[00:00:00] Alex Raymond: The job of the midfielder is to help the team win. So therefore, what's the job of the goalkeeper? To help the team win. What's the job of the forward? To help the team win. What's the job of the groundskeeper and the coaches and the trainers and the people who do maintenance inside the building? Their entire job is to help the team win. And that I find is a very helpful phrasing for post sales. 

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[00:00:32] Andrew Michael: This is Churn.FM, the podcast for subscription economy pros. Each week we hear how the world's fastest growing companies are tackling churn and using retention to fuel their growth. 

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[00:00:45] VO: How do you build a habit-forming product? We crossed over that magic threshold to negative churn. You need to invest in customer success. It always comes down to retention and engagement. Completely bootstrapped, profitable and growing. 

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[00:00:58] Andrew Michael: Strategies, tactics, and ideas brought together to help your business thrive in the subscription economy. I'm your host, Andrew Michael, and here's today's episode. 

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[00:01:09] Andrew Michael: Hey, Alex, welcome to the show. 

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[00:01:11] Alex Raymond: Andrew, thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

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[00:01:14] Andrew Michael: It's great to have you for the listeners. Alex is the founder of AMplify, the professional home for account management leaders, and the author of The Growth Department. Alex is also the founder and the host of Conscious Entrepreneur and was a previously the founder, CEO of Kapta. So my first question for you today is what's the latest news from Pearl Street? 

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[00:01:34] Alex Raymond: Yeah. So, there's a lot going on in Boulder. Have you spent any time here? 

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[00:01:38] Andrew Michael: Yeah, I spent almost a year in Boulder. I was out there for an accelerator for one of my previous startups as well. So...

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[00:01:44] Alex Raymond: Ah, cool.

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[00:01:45] Andrew Michael: Definitely on my list of places I wanna go back to. 

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[00:01:48] Alex Raymond: Yeah, yeah. That's fantastic. Were you with Techstars or which one were you with? 

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[00:01:52] Andrew Michael: With Boomtown. The time when Alex Bogusky was still there. And, yeah.

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[00:01:56] Alex Raymond: Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I went through Techstars myself with my old company, Kapta, that I was roughly – Well, you know, Boulder, there's a lot going on. It's a hub of entrepreneurship. There's a ton of cool things happening in Boulder. And I would say the thing that is going on right now is more about the discussion of what's not going on. And what's not going on is a lot of snow this ski season. 

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[00:02:17] Andrew Michael: Oh, yeah. So it's been dry this season. 

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[00:02:20] Alex Raymond: It's been pretty dry. Yeah, yeah. So, it's underwhelming and disappointing for those of us in Colorado. 

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[00:02:26] Andrew Michael: Yeah, I've been to many places in the world. I think like, still for me, it felt like the… Boulder was like this picturesque scene that you see on typical American movies with picket fences and people like having lawn sales and things like that which it's not the typical representation, I think, of the rest of America that I've seen at least. So it was like, still felt like a little bit of a movie scene living there for a while. 

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[00:02:49] Alex Raymond: Yeah, it's a nice place. 

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[00:02:49] Andrew Michael: I enjoyed it a lot. Yeah, enjoyed it. I think probably one of the most beautiful places in the world though is like out around Aspen. Taking a drive, I went both in summer and in winter around then. It was just next level how beautiful the place is.

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[00:03:02] Alex Raymond: No doubt. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure, for sure. 

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[00:03:04] Andrew Michael: Nice, but we didn't come here today to talk about Aspen and its beauty. Mostly interested today, I think, like to discuss a little bit about the book that you've just released. And I think definitely a topic we've talked about quite a bit on the show, but really is this idea of the account management, customer success team being treated as a revenue engine. And there's definitely two camps on this. And the one is sort of, okay, if we start involving revenue in this, we start shading the relationship and then we can't really deliver the service that we should be delivering. 

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[00:03:36] Andrew Michael: On the other end is the service that we should be delivering should be delivering revenue and value. And the people that know them best are the people that work with them closest, so it makes it easier in that relationship. I think it's obvious where you sit based on the book, but maybe you wanna give us a little bit about your take and how you see the world. 

