Gainsight’s Carol Mahoney on What It’s Like to Work at a Human-First Company
(And How to Tell If You’re Interviewing at One)
Carol Mahoney is a big believer in kindness.
Even when she’s having a particularly frustrating moment, she finds a way to approach it with a sense of humor and a strong dose of perspective.
“Everyday I try to keep a high kindness bar for myself. It’s easy to slip and I’m not perfect ” she says. “But just a little kindness goes so far, and costs so little.”
Carol is reluctant to connect her philosophy of kindness directly to career outcomes: “I don't know if it helps you get further in your career, but it doesn't hurt, and it sure makes you feel better as a human being,” she says.
But if Carol’s own story is any indicator, a focus on kindness does make for a better, richer career. She’s built a multi-decades career in HR by innovating creative ways to make things better for as many people as possible.
Now, as the Chief People Officer at customer success category creator Gainsight, Carol is doubling down on the power of a work culture that puts humans first.
We sat down with her to find out more about what Gainsight’s culture looks like — as well as how she got there, and what she’s learned along the way.
Finding a Love for Running a Business
Though Carol has spent her entire career in HR, her personal approach to work isn’t that different from that of someone who has spent decades managing a business.
“I spent the majority of my career managing the talent acquisition function, and I really loved it. I thought of it as my own little P and L. The profit was hires, and the loss was the investment of time and resources. And I loved running that kind of a business,” she says.
Carol went from doing that for smaller companies to helping Yahoo! expand by hiring thousands of people a year. But even as her roles got bigger and bigger, Carol never planned on being in the Chief People Officer role she’s in now.
“That wasn’t my goal,” she explains, but when a boss of hers at a previous company left unexpectedly, she found herself stepping into the position.
“Long story short, it turned out to be something I loved. I realized in my first meeting with the exec team that it was going to change my complete perspective on what an HR leader does,” she says.
Because she’d focused for so long on running the business of Talent Acquisition, she had missed the bigger business strategy which relied heavily on other parts of HR like performance management, benefits, compensation, and training and development.
“Business context helped me piece the HR mosaic together in a way that was very powerful,” she says of HR leadership. “It also made a huge difference to be in charge of the HR strategy as opposed to executing aspects of it.”
Building Gainsight Together
When the CEO she’d loved working with left her last company, Carol realized it was time for a change. She worked with a headhunter to set up a series of interviews — and then promptly canceled them all after she’d met with Gainsight.
“I just immediately knew that was the right opportunity for me,” she says, smiling.
“At my previous company, the challenge was to create meaningful values and an engaging culture, ,” she continues. “There was plenty of HR infrastructure, but the culture was a little flat. At Gainsight, the culture was so alive, it was on fire, but there was no teammate operations infrastructure to bring that culture to life every day.”
Now, Carol is focused on supporting the culture that Gainsight is so proud of, and is not afraid to switch things up and introduce new programs that better align with the company’s mission: “To be living proof you can win in business while being human first.”
Late last year, she embarked upon a virtual listening circuit, holding round tables with hundreds of employees. “In these discussions, I was getting a pulse-check on how our ‘Teammate Value Proposition’ might need to be updated or changed. What’s working? What’s not working? What financial incentives need updating? And the resounding theme was, ‘The culture at this company is great. Don’t screw it up,’” recalls Carol.
She’s setting out to protect and strengthen that culture by reconsidering what HR, (Teammate Success, as it’s called at Gainsight) at a human-first company looks like. For instance, Carol’s team recently redesigned Gainsight’s performance review process.
They started by renaming the performance review process “human-first coaching.” “Naming conventions matter. The term ‘performance management’ seems dated and lacks inspiration. Instead we are cultivating a growth mindset approach that enables teammates to achieve peak performance. Teammates want to continually improve their ‘game’ and providing them with coaching to help them do so can be very powerful. So far, it’s been well received.”
3 Ways to Tell If a Company Is Human-First
It’s not always easy to build a business that considers people first, says Carol. “And it can be weaponized. Every once in a while, employees who don’t like a decision will complain that it’s not ‘human-first.’ I remind myself and others that being human-first is more than my own personal needs being met. In fact, the needs of other stakeholders can trump my own.
“Before we start a major project, we determine what success looks like for the human beings that are a part of the Gainsight community: including our teammates, our customers, and our investors. ”
If you’re wondering if a prospective employer (or even your current employer) shares that approach, Carol suggests that you:
- Look at whether their leadership reflects their DEIB commitments. “Whenever I’m checking out a company, I look to see what the senior team looks like. Forget what they say about diversity, how diverse is their senior workforce? I don’t want to see all caucasian men, for example.,” says Carol. “I want to work with a company that values diversity. I know that DEIB takes time but I want to see some progress.”
- See how they treat candidates. “In interviews, listen to the tone, not the words,” she says. “Do they talk human-first but sound human-second? One ‘tell’ is how you’re treated during interview scheduling. Is your time as important as the company’s? How well does the company seek to understand your needs and expectations?”
