We discuss strategies with Lesley Ronaldson (VP of Sales EMEA at Gong) on the importance of a customer-centric approach to digital transformation for your business. She shares her experiences and practical tips that you can use to understand customer needs for business success in the digital age.

Hello, and welcome to the Growth Workshop Podcast with

myself Matt Best and my co host, Jonny Adams. Today, we're joined

by the fantastic Lesley Ronaldson, a friend of our

business now for for a number of years and a familiar face to a

few of us here. So we're thrilled to have you on with us

today. Lesley. So thank you so much for joining.

Thank you for having me. I'm very excited to

do this podcast.

Brilliant, brilliant. And as you will know from and as

the rest of our audience will know, as is customary. We ask it

ask a question about what's been interesting what's been going on

in your week. So Jonny, I'm gonna come to you first and and

nice to see you as always, but what what's been going on in

your world over the last seven to 10 days?

Matt, lovely to see you, Lesley, it's fantastic to

have you on today. Thank you so much for joining us. What's been

going on two things. I've been on a nice vacation holiday over

a number of days, which has been fantastic. I went away with my

wife, it was our last trip for having a baby. So it was sort of

one of those where we were really sort of planning the most

important things of our life. But I still managed Matt and

you're gonna roll your eyes unless the show you might do

too. But I still managed to actually come back for a day of

work during that trip. And I think that sort of put things

into perspective that it's all about balancing life and work at

the moment here at SBR. As we're looking to grow and scale into

one of the biggest and best sales consultancies in the

world. I think that's the sort of things that you need to do.

But equally, I managed to have some fantastic time over in

Spain, eight loads drank every single day, which is unfortunate

because my wife obviously couldn't drink much. But we had

a wonderful time whilst balancing work and a lovely

break together. So yeah, that's what's been going on in my life.

Congratulations. I and also I love that I think

work life balance is gone now. We call it work life harmony

here.

What would you mean by that in your context, Lesley?

And thanks for the congratulations.

It's not a balanced anymore. I mean,

sometimes it's just it is what it is. There's days where I

leave at three o'clock to go to maybe a school show. And there's

days where I maybe have to work to another 10 at night and I

make it work. It's the nine to fivers.

Interesting. Someone was bleating on

LinkedIn, no offense to those that do that. But they were

talking about four days a week and how powerful it is. And my

point was what you can do four or five days a week, but

actually it's the Flexi part. I think what you call harmony. I

absolutely advocate that work life harmony, peace. So yeah,

yeah, harmony.

Nice. And Johnny, there's nothing that a pregnant

woman, in my experience, thinking about my wife that

likes least is watching the other half supper nice, cold

beer in the sunshine at about 12 o'clock on holiday.

My wife's Irish as you know, Matt, and Lesley,

you'd probably notice being Irish. Our point is, if I can't

do it, then at least one of us has to do it. So she's all for

me drinking beers. Yeah, one of us should have a good time.

Fantastic. Similarly reconnecting with family. Right.

I think that's been something that for me over the weekend,

I've been fortunate to have my parents come to visit which is,

which is always nice. And it's good for the kids to get some

time with their grandparents as well. So I've just had a really,

really nice time kind of connecting anyway, think about

that work life harmony piece, right, just a bit of

prioritizing time had a couple of really involved weeks at

work, which had been really great, really kind of rewarding

in lots of ways, but tiring and others. And sometimes it's good

to be able to just go out and need to disconnect from this a

little bit and reconnect with a family time. So that's been

what's going on in my world. And let's see, how about you?

There's a lot going on, I suppose I'll stick

with with work for this one. I'm just back from a trip from the

US. We had a new CRO join Gong last September. And there's been

a couple of changes on the leadership team. And he has a

huge belief that sometimes I'll talk about my team, and my team

is my directors and my managers, my directors, my reps. But he

wants us to focus on the first team. And my first team should

be my peers. So we went to the US for three days. And I have to

give, you know really commend him, he kind of left us to our

own devices a lot, there was a lot of downtime, a lot of meals,

a lot of activities and sports. And quite a loose agenda. So

what happened was, there was a lot of conversations that

weren't about work, I would say I came back from that trip. And

there's there was 10 of us plus him. And I can tell you a

personal story about every single one of those leaders. And

I had a lot of aha moments of aha, that is why often you come

across on a call the way you do or that is why we had maybe that

bit of friction last year over over an account. He also talks

about The Five Dysfunctions of a Team which was really important

that actually we don't we all read the book before we got

there. And the biggest one, the foundation is is trust. And I

left that trip with way more trust way more understanding.

