RevRev Ep. 12 – Rob Massa
From GM of EMEA at BounceX (now Wunderkind) to his current role as the CRO at Forecast, Rob Massa has turned a unique international business experience into his first CRO role. In this episode of Revenue Revolutionaries, Dave talks with Rob about how to reduce churn through leading indicator metrics via Sales, CS, and Marketing alignment, the power of strongly communicating the relationship between vision and tactics to employees, and the importance of over-indexing on hiring, onboarding, and training processes.
Episode Key Takeaways
1. Get Sales and Customer Success teams as close as possible – Rob stresses the importance of keeping Sales and Customer Success teams as close as possible. When there is true alignment, Sales should be proud to handoff a new customer to the Customer Success team. He also thinks it’s important to ensure everyone across Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success understands that selling to the right companies and customers is the best way to achieve individual and company goals.
2. Think two years out about retention risk and create retention leading indicator metrics – Rob oversees Sales and Customer and as he works to achieve his goals he knows it’s paramount that he drive down churn as much as possible. He has taken steps to identify the top ‘components’ contributing to churn and has developed leading indicator metrics to monitor behavior. He then aligns the company to these leading indicator metrics to ensure the company is driving the right behavior in the first 90 days of the relationship. He knows that this time period is crucial for setting a customer up for success beyond year one. Internal alignment to the leading indicator metrics has produced the higher retention rates he has been pursuing.
3. Remember the small things that matter to customers – Leaders can become disconnected from customers if a direct dialogue is not maintained. Rob cites an example of how a customer conversation led him to understand an issue that he wasn’t aware of and it ultimately resulted in a renewal that might not have happened without his outreach. Rob believes that CROs should have a disciplined communication cadence with customers in order to stay aware of issues customers are dealing with so the business can fix them. Oftentimes, there are communication breakdowns through the layers of management and it can prevent the business from serving customers to the best of its abilities.
4. Over Index on your hiring process and new employee onboarding and training – During the pandemic, Rob has gained a new perspective on the importance of a strong hiring process and employee onboarding and training. He has created a rigorous hiring process that ensures the candidates are truly getting something out of the interview process. He strives to be transparent and upfront so the discussions are a two-way street and the candidate fully understands the role and the company before they join. This has been a key reason for Rob being able to attract high-quality talent.
5. Strongly communicate how vision aligns to tactics – We all know that leaders are tasked with casting a strong vision for the organization. Rob believes leaders must help all employees understand how the vision for the organization aligns directly to the tactics. Help employees align their work to the goals of the company. Answer the question, “what happens if we hit our goals?”. Transparency and communication on this front put the company and employees in a better position to be successful. There is power in sharing high-level corporate strategy with employees.