Stephanie Yamamoto

Most CS candidates fail here. 👇 Asking lame questions at the end of the first interview. They either don’t ask at all or go for lame, vague ones like “What’s the company culture like?” The real issue? You can't use these insights to steer the next interview rounds. ❌ Instead, be smart. 👉 Use this stealth question: “Imagine it is a year from now, we're discussing my contract renewal. What would I have done in this coming year that will make you tell me that I have been the best hire you've made in the customer success team in the past year?” 💡 This question is gold. It shows you think ahead and care about long-term success. You’re eager to perform and deliver. You want to excel. 🚀 𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗲’𝘀 𝘄𝗵𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸𝘀: You get clear performance expectations. The interviewer will outline exactly what success looks like. Now, you know what’s important and can align your efforts. You’ve turned guesswork into half a game plan. 📈 You demonstrate initiative and engagement. Asking this shows you’re proactive and genuinely interested in the role. It’s not just about landing the job; it’s about making a significant impact. 🌟 You gain insights into company priorities. Their response reveals what the company values and what their struggles are. You get a peek into their culture and management style. This helps you decide if this is the right place for you. 🏢 It opens up a deeper dialogue. This question can lead to a rich discussion about the role, team dynamics, and company strategy. You build rapport and show you’re thinking strategically. 🔍 🚨 See comments for bonus open questions 🚨 Use this question to tailor your answers in follow-up interviews. Showcase your skills and experiences that align with their success criteria. Show that you’re the perfect fit. 🎯 Wrap it all up in your case assignment and founder interviews. Refer back to this conversation. 💬 Don’t settle for being another average candidate. Stand out by asking bold, open-ended questions that get to the heart of what the company truly values. 🌟 In the end, remember: The right questions can set you apart and pave the way to success. 💥 Drop some stellar questions you've received as an interviewer or favourite open ended question in the comments. ------------------------------------- Think this is valuable for other CS folks? Hit Repost ♻️ #customersuccess #saas #startups #careercoaching  #CS #CSM #SuccessHacks #customersuccessmanager #interviewtips

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CSMs: How to survive the meeting madness 👇 𝗠𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗖𝗦𝗠𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗼𝗻 𝗮 𝗺𝗲𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗵𝗮𝗺𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗲𝗹. 🐹 Back-to-back meetings. No time to prep, pause, or pee in between. This is the story for the whole week. Leaving you brain-dead by Friday and screaming 𝘛𝘎𝘐𝘍. And then the realization hits you. You've not yet sent all the post-call summaries or followed up on your task/ action steps. Things slip through the cracks, work remains unfinished, and suddenly, it’s Monday again. You're stuck on the treadmill of inefficiency. Let’s face it: your weekly meeting marathon is killing productivity. 😵 It's silently killing your brain cells. It's taking time away from the productive and creative work that moved the needle for the customer. It's not something that brings you joy. Here's how you get off the meeting hamsterwheel this week itself. 𝗗𝘂𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗺𝗲𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 📆 • Limit meetings to 40 minutes. They tend to overrun anyway, and this way, you can carve out time for other essential actions. • Don't just send them the how-to guide, explain the value/benefit, and show them live how to do it. And then still send the guide. Repetition makes it stick. • 2 min rule. If you can do it in two mins, tackle those small tasks during the call itself. Protect your to-do list. • Plan each meeting ahead of time, jot down a bullet-point agenda, it help you keep the call structured. • Use tools like tl;dv - AI Meeting Assistant or UpdateAI to record your discussions effortlessly. 𝗪𝗿𝗮𝗽 𝗨𝗽 𝗟𝗶𝗸𝗲 𝗮 𝗣𝗿𝗼. ⏱ • Dedicate the next 5-10 minutes to polishing your notes and sending them off to your customer. • Book your next session while on the call. • Log everything into your CRM or CSP. • Take a sip of water, and breathe. 🙅‍♂️ Enough is enough. This is how you reclaim your time. Implement these changes this week and watch your productivity—and sanity—improve. You'll finish your calls with everything wrapped up neatly, allowing you to move confidently onto the next with clarity and focus. Isn’t it time you stepped off the treadmill and took control? Are you ready to stop being a slave to your schedule and start owning your day? What other strategies do you use to run effective customer meetings? ------------------------------------------- #customersuccess #saas #startups #careercoaching  #CS #CSM #SuccessHacks #customersuccessmanager

