Episode Transcript
Will: Cece, thank you so much for joining us today. It's great to have you on the show.
Cece: Thank you Will, really looking forward to our conversation today and want to thank you for having us here.
Will: Wonderful. And Lynn, thank you very much as well for joining us today.
Lynn: Awesome, great to be here and excited for our conversation.
Will: For some of our listeners who may have just heard about Enable Us in the intro, maybe we can start by giving them some context and background about what Enable Us is up to.
Cece: When I was a customer of Enable Us, what I found interesting was the company's goal to make B2B purchasing more like Amazon - where you can browse, find what you're looking for and purchase easily. That's what Enable Us seeks to do with B2B, making the entire process easier for sellers and buyers through our seller and buyer enablement platform.
Will: I love that story - any story that starts with "when I was a customer and then came onboard the platform." Lynn, we'll jump to you if you have anything else to add, but first I want to ask - was there one specific thing you saw or experienced as a customer that made you say "I really want to be part of this journey?"
Cece: There were actually a few things. Enable Us was the first vendor where I asked "can you slow down your product releases?" Seriously, in some meetings I would say "Lynn, I can't catch up with everything you're doing." What really impressed me beyond their mission was the product innovation. As a product marketer at heart, seeing a company delivering both customer-requested features and platform improvements was unique. That sparked my curiosity to learn more about the company. As I got to know them better, the people really sealed the deal - being able to work for a company with that unique chemistry and ingredients to deliver a product that filled a need in a beneficial way is every product marketer's holy grail.
Will: That's awesome. I also like that Lynn, who's here with us today, is part of your story about discovering the product. Lynn, anything else that might be missing about Enable Us?
Lynn: Running the customer success side, I get to see all the exciting ways customers utilize our platform. While the ideal use case is for sales to improve their processes and make buying more efficient, we also have customers using it for customer success - for better onboarding experiences, ongoing training, or onboarding new sales users or customer success managers. It's really a dynamic tool that people can use for digital experiences and rooms for anything they need. We've got customers with some really exciting use cases, and we love seeing how people take advantage of the platform.
Will: That's great. Before we jump into the meat of our conversation, Cece, maybe you can share what your role is at Enable Us and what that entails?
Cece: I'm the Chief Marketing Officer, so I look at our brand messaging, positioning, and how to drive interest with prospects and customers to want to do more with us. Pretty much anything you can think of for marketing is under my purview. Working with Lynn on customer stories is really integral - that customer advocacy and customer marketing component is where Lynn and I work very closely.
Will: That's a great segue because we've got two leaders here from these groups. I'd love to understand how your teams work together. Is there a strategy, methodology, or framework that you use?
Cece: Lynn, do you want to start?
Lynn: My role covers everything post-sales for Enable Us - from implementation to onboarding, education, support, and customer management, ensuring customers meet their goals and want to renew. Through my work, I hear those success stories and understand what value they're getting and how they're talking about our platform internally. Cece and I work closely together with regular one-on-ones and projects. It's about making sure she's aware of those day-to-day conversations I have with customers, things from QBRs, or regular meetings where we discuss value. I loop Cece in when there's a great story or use case that maybe we're not highlighting on our website that prospects might be interested in. While she can always ask me if she needs a specific customer fit, I try to proactively send her great ideas about where our customers are succeeding.
Cece: For me, my goal is to help Lynn understand what I'm doing from a marketing perspective - what stories I think can help drive the message forward and differentiate us in the marketplace. Sometimes we might have an interesting story, but is it worth the effort to publicize if it's too much of an offshoot? When working with customer organizations, I try to be very clear about what I'm looking for rather than asking for everything. Marketing sometimes flies in asking for ABCDEFG, and customer success is like "whoa, hold on." I try to step back and say "here are the three things I'd love to have - a testimonial, a video clip if it's easy, or a case study," and clearly outline how I can generate other content from just one of these. It depends on what I'm looking for and the customer's comfort level. Marketing folks sometimes want everything from every customer without considering the nuance of those relationships and timing.
