Helping Sells - Mastering the Art of Consultative Customer Success

Have you ever struggled to get customers to see things your way, even when you know you're right?

The problem might be that you're up against some powerful cognitive biases that impact how people process information and make decisions.

In this eye-opening episode, Rachel chats with Dan Smaida, author of "The Psychology of Advice" and an expert in using behavioral science to drive better communication and influence.

BY THE TIME YOU'LL FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:

• The key cognitive biases that undermine your ability to sell and how to counteract them
• Why asking the right questions at the right time is so much more powerful than just telling people what to do
• The 3-step "consultative sequence" that builds trust and gets customers invested in your advice
• Practical tips for proving the value of customer success to skeptical executives

Don't let cognitive biases sabotage your efforts to help customers. Tune in to learn how to leverage the science of influence for powerful results.


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This episode was sponsored by Vitally.io

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🎬 This content was edited by Lifetime Value Media. 

Learn more at: https://www.lifetimevaluemedia.com 

🎬 This content was edited by Lifetime Value Media.

Learn more at: https://www.lifetimevaluemedia.com

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Transcript

[Rachel] (0:00 - 2:52)
Hey, CS Psychos. Rachel Provan here, and on today's episode, we're going to be talking about how to influence others using behavioral science. How's that different from what we talked about in the other week? This time, it's coming from someone else who's actually used these techniques for over 20 years in his sales, coaching, and consulting career.

So you've got me beat. We're going to talk about how do cognitive biases impact our ability to sell? What questions to ask and when, plus the secret to the consultative sequence.

That's all coming up next right here on psychology of customer success. Stay tuned. Humans don't think or behave like computers.

You can't just run a command and get them to do what you want them to do. So why are you still basing your CS strategy based solely on logic? I'm Rachel Provan, CS leadership coach, award winning CS strategist, and certified psych nerd.

I teach CS leaders how to build and scale world class CS departments using a combination of strategy, leadership and mindset using my secret weapon, psychology. Come join me every Wednesday for psychology of customer success, where we'll dive into why people do the things they do, what motivates them and the effect that has on your CS strategy, team dynamics and executive presence. Make sure to subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts and make sure to share it with your CS bestie.

Talk soon and here's to your success. Welcome back, everybody. Today, I'm really excited to have Dan Smaida joining me.

He has spent this entire century helping people use behavioral science to improve communication and increase influence. His clients range from financial services to 3D printing, edtech. Dan's technically a snowbird.

He spends his summer in Wisconsin and his winters in Florida, which sounds very smart to me. His book, the psychology of advice was just so amazing to me. I mean, you guys know I nerd out on this stuff.

And it basically could have been written for me and my particular obsession with psychology and how it applies to customers are selling, you know, how we can understand our customers better. So it really gets into all the cognitive biases and those shortcuts our brain takes that we're not really aware are happening. That's happening to our customers, too.

And he really helps call out which of those are happening, when, why and how to counteract them. It's gold. I can't even begin to tell you.

But with that, I'm going to let you actually talk to him instead of me raving about him. Dan, thank you so much for being with us today.

[Dan] (2:53 - 2:59)
Oh, thanks for having me. I'm really looking forward to this conversation. Customer success is everybody's success.

[Rachel] (3:00 - 3:16)
Yeah, absolutely. In your book, psychology of advice, you say helping sells, selling doesn't help. And I got like that emoji of the brain exploding because I could not agree more.

But can you elaborate on that for people?

[Dan] (3:17 - 4:44)
Yeah, I think if you put yourself in the shoes of when you're a customer or potential customer, it gets really clear. We've all had experiences where you're dealing with someone and their smarts, they know their stuff, they're clearly adept at the product, but their agenda is to move a product or to close something or to get a contract signed. And it just doesn't feel like they have your best interests at heart when that's the agenda that's visible to you.

Now you can have the same agenda. I want to ultimately sell something, but if your primary objective is to help people decide to help people get educated, help people come to their own conclusion after examining their options, when people feel like that's your goal, help them get to a place of good choosing. Now you're taking advantage of actually a big cognitive bias, one of the big few, and that is a similarity or affinity bias.

We trust people who have our agendas in common. We trust people with the same agenda and sales. If I feel we're both interested in helping me decide versus you're trying to sell me a product, it's just a different deal.

[Rachel] (4:45 - 5:52)
Absolutely. Customer success has moved into a more revenue-driven role. We were always doing retention, but there's been a greater push for us to handle expansion and some of us have quotas now.

