🎙️ join us on a thrilling roller-coaster journey in the disaaster recovery podcast as we chat with a veteran army officer, West Point graduate, and an accomplished solutions consultant.

🔍 our conversation explores the captivating world of solutions consulting and how it can aid customers in recognizing the benefits of a product.

🔬 we dive deeper into the world of solutions consulting, dissecting its integral role in comprehending customer's business processes, and differentiating between the roles of an account executive and a solutions consultant.

💼 we plunge into the subtleties of client relationships, understanding what to demonstrate to clients, delivering customer value and why these relationships are the backbone of business deals.

🔗 together, we'll unravel the importance of resource allocation, the implications of internal champions' layoffs, and the necessity for making deposits of trust.

⚠️ as we navigate this riveting conversation, we'll touch upon the potential hazards of trust breaches and their repercussions, such as organizational splits, drastic cultural shifts, and the loss of major stakeholders or clients.

🚨 we highlight the significance of spotting early signs of a deteriorating relationship and methods to halt it from escalating further.

💡 as we wrap up, we delve into some hard-hitting disaaster recovery stories, emphasizing trust-building, dealing with the loss of a significant partner or client, and the invaluable lessons these experiences teach us. join us on this enlightening podcast episode that promises to offer you insights to maneuver your journey in the software as a service startup life. 🚀

transcript

josh: 0:00

welcome to the show, to the diSaaSter recovery podcast. really excited to have a conversation with you today. i'm glad we're doing this remote because, if i recall correctly, you might have a bit of a tough time arriving to a particular site if we were to meet up on location because you're without a vehicle. is that right?

speaker 2: 3:11

that is still correct yeah, what happened there? well, you know, over covid. obviously there was just a lot less travel and ultimately i was driving a jeep for a very long time. where i've gone through many jeeps, it's really the only car ever since i was a kid that i ever wanted to own. but it just got to the point where it didn't make sense to keep it around and repair it all the time to make it three miles to the gym and back every day.

josh: 3:40

so well, what are you going to do instead? are you just in your house all the time? is public transportation good where you are, or are you looking to get something to replace the jeep?

speaker 2: 3:52

yeah, great question. my wife is eager for me to replace the vehicle. i'm not exactly in a rush because uber is what it is if i ever need to get to the airport. but, like i said, i don't really go a lot of places except to the gym and back right now or to the airport to travel for work. but i've actually been kind of toying around with the idea of getting an old hummer, old h1. maybe you're on the same age that i am.

josh: 4:21

what about the hummer stands out to you. why the hummer? because it's not the most practical vehicle?

speaker 2: 4:27

oh, i think it's. i think it is quite the opposite of practical. you know it's here's. the problem is that, like i said, i grew up always wanting a jeep and i did the jeep thing and everybody is driving a jeep now. jeeps used to be inexpensive and fun and there was kind of a cult following with them, and now all of a sudden they become almost luxury vehicles and you're more likely to see you know, like a soccer mom taking taking a jeep out for the day than you are somebody fixing it up themselves or sleeping in the back of it, kind of kind of having fun in that. and so the jeep kind of lost its lore to me because everybody is doing it. and so, you know, for years i never thought that hummer was a great vehicle or anything right, and it's certainly not a comfortable vehicle, but it's definitely a recognizable one. and so i used to. i used to drive around. i had an orange jeep with the blue white water kayak on top and people i didn't even know would know if i was somewhere and they'd kind of report back on where i was, and so i kind of liked the idea of having a vehicle that, you know, somebody could look at down the road and say, oh, i know that is. i know what it is. it's just kind of fun, you know. and it's so fun because it's impractical and everybody's against beginning it, which makes me want to have it even more right now.

josh: 5:50

well, it stands out and from what i've come to know of you, you are someone that stands out. now i got to ask, with regard to the hummer, how much do 80s action movies play into your desire to get a hummer?