Will: That's a very good point, and I want to come back to how you communicate to the customer. But first, Lynn, you mentioned keeping Cece "hyper aware" - that sounds good when we say it fast, but I'm sure our listeners are wondering "how?" Do you have any tips or tricks for doing that while managing your demanding post-sales role?
Lynn: There are two pieces. First, Cece and I have regular calls where she might mention she's looking for a customer in a specific industry or use case. So I keep a mental list of what would be helpful and can quickly email her or bring her in when those opportunities arise. We also have internal processes - we use our all-team Slack channel where I share great customer stories or feedback. Cece often responds wanting to do a case study. We also have a go-to-market meeting with our sales team, myself from customer success, Cece from marketing, and our product team. This helps us all stay informed. If there's an interesting customer in the pipeline, Cece can flag it as a potential case study early. From the initial onboarding, I can then focus on establishing benchmarks and success goals so we'll have a compelling story in a few months.
Will: Makes sense. And Cece, you mentioned evaluating stories and determining which ones you need. What criteria do you look at, and how do you produce a list of what you're hoping Lynn and the team can find?
Cece: It starts with our messaging and marketing department goals for driving the company forward. Think of it as an umbrella - there's always a top message with supporting elements underneath. If our goal is making B2B buying easier for sellers and buyers, then I'll have three benefits or things we do well for customers. It could be ease of use as a differentiator or being able to drive efficiency like closing deals 30% faster. Starting with our goals and key messages keeps us focused. If there's an interesting but outlying story that doesn't fit these criteria, we have to decide if it's worth pursuing. If it doesn't help move us forward for the majority of our customers, we might pass. I try to say "I'm looking for customers that can show time savings, ROI, and collaboration" and focus only on those stories or quotes.
Will: That makes sense. The idea of focus is so important - we can only have so many things floating around in our minds. You mentioned this earlier, but I think this is one of the most important areas where both focused and nuanced approaches can help: how do you actually communicate these asks to your customers, and what have you found works and doesn't work to gain their buy-in?
Cece: Let me start with how I work with Lynn, since she's usually the one taking the ask to the customer. How I position it to Lynn helps her frame it for the customer. Usually, I'll say "this is a great story, I'd love to do a case study, I only need 30 minutes of their time." I've learned not to do multiple emails - I try to simplify it as much as possible. What works is getting them on the phone for 30 minutes. If they have more time, great, but 30 seems to be the sweet spot. I just say "I'm going to ask you a few questions, you tell me what you think, and I'll come back from there." We record it and say "we're just recording on Zoom." If they're comfortable with me using audio or video, I have that. So from one 30-minute call, I can create text, video, audio, and even a mini case study. With new customers who already have great experiences but maybe not ROI yet, we might just do a quote. I work with Lynn based on where the customer is, we formulate a strategy, and then Lynn takes it to the customer.
Lynn: Following what Cece mentioned, it's about making it seem as easy as possible for the customer. When you ask someone to do a case study, they think about writing a paper in college - that it's going to take tons of time, research, multiple drafts, and they have a full-time job. So we package it by saying "you've told us these great things, we want to highlight you, next step is introducing you to Cece for a quick conversation." We emphasize that we'll do most of the lift - we'll do the prep work, ask a few questions, and create all the content from that one conversation. They can just approve things over time. We're not asking them to go to their data teams or do extensive work. When customers mention getting great feedback in sales kickoffs or improving sales cycles, we jump on that momentum and say "can you give us 30 minutes?" It's a win-win, and we make sure they know the lift will be minimal on their side while the impact remains high.
Will: Do you ever run into objections in this process? You mentioned if people feel it's too much time, and how you keep that low, but are there other objections that others could benefit from understanding how to help people get comfortable with?
Lynn: I see two main objections. One is when they're just not ready yet. Maybe they've got initial wins but are hesitant because it's still new, or maybe some sales reps love it but full adoption isn't there yet. So sometimes it's understanding timing - as Cece mentioned, if it's early, maybe they don't want a formal case study but would do a quote or G2 review. The other objection is people not feeling they have a story to tell. Customers might need help figuring out their value. There's obviously ROI and changes to the sales process, but they might not feel confident communicating that. So it's about working with them throughout the customer journey to understand and recognize their value, so when we ask, they know "yes, I am getting value, here's what it is" versus "things are going well but what does that mean?"
