Robert Clarkson on this episode
Robert Clarkson, Chief Revenue Officer for SMB and Clover at Fiserv, has spent his career running revenue at companies that process payments at scale. He was instrumental in PayPal's journey to going public from eBay, ran the Americas for Stripe, and led Payoneer before joining Fiserv, which moves $4.6 trillion in payment volume annually. Across all of these organizations, Clarkson has consistently pursued the same thesis about sustainable growth.
The most obvious growth lever—acquiring new logos—is the one Clarkson spends the least time optimizing. Instead, he focuses on two other growth mechanisms that compound far more effectively: ensuring existing customers extract real value from what they've bought (same-store sales), and expanding into new products and use cases that solve adjacent customer problems. His model hinges on measuring sales teams not by what they sold, but by whether customers actually achieved their intended outcomes.
The reframe is radical: most revenue organizations judge sales performance on transactions closed, while Clarkson embeds customer success metrics directly into sales compensation. At one company growing 16-19% annually, he reorganized around customer satisfaction and solution-stacking rather than payment volume alone. The result: growth jumped to 26% the first year and never dropped below 30% thereafter. This wasn't incremental improvement—it was a complete reimagining of how the business creates value.
The episode walks through Clarkson's repeatable model: how he assesses brand recognition and removes barriers to entry, splits teams into hunters (pursuing new logos) and growers (deepening accounts), and why net dollar retention must exceed 100%. Listeners will learn why he accepts almost any customer acquisition cost as long as customer lifetime value holds up, and how AI enables small businesses to access the kind of analytical horsepower that enterprises take for granted.
What we cover in this episode
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1:37
The three growth levers New logos are the most obvious, but same-store sales and expansion into new use cases drive sustainable growth.
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4:53
Mosaic versus quilt strategy Fiserv inherited multiple acquired companies with separate growth strategies; integrating them requires showing customers the complete picture, not isolated tiles.
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13:21
Democratizing enterprise analytics for SMB AI and payment data enable small businesses to access the same analytical insights that enterprises use, from inventory optimization to demand forecasting.
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27:36
Customer success in sales compensation Embedding customer outcome metrics into sales comp plans aligns incentives so salespeople focus on customer success, not just transaction volume.
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32:23
Net dollar retention above 100% Growth investments must create expansion revenue from existing customers; if customers are growing, your base revenue growth becomes a head start, not a hurdle.
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40:19
Hunters and growers team split Separate sales roles: hunters acquire new logos, growers deepen accounts and drive adoption of features customers already own but don't use.
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46:38
From 16-19% to 26% to 30%+ growth Shifting from payment-company positioning to solutions organization and embedding customer success analytics drove explosive, sustained acceleration.
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49:28
10X thinking versus incremental optimization Uber and Netflix examples: solve the actual customer problem, not a better version of the old mechanism; technology and AI enable radical solutions.
The lines worth sharing
My job is to make other people successful. And those other people are a wide ranging group: my customer base, my coworkers, senior leadership, and ultimately the shareholder.
Robert Clarkson · 4:29
I sell to you a product; I sell with you the downstream benefit to your consumers. That's the difference between a transactional sale and a true growth lever.
Robert Clarkson · 29:54
Net dollar retention needs to be over 100%. If your growth rate is already 10% from customer expansion, you only need 10% more in new logos to reach 20%.
Robert Clarkson · 33:13
Uber didn't build a better taxi. Netflix didn't optimize VHS. They solved the actual problem: I want to get from A to B, I want to watch a movie.
Robert Clarkson · 49:28
Common questions from this episode
What are the three growth levers every CRO should optimize?
New logos (customer acquisition), same-store sales (ensuring existing customers extract full value from their purchase), and expansion into new products and use cases. Clarkson spends the least time on new logos because the other two compound more reliably and sustainably.
How do you measure sales performance if not by revenue closed?
Embed customer success metrics into sales compensation plans. Measure whether customers achieved their intended outcomes and grew their business as a result. This aligns the sales team with customer value creation, not just transaction volume.
Why does net dollar retention need to exceed 100%?
If existing customers are growing and expanding their use, your base revenue grows with them. This head start means you need far less new-logo growth to hit overall targets. Below 100%, you lose customers faster than you can replace them through new sales.
What's the difference between hunters and growers on a revenue team?
Hunters pursue new logos and take relationships from zero to one; growers deepen existing accounts, drive adoption of unused features, and expand into adjacent solutions. Both are critical, but require different skills and incentives.
How does Fiserv use AI to help small businesses compete with enterprises?
By embedding enterprise-grade analytics into Clover, SMBs can access real-time insights on sales patterns, inventory, and customer behavior from $4.6 trillion in annual payment volume. Small business owners get the same data-driven recommendations that 300-person analyst teams provide to Walmart.
What drove growth from 16-19% annually to 26% and then 30%+?
Repositioning from a payments company to a solutions organization. Instead of selling payment features, the team showed customers what their transaction data revealed about their business and recommended adjacent solutions like capital, payroll, and deposits—turning cash flow management, not payment processing, into the core value.
SEO meta description
Robert Clarkson, CRO at Fiserv, reveals how to grow beyond new logos by embedding customer success in sales comp and expanding existing accounts from 16% to 30%+ annually.
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Fiserv
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CRO strategy
net dollar retention
customer success sales compensation
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Read the full transcript · 58 KB · Robert Clarkson
EDDIE0:04Welcome to Go to Market. In this podcast, we share tangible, actionable playbooks from the trenches working as go to market strategy and rev ops consultants for our clients here at Union Square. Consulting and candid conversations with revenue leaders in the market that have been there. Now let's get into it.
RACHAEL0:23Today I'm talking with Robert Clarkson, chief revenue officer for SMB and Clover at Fiserv. Robert has spent his career running revenue at the companies that move money. He was on the leadership team that took PayPal public out from under eBay. He ran the Americas for stripe and led pioneer before that, before coming to Pfizer, where he's at today.
