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About us
Upgrading to 2.0
About us
It all started when our CEO, Dana Soza, saw a gap in the market between SaaS company's talent needs and the lack of experience in the market during the height of COVID.
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That was the impetus to our lean and mean coaching and consulting firm. We specialize in providing customer success services to B2B SaaS companies and startups that are bootstrapped, angel-invested, or venture-backed in the Pre-Seed, Seed, Series A, Series B, and some Series C stages.
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Our main focus and expertise is finding and filling your strategic and operational business gaps using our proven and proprietary C.S.A.T. SaaS Maturity Assessment to determine areas of strength and improvement within four categories, Charter, Strategy, Analytics, and Talent.
Then we use customer success best practices to help reach your next stage of maturity. A few areas include stage-specific organizational structures, segmentation strategies, CSM engagement activities, managed service offerings, unified GTM Strategies, and developing best-in-class customer success talent by properly identifying, onboarding, building and retaining great talent.
And we can do it all in a turnkey format to reach your next stage of maturity and growth without breaking the bank. That’s what makes us different.
Our mission, vision, and values
What we do
It's simple. We provide coaching, consulting and training solutions. We provide them in both custom and turnkey formats. And we specialize in the field of customer success.
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Who we serve
CS NEWBIES
If you have skillsets that are customer success adjacent--like account management, customer service, sales, teaching, marketing, retail, server, etc.--and want to break into customer success, then you're a CS Newbie.
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You Often Say:
I want to move into customer success/tech, I want to be a CSM, I want more opportunities in the future, I need help with my resume, I’m great with people, I need someone willing to give me a chance, etc.
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You Need:
Affordable coaching, free resources, on-demand services, and advice.
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Check Out Our:
CS Career Newbie Plan, AMA Hour, #CEclub, and eBooks, Blog, and Dana's Advice & Insights.
CS CLIMBERS
​If you’re customer success professional, aka CSP, who wants to kill it on-the-job, work toward a promotion, or find your next gig, then you’re a CS Climber. ​​
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You Often Say:
I’m ready for a promotion, I want to be a better/more effective leader, I want to do a great job, I want to improve, I need CS guidance, I need more CS knowledge, I need to know what to focus on, I want to think more strategically, I need a mentor, etc.​
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You Need:
Coaching options, resources, and advice.
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Check Out Our:
CS Career Climber Plan, AMA Hour, eBooks, Blog, CS Breakfast Club series, CS Economy BookShop, and Dana's Advice & Insights
CS CRUSHERS
If you're an experienced customer success leader who leads teams, builds programs, rolls out initiatives, and manages the customer success group's needs, then you're a CS Crusher.​
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You Often Say:
I need a sounding board and/or brainstorming partner, I want to create a world-class CS org, I want to create fee-based CS services, I need to increase our NRR/GRR, I need to optimize our team and delivery, etc. ​
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You Need:
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Coaching, consulting, and advice.
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Check Out Our:
AMA Hour, Kickstarter, Optimizer, Customizer, CS Economy BookShop, and Dana's Advice & Insights
AND BEYOND...
If you influence, make decisions for, or collaborate with the Customer Success Mgmt Group--like Founders, C-Suite, SLT, HR, Marketing, Training, Sales, Product, PS...and beyond--then this is you.
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You Often Say:
We need to increase revenue, understand our customer base, improve our business performance,
create processes & efficiencies post-sale, improve our customer’s experience, align better across functions, provide more value to our customers, etc.​
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You Need:
Consulting and training solutions.
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Check Out Our:
Kickstarter, Optimizer, Customizer, and Training options.
Our founder
Dana Soza is a globally-recognized, multi-award winning customer success professional, including Top 100 Customer Success Strategist, Top 50 Women Leaders in Customer Success, Top 10 Women Leaders in Customer Experience, and 2021's Kindest Leaders in Customer Success.
She's CEO and CCO of Customer Everything Solutions and Dana Soza Customer Solutions. She's had an award-winning 20+ year career as a sales executive, certified educator, and recognized customer success thought leader, and she's just getting started. Dana is committed to revolutionizing the field of customer success.
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She is a contributor to the Customer Success Associations first-ever CSM Competency Standards, an author of How to Land and Succeed in the Customer Success Profession: a success playbook for your employment journey, a regular guest on customer success podcasts, a speaker at multiple Gainsight Pulse conferences, and creator of several signature programs including her CS Career Evolution Framework, C.S.A.T Maturity Assessment, CS Unlocked series, CS Economy BookShop, and the #CustomerEverything Club.
IN HER OWN WORDS
My Life 1.0
I’m a California girl. There is something about the title that elicits the idea of sunshine, fun, and bold personalities. I even had a “Killer Dana” bumper sticker on my car back in the day. It came from the iconic Killer Dana Surf Shop in nearby Dana Point, California. I used it to bluff myself and others into thinking I was part of the “cool kids’ group.” It was my anchor to generate self-confidence and show the world that I belonged.