speaker 2: 6:07

oh, 100%, you know it's, it's something you see as a kid. you don't see it on the road, but you see it in the movies. arnold schwarzenegger, you know, really brought, i think, the hummer into the public's eye, and then it's a car that, or a vehicle that i drove or was driven in for a long time in a prior life, you know, but it just it never seemed practical or like something that i would actually want. but i would definitely say that a lot of how i view the world was shaped before i was 10 years old, so that's probably a big factor at this juncture.

josh: 6:41

yeah, a big factor for all of us. you know i can't help but notice about this whole conversation so far. you straight up called out here's the problem with jeeps. you talked about a very specific problem. they're everywhere. tons of people have them. it sounded like there's a little bit of a lifestyle desire there as well, like are you really living that true jeep lifestyle that really drove jeep to become so prominent? and you also talked about how you can go about solving that. the hummer is an opportunity to solve these pain points that you're talking about. i think that was such an indicative way of setting up your expertise, because today we're talking about solutions consulting and pre-sales engineering, and this is very much in line with it. so i'd love to start out with the first question. well, the first question that i had prepared to ask how do you define solutions consulting?

speaker 2: 7:38

well, i hope better than a guy who thinks that a reaction to everybody else driving a jeep and going towards hummers. there's gotta be a better definition than that. but in the context of software as a service because you'll see the title elsewhere the title and the duties are gonna vary greatly between companies. you might see crossover with positions like sales engineers or pre-sales consultants, but ultimately, if you work in solutions, your purpose is to help future customers visualize how your solution, your product, your application, consult through problems, and in many ways you're gonna be the be-all, end-all in understanding your product's current features, capabilities, limitations, and then, really, the future state as much as anybody can understand that future state, as road maps change pretty rapidly. but you're also a process expert. you dive deep into discovery. you really understand the issue that your prospect or your client is having. you understand their current business processes, and if you don't know them, you need to do a lot of research and get in there, maybe get on the ground, learn it, and ultimately you're trying to figure out how you can help them transform their business and recognize value very quickly. on top of that, though and i think you know you're also the first face representing technical credibility. right. it's not like a client gets to talk to your engineers directly and ask every question that they wanna ask. so you're ensuring that your solution plays nicely with existing technical infrastructure or you're finding a way to make sure that it does, and really, at the end of the day, solutions consulting as a job requires an incredibly diverse set of skills, but not the least of which are heavy balance of empathy and, ultimately, storytelling.

josh: 9:31

well, i think that's a great way of thinking about solutions consulting. just to recap, you talked about really making sure that there's an understanding of the pain, of the problems that are being experienced with the potential customer, if this is an active sales cycle, the prospective customer. you talked about helping tie the features and capabilities, the things that you can do with the product, to transformational value impact what can happen. you talked about being the expert in the technical side of the product, because often you are the first technical person to speak with the potential client and that can leave quite the impression because there's gonna be a lot of concerns and sensitivities over bringing new technology. in plus, with the increased focus on cybersecurity, the increased focus on including it in any procurement decisions, you know it's very important for those questions to be seamlessly answered and those assurances to be provided. and then you talked about being an expert in the process, and this was a follow-up question that i had for you. would you say being an expert in the process? are you talking about a sales process or are you talking about process in terms of the work that the prospective customer does?

speaker 2: 10:58

honestly, it's a little bit of both, and i do think that you were able to express that a little more articulately than i was. in that respect, i think at the heart of it, it really comes down to being genuine, and so i'm more inclined to really understanding the business process as opposed to being the sales process expert. that said, you have to know the sales process too, right, but for me, it's really about getting to know how your client or how your prospect is doing business, understanding their pain points and where you can again help transform their operations and make their life better, save them money and make them more efficient. so i think that i have to tell people i'm here to help pull back the curtains a little bit, and so i think that that kind of imperfect way and that honesty of looking at those problems and understanding what they're doing, that's kind of what i'm getting at.

josh: 12:01

i like how you phrase that how the client is doing business because that's not just how a process is done. that is factoring in unique attributes of the individuals that you're speaking with or the team that you're working with, in addition to the actual process that they are trying to conduct in the department that they're in, at the company that they're at, for the industry that they're in. so i like how you phrase that of how the client is doing business, because that invokes, in my eyes, such a bigger world than what might usually be considered. now. another quick question that came to my mind is about how you see the differences between account executives and scs.