A lot of CS professionals are somewhat resistant to that because they feel like if I wanted to be in sales, I'd be in sales. I don't want to push things on people. I want it to be about them.

I don't want to be gross. It's really interesting because they're thinking about bad sales, not regular sales. Sales can be a service.

It can be a way of having your customers back because you know more about your product than they do. You know, hey, I know about the product. I know about you.

I can actually give you advice here on, hey, this might be a problem in the future. Let me show you that I have your back. Here's what I'm thinking about in terms of your business and why this might be a good option for you.

Selling them every single item you have, probably not the best sales.

[Dan] (5:54 - 6:25)
Being willing to not advocate for something or to advocate for what you sell is often what really credentials people as an honest broker. If you ever thought the movie Miracle on 34th Street, Macy's Santa is like, hey, we don't have this toy. We'd go across the street.

They have it. Macy's boss is originally mad until they realized the line for Santa was out the door because they had the customer's best interest at heart.

[Rachel] (6:25 - 6:33)
I love it. You talk about how asking questions tends to be the most powerful way to sell. Can you talk about why?

[Dan] (6:33 - 8:30)
The number one reason is possibly the biggest hurdle we all face in our life in terms of cognitive biases, and that's confirmation bias. We really want to be right, and we look for evidence in the world that proves we're right, and we dismiss evidence to the contrary. My first book was called Love and Selling, and I use love as an analogy quite often.

I think it applies here. We all know someone in our life. Has this ever happened to you?

Somebody you care about that's close to you is with the wrong person, and they're making a huge mistake. Everyone's, oh, yeah, I've had that. And then I ask, well, how many of you have had the talk, like the don't do it talk?

In my workshops, a lot of hands go up, like, oh, yeah, I tried that. And I say, and how many of you were successful in that? All the hands go down, save for maybe one every so often.

And the stories behind that are hilarious, right? There's way more getting uninvited to the wedding than there is revelation, right, in that conversation. And it's because when you're in love, you dismiss all evidence to the contrary, right?

When you're in positive override, they could be mean as, oh, they're just having a bad day. That's confirmation bias, right? We just look for everything that proves we're making a good call or pushing away things that say, no, we're not.

And so that's what makes questions so important and process too so important. People don't argue with their own data. So as much as possible, they need to come to their own conclusions.

They'll argue with your math, but not their own. So can you put them in a position where they do their own math? There's a process to that.

But asking questions in a nutshell, helps you work with the number one cognitive bias we deal with in life. And that's confirmation bias.

[Rachel] (8:31 - 8:43)
I couldn't agree more. Can you talk a little bit about how you figure out what questions to ask and when to get them to the to the best conclusion for them, honestly?

[Dan] (8:43 - 10:22)
Yeah, it's a really good question. Sometimes I use chess as an analogy. Sometimes I use chili in this situation.

Okay, what do you like better, right? Glom on to that one. But the question you ask, what questions you're asking, what is like asking what chess moves do you make?

What do you use? When or what spice do you use? And when you put it in?

There's a million different possible right answers. They're just dark and it really depends on where you are in the game or who you're cooking for. And so in chess and in chili, he becomes, do you understand the ingredients and the effect they have on the overall in chess?

If you know, have good command of how your pieces work, what they're able to do, that's the first step in making good moves, right? Strategy comes on top of that. In chili, if you know the effect of tarragon versus basil.

Yeah. You know, you're in position to operate differently as a chef and make chili that's more intentional, especially if you know someone likes their food more savory or in chess, someone's a little bit more aggressive in their offense. So it's knowing what the question types are, how they affect the conversations and you can pull the right spice out of the cabinet at the right point in time.

I happen to have in the book, all of those question types, a dozen or so documented. What is it? How does it work?

When possibly to use it, but it's situation.

[Rachel] (10:24 - 10:51)
That makes sense. I think it's very helpful to have those questions in the book because I love an analogy and I'm going to go with it here. Most of these people, not that they're not very smart, but just in terms of their experience with chess, they're playing checkers or with chili, they're opening a can.

We are at the very early stages. So saying what to put when it's like, what does that even do? So it is helpful to have that spelled out for us.

[Dan] (10:51 - 11:54)
Yeah. A great starting point for a lot of folks that are trying to be more consultative. A couple of the biggest things I see when I coach, I look at a lot of conversations.

I ride with people. We plan, we prepare, we simulate conversations. Asking one question at a time is a real skill.

