Ep # 185: How Stronger Handoffs Create Better Retention Outcomes ft. Kelly McGuire (VP of Customer Success, Everstage)

Kelly McGuire 00:05 To me, it’s about can you answer simple questions on how we’re helping that organization make money, save money, and or mitigate risk? It’s about being able to step back and understand what their business is, be able to answer those questions, and make sure that we’re working with the right people to do so across the org. Intro 00:28 Welcome to Across the Funnel, where we dig into concrete Go-To-Market moves across sales, customer success, and account management so you can build revenue that lasts. Brought to you by Hyperengage and Dextego. Adil Saleh 00:44 Hey greetings everybody, this is Across the Funnel, Adil your host. We’ve grown quite a bit with this podcast, doing our 180 episodes now, and we’ve been exploring different organizations post AI impact, I would say, in the past one year. A lot has changed. A lot of these organizations have consolidated a lot of these adjacent teams across the GTM functions, and this has become a pretty grown pain over the past two or three quarters, how to manage productivity, focus across the sales organization. And compensation management is one of the biggest talk of the town, at least here in the valley, because every sales leader is thinking about how I’m gonna get paid, how much I’m gonna be paid. Things are so uncertain for a lot of sales leaders that we spoke to. So today we’re gonna be talking to the VP of Customer Success, Kelly McGuire, from Everstage. They are an AI-first revenue transformation platform from code to commission. This is one of the first movers in the category, and we are gonna be talking about how they’re helping sales manage, of course, their revenue, commissions, keeping their sales leaders and organization pretty much optimized and streamlined for greater revenue growth. Thank you very much, Kelly, for taking the time. Kelly McGuire 02:09 Yeah, thanks for having me. Really excited to chat. Adil Saleh 02:12 Love it. So now I know that Everstage has been there for quite some time and over time it has AI capabilities, like every other product. When it comes to revenue leaders, how much, when it comes to data, visibility, and transparency, does this play a bigger part even now, because every leader, be it the C-suite, like CCOs, or VPs, revenue leaders, sales leaders, VP of Sales, and all, they look at so many dashboards and they have so many statistics in front of them every single day, whether it’s an internal meeting or a board meeting. They are dealing with dashboards. So being somebody like Everstage, pretty much integrated in the workflow, how does it change with this AI and what kind of impact has it made so far when it comes to compensation management, when it comes to productivity of these sales organizations? Kelly McGuire 03:13 Sure. So Everstage, we’ve been around for about five, six years. We founded in 2020. Interesting time to start an organization, but that was before we all kind of knew what was happening then. And I think that one of the biggest differentiators and why we’ve been so successful so far in this space as the fastest growing software in the sales compensation or sales performance management space, on places like G2 and Gartner, is because we are very customer first, and that means that we’ve sat in the actual shoes. Many may not know this, but I think a lot of people at this point that know Everstage and know some of our competitors in the market, know our CEO and co-founder of the organization led revenue operations for a large organization, took that and saw a very large amount of growth. And in that organization that he went through, he saw these gaps in the tools that were out there. And so we were founded by people that are in the roles doing the job today, right? Many of our organization’s founding members, many of our legacy members, many of our continued employees, have kind of been walking, talking, breathing revenue operations for a really long time, well before our inception in 2020. With that said, our product really aims to solve kind of two issues, or really not issues. I’ll think of them more like opportunities. The first one is on what I’ll call your operational maturity and your ability to automate and scale. And that’s for your revenue operations teams and your leaders, your FinOps, your Sales Ops teams, whatever kind of denomination you call them within your organization, the group that basically makes sure all of those sellers and any commissionable employee gets paid. So that’s what the foundation of our platform did, was kind of solve Siva, our CEO’s, original problem and many of the organizations’ and people in that space’s problem, which is being able to do that in a no code way so that you as a FinOps leader, manager, analyst, can go in and build your compensation plans at ease and use of the system. And that’s what we’ve been able to really successfully do and really serve what we call our admins, those finance, those Ops end users. And then on the flip side, and you said this and it really struck a note in me, but it also kind of hurts my heart a little bit because you said you talk to a lot of sales leaders that don’t understand what