From Zendesk to Coupa, Reltio to ZoomInfo: Lessons in Career Transitions

All right. Hello everyone. Welcome to CX Nexus. I'm Nicole Saunders.
Chris Detzel: And I'm Chris Detzel.
Nicole Saunders: So Chris, it's been a couple months. We took a little break over the summer and we're coming back and we both have new jobs.
Chris Detzel: Yeah, it's crazy. I haven't announced that yet.
But yes, i'm gonna have a new job very soon just like you
Nicole Saunders: I'll publish this episode until you announce it
Chris Detzel: perfect [00:01:00]
Nicole Saunders: This is your official announcement.
Chris Detzel: Yeah
Nicole Saunders: So that's it's bonkers. We were in a totally different space. We both made transitions around the same time So I think that there's a lot we can talk about today as far as like How that all happened how we went about pursuing some of our new opportunities?
And really talking about like those first couple weeks and how we're preparing for You Starting a new job.
Chris Detzel: Yeah, how does one how does it feel? It's got to go you were with your last company for five or six years, right
Nicole Saunders: seven and a half Oh my gosh,
Chris Detzel: and then all of a sudden you're telling me during the pre show that you know Just four days later.
You started a new job. Geez, it was a big transition I
Nicole Saunders: definitely I will say I wish i'd gotten to take more time off in between jobs and you know for anyone that's planning a transition build in some time in between things because it is a big adjustment, but For a variety of reasons. That was what made sense for me this go around.
But yeah, as community professionals, I think one of the challenges is often our [00:02:00] identities get a little bit wrapped up with the work. And I think that can happen in a lot of roles, but when you are the person that manages and maintains all these relationships with people, your identity can come really wrapped into your work and it's one of the reasons that I think it's important one, to make sure that you're always evaluated.
Am I setting healthy boundaries with my work? It's okay to change now and then it feels scary because of that. But I think it's also where sometimes it becomes necessary if you feel like you're too close, which wasn't exactly what was happening for me, but I do think that's a big shift. And I think in transitioning to a new company, there has been some of that sense of Oh, I built this whole thing and now I have to let it go And it's going to live on without me and i'm going to go be part of a different thing And that's okay.
And I think that's hard, especially if people are doing that for the first time Yeah, it'd be hard to let your babies out into the world and let them go be grown ups by themselves But we all have to do it
Chris Detzel: I love that you said that nicole because You know a [00:03:00] lot of us including me, you sit there and All day, every day, you pour your heart and soul, into doing this thing and for us, building the communities and the programs and things like that.
And then when it's gone, or you go to another company or whatever, it's oh, you gotta start over. You gotta start rebuilding or building from ground up. Not just maybe community, but community. The relationships that you have internally and everything else So I think that this is where you wanted to get to is what how do you start a new company?
And how do you really think about that? How do you how did you approach it your first two weeks?
Nicole Saunders: Well, I did try to do a lot of preparation for this and the way the whole job change came up for me, I hadn't really decided to leave. I wasn't really looking for an opportunity, but an opportunity presented itself to me.
I had a leadership from another company reach out to me and say, Hey, we're looking to build this program. We think you'd be great for it. Would you want to talk to us? And it was just the right fit. And I really had to sit with that for a couple of weeks and think about Oh, what am [00:04:00] I leaving? What am I going to?
The grass isn't always greener. It was a company where I didn't know a lot of people. And so I was a little worried about it, but ultimately I decided it was time for a change. And I decided that the team that I was leading. And I thought, felt like I could leave things to them and they would keep it all going.
And so far they're doing a great job as far as I can tell. But in thinking about that transition, at Zendesk, I started as the team of two. It was me and one other community manager and eventually built up that whole program and built the team out and everything like that. And so I had gone from being a first time manager to a senior leader in that role.
And now I'm coming into this new company as a senior leader. And so the way that I was going to show up for this job is going to be a lot different than the way that I initially showed up for that job. Yeah. It's I've moved across country a couple of times and those are always great opportunities to.