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By simplifying their Quotes, we saved over $300K for our first client at RevSolutions. If you’re a VP, you know that: Accurate quotes close deals. But getting them right is a major challenge. Sales teams often struggle with: → Inconsistent pricing, → Manual errors, and → Lengthy approval processes. These issues erode trust and can cost you business. That’s where the Q of the CPQ system comes in handy; Especially if you’ve complex pricing structures. CPQ tools make the quoting process efficient, ensuring consistency and accuracy across the board. → Automate complex pricing calculations → Standardize discounting practices → Speed up quote approval times With accurate quotes, you build trust with your clients. They know they can rely on your pricing, which makes them more likely to do business with you. Moreover, your sales team can respond faster, turning leads into customers with minimal friction. Accuracy in quoting means credibility and efficiency. How reliable are your quotes? #cpq #quote #pricing

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The most underrated role on Go-To-Market teams: Revenue Operations A great Rev Ops leader gives your revenue team leverage. I waited too long to hire for this role, instead choosing to do the job off the side of my desk. I was being lazy. I didn’t fully understand what “sales operations” or “revenue operations” meant. I hadn’t taken the time to sit down and write out the job description. But once I found the right person, it was like the world opened before my eyes. Our Rev Ops leader was my partner in running the revenue team. They were involved at the strategic level and at the tactical level. They knew where all the bodies were buried. So what does Rev Ops do? I’ll do my best to list some of the key responsibilities: - build the revenue model - weekly sales forecast - select, implement, and maintain the tech stack (CRM, sales engagement tools, etc) - design sales compensation plan - run the sales compensation report monthly - own the TAM data in the CRM (super important!!) - analyze sales team performance - manage lead distribution The list goes on. If you have 3 or more sales people on your team and you are planning to scale, hire a Rev ops leader ASAP. Who is your favorite Rev ops leader? Tag them!

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What new CSMs should prioritize over QBRs. 👇 A first-time CSM recently asked me how he could nail a QBR. 🙈 As a new CSM, diving deep into the fancy world of QBRs might feel like it's the right move.  It's all the rage on LinkedIn these days. But here's a reality check: It's  by far 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗺𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗶𝗺𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 you need to focus on early in your career as a CSM. You're likely mimicking what you see on LinkedIn as a trend rather than laying the groundwork for real Customer Success. If you're a first-time CSM, focus on these things instead: • Definig what success/outcomes mean for your customers. • Better measuring and reporting your tasks and metrics. • Understanding how startup finance/metrics work. • Building strong cross-team collaboration. • Removing friction for your customers. • Active listening listening skills. • Master product knowledge. • Leveraging data analytics. • Developing copywriting skills. • Asking better open-ended questions. • Using simple storytelling frameworks. • Building effective time management skills. • Developing a good  customer goal-setting framework • Creating a mutual and signed-off plan to reach the goals. QBR's are just milestones in the customer journey. Do all the above things decently well and your QBR's will be stellar, just like your career growth as a CSM. Add your two cents in the comment.👇 What other things should CSMs focus on, instead of QBR? ----------------------------------------------------------- #customersuccess #saas #startups #careercoaching  #CS #CSM #SuccessHacks #customersuccessmanager #lessonsfromanewvp   

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ZoomInfo Copilot is working 24/7 — surfacing important updates you should know about your top accounts.  With breaking alerts delivered via Slack, you'll never miss when a buying group shifts or a key account spikes on intent. 🔔 Have a question about one of your accounts? Ask Copilot's interactive, AI-powered chat and get answers in seconds.  Ready to give Copilot a try? Request a demo: bit.ly/3Kj4myP #ZoomInfoCopilot

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CS teams NEED to start "managing up" with execs and the board by talking about REVENUE. Yes, you can keep talking about sentiment and feelings, but start with the $. Don't lead with churn- Bottom-line-focused execs don't like that headline, so you need to tell the story better. An informal poll had CS teams owning over 50% of the revenue of many SaaS companies. Lead with this and have it be your first talking point. From there you will be able to get more things done with other departments, as your requests will be revenue-focused Need to get a Customer Success Platform as you scale? Point to revenue and the potential to lose revenue without efficiencies Need to hire more to prevent burnout? Point to Revenue potential with renewals and upsells Talk in the language your execs and board want to hear.

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Gong is freaking $. I barely use Hubspot anymore for deal management, forecasting, pipeline reviews. Their new AI features enable immediate and targeted access to this incredible wealth of information buried in call recordings. Also super powerful for identifying customer advocates and upsell opportunities, and spotting trends in customer success and product experience gaps. I know everyone in that space is fighting to build these big suites w/everything from CRM to call recording to sales engagement/sequences, but I think Gong has the biggest entry-point advantage starting in call recording, and my money is on them to win the race vs the rest. Salesforce is in a different boat - obviously SFDC will be fine regardless as the backend CRM/datalake, but they may lose ground on the front-end applications to Gong, although Slack is a game-changing asset and unfair advantage - so should be interesting.

