Shifting FOCUS to Your Customers in Sales Ft. Josh Roth | Revenue Reimagined Ep. 015

Shifting the focus of sales from just 'winning the deal' to driving genuine customer success requires a fundamental shift in mindset. Josh Roth emphasizes that churn is not a post-sales problem; it begins during the very first interactions with a prospect. By tying the sales process directly to a robust value analysis, sales teams can ensure they only acquire customers who will actually benefit from their solution, effectively weeding out bad fits before they become costly churn statistics. A key innovation discussed is the 'Pillar Deal' concept. Instead of forcing a rigid Account Executive to Account Manager handoff for the sake of internal unit economics, AEs selectively keep high-potential accounts or perpetual cash cows. This prioritizes customer trust and continuity over strict company metrics, fundamentally reimagining account ownership to align with the buyer's journey. The conversation also touches on practical strategies for the current economic climate, heavily favoring customer retention over acquisition. Building trust early by actively disqualifying bad-fit prospects, shifting mutual success plans to focus on value realization instead of contract signatures, and simply getting 'faces in places' through on-site visits are proven tactics to increase win rates and maximize customer lifetime value.

Discussed in this episode

• Why churn is an everyone problem that starts with the very first pre-sales conversation.
• Using a multi-layered value analysis during pre-sales to quantify specific financial impacts.
• The importance of disqualifying prospects early if their projected ROI falls below a 200 percent threshold.
• How to seamlessly pass the value analysis from pre-sales to customer success as a living, iterable document.
• Reframing Mutual Action Plans to target 'value understood' rather than just a signed contract.
• Introducing the Pillar Deal concept where Account Executives retain ownership of high-potential accounts.
• Why focusing heavily on customer retention provides better unit economics than purely chasing new logos.
• The staggering impact of 'faces in places' and returning to on-site visits to dramatically boost win rates.

Episode highlights

1. 0:00 — Intro and alternative GTM roles
2. 2:30 — Tracking ballpark visits to guarantee renewals
3. 5:00 — Why churn is an everybody problem
4. 7:15 — Implementing a living Value Analysis document
5. 10:30 — Willingness to disqualify vaporware prospects early
6. 13:00 — Bringing CS into the sales handshake
7. 15:20 — Building JSPs to value realization
8. 18:45 — Reimagining handoffs with Pillar Deals
9. 23:10 — Retention over acquisition and on-site visits

Key takeaways

• Churn prevention begins during your first pre-sales discovery call.
• Disqualify early if projected ROI doesn't exceed 200 percent.
• Tie Mutual Action Plans to value realization, not contract close.
• Let AEs keep massive-TAM accounts to maintain customer trust.
• Get on-site with prospects to significantly increase your win rates.

Transcript

You know, I think churn is an everyone problem. Right? You know, it's it's certainly not a success problem. I also think it's it's not a sales problem.

I think it's an everybody problem. Welcome back to another episode of Revenue Reimagined. We are so excited to have Josh Roth with us today. Josh is the current revenue leader at Lob, a super active investor in the SAS space, uh, and a friend of the show.

Josh, thanks for being here, man. I'm super excited. Adam, let's let's dive in. This is going to be this is fun.

Hey, Josh. Awesome. Thanks for joining. So, uh, this is called Revenue Reimagined and, uh, as a as a sales leader, I'm super curious if you had to take on another job in the go-to-market function, which would it be and why?

Couldn't be in sales anymore. Different go-to-market. I'm I'm going to go uh, customer success. Ah, nice.

And why? That's what sales ultimately is supposed to lead to, right? Is is your customers having success and, um, you know, whether it's making more money, saving money, you know, mitigating risk, whatever it might be and, um, yeah, care about people that we work with. I want them to do well and, you know, if my job isn't going to be in sales, I want to make sure that my job is doing what I can to help them.

So, I love that. I I want to piggyback on that because you said something that's important, right? Success is what sales should lead to. Oftentimes, and I've led sales teams, I've led success teams as well.

Um, sales doesn't think of it like that. I think too many sales leaders and then sales reps through their sales leaders, think of it as my job is to go out and get business and arguably a lot of them don't even think that's their job. They think that's the BDR's job, which we can talk about in a whole separate tangent. But they think that my my job is to close business, right?