they’re making, have visibility into what they’re getting paid. As a sales leader, what’s in it for me is how are you making money, right? That’s what drives many sellers. And the fact that many of them are people people, right? They enjoy talking to humans and being around others and helping them solve problems. That’s what we’re helping a lot of our customers do here at Everstage. And for those sales leaders and for those sellers that are on the ground, whether in office, on their phone, via our mobile app, they’re able to see what they’re making, have transparency into where they are on quota attainment, use some of our tools that are AI forward on abilities like benchmarking and forecasting so that you have a better prediction of what’s gonna end up in your pocket. And when it does, it’s accurate. It is on time. You have a place where you as a seller can go and talk to the admins, the finance, the RevOps teams in a centralized location so that as your business grows, and everybody thinks about the big successes of that growth, with that come the responsibility of audit and controlling all of those different things. Our system handles all that operational efficiency for you. So it lets both of those end users really shine and thrive and be empowered to make the best use of their time in seats or at their desks or in their cars when they’re talking to people so that they know what’s at the other end of the rainbow for them. And for sellers, hopefully that’s a big pot of gold, right? And for the finance people, it’s on time, accurate, and often, in terms of being able to really automate that ship that you’re building and driving, or sailing, so to speak. And then where does AI come into it? It kind of comes into it everywhere. But the way that we’re really taking it in terms of an AI first approach is, on the administrative side, we have an auto agent that helps you automate and build all of those logical components of your plan so that you as a finance person are not coming in and building from scratch. You’re validating and QA-ing and then moving along. So your time to get that plan out the door goes from six weeks or two months to a much, much shorter runway, which ultimately has your business selling more, achieving their goals more, everybody wins. And on the sales side, it’s all of those ways to really serve up that spoon-fed information to the seller so that they’re able to see it in ways and kind of gamify the system so that they can see what more they can accomplish to really motivate and not just provide Adil Saleh 08:22 Absolutely, keep them always inspired and motivated. And of course, what about just a quick question on this. A lot of these fellow sellers, they get motivated from the folks and the peer group that they look up to, the people that make the most commissions and all. So is that phenomenon incorporated inside Everstage? Kelly McGuire 08:41 Yeah. So the ability to see where you’re tracking against your peers and create what I like to call a very healthy dose of competition, especially tapping into that sales persona, yes. So all of that is visible at an attainment level. Now, we don’t share proprietary information across sellers, of course, right? But what we are doing is providing that competitive visibility into quota attainment and really allowing the business, our customers, to tell us how their org works, how they and their leaders, their first line sales managers all the way up to their C-suite, wanna see and be able to answer this one big question. For every dollar that we’re making, how much are we spending? That’s what a CFO cares about. That’s what a CEO cares about. They wanna understand how the business is scaling. And so we provide visibility into that top down, bottom up, and the layers. And how we do that is really based on what the teams like to see and the culture of the organization. And that’s really where my customer success team comes in. We get to know the customers, I say intimately, but I mean this in a way that we understand their world. We understand what their business challenges are, what are they trying to solve. We know who we’re working with throughout the various roles and levels of the organization and how the CFO is connected to the head of RevOps, connected to the analyst that is helping build the plans and run commissions. So that we are helping understand the value of the challenges we’re helping them solve, and we can help quantify what the vision is of us being part of that. That’s the whole method of customer success to me as a leader. How do you go from being seen, and by you I mean us as a brand, from being seen as a vendor, to that trusted advisor, to the partner, that when they’re thinking of their commission strategies going into next year, they don’t just think about the fact that they’re building it in Everstage, but they want our teams to help guide them because we’re people that have been in the role and sat in the seat. And we also use our own software. So we’re drinking our own champagne, so to speak. And it’s really allowed for this community to foster within our customer base, but also just within the RevOps community. We host on a monthly basis in various cities throughout the US and a variety of places outside of