Not asking three questions in one so that people just answer the easiest, pick the easiest one out of the pile. Secondly, it's just the difference between an open and a closed ended question. Questions that were fought were like narrow the possibilities.

Do you do this? Is this an issue? Yes or no?

A or B versus what's going on here? Why am I offering advice? The W's and their cousin, how that open the possibilities.

Just getting good at that. Am I discovering and clarifying open-ended? Am I confirming or committing, right?

Closed ending. You get those two, right? You've solved one of the major problems that plagues people in the questioning.

[Rachel] (11:56 - 12:06)
That's such an amazing point because it's like, yeah, are you asking them to open up their thoughts or are you, because those A and B questions kind of narrow the path that they can go down.

[Dan] (12:07 - 12:15)
Also vital, right? If somebody is hungry, where do you want to eat? Sometimes it's too much of a question because they're hungry.

[Rachel] (12:15 - 12:17)
Every night is too much of a question.

[Dan] (12:18 - 12:27)
A or B makes that much simpler, right? Now we're getting down to business. Do you want to go out to eat is a popular question in our house.

Yeah.

[Rachel] (12:27 - 12:35)
I mean, we, for us, it's like, what do you want to order up to you? All right, fine. Do you want Mexican or sushi?

[Dan] (12:36 - 12:48)
Well, to be completely fair in my house, the whole like, Hey, where do you want to go for dinner? That comes up when it's my time to cook, right? My spouse is a chef and will tell, right?

So that's not her saying it just.

[Rachel] (12:50 - 13:07)
Hey, I, I gave up cooking a year or two ago when I realized like I don't like this anymore. All right. Okay.

So bringing us back to the topic at hand, there's something in there that you call the consultative sequence. Can you talk a little bit about what that is?

[Dan] (13:08 - 14:53)
Yes. One of the three problems I've been focused on this entire study revolves around, they're all about the consultative sequence because I work with people who don't, it's not a transactional situation. There's an ongoing business relationship they're trying to forge.

They don't have power. They're trying to wield influence very much like the listeners of this podcast, right? That's what you're doing.

The same issues apply. Number one, the consultative sequence is this diagnosed before you prescribe, discover before you deliver, right? Steven puppy would say, see first to understand them to be understood.

One, two doctors who get it out of order are guilty of malpractice and professionals who get it out of order are consultative. And so the keys there are enough discovery. One of the big problems I deal with this insufficient discovery, just not enough understanding by everyone of what the problem is and what the need is.

Secondly, premature delivery. Even if you're right, even if you know it all, if it's too soon for your advice, it's just like a doctor who doesn't even have to feel your knee to know what's wrong. They still got to feel your knee.

And because of those two, if you don't get those right, then commitments aren't durable. At most they're like wishes. So that's the consultative sequence diagnosed before you prescribe, discover before you deliver so that people trust the process by which you get to your advice.

[Rachel] (14:54 - 15:19)
That is such a great point. And one of those things that I think makes so much sense and is so hard to do because of that, you know, confirmation bias, we have a way we want it to go, or we're looking for them to say certain things to say, aha, you need this. And how can we avoid that?

How can we know that we have that bias and try and counteract it to make sure that we don't prematurely do that?

[Dan] (15:20 - 16:20)
Awareness, like anything is the first step toward change. You know, where awareness that you have that issue and experience is a trap. But the more experienced I am, the more I've seen it before, the more likely I am to assume that everybody sees what I see, right to assume basic facts that may not be apparent to everyone.

And so having a process of discovery that makes you methodical about it, and brings everyone along is absolutely vital. Another thing is to really check your statements at the door, right? I'm about to say something.

Is it time yet? And you know, should I be asking a question? First, that confirms the need for what I'm about to offer.

It's a vital pause in your thinking. And it comes when you can, when you're operating both in the conversation, but you've also got that camera over your shoulder, like watching yourself in action and watching the process of your conversation.

[Rachel] (16:21 - 17:26)
So interesting. You know, I also study evolutionary psychology because I think it informs our, you know, our cognitive biases so much. You talk about Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

I feel like the reason we get so illogical when it comes to our work is because we do associate it with our safety, with our shelter, our food, our ability to provide for our family. That makes it feel life or death, even though you're like sitting in an office chair having a conversation, your brain is treating it like, if this isn't right, it's all over. So I think that's probably why we aren't as logical as we'd like to think we are, or as we wish we were.

