Helping Sells Radio

This is part two in a two part series in which Mel and Bill talk about owning renewals, negotiating the renewals, and lessons learned building a customer success team that does own the renewal. More about Mel on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melihabilge/More about ServiceRocket:Visit ServiceRocket.com: https://www.servicerocket.com/On Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/servicerocket/On Twitter: https://twitter.com/servicerocketOn Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ServiceRocket/On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/servicerocket/ Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

This is part one in a two part series in which Mel and Bill talk about owning renewals, negotiating the renewals, and lessons learned building a customer success team that does own the renewal. More about Mel on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melihabilge/More about ServiceRocket:Visit ServiceRocket.com: https://www.servicerocket.com/On Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/servicerocket/On Twitter: https://twitter.com/servicerocketOn Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ServiceRocket/On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/servicerocket/ Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

Mel and Bill talk about customer advisory boards (CABs). More about Mel on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melihabilge/More about ServiceRocket:Visit ServiceRocket.com: https://www.servicerocket.com/On Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/servicerocket/On Twitter: https://twitter.com/servicerocketOn Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ServiceRocket/On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/servicerocket/ Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

Mel Bilge and Bill Cushard discuss defining and documenting the customer success process.More about Mel on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melihabilge/More about ServiceRocket:Visit ServiceRocket.com: https://www.servicerocket.com/On Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/servicerocket/On Twitter: https://twitter.com/servicerocketOn Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ServiceRocket/On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/servicerocket/ Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

Aaron Thompson, CRO at SuccessHacker, wrote a Linkedin article called "QBRs are stupid. Naturally, we had to talk about it. The problem is QBRs is that we say they are focused on the customer, but we deliver them as all about us. Aaron is begging us to re-examine the nature of our QBRs to make them actually about the customer and for the customer. Here is a link to his article: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/qbrs-stupid-aaron-thompson/?trackingId=PKMxzPJcSgCfxwMcYfhFcQ%3D%3DMore about Aaron:On Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/athomps/At SuccessHacker: https://www.successhacker.co/More about ServiceRocket:Visit ServiceRocket.com: https://www.servicerocket.com/On Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/servicerocket/On Twitter: https://twitter.com/servicerocketOn Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ServiceRocket/On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/servicerocket/ Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

Mel Bilge and Bill Cushard discuss implementing quarterly business reviews.More about ServiceRocket:Visit ServiceRocket.com: https://www.servicerocket.com/On Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/servicerocket/On Twitter: https://twitter.com/servicerocketOn Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ServiceRocket/On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/servicerocket/ Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

Mel Bilge and Bill Cushard discuss why net revenue retention is a north star metric and a growth metric. More about ServiceRocket:Visit ServiceRocket.com: https://www.servicerocket.com/On Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/servicerocket/On Twitter: https://twitter.com/servicerocketOn Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ServiceRocket/On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/servicerocket/ Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

Debbie Smith is the senior manager of Smartsheet University and vice president of the Customer Education Management Association (CEdMA) and joins us on Helping Sells Radio to talk about helping customers beyond the product. This all started on a Linkedin post, which talked about how software companies should consider building the school that teaches the skill in its domain. Software companies can help people (customers and potential customers and just anyone) learn the skills necessary to perform the job its software is designed to help. And even credential people in that job. It's a big idea. Debbie is doing something incredible. Instead of creating the school from scratch, she partnered with the biggest "school" in project management; the Project Management Institute to teach project management skills and help PMI certified professional maintain their PMI certification. Not only is Debbie building trust between PMI members and Smartsheet, she is helping PMI members further their skills and careers. What a c

Mel Bilge and Bill Cushard discuss the importance of account ownership in SaaS customer success. More about ServiceRocket:Visit ServiceRocket.com: https://www.servicerocket.com/On Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/servicerocket/On Twitter: https://twitter.com/servicerocketOn Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ServiceRocket/On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/servicerocket/ Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

Mel Bilge and Bill Cushard discuss high touch customer success and why being scalable and low touch isn't all it's cracked up to be. More about ServiceRocket:Visit ServiceRocket.com: https://www.servicerocket.com/On Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/servicerocket/On Twitter: https://twitter.com/servicerocketOn Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ServiceRocket/On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/servicerocket/ Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

