Helping Sells Radio

If you are a regular listener of Helping Sells Radio, you know that whenever we have a guest on the show to talk about customer success, we challenge them (I'm putting that nicely here in the show notes) on the idea that customer success is really not yet about customer success and more about "our" success. I ask, "When are we going to change that and actually start talking about customer success?" I'm still waiting for the right answer. Well, we have two customer success guests on this episode, and they have an answer to the question. And the answer is: business outcome management. Dave Duke, Co-founder and Chief Customer Officer at MetaCX, and James Scott, General Partner of the Customer Success Practice at SuccessHacker explain that business outcome management is a core customer success competency (or should be) that provides a team a methodology for helping customers achieve business outcomes.  We are one step closer to living up to the promise of customer success as a discipline. Learn more abo

Sarah E. Brown, author of Power to the Startup People: How to Grow Your Startup Career When You're Not the Founder, wants to help people evaluate whether and how to build a career in startups. As we talk about on the show, most of what is written about startups is for the founder. Little-to-none has been written to help employees. Until now. Working at a startup can be fun and exciting and enriching and lucrative. Working at a startup can also be stressful and purposeless and cliche and unprofitable. To make matters worse, one startup might be a perfect fit for you, but a terrible match for your best friend, who you think is so much like you. In other words, working at startups is not for everyone. The point is to evaluate what you want out of your career and see how that matches up with what startups can offering. You need to look for a fit. The most valuable part of Sarah's book is that it helps you think about this evaluation process. You quite literally could use Sarah's book to make a check-lis

Chris Yeh joined Helping Sells Radio to talk about his new book, Blitzscaling: The Lightening-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies, which he co-authored with Reid Hoffman. Blitzscaling is written for entrepreneurs who want to grow their companies to massive sizes and understand how to navigate the transitions from small company to medium company to large company. It's not all roses. As Chris explains, "You start off building a company and dream about a day when you've got it all figured out, and it's all going to be smooth from there. It turns out that time never arrives." What happens instead is that once you do have it figured out, you almost have to start again from scratch because your company is entering a new stage of its lifecycle and the new stage requires a new set of beliefs, operating principles, and processes, and sometimes even people.  Companies go through stages. At each stage the company is completely different. And the company should be treated different

We sure do sound like an expert at work when we educate our peers and stakeholders about best practices in our industries. After all, our executive teams are asking us to implement best practices. Our customers expect us to follow best practices. The conferences we attended attract us with sessions on best practices. We learn them. We implement them. We are praised when we do. But did any of us sit down and think, before we charged down best practices hill, "Is following these best practices right for us?" Jay Acunzo, keynote speaker, founder of Unthinkable Media and author of the upcoming book, Break the Wheel: Question best practices, hone your intuition, and do your best work, helps us change how we think about best practices. Jay tells us, "We are starting to lose sight of how to make good decisions at work. We think it's about finding that best practice. But here's the deal. Finding best practices is not the goal. Finding what works best for you is the goal. Big difference.  So this b

There is a first time for everything and this episode has two first times. First, we took Helping Sells Radio on the road to visit Dustin DeVan, founder and CEO of BuildingConnected at his office to talk about disrupting the construction industry with collaborative software. Second, Sarah E. Brown, founder and long-time co-host of Helping Sells Radio and director of content marketing at BuildingConnected, joins the show as a guest host AND a guest. She even took over the show open.  So, this was an exciting shows on multiple levels. Riddle me this: How does a mechanical and aeronautical engineer with no aspirations to get into construction or technology,  start a technology company for the construction industry? Think about that there for a moment.  In this episode you will learn how Dustin got into the construction industry, and while he was working in it, how he discovered that the construction industry is one of the most collaborative and also one of the most fragmented industries in the wor

Here is the question of the day: "How far do you go to help a customer adopt your software?" I ask this question to many of our guests, and there isn't one right answer. As you can imagine, there are many answers. In other words, "It depends." My favorite answer now comes from Arjun Devgan, VP of global customer success and services at Percolate. His answer is to create a methodology for adopting the software and then publish an eBook describing it and also publishing tools customers can use during their implementation or digital transformation.  This is just like the question I received after my talk at CS100 Summit 2018 run by ClientSuccess about what courses one should start building if there is nothing today. The second course topic I suggested is to create a course on your rollout methodology. The idea is to help a customer with a proven process for getting up and running on your software. Presumably, you have such a process. Why not teach customers how to do it? Percolate codified their proces

It is the the sixth and FINAL in the CS100 Summit Preparation Pack, so it is appropriate that we finish this series with Dave Blake's episode. The CS100 Summit Preparation Pack is a collection of past Helping Sells Radio guests who are also speaking at the 2018 CS100 Summit put on by ClientSuccess. When the agenda came out, it was glaringly obvious what a high level of speakers ClientSuccess attracts for their conference, we noticed five speakers were past guest of Helping Sells Radio. So we go together in the studio and decided to re-air all five of those episode just before and during the conference.  Enjoy the CS100 Summit Preparation Pack. From Dave's episode: One of the biggest obstacles to this customer-centric evolution is the buy-in of executives. According to Dave they believe in it because it's "THE" thing to do, however they don't invest the time and resources to make it truly happen. So they create CS teams within their organizations, yet they don't give them the ability or power to impact ch