that as well. We call them GTM Mixers, right? They’re basically a small kind of panel of RevOps professionals that come together and talk about common things that they’re facing. And then we normally feed you and make sure that you go home with a full belly type thing. And we create this network of people that have said to me at these meetings, yeah, we don’t get a lot of these in our city. It’s really, really great that we can come here and learn from professionals because, for better or worse, the teams that are using our software from the admin perspective, those RevOps, those FinOps, those Sales Ops teams, they’re normally small and mighty. Some of our customers will tell me things like, our revenue’s grown by 4x, but our RevOps team has not grown by one headcount. And that’s again where places like Everstage come in. Their embracement of AI to automate and drive a lot more efficiency. Adil Saleh 11:54 Do more with less yeah Kelly McGuire 11:55 in their world. And that’s what we’re helping them do here at Everstage for sure. Adil Saleh 12:00 Interesting. Love it. This is so amazing to see, how you’re not only helping them optimize their revenue and get visibility across the organization, but also to automate, to make sure that they do more with this. Because every founder is now trying to have their AI implementation inside their vertical agents, all of this. So now as building has become easier than ever, distribution, sales, all of this has become harder than ever. So a lot of these early stage companies that you might have come across using Everstage, and they’re fast growing AI startups, They are thinking of hiring their sales, What is this segment of new age AI-first companies, thinking of hiring their first RevOps or VP of Sales or building their commission plans and all of this. How is this experience going with Everstage so far? I just want to get more knowledge into how these AI-first companies from, I would say, 2023 beyond are thinking about this problem because this is going to be a big problem going forward. Kelly McGuire 13:11 Yeah. I don’t still see it as a problem. I see it as an opportunity to have the right partnerships at the right time. And Everstage, we have a lot of our customers in the tech space, and a lot of them are not. So we have a very good spread across everything from SaaS and all things in that world to manufacturing and healthcare and finance. So our space runs wide, our net runs wide, in terms of our ability to really help an organization in this way. And so the scale at which AI is coming at certain companies is sometimes faster, sometimes slower, specific to tech, of course. I think that what we’re seeing in that space is that they are also trying to do more with less. And a lot of that is unlocking efficiencies on their team. And that’s really where we help because we are taking a lot of the process. Customers that used to spend two weeks literally processing commissions for every pay period, now spend two days using our platform. And so that allows them to have the breathing room to work on other things without adding additional headcount, still continuing to create that priority that is RevOps. And Everstage in the last year and change, we’ve added additional products into our suite. Now beyond just sales compensation management, we now have Everstage Planning and Quota Management. We have a CPQ tool that we’ve come to the market with. We have other things that are basically, and all the systems talk to each other, which is what any operational leader loves, the systems are all feeding from the same place. So there’s one source of truth. We all know, especially when we do any type of project that involves data, you start to open the closets and you find lots of skeletons because you’re like, oh, that hasn’t been clean data for quite some time, and now I have this ripple effect. When an organization partners with us, we’re helping them sometimes uncover that and they’ve gotta go fix and clean that on their end. But we’ll coach and guide them on the best way to do that because that’s why we’re experts. Then we’re helping them really synthesize and automate that process, unlock all of the different AI-first and automated functionalities within our platform, from the end user as a seller to the executives getting the right level of visibility. Again, to be able to ask that big question, for every buck that we’re selling, what are we paying off that buck? Because that’s the question the board’s asking. And so we’re helping in every stage within the organization as it relates to that operational efficiency. And now that our product suite is growing in all of that AI-first way as well, it's allowing for that kind of cross contamination in a good way, but like kind of connection of all that data in one place, again really unlocking those efficiencies for our customers. And the customers speak for themselves. That’s why we’re top rated on many of these software sites because we’re in the people business. That’s what we’re trying to do, and again that’s what me and my team are really focused on in CS, creating a great experience so that when you’re making decisions, you have a bigger team than just that small and mighty group of you and RevOps to look to, and it’s