Shaf Ahnaf

Marc Benioff can I introduce you to new way to accelerate growth? Seven revenue solution implemented in a day. How many business would move to salesforce. In my view all of them in time. Lets talk simple math: 250,000 customers x $100,000 (the cost of one employee) which is 45 licenses equals $25B/year. Best part everyone can self-implement. Gokul Rajaram would you like to see what I am talking about?

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Fighting about Renewal processes isn't adding any value to the ongoing CSM conversation. I get it. CSMs need to be more commercial CSMs have to own their book of business CSMs need to manage the renewal cycle CSMs need to go after the expansion CSMs ... What I struggle with is: We sometimes seem to care more about how to justify why something exists along the internal processes we run vs. looking at why something exists in the first place. As a result, the role of Customer Success has been watered down. It became a self justification of why QBR, why relationship, why x$ book of business, why z# of headcount, why CS needs to own this now. But why is Customer Success here? In recurring revenue businesses, the transaction with a customer doesn't end at the time of the sale. The traditional funnel is dead 💀 Revenue is only recurring if we deliver impact - recurringly. The traditional funnel expanded further into a bowtie, which mirrors the acquisition side onto retention. Long life the funnel 😇 And while Marketing needed to extend their own domain deeper into the Customer Journey from awareness to expansion, Customer Success owns most of the magic, helping customers achieving recurring impact. So what is impact? Well, that's for you to define. What does good look like (WGLL) for your customers? What do they expect and what are the outcomes they are holding you accountable for? That is what Customer Success is driving along the Customer Journey. As a CS team I then ask myself and build playbooks around: → How do I achieve frictionless onboarding & activation to first WOW? → What topic education & change management is needed at the customer? → What internal alignment do I need to create which elevates the customer experience, but goes unnoticed by the customer (they don't care about our processes) → What product enablement is crucial for the customer? → How does the customer ecosystem (e.g. partners) look like and how does it influence value delivery? → How are outcomes achieved, how do they happen recurringly and how are those experienced by the customer? ... and how can I deliver against that. Renewals, expansions, referrals all happen as a natural result of that. What questions are you asking yourself ? #CSM #saas #revenue and picture credit to Jennifer Peters 😎

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Salesforce revised its pipeline coverage ratio to 3x, shedding light on the math keeping execs up at night. How can 1 ratio blow up your entire GTM model? It's not rocket science. It's just math. Particularly, pipeline generation math. Salesforce went from 2x to 3x. You might be going from 3x to 4x, or even 4x to 5x. What does this mean? Assumptions about pipeline coverage are falling like dominos and leaving GTM orgs with a massive hole in their forecasts. When this happens, the math gets really bad, really fast. Picture this: you're a best in class GTM org like Salesforce and you've just updated your pipe coverage ratio from 2x to 3x. Needing 50% more pipeline is painful enough. But the punishment doesn't stop there. Pipeline generated by your sellers is also down. Buyers are reluctant to champion products, and budgets are tight. This leads to longer sales cycles, more discounting, and plummeting deal sizes. Across the board, reps are producing less pipeline. Ranges vary by category, but let's assume pipeline creation is down 25% for illustrative purposes. (We're going to keep the math simple, because specifics will vary by company). On a $100M new business goal, you'd previously need $200M in pipeline. At $1M in pipeline per AE, you could bring it in with a team of 200. Now you need $300M of pipeline to close that same $100M in revenue. AEs are creating $750k instead of $1M, so that same team of 200 is bringing in $150M in pipeline, only half what you need for the year. Draw out the math and you suddenly need 200 additional (fully ramped!) sellers to deliver the same $100M in revenue. That's DOUBLE the headcount. Your CEO and CFO's heads are spinning, because this wreaks absolute havoc on a company's operating model. But that's a post for another time. You can tweak the assumptions if you'd like, but it's terrifying any way you look at it. No amount of passion, skill, or dedication can overcome math. You can't escape math. The bad news? This doesn't seem to be going away any time soon. The good news? Recent advances in AI can change some of the assumptions around the people, process, and technology equation required to generate new pipeline. In the old world, the only answer would be to double headcount. In the new world, there are ways to drive enormous leverage into the equation. Scaling with people doesn't have to be the answer, you can scale people with AI like no time in history. Which means the cavalry could be on the way...