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[00:03:53] Alex Raymond: Yeah, no, absolutely. And thanks for the tee up there. Yeah, I suppose it is pretty obvious which side I come down on. I just wrote a book, came out in January, called The Growth Department. And so the answer is really in the title there. But here's what's going on. Customer success for sure and account management a bit are in this real identity crisis right now. Literally, what is our role? What are we doing? And things are changing very fast in the market. As we know, there's a lot of stuff going on. So the question is, how do we best support our company? What is it that we do as a function and as a team to help our company to succeed? 

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[00:04:32] Alex Raymond: And I started essentially with that question of what is the role of these post-sales organizations. So post sale would just kind of – post sale would just be the umbrella term for account management, CS, client services—whatever it is that you call it inside of your company. What's the role? And along the way out, let me share some of the stuff that I learned. I read this fascinating book called The Meaning Revolution by Fred Kofman. He's used to work at LinkedIn and Google, and a really well-known leadership guy.

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[00:05:01] Alex Raymond: And he's got this analogy in his books and his workshops. And he starts with the idea of: what is the role of this team? And he puts the analogy through: what is the role of a midfielder on a soccer team or on a football team? And you might say, “What is the role of the midfielder?” Well, it's to… you know, it's – I don’t actually know all that much about soccer, but it's to, you know, sometimes score goals, but to make sure the ball gets passed around and do a little bit of interference here, there, and everywhere. It would be the typical answer. 

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[00:05:30] Alex Raymond: But what he says is, “No, the job of the midfielder is to help the team win.” So therefore, what's the job of the goalkeeper? To help the team win. What's the job of the forward? To help the team win. What's the job of the groundskeeper and the coaches and the trainers and the people who do maintenance inside the building? Their entire job is to help the team win. And that I find is a very helpful phrasing for post sales. Because we can say, what's the job of the account management team? What's the job of the customer success team to help our company win? Boom. 

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[00:06:05] Alex Raymond: Okay, great. So you can say, “We're here to help the company win.” How do we help the company win? Well, in this case, you can say we help the company win by delivering profitable revenue back to the company. Right? So, for those of you who studied accounting out there, this is a contribution margin. Our job is to take an asset and extract a contribution margin from it, which is we're doing something, we're helping the customer solve a problem, and we're giving them a product that's meeting their needs and a service that works for them.

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[00:06:35] Alex Raymond: They're paying us, that gives us a contribution margin because we're taking in more than we're paying out. So we take that contribution margin, we give it back to the company, and that's how the company wins. Okay, awesome. So we're here to help the company win. We do that by delivering profitable revenue back to the company. How do we then do that? Well, we do that by making sure that we are keeping the customers that we have, growing the customers with the most potential, and that there's no surprises along the way. So keep, grow, no surprises.

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[00:07:05] Alex Raymond: And so that's a flow that I think a lot of people in account management and customer success have gotten away from because we spend too much time thinking about CSAT, NPS, "When's my next quarterly business review? When do I go talk to the product team about new features,” and all this other stuff, either client-facing or internal-facing, that's taking us away from the core purpose. And so, when you frame the core purpose that way, that's how I answer your question.

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[00:07:33] Alex Raymond: I see your question was, are we on the revenue side or not? I think the definition of post-sale by helping our company win means we're delivering profits back to the company so the company can do all the things that it wants to do with that contribution. So that's where I land, and that's kind of how I think about this stuff.

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[00:07:50] Andrew Michael: Nice. Okay. So, I think definitely there has been a big shift, I think, when it comes to customer success. I would say over the last, like, two to three years, interviewing and chatting to people. It definitely wasn't seen as like a revenue generation engine, but there's more people warming up to the idea that this should be the way. 

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[00:08:09] Andrew Michael: I think still one of those areas for tension really relies around compensation and within the team, how sales and CS work and collaborate together. And based on your sort of assessment now and judgment, like how do you see some of the best CS and sales teams working together? And maybe as a follow-up to that, like what are some of the comp plans that you're seeing in the market now for CS and sales so that this aligned vision works together, where sales can still be bringing in new clients, but then CS and account management can be growing and expanding those clients?

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[00:08:46] Alex Raymond: There's a whole bunch of stuff that's happening here that people are starting to look at, and I think of it in at least a couple of different ways. The first is the org chart. So, what is the company—how does the company structure to support this… is one of the ways that I started to approach that question. The second is, the second is for sure compensation. The third is actually the role of the account executive. So let me share some example. I want to see if these resonate with you, if you like these ideas. 