your Everstage folks. Adil Saleh 16:42 Yeah. Interesting. And now you mentioned earlier that a lot of your customer segment lies in the tech space. I would say B2B SaaS, subscription based products and platforms. Keeping in that, for that segment, how do you define success? Starting from maybe first point of interaction, which is post-sales onboarding, like your VP of Success. We speak to a lot of CS leaders all these years. A lot has changed compared to when I started three years back. So now thinking of your success organization, how you’re measuring the success metrics across the journey from onboarding to adoption that drives retention and then of course the expansion. I’ve read a lot of your G2 reviews and reviews on other platforms as well. So it’s so amazing for people to speak so good about Everstage, not just like people that are forced, because I can read them and I see them. They’re actually the legitimate consumer of your platform. So now how you’re making it a success across your team, how big is your team, what kind of process you have, like in terms of playbooks and any platforms, any tech stack that you have to measure success? Kelly McGuire 17:55 Sure, sure. So I’m gonna just go back to your original question. I wouldn’t say the majority of our customers are in tech. I’d say about half of them are in tech, give or take. But we do have a pretty large spread. And I think how I define success doesn’t change based on the customer. To me it’s about can you answer simple questions on how we’re helping that organization make money, save money, and or mitigate risk? Now there’s a lot that goes into being able to answer that, and I’m happy to kind of double click on some of those things as alluding to some of your question. But to me, it’s about being able to step back and understand what their business is, be able to answer those questions, and make sure that we’re working with the right people to do so across the org. It’s not just working with the leaders, it’s working with everybody within the org, understanding how they’re what I’ll call organizationally interconnected. So how the CFO feeds to the analyst and what those business problems are, what the challenges and reasons are for those problems, that type of thing. In this world of millions of tools, I am probably more selective than the average CS leader on throwing tools at my people. It’s not that I’m against them. I am very much a lover of modern technology. But a lot of them are homework assignments and headaches and noise. And to me, I take a more methodical approach as it relates to this philosophy and methodology that I’ve kind of built within my career and that I’ve learned within my career, that I’ve carried various aspects and built this methodology, which is really understanding the customer, understanding the different stages in which we need to work with them to get towards what we need to execute, which is lights on, value seen, and growth opportunities identified and nurtured. And really growth opportunities that are in line with their business challenges and how things are progressing in their world. But for us, the success of that starts well before the handoff. I think customer success, and I've said this to more people that, you know, probably everyone that I could, and I still say this a lot at every stage, is really truly an organization that owns customer obsession across all aspects, which is why I’m here. Because to me, customers are the heartbeat of the org. If you don’t take care of that heart, what are we doing? Why are we here? And I’ve worked at a lot of different places and the degree of caring about a customer, the scale has been different in all different places. Here it’s very high. And part of that, again, going back to what I said in the beginning, is because the people that built this and started this sat in the same shoes and have empathy and understand what we’re dealing with, what you’re dealing with. And we all stay modern on what’s going on in those worlds because, one, they’re our customer base. But two, we’ve created this community through a variety of ways to just nurture it. But to me, success starts when you first get exposed to our brand, understanding who we are and what we do and really how we help solve your problems. And I think we’re good at telling that story because, again, we have walked in those shoes. Our sales team, and I’ve recently made a post on this on LinkedIn, I’ve spent most of my career in CS even before CS was really a function. And sellers sometimes can sell the big dream that is not close to reality. Here, that’s not really what happens. We have a really good collaborative, ethical, motivated and kind of rockstar sales team led by a great leader who’s my counterpart. And they make sure that when they’re kicking things over to our side of the fence, it’s in a seamless way and everybody’s aligned, and we have checks and balances in place to make sure of that throughout the sales process, which we are very much a part of. And again, being the type of org that we are, yes, obviously I have a bigger job title than someone on my team or somebody in a different department, and vice versa, there’s different levels and titles, et cetera. But we’re a very flat organization