speaker 2: 12:48

ooh, you know a good question, right? i think when i first started out as a, as an sc, i kind of wondered why there were two different positions. right, because if you can master the sales cycle and you can master the other side of the house, does one really need the other? and i've kind of gone back and forth on that and i think it probably does depend on your application or your solution. but ultimately, the ae or the account executive is concerned with making the sale and then making the next sale, and making the next sale, and ultimately, i think that solutions consulting is about solving the problem. and so, yeah, in the background, you know you're always trying to make your solution, or you're always trying to find a way to make your solution fit if you can. but it's really a different kind of motivation and really a different end state than what you're looking for.

josh: 13:56

that's a great way of breaking it down. the account executive is ultimately the person responsible for making the sale. their number is their number. they are held responsible for meeting that number and the solution consultant identifies how the problem can be solved. if it can be solved right because that's part of the process of qualifying are we even a good fit for this situation? how can it be solved then, working together with the account executive, the account executive can take that information, take those arguments, take those persuasive value propositions that we talked about crafting just a second ago and helping drive the sale forward. i think it's a great breakdown that you.

speaker 2: 14:43

it definitely comes down to motivation, right? i think that when you're looking at what fires up the ae, it's closing the deal. what should fire up an sc is definitely solving the problem.

josh: 14:57

solving the problem. i could certainly relate. my experience as an sc certainly built a similar perspective in my eyes.

speaker 2: 15:06

now, an lis there.

josh: 15:09

yeah, now you and i both have this sc experience and we both have similar perspectives on it. i would like to talk not about what we agree on, but what do people in your experience tend to get wrong about solutions consulting?

speaker 2: 15:29

oh yeah, well, i definitely have a different opinion on this than a lot of solution consultants that i've come across, and certainly different than a lot of people who work with solution consultants as well. ultimately, i think what people get wrong about solution consulting is really a direct result of what we're measured against our kpis, because, of course, we reward people because of their ability to bring in new customers. you'll see solution consultants wrestle with this idea of whether they're a product expert or a salesman. of course, like i said, there's an element of both. but when you get too caught up in making the sale, your demo, if your solution is too perfect and too crisp, if you're not careful, you're going to see that people will do whatever it takes to make a sale. i think that that is where we start getting things wrong, because if you're not the right fit for a customer, if you're not being honest or you're not there, just if you're not building a legitimate trust and deliberately deciding, like you said, whether you're fit or not, sometimes you have to be deliberate and say i'm not going to do this sale because you're not a right fit. if your application doesn't solve the problem at hand, you're forcing it and it ends up biting you in the ass because you're not just throwing a prospect over the fence to customer success. when you're done i think that's again a widely held belief you're bringing in a long-term terror. if you're doing it correctly or if you don't have their best interest in mind, you will have set the company and the continued relationship up for failure. while the tech world seems really large, it always feels like people can jump from job to job to job. it's actually pretty small. if you lose client trust, that's going to fall, i guess. to summarize, people who take a short-term view of solutioning are getting it wrong, because it is definitely a long-term.

josh: 17:36

i think it's important, like you called out, really, if i'm summarizing is not to sell a product that doesn't exist, because you're talking about doing whatever it takes to make the deal, and in some cases that can require some creative additions or workarounds to functionality in the product, just to get someone to say, yes, this is what we're looking for. but to your point, these relationships, see, there's a start. these are the start, ideally, of long-term relationships, long-term partnerships, and if you aren't able to establish a stable foundation built on, here's what we can do for you with relatively little additional help, with really no concern about is this going to work in the long run or not. you really want to set it up so that doesn't bite you in the ass later. have the churn, like you're talking about, impact, the brand reputation, start up the rumor mill or whatever the case may be. i think that's a great point to call out.

speaker 2: 18:43

yeah, i do want to be clear. i think that creativity plays a large role in solutioning. you have to be creative to solve the problem, because it's not a one-size-fits-all piece. now, if you find yourself describing what you're doing, a sleight of hand, you're 100%.