RACHAEL0:42Across all of them, he's carried the same idea about where real growth comes from, and it's not where most revenue works spend the majority of their time. Today we're getting into the model he runs company to company, and how he turns a business that grows in a straight line into one that's able to bend that curve. Thank you so much for joining me today, Robert.
ROBERT1:00Well, thank you for having me. This is great. I appreciate it.
RACHAEL1:02Excited to get to it. Yeah. So how do you, as a crow, tackle the issue of finding new growth beyond what the company is doing today, especially in companies like stripe, PayPal and Fiserv?
ROBERT1:15Well, I appreciate the question. And, you know, the
ROBERT1:19primary role of the chief revenue officer is not just to protect the current revenue, it is to grow the revenue. And so I always think of it in kind of three main work streams, right? One is and probably the most obvious is new accounts, new logos, new customers. Right.
ROBERT1:37And that's, you know, pretty well understood in the industry and almost every universally accepted as a growth lever. And for me that can take a number of different forms. It can be a digital acquisition. It could be face to face. It can be through marketing and self onboarding. So we can talk a little bit about that going forward.
ROBERT1:57But that's kind of the first pillar of growth and very well understood. And there's a lot of companies that that run that successfully. The second one though is what I call same store sales, same product, which is now that I have that new customer. Am I completely fulfilling what they they bought that service for in the first place?
ROBERT2:16In other words, what's their run rate? Is it meeting their expectations? I always try to make the accountability, our accountability to make them successful as opposed to just sell to them. Right. The the sale of the product or the service is just the beginning of the relationship. What really matters is are they using it as effectively as they originally envisioned or as was kind of described in the sales process?
ROBERT2:40And that to me is is really important. And I think a lot of companies judge their sales on what they sold, not necessarily what it meant to the customer. Right. So I really kind of index on that, that, that second piece. And then the third is new products, new industries, new geographies, new use cases. So those those sometimes referred to as cross-selling upsell.
ROBERT3:07But again it's all in the, the vein of of creating more value for that customer is there's the cross-sell and upsell almost talks about more like product placement. But for me it's more like how do we further invest in that customer success? Because the one thing that is kind of universal in this business is a successful customer, is a loyal customer, and everything else should contribute to that.
ROBERT3:32So those are the those are the three main ways that I look at CRO position and growth in general.
RACHAEL3:40Absolutely. And I love that sentiment because, you know, we at USC work a lot with SaaS and recurring revenue companies. And we always say, like, if you're a recurring revenue business model, that revenue has to recur. So yeah, especially for especially for companies where you're you're handling other people's money and other businesses money, that product needs to be, you know, amazing and super trust for where the and be something that is helping that customer grow their business.
RACHAEL4:06And you know there's lots of competition out there. So yeah that is.
ROBERT4:10Completely wrong. In fact, you know, if I, if I were to wear a t shirt every day with my motto, it's my job is to make other people successful. And those other people are a wide ranging group. Obviously, it's my customer base. It's also my, my, my, my coworkers. It's senior leadership, and ultimately it's the shareholder as well.
ROBERT4:29So those are the folks that I'm trying to make successful. And my products, my services, my delivery, my post sales is all, you know towards that goal.
RACHAEL4:41And you've worked with some really impressive companies. I mean, you got PayPal stripe fi serve now. So tell me a bit about some of the challenges that you typically face coming into organizations like these.
ROBERT4:53It's really interesting because every organization that I worked with had a certain growth path prior to me getting there, right. They I wasn't Dave Wyman employee, one kind of person. So not true startups. So, you know, PayPal is a big organization. Stripe his big organization. Fi servers in a big organization as well. So they had a track record of growth.
ROBERT5:19And with that track record becomes kind of this embedded way of doing things. And so one of the toughest things to do as an incoming CRO is to identify what of those embedded practices are promoting growth. And what are those are just done because that's the way we always did it. And so it's interesting, you know, at PayPal, it was really combining the consumer value proposition and the merchant value proposition for for PayPal.
ROBERT5:53And how do I energize the consumer base to make sure that the my, the ultimate winner was, was, was my client, right. And the consumer. And so that was a very different trajectory at stripe, which is a very fast growing organization. It was about taking a a speeding train and making it go faster. And in that case it is about what else can we do be doing for our customers.
ROBERT6:21And in many cases, are there services that the customer is getting from somebody else that they could be getting from from us? And third, and probably one of the more fun challenges is Pfizer, because it's an enormous organization. It does $4.6 trillion in payment volume. So it's massive. It's bigger than the other two combined. And it is it is been a composite of multiple acquisitions over the years.
ROBERT6:50So now now not only do you have kind of these embedded growth strategies, but you have many embedded growth strategies. Because each one of these acquired companies actually has a method which made them grow originally and obviously move the business forward. And now you're not only trying to take all the best practices from each one of those individually, but then meld them in together to a kind of a go to market strategy that one the business can understand and to the customers can understand.
ROBERT7:18Because I often equate it to it's like you're either a quilt or a mosaic. If you're a quilt, each one of you, each one of the squares provides value. But but they're still individual squares kind of doing their own thing. If you're a mosaic, all the all the pieces provide value. But if you step back far enough, you actually see an entirely different picture.
ROBERT7:43And so my job in many cases, especially with with a successful organization like Fiserv and Clover, is if you're if the customers are too close to it, all they see is is the tile in front of them. My job is to make sure they're aware of the entire picture, and in many cases, that means stepping back and showing what the end result needs to be, not necessarily feature benefit of that particular product.
ROBERT8:08So it really makes it a great challenge. And of course, all three of those organizations are very global. And so operating in multiple multiple countries, multiple jurisdictions, you have regulatory components, you have consumer behavior, small business behavior. So those are the other things that add, let's say avenues of growth but also challenges to overcome.