Maybe shed a bad habit or figure out like what [00:05:00] parts of your skin you want to shed and leave behind and come out as the beautiful butterfly in the new place and So I did a little bit with this job too and thinking about what lessons have I learned? How can I step start even a step further ahead of where i'm leaving from?
What do I want to do differently? And so I did a couple things, you know The first one was I made sure I got really familiar with the company. I read up on it as much as I could I read news stories. I looked at their website I read some management books and I really sat down and thought about what is the impression I want to give off on day one?
How do I want to communicate? What are the critical things? And the big thing that I knew is that I was going into an organization that's been experiencing a lot of change and we're actually combining two teams. And I think we can talk more about this too, where we're bringing the customer marketing and the community team together as one unified team.
Chris Detzel: I really like that.
Nicole Saunders: Oh gosh, I'm so excited about it. I can't wait to dig into it. But what I knew about that was like, The community team had moved from a different part of the business. There'd been some layoffs in the [00:06:00] last few years. There's a lot of things that have like shifted around. And so I was going into a team of people that had experienced a lot of change and were probably like feeling a little insecure.
They're not sure if the future is, they're not sure if they're working on the right things. And so I did a lot of journaling. I, like I said, I read, I thought about things, I wrote stuff down and I came to the conclusion that I really wanted to show up. And it's still some confidence in everybody and be a soft landing space and say, you know what, you guys are through the work of the change.
Things are still going to change a little bit, but I'm here to help stabilize and start building. And we're going to bring this group together and I want everybody's input on the strategy and that kind of thing. And so I had a really clear and crisp message for my first couple of weeks. I'd also given some thought to what were a couple of the big things that I thought I wanted to do.
And I spent a lot of time listening in my first two weeks. I had a day where I met with all of the peers on my. Like laterally on my team, and then I had a day where I met with all of my directs, and then I had a day where I went with all my skip levels, [00:07:00] and then I had a day where I met with all of my boss's peers on the marketing team, and next week I'm going to be shifting into meeting more of the cross functional people, and the week after that, community members, and some of our external stakeholders, so that I can really get a full picture.
There's a couple of questions that I'm asking everybody. The first one is, getting to know them a little bit personally, finding out what their day to day is, what they actually do.
Chris Detzel: Yeah.
Nicole Saunders: And then figure out, okay, what do you think is going well? What should we keep? What should we lean into? What are the challenges?
If you could fix anything today? What would it be? What changes would you make? And then I'm just asking them like, Is there anything else you think I should just know about? Be aware of? Have a link to? And then I ask them for a couple other people that I should meet. And I know that I'm really building those concentric circles of my internal network.
And what's cool is by asking everybody the same questions as I go through this, I can start to recognize patterns. And get a really good sense of, okay, what's true? What's not? What is one person's problem? What is many people's [00:08:00] problem? And how can I start to build a roadmap around that? And then I overlaid the things I thought I wanted to do coming into the org and said, okay, how does that match up with what I'm hearing?
And that has enabled me to come out with some big ideas and strategies right up front, which is. You know what every executive leader wants when they hire somebody new. But I had to do a lot of that very quickly I mean we're talking i'm telling you all this stuff like this has been like the last three weeks of my life.
Chris Detzel: Yeah before One thing you didn't mention was which company did you go to and then to its title and what it is? Oh, yes. Yeah, I just didn't hear that yet. So
Nicole Saunders: I am the new senior director of customer experience marketing at cooper
Chris Detzel: That's great.
Nicole Saunders: Yeah. We're still in the B2B SaaS space. They do business spend management software.
So really helping companies increase their margins, manage their business spends, deal with their procurement. I know we were I've used this tool in the past at other companies and things like that. [00:09:00] Really excited to be there and just learn a bunch of new stuff. And one cool thing about Coupa that I didn't know going in, is that Is there a bunch of folks that worked at lithium back in the day that are now in the marketing org and so what's really cool is it's got community just in its DNA.
People really understand the value of connecting the customers and this whole customer experience marketing team. The idea is, like I said, bringing together community marketing and community and customer marketing as one complete life cycle and recognizing that customer marketing is the end stage and output.
