 Live from Bellevue, Washington, it's theCUBE. Covering Smartsheet Engage ATG, brought to you by Smartsheet. Welcome back to theCUBE's continuing coverage of Smartsheet Engaged 2018 from Bellevue, Washington. I'm Lisa Martin, and I'm sitting here with a couple of Smartsheeters. We've got Stephen Brandsetter, the VP of Customer and Partner Success, and Mike Andrews, you are the VP of Strategic Accounts. Guys, welcome. Thanks for having us here. You're Smartsheeters. We are. I had to say I was very scared to say that on the air and I did it twice now and I'm going to stop because I didn't mess it up. So Stephen, running Customer and Partner Success, I want to start there. Because customer success as a term can mean different things to different companies. Something that I read that you recently was customers feedback saying, guys, that's Smartsheet, you need to be operating a different playbook for customer success. So first question, how do you define and deliver customer success at Smartsheet? Right, so first of all, customer success is often looked at as a single department and it's not, right? It is a whole company effort. You've talked with our product folks, talking with sales. Everyone in the organization is part of that customer success. What they're telling us, what the customers are telling us is, customer success primarily is about change management. We're going through a transformation that has a lot to do with your product, not everything to do with your product, but we need help with that transformation. And what you saw on the keynote was you saw three folks standing up who said, I, at my organization, signed up to do this really hard thing. And we didn't have a playbook as to how to do that thing. What we try to do as a customer success organization as a company, is make sure we're standing behind that person. So when that person comes out and says, I can accomplish that thing, that unsolvable thing for our organization, and I can do that on Smartsheet, we want to make sure that person is successful. And so sometimes that's the customer success team. Sometimes that's the training team. Sometimes that's our consulting team. Sometimes it's elements of product helping to come alongside them, showing them what's possible. So customer success at Smartsheet is holistic. It's not meant to be a single department. This is a company effort so that when folks do raise that hand and take on that impossible task, that we're with them to make sure they can accomplish that. And that creates the stories that you heard earlier today. And what Stephen's talking about is during the general session this morning, the CEO, Mark Mater actually went down to the audience and just randomly asked several, I think maybe three customers to talk about how Smartsheet is empowering them. And it was really interesting how articulate they were being put on the spot, but how they were able to speak so eloquently to how they are facilitating this transformation. You mentioned change management. That's a hard thing to do. You know, when you're looking at an enterprise that has a ton of applications, and Mike, you know this well, being a sales leader, they're comfortable with certain applications, yet companies grow organically by acquisition and there's a lot of different tools that some groups are married to, other groups are, I'm not so sure. To transform digitally, cultural transformation is probably stuff one. So how are you seeing, and this is a second part question to you, Mike, how have you evolved CS in Smartsheet to be facilitators of that change management for customers, not only for customers, but for you guys as well? So one of the things we thought early on was we tried this new thing that was called Office Hours and we did it at one of our largest customers and it was a huge success. Literally the first day we do it, 400 people show up on this webcast and it was fantastic. And so I talked with Mike and we talked to the organization and they were saying we have this new thing, it's going to be amazing, the feedback was fantastic. We go to that next organization to roll out the same thing and four people show up instead of 400. Wow. And so one of the things that's been really important for us is understanding, not all organizations are the same, especially in the enterprise, that as we create that playbook, there are certain elements that absolutely resonate at maybe our tech customers that don't resonate at all in the manufacturing space or organizations and that each of those organizations are different. So we've built out a lot of that playbook with an understanding that different elements of it are going to be applicable at different organizations. And that's the way we've approached it, which has been really successful where we know there are elements that has to have to happen. We know there are elements where we need to have scalable programs, not everything can be one-on-one, but at most organizations there has to be some level of one-on-one connection as well. And whether that's a big smart sheet day which we'll run, which folks will fly their own folks into, it's almost like a mini-engage conference at their own organization or whether that's all over the web. So we'll go to some customers, we'll show up in person and there's a big meeting room and there's only four people there and they tell us, well, there's actually 200 people watching this. And so it's figuring out that motion at least at the enterprise that's different for every organization. But as you also know, we have a long tail through our organization as well. So while we have those really large customers, we also have this long tail where we need to meet those customers at scale. We need to provide programs. So our center of excellence is a good example of that. Our webinar series is a good example of that where we provide these motions about at a scaled element. So even our smallest customer can take advantage of it. Awesome. So Mike, transitioning over to you. So I love stats, geeky, very geeky, but I admit it freely. I was looking at smart sheet, 75,000 customers. Here you have about 1,100 