RACHAEL8:32And were those would you say like mosaic pieces of these different companies that you worked for? Were they were those pieces in place when you already joined, or were they things that you had to build during your time there?
ROBERT8:44It's really interesting. So there's always an infrastructure available there, but in many cases there are gaps between those tiles of the mosaic and and so building that becomes really critical. It is it is the in some cases it's a go to market strategy. It's a marketing strategy. It's a client onboarding strategy. It's a solutions architect or a sales engineer strategy that takes what a customer bought and translate that into something in their environment that that works efficiently, effectively and drives change and drives the results they're looking for.
ROBERT9:21So in many cases I actually had to build components of the business. So for example, and PayPal was an entirely unique merchant marketing business. So we had we had to literally market to merchants to make sure that they understood the value proposition that we were bringing to the table at stripe. It was a mid-market strategy stripe at a at a small business kind of called startup and had an enterprise motion.
ROBERT9:53But between the two is this this kind of big, fertile ground of, of mid-market. And what you never wanted to do was a small customers to grow and be successful and then run out of room until they became, you know, some gigantic enterprise. So you wanted to make sure that there was a there was always a, a path forward for your customer, no matter where they were or their growth rate.
ROBERT10:15And at five, serve again, it's if I serve in clover, it's it's about payment processing in point of sale is is one strategy. But but customers shop omnidirectional right. So you shop online you order ahead. You buy things and then you pick them up in store. You buy things in your return them in store. You may have a, in a restaurant for for example, your menu changes.
ROBERT10:44So how am I keeping up with that from a from a business standpoint. And again, there are other services that businesses require. So it might be payroll, it might be capital, it might be access to additional funds, other software commitments that they have. So you know my my job now is to make sure that I'm not just looking for the well-being of, of my product within that, that, that merchant, but actually all products that touch mine.
ROBERT11:12And, and, you know, one of the things I, I always think about is how close are you to being the operating system of that organization? And, you know, people have often asked me, well, where do you draw the line between an enterprise and a small business? Right. Like, what is it? Is it revenues? Is it employees? Is it number of locations?
ROBERT11:32It could be all these kind of things. Right. But for me the main difference is an enterprise. You build and sell exactly what they want. But in SMB you build for what they need. And in many cases, an SNB doesn't have the resources to evaluate all their options. So they're looking for someone like us at Clover and Pfizer to make sure that we provide for them.
ROBERT11:59Here's a model for success. It's been used millions of times around the world. And this this is what works. And by the way, these are the things there's a small business person you're probably going to be challenged with. So here are some options to to meet those challenges. And and to me that's that's a wonderful puzzle to put together because it's always changing.
ROBERT12:17And the opportunities for SMEs are are always changing. And you know, when you when you look at SMEs you tend to think they're there. Their needs are small, their impact is small because they're relatively small businesses. But 89% of the new jobs created over the last two years were by small businesses. So yes, the Walmarts of the world hire 2 million people, and Amazon has millions of people and McDonald's hires millions of people.
ROBERT12:46But when you're looking at real job creation and what drives the economy, it's actually SMB.
RACHAEL12:51So it was just basically being able to proactively anticipate the needs of your customers and already have those products and services and connective tissues in place so that you can serve them when that need eventually does arrive and they don't have to shop around and find something else.
RACHAEL13:05So how do you once, once you have those things in place, those mosaic pieces in place? How do you then, as you said, zoom out or help the customer zoom out to see the different pieces that they can connect to and then expand as an account?
ROBERT13:21Well, actually, it's a really good question. And in fact, you know, it wouldn't be a podcast discussion if we didn't bring up AI at least once. So here we go.
ROBERT13:29I think AI is making a big impact in that space, because there's a lot of data that comes through these systems, right? So purchase data. You have time data.
ROBERT13:38You have customer data like all these things come through through payments. That's why payments is really the the oil that that that moves economy. Right. They have to exchange value. So
ROBERT13:49Small businesses traditionally don't have the analytics or the analysts to to be able to plow through that kind of data. They're really worried about the features. They're selling the hats. They're selling the sneakers. They're selling the air conditioners. They're servicing the pools. They're working out like they they have their day to day tasks. So what we're really helping them see and and instrument for is what are the things this small business should know in order to be successful.
ROBERT14:18And what have we learned by serving millions of small businesses that we know are kind of universal truth for businesses? So now we can start to take the
ROBERT14:27analytics and the intuitiveness of AI, place it upon our data, and then drive either recommendations or observations for SMEs to make a decision on. And so no one worries that Walmart can't handle its data, because Walmart has 300 analysts and probably, you know, 300 more that do nothing but but literally derive insights from the data of that that Walmart hits every, every second.
ROBERT14:57Well, small businesses certainly don't have that right. They are in many cases, they are a subject matter expert on their subject, and everything else needs to be kind of augmented around them. And so what I really like about what we're doing is
ROBERT15:11putting together these insights for small businesses, which would be the same tools that an enterprise organization would have.
ROBERT15:18Only we're bringing it down to an sub. So now, you know, a a small runner store can keep up with the biggest department stores because they know exactly what's selling. They know what's working, they know they can. Whether you can incorporate events, all those kind of things are in there. They're they're operating system so that they know when they should have sales, when they should have promotions, when they're selling things, when they're not.
ROBERT15:42And, you know, that's something that, you know, the big department store is big, big chains have in droves those those kind of those kind of that kind of access to to, to to data. But when it comes to SMEs, I want to give them the same fighting chance. I want to democratize that kind of horsepower for for business success right down to the smallest organization.
RACHAEL16:05And that AI component. Is that something you need to serve that you've been working on, or is that something that you've tried to do in the past with stripe and PayPal?
ROBERT16:13Well, I think it is. Clearly everybody has a path forward on that and and everybody's using it. I think what really boils down the differentiator in many cases, and they all have so, so AI certainly is ubiquitous now in marketplace. Its application might be different, right? Some people are using it for coding. Some people are using it for marketing.