You know, we talked about kids and partners and the age that

we're at the age profile, a lot of us have sick parents. So

talking about that and kind of where we are in our lives. And

honestly it was it was a brilliant trip. I love the no

agenda piece and I'm going to I'm actually going to mirror it

here and AMEA because I think although my leaders are close

it's really important to step away from the number of the data

on the drive and just Just breathe and be and let them get

to know each other because again, you build that trust then

conflict is easy you know you can you can debate them commit

and that's what we want to do here.

Oh brilliant. I completely advocate the trust

piece is the key pillars but like Maslow's higher Archi, you

know, you need to, you know, support the bottom foundation

before you can go to the next stage. But the way you've talked

about that, how your CRO put you into a position to produce the

trust and the productive conflict. I think that's

something that's missing. So thank you for sharing that you

need a sort of environment to test case it and how long was it

in the States? How long were you together?

Three days. And actually, at the end of the

three days, like, you know, there was hogs personal numbers

exchanged, and we've all agreed I'm gonna go back over unusual

wouldn't go to the US more than once a quarter. But we got so

much out of it. When I want to go to the next level, we now

want to go to kind of commitment auction results on start to plan

for next year. Usually, we have those conversations in October,

but we want to start them early. I mean, you know, it's a global

conversation, as opposed opposed to my region, my segment my team

there, my first team, it was brilliant. He's a genius, our

CRO.

I'm curious, how do you think you'll take your

lessons learned from that trip, and cascade that into the team?

Is there anything you're thinking that's gonna help you?

There was one thing, so there's these cards,

they're, they're called Value Cards, you get them on Amazon.

So he had, he had 12 decks of those cards. And all of us were

given the cards and you had to open the value that the deck of

values, put them into three piles important, middle

important, not really important, then you to take the ones that

were really important, and pick the top two and go around the

table. And it was chill, like, we were eating lunch, it was

casual feed on, you know, feet up on desks, it wasn't formal.

And, uh, you will have to say why those two values were your

top two values. My top two is fairness, and commitment. Others

were different. But you will have to say why. And I will say

there was not one person around that room that didn't talk about

their childhood, which was very interesting. The fact your

family of origin is so so important. And, and a lot of aha

moments for me. That is why you have sometimes sharp elbows in a

conversation because you were perhaps brought up in a

different tone than I was a single mom. That's why you're so

driven. That's why you will win at all costs. It was really

good, really deep, a lot of bonds made, and he's created a

team that will we'll run through walls for him.

And this is why we love speaking to people like

yourself and yourself as he because I think you know, what

will we do you minutes into the conversation, you just dropped

multiple golden nuggets for people to listen to, even for

me, I am taking that idea. And we're going to have a go at

that. So thank you so much.

It's interesting, you say around the childhood piece.

I was listening to Simon Sinek on the High Performance podcast

recently. And he was talking, you know, in order to help

people find their why always starts with a childhood memory,

because it's such a guiding principle in what you know who

we become and how we become that way. And I think it's yeah, it's

a really interesting thing to reflect on. I think it's that

time away, right? Is that time out of out of the day to day and

like you said out of the numbers and out of the data and out of

conversations about specific accounts in specific situations

and into something that's a little bit freer, and allows

everyone to be yourself a little bit.

I think some personalities have a have a

work. Like there's a work Lesley and at home, Lesley, they're

very similar, right? I'm really direct. I'm high energy high

excite no surprises there. But there's definitely people who I

would have went, there's a work version of them. And I saw a

completely different version of them. And they're very polished

and work and they're very driven. But actually when you

can refer back, one of them was probably the most entertaining

person I've ever met in my life. The stories he told I was like,

what kind of life have you lived, but in work? He's so

buttoned up. I never saw that side of him. So yeah, it's super

important to focus on your first team.

Reminds me of the again, I'm being pretty unfair

here. But you know, champion, it turns up, the Christmas party

has a couple of drinks. My God, well, they do on a dance floor

shirt off, tie around Ed crazy. Get back to work, sitting behind

the desk.

Yeah, one of our engineers here just opened

up a comedy club and he's a stand up comedian. I was like,

what, like, You're so quiet. Everybody has lives outside of

work. Never ever, ever judge a book by its cover ever.

It's great to get to know people like that. And yeah,

thank you for sharing that story with us, Lesley, that's, that's

fantastic. I mean, it's we go into the heart of today's

conversation. And you know, really what, what we'd hoped to

get your perspective and insight on. And as Jonny said, you've

already dropped a couple of insight bombs, if you like on us

in the audience, which is fantastic. But we know that,

again, going back into that sort of looking at your career that

you're passionate about sort of customer centricity and how

important that is to a business. And that's really what we're

looking forward to diving into in a little bit more detail with

you before that, though, it would be really great, I think,

for the audience. And for Jonny and I just understand a little

bit more and hear a bit more about your journey. So far, you

know, you've helped some incredibly senior roles in a

really competitive market at a really competitive space. Could

you just talk us through your journey so far.