You have an excellent way of sort of checking yourself. There was like a list of questions in there that are, you know, if you can't say these things out loud to the customer, it's not the right time to say it. That was really cool.

[Dan] (17:26 - 19:19)
You're talking about the six whys of all that. I'll give you I'll give you that nugget right now from the book and then you can read it later. The six questions you want to be able to ask yourself and answer before you start telling people what you think are number one is why are you offering advice at all?

Is it even necessary or is it just you want to? Secondly, and this is another big one is why am I offering the advice now? Is it really time yet?

Are they really listening? Why could my advice be unnecessary? In other words, could they come to their own conclusion here without me telling them things again, what questions are possible?

Why could my advice be premature, right? Even if it seems like it's time again, it's back to the when why might not may be ready for my advice. Why could my advice be perceived as incorrect?

Solve for the weak points in your advice and why you could be wrong. It even helps you frame your advice, right? I'm not necessarily right here, but and then why could my advice be perceived as selling?

And that gets back to am I at the right point in the process? Do they feel like I get where they're coming from and that I understand what they need when I open my mouth? Those are tough questions because a lot of times you realize that I just want to tell what I think.

And it's not constantly. But this advice, frankly, I found applies to everything from work to parenting and all points in between on the relationship spectrum.

[Rachel] (19:21 - 19:34)
Absolutely. I love that. Could this be perceived as selling?

Because again, like nothing wrong with selling, but you want them to feel that this is you helping them rather than pushing your agenda.

[Dan] (19:35 - 19:38)
I mean, I don't need the barber telling me how awesome the haircut is.

[Rachel] (19:39 - 19:44)
You know what? Like when they do that, it does actually help me think it's better.

[Dan] (19:45 - 20:01)
I think, well, you're biased because you're the barber. Of course, you think it's worse. Dunning-Kruger effect says that the worse we are at something, the more we tend to overrate ourselves at it.

The crappiest barber will be the wrongest about that.

[Rachel] (20:03 - 20:34)
Yeah, I have a whole episode about that, unsurprisingly. One question, because this comes to mind for me, just thinking about using this in practice, and I'm sure there's a bias or something wrong in here. But my fear of doing it this way is, what if we don't get to it by the end of the call?

And we asked a lot of questions and had a conversation. Is the customer going to feel like there's not a lot of value there, and why should we talk again if they've just answered a lot of questions?

[Dan] (20:35 - 21:19)
That's a really good one, because what we're not saying there is, don't offer advice. We're saying, set the stage for useful advice. And if somebody's looking at me point blank and saying, I just need you to tell me what you think here.

Sure. Yeah, man. I mean, absolutely.

I'm going to answer the questions. Dodging the question or trying to question the question or do the challenger sale on people is salesy, and folks react against that like you just did. Yeah, I'd just rather have a conversation.

If they really want to bypass the questions, just hear my advice. Okay, I'll give it to you. It's based on limited knowledge.

You got to qualify that, but here's what I think. Fine.

[Rachel] (21:19 - 22:08)
Yeah. And I mean, I agree with you that they might not take that as value. But in CS, we are not pressured.

I put pressure on it. You know, we want every interaction we have with them to deliver value so they don't ignore us. I'm really talking about customers here.

But for CS leaders, also, internal stakeholders kind of have to talk to again. A customer doesn't. There are different issues with each.

But if we're thinking of just CS strategy, and we're talking about the customer, are they going to want to talk to us again? Because I don't know that you can necessarily get to that answer in one call every time, depending on what you're trying to get them to do. So how do we get them on the phone again, if we haven't gotten them to the place where they are soliciting our advice?

[Dan] (22:09 - 23:04)
Yeah, that's a great question. There's probably a lot of different answers. You're dealing with a more complex situation, which is not push the but-- Yeah, solution is more like the customer has to go away and do some things again. And then we probably have to talk again. It's a process there.

That has a lot to do actually with consultative sequence. If you've asked the right questions and fed back to them in a way that they know you're listening and they know you care, right? It's not you're just getting them off the phone, right?

If they're clear on what the process is and what the steps are, and it's not nebulous, that's important too. So I have a very detailed and well thought out process. So it's clear and understandable.

And then thirdly, is getting back on the phone with you going to help them? Do they see a clear line of sight from that to solving for the problem that they're having?

[Rachel] (23:06 - 23:06)
Yeah.