It's to get in front of the customer, close the business, not my problem what happens after that. It's not my problem to make sure they get onboarded smoothly. It's not my problem to make sure that they use the product. It's not my problem to make sure they use it successfully.

Talk to me about from a revenue leader or sales leader perspective, how do you shape that mindset, um, and drive people caring one layer deeper of it's not just about selling, it's about selling successfully. Yeah, you know, ultimately, I I'm a firm believer that you're going to if you want specific behaviors, you have to incent it, right? So you have to incent the right behaviors. And for so long, and I love that the name of this podcast Revenue Reimagined because you're exactly right, we need to think differently as revenue leaders and we need to model differently.

When I started my career, my book of business and my revenue target was based around my book. So as I sold new customers, I needed to both retain them, grow them, and sell new logos. It doesn't matter how it didn't matter how I got there, right? If I wanted to get to a million bucks, I could get there with 80 80% expansions, 100% new logos, 100% expansions.

Didn't matter as long as I got there. Right? And so I made I was at the New York Mets at the time. I made this uh crazy spreadsheet.

And it was every single customer that was in my book of business, and then how many games they were attending, and how many times I visited them during the game. And I knew that if I visited my customers at least three times per year, they had a 95% chance of renewing based upon my own uh data that I had. So I knew that like over the course of the year, I needed to visit I I think I needed to make like somewhere between 1,400 and 1,800 visits. Wow.

Um over the span of the year. So each game, I would have a a little spreadsheet of like, here's all the customers coming. I would map out exactly the route that I would take in the ballpark to get to which customers at what inning, you know, all that jazz. Um, and it was a different way to think about revenue and and not only did I hit my number every single year, I hit my revenue target every single month because I was so specific with what I was doing and why and I had the data that I could back into.

I love that. Like having the data is super important, right? Like most people nowadays don't run on data and like a lot of these startup companies and people running like they're they're like my gut tells me this, or I think of that and and I mean I work with a lot of founders is like, okay, we know what you want to have happen, but what does the data say? And so I love that you had the data to map that out.

And I was just curious like, did you bring peanuts and that kind of stuff to your your customers at the ballpark? Oh, I brought everything. I brought like chicken fingers, I brought bobbleheads, I brought like signed balls. Like, whatever I thought was going to help that person or if they had mentioned something, I would take a note of it of like, oh, really likes Lucas Duda bobbleheads.

I don't even know anyone on this show is going to know the name Lucas Duda. Could be the third base coach for. I don't. Right?

Yeah, exactly. like no one's going to know that name. But it it was I was that specific. I knew exactly what they were bringing.

But my third year at the Mets, everything changed. We went to new logos only. We split new logos and expansions. Churn went up.

Customers were less happy, and the sales people were less happy because we had to create new relationships. And while it certainly helped on on the overall revenue side, we churned through customers much faster. I think churn went up, I don't know, seven, eight% at least and we went to the World Series that year. Like we shouldn't have had churn going up, it should have gone down.

So. And and it's funny you talk about it cuz I live in Tampa and it amazes me the emptiness of the Tropicana, like I'm like, there's got like there's got to be a good reason for it. It could be some transient nature here, but um anyway, I digress. I mean, it could be the it could be the team.

Um that's a whole separate conversation. They're good. They're good. Josh, when you talk about churn and like that's the dirtiest word in SAS, right?

The dirtiest word in sales of any kind is churn, but I think so many people don't focus on it. And there's this mindset that oh churn is like a success problem, right? Only customer success has to worry about churn. That's their job to make sure that the customers are happy.

I I'd love your thoughts on from a sales perspective, like how can we prevent churn from the very beginning because my firm belief and please feel free to push back is churn isn't a success problem. Churn actually starts the very first time a sales rep talks to someone. So, first of all, I I completely agree with you. I think churn is an everyone problem, right?

You know, it's it's certainly not a success problem. I also think it's it's not a sales problem. I think it's an everybody problem. And the way I think about that is at Lob and what we're actually solving for right now, we're, you know, probably most people listening, both of you might be going through the same thing.