I'll give you the whistlestop tour. So I've

just come into my 100 and first quarter in sales. So just over

25 years, I started my career in the late 90s and Dell, bottom of

the rung bottom of the ladder, be the or STR and I have to say

I was absolutely hooked. Dell was a massive multinational in

Ireland in those days. And we had one of the manufacturing

plants in Limerick and they were growing at a huge team and I

knew I was going to try and go as far as I could there and I

had made a commitment I did a couple of foreign assignments

there, I helped set up the first call center in India 2004. I

lived in Slovakia for a while and Bratislava where we

outsource our German sales? After about 1516 years and Dale,

I had a mentor say to me, Hey, you've had a great run, you

know, I was managing partners at that stage a senior manager, he

said, hey, you've had a great run. What Could one say? You're

a one trick pony. Now that phrase lives in my head rent

free. He said, You know, you've been behind a pretty big logo,

pretty deep pockets selling hardware, I think you may need

to start looking at SAS, and looking at software, and

potentially kind of the startup world. So I was like, oh, okay,

let me let me have a look. Now in Dublin there is we were

really, really lucky at that time around 2010. I suppose

there was Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, and we call it

silicon. Like, there's like a Silicon Valley element to

Dublin. And I had a friend who worked in LinkedIn, and we had a

chat. He said, Look, they're starting a new business on

LinkedIn. It's called LinkedIn Sales solutions on the product

to Sales Navigator, and this was 2014. Was it okay, yeah, you

know, I know a bit about LinkedIn, I used to call it the

Facebook for work, how wrong was it? So I went to the interview,

and I was one of the first managers hard and, and they

called it a startup within a startup. So we launched Sales

Navigator. LinkedIn, absolutely brought me on a journey, I would

say the leader I was and Dale would have been, you know, I

grew up at a boys club, I grew up surrounded by a lot of men.

And I definitely had kind of sharp elbows. But LinkedIn

taught me a lot of things to be an empathetic leader, to seek to

understand always, to, you know, always lead with my heart and my

head with data or data is really important. But your people are

really important. And customer. LinkedIn was the first place

where I ever heard about value engagement. And I had an amazing

manager in LinkedIn called Paul Terry. And he said, let me let

me finish it like this. If you're at a dinner party, and

the person on your right, only talks about themselves, and the

person on the left, asks you lots of questions about you. Who

do you want to sit beside? Most of all, I want to sit beside the

person, I want to talk to the person on my left, and he says,

why so well, because he's interested in me. And it's

conversation he goes on. That is how we treat our customers. No

feature blasting, no talking at them, no talking about the

product, you want to know about them. And for me that kind of

turned on a light. When I think about the Dell day, we were

selling like laptops and desktops. And there was an

incentive if you sold a printer, you got like an a multiplier. So

it's more commission. And I remember sitting beside a guy

called Fred hang up the phone. He goes, Yes, I just sold two

printers. I said, Oh, we were consumer sales. So how did you

do that? And he goes, Oh, you know, this old couple have just

bought a desktop but I sold them to printers. And I said mate,

even if she just turns our dining room into a we work you

know, that's that's not selling with integrity. Nobody needs two

printers. They probably didn't even need a printer. God loves

them. But I just remember thinking, that's cool. And then

I think when I got to LinkedIn, I was Daffy brought in an

education about it is all about your customer and SAS because

the the way the SAS model works, and you know what retention and

churn, it was an absolute like an overnight hole of how I sold

and how I saw with integrity and more integrity and always with

customer in mind, never overselling, it's not about me.

It's not about the sale. It's not about the commission. It's

about solving a need or solving a problem. So that was the

LinkedIn journey. Then I was approached by a smaller startup

that language translation company, then Asana, which was

project management, I am really organized person, sometimes it

can be crippling. Sometimes your greatest strength or index can

become your greatest weakness and I am super organized. And

Asana was like I come home was the mothership. I use it today.

Actually, all of Ganga Mia is run off Asana, so shout out to

my Asana crew. And then I had always known have gone it had

been on my radar since 2017. Because they were the New Kids

on the Block. They were incredible on social media, as

I've worked in LinkedIn, at their profiles were brilliant.

Their marketing was funny, spicy direct hit you between the eyes,

some amazing videos. So when they approached me, I was so

happy in Asana. It was a bit of a will I won't I? I said yeah,

this is absolutely the role for me. And I will tell you that I'm

never leaving.