josh: 19:04

yeah, there's a term vaporware. if it cannot be delivered, then you might be pitching vaporware. i agree on the creativity part. it goes back to your perspective that you shared earlier being an expert in the products, features and capabilities, being an expert in that business process at their unique place of doing business, so that you can ideate and come up with the best ways or the most effective ways to use these capabilities in a way that's going to help them achieve their goal. i completely agree with the creativity. then there's the creativity part of getting them to see that as well. you mentioned storytelling earlier. it's a huge part of making sure people understand what they can do, how they can do it and actually see themselves doing it. creativity is a great call out.

speaker 2: 19:59

well, it's like i tell my son my son wants to be an accountant when he grows up, which is wild to me, because i always imagine that a 10-year-old boy wants to be an astronaut or fighter pilot. i certainly never wanted to be an accountant. ultimately, you could be the greatest mathematician or the greatest accountant in the world, but if you can't communicate that effectively, you're worthless. same kind of place here.

josh: 20:27

communication is critical and sometimes it's not what you say, it's how you say it. we talked about what people get wrong frequently, about solutions to consulting. let's take it a little bit further. i'd love it if you could think of an opinion, a strongly held opinion, that you've encountered in solutions consulting that you completely disagree with.

speaker 2: 20:53

yeah, well, i think the most obvious one is that solution consultants are essentially demo monkeys. solution consultants exist to demo and sometimes you'll run into an account executive that says you demo the product and then you shut up and that's it. that is a widespread belief, both in the account executive world, the sales world, but also amongst solution consultants themselves. again, when you're looking from company to company, you're going to find those guys, those solutions engineers, those solution consultants that all they do is demo and they think that they are simply product experts. that's just such an incomplete view of what we're supposed to do. but it's definitely the one thing that i just completely disagree with, both an internal belief for many solutions consultants and the people that make use of us.

josh: 21:51

where do you think that perspective comes from? the perspective that solutions consultants exist to demo?

speaker 2: 22:00

well, i do still think it comes back to again what everybody's measured against and the ae's primary motivation in making the sale. then, the solutions consultant being a role that is there to enable the ae in that effort, it just paints a bit of an incomplete picture.

josh: 22:22

yeah, the demo. we could probably get into some particulars about demo. if you're really doing demos well, you're not doing the same demo, which means you're having to prepare unique aspects of it. it makes it hard to be transactional slash demo monkeys in this case, because you have to take time to understand what should even be demoed and why and how does that make an impact?

speaker 2: 22:54

100%, and so i do think that you'll find solution consultants, or so-called solution consultants, that know their product really well, and if you hear them demo once, you will have heard them demo 100 times. you'll hear the same thing over and over and over, and, while you probably have the core functionality that you do better than anyone else, if you want to stay at business again, it really is about meeting those specific needs of who you're talking to, not only their business, but, like you said, at what stage they're at in time. you know what level of digital maturity, where they at. where can you deliver value? and it's going to be different for every single company.

josh: 23:36

yeah, it's an interesting point. you know the. i think i see what you're saying. as far as the ae being focused on the sale, then the focus with regards to the demo becomes something to check the box, not something to really make an impact. but okay, let's just show them the product, show what we can do so we can get on to the next part of the conversation, which is by the product.

speaker 2: 24:01

little razzle dazzle. can you side here please?

josh: 24:04

that's right. that's right. and you know, for some solutions that could absolutely work, right, for simple solutions that could work. for those types of solutions, you probably don't have a solutions consultant in that case, right, solutions consultants. like you said, it depends on the product, but it really has to do with the technical complexities that come with, with setting up the product in such a way that it'll make an impact with the customer. so we talked about solutions consulting and there's a lot more that we can talk about, but i want to get to story time. i want to hear your story of diSaaSter. so i know you got a horror story. i'm sure you've got a few horror stories.

