By Chad Horenfeldt
“What are your goals?”. This is a common question CSMs ask clients as they try to start what they believe is a “strategic conversation”. The problem is that many CSMs have no idea how to conduct these types of meetings. Just because you have a QBR with your customer doesn’t mean you are having a strategic conversation. As Bob London says, “QBRs are getting into the customer's shoes, and strategic conversations are getting into their brains." There is an art to these discussions but you may never have been taught how to have them. This post will help you start down the path and provide a framework for having better strategic conversations with your customers.
What is a Strategic Conversation?
If you’re just conducting “strategic conversations” to check a box in your CRM that you collected your client’s business outcomes, there is nothing strategic about this at all. It’s important to understand the “why” behind these types of conversations. It goes well beyond capturing goals.
The objective of a strategic conversation is to understand your client at a deeper level. You want to get a better sense of what will move the needle for them or what their root issues are. The focus of these conversations should go well beyond your product and may not involve your product at all. You should see yourself as a truth seeker or that you’re performing an intervention. You may uncover issues that even your client didn’t realize existed. You may also want to push a reluctant client in a certain direction or nudge them forward as part of an existing engagement. For example, you may be trying to upsell your client on a new product or get them to take a training course that you know that could help them.
With strategic conversations, you are taking a step back from your normal routines. Think of yourself as a pilot pulling back on your controls so you can fly at 30,000 feet for a better view. You want to move beyond a superficial and tactical discussion to one that will give you and your customers greater insights and a better appreciation of each other; one that strengthens the customer-CSM bond and sets you up for greater success
These conversations should also draw out your client’s motivation to take the steps needed to achieve their desired results or address core problems. It’s one thing to uncover the core challenges or objectives - it’s another to get your clients to take action.
First, Show You Care
In a perfect world, your client would outline their concerns and objectives. You would respond with a joint success plan, the client would follow all of your recommendations and they would achieve their desired outcomes. It rarely works this way - especially when you have new client stakeholders. Your clients may be thinking: Are they truly hearing our concerns? Will they deliver on their promises? Have they demonstrated that they care about my needs above their own? There must be a certain level of intimacy before you can have a strategic customer conversation in which you will achieve significant progress. In addition, the CSM needs to take the time to thoughtfully listen to their clients and ask follow-up questions so they understand the situation and can help the client get to the best go-forward plan.
I’m not saying that clients won’t tell you their objectives if you ask them but the depth of detail they provide will depend on how much they trust you. It’s even more difficult to bridge this gap in our new world without in-person visits. So how do you generate intimacy and show clients you care? I recommend using a technique that psychologists have been using for years: motivational interviewing.
Finding Their Motivation
There have been countless times when I’ve finished a QBR and I had this high of just killing that meeting. I felt like Jerry Maguire when he thought he just signed Frank Cushman and saved his fledgling sports agent firm in the movie Jerry Maguire. Yet, just like Jerry was let down by “Cush” in the movie, I've also discovered weeks after my “amazing” QBR that the client made zero progress on what was discussed. I thought I asked the right questions and had a commitment to next steps but no real actions were taken. What happened?
The problem was that although I had given them appropriate solutions to their priorities, I never solidified if they wanted to put in the necessary effort to bring about the results that we discussed. I was seeing things from my perspective and not theirs. It turns out this issue also exists in the world of psychotherapy. A clinical psychologist named Bill Miller in the 1980s found that many psychologists were failing to curb patients with drug and alcohol addiction. The approach at that time was to scold their patients for their addictive behaviors and to prescribe a specific approach to recovery. That didn’t turn out too well. To improve his profession Miller developed a clinical technique called motivational interviewing.
Motivational interviewing is about drawing out the motivation from clients to pursue a necessary change or solution. It isn’t about getting clients to see things from your perspective. It’s about seeing things from their perspective. It’s about putting their needs before your own. It isn’t about giving your clients a solution, advice, or telling them what to do. That can cause them to shut down. It’s about finding their motivation and giving them the freedom to make their own decision so they are more open to change.