Steve Harper is the author of The Ripple Effect: Maximizing the Power of Relationships for Life & Business and creator of Ripple Central, a services consultancy that helps harness the power of human connection to transform your team, your career, and your life. Steve had me on his podcast, The Ripple Effect Podcast with Steve Harper, and now he's on Helping Sells Radio. We talked about his Ripple Effect, listening for opportunities for starting ripples with customers, and how he came up with this useful concept for building meaningful relationships. More about Steve: About Steve and Ripple Central: https://ripplecentral.com/biopress/His book: https://www.amazon.com/Ripple-Effect-Maximizing-Relationships-Business/dp/097686651X/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1642559779&sr=8-1His podcast episode with me:More about ServiceRocket:Visit ServiceRocket.com: https://www.servicerocket.com/On Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/servicerocket/On Twitter: https://twitter.com/ser

This article originally appeared on the Customer Success Leadership Network blog. We are thinking about customer success all wrong. We think it’s a function. A department. A post-sales team. The enlightened among us think customer success is a philosophy or even an organizational design principle. That’s better, but still not quite right. I mean, what am I supposed to do with “customer success is a philosophy?” I have no idea. After spending two and a half years running a SaaS business as a general manager with P&L ownership, I have come to this realization in my thinking: customer success is a business model innovation.To understand what I mean by business model innovation, we must first define business model. According to Alex Osterwalder, “a business model describes the rationale of how an organization creates, delivers, and captures value.”Notice the three parts of this definition: create, deliver, and capture value. All three are required in order for a business mo

Asa Hochhauser is the VP of Sales at McGaw.io, which helps companies harness the power of Marketing Technology and Data. He is also a member of the Revenue Collective and founding member of Sales Hacker. He knows a thing or two about sales, sales enablement, and designing sales tech stacks.Rolling out the right sales tech stack is the key to productivity. However, the stack is almost meaningless if you don't take the time to do two things first; 1) understand "the why" behind the need to assemble the sales technology; and 2) enable your sales team. If there was a sales magic triangle, the three corners would be goals, enablement, and technology. More about Asa:On Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/asahoc/McGaw.io: https://mcgaw.io/More about ServiceRocket:Visit ServiceRocket.com: https://www.servicerocket.com/On Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/servicerocket/On Twitter: https://twitter.com/servicerocketOn Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ServiceRocket/On Instagram: htt

Kay Formanek is the founder and CEO of Diversity and Performance, a company that develops conscious diversity leaders. She was managing director for 25 years at Accenture (though I did not meet Kay then, we shared time at Accenture) where she contributed to the agenda of diversity and inclusion and talent development. Kay’s expertise is in the neuroscience of unconscious bias and how to mitigate unconscious bias within an organization and within its leadership ranks. She collaborates with leading institutions and business schools like INSEAD and has spoken at forums regularly including TEDx.Kay is also the author of Beyond D&I: Leading Diversity with Purpose and Inclusiveness. You might be thinking, "Bill, what does diversity and inclusion have to do with helping customers?" That's what I thought. Until I read the book. The word "customer" appears on 58 pages of Beyond D&I, and there are many examples in the book of companies that implemented diversity and inclusion initiatives with the purpose

Maureen Burns is a senior partner in Bain & Company's Boston office and a leader in Bain's Customer Strategy and Marketing Practice. Maureen is out with a new book, Winning on Purpose: The Unbeatable Strategy of Loving Customers, with co-authors Fred Reichheld and Darci Darnell. I asked how Maureen, who has a background in investment banking and serves financial services company clients, could sign up to co-author a book about loving customers. She told me that at first she was skeptical saying, "Fred, I can't go to my financial services c-suite clients and talk about love." What is most motivating about this exchange is the realization that the evidence is overwhelming that companies that prioritize enriching the lives of customers (loyalty leaders in their categories) outperformance the market by 3X or more. And, it turns out, Burns' financial services clients have been quite receptive to the purpose of enriching customer lives. It's not just good for financial results, it's just plain the right way to