and we collaborate that way because we’re all kind of in this together. And that’s what you’re doing when you’re building something as special as what we’re building here. But we have something that, I’ve created this form that basically sales, we capture a lot of things within the sales process and that gets transferred over to us in CS, so that we have what I’ll call situational fluency in understanding why the customer purchased, what their buying decisions were, what the challenges were, because I want my CSMs to feel like sellers because they are. When I’m trying to explain to my 78-year-old aunt what I do, I just say I lead sales teams because it’s just easier. And part of it is because it’s also true. We are, but we’re doing it from this lens of we’re helping you achieve a solution to a problem. We’re helping you create this really strong value story. And if my CSMs are doing the right job, which I know they are because this is the type of leader I am, we’re very hands-on and we’re collaborative together, they’re making their customers, those RevOps teams, look like rock stars because they are. Our customers sometimes have thousands of sellers coming at them for questions, comments, et cetera. We help them synthesize and organize that in a streamlined way so that they have breath, they have breathing room. And then the business is able to better answer that question so that when that CFO goes into that board meeting, he’s confident, all because the RevOps team is doing exactly what they’re supposed to do. So we’re really helping create the right visibility and space for those customers and those RevOps teams to be seen as that incredibly important seat at the table that they are. Other things in terms of tools, I don’t have a customer success tool that I use today. I have used them in previous orgs. Some have worked well, some have not. Some of that is circumstance of the tool, some of that circumstance of the org. What I’m trying to do is figure out how we can get our systems better working and connecting and communicating together so that my teams have even better insight into customer behavior without having to always go and talk to the customer about that. And that’s where a lot of the automation piece comes in. And admittedly, as a CS leader, I need to embrace AI more. It’s something that is a big focus for me this year as well as continually, because we all know the world in tech is changing because of AI. And how our customers are thinking about that, depending on the type of customer, is a conversation we’re having often. And it is allowing our CSMs and my team and our global org in general to be able to unlock new opportunities, leveraging AI within our day to day too, so that we’re ultimately able to spend more time with our customers in CS. Because as a CS leader, I do sometimes struggle with how much AI we leverage because CS is a human business. I’m in the people business, and not all of that can be replaced by technology. You know, CSM- Adil Saleh 25:18 Absolutely. Yes. There’s no substitute to human connection. Kelly McGuire 25:21 No. And this is a close second, this thing we’re doing with the videos on, but my teams go out and see their customers. Last year I was on a road show for a couple weeks with a couple of my CSMs and some of my enablement team, because I lead enablement as well for our customers here at Everstage. And we were onsite training some customers and doing some big kickoffs and launches and having quarterly business reviews. There’s this human piece and then laughing over dinner. That piece for CS, there will always be that there. How much of that versus other areas, I think that depends on the leader and the org. And for me, that human connection and that ability to have EQ and that relational intelligence and connect with humans, that’s why people stay. Adil Saleh 26:06 And on the other side of the table, on the flip side, even customers are starting to speak for more human interaction and connection. They don’t want to talk to the AI all the time. And I know there are some steps or models for, let’s say, SMB or startup plans or something. But when it comes to mid-market, any customer, they want to meet, they want to talk, they want to sit down, and they want to be a good advocate for you if you spend good time versus the technology or versus the AI and all those chatbots and all. Perfect. You already mentioned that you are doing some events across in New York. We have almost 30 plus startups from New York City alone and over 70 plus from the East Coast. So what is it, one thing that you’re doing the next quarter for them to look out for, have an eye out for that, and then maybe they can reach you out, and anything, any collaboration. I love the energy. It is infectious and you have a beautiful name, Kelly McGuire. I was just telling my wife, I have a 7 months old so we were sitting together and I said I have this podcast and this girl named Kelly McGuire. It’s a beautiful name. Kelly McGuire 27:17 Oh Thank you, it’s Irish. Adil Saleh 27:18 Of course, a lot of people listening. Kelly McGuire 27:19 It’s Irish and today, St. Patrick’s Day. So it’s about as Irish as it gets, my name. I’m half Irish and putting me on the spot for an event right now