[Dan] (23:07 - 23:38)
Even just a little bit from the service professional saying, and when we get on the phone again, it'll take us 10 minutes and you will have a solution. You'll not have that problem anymore. Right?

So offer me an outcome from that next conversation if we can't get it this time and show me clear steps to get up there. Now you're setting an anchor there for success. Yeah.

Yep. And helping people want to talk to you again. But frankly, it's a lot of what you did in that first call that helps them want to talk to you again.

[Rachel] (23:39 - 23:54)
Oh, definitely. Definitely. Yeah, that's kind of our constant challenges that like we have to stay in contact with them to stay relevant.

We have to keep delivering value so that we know where they are with the product. And so they keep renewing.

[Dan] (23:54 - 24:06)
And here's nevermind it, we're banning. Yeah, sure. And for a brave question to ask, where it's not closure, it's how are we doing so far?

[Rachel] (24:08 - 24:09)
I love that.

[Dan] (24:10 - 24:20)
How are we doing so far? If you don't know good or bad, how can you be effective in managing expectations and creating a process going forward?

[Rachel] (24:21 - 24:40)
It's funny. A lot of people are advised to ask, you know, if the renewal was tomorrow, would you renew? And I don't love that question because I think it's very self-centered and I think it's kind of pressuring.

And I don't know that they're going to tell you the truth because it's a closing question, right?

[Dan] (24:40 - 24:42)
Yes, no closed question.

[Rachel] (24:43 - 25:08)
It is. And it's, I just think there's typically, there's no other advice around what else you're talking about. You're just ending the conversation there.

And I feel like it's jarring and it just, I don't know, it icks me out. A lot of people love it. I just don't feel like you're necessarily going to get the right answer.

And like, why would you leave that till the end and then have to go?

[Dan] (25:09 - 25:45)
You're trying to discover your chances or understand more about is a renewal going to happen? It's got to be more of an open ended question, doesn't it? How are you feeling right now about things?

What's your feeling about renewing right now? Even how likely, what are our chances of keeping you? Tell me more about that.

Why? Or what can we do? You know, with open ended questions, they are your best friend and the follow up crush, of course.

[Rachel] (25:47 - 25:58)
Yeah. Yeah. And that's why I like the, you know, how are we doing so far?

That seems more focused on them and what their outcome is than on, are you going to give me what I want or what?

[Dan] (25:59 - 26:01)
What's right? Right.

[Rachel] (26:02 - 26:12)
Because I hear that and I'm like, I don't know yet, but I don't want to tell you that because I don't want you selling to me. So yeah, yeah. That may just be the people pleaser in me.

[Dan] (26:13 - 26:24)
I could think it's giving people a chance to tell you how they feel about things and what they think. Generally a good idea when you're trying to have influence over the course of the Yeah.

[Rachel] (26:25 - 27:59)
All right. We've gone down a rabbit hole because this is interesting. But I really want your opinion on these things because we have you here and it's such an opportunity.

We are up against a couple of problems in customer success right now. And I'd love to know what cognitive biases you think are involved and how we can counter them. This is more, you know, customer success leader to internal stakeholders, namely the C suite.

Many companies believe that customer retention should be more or less automatic. So customer success really isn't necessary beyond expansion. As yes, people, we know this is not the case, you know, that it takes work to get people to achieve their outcome with the product because they're not just going to necessarily use as directed or consider it to be at the top of their list, right?

There's a reason we have to get some work done to achieve retention. But why do you think that we have trouble proving our value as a customer success department, we work with very lagging indicators, if we improve an onboarding sequence, which is generally one of the biggest causes of germs, bad onboarding, that doesn't show up for a year. You know, our KPIs tend to be NRR.

And it's just such a lagging indicator. So what biases do you think are at play here? And how can we help our C suite understand our value?

[Dan] (28:01 - 28:13)
Great question. First thing first, confirmation biases at play here. They sometimes they believe or they don't believe in the value of CS and there's nothing you're going to do about it.

Just have it.

[Rachel] (28:13 - 28:14)
Yeah.

[Dan] (28:14 - 29:42)
Sometimes you can do something about it. And the again, people don't argue with their own data. So are you putting the C suite in position to really understand what's going on, but not out of your own mouth.

For example, I'll start small picture and go out from there. Availability bias is really a strong thing as a story or an anecdote. Anecdotal evidence completely outweighs statistics way more than it should.

And so let's use onboarding as an example. Okay. If you have a great onboarding, a customer has a great onboarding experience, it shows up way down the line as a statistic, right?