Like, we're we're going through 2024 planning, we're trying to figure out what what the numbers look like. And a big way that that we're trying to solve for churn is in our pre-sales process, we leverage a value analysis so that we specifically understand the ultra-specific area or areas that we are driving efficiencies and financial impact for our customers. And we have this whole document that gets built out that we leverage in the sales process. And then we sell the deal, we flip it over to customer success.

Value analysis goes goes away. It's not used. And it it's it's it's a shame, right? Because the value analysis is is a hypothesis.

Right? This is what both teams, the buyer and the seller believe is going to happen. But like we all know what a hypothesis, right? Is, right?

It's just that. You have to iterate against that. And then the document is supposed to be an iterable process. It might be significantly more financial impact that you're driving.

It could be significantly less. You just got to dig in and figure it out. Right? And so what we are are working on right now is, okay, how do we get that process, our value analysis, into our post-sales process in the same way that we do pre-sales that we can have it as an ongoing unit of measurement.

Yeah. Right? A success measurement. Because then it's really hard for your clients to turn.

Like if you're hitting your metrics, like there's no conversations. Like, we've hit our metrics. Are you guys worried that you guys are not going to hit your metrics or like why does it not travel through because it's a super interesting tool? I I find people not using it enough, but It it's fully our fault.

Like, it's it's not that it like there's no reason for it not to travel all the way through. It's just the enablement side. It's just the process side. It's literally just setting our CS team up for success.

We built the value analysis, the sales team leverages it, it's in Salesforce. We track against it. If we're not using it in a deal cycle, we know that we're injecting risk in that deal cycle. We're then not though passing that to the to the account manager and saying, hey, like, here's our value analysis.

Here's the aggressive model. Here's the conservative model. Yeah. Right?

We have belief that even if we hit our conservative targets, which again, they're conservative for a reason, right? 90, 95% confidence interval. You know, is that we're going to hit that. If we don't, right, we got problems.

They're a risk. If we do, we should be totally fine. We modeled against this in the pre-sales process. So, it's really just setting them up for success and part of it is just we can't we we didn't do everything at once.

And you share it with your customer? Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, it was actually like I was an hour before I hopped on with the two of you.

I was on with a a customer, one of our AEs and we literally were sharing the value analysis and we were going through it step by step and the customer's like, oh, I don't know about that and that actually is this number and we're like co-building it together and at the end of the call, he's like, all right, great. Send the contract, like let's work on this, send me the value analysis too. Like it it's definitely got to be co-built. Dale, customers are those things that come along after you close a deal.

Just you know. Yeah, about that. Um just just want to make sure we're clear. It could be it could be a customer all the way through.

You could be expanding them. Come on now. They they were they were new logo, they they were they were it definitely a prospect. But I always like to say customer because anybody that's sending mail.

I love it. Okay, like, you know, you're you should be a customer. He's an ops guy. He's just listening.

He's he's an ops guy. He has to he has to go like step by step. It's annoying. I think verbage um is important and how we refer to people.

People don't realize it, but in your subconscious and in your customer's subconscious, it absolutely does play a role. Um, you know, we've all talked about how when you're you know, buying something or when you're interviewing someone what to say and not to say, right? Like I I was told like when you're interviewing someone, don't ever say when you start. It's when the candidate, when the person who gets this role.

But when you start using that word customer, you're getting them in the mindset that they're your customer. I love what you're talking about with, you know, a value analysis and something that's ongoing. I think, you know, there's a lot of talk on mutual success plans and action plans for closing the deal. Like, hey, Josh, what do we need to do and what are the steps we need to take with you as my champion to get this deal across the finish line?

Um, and that's all dandy and very salesy, but I think if done right can work really well. But I think there's something to be said for, hey, listen, after you onboard, we want to make sure that you're successful. So let's look at what, you know, success looks like from the time that you say yes through time to value, through onboarding, through, you know, inevitably expansion. But like how can we make sure and I've used a of line similar to this.

I'm curious your thought, but like we don't want to be shelfware. How can we make sure that you actually purchase us, use us and continue to get value day in and day out? Um, I love what you're doing there. I think it's great and I think it's something that a lot of people should really consider putting into play.