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[00:09:12] Alex Raymond: The first, on the org chart, I'll tell you, I see companies moving more and more to have a true chief revenue officer. So, what I mean by that, when I say true chief revenue officer, is not a chief revenue officer who only supports 25% of the company's revenue, but a CRO who represents 100% of the revenue. And where I'm getting that number from is the, you know, there's all these famous stats, but the one that's top of mind for me is Forrester data that shows that in B2B companies, 73% of revenue comes from existing customers every year. So, it's a 73–27 split. 

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[00:09:49] Alex Raymond: Now, a lot of times the CRO, even though it's called a chief revenue officer, is actually the VP of sales with a C-level title whose job is to deliver that 27% of revenue. But I'm seeing a lot of companies now starting to move to say, why don't we have a single owner of all revenue and put CS, account management, whatever we call it, underneath that person? So that person would basically say, "I'm responsible for all revenue. I have someone on the team who does all the new business stuff"—very important, we're not going to stop doing that, very important—and they also manage the existing customer relationships, the existing customer revenue. So that way, all revenue goes up into one person.

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[00:10:33] Alex Raymond: So, guess what? When it's time for resourcing decisions and prioritizing stuff, we are now looking at the entirety of the revenue, and we're hopefully getting away from that very real stress, tension, friction that's happening in a lot of other companies around "Where do we spend time and energy?" And you've got, you know, one team running over here for new business, one team running over here for existing customers, and that's kind of slowing everybody down.

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[00:11:00] Alex Raymond: And so, the first thing is the org chart point. And I've had folks that I spend a bunch of time with—one that comes to mind right now is Michael Rapp at IntelePeer. You know, he actually came up through the account management world. So he was in professional services, then account management, and is now the CRO of IntelePeer. And so that, I think, is a great model for people.

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[00:11:22] Alex Raymond: So, when you think about the organizational design, that's one thing as a way of kind of thinking about that. Because your question was about compensation, but it's really about incentives and behaviors, right? So that's one thing that I see as being super, super helpful to align the company around the idea that we're winning, right? Here's how we get there. Have you seen that, too?

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[00:11:45] Andrew Michael: I've heard similar notions, not necessarily like CRO being the role itself, but having a single role owning sales and post-sales. I think your description makes a lot of sense, though, as well on why it's important to have a single owner from that perspective. I think mostly as well, because if you think about it through that lens and you give a lot more priority to the post-sales activities of revenue generation, which if it's not, it doesn't happen.

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[00:12:15] Andrew Michael: And then having a single team with shared metrics to go after leaves less competition within the org to say, "Hey, this is my revenue." "No, this is my revenue." And actually, "This is ours, and let's work together to hit these targets." Because whether we like it or not, there is extreme competition in these roles, and there needs to be, I think, to some degree, for them to work. But if we can have them work together – shared goals, I think that that's very important too.

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[00:12:42] Alex Raymond: Yeah. Well, I mean, to that point, when you're talking about shared goals, having a common metric—so having a North Star metric across the entire team—is going to be one of the ways to reduce friction. And the one that I'm seeing a lot these days, and I know you've talked about this a ton on the show, is net revenue retention. So, NRR. When NRR is a North Star for people, then that allows the sales team to focus on high quality, best fit customers who are going to stick with us for the long term. And it allows the post sales team to do exactly what they're supposed to do, which is keep, grow, and no surprises. And that's something that allows everyone to be working in concert together.

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[00:13:20] Alex Raymond: If we have different—totally different incentive structures where sales is purely, you know, gross net new revenue come hell or high water, doesn't really, you know, just break down the wall. It doesn't matter what the quality of that revenue is, then they're going to bring in stuff that's probably not the best fit. That's probably not even in the best interest of the company. 

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[00:13:26] Andrew Michael: Yeah, a hundred percent. I think that was one of my earlier lightbulb moments. I can't remember who we discussed. Probably was like Steli Efti from Close. And at the time he mentioned that they were incentivizing sales, not only on the first sale, but then making sure that they had retained within six months. And then the comp was tied to two intervals. And I think that sort of speaks to what you mentioned now is all around not allowing sales to just go off and close whatever they want. That may be bad for the business at the end of the day. They consume resources, it keeps CS tied up solving issues that aren't really relevant. And then ultimately sort of everybody loses because of that.