Yeah. But what if it showed up right away as a story from a customer? So CS professionals get some qualitative assessment and feedback loops into your processes so that at the end of onboarding, just like in an app, how's it going so far?

Five stars. Why? Now you've got a story from a customer about this onboarding was critical to my success.

And that goes right to the C suite. It's not you talking, it's voice of the customer. It's a story that paints way more of a picture than statistics do sooner.

And it takes it to availability bias. Now it's all that one customer.

[Rachel] (29:43 - 30:16)
Yeah. Those definitely do help and creating leading indicators for how things are going with the customer do tend to help. Our main issue there is, you know, we have something called health scores where we balance things like an onboarding go, how long did it take?

What is the customer sentiment according to the CSM? What have they been saying? How many tickets do they have?

How much of the product are they using? Things like that usage statistics, the amount of times it's wrong is pretty embarrassing.

[Dan] (30:17 - 30:24)
I mean, according to the CSM is the problem to C suite, of course, right? Of course, barbers, your haircut's awesome.

[Rachel] (30:24 - 30:25)
Right?

[Dan] (30:25 - 30:49)
The person with the haircut sharing their feedback in an email, you can't question the veracity of that. It's way more powerful than a statistic in so many ways. So are you sharing stories with the C-suite?

Are you connecting the voice? Are you helping the C-suite hear the voice of the customer, not just see the stats of the business?

[Rachel] (30:51 - 31:05)
I think that's harder in this current economic climate because we do, we share a lot of voice of the customer, but it does tend to be like, great, show me the number. And yeah, the leading indicator definitely helps.

[Dan] (31:06 - 31:30)
Yeah. The other thing too, there, I mean, the broader picture is if you want executives to feel the difference, and you've got the time and the political will, is you do a control where you do some of your customers don't have customer success. Now they go through their own, right?

See how if people even want to do it, see how it goes.

[Rachel] (31:30 - 31:31)
Yeah.

[Dan] (31:31 - 31:37)
See if people even want to do that, or is that maybe like less of a real objection?

[Rachel] (31:39 - 31:56)
That's a good point. And I have had people in my course actually do that and had the C-suite see that, oh, you know, that cohort is churning at 30% versus, you know, 7% of the managed customers.

[Dan] (31:57 - 32:08)
Okay. Again, right. That third-party data is crucial.

If I'm a C-suite person looking at a study that said that, okay, now I don't have to do my own experiment.

[Rachel] (32:08 - 32:11)
Yeah, now I get it. Yeah, exactly.

[Dan] (32:11 - 32:19)
So, as professionals, you got to be a clip source too, right? You got to be bringing in that third-party data so it's not just the bottom.

[Rachel] (32:20 - 32:51)
One more question. I think confirmation bias is especially at play if you have a founder, CEO. Now they made this product.

They believe it works. They believe it delivers everything it could possibly need to deliver to the customer or they would not have made it this way. So in my understanding, confirmation bias is going to be at play there.

They wanted it. They bought it. Why would they not, you know, we showed them how to use it.

Why would they not renew? How do we explain that to them?

[Dan] (32:52 - 33:45)
I mean, you're dealing with even more than confirmation bias for the fundamental attribution error, right? I'm tied up in what I made, my identity. It's right.

I'm right. The customer must be stupid. It's what helped them get that far.

It's like just ignoring the naysayers and like rock solid belief that you're doing. Good luck with that one, right? That's one of the most intractable situations you can deal with, but understanding that it's that way, just understanding what's going on helps you deal.

That's just what's going on helps you take it not personally. They're not calling you wrong or stupid. They're just, that's the world they're operating.

[Rachel] (33:46 - 34:07)
Yeah. And it is something that is such a struggle for so many CS leaders at startups where the founders do tend to be the CEO, the COO, you know, they're dealing with that and they're not talking to other people who are also dealing with it. So they're hearing like, I'm a failure.

I don't know what I'm talking about because a hundred percent did not renew.

[Dan] (34:09 - 34:39)
No, experiencing is believing. If you've got the ability, can you help expose your founder to actually what's customer service people are doing? Have they spent even an hour over the shoulder or riding along with some CS people?

That's a change management thing. And they, your founders probably shouldn't do that in a lot of different departments to realize the value of what their company is doing for them. Particularly important, I would imagine the CS function.

[Rachel] (34:40 - 35:03)
I would agree. That's actually a really good point that I hadn't thought of. I'm going to noodle over that and how my CS leaders can do that without scaring the hell out of their CSOs as the CEO rides along.

