Grace (Lofgren) Maxon

“Outbound is dead” just means you are lazy. I rarely make grand proclamations, but I just can’t see any other way around this one. I get it, sales is hard, probably harder than ever before but that doesn’t mean outbound is dead. As sellers, we just have to work smarter, get creative, and adapt. This means understanding new buyer behaviors and expectations and leveraging every tool in your arsenal to stand out and knock down the door. This may take a little more effort but if you aren’t willing to do it, there are bigger questions to be asked. Now I’m not one to say all this and leave you without an example. So, here is how I put this into action to book a meeting with an account I’ve been following since before I even joined Evabot. Work Smarter - I used Evabot AI for Sales Outbound 2.0 to keep an eye on this company as I got up to speed over my first 60 days. Got a notification last month that their account score had jumped to 94. I checked our research and saw they were announcing new products and expanding their sales organization. I dove deeper and found they were hosting a product launch webinar the following week so I registered and joined. Get Creative - I joined and watched the entire webinar to educate myself on the progress of the organization. I took a selfie while I was on the webinar and sent it with my gaining access email. It took 2 minutes, 120 seconds to get a response. This meeting took place earlier this week, my contact specifically mentioned how much he appreciated the approach, and we already have our next call scheduled. Adapt -  Would I have thought to include a selfie in an email a few years ago? Probably not. Did it take a little extra time in my week to join the webinar? Sure. But, times have changed and I want to be educated and informed to give my buyer the best possible experience. Truthfully, I think this is the most fun I’ve had in sales in a long time. Come try to bury me with outbound, I dare you. Respectfully, of course.

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Today is a big day for Product Marketers who use Gong. Because today, Klue is launching our new Gong Integration. Here’s the scoop: ⬅️ Before: It was a challenge to track how often competitors come up over time ➡️ After: Gong tracker data is visualized within Klue so you can track competitor mentions ⬅️ Before: Deal support was reactive based on individual requests ➡️ After: Sort your calls by # of competitor mentions and prioritize deal that need support ⬅️ Before: The sales team was responsible for updating the competitive fields in the CRM ➡️ After: Automatically update these fields in your CRM based on competitor mentions ⬅️ Before: Klue content couldn’t be accessed in Gong ➡️ After: Sales can experience any Klue battlecard from Gong Engage Check out our landing page to learn more and test drive the product. Link will be in the comments.

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When I was a BDR at Zendesk I was a top user of 6sense BUT I received 0 training on the platform so I was extremely skeptical. I had no idea where the data was coming from, what the buying stages meant, or what best practices looked like. That's why I'm never surprised when I receive a daily DM from an AE or BDR who wants to learn how to use 6sense... sadly I can't train everyone (ya know, I got a bag to carry). UNTIL NOW. Our Next-Gen Sales Certification answers all your questions about 6sense. (Plus you can speed things up and listen to me, Ami, Ernest Owusu at 2x) Sellers, want a fighting chance at hitting quota? Get certified. Sales leaders, don't want to get fired for having a team that misses quota? Get your team certified: https://lnkd.in/dGTpkF3X Ami Arad doesn't need any more praise but he poured his (tiny rotting) heart and soul into this and it shows... this is a creative, funny, engaging masterpiece.

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Are your sales reps hitting quota? 🤔 Let’s chat about the opportunities that AI can bring to your organization.