It is episode five in the CS100 Summit Preparation Pack. The CS100 Summit Preparation Pack is a collection of past Helping Sells Radio guests who are also speaking at the 2018 CS100 Summit put on by ClientSuccess. When the agenda came out, it was glaringly obvious what a high level of speakers ClientSuccess attracts for their conference, we noticed five speakers were past guest of Helping Sells Radio. So we go together in the studio and decided to re-air all five of those episode just before and during the conference.  Enjoy the CS100 Summit Preparation Pack. From Kristen's episode: How can B2B companies get better with data? To improve their relationship with data, B2B companies should plan out their data collection processes from start to finish, advises Kristen. "Leverage the people they have in place in high-touch customer roles," she said. To augment what they're going to do with technology in the future instead of with people, she went on to explain. Tech tools can help B2B companies increase their

It is episode four in the CS100 Summit Preparation Pack. The CS100 Summit Preparation Pack is a collection of past Helping Sells Radio guests who are also speaking at the 2018 CS100 Summit put on by ClientSuccess. When the agenda came out, it was glaringly obvious what a high level of speakers ClientSuccess attracts for their conference, we noticed five speakers were past guest of Helping Sells Radio. So we go together in the studio and decided to re-air all five of those episode just before and during the conference.  Enjoy the CS100 Summit Preparation Pack. From Nicolle's episode: "Is it possible to monitor Customer Experience just by looking at data? Can we do that?" Bill was curious, since it can be hard to get customers to tell the truth when asking for feedback. "In some organizations it's possible," Nicolle replied. "But I wouldn't recommend it." She explained that the data is only one part of the equation. It only gives you some of the information you need to create a positive CX for cu

It is episode three in the CS100 Summit Preparation Pack. The CS100 Summit Preparation Pack is a collection of past Helping Sells Radio guests who are also speaking at the 2018 CS100 Summit put on by ClientSuccess. When the agenda came out, it was glaringly obvious what a high level of speakers ClientSuccess attracts for their conference, we noticed five speakers were past guest of Helping Sells Radio. So we go together in the studio and decided to re-air all five of those episode just before and during the conference.  Enjoy the CS100 Summit Preparation Pack. From Todd Eby's episode: Customer Success is simple. But the simplest things are often the hardest. Todd's customer success philosophy: "Understand what Success looks like to your customers. Make it your mission to deliver the direction, guidance and experience necessary for your customers to achieve their definition of success and you’ll be successful. It’s as simple as that. " Is this really simple? If it is, why aren't more comp

Although this is Helping Sells Radio Episode 85, it is episode two in the CS100 Summit Preparation Pack. The CS100 Summit Preparation Pack is a collection of past Helping Sells Radio guests who are also speaking at the 2018 CS100 Summit put on by ClientSuccess. When the agenda came out, it was glaringly obvious what a high level of speakers ClientSuccess attracts for their conference, we noticed five speakers were past guest of Helping Sells Radio. So we go together in the studio and decided to re-air all five of those episode just before and during the conference.  Enjoy the CS100 Summit Preparation Pack From Nils' previous episode: Nils has developed a model for building great customer success organizations. He calls it the 4 P’s of Customer Success. People Purpose Process Platform We talked through this model and one of the most interesting parts of that discussion might have been the most controversial part of the interview. When it comes to purpose, a customer success team can have a primary

This is first in a series of podcasts in anticipation of ClientSuccess's annual CS100 Summit Conference. We are calling this series the CS100 Summit Preparation pack. To kick off the preparation pack, Nils Vinje from Glide Consulting and CS100 Summit speaker, is back on the show for the third time. We talk to Nils about customer maturity impact on what level of services you provide, what he's talking about at CS100 Summit, and you are much better off spending 30 minutes documenting a process rather than perform that process over and over from memory. Because if you take that process and multiply it across a team of customer success managers, you will develop a lot of inefficiencies and deliver widely varying customer experiences.  Even if you cannot make it to CS100 Summit 2018, this episode gives you a taste of Nils' talk.  Learn more about CS100 Summit:  http://cs100.clientsuccess.com/ Go download those resources Nils talked about in the show:  https://glideconsultingllc.com/   