You know, it's it's interesting. The the shelfware concept is um, you know, look, I think probably all of us have have bought a piece of tech that we had a plan for and it became shelfware, right? I I definitely understand that. A big part of why we do the value analysis is actually so that we can quantify early to understand if we're going to drive enough financial impact.

So we have we consider a three-level or three-layer value analysis. The first layer is just a very rough gauge, like, hey, what's what do you expect your conversion rate to be? How many people are you trying to get, you know, mail in front of, um, what's what's the average order value or lifetime customer value, whatever the the metric is that you're measuring, right? And then we're going to spit out a rough ROI.

Again, this is just it's a very rough draft. But we have pretty significant conviction that if that number, if that ROI number is not 200% or above, that there's a chance we might be vaporware, right? Or there's a chance that there's just not enough financial impact in this project or in this scope that is going to enable us to really sell on value. And when we see that, it's just it it's I don't know that it's a red flag, but it's probably a yellow and or an orange flag for our AEs to say like, ooh, I don't know that there's enough here and that we'll actually share that with the customer.

Like we'll say like, hey, Adam, like, I really appreciate it. Thank you for your time. Like, look, 220% ROI, we don't see this often. You know, we need to see 5, 600% really commonly for us to feel confident going forward.

What am I missing? Like tell me how tell me how we get to. I I love that. For so many reasons.

Number one, you're saying you're you're openly saying we might not be right for you and that's okay. And even if look, the goal, I would assume is to make it right and figure out how, but even if you're not, you're building such trust with your with your customer at that point of listen, like if it's not right, I'm not going to take your money. Like let's figure out how we might be able to make it right. And if not, like, we're going to tell you this probably doesn't make sense.

Like, holy shit, like what what what a way to look at a customer and be like, I don't want your money. And how many times when you say that, do they like try to like get you to sell. Like, no, I want your solution. Like, no, this this really does have to happen.

I mean, it's every time I tell I every time I tell you no, you still try to shove something down my throat of like, we need to do this. Like, Dale, stop. Ever feel like keeping your CRM updated with call notes is a nightmare? You're not alone.

Most sales leaders would rate their CRM hygiene a four out of ten. Badly maintained CRMs lead to inaccurate data, missed opportunities, and a messy sales pipeline. Not ideal, right? Introducing Attention, your sales reps' personal Iron Man suit.

It transforms CRM upkeep, automating it with AI, and freeing your reps to sell, not enter data. Attention fills your CRM with a single click, drafts custom follow-ups, and gives real-time assistance. Isn't it time your CRM worked for you? Ready to upgrade your sales?

Visit www.attention.tech. It's interesting.

Typically when we share that, our the angle that we're taking is actually like we don't even want to continue the conversation with you. We're we're actually trying to disqualify the customer. Yeah. Because we know that if we take that to a CFO, the CFO's going to look at this and say, there's just not enough and we don't want to spin our wheels.

Right? So yes, we've definitely had customers say like, no, no, like we're missing this, and we're missing this. We'll dig in, we'll go into the weeds with them and we'll figure out like, is there actually value here? Is there not?

Are we just missing something? I would say nine times out of 10, you know, four times out of five, there's just not enough value and we've got like a maybe a low-level manager, like a tire kicker, who thinks it's really cool, but in no way is going to have the influence or or the decision-making ability to actually bring us in. And we try to call that out early and that's typically where we're like, hey, where's this project coming from? Like, is this your ideas?

Is this coming from a C suite? Again, nine out of nine times out of 10, it's just that person kind of going off on their own science project and we try to call that out early. Disqualify if you can. Disqualify.

Win win early. I mean, those are two things that we always I think good sales leaders and good uh revenue teams run through. One thing you may want to consider or try, um I've seen work in the past, is try to bring CS or whoever's doing the delivery into the end of the sales cycle. So if you bring them in, you can actually um we were talking about this the other day, like instead of doing a hand off, do a handshake.

And so, if you have bandwidth and the CS team, bring them into the sales process, enable them to have that that piece of paper or whoever like whatever the ROI is, and then they take it on from there. So then, like the sales team doesn't have to do it. That's exactly right. So that's actually what we do.