off the top of my head. Here’s what I would say to people that are listening to this. Just go to Everstage’s LinkedIn page and follow them. We are active and vocal about all the opportunities. We have events all over the place right now. We’ve got a bunch of them in San Francisco going on. So that’s where our events are based this month. Next month, there’ll be a different city and the next month there’ll be a following city. Beyond that, we’re working on creating some specific events for our customers, as well as for customers and prospects and different industry professionals to blend together. So more to come on that. But yeah, that’s what I would say, definitely check out our events and all the things that we share on our socials and on our platform because we’re just trying to help guide and support others like us because we know how hard the job is of people on the RevOps team. And so we wanna help you solve your problems and make your lives easier and obtain more results. And so, yeah. Adil Saleh 28:31 Thing is, now it’s a lot of these cultures and so much divided across tech because we get to experience a lot of tech companies. I’m sorry if I mention SaaS or tech a lot of times during this conversation. Kelly McGuire 28:44 No, no. I just wanna make sure that the audience knows we’re not just pigeonholed in that tech world. We do have quite a range of customers, but yes, tech is obviously a very big part of our world too, ofcourse Adil Saleh 28:56 You mentioned sales enablement. The training part, the enablement part, has been the biggest challenge because I know that sales, getting acquisition and everything, has become so new because a lot of these startups that I’m talking about, two years back, three years back, there was funds and now they’re struggling to raise the next round. And of course a lot of things are being pressed into sales and enablement and all that. Training has been the bigger concern. They’re using technology, but it’s not that sales intelligence and everything, but how do you manage when it comes to the training part, into the sales enablement? You mentioned that you are pretty much collaborative and you’re hands-on and all so how you’re thinking of doing it at scale in one vertical. Kelly McGuire 29:41 So are you talking about training our customers or internal training? Adil Saleh 29:44 Training, internal training, yeah. Kelly McGuire 29:46 Internal training. So it’s not just between sales and CS. It’s a whole company cohort. So product builds a roadmap that is generally built from a lot of our customer feedback, a lot of our team’s feedback, a lot of the industry feedback that we have, and a lot of the innovation that we know we’re headed, right? In order for us to understand what that is and how it impacts our customers, we have a general good answer on that because a lot of it is things that we know we need or we know where our customers are heading and we’re growing with them. But we have a robust kind of flow within our org where product is talking to product marketing and enablement. So my remit is beyond just customer success. I lead customer enablement here at Everstage. And what that generally means is, yes, we have an enterprise learning platform called Everstage Academy where customers can go in both, end users can see self-guided paths and tracks. And for some of our larger customers, we do onsite training and we do virtual live training, those types of things. And I always say, the more people assume ownership, the more it doesn’t become Everstage’s tool that we’re using for our commissions. It’s our commission tool and I’m the expert and now I can train you. So we have a lot of customers that actually go out and train their other teams or other sales orgs, their other customers, when they’re rolling out Everstage, which is amazing. We take a similar kind of mindset internally. And what I mean by that is, our product teams are talking to product marketing and enablement. We are coming up with a timeline and plan, and we have kind of the right, almost like a product sprint. We have every x amount of weeks or months we go through these things. It’s the same type of flow here so that sales and CS are learning together alongside the rest of the org. But how we’re learning and why we’re learning and what the impact is to our customers, that is different. The way that, like, I love engineers, but you don’t let an engineer train a salesperson. You don’t let an engineer train a CSM. Just like a CSM shouldn’t be training an engineer, because the way we think and how we learn is different. The thing that I’m really big about is not just telling you what it is, it’s also practicing it in a safe environment. Because a lot of times people teach things, they just go, okay, here’s what’s new. Go sell it. Go talk to your customers about it. Now what we’re doing, and we did this with our CPQ tool, which I love, because now we use our CPQ tool internally to do all of our quoting, my CSMs and our sales team. We were using it before it was out in the market, before we were selling it. And now we’ve used it and it’s so much easier for us to become a product expert when we’re using it ourselves. So again, it’s more like that drink our own champagne. We’re really focused