Maximizing Team Performance Through Support and Accountability
Eric Wansong, trusted by leading SaaS organizations, is a c-suite executive specializing in customer loyalty.
Synchronizing Team Efforts for Optimal Performance
As a member of Ithaca College's Varsity Crew team during his time as an undergraduate, Eric developed a deep appreciation for teamwork. Eric’s rowing experience fueled his passion for synchronizing individual efforts, appreciating the power of togetherness, and recognizing that collaborating as a collective unit requires hard work and focus. He feels nostalgic about the sound, power, and speed created by eight rowers pulling together, and their blades striking the water as one—literally lifting the boat out of the water, reducing drag, accelerating momentum, for an unrivaled, energizing, and exhilarating effect. Eric considers this the epitome of working together smarter, not harder.
An equally valuable but much less enjoyable crew learning experience is how easily synchronization can break down. Just one rower and one blade out of sync at any given moment sabotages the entire boat’s performance, stability, speed, and momentum—no longer lifted out of the water, competing boats closing in within a matter of seconds. The effort to retake the lead would be incredibly challenging.
Eric knows that a successful crew team requires clarity of purpose, focus, attention to detail, discipline, and the unwavering trust that each team member will fulfill their respective obligations. With extensive effort and training to achieve a synchronized team, the resulting energy and momentum is contagious. It is how races are won.
Much like the competitive nature of the corporate world, each crew member had to defend their seat. At any time, a new crew member could compete for an existing member’s seat.The strongest rower would earn the seat, just as the best qualified job applicant will receive a promotion, further elevating the caliber of the team in pursuit of optimal performance.
In hindsight, the parallels between his crew experiences and business are clear, creating a formative and foundational impact on Eric’s professional career.
During college, when not in class or on the water, Eric worked in construction, bartending, and retail sales. Given his strong work ethic, an aptitude for collaboration and developing personal connections, and staying active, a professional career in sales seemed like a logical beginning to his journey.
While having enjoyed many ‘club’ trips and earning numerous sales awards, Eric made a few mistakes along the way, continuously growing from those experiences. He found that commodity, feature/function-selling only produced short-term benefits for him and his customers with purchasing decisions based more on price than setting the stage for long-term relationships. Eric realized that solution-selling, addressing end-to-end business challenges with evidence-based outcomes is the key to securing larger campaigns—collaborating with executive-level buyers and establishing the foundation for longer-term, strategic customer relationships. His evolution from a ‘seller’ to a ‘strategic partner’ changed the dynamic to helping customers make purchases instead of being sold.
Another significant lesson was learning that long-term success and strong customer relationships require multi-dimensional relationship development rather than limiting interactions to a single point of contact. Eric recognizes the value of engaging customers at varying organizational levels to best understand needs and priorities, by emphasizing the importance of being an eager learner, a good listener, and asking informed questions to best position real solutions.
Establishing Customers for Life: The Road to Customer Loyalty
With a foundation in sales and sales management, Eric’s interest naturally gravitated toward understanding the customer’s journey, from end-to-end experience through success. Focused on establishing more strategic customer relationships, he progressively involved himself with a solution’s set-up, implementation, and deployment.
During his tenure as a Global Business Director for Business Objects, the opportunity presented itself to pivot into a new role, leading a Professional Services team—in doing so, he transitioned from sales to post-sales, leading a 70-person team. This paved the path to new opportunities leading global support teams, and customer success teams for Business Objects, SAP, VMware, Tangoe, and Code42.
Eric’s focus shifted to ensuring customers are set up for success, as loyal customers are most apt to renew, expand, and try new offerings. He recognized that in the age of SaaS, loyalty is vital to habitual solution use and adoption. However, customer loyalty is not guaranteed, nor is it earned easily. Knowing that customer loyalty is not a binary achievement, Eric prioritizes efforts to continuously earn it across the entire customer lifecycle.
Through his transition, Eric developed an approach to customer loyalty predicated on keeping promises, simplifying processes, establishing economic value, and developing strategic alignment.
His passion for driving value throughout the customer lifecycle has fueled a track record of scaling and optimizing operations, overseeing all aspects of the customer journey to maximize renewals with relentless attention to customer health, solution use, and adoption.
Agile in working across a diverse portfolio of organizations, from small to mid-sized private entities to large, publicly-traded enterprises, nothing energizes Eric more than helping organizations elevate and scale their operations to drive customer success performance, regardless of their maturity or size.
Personal Life:
Eric’s love for being on the water has stood the test of time. In warm weather, he searches for the opportunity to go swimming, paddle boarding, or kayaking. Passionate about traveling, he enjoys hiking, tent camping, as well as chopping down trees. As a dog lover, there is always one to walk, feed, or pet. As a dedicated parent, he can’t ever see his kids enough. And is always trying to be a better husband than he was the day before. After three near-death experiences, he considers every day a gift and a blessing.