Because there is a difference between, oh, listen to this gone call where they're like double speed, blah, blah, blah, like actually having to sit and listen and their experience that.

[Dan] (35:04 - 35:06)
Gone at double speed is a great solution here.

[Rachel] (35:06 - 35:09)
I love it. I just think it's a little different.

[Dan] (35:10 - 35:11)
Yeah. Yeah. Agreed.

[Rachel] (35:12 - 35:30)
And just in terms of the attention you're paying, at least for me, you know, I know I'm guilty of I'm going to, I'm going to multitask. I'm going to listen to this. I'm going to do something on my phone.

I'll get all of it. Whereas being the human on the phone with a customer is a very different experience.

[Dan] (35:30 - 35:40)
And just being able to see what people do in between calls and now I got to do this and that. And here's the issue. Yeah.

I love that idea from me.

[Rachel] (35:41 - 36:41)
I love that idea from you too. So as someone who's been both a coach and a CS professional, I absolutely agree. It's better to ask questions and let the other person come to the conclusion.

But I personally, this fundamentally, and I still have trouble doing it sometimes. And it's because I want to help and because I want to speed it up. And I often think this took me years to figure out, you know, we don't have time for this.

Like your CEO is saying your department is not working. We don't have time for you to figure this out by me asking questions. Now, logically, I know there are questions I can ask them to speed up the process of them getting there themselves, but it's hard to think of them in a split second.

As someone who's so good at this, how do I get better at it? How does any CS leader get better at coaching their teams in this way of just having patience and letting go of the ego? I want to be the one to give this to you and make everything all better.

[Dan] (36:43 - 37:49)
Wow. Yeah. I mean, there's a mindset there, right?

There's a mindset that's got, it's got to start with the belief that I'm going to have, get more results and have more influence if they have the good idea versus if I have a good idea, there's a long term payoff to that. So there's a mindset issue. Secondly, there is definitely a planning issue here.

The discipline to ask questions in the moment comes from the discipline to plan the questions beforehand, starting from what is the outcome I'd like to achieve? What is the desired or the need that's going to drive movement toward the solution? What's the problem we're solving that creates the need and what questions am I going to ask to get to the root of the problem so that we all feel it and how extensive it really, it is.

And from there come the questions. Now you're saying, okay, open questions. I'm going to have a question that examines the impact, another question type from the book.

And now you've got a little bit of a, not a checklist as much as a map of where you're trying to go.

[Rachel] (37:49 - 38:01)
We need that so much. Yeah. Yeah.

Because in a, you know, when you're reacting to a human, it's a split second thing. Again, you're not thinking totally logically, you're playing off the other person. So that really helps.

[Dan] (38:02 - 38:22)
When you see the board and where you're trying to go, I mean, that's a lot of what I do with people. When I coach individuals, it's helping them plan for the discover part of key meetings and key interactions. So that they do walk in with a plan to be deliberate about discovery and not rush to deliver advice.

[Rachel] (38:23 - 40:55)
That's actually exactly what I do to get CSMs comfortable with moving into selling is you're not selling anything on this next call. You're going to ask two questions, figure out what those two questions are, like, you know, based on these different, just write down those two questions, get the answer to them and you're done. And that is much more approachable to go sell this thing because the way they know how to do it is we also have this, you want it?

And that's not the best approach, you know, but if they haven't been taught this, how would they know? But those series of questions that you just asked, you know, our main question to our customers all the time is like, what are we trying to achieve? So that series you had just there, like I'm rewinding it for myself and taking a lot of notes.

And I advise you guys to do the same. You know, these things are in the book. It's just, if you're someone like me who needs to hear things, it's just so helpful.

And I do want to mention, because this is a standout thing and slightly embarrassing for me, but I read this book and when I say I read it, I sat down with a paper book in my lap and it was so pleasant, but I've mentioned this before, like I tend to use Audible or Libby or some sort of service where I can listen to an audio book. This didn't have one. And look, sometimes audio books are terrible because people try and do them themselves and they are not a trained voice actor and it's, you know, nails on a chalkboard, but I really wanted this information.

I really wanted to talk to Dan. So I sat down and I actually got through this book, you know, in two days because I have small children who will jump on me and attack, they will consider me sitting down as kind of like a call to war, but I actually read this book and it wasn't something where I was drifting off every minute thinking about the things I had to do. It was very approachable.