You're never leaving. You heard it here first. I'm

sure you're Yeah, I'm sure the rest of your team are thrilled

to hear that. There's thank you so much for sharing that that

history with us. Again, some really great insights. I think

there's there's So one key thing that jumped out to me as you

were talking about SAS and I think it's such a I have a

background in in SAS as well and in in delivery and and one thing

that SAS did to the market was to really throw the challenge

back to the vendor when it comes to that customer centricity

because it gave the end buyer options, right the days of huge

monolithic change that was involved in in swapping out

between technologies where you had like deployed implementer

you spend a whole bunch of money in data centers and stuff, just

a host particular technology, SAS kind of tore up that

rulebook and sort of turn the spotlight back at the vendors to

say what are you going to do to make sure that your client

values it's what are you going to do to drive that important

customer centricity? How do you How much do you care about your

clients? It's something that really resonates with me and you

see those organizations I was in an organization going through

that transition from that sort of deploy boldly into into SAS.

And it's a big transition. And it's quite eye opening. So yeah,

and clearly why you've been so successful since then, in

understanding where customer centricity comes from, why

that's so important. So customer centricity. What is it, Wyoming

Forbes defines it as the ability of an organization to understand

the meet customer needs and expectations. But what is it to

you?

I think, as my husband, he says, me explain it

to me, like a five year old, I think it is, what your

customer's needs are, and their demands are the focal point of

all your decisions, whether it's delivering a product, a service

or an experience, your whole team has to be thinking customer

first and customer first mentality. It's bandied around a

lot. It's a lot of, you know, principles are in companies, our

principle is here, create raving fans, so I want our customers to

buy, but we want our customers to be obsessed with the product.

And often at events. We're very careful here, where we sit

people, we do prospect, customer, prospect, customer

prospect calls, we're like a seating plan, and we will match

up vertical on your master persona, often sit back and

watch a rabbit you know, a VP of Rev ops, who's a customer tell

the VP of Reb ops who's a potential client, why he bought

Gong, because it's not me selling it, someone else selling

for you. So for us, our customer, their king, our

customers are absolutely King. .

And some might be listening to this and saying,

Well, that's about the product. Well, no, it's not that right.

In order to make that product sing, you need the people behind

it. So you know, thinking about that, and we think about why

that's then important is a unified approach across your

whole business. How do you take that from a product initiative,

we drive everything, this is why our customers love it and make

it something that lives and is the sort of foundation of a

business?

There's probably a couple of things we

do here probably, you know, four or five. But the first one is a

clear vision, right? Clear Vision from the top down. As I

said, one of our guiding principles is to create raving

fans, and we have clear measurables for all employees,

so retention metrics, etc. And, and our CRO actually has

customers is one of our pillars, which many, many companies do,

we touch on this every month globally in a team review, and

we ensure that every single person knows why we do what we

do think as well, if you want to remain customer centric, it has

to go across all departments, right, you are all responsible

for your customer, it does not end with the order form getting

signed, I think back in my old old cell days, I would have just

closed the deal and moved on the next that doesn't happen that I

think when I hand a customer over to the customer success

team, I still want to stay close to that. And it's really

important. Luckily, with gone, and this isn't a plug, we have

the full, you know, we have the full gamut of from the STR re

you know, outreach email or call that was sent through to the

full close of the deal to the negotiation to who the key

players were within the deal, and why they bought the product.