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[00:14:13] Andrew Michael: And I think what you mentioned, I was a little bit more eloquent in the sense that if NRR is the metric that everybody's optimizing towards then, and the incentives are aligned behind that, it really makes it simpler for everyone to get behind it. Okay. We know we need to bring in the right customers because when they land and they start working with CS, they're going to expand and they're going to not like to show up our resources. And so I like that a lot. 

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[00:14:38] Alex Raymond: Can I share one other thing that's happening right now that I think is actually a really bad idea?

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[00:14:43] Andrew Michael: Oh, yeah?

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[00:14:44] Alex Raymond: There's been discussion, you've probably heard it, there's been discussion around maybe we should just have a full spectrum AE or a 360 degree AE. So, basically an account executive, the salesperson who is with the customer from the moment of inception all the way to the point where the customer leaves. So, one person who does the entire sales process and then manages the customer and so on. That's been floated as an idea to solve some of these problems around friction within the company within the team.

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[00:15:15] Alex Raymond: And, you know, in my experience, I'll say, I don't think that's going to work. I don't think that's going to work because the skillsets, behaviors, and mindsets are so very different. We call them hunters and farmers for a reason. We have these distinctions of pre-sales and post-sales for a reason. And sales teams, sales individuals, people who do the hunting, people who do the new business, they have a different set of behaviors, right? They go out, they think differently, and they tend to like that sales motion calling. I was going to say chase. I don't mean the chase. They like that motion. They like that. They like the energy associated with that. 

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[00:15:52] Alex Raymond: They tend to be very different people than the post sales who typically are going deeper on certain topics, right? They're really rolling up their sleeves or solving problems for the customers. They're not as interested in the sales mechanics and the transactional mechanics. They're interested in solving, getting the customer to some goal. And those are very different people. As much as you'd like to, you can't just smush them together. So, that's an idea that's happening right now that I don't think has any legs whatsoever. What do you think? What do you think about it?

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[00:16:21] Andrew Michael: Yes. I definitely agree that there is distinct profiles and certain people are better suited for better roles. And like you say, the hunters out there… it's a different relationship and a different way of working. I like, I've worked with excellent hunters and then excellent account management, CS. They were able to… [inaudible]. Well, I've never really seen anybody be able to have split personalities and go through from one side to the other. 

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[00:16:50] Andrew Michael: The one thing though that I think is also a little bit of contention, tension is this idea then, okay, well, should sales step in there when it comes time to renewal and who's better dealt with those sort of conversations. So, if you have account management on one end, they're managing their book of business. It's really called book of business, but then we still have sales stepping in on the court, like the renewal basis to come in and negotiate those deals. 

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[00:17:17] Andrew Michael: And this has always felt off for me considering like, okay, one thing it's handing off and you hand over, but then it's like coming back in after a year of not really knowing or being on top of that account to come in and try to negotiate on behalf of the company. And I'm assuming as well, like based on the book and stuff, but you can speak more to it that this is not the way that you would agree with. And then it is like CS or account management should be the ones that are managing these upgrades, these renewals, these cycles.

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[00:17:47] Alex Raymond: I mean, think about it from the customer's perspective. So, the customer goes through a 3, 6, 12 month sales cycle with an account executive and they say, “Okay, great, we're going to do this. We're going to buy your service, buy your product or do whatever.” And then they sign the line and then the salesperson says, “Great, you know, as part of a transition, here's the new team that's going to come and help you meet your goals.” It's a account manager and a CSM and a project manager and all the people that we would associated with that. And then, off they go, right?

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[00:18:12] Alex Raymond: And so we got 12 months of work, we got a long time, we're doing all this stuff. If you parachute the account executive back in, you know, at like month 10 and a half, and say, “Okay, by the way, like here I am again, just to make sure we're gonna button this up and do this renewal.” It doesn't feel right for the customer. They're like, “Who are you? Where have you been? Why are you? Why are you just showing up here?” So, I don't think that's a great model. 