ROBERT16:34Some people are using it for customer service. Like there could be different applications of of that technology. And certainly the the technology itself is evolving very, very quickly. But I will say that the one thing that either.
ROBERT16:48Creates more value from using AI or limits the value of using II, is the access to the data. And so one of the things that that I think makes payment systems in general very successful using AI and certainly now at Pfizer and Clover, like I said, we do $4.6 trillion a year in, in, in payment volume coming through it.
ROBERT17:12So there's a lot of best practices out there. And that data can be used to channel what's really resonating in the industry versus what's a kind of a one time event. And so, you know, we and I part about AI can homogenize the data. So it's not merchant specific, but you can use it for benchmarking. You can use it for what would it be like if I opened up a second or second office here or a second restaurant there?
ROBERT17:39Those are the kind of things that we can provide, because we literally see in anywhere between 12 and 100,000 transactions a second, which is a lot of transactions.
RACHAEL17:54That is a lot. I can't even imagine that volume.
ROBERT17:56Well, what it this way if you're so we we do a lot of payments for NFL stadiums. So NFL stadiums is very quiet until they're not quiet which is timeouts and they're quarter end of half. So so you have
ROBERT18:1595,000 people who are all making the same decision at the same time, which is now I'm going to go get my pretzel.
ROBERT18:21Now I'm going to go get my beer. Now I want to go get my hot dogs. Well, it doesn't happen in a nice linear fashion. It's everybody's quiet. Yeah. Everybody runs to the concessionaires. Everybody gets back on their seats. So it's that kind of capacity that you really have to understand. An AI makes this more possible. What is the traffic flow?
ROBERT18:40What is the pattern for this? How many people buy before the game? How many people buy during the game? How many people get up in the middle of a quarter like should I? What should I be prepared for at the halftime versus the quarter? Like, those are the kind of things that are super fun to solve and make a big difference.
RACHAEL18:55And I mean, it's been, oh, probably a decade since I have really used things like stripe and PayPal in my day to day like business dealings. So I didn't even realize that companies like these were expanding into software like this and like technology where it's not it's really just not only a payment service, like it's a whole business operation service telling you like when you should put sales on.
RACHAEL19:21That's crazy. I had no idea that that's the direction these companies were going in. But I guess that's what it takes to, you know, keep expanding and keep scaling at a higher and higher rate instead of just going in that linear fashion. As the world keeps changing and as technology keeps changing, you have to stay competitive.
ROBERT19:38Absolutely. I every transaction is its own ecosystem. There was a reason for the transaction.
ROBERT19:44There was a reason for the next transaction, and there's subsequent transactions that might, may or may not occur. I have a good friend and she runs a kind of a bridal boutique. Right. And and she's the one that kind of taught me that when somebody gets engaged, it kicks off an entire chain of future events.
ROBERT20:06Right? Yeah. It's theaters, it's weddings, it's locations, it's food. It's, you know, honeymoons and gifts and, and and it all starts with, like, literally one bended knee. Right? So, so if you're at the front end of that, you have great predictability as to, well, I know the next 12 things that are going to happen. I don't exactly know when they're going to happen, but I know they're going to happen.
ROBERT20:31And here's how it goes. So and essentially every transaction in payments is it's all its own little microcosm of that. Right. It it's now it kicks off delivery. Now this off uses. Is this a is this a product you buy again and again. Is this more like a subscription or is it a one time event that needs maintenance?
ROBERT20:49Like there could be all kind of insights that are driven off of payments. Now I'm a total payment nerd and I, I think about this stuff 24 hours a day. But but that's why payments companies have such a wide view on organizations. Because it's not just what you're doing today. It's all the things downstream that that can turn into.
RACHAEL21:11That is so cool. Yeah, that's such a good takeaway for, you know, so pretty much any other software tech company out there, people listening to this like
RACHAEL21:20opening your mind and thinking outside of the box to like all those different steps that happen around the one thing that your company does and the wrong one problem that your company solves for like that problem doesn't exist in a vacuum.
RACHAEL21:32There's like so many other things going on in your ICP or buyer personas, day to day life surrounding that problem. Like how can you think about that and and use that knowledge to expand what your company does to help them even further beyond that initial problem that you solve for? I think.
ROBERT21:49That's well, you're right. And I know this can go in multiple directions, but I always say that people don't buy products. They buy outcomes. Right? So you're buying a thing to solve a thing, or you're buying a service to solve a thing, and that thing might be growth or it might be risk reduction or whatever. Right. There could be millions of outcomes.
ROBERT22:10But good companies, and certainly the ones I've worked for in five Serve and Clover and all the others really go work very hard to understand the outcomes because that's when you go, you move from payments to something much more for organizations because you're actually solving for desired or even unstated outcomes that they're looking for. And for me, that's the difference between, you know, sales and and true growth levers.
RACHAEL22:42Everything we talk about on this show. Diagnosing go to market ops. Prioritizing projects for revenue. Impact processes. Metrics. Insights. Building a predictable go to market engine. We've built frameworks for all of it. They're free and undated on our website. Union square consulting frameworks. The link will also be in the show notes, so make sure you check that out.
RACHAEL23:03All right. Back to the episode.
RACHAEL23:06So you've you've taken this idea of expanding a company's product and services beyond the initial outcome that they solve and into other outcomes that are surrounding that problem, into a model that you've carried from company to company. How can you walk us through that model and what's repeatable parts of it have been?
ROBERT23:27It's a really good question because at the end of the day, it's not only about great products and even a great need. There is an execution element to this. And so one of the kind of tools that I bring with me all the time is first.
ROBERT23:42How are customers recognizing what we do? And do they understand what we do and do we they understand the value that we're providing. Right. So, you know, that's more than just marketing. That's more than just sales brochures and events and things like that. That is is how does your brand and your reputation resonate with that customer so that you can you can start to leverage that.
