Helping Sells Radio

Peter Voss is a pioneer in artificial intelligence (AI), and he coined the term ‘Artificial General Intelligence.’ He is also the founder, CEO, and Chief Scientist at Aigo.ai. For the past 15 years, Voss and his team at Aigo have been perfecting an industry disruptive, highly intelligent and hyper-personalized Chatbot, with a brain, for large enterprise customers.We talked  about chatbots with a brain, why most chatbots aren't helpful, and we went into real use cases his customers are implementing with his chatbot, Aigo.ai. We even talked about his favorite chatbot use case. More about Peter: His company: http://www.aigo.aiOn Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vosspeter/On Twitter: https://twitter.com/peterevossOn Medium: https://medium.com/@petervoss Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

Theresa Lina is the author of the bestseller, Be the Go-To: How to Own Your Competitive Market, Charge More, and Have Customers Love You for It. She is also a long-time Silicon Valley business strategist and practitioner who specializes in helping companies become differentiated, innovative, and more profitable market leaders. As founder and president of Lina Group, Inc., she has more than 25 years of strategy, technology, innovation, and marketing expertise.Theresa comes back on the show (her pervious episode is 277) because the last time she was here, we didn't have enough time to cover the second part of her subtitle, "...charge more, and have customers love you for it."So in this episode we focus on that. After all, price is a refection of value, and we need to set our prices based on how valuable we are to our customers. Theresa shows us how to do it. More about Theresa:Her website: Apollomethod.comOn Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/theresa-lina/Her book: https://www.amazon.com/Be-Go-Competitive-Ma

I put two and two together this week to hopefully come up with five. This is an episode about the fourth habit of highly effective people: seek first to understand, then be understood. This idea is based on my podcast appearance with Kristen Hayer on Transforming Experiences in Customer Success and from a recent The Heretic Newsletter edition on listening. Or lack thereof. Something for me to think about this weekend. Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

Anita Toth is a churn crusher. In fact, she has taken her 20 years of academic research experience and created The Churn Crusher System for B2B SaaS companies to discover the real reasons behind why their customers churn. We talked about her ultimate guide to customer exist interviews, having purpose with every customer interview, and how her background is academic research helps her dig deeper and discover what's underneath the reasons customers actually tell you they leave. More about Anita:Her blog we talked about: https://anitatoth.ca/ultimate-customer-exit-interviews/The ChurnZero Webinar on Anita's topic. See video below:Her website: https://anitatoth.ca/On Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anitamtoth/ Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

Kristi Faltorusso is the VP of Customer Success at ClientSuccess and she is BACK on the pod to finish what she started on her last appearance (episode 283) when we started to talk about her seven reasons software companies need customer success software. In this episode, we spend the entire episode walking through each one.And remember the deal, if I came up with an eighth reasons, Kristi would give me a free ticket to the next CS100 Summit. Listen for the big reveal. More about Kristi:Customer Success Leadership Bootcamp Series: https://www.clientsuccess.com/resources/webinars/customer-success-bootcamp-webinar-series/Her Partnership Kick-Off Meeting Blog: https://www.clientsuccess.com/blog/so-long-onboarding-kickoff-its-all-about-the-partnership-from-now-on/On Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristiserrano/CS Real Simple: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cs-real-simple/ClientSuccess CS100 Summit: http://cs100.clientsuccess.com/ Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

Mike Arnold is the author of Slacking Off: A Successful Way to Work from Home. Mike has worked from home for 15 years. In fact, he calls himself a work-from-home entrepreneur. His career has put him in consulting roles with some nice brands like Cox Automotive, Verizon Super Pages and several major finance companies. The counterintuitive book title acknowledges that we all slack off from time to time and it's OK. As long as you get back on track. We talked to Mike about how in his book he aims to help readers who work from home become aware of favorite ways to slack off (he has an exercise to help you do this), how to use scheduling to make better use of one's time, and how to wield the power of saying "No."More about Mike:His book: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08RXFYMDZ/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i0 Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

Ruben Rabago is the chief customer officer at Intelllum, and co-author of The Customer Success Professional's Handbook: How to Thrive in One of the World's Fastest Growing Careers - While Driving Growth for Your Company. I've known Ruben since his Gainsight days, and the moment his book came out I've wanted to get him on the show. We spent most of our time talking about the intersection between three chapters of the book: chapter 2 on the role of the customer success manager, chapter 11 on how CSMs should help customers achieve their business goals, and chapter 12 on driving revenue growth. Every CSM and aspiring CSM should read this book. His book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B083XKZN8C/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1On Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rubenrabago/ Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