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CSM's, 5 Signs Your Company’s a Dumpster Fire—and It’s Time to Leave 🔥 1️⃣ Churn is Out of Control Every town hall’s starting to feel like a therapy session. Leadership talks “vision”. While you’re stuck managing unhappy customers and broken promises. Ask yourself: Is this where I’m meant to be? 2️⃣ The Slack Talks Are All Negative. Quarterly layoffs, top CSM's leaving. The vibe is “who’s next?”, it’s clear—the clock’s ticking. How long will you wait to make your move? 3️⃣ Career Growth? Radio Silence. You’ve hit your KPI, grown accounts, kept customers around. But every time you ask about growth, it’s “let’s talk next quarter.” Question is: How many quarters are you willing to wait? 4️⃣ Disconnected Leadership They preach “innovation” from afar but haven’t spoken to a customer in years. You’re in the trenches, fighting fires while they stand miles away. Are they even seeing the real picture? 5️⃣ The Product’s Losing Ground You’ve flagged issues, done the damage control, apologized to customers. But nothing changes. If they won’t listen now, will they ever? The right CSM role is out there—one where your growth and impact actually matter. Don’t settle for a company that isn’t moving forward and doesn't give a flying flower about you 🌻 👉 DM me "Interview" to grab early bird pricing for my interview masterclass.

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You don’t have to be a veteran CSM to make an impact at your company. If you're new to Customer Success, especially if you're coming from a non-traditional background, you need to make yourself visible and you need to ask questions—loudly and often. 👀 Visibility: Being active in team discussions, sharing your wins, and seeking feedback isn’t self-promotion—it’s demonstrating value. It’s how leaders know you’re engaged and invested. ❓ Curiosity: People tend to think it's a bad look to ask a "dumb question". It's quite the opposite. Your teammates probably have the same questions and you're demonstrating humility and self-awareness when you speak up. What leader wouldn't want a member of their team to do that? Plus, genuine curiosity is a necessary trait of an effective CSM. Stay visible, stay curious, and you’ll grow faster than you think! 🌱  #CustomerSuccess #Careeradvice #CareerGrowth

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✨ These are the Slack messages I LOVE to see from Account Managers! ✨ It’s all about the trifecta: ✅ Setting quality meetings ✅ Building quality relationships ✅ Driving quality deals Moments like this remind me why consistency and collaboration matter so much. When SDRs and Account Managers are aligned, great things happen—for the team and the customer. 💪 A huge shoutout to everyone out there putting in the effort to make every meeting count. Let’s keep raising the bar! 🚀 #SalesSuccess #Teamwork #CustomerFocused #SDRLife

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📣 Big news for social marketers AND customer service teams! 📣 Hootsuite just dropped Social Customer Care — a Salesforce integration that can streamline, simplify, and even automate social messaging across your entire org. ✨DMs get automatically routed to the right team and person. 💡 Support peeps can see message history in context and reply right from Salesforce. 🤖 There’s even chatbot integration to automate replies to FAQs across your social channels. You’ve gotta see it: https://ow.ly/HVnO50TzyVF

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Imagine you have 400 full-cycle sales reps who spend 80% of their time on non-selling activities. They have an average close rate of 12% and the average revenue per closed deal is $210k.   80% of their time spent on managing tools, data entry, and internal meetings is likely costing you A LOT. Want to know how much?   Salesloft has built a calculator that shows you how much your revenue potential is being impacted, and how much you could potentially reclaim with Salesloft.   This scenario: -$6,005,414 lost over 2 years if left unaddressed.   Annually, your sales team could potentially unlock $25,022,556 in additional pipeline value and $3,002,707 in additional revenue by reducing time spent on non-selling activities by just 5%.*   What is non-selling time costing your org? Give the calculator a try: https://bit.ly/46FVMoe

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My team had their best month in August. Historically a slow month in sales ends up being our best month (so far) this year. Three key factors that contributed to this (there were others too!): 1. Focus on quality accounts & outputs. Re-prioritizing our efforts to focus in on accounts that have higher intent. Also, the spray/pray doesn’t work, quality outputs are key. 2. Forecasting weekly & committing to KPI goals individually for the week that challenge each rep to really push their limits. 3. Win as a team mindset. Focused more on the team goal, rather than individual goals. Micro individual goals will get you there, but when we focused on the gap we had to our team goal - it really pushed the team to go above & beyond. Cheers to even more successful months ahead this year!!