- Ask about pay. “How are people rewarded? For instance, at Gainsight, we consider collaboration and team performance when making pay decisions. In fact, you won’t see a ton of compensation differentiation that isn’t easily explained. Though we definitely reward employees for their contributions, we try hard not to reward heroes who win at any cost.”
Interested in joining the human-first team at Gainsight? Check out their open roles!
How To Manage Your Early-Stage Career - Tips From Gainsight
💎 Are you wondering how to manage your early-stage career? Tune in to catch three top tips from Gainsight that will help you plan strategically!
📼 In this video, you'll hear from Kelly DeHart, SVP, Sales & Account Management at Gainsight, and get her view on how to manage your early-stage career.
📼 Tip #1: Go Where There Is Growth. The first tip on how to manage your early-stage career
means understanding the career path and trajectory of your new role when you first join a company. You'll find that some companies do an excellent job of showcasing career paths and requirements for getting from one step to the next. Don't lose sight of the fact that while you might start off making less money, your earning potential will increase as you take those next steps in your career. Maybe there's one standout company that gives you more opportunities to do that. So when you're selecting a role to apply for, definitely evaluate the path and consider going where there is growth.
📼 Tip #2: Improve The Status Quo. The next tip on how to manage your early stage-career is to take the initiative to identify improvements and make recommendations to improve the status quo. When you enter a company and begin onboarding, you learn the team processes and workflows. As a result, you have a unique, fresh-eyed perspective! After 30 or 60 days in your role, it would be fantastic if you could make recommendations on gaps you've discovered that could be fixed or optimized. In Kelly's words, when she has new employees that offer meaningful insights, that really helps them jump out in her eyes and shows the potential of what they will contribute.
One Last Key Tip On How To Manage Your Early-Stage Career
The third tip is to maintain a broad view of your career options versus just setting your sights on one linear path. Some people know that they want to be in sales or customer success for their entire career. Still, many people look for an entry point to try and learn the ways of a business, in case they decide to course-correct and move into different parts of the organization later. So to achieve that, when you first start at a company, try to build bridges and cross-functional alignment with team members that cross your path. For example, if you're in sales, you could align with team members in marketing or customer success and learn what they do. Then, if you consider a switch to another department in the future, you'll have a breadth of experience across the organization that will eventually make you more valuable on a leadership level.
📨 Are you interested in joining Gainsight? They have open positions! To learn more, click here.
More About Gainsight
Gainsight is a venture-backed, fast-growing tech company revolutionizing Customer Success for businesses. The Customer Success Company helps businesses expand quickly by reducing churn, increasing upsell, and driving customer advocacy. Gainsight provides a complete, end-to-end Customer Success solution through their services and technology. The industry-leading platform helps companies manage customer relationships effectively, track customer health, and transform the way organizations operate around the customer. Gainsight is the platform of choice for many leading companies like Box, Adobe and Workday.The company has been recognized as one of the top 100 private cloud companies in the world by Forbes, one of the fastest-growing private companies in America by Inc. Magazine, and as one of 20 Great Workplaces in Tech by Fortune Magazine. And Gainsight's CEO, Nick Mehta, has been recognized as one of the Top SaaS CEOs in America. The company has offices in California, Phoenix, St. Louis, London, Tel Aviv, and India.
Sales vs CS: How to Know Which is Right for You, With Gainsight’s CCO Kellie Capote
Performing in a dance show, cheering on the Steelers, giving a presentation: the activities Kellie Capote has most enjoyed throughout her life all incorporate connecting with other people.
It makes sense, then, that the self-proclaimed extrovert would've ended up with a career in sales.
And it makes even more sense, says Kellie, that she transitioned that sales career into working in the then-nascent field of customer success—and that she's currently the Chief Customer Officer at Gainsight, the company that pretty much invented the field.
She first started following Gainsight while in an account management role at ADP. It wasn't long until she was convinced she needed to work there.
"Watching the shift to the subscription economy, and the digital transformations that were happening, was a light bulb moment for me," says Kellie. "Like, 'Oh my goodness, I need to be at Gainsight.'"
Now, four and a half years into her Gainsight career, Kellie is more passionate than ever about the connective tissue between sales and CS, the potential for CS to transform organizations, and the growing CS team she's building at Gainsight. We sat down with her to hear more about how she got to where she is and what advice she has for people considering roles in either field, and we're thrilled to share her experience.
Finding Her Ambition
After studying marketing at Penn State University, Kellie began her career in sales because she was motivated by the chance to talk to people. "It really energized me," she says.
Several formal sales training programs at Fortune 500 companies later, she was working at ADP when she pivoted into working in account management—and that's when she realized she'd found something she liked even more than selling.
"It wasn't just the acquisition of, 'Let me go land a deal and then move on,'" she says. "It was really that continuous relationship and driving the customer towards their next set of outcomes. That really was where I got my fulfillment."
She leaned into the account management side of things, nurturing customers and going after metrics that are now part of a customer success approach. ("We just didn't call it customer success at the time!" she explains.) That's when she started following Gainsight's growth and decided to apply.