speaker 2: 24:45

tell us, tell us a story you know, like you say, i feel like i have a good basket, i could draw these out of these days, but ultimately, you know, there's never just one thing that goes wrong and all too often i think we want to point the finger at one person or one instance that derails an operation. so the story i'll share gets it a few things. so i was working for a saas company, of course, and this particular client i'm going to talk about was this massive global entity. now, i say my client, but we had the cal team, of course, and that team went through a lot of changes. so there's very little consistency in our team over time trying to support this gigantic whale essentially, and in that sense we're grossly understaffed and we just didn't resource this client properly because, as much as i like to think that i can save everything myself, it's just not realistic. and so you know, at your onset, clients are very forgiving. if you have a good relationship, they'll overlook gaps in your platform, they'll overlook a lot, but eventually, you know, the buck stops somewhere right in front of you, anyway. so this company had already rolled out our platform worldwide. it was pretty remarkable. but then that company went through a massive internal layoff and so everybody that we had as an internal champion with very few exceptions was gone and we found ourselves in a position where we had to go back into what was essentially a same cycle for an already done deal, done, multi-year deal, and so constantly selling and reselling to stakeholders at each and every location and we're talking about hundreds of locations here. so it became a battle of awareness, of feature functionality and, ultimately, stickiness. you know, but our company was just too comfortable with our position. we thought that we were so sticky that they couldn't lead us. now i say we, but i suppose i really mean that means everybody who wasn't boots on the ground, you know, because it becomes very apparent to anybody who's deeply entrenched in one of these situations when things are starting to go awry. so things started to get worse and at this point we're struggling to support what is ultimately implementation again across the world. and then one day we fired the main relationship holder and so, just like that, you know, a lot of the trust we had, a big part of the relationship soured and all of a sudden we're grasping at straws. at this point there's a very little consistency and very little trust outside of core group of people who are still there.

josh: 28:12

hmm, on the client side or on your side internally?

speaker 2: 28:17

on our side internally, you know, we just we had not properly resourced this and then we didn't think about the long term effects of what it would be like when we've ripped out you know, key component of the relationship. and now i got it. you know, one of the things guys talk about is that it's not, it shouldn't be about the person, it should be about the functionality of the application. but we're kidding ourselves if we don't think that relationships are the backbone for, you know, enterprise debils.

josh: 28:47

you called that out right. the stronger relationship you have with at least the influential people at a particular account, the more leeway you get in certain situations. it's kind of like a kind of like a bank you make a lot of deposits into the bank of trust, right, and then at some point you can make a couple of straws.

speaker 2: 29:11

yeah, exactly, but not too much, because then eventually they get hit with an overdraft fee, right.

josh: 29:19

exactly. yeah, you got to pay the piper and you know, like you called out, the internal champions at this client of yours were laid off. that's a tough thing to come back from. i mean, deals fall apart, implementations fall apart when that happens, especially if it's a mass layoff. so already, like at the start of the story, we're already in a tough situation. man, the odds are stacked against you, and then the main relationship holder on your side.

speaker 2: 29:56

it's gone, it's gone yeah. without water, you can't give them a heads up, you can't try to extend the relationship or share it with somebody else. it's just gone right, rip and replace.

josh: 30:09

imagine that was quite the withdrawal from the bank of trust scenario.

speaker 2: 30:15

yeah, i think that's putting it pretty mildly.

josh: 30:19

so what happened next?

speaker 2: 30:21

well, you know. so when something like that happens, you know your client reaches out to what they know or who they know still, and so then it all comes down to who's still on that team that they already have trusted, because as you continue to bring new people in, it's hard to rebuild that trust right. it's hard to establish it in the first place. but i guess what really ended up happening, though, like a lot of software, is that competitors started sniffing around. you know, oftentimes the first people who come up with a great idea or they launch a platform. it's great for a while, and then competitors come and they see what people have done right, they see what had been done wrong and they action on it quickly. and so this customer, like others out there, start to see what these other companies can do, what new features they're bringing that are no longer what we consider to be nice to have, but industry standards, and so the competition is heating up and we kind of sit there and we rest on our laurels, right. we start making promises about what we're going to deliver. you know how we're going to solve these problems or meet these gaps, that other solutions are starting to rise up and offer, but internally we never actually delivered anything of value to substantiate against those problems. you know, ultimately it became a massive chasm in pricing. is really what it ended up coming down to. you know it's. if you don't do x, y and z, how can i justify paying you five times what all these other companies are telling me that they can do stuff for? you know, we're willing to accept less functionality for a fraction of the price, or we'll be able to make that up with them in the future.