Darci Darnell is the head of Bain’s global sales & marketing practice and an active leader in Financial Services and Strategy practices with nearly two decades of management consulting experience. She also has particular expertise in customer retention strategy, NPS®, and employee engagement. Darnell is out with a new book, Winning on Purpose: The Unbeatable Strategy of Loving Customers, with co-authors Fred Reichheld and Maureen Burns. We talked about the original intent of net promoter system. As Darci described in the book, "NPS implemented correctly reveals how consistently a company lives up to its purpose of loving customers." Loving customers? Not all execs will accept this easily, even though the empirical evidence is overwhelming that loyalty leading companies out-perform the market by numerous multiples. Darci's advice to me, "Be brave."There's a life lesson. More about Darci:The book: https://www.amazon.com/Winning-Purpose-Unbeatable-Strategy-Customers/dp/164

Fred Reichheld is the creator of the  Net Promoter® , founder of Bain & Company's Loyalty practice, and the author of five books including the New York Times bestseller The Ultimate Question 2.0. Reichheld is out with a new book, Winning on Purpose: The Unbeatable Strategy of Loving Customers, with co-authors Darci Darnell and Maureen Burns. The ultimate purpose of any business is to enrich the lives of customers. This statement appears antithetical to the broadly accepted purpose of a business enterprise, which is to maximize profits or otherwise maximize shareholder value. But as the authors point out, when we enrich the lives of customers, we create a multiplier effect of financial results. Why? Customers who we enrich buy more from us. They don’t buy from elsewhere. When they bring their friends with them, they also don’t buy from elsewhere. There is a great story in the book in which Steve Grinshaw, CEO of Caliber Collision (they repair 

Too many of us think that go to market is a sales and marketing exercise (some think it's only marketing), but as Sangram Vajre, author of Move: The four question go to market framework and 3X Helping Sells Radio (Ep. 68 and Ep. 154) guest says, go to market requires marketing and sales and customer success to work as one. Where most companies falter is on one of these:They can:Make but can't sellSell but can't deliverDeliver but can't renewRenew but can't expandAll four of these "motions" must work for a company to be successful, and that is where Vajre's four question go to market framework comes in.More about Vajre:The book: http://themovebook.comThe Valley of Death we talked about: https://venturebeat.com/2019/03/30/getting-to-50-million-how-to-avoid-the-saas-valley-of-death/More about ServiceRocket:Visit ServiceRocket.com: https://www.servicerocket.com/On Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/servicerocket/On Twitter: https://twitter.com/servicerocketOn Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ServiceRock

Jeff Coyle is the co-founder and chief strategy officer at MarketMuse, which helps marketing teams improve the effectiveness of their content. As Jeff says, "We do the the why for content." This is the right question to answer before entering into any content publishing initiative, and the answer cannot be, "Because my boss told me to write these 10 blog posts." The 'why' matters. In fact, the earlier in the process you are informed by data, the more efficient your content is going to be. After all, as Jeff says, "The plague is spending time writing content that doesn't perform."I am beginning the believe that artificial intelligence and machine learning is getting to the point at which it can help us mere mortals make better decisions. More about Jeff:His company, MarketMuse: http://www.marketmuse.comOn Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffcoyle/The blog post we talked about: https://blog.marketmuse.com/seo-content-strategy-how-to-bring-humans-and-search-bots-together/More about ServiceRocket:Visit Ser

Simon Severino is the founder and CEO of Strategy Sprints, which helps B2B founders double revenue and save time, money, and energy by systematizing "everything." We talked about the value of systems, and as he said in the podcast, once you have experienced scaling, you then understand systems. And until you do, you cannot really understand the importance of defining processes, documenting processes, following processes, and continuously improving processes. You put process development in quadrant 2, which means you never do it. "I'll get to that later." Then later never comes.Simon helps his clients see how systems will help them grow and have time to take a vacation one or twice or three times a year. More about Simon:His company, Strategy Sprints: https://www.strategysprints.com/On Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simonseverino/ Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com