And we hand that to the customer success team on our professional

services team to the implementation. And we all

understand why the customer bought. So I think it's really

important to kind of have everybody bought in, I think as

well from from across collaboration with the team to

voice of the customer is is so so important. So wherever we get

customer feedback on a sales call, after the sales call, the

rep can just go into gone, tag the product team and give them

visibility with what the customer said, as much as I

trust salespeople, if you were to say something to me now about

the product, and then I have to go then and tell Jonny, maybe

two hours later, there'll be elements, but I may miss a

trick. So for us, once a customer gives us product

feedback, will will absolutely tag our product team and and

also our product marketing team. And then there's a couple of

other ways as well, which it's important to have customer

communities etc. So when I think about feedback loops, you have

to listen to your customers, you can't say the product is

brilliant. We use it here. Isn't it amazing? Like you can

sometimes drink your own champagne and get a little

drunk. So you have to be open to feedback, like feedback is a

gift. So for us, unlike many, many customers, we avoid the

customer. So again, the customer feedback that we get, we do

customer advisory forums like many other companies. So again,

we love feedback. And then finally customer communities is

an amazing way to do this. So if I think about someone who

doesn't really well in the market, it's HubSpot. They do an

incredible job. They've built out a membership base where you

share ideas and tips and tricks. And actually, if you think about

when someone goes to buy, they've already made their mind

up I will I don't go and book a holiday or book a book a hotel

without going on TripAdvisor. I don't book an Airbnb without

reading a review. So it's your customers that are actually

going to be your your advocates and your evangelists so to

speak. So I think communities are really really important. And

then I think the last two things is when it comes to customers

like you need to empower your employees you need to give them

the right tech stack and and tools and training to do this

you know, you can't say you know sell to your customer then fill

in this spreadsheet, which I've seen in other companies fill in

this spreadsheet and then send it to the customer success

person and then make sure that you know you schedule a call and

then scheduling your cube yours I think You know, there's

there's a lot of software out there, like prolific for camp

plans, you know, Gong, I think it's important that you have a

really clear, we call them swim lanes, like really clear swim

lanes have a customer journey. I think everybody should have

roles or responsibilities. We did two day training, we took

the whole company off site globally, to talk about roles

and responsibilities. So there's none of this, it's not my job or

pay, that doesn't feel like it's my job, but I know whose job it

is. So everybody owns the customer. And then lastly, data.

haven't told me about it all. But I love data. I'm a numbers

driven, I really am. But like data can tell any story. So you

need to be really careful. Well, I can I can mold data to tell a

great story or a bad story. But we do need to look at

performance metrics, like you do have to define and track

indicators related to the customer satisfaction and

engagement and really ensure those behaviors are being

measured. You know, whether it's an okay or or KPI, and here,

Gong, we are maniacal about this. So we track our numbers

weekly. In fact, I am on a call every Monday for one hour with

our Head of Customer Success for All our renewals, two quarters,

eight, two quarters, eight, and every customer success manager

who owns those renewals, saying, here's where we are, here's the

risk, here's what we need. There's that flag on the

product. And we are we are selling in packs we're pulling

all people in, and that's to ensure that they have a good

experience. Then we do monthly reviews. And then we also

showcases and QBR. So there's there's definitely, there's a

cadence and a process to being customer centric. And as I'm

listening to myself, it sounds like a heavy lifting unit or

something. Yeah, it is. But if you get it wrong, you've got the

sales team doing amazing selling all these deals. It's pointless,

like you're not profitable, you're not growing, and your

folks won't stay like you'll have an attrition problem as

well.

A whole load of stuff in there to unpack there's Yeah,

I mean, you talk to me about roles and responsibilities. And

Johnny will know without that clarity of process, that clarity

of ownership. But then you also said something which some might

think that contradicts that in the sense that the whole

business needs to be customer centric, and our whole business

needs to be focused on the customer. And I think some of

them so what that means that everybody owns a bit of it.

Yeah, but people still have jobs and people still have certain

responsibilities that talk to their skill set is finding that

balance, isn't it?

I think it is. I had something this morning,

that was a customer issue. And they went to support and the

customer support person was like hey, that's actually not my gig

that belongs to customer success manager. However, he walked over

and we're lucky we're in the office to the customer success

manager said hey, I've just had this feedback let's jump on the

call together. There's nothing in it for that part. The

customer says you know, he's busy, but we sell as a team we

sell in packs, and a customer last we're all shareholders as

well right? We're all on this journey together. You kind of

have to hire people that will go the extra mile for you and care

you will not hear someone on sale for say my accounts there

gongs accounts, my book of business it's gongs book of

business, that's not your account, it's gongs accounts,

you just happen to be allowed prospect into it. So I do think

it starts from the top down whether you know from leaders,

directors, to managers, and when I think about potential

customers, I will use gone and look at every single open deal

on my pipeline. And I can see which deals have a VP of sales

as a persona, a part of this of the of the decision maker, then

I will reach out that VP of sales. And I will do a peer to

peer demo, I don't use Gong the same way in a user's Gong. And

straightaway, I'm locked into that customer, we have a

relationship. When it comes to negotiation. I'm not just coming

in from you know, stage left to give the best and final, me and

that person already know each other. And that's been really

helpful for me, I probably do demos of the product three to

four times a week, which is really important because you've

got to lead by example.

Wow, that is just brilliant. The thing I love

about it is you mentioned about drinking your own champagne and

feeling drunk, I am absolutely leadless at the moment because

you clearly are drinking bunch of your own champagne, and you

are role modeling some fantastic behavior as a VP and creating

that from a bowtie to a diamond effect. You're creating those

levels really nicely set. I absolutely love that. Leslie how

you're going out there? And it's a bit like the other types of

tech stack out there at the moment. What are those use cases

and nothing stronger than with you demonstrating and walking

the walk in front of your team to be customer centric? I love

it.