ROBERT24:06Right. Because one of the most important things that that everybody should be building, customer or, or supplier is, is a good brand, right? So that's one I always make kind of a brand assessment. Two, I look at
ROBERT24:20what are the barriers to entry for a customer to do business with me? One of the things that I always feel like I need to solve for is shrinking the distance between want and have with the customer.
ROBERT24:33They they want this particular outcome. And I have this stuff. How do I put those things together as quickly as possible? And for me that's all about what's the onboarding process look like? What is the integration process look like? What's the ongoing monitoring process look like. So I a little bit more mechanical, but it's super important and relevant to customers because at the end of the day, they don't know how your product works as well as you do.
ROBERT24:59So it's kind of your responsibility to make sure it it lands and it's up and running. And the third is the ongoing iteration. Like, how am I learned more and more about customer? The customer need every day. And I'll tell you, I have a couple of rules. And I think it's kind of born out of a mile of paranoia that I have, which is I'm always worried that that I'm not hearing good ideas.
ROBERT25:26Right, that there are ideas out there in the organization that that could could have a meaningful impact on our, our customer base. And for some reason, the person the person doesn't feel empowered to say it or it gets buried in the bureaucracy. So I do a lot of skip levels. I also have a standing kind of operational cadence in any meeting that I'm in, which is once you're in the meeting, there is no rank.
ROBERT25:56Like everybody's exactly the same rank. And I try to get folks like if my leadership meetings, I want them to bring somebody on their leadership team as well, or one of their salespeople in to represent, you know, a more customer centered viewpoint. Because there's this I remember my rule of five, like five things happen to a salesperson before they go to their manager, positive or negative.
ROBERT26:23And then five things happen to that manager before they go to their regional director or sales leader or whatever, VP. And then five more times before it gets to me. So in many cases, it can happen 125 times either 125 times I've missed an opportunity to do something or 125 times I've done something that wasn't additive. And I need I need it.
ROBERT26:44I need to cut that number way, way down. Right. And so by having this kind of skip level, always accessibility kind of let's say flattening the organization in terms of, of of communication, it really goes a long way to trim errors and, and create and create opportunities where there were, where before it was kind of just glossed over.
RACHAEL27:11And so how do you translate that into ensuring that your salespeople, your marketing people, all the different teams that you have connected to revenue in your organization or
RACHAEL27:24working towards this same goal of, you know, growing this customer base and expanding them and getting them deeper and deeper into this ecosystem of what your company delivers.
ROBERT27:36Well, it's really interesting. One of the things I've always done when I get to an organization is
ROBERT27:41look at the compensation plan of the salespeople, and I think in 100% of the cases that I've always come into, the conversation plan is very well thought out. Right? It's it's it's optimizing for either new logos or revenue or transactions or whatever it is, like it.
ROBERT28:02And it's very well thought out in terms of
ROBERT28:05what's the metric that senior leadership, CEO, CFO, CRO is looking for? And then and then
ROBERT28:11What is the compensation plan energizing the sales force around to do?
ROBERT28:15I've always felt that there's one flaw in that model, which is,
ROBERT28:19is the customer succeeding, like, is the customer's business growing, and is the customer getting at least as much benefit as they thought they would, if not more so?
ROBERT28:31I've always tried to introduce into the compensation plan a certain measure of customer success. So typically in an organization there's maybe even a customer success organization. But in the comp plan, a piece of the compensation for the sales person is does is the customer using it effectively? Is the customer's business getting the results out of that product or service?
ROBERT28:57Are they did they open a new country? Did they appeal to a new demographic? Are they making more sales after 5:00? Like there can be things that they they wanted in this sale as part of the buying criteria. And are those things actually happening? So I actually have a feedback loop from customers that runs back through the compensation plan to say, part of your success isn't us selling to the customer, it's actually the customer benefiting from it.
ROBERT29:23And I think there's in many organizations, I call it the difference between sell two and sell width, right? I sell you I sell to you a product I sell with you. The downstream benefit of that to your consumers or your B2B customers or whoever you're selling to. And, you know, it's not only very successful within kind of a B2C organization or B2B to see, but I also a huge proponent of a distribution channel.
ROBERT29:54So think of ISDs or SaaS platforms or independent sales organizations or channel partners or, you know, other financial institutions that you work with. So again, it's not just what we sold to them, it's what's their effectiveness and selling that to their ultimate customer. Because because if there's one statistic that that that the Trumps all others in terms of its importance, it's is your customer benefiting from your products.
ROBERT30:22If that's the case, then I would go into my other kind of axiom for businesses. There's three categories of customer engagement. There's convenience, there's relevance and significance. Convenience is my product works and it's fairly price. So you buy it. But that's about it. Like it just does a good thing and you're happy with it. Relevance is it actually expands your business somehow.
ROBERT30:50It augments your systems, your progress, your service, your ability to talk to your customers, to to resonate with your ultimate customers or consumers. And that's that's important as well. Now you're becoming more relevant to their business model. And the third one is significant. Like if my business helps you do business in other countries or helps you sell
ROBERT31:13LTV long term value to your customers, now all of a sudden we're building this thing together. And my ultimate goal is always to get to kind of that significant relationship. Now, some customers, you're kind of held at a distance and it's a supplier vendor relationship, and that's fine. But you still should be working towards that same goal of am I actually making a positive impact because you never want to be commoditized because then it's it's it's like the water, like, I can buy the water from here.
ROBERT31:43I can buy the water from here. You never want to be the electric company because, you know, I got solar, I got wind, I got hydroelectric, or you no gas fired. And it's all electricity when it gets to my house. So it's whoever gives me the best price. But if. If what I'm actually buying from you helps my business or helps my customers, then not now.
ROBERT32:05I have an entirely different relationship.
RACHAEL32:07And how do you. What's your playbook on expansion? What's your model for your your salespeople and for your your service people in finding ways to expand into these other areas that you could help customers?