It was very simple. The text is large. There's white space in between.

So like you can rip through this thing, but the amount of value that's in there is unbelievable. You can listen to this podcast, but of course where you're really going to get all the meat of that is in the book. And it's not something you're going to have to slog through and it's going to take a lot of your time.

Read two or three pages a day and just take what you got out of those questions, that information and try and apply it that day. It's really amazing. So for people who want to learn more about you, you know, how they can work with you, where can they do that?

Are you available for coaching and consulting?

[Dan] (40:56 - 42:31)
Oh, absolutely. I do primarily work with sellers. A large amount of work with sales managers and leaders adjacent to the sales function, sales ops, sales enablement, customer success.

I would say that I'm a good resource first and foremost for the sellers in your organization. But secondly, for you, if you're approaching a key meeting or a situation where I am trying to make a sale here, but I'm a consultative seller, right, without the power selling to internal stakeholders. For example, that's something I can help with.

If it's, can we get better at making a sale to our customers as customer service professionals, upsell, cross-sell, I help with that as well. You know, probably not as well as you would, Rachel, because you're so wise and expert in this. So really think of me as a resource for sellers first and foremost.

And if you want to get ahold of me for just the one-off on the book, absolutely. It'd be helpful if you actually had bought the book, like Rachel said, 130 pages, big font, small pictures, whites, but most of all nuggetized. I mean, I'm just folding up a section here on breaking down problems, it's that much, right?

What is it? How's it work? What do you do with it to help clients?

That's all I do in the book is share a really a workshop in book form. I recorded an audio book. I haven't loaded it up though yet because it doesn't make sense when you say it.

[Rachel] (42:32 - 43:11)
Well, see, you know, there are still people who will not be able to make the time, it can't hurt. But yeah, looking at that book, I immediately think this is someone who understands the brain and how we process information. And I'm thrilled to say, I'm sorry to anyone who does this in their book, but I'm thrilled to say there's not, it's not padded with 10,000 examples of how you did this.

And you're so smart and you're so brilliant. Look at me in this fancy company. I did it with you.

Keep it about the reader and how they can do it. I believe you. It makes sense sold.

You don't have to try and wade through that stuff. It's all just actionable content.

[Dan] (43:11 - 43:12)
Thank you.

[Rachel] (43:12 - 43:14)
And I get paid nothing for this. It's just amazing.

[Dan] (43:15 - 43:31)
Well, and you'll see on the back cover vetted by real psychologists, right? I love what I do with people. It's not my opinion.

It's not stuff I made up. It's empirical data and accepted a real science that we can all use to be more influential.

[Rachel] (43:32 - 43:39)
I love it. All right. Time for your final question.

What's the best piece of advice you've ever gotten?

[Dan] (43:40 - 44:30)
Yeah. One of them we talked about, which is selling doesn't help, but helping sells. The other is that I had a mentor named Marty Rafferty who did a bunch of different things.

When he passed, he was actually a city administrator in Lake Elbow, Minnesota. But he taught me a lot when I was young. And the thing he said about sales has stuck with me the most.

And this is, I think, true for anybody trying to make any kind of sale. He said, Dan, there's only three steps in selling. Build a relationship, find the need, meet the need.

If you do enough of those two, you don't have to have the best solution and you certainly don't have to close. Closing takes care of itself. And I've hewn to that advice and help clients apply that advice since the nineties and it's golden.

[Rachel] (44:32 - 45:04)
It absolutely is. And that's what we really want. Like customers who close themselves, cause we're not thrilled with having to do that part.

That's why good sales actually fits really well with the customer success psyche of wanting to help and outcomes. All right. Thank you so much.

This was so valuable. The time just flew by. I will definitely link your book in the show notes and anywhere I post this because it is absolute gold.

And just thank you so much for being here.

[Dan] (45:04 - 45:08)
Thank you and good luck to everyone out there. I hope you're successful and you enjoy the book.

[Rachel] (45:09 - 45:46)
Absolutely. A huge thank you to you. There'll be links in the show notes for everything we talked about today.

If you're interested in leveling up your CS strategy, team leadership, executive presence with me, make sure to get on the VIP notification list for Customer Success Leadership Academy. So that way you'll be the first to know when the doors open back up in September. It is the last time they're opening up this year.

So that would be at Provansuccess.com slash C S L A. And until next time, take care of yourself, get some rest and make sure to share this with your CS bestie. Talk soon.

And here's to your success.