Listen, I just want to win and know he can

close it alone. Not one on in Yes, you can close a 20 30k

deal. But I'm talking about the six figure deals. Let's all get

in. Let's all get around a little What do you need? We do a

light linearity where we should be towards the end of the month.

So we we have a 72 inch screen a live Gong deal board open. We go

right nights to do kdl Bobby, where are we? And this in front

of 80 people and it's uncomfortable to start and it's

uncomfortable for new people. But Bobby's like here's where I

am on Baba bomb. I'm out red lines, and someone said Hey, is

it a German customer? Oh, I've had one of them. I'll drop by

your desk afterwards. And we can we can have a chat and I'm

watching this magic. I'm watching this tribal knowledge

this peer to peer selling let's say and I actually did do a VP

demo. So I said hey Bobby, I've done the VP demo. That's gonna

close on Friday. Call it committed. So there's a little

bit of peer pressure there and I welcome that.

It's peer pressure Lesley but I think the the devil

was in the detail with that example in that you've been in

at that client, you're not sitting there from an ivory

tower pushing people to commit stuff, they're not comfortable

to commit, you've been on the other side of the table to that

customer, you're translating your confidence back into the

team and back into. And I think that's the difference. It's that

you talk about teams win deals and tribal knowledge, and you

just simply can't, it doesn't matter how long someone's been

in a business, they will not know everything you've got to,

and things are constantly evolving and constantly

changing. So the ability to pull teams together like that, and go

and then have that that psychological safety net that

allows you to put the hands up and go, I'm a bit blocked here,

I need some help. Can someone help me as someone goes, You

know what, I've done this over here with this customer, come

over chat afterwards, we can unblock this together. Like

that's the magic. That's where we start to get that

collaboration.

You hit the nail on the head, it is magic.

And of course, we have a huge gong on the sales floor. And

when that deal comes in, we celebrate as a team and the

people go back to their desk a little spring in their step

wasn't there when, but again, like I want to bring the whole

floor on a journey.

I'm don't want to be too controversial. But I love

this chat, because it's raising the light of constraint that

customer centricity. I advocate customer centricity, I think

back to my careers and stuff I really have literally waking up

talking to customers is the thing that I've done in previous

jobs and love it today, the people that I work with, and

projects that we get SBIR, where it's like, oh my god, I love

working with that client. I flew over to Boston recently, where I

have a client, I didn't want to leave, even to the point that I

managed to get into check in on the air at the airport one hour

before my international flight because I was having beers in

Boston with the team. I just couldn't leave. Right. I was

even debating staying. The other side of customer centricity is

that we're customer centric, because we have to, but are you

really, and I think there's the sense of a really strong sales

team, that's customer centric doesn't always provide the

product that they have. They don't push the product

completely they might offer, you know, it's not us. But actually

you need to go and speak to this organization, because you will

achieve your goals with using this piece of technology. Or

actually you don't even need technology. Why don't you go and

talk to Barry who can give you some insights. My interpretation

of the aggressive SAS industries is growth at all costs. In my

opinion, again, you can say no Jonny. And that customer

centricity gets challenged because the way we produce SDRs

and AES is quite rightly, this is your job role, we're going to

let you do your job role. And we're going to empower you to do

it, but you're not going to do other job roles, you're just

going to do this very SDR base, a base job role, which actually

sometimes suppresses their ability to be strategic sellers,

which is, don't take this actually do that. My challenge

in SAS is I think that we don't do a good job for the STRS and

A's because we don't enable them to be strategic sellers. And

actually, that stops them being more customer centric, because

they will they will deliver or try and push their product at

all costs. That's my opinion.