Of good community engagement if you're bringing people along and that community commitment curve eventually You're going to get some advocates out of that and you're going to produce those stories and those References and all of those great things and so i'm super excited to bring these teams together I've got a really talented group of people that i'm going to be working with so it's pretty awesome
Chris Detzel: Customer experience can mean a lot of different things too, by the way.
Like the name marketing is like, what do we call this? What do we make this [00:10:00] thing that's all joined together? But yeah, you're right. It can mean a lot when I think I certainly understand. I think that's look, I love what you guys are doing. Bringing customer marketing customer, customer community all into one because you know at the end of the day You know, you're building relations from a community standpoint If we just go to that you're building relationships with customers maybe partners and things like that But then, you need case studies you need references and those are the people that It's a great feeder for that, I mean at the end of the day, right?
Like I mean you hey, look nicole. She uses koopa all the time and she does this and that and the other she's in the community Asking question and she's on these webinars Why not ask her to do a case study for us or just the programs that you can build to really drive the marketing the customer marketing piece is To me, it's obvious, so I love it
Nicole Saunders: thank you.
I'm super excited about it. And that was honestly the biggest thing that attracted me. And this opportunity came up with I just really loved that vision for it. And as soon as I'd already been working [00:11:00] very cross functionally between the community team and the customer marketing team to build out our advocacy program, the Zendesk Luminaries.
I think that was what caught the attention of these leaders. And here's what I'm going to make my plug for everybody about personal branding,
Chris Detzel: which
Nicole Saunders: is to say, go use LinkedIn, work out loud, share what you're doing, share how you're thinking about stuff, share your successes, because it really is where recruiters live.
It's where executives hang out when they're looking to find people. And if you're not sharing what you're doing and building up that sort of corpus of your work, you're missing a key opportunity and a key way to network and be seen. And, Chris, I know that you said that. As you were looking to change jobs, you were using linkedin really heavily for your networking So let's shift focus a little bit and talk a little bit about your change here.
Chris Detzel: Yeah why don't we go into that so my position at realtail was eliminated unfortunately, that happens and
Nicole Saunders: [00:12:00] Especially in tech, what else happened?
Chris Detzel: Yeah, and so when they let they were like, okay, you've got two weeks and then You know because I had to train different people or at least let them know where things were so I started looking and so I You know, i'm an animal when it comes to if I need a job then i'm going after it, you know So I started networking with people that I used to know or had relationships with calling them texting them sending messages on linkedin I didn't post anything that I was leaving, but what I did do was so I did find a job So I started on august 26 at a company called zoom info and i'll be Thank you, i'll be the senior community manager there helping to build their community from ground up.
so
Nicole Saunders: exciting
Chris Detzel: It is exciting. But the way I got it was in this and I encourage everybody again like you do like we both do we use linkedin By posting stuff that we do maybe our blogs Through the content we create [00:13:00] through podcasts through whatever right, you know saying something smart you know those kinds of things but also messaging people and like for example, I saw the job online and so I started scurrying for who runs that team?
Like I don't know who do I know who am I connected to? found this guy that looked like he was the leader and cinema direct message And applied and nothing happened so You know, but you have to be focused In hardcore about it and then probably a week later. I sent him another message I say hey, i'm not sure if this is still open, but would love to talk to you more about it I don't think he ever sent me anything, but then I get a call from a recruiter, you know because I already applied and then It went from there and but even during that one.
I was looking for other jobs I was emailing through linkedin ceos of companies Ctos cdo, like I saw this one job for this data company and I sent a message to the cdo Then I Used to work with this person at reltio. [00:14:00] I said, hey, man, do you know this person at this company? Can you help me out?
Yeah, I can help you out He sends a message to one of the leaders there and says hey chris would be really great So i'm getting people writing messages for me through linkedin through you know What I mean, he even showed me the picture So I think that you have linkedin is a huge resource, but you have to do the work It's not like if you just apply for a job, you're not good enough 99 percent of the time, especially in the tech field or tech area, you're not going to get the job.