josh: 32:23

so the trust was broken, right. this connection, this loyalty, it sounds like, was essentially destroyed. you didn't say that, but you know, for dramatic storytelling effect it was destroyed and it crumbled and that, in that destruction, gave opportunity to other entities, like the solution that you were providing, to come in and say we can do it, here's what we can deliver. look at these things, and that's to be expected. you know saas leaders, even saas followers anyone in saas has to keep up with market trends, has to understand what is being developed. what's that new innovation? what impact is it going to have for people? that you don't want to get caught up too much in height or buzz. but to your point, you called out that these were things that were becoming industry standard features and capabilities and your organization didn't deliver that.

speaker 2: 33:29

yeah, 100%, and i think that what really makes this a horror story is that we didn't listen to our internal team when we started identifying these things. so one concept that i'll kind of bring to light from a prior life is the idea of the strategic corporal, and so, in military circles, the basic premise underlying the idea of the strategic corporal, is a belief that operations are inherently complex and that decisions can't solely be left to some far away commander or, in this case, a removed executive staff, ultimately, that a junior person's judgment, their assessment, their actions on the ground can have huge consequences, and that you can't ignore what they're saying. and so what we got wrong in this case was ignoring the boots on the ground. we refused to negotiate on almost anything, except for, in this case, we were doing numbers of licenses, and so we were clinging to this idea that there's no chance this client can operate without us. we're so deeply entrenched in their day-to-day operations. frankly, our leadership was arrogant and we justified our position because, well, this client uses us a lot. look at their heavy usage. but, like i tell our sales guys after they make a big deal, i don't care how big the deal is. i do this mostly to mess with them. what did you do for me today? you cannot rely on your past performance, because you are only ever a minute away from somebody putting you down and going back to what they did before you were there. you might be a nice to have, but as soon as you are not convenient to me, as soon as you are not proving out that value. we're gone. and so we decided to play hardball, even though we're telling the guys it's like, look, this is not going to work. we decided to play hardball and i knew it was going to backfire, but it didn't feel like anybody was actually listening. again, we're too sticky, they can't rip us out. there's no chance. let's just give them unlimited licenses. but that's not what they wanted. so in this case, for all intents and purposes, call me the strategic core, as it were. the thing was that the client wanted to make the relationship. they really did they all, but told us what we had to do to keep them. it was really very clear to me, but we refused to budge on price. and again, when you cost multitudes or multiple orders more than your competition, you have to do a reevaluation. have you been overcharging them? are you overselling yourself? has the value changed because competitors have come up with a space, things along those kinds of lines, and eventually dollars talk and the company i was working for lost the whale that was keeping it afloat.

josh: 37:00

wow. so that was quite the just drop. it was dramatic. you didn't even start at a high point. you didn't even start at a high point, you were already. we said once upon a time i was in a really terrible situation.

speaker 2: 37:22

but again, even when you find yourself in a situation like that, you've still got a good relationship, you're still successes that you can take in there, because nothing's ever perfect, and i think we have to admit that too. nothing is a perfect fit unless it's a custom build and ultimately, there are a lot of things that can go wrong at any given time, and so in this case, there are a bunch of things. but i really think that ignoring the needs of the customer, ignoring that internal communication from the deeper understanding with the customer one because, again, the county was already ripped apart and then just this belief that you can't operate without us, it makes it very clear that it's not a partnership, it is a vendor-vendee relationship if it's from the side of the client, or it's a you're dependent on us, like, hey, you're dependent on amazon prime. where are you going to go if you don't got amazon? these days, you're going to go to a mall. seriously, how many people are going to a mall to buy stuff because then you're going to go back and return? it's just not realistic that a lot of these things continue to survive or continue to operate.

josh: 38:45

as a result of this, the client was lost. that's what you said lost a very big and important client. how did that impact the company?