Jeff Meyerson is the host of Software Engineering Daily and author of the book, Move Fast: How Facebook Builds Software. I am not a software engineer, and I enjoyed this book. I enjoyed it because it is a book about management and strategy more than it is about building software. Any business and any team can learn lessons from how Facebook organizes the entire organization around speed. Everything. Culture. Tools. Processes. And even how people join teams. After you read this book, you will think differently about how you might organize your team or company. More about Jeff:His book: Move Face: How Facebook Builds Software - https://www.amazon.com/Move-Fast-Facebook-Builds-Software-ebook/dp/B093HMJ4KB/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=move+fast&qid=1628641198&sr=8-1His podcast: Software Engineering Daily - https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/ Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

As Theresa Marcroft shares in her book, 90 percent of companies that fail in the first five years did not concentrate foremost on the customer. A customer-centric mindset, therefore, is the antidote to failing as a business and a customer-centric mindset is the beginning of the path to revenue. How does Theresa know? The stats. According to research from CB Insights, the number one reason startups fail is "no market need" (42%), and the number two reason startups fail is "ran out of cash" (29%). This is why, as Theresa describes in her book, The Path to Revenue: Secrets of Successful Tech Leaders, the secret to viability, sustainability, and growth is to embrace a customer-centric mindset and get on the path to revenue. We talked about what that path to revenue looks like. Hint: the path to revenue is how you chart a course through the technology adoption lifecycle, advancing from one market segment to the next larger market segment, and adapting your messaging and your marketing strategy along the way. The w

Chris Aubuchon is the director of customer success at Cycle.io, which helps companies deploy modern cloud container orchestration. We each had a homework assignment for this podcast; to read the book, Product-led onboarding: How to turn new users into lifelong customers by Ramli John and Wes Bush. Guest what we talked about? More about Chris:On Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopher-aubuchon-a682707/Cycle.io: https://cycle.io/about-us/Cycle's Slack Group: http://Slack.cycle.ioThe book we read, Product-Led Onboarding Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

Howard Tiersky is the CEO and founder of FROM, The Digital Transformation Agency, that helps companies grow revenue across digital channels by supporting the customer journey and resonating with today's hyperconnected audience. He has a new book out called Winning Digital Customers: The antidote to irrelevance.We talked about the three main themes in his book, which are understanding the customer, mapping the customer journey and design thinking, leadership and alignment. One key takeaway for me is his notion that many customer journeys are emotional journeys. Howard talked about customer research he conducts with his clients, part of which includes interviewing customers about their experiences working with his clients. He asks customers some form of this question, "What were you thinking during this experience/transaction/etc?" One of the most common responses from customers is, "I was thinking they (the company) don't care." Wow. Think about that. It makes one wonder, "Do our customers think that abou

Kristi Faltorusso is the VP of Customer Success at ClientSuccess where she is helping to shape the direction of customer success. Kristi is also a founding member of Gain, Grow, and Retain, advisor to numerous organizations and software companies, plus a top 25 customer success influencer. Prior to all of this, Kristi built and ran customer success organizations at the director and VP levels at software companies like BetterCloud, Sisense, and BrightEdge. She is also starting her own firm, CS Real Simple. Kristi recently published a blog post and some playbooks around the idea of up-leveling your customer relationships with something she calls a "Partnership Kick-Off Meeting." We talked about her partnership kick-off philosophy, the 3 steps to a creating a partner kick off, and the 5 elements of running a successful partnership kick-off meeting. More about Kristi:Her Partnership Kick-Off Meeting Blog: https://www.clientsuccess.com/blog/so-long-onboarding-kickoff-its-all-about-the-partnership-from-now-on/On Li

This excellent Linkedin post from Ziv Peled, chief customer officer from AppsFlyer, shows a predictive relationship between NRR and future ARR. Specifically, the stat is 130% NRR predicts a 5X increase in ARR in 5 years when you add a 15% YoY growth in new bookings. The numbers Ziv also shared shows that NRR of 90% or even 100% related to single digital growth in ARR in 5 years. I found this stat astounding. Ziv posed a call to action that, as this stat reveals, increasing NRR should be a priority, and that the best way to increase NRR is to get all departments in our companies together on increasing NRR. I don’t think bringing “all the departments together, and agree on the same goal - LONG TERM VALUE for your customers” is enough. I believe companies should design a business model that prioritizes NRR growth so that “bringing all the departments together” as a unifying exercise is unnecessary. Because the business model itself prioritizes NRR. Increasing NRR is function of busi

