conversations with the cco: first year strategies

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CONVERSATIONS WITH THE CCO:

First Year Strategies

Hosted by Curtis N. Bingham

Featuring Jennifer Maul

Chief Customer Officer

Vendavo




CONVERSATIONS WITH THE CCO

Fe a tu r i n g Jennifer Maul, Chief Customer Officer, Vendavo

Hosted by Curtis N. BinghamFounder and Executive Director

Chief Customer Officer Council

August 11, 2011

Conversationswith theCCO isa web-based, live Q&Aserieshosted by theChief CustomerOfficerCouncilthat

features some of the most forward-thinking and successful CCOs in the world speaking candidly about best

practices and challenges in driving customer centricity. To learn more and to view past Conversations, visitwww.ccocouncil.org

Howcanloyaltyexecutivesprovetheirvalueandgetitrightinthefirstyear?ThisConversationfeatures

achiefcustomerofficerwhowassuccessfulatdoingjustthat.AppointedasVendavo’sChiefCustomer

Officerin2008andpromotedtoSVPofGlobalSalesin2012, JenniferMaulbroughttwentyyearsof

enterprise software and management experience to the role. Her expertise running the post-sales

processofcustomerrelationshipsmadeheranaturalcandidatetotransitionthecompanyfromstartup

modetoensuringlife-longrelationshipswithcustomers.WediscussedJennifer’sfirstyearinitiativesand

accomplishments,andlessonslearnedinprovingthevalueoftheCCOrole.

CurtisBingham:Whywasthe

chiefcustomerofficerposition

createdinyourcompany?

JenniferMaul:Wecreated the

roletomakesurewetookthe

best care of our clients—not

only from a product and

supportperspective,butalsoto

ensure they were satisfiedand

gainingvaluewiththesolution.

Wewantedtomanagelife-long

relationships with customers.

It’s generally true in the

technologyspacethatyouhave

to evolve your solution with

your client so that it’s

continuallyaddingvalue tothe

bottomline.Wehaveanentire

methodology that maps outwhat transformation should

look like for that particular

PORTRAITOFACCO

CompanyProfile:Vendavoisa

privatelyheldtechnologycompany

thatofferspricemanagementand

optimizationsoftwaretoB2B

companiesworldwide.

Title: ChiefCustomerOfficer

Accountabilities: Reportsdirectly

totheCEOandisresponsiblefor

lifetimecustomerrelationships,

includingstrategicand

transformationalcustomer

partnerships,valuerealization,

support,andpricingeducation.




3

client.Then,it’saboutmarching

alongthatpath.

CB: What has been the most

critical to your success in the

role?

JM: One of the biggest

challenges was creating a

strategic relationship

managementteam.Ineededto

findpeoplethathadablendof

experience in pricing, industry

domain, selling, and/or

customermanagement.

CB: You brought a fairamount of earned authority

that increased even after you

entered into the CCO role.

Whatkindsofthingsworkedto

get people on board and

achieve that pull through

effect?

JM: We focused on customer

success. Especially around

customer success or

turnaround,takethatnextstep

with the client and publicly

recognize people throughout

the organization that you hadto gain buy-in from to make

that success happen. Make a

big, big deal out of it, and

peoplewanttoconnecttothat.

Whatalsohelpsisthatwetalk

about our company mission

statementallthetime,whichis

around delivering sustainable

pricing advantage to our

customers.

CB: Whatwasthestrategic

relationship management

process and why was it soimportant?

JM: We selected the large

account management process

by Miller Heiman, a process

that helps you analyze your

customers in a deep way and

thenfigureoutwhereyouneed

togonextwith them.Then, it

was all about designing the

role.Wecreatedtwolevels,the

strategic relationship manager

and the strategic relationship

director. In summary, it was

about finding somebody who

had expertise in our domain,industry, and previous

customer or account

managementexperience.Those

first five roles were staffed

from within Vendavo, as we

believe that you need to have

the context of pricing and our

solution in order to be most

successful.Itabsolutelywasthe

right decision. We puteverybody through Miller

Heimantraining,organizedhow

we assigned our customers

based on industry experience

by each of those relationship

managers, and then executed

themethodology.Wespentan

incredible amount of time

onsitewithclientstomakesure

we continually managed thoserelationships and it’s been a

veryrewardingexperience.

CB: What metrics do you use

to understand the notion of

customer centricity and how

customer-centric these

relationshipmanagersare?