Are you creative? Most of us business people do not think of ourselves (or our professions) as creative. When we think of creative people, we think of artists and musicians and actors and writers. This is just one of the mistakes we make about creativity. Allen Gannett, founder and CEO of TrackMaven and author of "The Creative Curve: How to Develop the Right Idea, at the Right Time," explains that anyone can be creative because creativity can be learned. He did the research and provides a way of thinking that will help any of us believe we can be more creative.  In just one example, Gannett explains that being creative is not just about the technical skill of whatever it is that we do. That skill could be painting or software sales. The technical skill of painting or selling is only one part of being creative. As Gannett explains, a creative person is good at three skills: the technical skill of the act, timing, and communicating and distributing your ideas. In other words, if you invented a new pai

How well do you know your customers? Do you know their lingo? Do you use their lingo in your communication with them? Do you really? Jeffrey Shaw, author of the book Lingo: Discover Your Ideal Customer's Secret Language and Make your Business Irresistible, joins Helping Sells Radio to help us, help our customers say to themselves, "They so get me." One tactic Shaw suggests is for us to use self-identifying questions so a customer can screen themselves to us. He calls it to help "customers how up 80% positioned." Shaw explains, "When you know your customer so well you really embody their emotional triggers that you can pose questions in your marketing and on your website that ring so true for your ideal customers their typical response is "WOW! It's like your in my head."  Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

You want outcomes? Allison Pickens, Chief Customer & Corporate Development Officer at Gainsight, has outcomes. In fact, she is perhaps suggesting the ultimate customer outcome a customer could have after using your product. That outcome? Getting promoted. Think about it. Someone...an actual person bought your product. They stuck their neck out. Convinced many other people in their organization that buying your product was a good idea. The your product is a promise to make some meaningful improvement. People agreed and green-lighted the project. Looking back...someone is going to ask, "Was that a success?" If it was, perhaps your customer now looks so good, he or she ought to be promoted. Right? So, how many of your customers have been promoted? I think that might be the ultimate customer outcome. Put that in your dashboard and smoke it.  Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

Maybe you've never heard of value engineering, but it's been around. A while. According to Stephen Morse, there is a direct correlation between a company's success and the focus they bring to bear on getting Value Engineering right. And on this episode of Helping Sells Radio, Morse helps us get it right.  Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

She tried. And she succeeded. Naturally. Emilia D'Anzica, founder of Customer Growth Advisors, joined Helping Sells Radio intending to take over the show and interview Bill about his book. We did that at the end of the show, but before we did that, we spent time talking about Emilia and her work with customer success teams. Very early on in the show we talked about on-boarding pitfalls because we all want to avoid them. One of the pitfalls Emilia wants us all to really get is that we assume our customers will just learn how to use our software. And this is not true. Customer needs our help in on-boarding to understand why and how to use our software. But that does not mean turning on the fire hose and try to show the customers everything. Emilia urges us to make sure the on-boarding training is laser focused on the fewest most important task that get customers to perform the one thing they bought our product for...whatever that it. Don't do more that because customers will forget it anyway. Just get them

Michael Redbord, General Manager of the Service Hub at HubSpot, joined Helping Sells Radio to talk about making customers successful. Software companies have to focus on building trust, adding value, and helping people do their job better. But how far should we go in helping our customer be successful? Asked another way, "Should the gym employee come to my house and throw away the cookies?" While Mike doesn't think the gym should go to people's houses slapping cookies out of their hands, we should try to help customers do their jobs better, not just get them to log into our software. Just think about how HubSpot does his. A lot of it is with education: educational blogs, HubSpot Academy, and the book "Inbound!" Speaking of books, Mike thinks the topic of making customers successful more than warrants a book. We agree. Write it, Mike. Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

Matt Cameron used to hand write letters to prospects to get into their office for a sales call. After granting Matt a meeting, a global company CFO said to Matt, "I need to believe that you know something that I need to know now." Whoa!  How many SDRs are thinking like that? Not many. At least in part, it seems this experience has driven Matt on his mission to help sales people learn executive acumen and become experts in the domain into which they sell, so that they can help prospects create value. Matt is well on his way. He founded SalesOps Central and created the SaaSy Sales Management boot camp to do just that. His background is as a sales leader at Salesforce and Yammer, two sales juggernauts to be sure.  Are you helping your sales teams development executive acumen and domain expertise? Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

I bet you have heard of the golden rule. You may have even followed it a few times in your life. There is nothing wrong with the golden rule. I think it's great. But if you think about it carefully, the golden rule is inherently selfish..."treat people the way 'we' want to be treated?" Jeanne Bliss has another idea. An idea that is more personal but less selfish. The idea is to treat people the way you would want your mom to be treated. Whoa! Think about that there for a minute. Then, think about it in the context of business. For example, answer this question: "Would you turn your mom's warrantee down 3 days after it expires?" Not! But companies do that to customers every day. And it's a shame.  Jeanne Bliss, 5-time chief customer officer and 4-time author has a new book that I think threatens the golden rule's reign. We will soon all invoke the "Make Mom Proud" rule for how to treat our customers. And that is the name of her new book, "Would You Do That Do You Mother: The 'Make Mom Proud' Standard for