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Mission accomplished: Our Career Clinic just helped someone get hired. Here’s the story. 👇 Why I launched CS Connect's Career Clinic 3 months ago? Because many CSMs are struggling to find a job. It's one of the toughest job markets ever. Friends of mine have been hit by layoffs, and it's been tough. So, I thought, why not help as many folks as possible? 🎯 The goal: move them one step closer to finding a job. 🏆 My success criteria? 🙋‍♂️ Just one person landing a job because of our efforts. Simple, right? 🕰️ I’ve spent over 50 hours on this. After work, putting together amazing panelists, hosting weekly sessions, curating videos, and sharing them with the CS Connect Community. It’s been a labor of love and I enjoyed every moment of it. ❤️ But, guess what? 🤘 Mission accomplished. Someone found a job thanks to the Career Clinic sessions. Oh lord, I couldn’t be happier! Now, we're taking a summer break to restrategize. 📣 Help me build this out, CS community. 𝙔𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙛𝙚𝙚𝙙𝙗𝙖𝙘𝙠 𝙢𝙖𝙩𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙨. How should we relaunch after summer? Should we narrow our focus or go broad? Should we cover salary negotiations? Should we cover panel discussion? What topics would you like us to cover? What do you want to see in the second edition of Career Clinics? Drop your thoughts in the chat. Let’s make the next edition even better. 🌟 PS: Could'nt have made this without the support of all the panelists. This is also a win for you all. Thank you all for this. 🙌 Ramses Bossuyt, Pieter Boon Bayron Toruño Solano Kostadin Lilov Rohan Tailor Aditya Maheshwari Katrina Kugelmeier Tarek Slimani Jennifer Peters Natan Pollack Sumi Jaiswal Adrian G. Vishwas Katti Prashanth Jothi 📣 Looking to contribute to CS Connect? Drop me a note.    --------------------------------------------------------- #customersuccess #communitybuilding #csm #communityledevents #futureleaders #customerexperience  #madeinamsterdam #opentowork #jobseeker

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The path to $10MM ARR is about finding your repeatable, scalable sales motion. The formula is simple, but not easy. It looks like this: Effort + Enthusiasm + Messaging + Lead Quality = Results When you are scaling a sales team, your job is to manage the inputs. Those are the things on the left side of this equation. If you can reduce the variability of the inputs, you will have more consistent results. Put another way. Consistent inputs leads to consistent outputs. Let's break it down... 1. Effort is the driver for your sales performance. You cannot scale without consistent effort. Effort includes the velocity of sales activity (phone calls, emails, meetings, etc.). Effort also includes the way that you execute your sales activity. This is your sales process and sales playbook. You can improve the quality of your effort with learning and development. 2. Enthusiasm is an amplifier for your effort. You have to act like you want to earn the business. A little enthusiasm goes a long way in closing more business. I've found that you can't teach enthusiasm. You must hire for it. 3. Messaging is how you get prospects to believe what you believe. Your messaging is your value prop. It's how you approach your ICP. It's the way that you convince customers that their current version of the world is no longer acceptable and they must make a chance. The best messaging illustrates the consequences of inaction. 4. Lead quality drives your conversion rate You have to stay focused on your ICP. The more variable your lead quality, the more inconsistent your sales results. The best effort, enthusiasm, and messaging are helpless if you are focused on the wrong accounts. This is the formula for predictable, repeatable, scalable sales. Manage the consistency of your inputs and you will have consistent outputs. What about you? What's your formula for repeatable results?

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ZoomInfo Copilot is working 24/7 — surfacing important updates you should know about your top accounts. With breaking alerts delivered via Slack, you'll never miss when a buying group shifts or a key account spikes on intent. 🔔 Have a question about one of your accounts? Ask Copilot's interactive, AI-powered chat and get answers in seconds. Ready to give Copilot a try? Message me today ! #ZoomInfoCopilot #zoominfo