Conducting a Strategic Conversation
A strategic conversation should consist of three parts:
Building rapport, establishing trust and uncovering issues/objectives
Assessing motivation
Getting commitment and constructing a go-forward plan
Part I: Building Rapport, Establishing Trust, and Uncovering Issues or Objectives
Your objective in this phase of the conversation is to establish a mutually trusting and respected client relationship that will be the basis for a more in-depth conversation. This will allow you to get to their core challenges and priorities. This isn’t an easy feat if you have never previously met so it is recommended that you’ve adequately prepared for the meeting and sent over the agenda and any relevant materials ahead of time.
How the meeting starts is an important factor in building an atmosphere of trust. Begin by reviewing the agenda but then turn the reins over to your client and ask them if there is a particular area where they want to start. By giving them the autonomy to drive the conversation you are already creating the foundation for a more fruitful discussion.
The OARS Framework. A core component of motivational interviewing and something that is used in all three parts of a strategic conversation is the OARS framework. It’s designed to help you extract the information you need, demonstrate active listening, and achieve commitment.
The OARS framework consists of four parts:
Open questions. These are questions that demonstrate your curiosity and desire to learn from your clients as opposed to closed questions which tend to pull your customers in a certain direction and take away their freedom.
Affirmations. Affirmations are acknowledging the clients’ strengths, accomplishments, and positive behaviors.
Reflections. A reflection is paraphrasing or repeating back what the client said to you.
Summaries. Summaries are longer reflections. They are typically used towards the end of your strategic conversations when you explain your understanding of the client’s issues or business outcomes to suss out any misunderstandings and outline next steps.
Open Questions. Open questions and reflections are the weapons of choice in this first phase. Open questions allow your clients to tell you what is on their minds. It gives them the power as opposed to closed questions which are just one-word answers and are more geared to your needs. Open questions typically begin with “what” and “how” as opposed to “why” which can sound accusatory.
When you start with your questions, you always want to have in mind the outcome that you are trying to achieve. For example, are you trying to resolve a long-standing issue, determine how best you can help your client now that they have launched your product, or determine the best approach for an upcoming renewal? Depending on the nature of the conversation, you should start with more general questions and then dig further with follow-up questions. For example, when there is a new stakeholder, I start at the company level to clarify their top priority. I then drill into their team priorities.
Here are examples of open questions you can ask:
What does success look like to you?
What is one improvement would you like to see?
What are the metrics that would indicate that you have made the right changes?
Reflections. Reflections are a form of active listening. It demonstrates that you are really trying to understand your clients so you can take the correct actions. It consists of repeating back what your customer has just told you to clarify their response.
Here are examples of how to start a reflection:
It sounds like...
If I understand you correctly . . .
What I am hearing you say. . . .
Good CSMs will listen to their clients and act on what they’ve heard. Strategic CSMs go further. As author Wayne McCulloch wrote in his book The Seven Pillars of Customer Success: “They also repeat what they’ve heard to the customer. ‘This is what I heard, and this is what I’ve interpreted. Can you confirm I’ve got it right?’ Once a strategic advisor knows the information is correct, they then take action and report back.” Strategic conversations must consist of open questions with additional probing questions and combined with reflections.
In this post, I’ve defined what strategic conversations are and outlined the first part of conducting these conversations. In part II I will cover how to uncover your client’s motivation and get their commitment on next steps.
The Success League is a customer success consulting firm that helps leaders build and develop top performing customer success teams. We offer short-term consulting engagements that can kick-start your planning efforts, as well as coaching for leaders who need some weekly advice. Check out TheSuccessLeague.io for details.
Chad Horenfeldt - Chad is a customer success executive with 15+ years of experience building and developing high performing teams. Currently, he is the Head of Customer Success at Kustomer. Prior to Kustomer, Chad held CS leadership positions at Updater, Bluecore, Influitive, and Oracle (Eloqua). In addition to writing for The Success League, he also writes regularly on the topic of customer success on his blog The Enlightened Customer.