Frank Zinghini is the CEO of  Applied Visions, a custom application development company that helps his customers build software applications. How do you persuade potential customers to buy software that hasn't yet been built and will not (or may not) deliver results for weeks or months or even years into the future?  And how do you do this, when each project is custom, and you have not way to say, "Here's what we did for this other customer," because the entire project is different? By earning trust. Easier said than done no doubt. This is the challenge Frank Zinghini faces with each customer. It was a fascinating conversation about trust, relationships, partnerships, just plain being genuine about helping customers...even if that means talking customers out of buying from you. More about Frank: His company, Applied Visions: AVI.comOn Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/frankzinghini/ Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

Mark Harari is the best-selling author of Lobster on a Cheese Plate: How to Stand Out, Attract the Best Clients, and Win Every Sale That Comes Your Way. In his 20+ years in marketing, he’s won numerous awards for web design, video, copywriting, print advertising, and more.So, what’s his specialty? Simple: generating leads.We talked about his metaphor of a lobster on a cheese plate and his approach for helping the market see us as the obvious choice in our field. Our ideal customers should find us and say to themselves, "they are the obvious choice for me." Do your customers say that about you?More about Mark: The Book: https://bethelobster.comOn Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markharari Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

Shreesha Ramdas is SVP & GM at Medallia, which acquired the company he co-founded, Strikedeck, a leader in Customer Success Automation. Shreesha is a multi-time company co-founder including LeadFormix (acquired by CallidusCloud) and OutJoin. We talked with Shreesha about what it means for a customer success organization to be outside in versus inside out in strategy and orientation, how easy it is to fall into the trap of being too one sided, and why you must balance these two and create a hybrid approach. On July 29, 2021, Shreesha and I are running a Customer Success Leadership Network event on this topic, which you can register for on the CSLN website. If you like this conversation, go register for our event.More about Shreesha:Medallia Strikedeck Website: https://strikedeck.com/Shreesha on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shreesharamdas/Strikedeck Radio: https://strikedeck.com/strikedeck-radio-customer-success-live/ Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

Nick Amabile is the Owner and CEO of DAS42, a US consulting firm comprised of data analysts, scientists, business professionals, and engineers who provide end-to-end data services—including data strategy, tech stack integrations, application implementation, and enterprise analytics training. Nick’s FullStack Philosophy is centered around the two components critical to achieving data-driven success: building an effective data analytics environment and building a data-centric company culture.We talked about helping customers become more data driven, the two components critical to achieving data-driven success, and the four maturity stages of a data driven organization. More about Nick:His company DAS42: https://das42.com/On Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/namabile/ Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

Theresa Lina is the author of the bestseller, Be the Go-To: How to Own Your Competitive Market, Charge More, and Have Customers Love You for It. She is also a long-time Silicon Valley business strategist and practitioner who specializes in helping companies become differentiated, innovative, and more profitable market leaders. As founder and president of Lina Group, Inc., she has more than 25 years of strategy, technology, innovation, and marketing expertise.Her origin story begins early in her career at Accenture when she moved into a marketing role and helped build a new line of business from zero to $800 million in less than a decade. That experience was the seed that became her Apollo Method, which she describes in her book. If you want to be the "Go-to" in your marketing, listen to this episode and buy her book. More about Theresa:Her website: Apollomethod.com Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

Anthony Blatner is a tech founder, ex-IBMer, and the founder of Speedwork Social, a top LinkedIn advertising agency. After watching a lot of companies with great products or services fail because of ineffective marketing, Anthony started Speedwork Social to help those businesses unlock their B2B marketing potential and achieve explosive growth.He says everything we want to hear on Helping Sells Radio. We talked about:how marketing should lead with value not a conversion to a sale, though you do need a solid call-to-actionwhat he thinks is the best form of educational content that works on Linkedinthe minimum customer lifetime value you need to be successful on Linkedin. More about Anthony:His company, Speedwork Social: https://speedworksocial.com/On Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthonyblatner/ Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

David Duncan is a managing director at Innosight, where he works with leaders to create customer-centric teams, strategies, and organizations. David is a featured speaker and author on customer-centricity, innovation, and growth. He is the coauthor of two previous books, including the Wall Street Journal bestseller “Competing against luck: The story of innovation and customer choice, written with the late Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen. A leading authority on the theory and application of jobs to be done, David has extensive experience conducting market investigations around the world.He just published a new book called, "The Secret lives of customers: A detective story about solving the mystery of customer behavior." As David says, imagine if everyone in your organization had the skill of being a market detective and empowered to have insightful and mutually rewarding conversations with the customers they serve. How great could your company be? More about David: On Linkedin: htt