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[00:18:35] Alex Raymond: What I would recommend though, is make sure that your customer success and account management team are very commercially aware that they can have those commercial discussions. So, there tends to be not a skills gap, Andrew, but a confidence gap on the part of a lot of CSMs to have those conversations. 

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[00:18:55] Alex Raymond: And so here's what I think about when it relates to those motions is a lot of times as customer success will say, well, “I don't want to be in sales. I'm not really that transactional kind of person. I don't want to feel like a used car salesman. You know, they kind of feel like they're maybe a little bit allergic to – or they're put off by revenue, the concept. But what they're really saying is I just don't want to have that, you know, I don't want to have that feeling of being this type of person. That's fine. I get it. What we can do, however, is focus on what we're great at, delivering value for our customer, defining the value, making sure that they can see it, making sure that everyone knows what the goalposts or the scorecards are. 

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[00:19:39] Alex Raymond: And through that, walk the customer through a process that says, we're going to define value where you're going to get it. We're going to remind you all the time. We're going to have a scorecard for it. And of course, then the end result of that is the customer saying that was really valuable. Let's go do it again, which is a renewal or an upsell or a cross-sell.

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[00:20:00] Alex Raymond: And so I think a lot of it is understanding how do we get more confidence in our team, how do we get them more fluid and fluent in these kinds of conversations? I don't know – nobody needs more training per se. Like this is not a training issue. It is just kind of orienting people to our here's how we can think about it. Here's what you can go do. That keeps the customer – it respects the customer more. It respects the customer and it respects the customer success team to actually be delivering.

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[00:20:27] Andrew Michael: I think this makes a lot of sense in the context when product is working and it is delivering consistent value and customers are experiencing it. I think the challenge comes is that that's not always the case. And for the most part, it's never the case. And companies take a long time to figure these things out. And I think that's probably where the lack of confidence lies as well in it… is that people in these roles, like they want to believe that their products are doing the things they say they're doing, but they're not always. And so I think like, for me, feels a lot of times not even really necessarily like the issue of confidence is a more a belief in the products or service that you're actually working on in the first place.

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[00:22:09] Alex Raymond: Yeah! Well, for sure. I mean, if you're if you don't have product market fit, it's an all hands on deck sort of situation. You got to fix that problem first. If your net revenue retention is below 100 percent, you are sinking and you need to be all hands on deck in figuring this stuff out. So yeah, absolutely. If you're not at that level of maturity yet, then you want to be spending your energies in those areas.

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[00:22:34] Andrew Michael: Yeah. But I think even then as well, I think like in an ideal scenario from a customer success account management perspective, you need to be able to point to like three to four to five things each year in your cycle that you know have had a marked impact on the business and has had delivered an ROI on the service that you deliver. I think the problem is more often than not, those examples don't exist and those things to point to don't exist.

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[00:22:00] Andrew Michael: I think this is also part of the way like the operating model and the way CS has operated up until now, as you mentioned, like focusing too much on NPS and the net promoter score and the QBRs that are upcoming as opposed to like just getting on the phone and say, Alex, like, "how can I make you a superstar?" Like, "what do we need the product to do over the next few months for you so that's like the ROI is there and the calculation becomes a no-brainer.”

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[00:22:24] Andrew Michael: Because then, I'm not having a conversation with you about renewing your product. It will be [inaudible] like, Hey, Andrew, like, how can we get more out of the product now? How can we expand with you? I think this still to me, like the more I speak to people around CS and account management tends to be like the thing people talk about and say, "yes, you should be doing this." But it's one of the things that very few people actually nail it and really build that strong relationship with their customer. Care deeply about making them look good as individuals and as a company to deliver the value that the product promises to deliver, but doesn't always because there's a million other reasons in life why things don't turn out the way we expect them to.

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[00:23:05] Alex Raymond: Well, customers get distracted, priorities change. You're going to get turnover at your champion. Your champion is going to turn over. People are going to leave. Things are going to happen. And that's one of the reasons that you don't want to over index on relationship. So yes, part of your job is to make sure that your customers like you and they respond to your phone calls and emails and that you're generally viewed as a part of a team, but don't over index on the idea that we're, you know, I'm going to take them out for dinner. I'm going to become their best friends and, therefore they're never going to leave. 