ROBERT32:23Yeah, it's it's really interesting because in fact, I literally had this conversation this morning with my team.
ROBERT32:29I think the traditional sense of retention is
ROBERT32:34you have 100 clients, and how many next year do you have? Do you have those same 100. And in revenue? Revenue retention is typically thought of that way too. And then you have a growth layer on top of it.
ROBERT32:45But you know, you did $100 million in sales and next year. What did you retain, $100 million? I turn that around a little bit. And I've learned this kind of over the years and working with great companies, net dollar retention needs to be over 100%. In other words, the expectation is that the because we're we're we're we're fostering customer growth.
ROBERT33:13What they bought at $100, you know, last year should be 112 this year, 114 this year. And and so it's really important to invest in your customer relationship. Because if your growth rate is already 10%, because your customers are growing at 10% now to get to 20%, all you have to do is come up with another 10%, right?
ROBERT33:35Or 8% if I get to get to 18, if if I'm really in a traditional retention algorithm now, it's like I started 100% or lower and I have to make all that up. Plus what I wanted to get from my growth rate. And I think that's a that's an entirely different business model. And so you really have to to invest in the relationship with your customers because again, you know, I, I serve everything from the smallest startups and SMEs to the biggest companies in the world.
ROBERT34:08And throughout my career, I've had those as my customer base, my almost my whole my whole journey. The, the one thing that is, is critical about those is they are all looking for year over year growth and obviously my success being a byproduct of their success. I have to I have to fertilize that, that that growth vector in their business so that it will apply to mine.
ROBERT34:39And if I can do that, I wake up on January 1st with with 10% growth, and then I do all of my other stuff to get to get better than that. And, you know, whether you want the rule of 40, the rule of 50, the rule of 60 to rule 20, whatever it is like, it's all made easier if your clients are growing.
RACHAEL34:57Do you ever have you have you ever had a situation where, let's say, product or service is getting or let's say, let's say customer success is getting feedback about the product or service, and that gets to product. And then they're able to, you know, create something that solves the issue that customer success is seeing. And then you have sales getting feedback from product that, okay, we have this new thing and now go and expand other customers and get them onto this new thing is that does that happen commonly?
RACHAEL35:28Is that.
ROBERT35:29It does. In fact, I've told the story many times, but my grandmother gave me the best advice, which is you have two years in one mouth and you should use them in that ratio. And so being a crow, I am my team and I are the listening post for the organization, and we are never going to be smarter than the than the composite of our combined customers.
ROBERT35:55Right? It just it just can't happen. I don't care how good we are, we're not as good as millions of customers. Right? And so to me that feedback loop is incredibly important. And now it's interesting because you get a lot of feedback from customers. Right. And they all have different problems to solve or different challenges or different opportunities.
ROBERT36:18So so the feedback is,
ROBERT36:20A lot of sound coming through. What, what our job is, is to, to to take those that that
ROBERT36:27cacophony of sounds and turn it into an actionable, prioritized, prioritized list of, of actions. And so sometimes you prioritize based on urgency. Sometimes you're based in on Tam, like there can be other things in there. But the the important part is, is that you're always listening for it.
ROBERT36:48And I will say that, you know, that is another area where AI is helping because it can listen to phone calls, it can read emails, it can infer from millions of interactions between us and our clients. What are the patterns that are developing? What is because I'll get a version of it and my peers will get a version of it, and my my team leads will get a version of it.
ROBERT37:11But you know, well designed AI can easily cut through that, that can get to the true signal much more quickly and adapt to new information all the time. So I never want to take it out of the hands of salespeople in terms of the listening. But the, the,
ROBERT37:37collection
ROBERT37:38driving insights can be now offloaded to, to AI and then and then counter checked by by someone who makes sure it's reasonable and my, my my relationship with product finance, risk and legal is equally important because at the end of the day, I have to make recommendations for the business that can be, you know, contracted and regulatory compliant.
ROBERT38:05Doesn't an undue burden of risk or compliance to the organization or, by the way, you know, there are always finite resources in in engineering. Now maybe again AI has Claude and others have have helped expand the capacity. But there's still a finite version. So you still have to prioritize. But that's that's where being a collaborative partner in the business, as opposed to just a mouthpiece of customer desire is a big difference.
RACHAEL38:38switching gears a bit into analytics and metrics and stuff. How do you know that your expansion strategy is actually working before the revenue shows up? Depending on the length of your sales cycle or how long it takes people to adopt? Right. What kind of leading indicators are you typically watching?
ROBERT38:54For
ROBERT38:55a number of things. One is.
ROBERT38:57Two way communication with customers is is important. And so if they're engaged with you. So in the sales process it might be what actions have they taken. Have a if they looked at your material have they inquired about functionality or you know, opportunity for expansion whatever it is. So that's relatively obvious. But if you get a layer deeper you get to
ROBERT39:25am I providing.
ROBERT39:27Benchmarks to the customer that they can aim for? In other words?
ROBERT39:30Am I giving them a North Star, or am I selling them a product like I think successful organizations can foster that sense of possibility over preservation. In other words, like what's possible here? Let's, let's, let's solve for the thing that we initially kind of engaged upon in terms of a dialog and potential problem solving.
ROBERT39:54But
ROBERT39:55how quickly can I take that conversation into more of a company wide integration? Right. So whether it's again, kind of moving between convenience, relevance and significance. How quickly can we get there? That's one. The other is I think I always had two groups of folks. You have to call them hunter farmers. I call them hunter growers.
ROBERT40:19If people are out there going after new logos and their their area of expertise is is taking the relationship from 0 to 1, right. They weren't a customer before another customer. And that is a, you know, a tried and true sales expertise. And people kind of understand it. But but the growers, the folks who actually take those accounts once they're in and kind of set up and running are now much more consultative.