I thought you're going in one direction

you went the other. So the first direction you're going in is

selling without integrity, there is a absolute cases when we're

speaking to a customer saying we can't do that what you want our

product to do, we cannot do that. And in fact, if they sell

the product, and and I have that I had an expression, another

company, the rats were selling the dream and leaving the

nightmare with the customer success team. If you oversell

you will be caught out. So what I have done in previous

companies is if that happens, you will lose the commission. So

there is a bit of a slap on the wrist. If we can't do what the

customer needs, you cannot sell the product. So you can sell a

motorbike to somebody who needs a car. It doesn't work. That's

the first thing. The second thing if we feel a competitor

can do a better maybe. And yes, there are cases. But I would

ensure and I've done this in every role, that there is a

competitive analysis done for every he knows what the

landscape looks like, there is a battle card for every single

competitor. And I actually can click a top spot and then go to

every single now. And you need to save the customer and hey,

what you're looking to do, we do it ex may do it better. However,

here's where we beat X and do it. You are being honest, but

you're gently leading them away from where they were kind of

going and saying I won't do that doesn't really matter. But it'll

do this, this, this and this. It's up to the customer to make

the decision then but again, it is selling with integrity. The

second part of your question was the SDR and the AE. So the SDR

has a role and their role is to prospect into as many hands as

possible. Bring them on a journey and get in front of the

the skin in the game for the SDR is they maybe do not care as

much about the customer. But they care about them as

professionals. They're early in seed and career they want to get

to AE so what we'll do is if they get to eight months or nine

months and good track record, then we make them a senior we

just promoted someone this morning in the huddle. Then they

unlock what we call the STR a Academy where they then have

access to my meetings at one to ones and then they're allowed

sell into our very lower lower lower your customers so they get

some access to what the world's gonna look Like, we also

sometimes use STRS to do demos that selling in packs. P So do

they care about customers? I'm gonna say probably not. And I'll

say when I was an SDR, I didn't really I was all about them

hitting the number. But as they go on the journey and they're

selling, and they understand that more they do the AES,

absolutely Chairman's customer.

The first part of your answer is exactly what I've

been trying to kick around in my head recently. And I also think

the churn rate would be a great lag indicator right of this is

that if Jonny has a high churn, then there's clearly going to be

something that's going on notwithstanding, I still think

that there is this strategic element where, in SAS a

strategic account holder, what we see a lot in consultancy, is

that they sit on this pivot with the C suite, and they're just

helping them achieve their 600 million revenue goal or their 5

billion revenue goal, whatever that may be. And they're able to

position and move them around to different types of services and

product. Do you think there's a role within a senior a in SAS

for that at all?

So we have just started a center of

excellence here and again, many of the customers have it. And

what we've done is we've taken our Senior Director of Product

Marketing, we've moved him in there are AMEA, head of Reb.

Ops, you've moved him in there, and our head of enablement in

the US, we've moved them in there. The reason we pick those

three is because the three key personas a buyer product is head

of sales, head revenue, head of enablement. So what they do is

they are like our 18. So all six figure deals, we do a center of

excellence review. So the US team fight here, we sit in a

room for three days, it is a long piece, you know, there's a

bit of an investment on time, but I've never lost a quarter.

And I do believe it's down to that. So we were in a room, we

maybe review 30 to 40 deals over 100k with that with that center

of excellence team. And then they go in and they do the demo,

they go on site, they will run the mutual success plan with the

A, it's like a gold standard approach. And then when you move

into the customer success side and they become a customer, they

don't back away like an AMI do they are still part of the

journey, and they executive sponsor to that deal.

I go go back to saying thank you so much. Those

points have helped me personally, really appreciate

it.

I'm going to use my favorite three words,

tell me more.

So my perception is my reality through past

experiences, not due to conditioning, I have experienced

SAS as quite an aggressive environment, and when working

with products, because that's what we do as a job. I've seen

this win at all costs Boxtop a just going head on, I'm gonna

win this deal, and not having the ability to step back

strategically and think, Okay, let's think about the customer.

And this comes back to customer centricity and why are

challenged is that go at this moment in time they're looking

to move this direction as a business. Gong should be coming

in six months later. What they actually need is HubSpot.

So we've, I have example of that when you're

implementing Salesforce, it's a bit it is a heavy lift to do

them both at once. So why don't we do Salesforce will stay

aligned check in three months bah bah, bah, bah, bah. We also

co salad HubSpot. So if HubSpot has mentioned, we have a joint

Slack channel with them. You'd like joint lunches with them.

And we can ping the team there and say, Hey, I'm working with

actually we ping their customer success team and say, Hey, where

are they on their journey and on HubSpot are brilliant. They'll

say, you know something, we're only just starting

implementation hold fire or hate, we're nearly done, go for

it. And by the way, I think you're gonna win. This isn't

this part of the part of the deal, just so what integrity

it'll bite you in the ass.

Not any reminds me of when I lied when I was, you

know, back in the day, and you lied to somebody. So he's going

to catch you up by you know.

Just tell the truth.

You touched on something about the competitive

space. So I think it is a competitive space, and it can be

quite aggressive. So from a customer centric point of view,

I think for us, we just need to be really personalized and

personalization at scale is something a lot of people talk

about. So you know, it's obvious Account Based Marketing, that

making sure customers are getting the best experience and

and being really innovative. So we need to be five steps ahead

of our competitors. I think hence why voice of the customer

is key, those customer advisory forums as well. And also, when

we launch new products, we love having customers as part as part

of the beta. Because they're the ones using it. I think with

anything an offer, like it'd be an example, I could be creating

a deck. And I think the deck is amazing. And I'll say another

one of our principles here is no sugar. So I'll say to somebody,

can you look at my deck, no sugar, I can't see past it

anymore. I'm so in it. And they'll say, Oh no, you spelt

that wrong. Um, I didn't see that. So with our product

because we love our products so much and and and an engineers,

it's their baby. It's really brave. But it's important that

we let customers into the beta and say, Hey, this isn't working

or actually, that button is annoying that we can move that

because I could toggle quickly and I wouldn't have to go here

and save me a second. But if I do this 14 times a day, over the

month, it's like three minutes back. So I think that's really

important as well and then just being responsive and agile. So

when we get the feedback from a customer if their thing To get

other customers are thinking it? And if it makes sense to to the

product and outpace competitors, why wouldn't we listen to them?

