Onsite Flashcards
Please share an example of customer obsession #1 - Herbalife - S Situation
S: top 50 e-commerce site with 3b in sales was experiencing outages due to lack of consistency and reliability of their legacy configuration update processes, which they had to do monthly. They had seven datacenter/cloud regions, each with its own unique XML file that they jokingly called ‘this horrible thing’ to manage updates. They had code freeze for 2/4 weeks every month largely to deal with reliability issues and updates.
Please share an exmaple of customer obsession #1 - Herbalife - T Task
this was a known issue but there was no budget or proposed solution. I needed to help a technical director prove, design, and sell our solution internally. We knew our dynamic service registry/configuration mgmt solution would give them a automated and holisitc way to manage all their datacenters and services.
Please share an exmaple of customer obsession #1 - Herbalife - Action
Anticipated there would be another outage. Started with a free 3-month POC to prove feasibility, giving us metrics on how much engineering time they’d save in manual overhead (estimated 30 hrs every month per datacenter, equal 185k annual) and evidence reliability would be significantly improved. Presented our findings together to global VP for if there would be another issue. Surely there was and it was a CEO level priority. Budget freed up, some negotiations happened, but we were prepared and able to capitalize.
Please share an exmaple of customer obsession #1 - Herbalife - Results
Over the next 3-yrs we’re estimating we’ll save them 600k in manual updates, another 2-2.5m in time recovery and DR time. More importantly, continued outages cost would have cost them 10s of millions and their license to do business in China, their 2nd largest market.
Please share an example of customer obsession #2 - Viasat - S Situation
I wrote about this in writing exercise, in short… an existing customer wanted to buy additional licenses through we failed to deliver on the expected value to date. Important to note we were only serving less than 10% of the addressable market in the account.
Please share an example of customer obsession #2 - Viasat - Task
I needed to decide between what’s best for the customer and long term partnership and the immediate revenue, which represented 20% of my annual goal.
Please share an example of customer obsession #2 - Viasat - Action
I had to present my case to management, and then the customer, suggesting the compromise that we’d be better served if the customer invested in Partner Services instead. That’d allow us to accelerate progress and ROI on our solution.
Please share an example of customer obsession #2 - Viasat - Result
It’s been less than 60-days but our relationship immediately evlved. We identified and started to onboard our partner. We have a clearer roadmap of use cases and value to deliver. Customer already introduced to teams and projects we had no access to prior
Please share an example of customer obsession #2 - Ticketaster/Sauce Labs - Situation
F500 eCommerce in the live events industry was suffering from app quality issues, learned through a boutique services partner, because they didn’t have the resources to test all functionality at the speed their dev. teams demanded. We sold a hosted solution to test at cloud scale, speed, coverage.
Please share an example of customer obsession #2 - Ticketaster/Sauce Labs - Task
Needed to sell the partner to broker a meeting with their customer and then sell the customer on the cost and speed benefits of our solution.
Please share an example of customer obsession #2 - Ticketaster/Sauce Labs - Action
I explained to the partner we should use this is a pilot to see about joining our partner program, providing them marketing and credibility. Also, our service would free up their senior resources to do more meaningful work in the account. To the partner, I had to explain what metrics we needed to collect for a business case, prove through a POC our solution works, and create the content for our customer preso. With the customer, it was a normal sales process, revalidate value and technology, and jointly work on the business case.
Please share an example of customer obsession #2 - Ticketaster/Sauce Labs - Result
Our value was you they would improve their coverage (devices you test on) and save on operational costs (false failure and infrastructure) while testing at same speed. They could now test on 4x number of devices, save 650k a year in costs, and get immediate access to new devices by simply pointing tests to our cloud service.
Give me an example of a time when something you tried to accomplish and failed.
(Herbalife)I committed a significant deal earlier this year that hasn’t closed yet. At hindsight, I rushed the process and failed to realize some important considerations. There was a vacancy at the CIO level and thus a technical committee of 3 VPs reported to the COO. It wasn’t until it was too late that I learned the VP we had was great technically but not good at making friends. His peer, though not part of this domain, suggested stopping this signifcant purchase until a CIO joined. COO agreed. CIO joined only in December. Now restarting process. They were willing, but not ready and able to purchase.
a challenge where the best way forward or strategy to adopt was not “clear cut” (i.e. there were a number of possible solutions). How did you decide the best way forward?
(CoreLogic/Neudesic): situation. a customer approached about a transformational requiring two of our solutions. They had limited experience and resources and wanted to leverage a partner we didn’t certify. Tasks. #1 was how to proceed, #2 how to ensure success, #3 what to do if it failed? Actions. #1 we agreed with the caveat that we’ll need to interview and they’ll need to sign up to our partner program for certification. #2 weekly calls with TAM and every 3-weeks in person with customer and partner, #3 we made it a point that our responsibility is with the customer first. Result. Six months later, we recommended customer continue with only 1 of the 2 solutions and a different partner. This was because of some issues with the partenr and lack of focus by the customer.
An example of when you showed initiative and took the lead?
1 I built successful territories for now 3 territories, 2 startups with < 30m in revenue, which required both initiative and creativity. #2 At HashiCorp, recognized we have great solutions but lacked a brand and infrastructure to support our customers as they adopted our technology. I took iniative to vet and enable local SI partners (Trace3, Evotek). #3 Another one, this year we had a customer with only 9-5 support face a Sev-1 issue going into the weekend. I took initiative the iniative, asked them to open a ticket, made the case to make an exception, and lead by example by joining the support call late into that night. See email.