ROBERT40:47They are they are really trying to deeply understand what these customers outcomes need to be. And so for me, that's another leading indicator, which is how is that transition from your customer to now your, your, your you're kind of
ROBERT41:05An organization that has multiple needs that we're addressing as opposed to a purchaser of a product and, and that dialog, and I'll show you where it will manifest itself. So we we have a software, we have dashboards. We have, you know, ways to interact with with both Clover and five serve. I can see whether a customer is we're they're using our software.
ROBERT41:30What they're inquiring on, what they may be are missing in that software or functionality that they could be using. And my, my grower team's responsibility is to reach out to that customer and say, hey, I noticed you were doing all this cool stuff on the software. Do you know what does these other things not in pursuit of a sale because they've already bought the product, but in pursuit of engagement and kind of that, that value finding within within the things that they already own.
ROBERT41:59I, I often say that if you if you sell a customer a product that does six things and they're not using six things, they're getting that sixth one from somebody else, and therefore somebody else is talking about my customer about something I could help them with. And so I, I again, that kind of healthy paranoia is our customers getting the full value out of the feature set that we're providing for them.
ROBERT42:27And are they gaining the insights to grow their business? Because if they're not and we could be doing better, then we should be doing better.
RACHAEL42:36I like that it's like going to the intersection of value and adoption signals and product whitespace. So like where where is it that you have a product that can be helping them that they're not using? And also are they giving signals that they are already finding value in the company and what they're getting and they've already adopting it.
RACHAEL42:58That creates like the perfect storm of like you like us, you are using our product, but you're not getting everything that you could be getting out of it, right?
ROBERT43:06And, you know, it's it's it's like you, you buy a car and you know how to drive it, but do you know all the things it does? Do you know how to preset the stages? Do you know how to make sure that defaults to Apple Music versus Spotify or Spotify versus Apple? Like there's there's a kind of fine tuning to make to the car then becomes less
ROBERT43:30the piece of equipment you bought and more a reflection of you.
ROBERT43:34And that's how I want my products to be. I want them, I want my products to be a reflection of my customers usage of it, not my kind of preordained path that will go down for usage. And I think that's a that's a huge differentiator. And and all the while, taking friction out of the process to make sure that an SMB who doesn't have the time to devote 73 hours to understanding your software, it's intuitive, it's empathetic to what they're looking for.
ROBERT44:03And it's and it's very easy to use or make changes to.
RACHAEL44:06Yeah, well, we're coming up on the hour here. Do you have a little bit more time to go over for one last question?
ROBERT44:13Absolutely.
RACHAEL44:14Awesome. Okay. This is the last one I had for you, but I it's one of my favorite ones in the list here.
ROBERT44:19I don't want to miss it then.
RACHAEL44:21Yeah. What go to market transformation are you most proud of and what was the growth rate like before you got there and after you transformed it?
ROBERT44:31The overemphasis on what are we selling to the client versus what benefit is the client kidding. And here's, here's, here's kind of the mantra that that overshadows that, which is everybody knows the cat versus LTV cost of acquisition versus long term value. And and everybody tries to balance it. But for me, I am less concerned about CEC if the LTV is healthy and growing.
ROBERT45:03And so
ROBERT45:04earlier in my career, I was very concerned about
ROBERT45:08finding a customer
ROBERT45:10at the optimal price
ROBERT45:12and therefore
ROBERT45:13delivering the LP that the product did.
ROBERT45:16What I was really doing was severely restricting the kind of customer that could benefit from my product, because I was worried about the cost of acquisition more than I was worried about the long term value.
ROBERT45:30And when I think of long term value, I think of their long term value, because that that essentially is my long term value as well. And so again, I,
ROBERT45:40sit through many meetings where we talk about marketing expense, and we talk about the cost of acquisition and the various channels for acquisition, whether it's it's search or it's Facebook or, you know, obviously there's there's TV, there's ad, there's print, there's there's sports marketing, there's all kinds of things you can do.
ROBERT45:58what I want to make sure is that at any CCaC,
ROBERT46:01I can create a LTV that justifies it. So now I'm not just
ROBERT46:06looking for the customers who are less expensive to get, but looking for the customers who will get the most benefit and use my product most kind of holistically. And I think that's been a game changer for
ROBERT46:20I'm not the only one who thinks that way.
ROBERT46:22But I will tell you that
ROBERT46:23several years ago, a few years ago, I was pretty rare in that.
RACHAEL46:28And is there a specific example at one of the companies you've been at where you implemented that? And it's absolutely changed the growth rate of the company.
ROBERT46:38it's kind of an insightful question because a company that I work for in the past basically had a growth rate between 16 and 19% for the prior three years, right?
ROBERT46:48So it's like 16, 17, 19% or whatever it is.
ROBERT46:52we came in
ROBERT46:53organized around.
ROBERT46:54Not just customer acquisition but full customer satisfaction. And by that I meant.
ROBERT47:00Is every use case for our product and service being utilized by by our customer base. And in fact, it wasn't the case. It was. They were we were seen as a payments company and not necessarily as a solutions organization. So we immediately implemented kind of this this dashboard approach, which is here's here's what your transactions are. But at the end of the day, here's what those transactions are telling me about your business.
ROBERT47:29And therefore here are some suggested other alternatives. And it's it's it's
ROBERT47:34Clover Capital. It could be, you know, rapid redemption. And there's, there's rapid deposit. There's there's other things that fit around that. And all of a sudden now you're talking about cash flow for an organization rather than just payments. And so the difference is 16 and 19% versus in that in that particular instance, the first year was 26% growth.
ROBERT47:58And I never had a year under 30 after that. So it's it's not just incrementally better. It's it's revolutionary better. And I had a long time ago and she used to tell me the worst insult she had for you, if she was really mad at you, was you're thinking like an incremental list. In other words, you're you're thinking that you have 100 and you need to get to 110 as opposed to you have 100.