With no connections, she managed to land a job there as an enterprise CSM consultant. Within six months, she had taken on managing people and building out the CSM team. From there, the promotions kept coming until she landed her current role, CCO.
The Difference Between Sales and CS
As someone who came up in sales and now manages a big CS team, Kellie is well-positioned to understand what both fields have in common (as well as how they diverge). We asked her for a primer, and here's what she shared:
- They're more alike than not. "There's a lot of connective tissue between sales and customer success," explains Kellie. "Very often people think that sales and customer success are in opposition to one another. I actually think customer success is long-term selling. We're constantly earning our customer's business from pre-sales to each and every renewal event."
- What's different is the timeline. "In a traditional sales role, you're typically running up against a number. You're in acquisition mode, whereas in customer success, you have a longer lens on what's success."
- Value selling is at the heart of each field. "A lot of the formal training that happens in sales organizations around value propositions plays so nicely in customer success, because it's all about explaining the what, the why, and the how. Having frameworks to do that becomes really, really important."
- The same type of people can often succeed in either role. "Both demand what I call the adaptability quotient. You have to have thick skin in sales because it's a numbers game. You're not gonna win all of them. You can't ride the highs too high or the lows too low. And in customer success, you're gonna have good days, bad days, and everything in between," says Kellie.
- But recruiting for each role is slightly different. While both roles require communication skills and relationship management, Kellie says that sales is more dependent on stronger negotiation skills, and customer success requires a "bulldog mentality" to keep digging deeper and understanding a customers' personas and roadmap to "push them up the maturity curve of success." CS is all about EQ, says Kellie. "You've gotta be able to paint the art of the possible. Building those connections and getting the truth out of people is a craft that not a lot of people can do."
- And CS is usually more deeply embedded in the rest of the business. "Customer success folks do more cross-functional collaboration. You need to be able to engage with product. You're engaging with services, you're engaging with support. You're working with marketing, you're working with PMM," says Kellie. "You have to really be the voice of the customer."
5 Tips for Figuring Out Where You Want to Be—And Transitioning, If Need Be
If you're debating a career in sales versus CS, Kellie has advice on where to start:
- Ask yourself how money motivated you are. "CSM compensation is ticking up year after year and there's good money to be made, but there's still a pay gap. If you want to bust your butt and get the biggest commission check that you can get, and that's the number one motivator for you at this point in time, it may be sales where you want to start," says Kellie. Keep in mind, though, that sales compensation usually is heavily weighted towards commissions, so if you're after security and stability, you might prefer the salary-based CS model.
- Determine whether you prefer set processes or open-ended problem-solving. "CS can be like herding cats, and it requires that you get your hands dirty. If you enjoy digging in and understanding other people's business and not just talking about the strategy, but helping to make the strategy work by connecting the strategy and the tactics, try CS," says Kellie. "If you just want to follow your sales methodology and move on to the next one, that's sales."
- Figure out if you want to explore other roles at the same time. Because CS is so cross-functional, says Kellie, it's a great place to start if you're interested in learning more about product, operations, marketing, or management. "It lends itself to lateral moves within the company. And if you stay within the function, you could get into leadership. I'm a little biased, but I think we're increasingly seeing the CCO role become a very strategic role within organizations."
And if you started in one field but are interested in moving to the other, you can follow Kellie's path and:
- Believe that there really are transferable skills. If you want to go from customer success to sales, you'll want to highlight consistent performance and operational rigor, says Kellie, which can be done by showing the metrics you've owned and what stretch goals you set for yourself. For the opposite transition, she suggests highlighting relationship management and cross-functional skillset, along with tangible examples of how you've made customers successful.
- Recognize that both fields are becoming more strategic and structured. As CS evolves, says Kellie, it's developing more of the metrics-driven approach that sales teams have long had. And sales teams are starting to measure their own success on a longer time horizon, too. "Having that big rallying cry drives overperformance," explains Kellie.
As Gainsight's CCO, Kellie is looking forward to the next evolution of the future of CS. "My ultimate responsibility is being like the learning engine of the business, constantly driving and advocating for customer centricity," she says. "But it's not a one person job. We need an organization to do that."
[VIDEO ▶️ ] How To Prepare Your Resume For Interviews - Tips From a Gainsight Recruiter
📼 Wondering how to best prepare your resume before job interviews? Watch this video to get super valuable tips from Regina Kiffin, Recruiter at Gainsight, the venture-backed, fast-growing tech company that is revolutionizing Customer Success for businesses.
📼 In this video, you'll learn Regina's favorite questions to ask interviewees and how you can prepare your answers in advance to help you stand out. As Regina highlights, research is key for preparation! Make sure to do your homework before meeting the interviewer, research the company, and reflect on why you want to join Gainsight in this particular position.
📼 Don't miss Regina's insight on Gainsight's culture and values as well as why this company is such a great place to work.
🧑💼 Are you interested in joining Gainsight? They have open positions! To learn more, click here.