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Documentation: my not-so-secret #customersuccess weapon. Have you ever been assigned a new CSM and they know all your account history during your first few calls? #win Does your CSM seem to have a perfect memory 😉? #notetaking for the win How do you keep your clients aligned to your success plan? Project plans, agendas, email recaps, and regular check-ins. ______________________ 👩🏻‍💻 Hi! I'm Moriah. I like to learn about #CustomerSuccess, #PropTech, #SalesTools, and #CompanyCulture and post select resources around these topics.

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Happy Saturday ☀️ A little reflection on the state of RevOps Many teams are standing up their first RevOps team right now or adjusting their current version Here are a few corners to prepare for... 1️⃣ Focus on solutions, not data Yea data is a core component of a great RevOps infrastructure but providing it is step 0. The value in RevOps is enabling strategic decisions to be made with informed insights 2️⃣ Prioritization is crucial As RevOps is forming everyone will want you to be their silver bullet. The problem is that not every problem needs to be solved now and resources are not unlimited. Be proactive and standup a revenue roadmap for the next 12-18 months so everyone understands what we are prioritizing and why. Beyond this create a process for reviewing new potential priorities. Priorities will change and that is ok as long as it happens in a methodical way 3️⃣ Invest in relationships At the end of the day you are working with people and the many personalities that exist in every company. Alignment and sustained change will only happen with strong buy-in from other people

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Salespeople would love this Are you finding updating opportunities and managing pipelines on Salesforce more challenging than selling your product? Tracktable is what you’ve been missing. Here’s why: With Tracktable, you get a spreadsheet-like interface that is easy to use and syncs in real time with Salesforce, ensuring no data leakages. Here’s what you can do with Tracktable: 🚀 Act on leads 🚀 Manage opportunities 🚀 Track pipeline 🚀 Update account and contact details 🚀 Add notes Its user-friendly interface saves AEs countless hours on redundant tasks, allowing them to focus on what matters most: building relationships and driving sales. 𝗟𝗮𝘂𝗻𝗰𝗵 𝗔𝗹𝗲𝗿𝘁: We’re launching 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗰𝗸𝘁𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 on Product Hunt tomorrow at 1:30 PM IST. We need your support! 🚀 Save time. Increase productivity. Join us tomorrow! Hoping the community supports #Salesforce #SalesTips #ProductivityHacks #ProductHunt #SalesManager #AE #SDR

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A poorly executed #customersuccess strategy will kill your #NRR for years to come. I've seen it first-hand too many times over the years. Here is how you deliver a well-executed CS strategy to drive great NRR and ultimately, business growth: 🛣️ 𝐔𝐬𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝗗𝘆𝗻𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗰 𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐮𝐞 & 𝐂𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐫 𝐉𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐞𝐲 The first step in any customer success strategy is understanding the full & dynamic revenue & customer journey. This means not just knowing what your customers do, but why they do it. How and why did they buy your services? How do they move through their journey with you (rarely ina straight line!)? By understanding their motivations, you can better anticipate their needs and deliver solutions that truly add value. And don't forget, the old-school customer journey is not the standard anymore, you need to use the full, dynamic revenue & customer journey to get the full picture. This stretches from pre-sale to post-sale and allows for the customer to move in and out of journey phases/stages dynamically. 📈 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐄𝐧𝐠𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 Customer success is not a reactive function. It's about being proactive, anticipating customer needs, and addressing them before they become issues. You have to ensure that your strategy is aligned around, and fosters, a proactive CS culture and process that allows your team to execute effectively. This not only improves customer satisfaction, but also reduces churn, and creates more expansion opportunities. Both key factors in improving NRR. 📊 𝐃𝐚𝐭𝐚-𝐃𝐫𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐧 𝐃𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐌𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 In the #SaaS & #CS world, we have access to a wealth of data. By leveraging this data, we can make informed decisions that drive customer success. This could be anything from identifying usage patterns to predict churn, to understanding which features drive the most value for customers and beyond. And it needs to go beyond telemetry, usage etc. Also capture, track and understand customer goals and other qualitative data points. One problem is that this data is often siloed or hard to access, so make sure you have systems (like RevSetter) that can bridge that gap and allows CSMs to effectively action the data & insights. 🤝 𝐁𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚 𝐂𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐫-𝐂𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐜 𝐂𝐮𝐥𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 Customer success should not be the responsibility of a single department. It should be ingrained in the company culture. When everyone in the organization understands the value of customer success, it becomes a strategic priority that drives business growth. This is why the dynamic revenue & customer journey, the engagement focus, and the proactive mindset are so important. When those are present - and a strategic & customer-centric approach is adopted by the CEO & leadership - the sky is the limit. Leverage these four building blocks and your CS strategy and execution will thank you for it ✅ *** 🛎️ If you enjoy my content, follow me for more ♻️ Repost to share with your network

