Helping Sells Radio

This is one of those podcast episodes to which show notes don't do justice. I will say this, Barry Kelly, co-founder and CEO of Thought Industries and Rob Castaneda, founder and CEO of ServiceRocket, come on the pod to talk about the future of customer education, the constantly changing software learning landscape, and why their two companies came together to take this market trend head on. More about the Thought Industries / ServiceRocket Partnership:The announcement: https://www.thoughtindustries.com/blog/thought-industries-and-servicerocket-partner-to-grow-market-for-customer-learning-software-and-services/About the relationship: https://www.thoughtindustries.com/blog/qa-with-thought-industries-and-servicerocket-sharing-expertise-for-customer-success/Advancing customer education: https://www.servicerocket.com/post/servicerocket-partners-with-thought-industries-to-advance-customer-educationMore about ServiceRocket:Visit ServiceRocket.com: https://www.servicerocket.com/On Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/c

I heard about this book, The Expansion Sale: Four Must Win Conversations to Keep and Grow Your Customers, from Nick Mehta the CEO of Gainsight. Nick had tweeted about it when it came out in early 2020. It piqued my interested and when I read the description, I knew I had to read it. And there it sat. On my wish list for 18 months before I read it. When I finished, I knew that Helping Sells Radio nation needed to learn more about this book. On this episode, I talked to Tim Riesterer, chief strategy officer at Corporate Visions and co-author of The Expansion Sale. We all live in a world in which 70-80% of our revenue comes from existing customers. We should learn to spend more time and energy retaining and growing this revenue and The Expansion Sale is the way to learn that skill.More about Tim:His company, Corporate Visions: https://corporatevisions.comThe book: https://www.amazon.com/Expansion-Sale-Must-Win-Conversations-Customers-ebook/dp/B083FBFQ6M/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+expansion+sale&qid=1637363620&a

Sasi Yajamanyam is the director of customer success strategy and operations at ServiceNow and author of Reimagining customer success: Designing organizations around customer value. Sasi has an extensive career in customer facing roles from senior consulting and strategy roles at IBM and Freddie Mac to product management and customer success roles at the CEB (Corporate Executive Board). And now at ServiceNow.Sasi saw a problem with how customer success is being implemented, as a siloed department. Not as organization design. In his book he offers a framework for how companies can design their entire organization around customer success and customer value. More about Sasi:His book: https://www.amazon.com/Reimagine-Customer-Success-Designing-Organizations-ebook/dp/B09DX99TWD/ref=sr_1_1?crid=EQ5PQEIV0194&keywords=reimagine+customer+success&qid=1636682836&sprefix=reimagine+customer+success%2Caps%2C399&sr=8-1On Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sasiyajamanyam/ Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.

Wayne Mullins is the founder and CEO of Ugly Mug Marketing and author of Full circle marketing: transform your marketing and turn customers into evangelists. He is also a two time guest on the show (Ep. 198). In his new book, Wayne argues something incredible...that if you apply his full circle marketing approach, you only ever need three campaigns. And these are it: Convert strangers into friendsConvert friends into customersConvert customers into evangelistsAfter I get over the shock of only ever really needing three campaigns, I looked at the list again. One third of the list is about communicating with customers, turning customers into evangelists. Most marketing teams spend no time trying to covert existing customers to anything else. Once a prospect becomes a customer, marketing is moving on.But a good marketing team knows, as Wayne says, that few things are more scalable than getting existing customers to evangelist your services. Imagine that...a marketing team spending at least a third of their time,

What can I say? Dave Derington, co-host of the number one customer education podcast, CELab, has just joined ServiceRocket as director of customer education. We recorded this podcast on his first day. It's part of his onboarding. More about Dave:His podcast (with co-host, Adam Avramescu), CELab: https://customer.educationOn Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/derington/ Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

Dave Jackson picked a fight. He said NRR was not a measure of customers' success. In fact, he capitalized NOT. I say NRR is the ULTIMATE measure of customers' success. He posted this message on Linkedin (see link below) and mentioned me (among other experts including Dave Duke, Ross Fulton, Nick Mehta, and Kristi Faltorusso).I responded the only way I know how...to have a debate on the podcast. So here it is. The question is: "What is the ultimate measure of customers' success?" More about Dave: His book, Customer-led growth: CEO's guide to building a SaaS company: https://www.amazon.com/Customer-Led-Growth-guide-building-company-ebook/dp/B09DBMXJK7/ref=sr_1_1?crid=26XFV5F8V8PT2&keywords=customer+led+growth&qid=1636389307&sprefix=customer+l%2Caps%2C1220&sr=8-1His company: https://thecustomer.co Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