You'd be a fool not to.

Yeah, I think from what you've just shared there, I

mean, that it's not quite a blueprint, but it's almost

getting towards that. Lesley, I think we always came full

circle, we talked about sort of how exposed you are in a SaaS

business versus the old days. And I think you know, what

you're talking about there is how to stay competitive against

yourself as well, right is sort of sticking up there standing up

to your own standards and maintaining those high standards

and ability to deliver which is, which is also really, really

challenging. I love what you shared there around sort of

personalization at scale, and then how responsive you can be

and just just even understanding that if one of our customers is

saying this, they're probably not the only one. And I've seen

that firsthand, you know, that ignorance or arrogance, even

that bleeds into customer success, these are they go watch

their customers, they don't know what they're talking about with

that for now, this week, who said that this is rubbish, they

must be, they must all be wrong, as it were, hang on a minute,

and then all of a sudden, what happens when it hits your chair

number and the next night in six months time. So being you're

being really acutely aware, I think, something you shared

this, how you're showing your team that what Johnny and I

talked to our clients a lot about in that track to run on.

So this is you're an SDR coming into the business. This is the

journey that you're gonna go on, we're gonna give you exposure at

those points. That's how you get a team invested in the business

in the customer, and get them caring and getting them thinking

outside of their silos and thinking outside of their

immediate responsibilities. Lesley, I'd love just to ask

you, if you were to give our audience say, hey, let's see,

we've got someone out there who's as a CRO or sales

director, or Head of Customer Success, or whatever it is

someone in a SaaS business that's growing and thriving,

what would be the three key things that you'd encourage them

to really think about, from what you've shared with us today?

It could depend on tenure and and also

how long they're there. They're doing their job. I think

listening tours, for me are the first thing I do in any job. So

I do an internal and an external. So when I joined Gong,

I spent two weeks listing, I had one bullet every single person

in this building. Why did you join Gong? What do you like

about your business? If you had a magic wand, what would you

change, and you get you get that you get a vibe of what's going

on the sales floor. And a lot of it was I wasn't sure of my roles

or responsibilities. I do this job, she does that job. I'm

under pressure for exit. So you kind of start to hear about

maybe the parts of the of the engine that are a little bit

broken internally, and then externally listening towards

that your customers. I think we forgot when we during COVID How

important is to get in front of somebody and look them in the in

the whites of their eyes. People do buy from people and we forget

that we buy things online all the time. And we just click on

Apps. So I would say listen, of your existing customers look at

your existing customer base. So in other companies I've worked

for and here we have our top 100 customers, then we have our top

20 execs I'm on that I'm one of them. And all of us have

customers that we're aligned to that is a really tightly run

program. And I'm actually that's one of my Okay, or so I have 10

customers at the moment. That's my focus. How many have I met

them as awesome, I met with them, how are they have I

listened, right? I'm not selling them anything. I'm not here for

the upsell. I'm not here for the renewal. I'm just here, how you

get on what's going on. And then the final one on one I wish I'd

known really early on in my career get friendly with

product, you need to get friendly with product, they are

just as important as the sellers. They're the ones that

control the roadmap. They're the ones that that are doing all

these things in the background. And you need to have a two way

communication. So we will do product roadmaps here. And also

give them feedback. It's a two way street. And on that product

roadmap, what's customer facing? What can I share? What are the

reps need to know? So you're on a call, Hey, your product

doesn't do this? No, doesn't Mr. courseware, however, that's

coming in August would like to be part of the beta. That's

really important. So product is key. So listen to your

customers. Use your leadership team to keep those relationships

alive with your customers. It's not just trying to sell to them.

And then honestly product or your best friend.

Brilliant bits of advice and insights shared right

from the get go. You're really understanding our customer

creating an organization that's truly customer centric, and why

that's so important for retaining and growing an

effective SAS business in today's incredibly competitive

market. Lesley, we've thoroughly enjoyed talking to you and we

look forward to seeing you again soon.

That's fun. Thank you for having me.