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AltiSales is revolutionizing SDR Leadership (and even for SDRs). It's not just about the Call Funnels (which are awesome, check them out) Or the Email Tracker (what's your Positive Reply Ratio?!?) It's the Notifications! I never realized how crucial notifications are for staying on top of things. As sales leaders, we juggle 5-10 different tools daily. Each with different reporting. Each with different tracking. And as a Sales Leader, you often have ZERO idea where to start troubleshooting. [Enter AltiSales.io] Every morning, I receive email notifications (and Slack messages) highlighting the areas that need troubleshooting. Whether it's templates in my sequences that need to be deactivated due to low positive replies, Or identifying which variant of an email from an A/B test has a better Positive Reply Ratio, Or addressing low connect rates for some users, Or overdue tasks piling up for reps, Or failed emails throughout all your sequences, Or pinpointing where, in the last 1, 2, 3, or 4 weeks, my reps are struggling with their cold calls, And so much more… Having more tools isn't the solution for your SDRs and leaders, but having the right visibility and notifications is. Before AltiSales, I thought I had a good grasp on the visibility I needed for troubleshooting, but I was operating on a chaotic model. With AltiSales, I am more zen and aware of every detail. Notifications... who would have thought... Check it out – it's free for Outreach users. #salesdevelopment #businessdevelopment #sales

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🔥 Hot Take Alert! 🔥 Why I Advocate for Persistence in Sales – A Perspective for Engineers As an engineer, you might find persistent salespeople a bit much at times. But let me share why I actually seek out and value persistence in sales interactions: Urgency to Act: Persistent salespeople show a drive to close deals promptly. This isn't just about them managing their pipelines efficiently; it’s about prioritizing tasks and aligning with my timeline, ensuring projects move forward swiftly. Set Clear Expectations: Early interactions with eager sales teams allow me to gauge the level of support I’ll receive post-purchase. It’s crucial to establish expectations early on, especially regarding response times and support, which often decelerate once contracts are signed. Invaluable Experience: A salesperson who consistently engages with a variety of clients gains a deep understanding of industry-specific challenges. Their persistence often translates into a wealth of knowledge and creative problem-solving abilities that can be pivotal for businesses like ours. From my perspective, a salesperson’s persistence is a preview of the attentiveness and support you can expect as a client. It’s a trait that can transform a standard vendor relationship into a strategic partnership. Do you agree? How do you feel about persistence in sales interactions? #Sales #BusinessDevelopment #CustomerExperience #Engineering

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Hot Take: Hating on Signal-led and outbound means you don't get either or don't understand how to build it. We are having the best pipeline month in company history and about to beat our best quarter after going signal led(Q2 '24 results to follow). How did we do it = Stacking Signals!! The key to success here is that each signal is not a solution, you need to stack them together and triage them to get your best strike zone. Here is the list of signal's I captured manually. An OKR for me this quarter is to add more to my repository of signals and I plan on doing this by integrating all these signals into Common Room and further track their activity for unique trigger and conversion events. In an ideal world I plan on "Big Brothering" my leads/signals to see if they become hotter over time and convert. These are some of the signals we are working with currently and you can find the resources of signals from Common Room in some of the links i'll share. 1) CRM signals: Lookalike customers and prospects in your deal committed stage. 2) Social Signals: Community engagement, Dark social conversations. 3) Website Visitors: De-anonymized 4) Product Signals: Sign-up's, lookalike sign-ups and sign-ups engaging with competitors. What's fascinating is that these signal produced leads are converting to qualified opportunities and closed won 37% faster. These are also outperforming our inbound demo's and hand raisers. This is the current workflow and how as a PLG org, stacking the above signals and doing a bit of manual work is a must. I'll stress again - all these signal's without the right enablement and sales talent will fall short. Enter Debdutta Saha 🧘‍♂️ - This is how Deb stack's our signals and build's glorious qualified pipeline. Step 1: Deb tracks all sign-ups on our Tablea dashboard and looks for unique sign-ups. Aka has somebody hit room limits or has somebody invited other internally to sign-up. These events increase the score and turns the sign-up into a signal. Step2: We check de-anonamization took to check visitors on our site and validate who to reach out to. 40% activation failures exist in PLG and this signal combined with the above shows us sign-ups that might be in market and actively evaluating. Step3: Then we look for unique trigger signal to get a better sense of the org - aka do they have open headcount, are they hiring for roles that are end users of my product. Here is a repository of signal's from Common Room that you can use https://lnkd.in/gSC6Px-9 Step4: We prospect and talk to all ic's to learn what could be ATL messaging for the leaders that will help us convert an account to an opportunity. The above is just 1 of many play's we run. The hypothesis is that by integrating all my signals and product data into Common Room, i'll be surfaced more wins to go after. I'll share Q2 results soon - playbook in comments. #sales #khantent #management