Tyler Kemp is the chairman of the board and CEO of IntentFlow, which helps companies find new customers who are looking to buy using AI and intent data. He is also CEO of Leadroll.co, which helps companies get more sales meetings for high ticket sales. We talked about what it takes to reach and attract your ideal customers in a world in which privacy is taking center-stage and personal data and cookies and tracking is being limited more and more. This is causing a lot of anxiety for marketing teams. Tyler suggests we need to urgently learn about buyer intent and leverage that knowledge to meet people where they are to offer relevant, useful, helpful content and other offers in the moment of need. More about Tyler: His company, IntentFlow: https://www.intentflow.com/thesisOn Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tjkemp/ Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

Listen now | Jon Picoult is the author of From Impressed to Obsessed: 12 Principles for Turning Customers and Employees into Lifelong Fans. He is also the founder of Watermark Consulting and a noted authority on customer and employee experience. Jon helps companies impress their customers and inspire their employees, creating raving fans that drive business growth. Jon has personally advised the CEOs and executive teams at some of the world’s foremost brands, with his clients collectively representing over a million employees and more than $600 billion in annual revenue. Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

Mary Ann Pruitt, the CEO and President of Mosaic Media, a collection of media buying experts and creative strategists who negotiate, purchase, and monitor advertising space and airtime. She’s on the podcast to share how the right media strategy can help you reach your customers in an ever evolving climate of media. You know what they say, "Traditional media is dead. Long live traditional media." More about Mary Ann:Her agency, Mosaic Media: https://mosaic.agency Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

When Ben Worthen, CEO of MessageLab, said it, I did a double take. He posed a simple question, "If you had an idea store, what would be in that store?" A simple question. Then he asked a follow-up, "...and how can you get repeat customers of your ideas?" Whoa. This is a different and better way (in my opinion) to look at marketing. If you want to become relevant to a certain audience, how are you going to do that? If you sell project management software, how are you going to become relevant to project managers? If you sell digital transformation services, how will you become relevant to the C-Suite on the biggest 1,000 companies in the world? We tackled these questions and Ben helped me reexamine how I think about marketing. More about Ben:His company, Message Lab: https://messagelab.comOn Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benworthen/ Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

Henry Trevelyan Thomas is the VP of Customer Success at Tessian, a human layer security platform. After beginning his career in corporate law, Henry joined Tessian as its first customer success hire in 2017. Since then, Tessian has raised over $120m from legendary security investors (Sequoia, Accel, March, etc) and grown from 10 to ~200 employees.  We talked about a blog post he wrote recently "Building a customer success team: 5 pillars of customer success." And, yes. We may have even talked about NRR.Special thank you to Rav Dhaliwal (Ep. 208 and Ep. 268) for introducing us to Henry.More about Henry:His blog post: https://www.tessian.com/blog/building-a-customer-success-team/On Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/henry-trevelyan-thomas-991a0861/ Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

Ben Bensaou is a Professor of Technology Management and Professor of Asian Business and Comparative Management at INSEAD, Fontainebleau, France. His research and teaching activities focus on how to create innovating capabilities and competencies as a way to build an innovating organization and culture, and this led him to write, Built to Innovate: Essential Practices to Wire Innovation into your company's DNA.We talked about the difference between execution and innovations, the difference between innovating and innovation, and how innovation is really about leaders because innovation is and should be about anyone, anytime, anywhere. More about Ben: His book: https://www.builttoinnovatethebook.com Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

Sam Richter is the founder and CEO of SBR Worldwide and an internationally recognized expert on digital information and is considered the father of modern-day Sales Intelligence. He is a hall of fame business and sales keynote speaker and has won numerous awards and recognitions including, National Speaker Hall of Fame, Top 15 Highest Rated Speakers for Virtual Events, Top 50 Sales Keynote Speakers, Top 25 Most Influential Sales Leaders, Minnesota Speakers Hall of Fame. I could go on. He's even won a Codie, which is pretty much the Oscars of the software industry....for best ecommerce software.We talked about how to get to know your customers using sales intelligence and the worst thing you can do is ask your customer, "What keeps you up at night?"More about Sam: His website: https://www.samrichter.com/bioHis software company: https://www.intelngin.com Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

David Wachs is a serial entrepreneur. His latest venture, Handwrytten, is bringing back the lost art of letter  writing through scalable, robot-based solutions that write your notes in pen. Developed as a  platform, Handwrytten lets you send notes from your CRM system, such as Salesforce, the web site,  apps, or through custom integration. Used by major meal boxes, eCommerce giants, nonprofits and  professionals, Handwrytten is changing the way brands and people connect. Prior to starting  Handwrytten, David founded Cellit, a leading mobile marketing agency. Cellit was sold to HelloWorld in  2012. We talked about the importance of handwritten notes in a digital world and how it helps you stand out with your customers in a crowded world of digital information overload. More about David: His company, Handwrytten: https://www.handwrytten.com/On Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidwachs/ Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