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"You shouldn't just repost your company info" is common LinkedIn advice, but sometimes you gotta flex. Major Flex Alert! Gong has been named a leader in the new report, The Forrester Wave™: Revenue Orchestration Platforms, Q3 2024. In this report, Forrester analyzed and scored 12 top vendors in the market. Gong received the highest scores possible for more criteria than ANY OTHER VENDOR, including:   ⭐ Innovation ⭐ AI and automation differentiators ⭐ Range of analytics insights ⭐ Platform UX and integration “Gong’s AI reveals unique buyer and seller insights to improve deal outcomes. One of the few companies founded with AI at its core, Gong has used its nine-year AI résumé to create transformative insights for revenue organization." Check out the full report here: https://lnkd.in/gFTqqKAn

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As Thanksgiving rapidly approaches here in the States, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on what I’m most thankful for in 2024 as a Customer Success professional. Customer Success isn’t just about renewals or upsells—it’s about building genuine, lasting relationships. Tapped into different skillset to connect and optimize. And for that, I want to express my gratitude to the who make it all possible: 🧡 Our Customers You’re more than just accounts. You’re partners, innovators, entrepreneurs, managers, and collaborators. Thank you for trusting us with your goals and challenges. Your success is our greatest reward. 💛 My Team Customer Success is a team sport, and I’m endlessly grateful for the colleagues who brainstorm creative solutions, go the extra mile for clients, and celebrate every win—big or small. 🤎 The Challenges Yes, even the tough days. The escalations, the churned accounts, the tricky conversations—they’ve all made me better at what I do and reminded me why resilience is a cornerstone of success. ❤️ The Wins Every milestone achieved with a customer reminds me why I love this field. Seeing someone reach their goals because of your guidance? That’s the ultimate Thanksgiving feast for the soul. As we head into the holidays, I encourage everyone in the Customer Success community to pause and celebrate the impact we make. It’s not just about managing accounts; it’s about helping people and businesses thrive. What are you thankful for this season? 🍂 #Thanksgiving #CustomerSuccess #Gratitude #PipedriveCRM #Thankful

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Onboarding Bootcamp Complete ✔️ Shout out to Elena, Joana, Gurpal, and 🪭Michelle for delivering the sessions throughout the week. Biggest takeaway: There is nothing that replaces roleplaying, watching gong videos, and debating best practice for getting into the swing of things. What's your go-to for onboarding?

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One of my favorite things about CS-life (ie working as a SaaS Customer Success Manager) is client summits. As a people person there’s nothing quite like 3 days of getting to hang out with the people that you communicate with all year long on a day in and day out. I love the incredible moments of intense focus talking shop, taking on big ideas, getting in the weeds in workshops, and of course the liesure time *not* talking shop. There’s always a sense of reinvigoration and excitement during and coming away from a summit. Initiatives launch, ideas are grown and seeds are planted. Thats why I’m so stoked to be a part of and promote Redlist Attain! This is the news conference for professionals, eager to stay ahead of the curve in maintenance and reliability through the integration of advanced technology in AI! Whether you’re a reliability leader, plant manager, or CFO, you’ll discover how Redlist’s solutions with AI integrations can enhance your total productive maintenance (TPM) strategies – turning data into *actionable* intelligence that improves efficiency, extends equipment, life, ensure seamless operations, and reduces the pain of employee turnover. Come and join us October 21st-23rd in Utah!!