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There are two ways to solve gaps in signal-based selling. Only one is guaranteed to work at scale. 1) Revenue Enablement Provide continuous training for (a) every new hire who joins a team and (b) every 6 months to refresh reps on essential information, workflows, and processes. Many factors can impact the effectiveness of enablement activities (from the comprehensiveness of training materials to the trainer’s institutional knowledge, to how closely the individual reps were paying attention that day). Enablement only becomes harder as more people and processes are added to the mix because there are so many moving parts. 2) Revenue Operations Through automation, RevOps can reduce gaps — especially from human error — that cause friction or inaction among reps. Specifically, end-to-end automation. Most common “automations” in signal-based selling usually don’t go far enough. Therefore teams are overly reliant on enablement touchpoints to stay aligned. Ex: A champion moves to a new role and this is automatically updated in Salesforce This automation gets the process from point A to point B, but still relies on multiple human touches from B to Z. End-to-end automation ensures that essential tasks throughout an entire workflow are set up to keep the process moving toward an end goal. It anticipates gaps and opportunities for human error from point A to point Z (meeting booked). Ex: A champion moves to a new role, the CRM record is updated, a rep is notified, and a multi-step persona-specific email sequence is triggered. Would every rep follow this process if it was entirely manual (even with enablement training)? Probably not. That’s why every signal play should be accompanied by clear workflows enabled with end-to-end automation. The play can scale with your team. Signals without action are just noise for reps. Automation guarantees signals get actioned.

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In the SaaS industry, speed is not the edge, it's a requirement! Don't stall due to this silent killer. As companies need to scale the left hand stops knowing what the right hand is doing which slows things down. Start early with Rev Ops to ensure you keep velocity as you scale by having a finger on the pulse of all things revenue. If you're thinking about taking the plunge, do it! It's never too early. #revops #saas #businessstrategy

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Biggest challenges while building early RevOps team? Dependency and Resistance to Change. Let me explain. You are coming to a company that “works just fine” into a role no one really understands. The role is extremely collaborative - you essentially touch every department. And you are coming in to show the inefficiencies and fix them. In processes that were owned by someone else, who usually takes it personally. You have to bring together and align a lot of stakeholders, you need to push them to the edge and drive them to deliver, so you can deliver.  If something works - someone else will claim the credit. If it doesn’t - you are typically the first one to blame. I have seen data teams blaming RevOps for bad data quality - while consolidation was leading to its improvement. I have seen dev and product teams delaying and doubting every step - just because they were loosing the control and ownership. And this could continue into any department - the more technical, the more resistant. After all - someone coming from commercial won’t tell the techies how to do things! It often feels like people forget they should have the same goal as you - long term company success, not only hitting this quarters OKRs. The only way out is persistence - persistence and well built tech stack (thanks all the low/no-code and AI tooling! What is your experience with cracking hard stakeholders? #revops #revenueoperations #gtmacademy #changemanagement

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Don’t get hung up on a buyer’s “budget.” You don’t know what it is, and can’t do much about it. The other reality is, purchasing decisions are often not based on budget at all, but urgency…i.e. “Get this product now, or else…!” Think about Zoom, Slack, Guru, etc. A lot of companies “didn’t have a budget” for such seemingly frivolous tools until the pandemic necessitated their use. Suddenly, money appeared. Actually, it was always there, but put towards more urgent things. Decision-making requires prioritization. A budget is a snapshot in time, not a life sentence. The phrase "we don't have a budget" often translates to "this isn't important at the moment." While you don't want to try and fit a square peg into a round hole, our job is to shift the conversation and demonstrate how your product or service addresses a more urgent need. If you accomplish the above, the money can always be found.

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Hot take: SDR is not the hardest job in sales. Mid Market AE is. Here’s why: Mid market is in an awkward middle between enterprise and SMB. These AEs often need mastery over not one, but two distinct sales motions: 1. High velocity selling 2. Enterprise selling Enterprise reps have the “luxury” (said tongue in cheek) of exclusively running enterprise motions, even if the initial land is small. SMB reps have the luxury of exclusively running high velocity, faster cycles. Mid Market reps are in the unenvious position of needing to know both. They don’t have the luxury of hyper-specialization. Companies between, say, 250 and 1500 employees have wildly different buying processes and speed. It is not uncommon for the mid market segment to struggle the most. I see this all the time. I see you, mid market reps. P.S. Here's 39 sales questions you can use to crush mid market selling: https://go.pclub.io/list

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