Mike Farrell is the CEO of Green Leads, a pipeline generation company. Mike is a veteran of the B2B Lead generation and Sales Development industries and IT Solution provider channel. A growth expert, Mike achieved a 7x revenue increase at BAO 15 years as COO, 2x revenue growth at PC Connection (a Fortune 1000 firm) in 4 years as SVP of Sales and 20x growth at Copley Systems.I believe pipeline generation, as measured by the metric, pipeline creation rate (PCR), is the ultimate measure of how we can bring sales and marketing teams together and minimize the dynamic of throwing leads over the fence. Sales says the leads are good enough (or there aren't enough) and marketing says the sales team need to address those leads better. If pipeline is measured by the total value of opportunities and sales is the team that is creating the opportunities, then there is implicit acceptance that a lead is good. This is just one of the things we talked about with Mike More about Mike: His company, Green Leads: https://www.gree

Kris Rudeegraap is the CEO and co-founder of Sendoso, the leading Sending Platform that helps companies stand out by giving them new ways to engage with customers throughout the buyer’s journey. By integrating digital and physical sending strategies, companies can increase the effectiveness of their existing go-to-market programs and improve their relationships with customers. We talked to Kris about the major pain companies have in sending things to customers, employees, partners, etc. It is a lot harder to send gifts to people now that the world is even more remote and distributed and Sendoso solves this problem. My take away is that everyone knows that sending gifts to the right people at the right times makes a huge difference in building and maintaining relationships. But few os us do it well. The key is to make the process of sending part of what we do and not something extra to do. More about Kris: His company: https://www.sendoso.comOn Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rudeegraap/ Subscribe

Joseph is the CEO of Uvaro, a tech sales career accelerator, and of Kiite, a sales enablement platform purpose-built to provide sales teams with the information they need when they need it. A graduate of the University of Waterloo’s Computer Engineering program, Joseph’s a repeat Founder & CEO, and with multiple successful exits, and speaks frequently on the topics of sales leadership, diversity, and corporate social responsibility. We talked about how he can run two companies, wow these two companies relate to each other, and the three sales skills we are not practicing but should be.More about Joseph: His company: Uvaro.comTwitter : https://twitter.com/josephfungLinkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/josephfung/ Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

Verl is the CEO of Claravine, a company that helps leading brands take ownership and control of their data from the start, for better decisions, stickier consumer experiences, and increased ROI. Their platform, The Data Standards Cloud, makes it easy for teams to standardize, connect, and control data collaboratively, across the organization.We talked about the importance of customer data quality and context and how to bring together customer teams with the data analysts to think about data more holistically.More about Verl: His company, Claravine: https://www.claravine.comOn Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/verl-allen-b83175 Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

David Jackson is the founder and CEO of TheCustomer.Co, which helps B2B SaaS companies profitably win, satisfy, retain and grow their chosen customers better than the competition. David is also interim chief customer officer at Deepcrawl, which is the #1 technical SEO platform for enterprise businesses. Prior to founding TheCustomer.Co, he founded, led and grew customer feedback specialists Clicktools, where he served as CEO for 15 years. Founded in 2000, Clicktools was one of the UK’s first true SaaS companies and one of the first to recognize the importance of customer success, appointing their first CSM in 2005. He led the company through two transactions, selling 49.9% to Survey Monkey in 2010 and 100% to Callidus Cloud in 2014.David has just launched a book called Customer-Led Growth: A CEO's guide to building a B2B SaaS company. Guess what we talked about. More about Daivd:His Book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09DBMXJK7/?coliid=IZ2ZEVR3Y1VV5&colid=1MG6QN6554KZS&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_i

Dave Blake is the founder and CEO of ClientSuccess, which helps its clients deliver world-class client success, retention, and growth. Dave is back (previously on episode 52) and this time to talk about the relationship CEOs have with customer success. It is a complex one. On the one hand, CEOs know how important it is to retain and grow customers. On the other hand, many CEOs still focus time, energy, and resources on growth through sales and marketing. No wonder CAC is higher than CRC. There comes a time when a company's customer base is delivering more revenue than new customer growth and sometimes companies realize this too late and they cannot fix the leaky bucket in time for the inevitable. We talked to Dave about what CEOs need to know about customers success. Then we talked about how customer success leaders can persuade CEOs to give customer success the attention it needs. More about Dave:His blog post, What Your CEO Needs to Know about Customer Success: https://www.clientsuccess.com/blog/what-your-c