speaker 2: 38:57

i think that this is the real story because prior to losing this client, like i said, this whale really the primo example customer that you wanted to have your claim to fame. once we lost this, it felt like the entire trajectory of the company changed. we started creating these rifts internally and externally. internally, i was frustrated that i didn't feel trusted, that somebody wouldn't act on my assessment of the situation because we lost this big piece of revenue. ultimately, we had to start making more cuts in our company because we couldn't justify, well, i guess, a lot of positions anymore. i mean, really, this company was keeping us afloat and so, as these rifts grew deeper and deeper, you really saw that the core group of people that made it work where we were at leave, some by choice, some not by choice, but it got to be. and again, this is in the throes of covid, right to where you're surrounded by people that you don't know. they're not known quantities and that can be fine. we can still build great relationships, believe it or not, over zoom. i guess, for anybody listening, i had known josh for years, or i felt like i knew josh for years before i ever met him in person. and it was weird to me because this guy become one of my best friends and i had never even been in the same room and we just we had missed each other. for all sorts of reasons company on-sites he's off doing one thing, i'm off doing another, visiting separate clients but again, the takeaway is that the culture of the company changed and we brought in new executive leadership, and that executive leadership brought in people that they trusted and that they didn't necessarily trust the people who were there before, because, look, we just had this massive failure, and so then we start to schism inside of the company itself and nothing seemed to improve. i think this is the difficulty, of course, one with covid and two with having a lot of remote work. there was no culture to our own company, and i really, genuinely believe that this all came really to a head once we had lost our partner, our client, because there was no other kind of unifying, there was no unifying mechanism other than everybody getting a paycheck from the same company.

josh: 42:12

well, i certainly had a lot of takeaways from what you, the story that you just broke down and i left me thinking, like what a diSaaSter. no, i don't want to get into my takeaways just yet. i'd actually like to hear from your takeaways reflect on that story that you just told us, that experience in your professional life. what did you learn from that? what were your top takeaways from that experience? well, i'm glad you were able to take away takeaways.

speaker 2: 42:41

take away takeaways. i'm glad you were able to do that because i feel like i'm kind of just talking in a big circle here. but i'll tell you that the big takeaways for me and kind of what i take forward into future organizations that i work with, it starts with trust. right, people and external, but relationships are key to everything that involves people. and once you sour a relationship or once you have a breach of trust, i do not believe that that could be salvaged. you know it's. you don't trust a person who burns you. right, and in this case, our company had become very first defensive about the whole situation. right, we're blaming the client. and then we became offensive to where we were potentially looking at legal action against them and realistically, it was just a cling to desperation at that point, right. and so again, it comes down to you need to maintain trust, you need to have deep partnerships because you don't want souring relationships. right, you're going to see these signs ahead of time. right, they say i don't know, i want to talk to this person again. right, if you have got a team and somebody from your team or from your company inserts themselves but they're not a trusted entity and that client comes back to you and says i don't ever want this person on the phone, i don't want to meet this person, i don't want to see them. well, don't you know? i don't care if that person is your executive. whenever it's done, they don't trust that person. don't try to force them on it, because you're going to start seeing more and more withdrawal right, you'll see people go stick meetings, not responding to emails, ignoring your calls, and, honestly, they'll stop. at that point they stop championing your software, they'll stop championing your product, because once that's done, i mean you always have to be on the lookout again. for who is your internal champion, right? who trusts you enough that they're going to essentially advocate for your product's internal? who's going to evangelize that to others? because once that's gone, nobody's doing it and you might as well rip it out. you know you're lost in this case. now i'll go back to the specific. on this one, we were doing a last ditch effort to mend the bridge right and we thought that we were going to a site to do one of those typical hey, this is what we do and this is how we help you. we were ambushed by procurement and i'll tell you what? it's never a good feeling to think you're going somewhere for one thing and that to have procurement back you into a corner and just make it a pricing discussion. you're already lost at this point and there's very little you can do to salvage the deal. but certainly you know there's no way to, i think, prepare that trust.