You're just not. Sorry. You have to put that
Nicole Saunders: in. It's so valuable to know someone, to have that recommendation. And, I know, and I've said this before, but as a hiring manager, I'm, one, I'm absolutely going to go look that person up on LinkedIn, even if they don't include a LinkedIn link on their resume.
I'm going to go see what they have there. And so that's just an opportunity to share more about who you are and what you do. But too, if somebody does have a link to the LinkedIn or better yet a website or a portfolio or a blog that they run or a YouTube channel where they create videos, I'm going to [00:15:00] go look at that stuff.
And they're immediately going to get more FaceTime than any other candidate because they've put that together and they've put that out there. And I can really. Get to know them a little bit more and see that information. And it's just so critical. And I think it's something a lot of people don't think about, right?
We get immersed in our day to day. We're really busy with our jobs. Again, as community builders, we're super immersed in that. We're not thinking about our personal community and our personal brand and what we're building, but it's critical for career success to be thinking about those things and how you want to present yourselves to the world and what you want to share and what's going to be meaningful for future employers, because let's face it.
Very few people these days work at one company for their entire career. You're probably going to change jobs at some point, whether by your choice or not.
Chris Detzel: That's right. And so
Nicole Saunders: it's really important to have this stuff together and not be trying to build it the day after you found out that you don't have a job anymore.
Chris Detzel: Look, I think something you mentioned was standing out. So certainly linkedin is a tool but something that I think you have to try things like one example is So I put this [00:16:00] presentation together around how I built communities in the past from ground up Business outcomes and everything else and in that presentation I now link it on my resume to say read about how data can really help drive communities, right?
People can click into that presentation and look at it. And then I have a blog that I wrote about My journey for almost four year journey of my last job that, I don't put the name of the company that I did but here's what that journey looks like. And then in that blog, I link that blog in that resume.
And then something that somebody said, even at zoom info was like, Oh my God, nobody's ever done that. I
Nicole Saunders: love that idea, Chris. That's it's so smart. And you found a great way to communicate your value and also show that you're like, You communicate your value. You showed your presentation skills.
You showed some creative thinking you showed Proaction right getting out of there and be like, hey, you know what? You [00:17:00] probably want to know more about this thing I'm just going to include it right here make it easy for you to find out about it
Chris Detzel: I think that to stand out you just have to do and try different things like and sometimes You know the one thing that I thought at first I thought you know, I'm gonna reach out to all these people and they're just gonna be like annoyed and everything else But you know what?
You Who cares like why do you build connections? Anyways, do you do it just to be friends? Yes, that's one But people want to help you possibly right?
Nicole Saunders: That's what i'm just going to say is like I think human nature is to help And all you have to do is ask people like most people if you ask them for help They'll either say yes, or they'll try to find a way to help even if Exactly what you're asking for isn't what they can do for you And that's a lesson I learned as a community manager is If you go on a forum and just ask people to help each other, you'll get more people helping each other than if you, oh, that's what community's
Chris Detzel: about.
Right?
Nicole Saunders: Put it out there, yeah, exactly. So it is so critical and so important. I just, I love that idea, Chris. I'm [00:18:00] totally going to steal it. Do your future employer expect to see a slide deck in my resume?
Chris Detzel: Yeah I'll send you my resume just to show you what that looks like.
You can judge on your own, but but nobody has access to that except for the people I give access, it's fine and it was fun because i'm sitting there that week like I had I think I interviewed seven times with different people, but Any given time like during like a week or two ago I've seen people in it like it wouldn't tell me who was in it, but you'd see these little weird Dogs or whatever, right?
Nicole Saunders: Google
Chris Detzel: slides, and
Nicole Saunders: people are looking you know that they're in there, there's
Chris Detzel: It was awesome. And that's
Nicole Saunders: amazing.
Chris Detzel: I think that one one idea Years ago, I didn't do it. But this guy gave me this It's like how do you set yourself apart? And what he did was he's looking for a sales job when I worked at forester research And so he interviewed with somebody and they yeah, he might be okay.
He might not be okay But he sent him a pizza and that pizza it says I deliver and he [00:19:00] called him and said hey, this is you're He said something to him because this is a bar list and I deliver or something You know what? And so and he got the job eventually, it's i'm not saying it's crazy Yeah, but it was And they loved it.
