The April 17 virtual meeting of the Chicago Sales Leadership Community was a huge success!

The topic for the meeting was “Customer Success as a Growth Engine and Growth Accelerator”. Senior executives from the community shared insights and perspectives on how their organizations are leveraging customer success to grow revenue. The meeting provided ideas, approaches, and actions to help your sales organization improve their customer engagement and ascend to new heights of sales performance. Hosts for the meeting include DePaul University’s Center for Sales Leadership and SOAR Performance Group.

Listen to or download the audio from the meeting:

Who were the senior executives on the panel?

• Rachel Orston from Bettercloud (Chief Customer Officer)
• Tony Smart from Gainsight (Head of Services Sales and Strategic Advisory)
• Brandon Tubandt from Keyfactor (Senior Vice President, Operations and Customer Success)
• John Thackston from SOAR Performance Group (Vice President, Business Development)
• Charlie Thackston from SOAR Performance Group (President)

Questions discussed at the event:

• Customer success was a hot topic even before the Covid-19 pandemic and it seems like it is only growing in importance. From you perspective, why do you believe that this is occurring?
• Customer success is a term that often has different meanings in different organizations, what does it mean in your organization?
• In your view, where should customer success report in the organization?
• With everything that has happened in the past month, we see many of our clients analyzing roles and responsibilities across sales and customer success. What are you all seeing here, and what are some smart moves that you believe organizations can make to optimize coverage during a really fast shifting period?
• When you see organizations that really use the customer success function as a growth driver – what do you see that they do differently and better than those that don’t?
• What do you see as the critical skill sets for a customer success organization to have in order to really be a growth accelerator for their organization?
• What would be your advice for an organization that is trying to determine how to drive more customer growth with their customer success function?

Why should you attend future meetings?

The meeting offers opportunities to:

• hear from other sales leaders to get their perspective on important topics you face within your company
• meet other sales leaders from the area to expand your personal and professional network
• connect with DePaul University students participating in the sales program to identify potential sales talent
• ask your questions to the panel (and group) to get further insights
• get a free coffee.

Who might you see at a future meeting?

Previous events have included sales leaders from top companies of all sizes and industries.  Plus, there will be DePaul University students that are participating in the sales program (are you looking for some sales talent for your organization?)  The meeting is open to practitioner sales leaders and invited guests.  There is no cost to attend.  Registration is required.

When was the meeting?

April 17, 2020 / 2:00pm – 3:30pm (US Eastern Time)

Where was the meeting?

Virtual Zoom Meeting

About the Chicago Sales Leadership Community

The Chicago Sales Leadership Community was co-founded by DePaul University and SOAR Performance Group to create a forum for best practice sharing and executive networking within the greater Chicago area.

• The community is a cross-industry organization of senior sales leaders focused on building a community within the Chicago market for advancing best practices in sales leadership.
• It also creates networking and mentoring opportunities for Chicago senior sales executives with DePaul University students participating in the DePaul University Sales Program.
• The community is led by the advisory board with representatives from companies that represent different industries and go-to-market models.
• In addition to the meetings, the community also provides online options for participation through recordings and an online community.