Will: Those sound like good tips to help overcome those objections. I can definitely see people feeling they may not have a story yet. Cece, there could easily be misalignment of corporate objectives between your two departments. How do you keep yourselves aligned on higher corporate objectives?
Cece: That's a great question because I've been in organizations where we weren't aligned, yet marketing was asked to get a certain number of case studies or testimonials. You typically don't have direct access to customers, so you work through account managers, CS, or others. If CS and account teams have different goals and objectives, their time has to focus on what they're being evaluated against. Now you have two groups with different objectives. The overall goal might be the same - ensuring customer success, having stories to tell, sharing best practices - but if you don't structure those corporate objectives together and align on them, you'll often go in different directions.
Cece: In my last two organizations, when setting up KPIs or OKRs, leaders have to be on the same page and agree on the language. It can't be marketing getting X number of case studies while customer success gets X number of G2 reviews. They sound like the same goal but in implementation, they're not. When you come together and say "what's the give and take here? Instead of 10 G2 reviews, let's get five, and instead of five case studies, let's get two or three," you start aligning on goals. You're speaking the same language, and your teams at the front lines are going in the same direction. That's what Lynn and I do here - we're very aligned on what we're trying to achieve, why we're achieving it, and the timeframe.
Will: If someone listening might be in a situation where this alignment doesn't exist, whether they're in leadership or not, any suggestions for how they can get that alignment or make the best of a difficult situation?
Cece: If you're two to three levels below leadership and your organization has created goals you have to implement, it's important to start having conversations with your peers and manage up while providing recommendations. We're all good at identifying problems, but if we don't bring solutions to the table, you'll just continue propagating the situation. Collaborate with your peers, come up with a solution that satisfies your individual group needs and overall goals, then bring it to leadership. That way, leadership is signing off on a solution you've already developed. Next time around, you can say "we learned from this, how can we apply these lessons from the start?" I know it's tough and requires a lot of cross-functional collaboration depending on organization size, but start with a few aligned folks and develop a solution to recommend upward.
Will: That makes sense. Cross-collaboration seems key here - it's really a multi-departmental project. Lynn, sometimes you and Cece might be aligned, but team members might be busy or worried about clients. How do you gain alignment within your own organizations and help team members see the value?
Lynn: The pain when things aren't aligned is pretty apparent and adds to your daily challenges. Without alignment, you get customer marketing coming to customer success last-minute saying "I need someone immediately," or you have one really good customer getting tapped repeatedly. I've been in situations where one salesperson tells all their colleagues about a great customer, and suddenly this customer is having 20 conversations a month with sales deals until they ask us to calm down.
It's about identifying these pain points - whether it's the fire drills because everyone's busy, or risking customer goodwill by overusing them. If you think about what can go wrong and how to fix it, that helps get buy-in. Also, consider what you're already doing and how to use that for alignment. Many customer success teams have internal QBRs where they share success stories. Invite marketing or the customer marketing team to these meetings to hear stories firsthand. Depending on organization size, different divisions might have great stories that other segments don't know about - like a mid-market west team story that enterprise east could benefit from.
When we share these stories both within our team and with customer marketing, it's not just for prospects - it's also for customers. It gives validation to a customer to hear others' success stories. Often customers want to hear these stories and might start asking questions, leading to upsell opportunities or just reinforcing their purchase decision. There's value for existing customers and customer success managers in this alignment, sharing stories without creating extra work or reinventing the wheel each time.
Will: That makes sense. Have you two always found that the collaboration at Enable Us between your teams has been so strong, or were there learning lessons that led to this strong alignment?
Cece: Lynn and I have a very similar mindset about collaboration and information sharing - that's really important when you start with leadership. Any growing pains were more about language - coming to a common language is always necessary when moving to new organizations or working with new people. Once we established that, we were fortunate to have had less-than-ideal experiences elsewhere that we didn't want to repeat here at Enable Us.
Lynn: I'll double-click on that last piece. We've learned what doesn't work well, and especially as a smaller organization, we need to be working efficiently. Having clear collaboration - here's what you handle, here's what I handle, we'll meet to discuss what we need - has been huge in how we've been able to release product updates and make changes quickly. Everyone has great trust in each other and knows their role.