Nicole Saunders: The point is you do need to find ways to stand out And also you need to demonstrate that you have confidence in your work and what unique perspective you bring. And I think that there's probably a lot of people listening to I don't do anything that's like worth posting about or something.
Trust me, whatever it is you're doing is worth posting about and we're sharing about and sharing your ideas on. And it doesn't even have to take a lot of time. Like you were saying, you need to be hardcore. I think you just have to be consistent. You don't have to go and write long articles. You most of my posts are.
Re shares of other people's stuff with some commentary on it, but I'm always trying to give a little bit of my perspective, share a little bit of my thought. I also spend a fair amount of time looking around and engaging with other [00:20:00] people's conversations and contributing to their posts too. And it's good karma, right?
It builds goodwill. It builds those relationships. And it's so critical. It clearly just played a big role in both of us having some new career successes and some opportunities. And, I think that's a critical thing for people to think about.
Chris Detzel: Yeah, and I think that sometimes, whenever you go on linkedin and you might post something And maybe only get one or two likes, who cares?
It doesn't matter, just keep doing it You know push keep learning, and I think that's the key and I like what you said, you know contribute to other people's posts, you know say You know, even if it's like hey, that's really cool. I really like that or you know I do that a lot, and I might not have something super smart to say but you know If you just get known and people like recognize you over time, And so I think that's I think that's important.
I like to I like to give credit to like when I was at the other company whenever we did a webinar or something like that or [00:21:00] I call it shows You know, I like to evangelize the person that's doing it. Hey, look at Nicole in this thing, and just be consistent, do different things.
And I think, you'll get there, LinkedIn is a huge resource. I think we said that already,
Nicole Saunders: yeah. So Chris, I talked a little bit about the preparation that I did coming into my new job and I'm now two weeks in, so we can, Dig into that, but how are you preparing for yours?
How are you thinking about that? You know given that you haven't started yet. You're getting ready for it.
Chris Detzel: I think it's look it's not a completely different from what You do when you build a community from ground up you have to do a lot of things, right? We already have the platform that we know we're going to go with so I don't have to worry about you know Picking a platform.
But now i've got to start thinking about content strategy. I got to think about engagement tactics strategy I got to think about people right the people are the most important piece so usually when I start off the last two companies that I worked for and did the exact same thing is I just got on the phone for the next two weeks what you [00:22:00] did And started looking for my individual contributors Those that are really smart about the products, right?
And so just those are your sc's as your product managers Those are your maybe even support people. It depends and then i'm also looking at the key people that are going to be Gonna be giving me budget for it, right? So or at least Who are my key stakeholders at the end of the day, right?
So thinking about Kind of that, but then also putting together a roadmap. So what does that business strategy from the top, from my company, my not just the company, certainly the company's important but from my department, what is their strategy and roadmap look like and how can I tie that into it and then just go, right?
So I'm going to start building relationships. I'm going to start building. Then I'll start thinking about the tactics to drive content. So thinking about like. All right, i've got to reach out to our current customers. Where do we start? Zoom info has a lot of products so Which problems are they do they want to solve first?
[00:23:00] Because you know if there's look you can't just push a lot of content all there at once. It's not going to happen So where's our biggest problems? Where what big things can we solve and then start reaching out to customers and letting them know about the community and saying You know the way i've done the last couple jobs is You I'll and i've said this before i'll reach out to a thousand people customers let's say or a thousand users And i'll say something like hey, you currently use, zoom info's product whatever the product is, And we're starting an online community and we need your help and then just start off that way The way you can help is you know by providing content.
So If you were to answer this question, and just ask them, one question is, if you're in the peer, if you're in the room with your peer, when you first started using zoom info, what's the first thing you would have wish you would have known and would have asked a peer of yours. And they give them that question, boom, that's seed.