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Although its great to have frameworks, I always find we deliver the best when we have the flexibility to be ourselves and execute customer goals by working to their rhythm. It can be tempting to rely too heavily on process which can lead us to assume what matters to our customers, rather than listening to what actually does. Easy things you can do to be more flexible include: 1. Speak their language (Do they prefer emails, phone calls or video conference?) 2. Understand the wider goal (What are their business initiatives and how do they contribute to that?) 3. Understand the information they need in a format that fits them #customersuccess #outcomes

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Has #customersuccess became exhausted? #revenueoperations as a partner has seen this function also take the brunt of the lean and mean spirit ▶️ Accounts per #CSM are up for high touch and medium touch motions ▶️ ARR loads are also higher ▶️ They have the least attention from RevOps ▶️ Sometimes will have to just use the software that sales uses ▶️ An increasing weighting of their incentives towards NRR So where do we go from here? I think it's time to bring the voice of the customer back into the room What would your customers say and how would they want to be supported? ▶️ In addition to NRR, let's also talk about GRR ▶️ Let's make customer value maps or journeys a thing again. A fulfilled customer that's growing themselves will also grow with you ▶️ Customer wellness metrics should start to push back against NRR as the sole weighting criteria ▶️ Reexamine who owns the upsell and cross sell. Who has the in-house training and skill set to execute this? ▶️ Invest not only in knowledge bases, but actual training and coaching My two cents 👋 More musings on the Substack (link in profile)

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Tired of losing hard-earned deals? Solve for Revenue Leak. In Clari’s 2024 Revenue Leak Report, RevOps leaders said leak happens at every stage of the funnel. - Creating: Poor and slow upsell pipeline tracking - Converting: Unsure where pipeline is dropping off - Closing: Slipped deals Don’t let Revenue Leak drag down another quarter – or another year. Download the Revenue Leak Report for more: https://lnkd.in/eeVWViQz  

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I’m starting to see a trend on internal Salesforce teams. More orgs are moving towards a centralized ownership model, which is great! But many of them are UNWILLING to do it the right way 👇 This is what we see playing out across the landscape. 1. Companies reach the stage when Rev Ops can’t own GTM Systems 2. They make the smart decision to centralize all Biz Tech teams 3. Rev Ops worries about their needs being met in this structure Result: A portion of the Salesforce team remains within Rev Ops And this end result is even more disjointed than when you started. Now, some top-down decisions are made from the Technology team. While other bottom-up decisions are made from Rev Ops and the Admins, Business Analysts, or Product Owners that remain there. The point of centralization is to create a unified governing body. This ‘partial’ centralization model is a disaster. And I say companies are “unwilling” to get it right because it’s a choice. It’s conceding to one team, rather than prioritizing organizational needs overall. We see this playing out all over the place. An example you can see based purely on open jobs is at Dialpad. • 300+ Sales Reps • 100+ Support Reps • 8-person Salesforce team 👉 Sr. Director, Enterprise Apps & Integrations 👉 4 Salesforce Administrators 👉 3 Salesforce Engineers 👉 And 2 Open Biz Tech Positions: 1. Sr. Director, Enterprise Applications Reporting into the CIO Ownership of Salesforce, Finance Systems, HRIS, and more. 2. Salesforce Administrator Reporting into the Director, Sales Ops & Strategy I understand the desire for Rev Ops to retain some control. Yes, there are benefits to them having Salesforce SMEs on the team. But ultimately, Salesforce needs to live on a single team. Otherwise, the CIO org lays plans for the long-term roadmap. Meanwhile, initiatives are occurring without their full knowledge. • An Admin working directly with Finance on changes to CPQ • Random deployments trickling into the org along the way And this slowly turns into complete fragmentation. The Salesforce team needs to be centralized. And there’s a right way to do it. __ #Salesforce #BizTech #GTM