ROBERT48:22And what do you take? How does he get to 1000? How do you get to a million? And so if if she called you an incremental list, you, you, you, you better go back and rejigger your thinking because you were thinking too small. And so this was a perfect example of payments are one thing, but all the things that make a business successful are an entirely different one.
ROBERT48:42And it changed that. Your growth trajectory from 16 to 90% to 26 and then 30%. And to me, that was that was kind of taking customer centricity to the forefront.
RACHAEL48:56It's like the concept of ten X is easier than two x. I think there's a book out there that I, series CEO Eddie, has been reading and really likes the idea that it's it's actually easier to ten x
RACHAEL49:08your company revenue or how much money you're making than it is to just to exit, because if you're in A2X, it just means you're trying to do double of what you're currently doing, which can be really, really hard.
RACHAEL49:16But ten x, like, there's no way you could do ten times the amount of what you're currently doing. You have to completely think outside of the box and completely transform what you're doing to reach that ten x number.
ROBERT49:28I would say this, and this is kind of one of my favorite examples, like
ROBERT49:32I've worked with with Uber over many years. Right. And there have been a great partner for for us.
ROBERT49:39love the way that Uber solves the problem.
ROBERT49:42before over
ROBERT49:43you and I would try to hail a cab. It was raining.
ROBERT49:45We stand around there waving our hands like we were doing some dance number and then maybe get a cab to stop. And then when the cab comes, I have to explain to the person where I want to go, and then maybe they're familiar with, or maybe they're not. Maybe I have to show them, like the addresses or whatever.
ROBERT49:59And then we finally get there. I have no long I have no idea how long it's going to take because we're I'm driving in a city I'm not familiar with or whatever. And, and, and then when we get there, which is my ultimate goal is to get to the be place from the a place. Now I have to do all this, all this calisthenics in order to pay you.
ROBERT50:20Right. So I put the money through the little slot or pay with a credit card or whatever it is. So Uber said people want to just get from A to B, what is the fastest, easiest way to do that? So what I'm going to do is by the time you decide that you need to go from A to B, you're going to put it in this app where I want to go.
ROBERT50:38So the person who comes and gets me, I know where they are, they know where I am, they pick me up, they know where they're going. I know the route they're taking. And by the way, the payments are already taken care of. And when I get to my destination, I just open the door. Get out. Close the door and go.
ROBERT50:53Right. So to me, that is exactly what you're referencing, which is don't try to make it a better taxi experience. Solve the actual problem, which is I want to get from A to B. And, you know, another similar example is Blockbuster Video and Netflix. People wanted to watch the movie. They didn't want to go to Blockbuster Video and pick it out.
ROBERT51:18They did it because that was the mechanism they needed. But what if I could sit in my living room and pick the movie I wanted and have it show up on my TV? And then when I didn't want it, it disappeared again? Like, that's solving the problem versus making an incremental step towards making VHS tapes easier to access, right?
ROBERT51:38Like it's just, you know, to access that technology is, is is great, but what am I actually solving for? And I hoped I always think especially, you know, what we're doing if it is solving the issue of how do my customers exchange value with their customers? And then shrinking that down to the most simple algorithm there is.
RACHAEL52:03And correct me if I'm wrong, remember, is listening to this absolutely fact checking because I'm not sure if this is correct, but
RACHAEL52:09from what I remember, Netflix did start out as like a mailing service for for mailing you the video. So trying to solve that problem of like, oh, I don't want to go to the store and pick it out, but just doing it in a way that wasn't thinking outside the box enough.
RACHAEL52:23They were trying to like just shorten that experience to mailing it to you. But it didn't solve the actual problem of like, I just want to watch a movie. It just solves the.
ROBERT52:31Problem, right? Like, yeah, originally it was the little red envelope that would show up with the DVD in it, right? And you would, you would get them. And that was cool. Like, now you didn't have to go and pick them out. You didn't have to like, walk through the the aisles and try to figure out which ones are available and all that kind of stuff.
ROBERT52:46You just put it in and showed up. So that was,
ROBERT52:49healthy incremental thinking, but still not solving the entire problem. Now, some of that though, is technology itself. Like, yeah, people had DVD players, right. So not everybody had. And modem speeds were relatively low. So if I wanted to watch the new movie, the, you know, the Odyssey, right.
ROBERT53:08And Audio Deus, that was a lot of streaming information that had to come through a relatively slow modem. Right now, when you're in gig speeds and two gig and five gig or whatever it might be, that technology has allowed for kind of significant leaps in in that, in that incremental to almost making it disappear. And so in some cases, you do the best you can with what you have.
ROBERT53:37It's, you know, you know, that it's like somebody in the 1800s, what they wanted, they wanted a faster horse. Well, yeah. Because they hadn't seen a car and then seen an airplane. But when they saw those, they're like, well, that seems to be a better idea. So I think that's, that's that's what we're always trying to do here, which is, you know, here's what I ultimately want to do.
ROBERT53:57I may be throttled to some degree by technical challenges or capabilities, but AI, quantum computing, other things are starting to, to, to dissipate those, those obstructions. And all of a sudden it's starting to get easier, right? That path is becoming straighter.
RACHAEL54:16I will say, though, I do miss going to blockbuster. That was kind of fun. I mean.
ROBERT54:21One, you could always buy all the Swedish Fish and Skittles that you ever wanted, which was like an impulse buy that you almost couldn't avoid. And I like the popcorn.
RACHAEL54:30Yeah, yeah. All right. Well, this is all the time we have for today. Thank you so much, Robert. This was great. Where can people find you if they want to look you up or find where you're posting? What's going on?
ROBERT54:42So always find me on LinkedIn. I am happy to answer any queries. And and you know, I'm at Pfizer if you need me but it's a
ROBERT54:51the best days I have are talking to other people.
RACHAEL54:53Nice. Awesome. Well I hope today was a good one.
ROBERT54:56All right. It was a very good one.
RACHAEL54:58Thank you. Sweet. Thanks so much, Robert.
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