on really assuming ownership because we are people that do these things. My teams are commissionable, sales teams are commissionable. We wanna make sure that we’re able to use the things that we’re selling and understand the value because we’ve walked a day in the shoes. Again, back to what I said in the beginning of this, that’s just how we operate here, and it’s why we’re very customer focused, because we were the, and we are the customer. Adil Saleh 32:52 Yeah, and that drives a lot of this customer education goes with that and this actually educates the sales reps and educates the success reps as well while they’re working closely with the customer. Kelly McGuire 33:02 Absolutely. Adil Saleh 33:03 Perfect, perfect. So now, I know that this is, how long ago you joined, almost going to be two years in the next quarter. How do you see this opportunity at Everstage being a VP of CS? I know that you’ve been a long CS veteran for quite some time now, and what is the next step you’re looking forward to within Everstage? Maybe a different role or maybe a level up. What is it that you think motivates you and keeps you excited for this year, staying in Everstage? Kelly McGuire 33:35 Yeah, yeah. I can’t believe it’s almost been two years. I feel like I’ve been here like 10 minutes. And also it has always felt like home. And I think that just speaks to kind of answering some of your question, which is, when I met the people, starting with my boss, who’s our CEO Siva, when him and I had our first conversation early on in 2024, I knew I wanted to work with him. I’ve worked for Adil Saleh 34:05 It’s more for people, yeah Kelly McGuire 34:08 I’ve worked for four CEOs in my last couple of roles, so I’ve seen good and bad, and not just in CEOs, but in C-suite leaders and in bosses and all the things. Every person I met here was authentic, was genuine, was kind. Then I saw the product and I was like, wow. And I used a competitor previously, so I knew I was using a different ICM tool and knew the deficits in that space as a sales leader would call me. This tool was just so much more robust, more for the audience. Again, that’s the theme, that we really do kind of drink our own champagne. So for me, the people and the product and the mission have brought me there. The immense amount of talent that I work with every day, from customer support to implementation to my team in customer success to sales to product to engineering to marketing, we have really good, smart people. Some of the most talented people I’ve ever worked with in my career, who are intentional about what we do. And yes, we’re still a growing tech SaaS startup where we’re moving fast and breaking things sometimes because that’s kind of the world we’re living in. But the intention and the why we’re doing is so incredibly right. I don't have like a fancy word for it. And something in my gut, I’m someone who looks at logic, I look at data, I look at facts, and then if I’m still not sure, what is my gut telling me? I'm like kinda holding my core for a second there. And in my gut, I knew that this was the place and I was right. And yes, as a customer success leader, there are aspirations that I have about growth and opportunities to continue to make a bigger impact in any organization that I’m at. And I think I definitely have that here at Everstage. But my bigger focus is around making sure that our teams and our customers are growing and evolving and seeing success. That’s what really fulfills me. And yes, I’m hopeful that will come with growth and title and things of that nature as any natural ambitious leader wants. Adil Saleh 36:50 Mm-hmm. Kelly McGuire 36:51 But that’s almost secondary to the outcome of what we’re trying to do at Everstage, which is really continue to disrupt this market and do it with that AI-first, innovative, industry-leading lens. And we’ve been able to do that with our recent product launches and hoping to continue to do that with some other things we have coming. And just honestly having fun with the people we work with along the way. Our customers are great. They’re tough, as any customer should be because they’re the customer. But our teams are smart and so capable and so willing, and we have a really good time doing it. So it’s been a really, really great step for me. And yeah, I’m a busy person with packed days and I was on 30 plus planes last year for work. I travel a lot. Most of them are to customers because that’s how I roll. But I wouldn’t trade it. So it’s been a great almost two years and I’m looking forward to more. Adil Saleh 37:57 Love it. And you cannot be good enough if you’re not passionate. That’s about it. You cannot live it if you’re not passionate every single day. And as you mentioned, you work with a lot of interesting, intelligent people around you, and that motivates you a lot as well because when people are intellectual and intentional in this time of AI, this is lethal. So I wish you best with all that you’re looking out to Kelly McGuire 38:23 Likewise Adil Saleh 38:24 and all that you’re going to make, and definitely will follow your journey. So one advice for every female because unfortunately we have only 43 or 44 female leaders on our podcast. I’m not sure how the team is rolling, maybe they