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[00:23:34] Alex Raymond: That's not what makes customers stay. What makes customers stay is are you delivering a meaningful result that is helping me to get closer to my big goal? And it could be a company goal, team goal, individual goal, but are you helping me in a meaningful way to achieve one of these goals? That is going to get you a lot better retention and upsell and expansion than simply, oh, I like you a lot. 

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[00:23:55] Alex Raymond: I mean, how many people, like literally, how many of your listeners, Andrew, have been the recipients of that email? That email. "Hey, it was a real pleasure working with you. I so enjoyed the team, but we've decided we're going in another direction. We're not going to renew.” What percent? 50%, 75%, 100 % of listeners have gotten this kind of email. So this is what happens when we go all in on relationship, we forget about this other stuff. 

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[00:24:20] Alex Raymond: So, you know, value before revenue. You got to deliver the value to the customer. You got to track it. You got to define it. You got to understand what they mean. You have to be very disciplined about this. And that's the kind of thing that's going to make a difference.

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[00:24:32] Andrew Michael: Yeah. 100%. I think it was early episode [inaudible] we chatted about this with [inaudible] and the idea of sort of the customer champion and he gave some stats back then. They probably still equate now, but it was the average tenure of somebody in like software businesses is 24 months. And then in Silicon Valley was like 18 months. And by the time you start selling into your customer, they're probably already 6 to 12 months into their cycle. 

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[00:24:55] Andrew Michael: So whenever you're meeting these people, the likelihood of them still being around like a year from now, two years from now is quite slim. So you need to, like, as you say, really be thinking at a higher level to see like, how can the company actually see and understand these things and focusing on the value.

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[00:25:10] Alex Raymond: Hundred percent. Yeah. A hundred percent.

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[00:25:13] Andrew Michael: I see we're running up on time. So I want to make sure I'll ask you a couple of questions I ask every guest. First one is… what's one thing that you know today about churn and retention that you wish you knew when you got started with your career?

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[00:25:25] Alex Raymond: I will double down on this idea of not over investing in relationships. Don't assume that the relationship is the answer. And it's too easy. We have this tendency to be liked. We want people to like us, to enjoy our presence. We want people to feel good around us. We want to feel good around other people. It is too easy for us to default into nice guy syndrome, into saying yes all the time, into into doing whatever it takes to keep the customer as opposed to really pushing the customer to get where they want to go. 

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[00:25:55] Alex Raymond: And the best account managers, they do that. They know the customer. They know the big goal. They know the big picture and they will push you. They will say no. They will challenge you. They will do whatever it takes to literally drag you up toward the goal if that is what is required. And that's going to lead to better results for your customer and of course for your company.

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[00:26:17] Alex Raymond: And by the way, for you. You're going to make more money. You're going to be more successful if you do this as well. If you default to saying yes all the time, to being a doormat, to having too many requests pile up in your calendar, to being too focused on the relationship, you're not going to have the energy that it takes to make that sort of thing happen. 

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[00:26:34] Andrew Michael: 100%. Yep. You don't need to be a doormat to be successful. You shouldn't be. 

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[00:26:43] Alex Raymond: Yeah, No, no. I mean, so, so many people think like, I've got to say yes to every customer request. But think about what the customer just did when they bought your product or service. They hired you for your expertise and for your guidance because they don't know how to solve this problem. If they knew how to solve this problem, they would solve it. So, they hired you. So, they want you to show up and tell them what to do and guide them and lead them.

[00:27:02] Andrew Michael: Absolutely. Nice. Last question then. I think we'll take it in the context of the topic of today's show. What's one thing when it comes to managing the relationship between sales and CS that... you wish more people would ask you, but they don't?

[00:27:20] Alex Raymond: Andrew, one thing that I wish people would really understand, like leaders in the company would understand, is the economics of where the revenue is being generated and how it's being funded. So, if you look at it, it's like this crazy seesaw. New business sales generate 25 to 30% of revenue every year. Existing customers, it's 70%, 75% or even more they get generated every year. Great. you say, oh, I understand that. So therefore, we're funding in an equal way, right? Most of the funding, 70% of the funding is going towards existing and less is going toward net new. Of course, that's not how it happens at all.