So before AEs are allowed to commit deals, we actually have to add the CS to to the deal of that. Um, yeah, we we you're you're 100% spot on. We've actually seen uh a bit of an uptick in win rates because of so. I love that.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, because because think about it as well.

Like, so we as sales people are selling to the the economic buyer, the whoever the person is. They're probably not using your solution anyway. It's somebody else using your solution. So we're as a as a sales person, I'm handing off the CS.

The buying person on the other side is handing it off to whoever's implementing or using it as well. So there's like there's four people in this equation, it's not a two-person equation. And if you don't get those other two people combined together or like aligned together, you're going to get no place when you hand it off that it'll be it'll it'll fail. You know, it's it's interesting like if you think about like Adam, I think you mentioned mutual action plans earlier.

Um, yeah. A lot of of a lot of maps or JSPs, whatever people are calling them, um, they don't get great utilization from the customer because a lot of it is just like, how do we move this sales process forward? Like, what's the next step? Right?

We're going to go from demo to, you know, what what whatever. Yeah. Right. Um, and part of that is because the sales people don't actually identify who the implementation folks are at at your your buyer, right?

And so there's there's not necessarily project scoping. It's just moving along in a sales process. So when we were, you know, when we were leveraging, you know, joint success plans or mutual action plans, we weren't getting great utilization on it because a lot of it was just based on how do I take this to the next step? How do I move the deal and like all that like.

Right. Me, me, me, me, me. Exactly. And it's it's we realized like that's that's not the way to play it.

We have to we have to get a a deeper understanding of project scope and then we need to get your implementation folks as you implement, the deal will naturally flow the way that it should again, just by identifying the the the right people post sale. Actually, in the in the JSPs, um because I struggle with this with some of my teams when I was implementing them, I actually say, we all have we all have line items in this action plan. Like what um mutual action plan, joint engagement plan, whatever we call it. But the customer gets action action items in there as well.

You share it with them and you're like, okay, you have this due by this time frame. And then you don't end up becoming a sales concierge because that's what ends up happening. Like, go do this, get this contract. Like, hold on.

You also have to get your red lines back to me by this time frame. The other thing that does on the on the JSP side is if the if the deal gets delayed and they're expecting some value, let's say it's an October, but they don't get red lines back to you when they say they're going to have them. Now you have it kind of in paperwork. Like, I know we're delayed on the value side of it.

However, what we're seeing is that we were delayed in the contracting side. So we all we all are on the same page. That's right. And when I when I built the JSPs, I wouldn't build them to contract close.

I'd build them to value like value understood. Oh, yeah. So then like, yeah. Because then then the customer is like bought into it.

If you only get to contract into like when the contract close, it becomes a close plan versus like a mutual action plan. That's right. And and if you're if you're the customer, right? Like what does that say about the focus of of the sales person?

Yeah. Right? Yeah. Like that doesn't tell me that this person is remote.

Yeah, or cares about if I'm going to be successful. Right? Like your work starts at contract signature, does not end. Yes.

I always say like a sales is a promise to deliver value, then you actually have to deliver that value. Absolutely. That's right. So, Josh, let me ask you, like, the world has changed, right?

Over the past 12, 18 months, maybe closer to 24. Um, we've seen revenue and sales flipped upside down. When you look at the back half of 23, the last quarter of 23 that we're going into and going into 24, what is like a solid go-to-market motion look like to you? What do we need to change and how do we need to how the companies need to adapt to arguably and use my words, reinvent go to market, because what we've done isn't going to get us where we need to go.

I thought you said reimagine. Reinvent. Okay, reimagine. Good, Josh.

Sh. Listen. Shut your face. Um, it's it's it's a great question.

It's very timely. So I'm building out my my operating plan for next year. You know, I'm I'm actually like doing this day-to-day, built out kind of the sketch for what I I want the operating plan to look like next year. And there there's kind of three different pillars that I'm thinking about.

The first is from an efficiency perspective. I recognize how critical it is, you know, unit economics to split AEs and AMs and make sure that, you know, AMs are working expansions and AEs are new logos and all that. Makes sense, right? Uh, the flip side is when you are taking that into account, Simon Sinek says this a lot.