That's so I'll get 40 or 50 of those. And then I'll be ready to post [00:24:00] two of those a day for the next three weeks, right on behalf of that customer. And then. I'll email the customer before it goes out and say, Hey, we're launching the community. Do you want to be a. You know the person that kind of goes in there and starts playing around, what do you call it?
i'll give them a badge or whatever. So there's that tactic, right? But then I know I want to start potentially a program a webinar program How am I going to do that or i'm going to find the experts and so i'm already thinking about that I'm already thinking about where I can go from past experiences and everything else because those technical webinars drive Community engagement get q a gets people on and those things it's the simplest thing and then, just your basic community management, right?
And then, you just Go from there and you build programs from that and you get the people excited internally Like that is the number one thing is getting people Excited about it and just having that and showing that excitement saying it's going to do this It's going to do that, but I need your you to help to do this and [00:25:00] this A lot of people will say no, it's fine.
Move on to the next person because you'll maybe a lot of no's or a lot of Oh, yeah. Yeah, sounds good I've got to move on to the next and then the person like i'm talking to cole Nicole's oh my god, I would love to do a demo of this that or the other and Boom, you're my first person and then I'll say and i'll say something like in September 5th, we're gonna get do this webinar.
You're gonna be on it and we'll have our customers on it Maybe we only have 10 people who cares But it will grow and then i'll use that content to drive anyways, I get very excited about it I already know exactly what I want to do, I
Nicole Saunders: love this chris. You're so energized You're so excited and what I heard in there is like You're thinking about who your key stakeholders are going to be understanding what's important to them.
You're thinking about your roadmap and like the things you want to do is some quick wins as well as a longer range vision and having a strategy already in mind. I think you're going to be able to hit the ground running when you get there.
Chris Detzel: Yeah. I might even next week work on a straw man strategy.
And then be able to [00:26:00] show up with it. Yeah. That's what I did when I was at relative. I just said, Hey, here's what I'm thinking. What do you think? And that leader was like, Holy shit.
Nicole Saunders: And especially because you're going into a building role where you're going to start from scratch and you're building on the ground up, and I did some of that too, of course, I knew I was coming into an organization that had a lot of things established where it's going to be more about figuring out what's there.
How do we optimize it? How do we pull things together than building from scratch? But it is really good to show up with at least an idea. And like you said, a straw man is something that you can start to Throw ideas against and start to shape it into what you're actually gonna do And I think that's another critical thing to bring up when you're heading into a new job and you're starting a new job You're going to want to be able to deliver some stuff in those first couple months And you're not going to be able to do it if you don't think about it a little bit ahead of time So that by the time you're a couple weeks in You can at least start to put some ideas out there for what you think you want to do And what you get the ball rolling on and that kind of thing
Chris Detzel: and I think The other thing [00:27:00] to think about when you do this and same thing with you, but with that road map that is a deliverable a road map a strategy and a road map Hey, this is what i'm going to do and then you might get like a project management Not tool necessarily you could use a tool but I use excel and i'll say things to get done Who's going to do it and then i'm going to write them all out?
I need a url. I need a I need to You know the very tactical things that you need and then you know that way you don't forget that way I know nicole's gonna go do this and I know bill's gonna do that Jill's gonna do this, and if they don't just put names there and then oh, that's this person that's gonna put But like community dot, you know zoom info.
com on the main website on the docs website on the support website Who's going to do all that? Those are different people All right, and so those are all the tactics you should write down to say this what i'm going to go do You know, there's a lot of stuff to do think about because it's not even there Yeah
Nicole Saunders: let's think about a lot of exciting things to come.
I think we've got some [00:28:00] great episodes coming up talking about this whole space. I definitely want to bring some customer marketing leaders on and do some interviews. I know we've got a couple of other guests lined up and ready to talk to us. To our listeners, you're going to start to hear some slightly more frequent episodes as we're able to get them done in the midst of the fire hose that is starting to burn.
New jobs for both of us. But we hope that you found some helpful things as always helpful. If you can subscribe, share with a friend leave us a five star review, it actually makes a really big difference in search rankings if you do that. So we'd really appreciate it. And otherwise, until next time, I'm Nicole Saunders.
Chris Detzel: And I'm Chris Detzel. Thanks everyone.