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Everyone thinks it's easy to become a CSM Here’s your reality check: It’s not Despite what the “Top 100 CSM influencers” tell you. I never knew what a CSM was until 2019. And I think most of you never knew about it either. There is a lot of buzz around this role. Too many #LinkedIn influencers (who aren’t even CSM’s) tell you: -Send proactive DM’s and LinkedIn messages to companies   -All you need to do is network to become a CSM -Make sure to put numbers on your resume -“All teachers can become a CSM” (not knocking teachers, my wife is one) There is a lack of understanding of what the role is: 1. You are the one who will get a call at midnight on a Tuesday 2. You are the one who has to deal with an angry client 4. You are responsible for massive company revenue. 5. You are relied upon 7 days a week. 6. You are on call if needed. 7. You are not 9-5, ever. This is not a rainbows and butterflies role. This is hard, demanding, emotionally draining WORK. Are there amazing benefits? Yes. -Work remotely -6 figure salary -Great benefits But it comes at a cost. -I’ve seen people take months off of this role to rest -I’ve seen countless peers burnout only to change careers -I’ve seen tech companies lay off their entire CSM department -I’ve seen under-performers fired who have families to support All that is to say. If this is something you want. As in you will be truly, unstoppable. Ask yourself: What is your “WHY”? What is going to motivate you throughout the: -Ghosting -99% Rejection -The 5 interview rounds -A QBR you spent hours on -An offer that gets taken away There is so much “you got this” on LinkedIn Not enough authenticity. If I made you angry this morning. Good. At least I told you the truth.

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I enjoy talking about Customer Success Careers. I found this statistic recently about how companies are investing more into their CSM org. It says" According to the Customer Success Index 2023, 92% of companies are maintaining or increasing their investment in CS, despite difficult economic conditions." I can attest to this that companies out there are investing in their Customer Success orgs. Customer Success is an exciting place to be!

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So over the past few weeks I've had a few interviews for customer success roles, and something that keeps coming up as one of the most common questions in my mind is “As a customer success manager, how are you going to generate growth for the business over the accounts you manage?” It’s a good question, and one that upon reflection, I think having come from a support rather than sales background this is one I have had to learn as I go along and have generally found to be one of the more difficult questions. However hopefully vocalising it in more depth here will help me in future interviews.  Presently to be a great CSM it’s not enough to simply provide high retention rates and customer engagement. With markets becoming increasingly competitive, companies want their CSM’s to be able to help the company grow, and providing growth from the recurring revenue of the current client base is a great way to grow while providing the stability that recurring revenue can bring. Driving growth within a client portfolio means going beyond just meeting clients’ needs to actively identifying opportunities that benefit both the client and your organisation.  When I have had to approach this myself, the first step I like to do is focus on client analysis and learning as much as I can about the client. Once you understand the clients objectives and what they hope to achieve it is far easier to start identifying growth opportunities. Utilising a quarterly business review (QBR) provides a great opportunity to not only discuss this with your client, but also allows you to present these opportunities to the client.  Secondly, I like to consider what value does a new module, or feature add to the client? Does it make processes more efficient? Cut costs? Provide meaningful data? How does this impact their business? At the end of the day clients won’t buy into more features if they simply don’t need them or find them useful. At this point, I might also look at case studies within my own portfolio, or even within another CSM’s portfolio, to see if I can find any success stories that can backup my pitch. I have found that presenting a similar client that has had success with what you’re trying to sell is extremely compelling to customers.  I think something that is important to note as a CSM is that even though you’re generating growth, you can’t just come across as another employee trying to sell something to the customer, otherwise you’re going to start losing the trust that you build with the customers. I think it’s important to align yourself as a product and industry expert, who is providing valuable advice, rather than the traditional salesman role when looking to pitch new features to customers. #CSM #Customersuccess

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CSMs, ever been scared of your customer stakeholders' job titles? I used to be. VP of Sales? Terrifying! Rev Ops? Probably the one I feared the most! CS Director? They're gonna be judging me and think I'm rubbish! Stick a 'Global' in front of it and that was me done. 'I'm just little ol' me' Until my Manager at the time gave me a much needed mindset shift: 🩷 Focus on the role, not the title -  titles are just labels for responsibilities 🩷 You're the expert on the product they've bought for a reason -  you bring valuable insights and solutions to the table 🩷 Be curious, not intimidated -  seek to understand, not prove yourself And most importantly, they're just people. People who for the most part are just doing their job, trying to do their best, also wondering what to have for tea tonight. Tell me I'm not the only one who has felt like this?

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