There are 1,001 ways to measure performance, and there's neg you know, there's no ways to measure trust, right? And when you take an AE off an account off a deal, as a company, your message is revenue and our company is more important than the customer. Whether you mean to or not, right? And so the way that I'm thinking about this next year is bringing what I call a pillar deal concept where AEs have a rolling, um, you know, call it 10, 25, whatever the right number is, accounts that they get to decide whether they want to keep.

So I'll give you three different examples. AE sells a customer. They realize that that customer is capped at what they bought. There's never going to be any sort of expansion.

They've done the right discovery, and they decide, hey, you know what, Adam? This account is done. No need for me to focus on it. I'm going to pass it to you.

Right? That's one option. The second option is AEs done the right discovery, recognizes, hey, this is, you know, a land, expand, explode type of motion. We're going to land it X, we're going to expand to Y, and then we're going to explode to Z.

I'm going to take this account. I'm going to keep it for maybe it's 18 months, maybe it's 6 months, maybe it's 12 months, but I'm going to work that expansion. I'm going to make sure that they see value that we in that we drive that financial impact for them. And then after again, however much time it is, right, then we slowly pass it to the AM after we've gotten that expansion, right?

The last the last part is just kind of your what I what what this is called, pillar deals, right? Where you sell an account and you know that the TAM is significant, right? There is legitimate potential that this account can become a named account, right? Whatever your definition of a named account is, right?

And you're going to keep that in perpetuity, right? That's one that's just it's a cash cow, right? Let revenue operations, let sales leadership figure out like what the compensation is on that, right? But ultimately, you want your best people on your best accounts and you want the people that have all of the context.

Right? And it's really important that you keep that over time. You you can't just put yourself and your company and your customer in a situation where you've spent all of this time working together and then you just flip it to someone else. Like, no matter how good your process is, you are going to lose the goodwill in that relationship, in that agreement, in that partnership.

And the pillar deal concept is really meant to keep that. And and and. Robos is going to love you. Hey, and let it compound, right?

So this is something that we're working on for next year and it's is really kind of the the pillar, if you will, um, for for what my go-to-market strategy is going to be, which is, you know, keeping, you know, keeping a focus on unit economics. Right? Efficiencies are important. Let's let's be realistic as to where we are in in today's world.

Um, and that does not make it mutually exclusive from doing the right thing for your team and for your customer. It's interesting. I love the concept. There's a couple of things.

Yeah, I think it's super cool. I have I don't think I have another 40 minutes to go through that, but I have to think through them. But um, it's it's a it's a great concept and I think, you know, Dale will send you one of his typical four-page follow-ups, Josh. Please do.

Please. Like I would love for you to like poke around and like and try to figure out where the weaknesses are. That's what I'm I'm trying to do for like three weeks now. So any other eyes, please.

I think I think internal rev ops is probably has something to say about trying to figure out the compensation model on that, but um, that's it. Oh, you would believe. Yeah. I I bet I bet that one I bet that one's kind of tough.

Um, super cool. I like it. I like the idea. It's cool.

One of other things that we do inside our our uh audience and community is is uh give back. So we we're big believers in giving back and uh you are offering up something to uh one of our listeners and audience. So uh go take it away. Cool.

So I'm I'm happy to do one and or two different options. Number one, um I'm happy to do a uh you know, 20 or 30 minute call with with a listener to, you know, if you're looking for whether it's career advice or deal advice, deal strategy, you want to do like a deal review or um anything like that. I'm I'm happy to to chat with you. Poke holes in the pillar model.

Exactly. You can poke holes in the pillar deals. Like like you know, whatever whatever you're looking for, talk to me about ducks football. Like I'm I'm game.

Um so that's what I The second option is, you know, if anyone's looking for any like lob swag, if you want like t-shirts or water bottles or magnets or golf balls, um I know uh I know I've gotten seen a few LinkedIn posts of people saying like, stop sending me t-shirts and start sending me golf balls. We got golf balls if you want it. So, you know, happy to do one and or both for for anybody that's listening to this. It's a it's a great topic and it's one that that probably needs a little bit more attention.