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In truth, I was shunned as a misfit and ridiculed every single day from elementary school to high school graduation. I did not understand why I was targeted, but I wanted to learn what was “wrong” with me and loved digging into the human psyche. So, ten years after high school, I gained enough self-confidence and the means to go to college.
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To my surprise—having never excelled in school—I graduated Cum Laude, earning a Bachelor’s degree in psychology. I also made the university’s President’s List, became a member of several Honor Societies, and learned to make myself marketable by minoring in Marketing. My educational path fortuitously set me up for a career in Customer Success. Whether I realized it or not, it taught me the psychological drivers and marketing strategies that can lead to success around customer adoption, retention, expansion, and advocacy. But that was not the only part of my educational journey.
turning point
Catastrophic Car Accident
For about a year and a half, I was an outside account executive for Groupon. While traveling on the job, I was involved in a catastrophic car accident, T-boned across a small highway by what felt like a Mack Truck. This tragedy left me hospitalized, suffering from PTSD, and in long-term physical therapy.
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It led to the loss of my relationship with my significant other, my apartment, and the ability to drive. While in recovery, I was trying to figure out what I would do with my life. A girlfriend motivated me to teach English abroad, joking, “If my life blew up in smoke and nothing held me back, I’d go. Go so that I can live vicariously through you!”
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So, I did! I went to Madrid, Spain, with a new teaching credential under my belt and all my earthly belongings in two suitcases.
my aha! moment
LIFE IN MADRID
Less than a year after moving to Madrid, I ran a successful English teaching practice, coaching professional Madrilenos who worked for the Ministry of Health, United Nations, Europol, Mars, L’oreal, Eli Lilly, JCDecaux, KPMG, Conde Nast, Telefonica International, Allianz, and Real Madrid Club de Futbol.
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After a particularly memorable private English lesson with a student whom I enjoyed teaching, I posted this on Facebook:
CREATED TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE
That was my “Aha!” moment, and it hit me like a ton of bricks. I discovered two things. First, I was never built to sell. I was created to make a difference. I recognized that the “turn ‘em and burn ‘em” and “buyers are liars” mentality that many of my employers fed me was soul-crushing. It was only after I did the meaningful work of teaching and leading others to knowledge that I understood I finally belonged. I saw how my students needed me, and teaching them gave me purpose. I also realized that if I can run a successful teaching business in a foreign country, I can run one anywhere.
upgrading to 2.0
My Life 2.0
With my new life’s purpose metaphorically in tow, I asked myself, “Where should I go next?” I chose South Korea. Why not? However, life had other plans. During the application process to my newly chosen destination, I received a call.
Here's the abbreviated version of that wacky conversation I had with Dave:
It was a former customer named Dave, whom I had known ten years prior when I worked in Artist Relations and Sales at a professional audio equipment company.
His conversation and offer transformed my life yet again.
Let’s call it Dana’s Life 2.0.
And it led to the most significant “Aha!” moment of them all.
💬DAVE: “I built a software-as-a-service platform, and I’ve always had you in mind to be my Director of Customer Success. I can finally bring you aboard. Are you interested?”
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ðŸ’ME: “You built a what? I live in Spain. You want me to move back to the States? And what is Customer Success?”
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(After that, all I remember was…)
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💬DAVE: “Dana, it’s what you’ve been doing your entire life.”
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(mic drop)
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my customer success transformation
Trial by Fire
His convincing conversation motivated me to leave Madrid, move back to the U.S., and pursue the customer success profession. After over six years of working in the customer success field, I found myself doing diverse work. I was part of foundational teams that...
900%
24%
100%
Built and operated a bootstrapped little-engine-that-could SaaS startup that scaled by 900%
Lead post-sale expansion efforts of a recently acquired growth-stage SaaS business with average MRR growth of 24%
Delivered revenue expansion increases of 5-20%, 78-98% adoption, and 98-100% and 8.1-8.5 retention and NPS scores, respectively.
...by unearthing and improving operational gaps for some of the heaviest hitters in business like:
Dun & Bradstreet: A $2B public-to-private-to-public data and analytics giant
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GE Digital: The household name and IoT software provider (eventually spun-off into ServiceMax)
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IFS: A $700M Netherlands-based multinational SaaS, Cloud, and On-Prem enterprise software provider
Since then, I have come full circle in my journey and proved my previous customer, Dave, right. Now, I want to bring others along on the adventure of customer success.
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The subscription economy is making customer success an imperative, because the one-and-done sales cycle is becoming obsolete. So, companies and individuals realize they need and want it, but don’t know where to start. Don’t worry. I do. Check out My Services so we can get started.