companies represented over 20 countries. You guys have presence in half the Fortune 500, 90% of the Fortune 100, lot of customers, hand industry. Some of the things that they were hearing from you guys or rather you're hearing from them is we want you to build for scale, as you were talking about, Stephen. We want you to teach us how to fish and they want you also to help them do it right and do it fast. How are you helping customers do it right and do it fast? Can you do both at the same time? We're proving that. And I think something that's really unique about how we go to market and really the basis of our ethos as a business is we're obsessed with keeping the software easy to use. And as we add functionality to not get it heavy and make it put friction in place. So when we think about engaging with the biggest companies in the world, we have the benefit of starting from organic adoption where individuals and teams are using the software, they're experiencing value, they're sharing, they're collaborating. And what we see happen, the dynamic we see happening is as individuals get share and go to directors or VPs and we get in, we start from sort of work execution, project management, task tracking and we end up, the next step is often these line of business solutions whether M&A or product planning or employee engagement. Literally every function in the business can benefit from the ability to configure the software and keep in mind, we've already taken off the table the biggest issue. I've been an enterprise software for 30 years. I've sat with a lot of CIOs who've written seven figure checks and when they're honest with me, the biggest thing they worry about is, is this software going to get used. We take that issue off the table, we turn it on its head and that ability to have that basis of adoption, to have raving fans who love using the software and then the added benefit of being able to go higher in an organization which senior leaders who want transparency, they want speed, they want accountability, that configurability to solve bigger and bigger, more complex, more strategic flows is a huge advantage for us and it's frankly what fuels us sort of our passion around serving our customers because we get such great feedback. The configurability that you mentioned might kind of seems to be how customer success is set up to be configurable sort of modular to be able to adjust it and with the agility that's needed to deliver what these customers are needing. So sounds like maybe land and expand. I know we've got a gentleman from the office of the CIO at PayPal who's going to be on shortly with us really helping the C-suite at PayPal which everyone uses to be able to see things more clearly have that transparency in terms of managing projects. So I know this goes to customers as well. So is it pretty typical to start with a function within marketing for example where there's a team that, hey, this is innovative, this is going to integrate with JIRA and Slack and all these things. Is that kind of a common sales conversation? Absolutely and what we practice the principles of the challenge or sale and challenge or customer and one of the key elements of the challenge or customer is this idea of a mobilizer and a mobilizer does two things. They drive change and they build consensus and what we find is those individuals who are change agents love oftentimes love our software because they can do things that they wouldn't otherwise, they'd have to depend on a consultant or IT. So we find those individuals and we work with them and they coach us up on what are the priorities, who are the key players and that becomes a very common play we run to get higher in the organization. The other thing that's happening now, I'm seeing it really over the past year is organizations are starting to choose to sort of play offense with us. So we'll continue to have that bottoms up organic growth but now we're seeing VP's of marketing or CMO's or CFO's or COO's realize, hey, you know what? I love the fact I have this base of users who love the software and I can do things, I can enable priorities or initiatives that span the organization, get away from siloed apps and have the kind of visibility and speed that's been unheard of. We're starting to see that our customers wanting to play offense with us. That speed to value element has just been critical. So you heard in the stories this morning, we have ModPizza, their first solution, the gentleman probably built that in a day and that was just to roll out one store and then they rolled out eight the next year and I'm sure they made some modifications there and then they need to go from eight to around 200 in a year and they were able to do that very quickly. They were able to take an existing solution and make the modifications, add in one more element which is Control Center for us to make it that much more scalable. So when you talk about the LAN expand motion it's both within the customer as a whole but on a solution as well where we have story after story where someone starts a new initiative, they don't know whether it's going to work out, it works out really well and that effort they put into the initial solution isn't lost, they don't have to switch over to a different application because it's now gotten too big or some element like that. They're able to just, the software and the application is able to grow with their growth as a business which eliminates a lot of those things that often happen in business where you have to pause something that's growing to replace a software. Right. So in terms of the feedback loop you obviously as you were describing Stephen the customer success program that you're running here is very cross function, very collaborative. It's product management, it's marketing, it's sales, it's IT, it's all of these groups that need to come together. How, what's the process like maybe from both of your perspectives Stephen starting with you of getting customer feedback when they're engaging with their customer success manager for example and they want a feature that is not quite there yet. How do you take that