The Right Hire for Customer Success with Dan Barrett

In this curated episode of the Revenue Builders Podcast, John McMahon and John Kaplan are joined by Dan Barrett, Executive Vice President of Customers at MongoDB. Dan shares his journey of evolving MongoDB’s customer success strategy from a reactive to a proactive approach. He discusses the importance of hiring the right profiles, implementing disciplined processes, and understanding the nuanced root causes of customer churn. This conversation is a must-listen for anyone involved in customer success or looking to enhance their customer-centric strategies. KEY TAKEAWAYS [00:00:36] Transition from Reactive to Proactive Customer Success [00:01:01] Implementing a Disciplined Process to Identify and Address Risks [00:02:30] Balancing Skill and Will in Hiring and Developing Customer Success Teams [00:04:47] Key Attributes for Successful Customer Success Managers (CSMs) [00:06:21] Common Pitfalls in Customer Success Leadership [00:08:24] The Complexity of Understanding and Addressing Customer Churn [00:09:46] The Importance of Truly Listening to the Voice of the Customer HIGHLIGHT QUOTES [00:01:54] "The earlier you engage with the customer, the better chance you have of fixing their problems and getting them happy." [00:02:54] "Part of it was a skill thing, but part of it was also a will thing. Do people actually want to be doing that kind of job?" [00:05:34] "The biggest strength of a great CSM is that they just want to go above and beyond for their customers." [00:07:31] "Customer success is not a silver bullet to a product that doesn’t work or doesn’t have product-market fit." [00:08:43] "Most churn situations are much more complicated and nuanced than a single subcategory." [00:10:33] "There is no substitute for actually talking to customers and understanding what really went wrong." Listen to the full episode with Dan Barrett through this link: https://revenue-builders.simplecast.com/episodes/an-outcome-mentality-the-right-way-to-approach-customer-success Check out John McMahon’s book here: Amazon Link: https://a.co/d/1K7DDC4 Check out Force Management’s Ascender platform here: https://my.ascender.co/Ascender/