don’t get a lot of them or what. So what is that one advice for a female trying to be a CS leader or GTM leader in the future, to keep perseverance and be consistent? Kelly McGuire 38:59 It’s a great question. One I get asked a lot. Last week I actually had two people ask me, how are you so confident? I don’t find a lot of CS leaders that are like that, especially if they’re women. I don’t know. Again, like I said, I’m the oldest of eight, so I’ve kind of had to pave the way for a lot of people in my life and I’m not afraid. I think part of it is just being comfortable stepping outside of your comfort zone. The first place we go psychologically is fear. Our brain tries to resist it because Adil Saleh 39:32 on default Kelly McGuire 39:33 we’re doing something different and that is scary. But your comfort zone will kill you. And that’s a very dramatic way of saying it, but the other 50% of me is Italian, so there you go, that’s my drama side. And I say that because if you don’t step outside of your comfort zone and embrace that fear zone and work through that little fear and grab that bravery that takes one second to be, it takes one second to be brave and then you’re done with whatever that is. And again, I caveat this with, if you’re an open heart surgeon, don’t take risks. There are certain people that this does not apply to. But for us in CS and for people in tech and for people in leadership, step outside of your comfort zone because that’s where you learn and you grow. Once you work through the fear and you learn and you grow, and I live in that place. I was just on with my CFO. We were talking about how him and his team are embracing AI in certain areas and I was picking his brain because I wanna learn more and I want to do more on my side. I’m not perfect. I need to grow. And I think having that balance of humility while also understanding your worth and your value. A lot of VP, CS, a lot of people in my role, my hope is in the next five, ten years we’re the CEOs and COOs. We’re the future business owners and leaders in the room, so to speak. And what I’ll say to any woman in the room is, don’t fight us for the seat at the table. Kick someone else out and take another one. I’ve worked with a lot of really wonderful female leaders in my career and I’ve worked with some not really great female leaders, and that can apply for anybody. But a lot of that is about competition, and we don’t need to compete with each other like the world tells us to, but we need to stop because there’s no point in that. and so for me i think Adil Saleh 41:18 Comparison and competition, actually it’s counterproductive. Kelly McGuire 41:22 It is. Right. So for me, I embrace my comfort zone. I encourage people to do that as well. And I am always happy to help people see how to do that and work through that. It’s something that I do with a lot of people kind of in and outside of my professional network, coach them through those moments, because I know it’s not easy. But then once you do, you’re through it. And again, you learn. Failure is not fatal. Again, unless we’re a heart surgeon, different story. But in life, for the most part, failure’s not fatal. We learn. Adil Saleh 41:55 Yeah we learn. I love this story that Bill Smith brought up, his experience of skydiving, and he said on the maximum point of fear, you hit happiness when he was out and he was jumping out of the plane. And at one point he was like, of course it was scary. And when he shot that video and I was watching him, because I’m planning for skydiving next year too, he then explained that he did, I cannot explain the amount of happiness it hit at the maximum stage of fear. Kelly McGuire 42:32 Yeah, because you’re realizing new things. You’re stepping out of your comfort zone and you’re experiencing something for the first time. I think people who stay in their comfort zone their whole life, that’s sad to me, because I’m just like, what are you not experiencing because you’re afraid of trying? And again, there’s exceptions to every rule, but if you follow that rule, to me, especially in life and in business, it allows you more good things than not, especially in those moments where you fail because you’re gonna learn. Adil Saleh 43:04 Yeah, you learn. You never try, that’s what Twista, Smart, and Cole say. You never know until you try. So you gotta try and you gotta go first and you gotta experience and take it as an experience, whether it’s a failure or success. So Kelly, it was really inspiring, insightful conversation. I love the energy. It was pretty infectious, just like your name. Thank you very much for giving the time and sharing all this, all these interesting facts and your stories and being so concrete about it. It was so epic. Kelly McGuire 43:40 Sure. It was great to meet you and best of luck with everything. Looking forward to seeing how this comes out, and good luck with the little one. Adil Saleh 43:46 Sure. Thank you very much. God bless. Kelly McGuire 43:48 All right, I’ll talk to you soon. Bye-bye. Outro 43:51 Thank you very much for listening to Across the Funnel. If you got one useful GTM idea out of this show today, please share this with a teammate and hit follow. Explore Hyperengage at hyperengage.io and Dextego at dextego.com.