[00:28:00] Alex Raymond: When you look at sales training, infrastructure, comp, headcount, all the resources, the amount of money that's spent on sales kick-offs. All this sort of stuff, it's like a 3:1 or 4:1 difference in terms of how we're funding. So, we're misfunding and misallocating resources across the company. Then, people say, why aren't we growing faster? Why aren't we more profitable? Why is our net revenue retention down? Why is churn up? Why is my valuation down? Well, a lot of it comes down to how are we funding those two teams based on the revenue and the profits that are being generated.

[00:28:37] Alex Raymond: Cause like, if we say that somewhere between 70 to 80% of revenue comes from existing customers every year. Well, how much of our profits come from them every year? And the answer is 100%. Literally 100% of our profits come from existing customers every year. Why? Because it costs us money to acquire a new customer. So, I wish people would really start to dig into that within their companies and therefore, understand the resource allocation decisions that are being made on back of it.

[00:29:05] Andrew Michael: I love that. I think every account management, CS rep now is like cheering in the background saying, yes, I told you so. You've been spending this money wrong all the time. Comp me better. But, yeah. I think definitely there is this mismatch and misalignment in terms of how the world sees these things. And to your point as well, love that as well. That sale is a cost sensor to begin with, and you only really start to reap the benefits like in year two, three, for the most part, just because of the ROI and maths and the way these things work.

[00:29:34] Andrew Michael: Yeah, so, great points. I think a lot of amazing lessons learned today. Before we wrap up the show, though, is there any final thoughts you want to leave the listeners with anything they should be aware of to keep up to speed with your work?

[00:29:45] Alex Raymond: The one thing I'll say to everyone who's listening is don't underestimate the power of language in describing what you do. Just like you, Andrew, I talk to a lot of people in these post sales roles all the time, and I'll ask them questions like, you know, what's your book of business? And they'll say my book of business is 30 customers.

[00:30:04] Alex Raymond: When you say that your book of business is 30 customers, I immediately started thinking about this in like, very transactional numerical terms. If you tell me instead that your book of business is $3 million, then I start seeing you as a steward of capital, someone who's in charge of money, someone who's in charge of doing something serious, like making more money for our company. That's an example of where language is really important.

[00:30:29] Alex Raymond: If you say, I manage accounts, then I think of you as a… maybe you're like a customer service representative person who manages stuff. If you say, I help my company win, here's how. If you talk about the language of winning, if you talk about the language of keep growing, no surprises. If you talk about the language of business and economics, then your status, your stature inside the company is going to increase.

[00:30:54] Alex Raymond: And so, I really want to recommend that everyone be very cautious about the language they use to talk about their jobs and don't underplay the importance of what it is that they're doing out there. Like feel free to toot your own horn. Remind people of the great work you do, remind people the results that you're delivering, remind people how much money you're making for your company. That's all stuff that I want leaders and individual contributors to be doing more of.

[00:31:18] Andrew Michael: Yeah, I love that. So good lesson there. I think it definitely is like being able to position yourself and your role in today's economy is a vital skill to learn as well. There are subtle cues in terms of the way you describe yourself, say a lot about, like, what you actually do and the impact that you're driving in companies.

[00:31:37] Alex Raymond: Well, so that was the reason that I called the book, The Growth Department, because, you know, I thought, yes, this is a book about customer success. It's a book about account management. So, I could call it something like that. And instead, I said, no, what are these teams actually do? Well, they help their companies grow faster and be more profitable. So, let's talk about that. And that I would love to have more people to start to think of themselves as the growth team or the growth department.

[00:32:02] Andrew Michael: Nice. There'll be some confusion there with existing growth team but I like [inaudible], from a typical growth team, I've always held the idea that like the growth team's responsibility is to unlock growth no matter where it lies, whether that's in CS sales, marketing and so forth. So, it definitely fits the narrative. Like you're pushing us in terms of like it's everyone's on the team's job to make the company successful. And yeah.

[00:32:28] Andrew Michael: Alex, it's been an absolute pleasure for those who will make sure to leave anything we discussed today in the show notes. If you want to check out Alex's book and keep up with his work, it will be there. It was an absolute pleasure chatting with you today and thanks so much for joining. I wish you the best of luck going forward.

[00:32:42] Alex Raymond: Thanks for having me, Andrew. I enjoyed the conversation.

[00:32:44] Andrew Michael: Cheers.

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