For example, with G2, I had owned a lot of our content and reviews for about a year when Cece joined. She came in saying this could be better from a marketing perspective, and I know where my strengths are. So we figured out where she could step in to update our profile and lead forms. We co-own some processes in HubSpot and G2, but we determined what's truly marketing-owned versus customer success, and where we need to consult each other. Because we've had to move quickly and make changes, there's trust that she's doing what's best for marketing while I care deeply about our customers.
Having clear company goals and understanding what each department is doing means there's not a lot of back-and-forth. In bigger organizations, the same sentence can be read differently by different departments. For customer success, "assist other departments as necessary" can mean many things - if I have time, maybe, or here's what I think they need. But being specific about G2 review numbers in my OKRs helps, versus more qualitative goals about helping or assisting. When Cece came in, she had a strong project mindset about what needed to get done, similar to my approach. So we aligned on our goals and kept communicating.
Cece: Lynn also touched on something unique about Enable Us's culture - we don't have the luxury of endless meetings to get one thing done. We're fairly straightforward - if we have a question, we ask it, get answers, and move forward. That helped accelerate our collaboration and understanding. Don't get me wrong, Lynn and I sometimes come at things with different perspectives and have differences of opinion. But we always leave conversations with a clear understanding of what each of us is doing, with the overall goals of what's best for our customers and what will help drive the company forward. Because we're super clear about that and everyone here aligns to it, we work like a well-oiled machine.
Will: I think that alignment and transparency you mentioned is a large piece of successful collaboration. We've had a wonderful conversation about teams working together. Cece, are there any other key lessons you think are important for a company trying to make these cross-collaboration initiatives work?
Cece: What comes to mind is this: Sometimes we want to do everything, and because we're trying to do so much, we actually get nothing done. My recommendation is keep it simple - KISS, "Keep It Simple, Stupid." Do no more than three things. If you're just starting, what are the top three things you want to do? Give it a reasonable timeline. You can be aggressive, but don't be so aggressive that you know you'll fail. Focus only on that for that period, then build on it. In a year, you'll have a full-fledged program. People tend to want everything first and get nothing done. Start small, have successes that can be proof points for your program if you have any doubters, and go from there.
Will: Wonderful. Lynn, any big advice you would offer to the listeners?
Lynn: The big thing is ensuring open communication with other departments. Even before creating a new program, figure out what you're doing today that could be shared. Customer success often tells cool customer stories and wins within their team or in internal QBRs or revenue kickoffs. How can you utilize these existing processes and improve them, versus adding more asks between departments? This goes both ways - customer success might also be looking for more customer stories and use cases. Figure out what both teams are doing and where there's opportunity for alignment and reducing duplicate work. Make sure there's open communication at all levels, not just having customer marketing reach out to their favorite CSM. Understand what's most important, what's already happening, how to make it better, and then determine if we need to build something more official to streamline things.
Cece: I'll add one tip - when Lynn mentioned they have QBRs where customers tell stories to internal teams, that's a ripe opportunity. When you're already asking a customer to tell a story internally, asking if we can record it and make some of it public isn't much of an additional ask. The first ask is just getting their time for the call. This next-level request is something that's underutilized in my career. Unless it's 100% confidential, let the customer guide you on that - it doesn't hurt to ask.
Will: I think that's a really nice way to wrap up a conversation about alignment between customer success and marketing - that simple idea that you're already having a call, could it be valuable to the other team? What are those little things we can do that can give us big results? Thank you very much for your time. If people wanted to find out more about you or connect, where would be the best place?
Cece: I'm very active on LinkedIn and Instagram, and Twitter too. Find me on LinkedIn and connect there. For Enable Us, we're @EnableUsInfo on Twitter and Enable Us on LinkedIn. You can follow us there and visit our website, enableus.com.
Lynn: LinkedIn is going to be the best option for me, so feel free to find me there.
Will: Thank you both very much for your time today. I enjoyed this conversation and I'm sure our listeners did as well.
Cece: Thanks for having us.
Lynn: Thanks for having us.
