29:31]:

So it started with, you know, 4,000,000 was the first one. And there was it was rubbish. It wasn't 4,000,000 of lead, like, business that we closed off. It was way more. It's just that all the CSM globally weren't attaching everything in this Excel sheet. But the following year, we got on the dashboard and we actually drove 15,000,000 of booked business.

Alex Abbott [00:29:52]:

Wow.

Lara Barnes [00:29:52]:

And then yeah. So it was pretty significant. But then we we were we really focused in on the level of working with the a with the AEs and how we did that and going into their sales meetings and really focusing on how those leads then closed.

Alex Abbott [00:30:11]:

Yeah. Right. We're running out of time. So finally, what's one piece of advice you would you wish you would have had earlier on in your career?

Lara Barnes [00:30:24]:

I know. I thought about this earlier. And it was, I actually was very lucky to have been given lots of advice early on. I think that thing I said earlier about trying to establish what impact you have every day really helped me kind of think about how I set my goals every single year as to what I want to achieve and actually measuring those goals and seeing how if you do something every single day even if it's tiny little thing to get towards your goal that really helps you achieve it. And even thinking about how you're gonna do it as well and then doing something every month towards it, you know, that could really that also helps. But measuring that impact and showing how you're having an impact on that organization

Alex Abbott [00:31:16]:

Yeah.

Lara Barnes [00:31:16]:

Is the benefit that I did from very early on to show how I'm gonna get that next promotion.

Alex Abbott [00:31:25]:

Mhmm.

Lara Barnes [00:31:25]:

Yeah. Tracking that, you know, you're going in and you're just managing customers. Great. Because that's what you do, but you need to be able to show the impact.

Alex Abbott [00:31:35]:

Yeah. It'll weigh you down. You need to feel like you're making some progress.

Lara Barnes [00:31:39]:

Yes. Yeah.

Alex Abbott [00:31:41]:

Brilliant advice. Thank you so much, Lara. It's been an absolute pleasure having you on. Thank you, Adam, Jackie, and Victoria Williams for your for your comments. Without you guys, the show wouldn't be the show. Until next time. Have a great week, and weekend ahead. Take care.

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