Awesome. Love that. I love it. I definitely I definitely think someone will take you up on that 20 or 30 minutes.

I think that will be found from our listeners. Even our founders. Um getting time to talk to revenue leaders and poke holes and really learn more. Um is something that they they really appreciate.

All right, as we wrap it up, I want to dive into some rapid fire, um and we will start with what song would best describe your revenue strategy. I'm going No Surrender by Bruce Springsteen. Nice. Very nice.

I give it to me. I'll get you. I get the. We've never had anyone repeat songs yet, so.

Yeah, we haven't. Oh, all right, I'm glad I wasn't the first. Adam's still waiting for Living on a Prayer from Bon Jovi. We'll see what happens.

Someone someone's going to say it. I I promise you. I mean, it it's it is your revenue strategy from what I hear, Dale. But like, you know, someone someone else will say it.

100%. I I still like Jen Allen's uh uh juvenile back that ass up, but I'll uh Yeah. move on. Okay.

Oh, you'll good explanation there. Okay. Um, if you had a crystal ball, uh, what's one revenue trend that you predict will take like really strong hold in the next 12 to 18 months? Uh, community led and content led growth.

Why? Curious. Uh, people need a new channel other than cold calling, cold emailing, and LinkedIn to actually speak with customers. Um, and that's one that is very low cost.

Yeah. Yeah, cool. Fair enough. I I think I know the answer, but generally speaking, not like if you're a seed phase startup or if you're a $200 million company, generally speaking, 2024, in the context of revenue generation, you could only choose one area to focus, and it's customer retention or it's customer acquisition.

Which one are you going all in on? Customer retention. Why? Few reasons.

One, it's more cost effective. Number two, um, you, uh, your win rate on expansions is typically going to be higher than new logo. Uh, number three, if you churn everybody you acquire, like why why are you spending so much money to acquire in the first place? Focus on ensuring that there's success first before you invest in acquisition.

And I think it runs on the I think it runs on the pillar model you're you're saying. I I I really like the model. I the more I think about it as we're going through this, I I have like tons of questions, we may have to have follow-up call. We do, please.

What's one lesser known tip or tactic, um, that is that had made a surprising difference in revenue outcomes for you or your team? I don't know if it's it's it necessarily surprising, but getting on site. Getting a face in the place has had such a monumental impact. I think we're we're winning those deals at at 2x.

as as frequently. I mean, it just like get on site. Go meet people. Go shake their hand.

Go smile with them. Go have a dinner. Get get faces in places. Get faces in places.

I don't know that that's necessarily surprising. I just feel like it's not done as frequently anymore. Well, it's probably like swinging back, right? From the whole COVID world.

Like, people I think people forgot how to do it. It's the weirdest thing. Yeah. Yeah, like two years and people are like, how do I get on site?

Oh, I see Adam's on site with a collared shirt, which is very odd. But, um, anyway. Listen, I I occasionally have to clean up for for the clients. Those are the ones that you signed that pay you to do work, Dale.

Um, Oh, you told me Josh was the reason why you wore the collared shirt today. Okay. I'm going to I'm just going to take that and be complimented. There you go.

I can't even keep my own story straight. So, Josh, earlier in the show, you talked about, um, going from sales into CS. So, it's tomorrow morning, you get your cup of coffee, what's the first thing you do as a uh CS leader? Oh.

That's a very good question. What's the first thing I do with with as a CS leader? Um, figure out why uh customers are risk to churn and solve those problems. Josh, I I really I I I cannot say enough how much we appreciate you coming on, um, and sharing your knowledge.

I think everything from the pillar approach to how you look at, um, bringing customers through the journey, to how you think customers are getting value, there's so much, um, knowledge and value that you dropped here. Um, a a heartfelt thank you from both of us. Where, um, where could people find you, man? uh LinkedIn's the easiest spot.

Josh Roth. You'll you'll see my little uh banner, my little collared shirt. Uh, you know, I I I wore it for you in the profile picture, Adam. There you go.

I I I appreciate it. Thanks so much for joining us, man. We appreciate it.