feedback from the customers, from the field and start to really prioritize that internally? So let me start. So one of the things we've introduced this year is as we've grown the field organization we're using our own software and we've built these territory hubs. So the Account Exec, the SC, the CSM, the SSR, the internal team everyone is on the same page as it relates to what we're doing in the account. And we run weekly meetings, we check off on priorities and to-dos. So you have that visibility by use of our own platform. So everybody's on the same page and that idea of signal that we talk about that Gina Mark talked about it starts with that team that is right there with the customer and then we feed it. Oftentimes I'll let Steven take the handoff. So we have that signal, we have the pulse right with the customer with these field teams and then that gets fed and I'll let Steven talk about how we drive it here in Bellevue. Yeah, so there's two elements of getting that signal and I'm sure there's more if you think about it but one is from the internal team and one is the feedback from the customer. And we, not surprisingly, have used the Smartsheet application to do that but anytime we're getting a customer signal, that could be from our community, that could be coming in from a support ticket, that could be a conversation with a customer success manager, could be from any site, that feedback then goes into a Smartsheet form and that goes directly to the product management team and anyone who has submitted that from a support rep perspective, for example, gets visibility to where that stands in the progress. So is this something we're looking into? Is it in progress? If there's a date to it, what does that look like? So we get all that and then the other element is we are huge users of Smartsheet internally and Mark likes to talk about that he is the biggest user of the mobile application across our whole customer base and he probably is but we absolutely eat our own dog food there or drink our own champagne, probably a better one. And that motion really helps us understand how to use the application. So dynamic view, which was launched this week, we're going to be one of the biggest users of that right out of the gate. For the example that I just brought up, what dynamic view allows us to do, is it allows us to provide a view of all of those submissions of requests and the right view to the right company or the right internal stakeholders so they know exactly what that status is. So those are two ways that we get that feedback back into our product team. And I, you know, Mike you said you've been in sales for a long time. How helpful in a sales situation is the fact that you do drink your own champagne? That smart tea on smart tea, I imagine, is a lot of companies don't do that. It's a really big deal. Anybody who's really being in the company, anybody who's touching the customer, when I hire people, the ability to have that competence and understand how to use and speak from personal experience. I mean, that feels passion, it feels credibility and it's authentic, which is one of our core values. And then it's so much of it is the art of the possible on the whiteboard with the customer. This ability to move from an idea, map out, we've literally mapped out processes and within 30 minutes, the SC's in there and we've prototyped a solution. And not only is it a quality solution, but the customer's blown away by the speed with which we've done it. And that, but that starts with that deep understanding of the platform and all the functionality and what you can do with it. Right. And then I'm sure that breeds that authenticity that Jean actually talked about that. Well, we're almost out of time, but I want to quickly, Steve, and talk about the partner success program. You guys partner with Amazon, Oracle, NetSuite, Salesforce, Slack, Google. I'm probably leaving out a few. Talk to us a little bit about the partner evolution as you compete with some of these partners as well. Well, I'm going to switch that a little bit. So we have two elements of partners. So we have those technology partners that you're speaking to. And then we have the solution provider partners and resellers. That's more in my world, but what's been really excited about those folks. And we had a big partner day yesterday. So I'm kind of coming off the high of talking with all these folks. And one of the things that we hear over and over again is whatever their focus is. So sometimes that's a geography focus. Sometimes that's an industry focus. They tell us how much we're missing already. So they'll say, if I'm focused on the accounting industry, say, you guys don't even know how great your off the shelf application is in the accounting world. And what they're so excited about is being able to configure it, being able to build applications on top of Smartsheet that then they can bring to that world. So that from a scale perspective, we don't have to be experts in accounting. We don't have to be experts in any of those different verticals or in those geographies that we can leverage those partners, their expertise, their relationships in order to bring that to market into those areas. Any feedback? I know we're out of time, but any feedback on some of the announcements that came out today from some of your key partners? Besides two thumbs way up. They were extremely excited about Dynamic View and seeing what's possible from a new solution perspective there. They were just like the rest of the customers. So when there was the final slide showing all the new features bring, all the phones came out to take pictures. It was a great scene, and they were definitely in that mix. Excellent. Well, Steven, Mike, thanks so much for stopping by theCUBE and sharing with us how you're transforming, how the customers are able to evolve and transform with your technology. We know we have a lot of meetings to get to, so we'll let you go to that. Thank you very much. We want to thank you for watching theCUBE. I'm Lisa Martin, live at Smartsheet Engage 2018. Stick around. I'll be right back with my next guest.