Why The Best CS Leaders Start With The Boardroom, Not The Product ft. Adnan Rahman (Paycor)

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Most CS teams are stuck in a loop. Monitor the health score. Chase the red account. Run the QBR. Hope the renewal sticks. Adnan Rahman saw the loop. And broke it.

As the Head of Customer & Partner Success at Paycor, Adnan manages 35,000 customer relationships across different segments with a team of nearly 100 CSMs. That kind of scale forces clarity fast. And what became clear? The problem was never the metrics. It was the conversation.

In this episode, Adnan breaks down the value realization framework his team built from scratch that is now deployed across 28 enterprise CSMs and 17 mid-market CSMs, with a goal of 75% active success plans by year end. He gets into the exact discovery questions that replaced fear with candor, why executives are now showing up to meetings they used to skip, and how joint success plans replaced the product demo masquerading as a QBR.

Josh is writing a book on building customer relationships. Follow his journey and insights at www.joshschachter.com. --- Timestamps 0:00 - Preview & introduction 1:17 - Meet Adnan Rahman & Overview of Paycor 4:50 - The value realization framework explained 7:07 - Do customers arrive knowing their outcomes? 8:05 - Bob London's UBR method & the most disruptive questions CSMs ask 9:06 - Implementing the framework & outcomes 11:56 - How to build your own value framework from scratch 16:31 - How Paycor is drawing insights & enhancing efficiency with AI 18:38 - Paycor's agentic future: renewals, expansions, risk 20:40 - Paycor's learning & community inititative 24:29 - Where Paycor CS is headed by year end

--- What You’ll Learn - How to build a value realization framework - The exact disruptive questions that unlock executive conversations - What a joint success plan looks like vs a traditional QBR How to connect every CSM touchpoint back to measurable business outcomes - How to ask about renewal without making it awkward - Where AI agents will hit CS teams first - What community looks like when answer engines exist - How to scale personalized outreach without scaling headcount

--- Want the playbook, not just the conversation? Subscribe for deep-dive, actionable breakdowns from every episode at unchurned.substack.com.

--- Where to Find the Guest Adnan Rahman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adnan-rahman-irvine/

--- Where to Find Josh: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jschachter/ Unchurned Substack: https://unchurned.substack.com/