josh: 46:11

yeah, my takeaway from what you shared is the importance of truly listening to customers, and not just listening, not just hearing their words, but taking some sort of action, demonstrating that you are trying for them. it this ties into your takeaway of, you know, making sure that that long-term partnership, that long-term trust, is there, preventing it from going sour and i love that you called out signs, essentially, of a souring relationship. you know where they are flat out refusing to ever talk to specific members of your team. i mean, that's a pretty, pretty bad sign. that's pretty, pretty good, that's a pretty good point. okay, if, internally or externally, someone comes to you and says i don't want to ever talk to this person, that person needs to go. that's gonna be a toxic element, either internally or externally. there's a clear problem. it is a problem ghosting, not showing up, you know. so, withdrawing i think that you put it really well withdrawing, and that's really indicative of what's happening, which is they're no longer championing the solution, which is what you need. you need people to advocate behind closed doors, when you're not there, about why this thing should be bought, paid for and used by whoever is doing those exact things. so that leads to this resistance, to push it out, to deploy it and eventually the signs become clear that you're on your way out and there's nothing you can do at this point to save it, yeah, but it's again.

speaker 2: 47:58

i think it's really important and the people are probably gonna disagree with this. i think it's just important not to see them as dollar signs and to treat these guys like the long-term partners that you know they deserve to be ultimately.

josh: 48:17

yeah, people want to do business with people, not businesses. what you're calling out is let's treat people like people who have importance and value beyond a monetary amount, and in doing that, that's what's gonna lead to monetary compensation. well, what a conversation, what a story. that is definitely a diSaaSter, and i'm sure that you are not the only one who's experienced something like that before. you know, the rise and fall of many different startups can be tied to the success of a particular client or the failure of a particular client, so i really appreciate you coming on and sharing your candid thoughts about your experience and what you learned, and just your perspective on solutions consulting in general.

speaker 2: 49:08

well, it was a pleasure, josh, and, like i said, i hope i didn't bore anybody too much and i guess at least at a minimum giving everybody the opportunity to look up the concept of the strategic core role. so take that for what you will.

josh: 49:21

a lot of learnings fact into this episode. all right, well, thanks again for being here.

speaker 2: 49:28

stay frosty, my friend.

josh: 49:31

one of my biggest takeaways from the conversation with our guest is the importance of listening to customers. now, that doesn't mean that the customer is always right. i mean, they are frequently not always right. they're frequently not right about a lot of topics. they're people, after all, just like weird people. but what it does mean is that it is essential for individual team members who make up the company's workforce, especially those in customer facing roles, to truly hear their customers, to be so in tune that they are able to get to the why. is it a new pain that needs solving? is it a need to reframe a specific situation? a team that works together to delight customers will not be beaten. now he also brought up points that i certainly relate to, being a former solutions consultant on the presale side myself. ses help ae and the company get the deal done by focusing specifically on the problems that need to be solved, on the pain that needs to be relieved, on the value that needs to be delivered, or at least the path to value. but you have to be careful. you really, really do not want to over promise and set the company up to under deliver. with the pressure to get deals done, it can be tempting to provide workarounds that get the deal signed but ultimately fail to deliver long-term value on either side, and this is most certainly related to strategy and company culture. the question is what do you prioritize making money or making customers successful, and at what cost to the company? i'd argue that every company's priority as a whole should be to make their customers successful. and make no mistake, much like the great 80s movie franchise and 90s show highlander, there can be only one, only one priority, the one thing that is placed above all else, because when there's a conflict or decision to be made, you have to have a dominant criteria that enables you to make a decision and choose a path. now, far too often, profitability or bonuses or shareholders get the number one spot, and far too often those companies aren't the best to work for. now, what do you think of the diSaaSter story or guest shared? could you relate? if so, let us know. go to wwwdiSaaSterrecoverycom and send us a message and, before you go, take a second to subscribe to the show. let us know how much these stories resonate with you by leaving us a rating and a review in apple podcasts or spotify or really any podcast player of your choice. also, share these lessons with a co-worker or even a boss who's going through it with you. who knows, maybe your story of diSaaSter recovery could be next. cheers, guys.