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SDRs don't work for AEs.... In fact, AEs should work for SDRs. If you're in a position to have an SDR helping you crack meetings you need to point them in the right direction with the right messaging and use cases. SDRs aren't your assistants. They're the tip of the spear. Cole Praver 🙌 #sales

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Great post by Keenan . Sales is a Numbers Game but that does not mean quantity over quality…a marginal improvement on win rates makes an exponential impact on revenue…especially when you sell high-ticket items. You improve win rates through targeting, qualifying, and how you sell (sales methodology) like Gap Selling). This (win rate) should always be the first place to look at improving when you want to increase sales velocity https://lnkd.in/dGuY-hx8

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ZoomInfo Copilot is transforming the way sales teams work. Just ask Joy Rohde, Sales Director at Earnix. Leveraging customer intent data and AI, Copilot helps sales teams focus on the best accounts and confidently reach out when they're ready to buy. ⏰ T-minus three days until Copilot is here — you don't want to miss it! #ZoomInfoCopilot

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Top 5 key metrics I recommend CROs use for inside sales professionals: 1. Speed of response 2. Efficiency of progression through the process 3. Number of calls per day 4. Number of positive outcomes 5. Demo sets As a CRO leader, these are five metrics that I live by. 

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Here's a summary of Salesforce's most recent earnings call from May 29. As a sales rep you should be up to date with this type of information (for your prospect's company) so you can tie your solution to the current challenges e.g. elongated deal cycles and budget scrutiny, or focus points for the organization like leveraging customer data to build powerful AI workflows. At the very least, you can differentiate yourself as a sales rep and show you care about your prospect's business challenges and objectives by bringing these points up on your next call. SalesNote.ai

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I did an informal poll on CSM vs Sales commission splits. I was pleasantly shocked to see that over 95% of companies do not have Sales take a commission on renewals unless it’s a particularly challenging one; the AE is there to help with it as a “bounty renewal”. in this case, the AE gets a % but is not taken from the CSM. Other interesting data points: "Commission on upsells and renewal made up 30% of the total compensation package. However, the exact commission % was determined by dividing the 30% by $$$ into the total ARR managed by the CSM." What metrics should this be based on? Most followed this model to Typically, companies that are earlier in their CS maturity will base this off a few leading indicators (adoption milestones, EBRs, etc.), and then move to comping on lagging indicators (retention, expansion, NRR, etc.) once their leading indicator activities have been proven. The following are examples of metrics you can use, not an exhaustive list: Leading: QBRs and/or EBRs (attained vs scheduled) Product adoption milestones (product dependent) Lagging: Net Revenue Retention (NRR) - this is likely the most common Retention Expansion Advocacy (hard to make this scale across large teams and mixed portfolios - this is better as a SPIFF or annual metric to Bonus on) From there, you can determine the weight of each metric on the bonus. I'll give an example using a bonus that is achieved by a renewal retention goal and an NRR goal. Criteria for 100% Bonus Attainment: 90% Renewal Retention (50% weight) 125% Net Revenue Retention (50% weight) "This keeps it pretty simple with two priorities. Retain and Expand Revenue. The Retention goal being assessed separately ensures CSMs don't have significant churn masked by massive upsells. In this example, if a CSM had 85% Retention and 115% NRR, they'd end up at 93.22% to goal for their overall commission/variable comp."

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In 2023, 61% of companies did not achieve their revenue targets. Clari surveyed 400+ revenue teams & professionals to find out why. In Clari’s 2024 Revenue Leak Report, RevOps leaders said leak happens at every stage of the funnel. - Creating: Poor and slow upsell pipeline tracking - Converting: Unsure where pipeline is dropping off - Closing: Slipped deals Don’t let Revenue Leak drag down another quarter, or worse, a year. https://lnkd.in/eww_z5V4

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Customer Success isn't just a cost center—it's your secret weapon for scaling revenue. Are you harnessing data to predict churn and drive expansion? If not, you're falling behind. In today's competitive landscape, innovation in success strategies isn't optional—it's essential. #customersuccess #saas #cco

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