JM: By design the role is not

fully quota driven. Our key

metric is NPS, and we also

spend a lot of time on an

annual customer satisfaction

“Attheendofthedaynothingspeaksmoreloudlythana

greattrackrecordandexcellentexecution.Wefocusedon

customersuccess.Makeyourprogresshugelyvisible.”




4

survey. We’ve rallied around

the NPS concept even at thecorporatelevel,drillingitdown

to the set of customers that

eachofourSRMsmanage.

CB: What do you think drove

your breakthrough, where

everybody realized that

appointingaCCOwastheright

thing to do, and saw results

fromit?

JM:Itwasevidentthefirstyear

that just a focus on customer

success and how they move

along the path in their pricing

journeys was huge. Between

thefirstandsecondyearofour

surveywehadaten-pointleap

inourNetPromoterScore,and

usedthattorallythecompany

around what NPS was. People

inevitably became excited

about not just the results, but

also the customer success

stories that had changed the

game forseveral clientsduring

thosetwoyears.Everyonewas

really proud because it was a

companyeffort.

Also related to the success of

the role was a customersegmentation study. We

analyzed25differentattributes

of data across 100 customers,

which we then put through

statistical models to find the

most highly correlated

variables. We found that the

one metric impacting the NPS

was the contribution our

solution makes to our

companies’ bottom lines in

termsofreturnonsales.Where

wemeasuredvaluewiththose

clients,itwasveryevidentthat

their NPS would be higher.

Whenyouhavethedatabehind

it, it’s so much easier to get

people on board. More

importantly, we asked the

question, “What’s the tipping

point in the value realization

score that bumps up the Net

PromoterScore?”Forus,that’s

1.5%returnonsales.Nowthat

we know that, we can talk to

our customers about findingvalue that contributes 1.5% to

theirbottomline,andit’smagic

afterthat.

CB: What three things do

yourecommendfocusingonin

the first years to prove your

valueandgaintherecognition

youdeserveasaCCO?

JM: Develop and execute a

customer success strategy.

Secondly,Iwouldfindawayto

either directly control or

dramatically influence therevenue stream. Finally, make

yourprogressvisible.Celebrate

those turnarounds, customer

SAT improvements, revenue

impactandspendalotoftime

communicating those stories

internally and externally.

“Findoutwhatyourcustomerscallahomerunandgo

makeithappenonagrandscale.”




5

About CURTIS N. BINGHAM

AsExecutiveDirectorof theChiefCustomerOfficerCouncil™,CurtisBinghamisthe recognized

authority on chief customer officers and the first to promote this role as a catalyst for

competitiveadvantage.HeisthecreatoroftheCCORoadmap,agroundbreakingworkcontaining

100+criticalstrategiesessentialforcustomercentricity.Asaninternationalspeaker,author,and

consultant,Curtisis passionate about creating customerstrategy tosustainably growrevenue,

profit,andloyalty.

About JENNIFER MAUL

Promoted to Senior Vice President of Global Sales in the spring of 2012, Jennifer Maul is

responsible for lifetime customerrelationships,customersuccess, andgrowingthe customer

baseatVendavo,theleadingproviderofpricemanagementandoptimizationsoftwareforB2B

companiesworldwide.JenniferjoinedVendavoinMarch2004,whereshefirstservedasSenior

VicePresidentofGlobalServicesandinJuly2008,becameVendavo'sChiefCustomerOfficer.

About THE CHIEF CUSTOMER OFFICER COUNCIL

TheChiefCustomerOfficerCouncilisthefirstofitskind;amember-ledpeer-

advisory network offering unparalleled insight into the critical issues facing

CCOs.It was createdto providea safe environment whereCCOscan share

ideas,concerns,andbuildbestpracticesthatwellhelpthem,theircompanies,

and especially their customers succeed. The Council includes CCOs from

diverse industries, purposefully cross-pollinated with the most forward-thinking companies, large and small. For more information, visit

www.ccocouncil.org,[email protected].

FormoreresourcesfromCurtisBinghamandtheCCOCouncil,includingarticles,videos,and The

BinghamAdvisory ,visitwww.ccocouncil.org.

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ConversationswiththeCCO:OvercomingResistanceintheFirstYearwithPeterQuinn – In thisarticleby

CurtisN.Bingham,featuringPeterQuinn,ChiefCustomerOfficerofInfor,you’lllearnPeter’sstrategiesfor

successfullyovercomingresistancetoembeddingcustomercentricityinhisorganization.

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