Helping Sells Radio

David Dulany is the founder and CEO of Tenbound, a research and advisory firm focused and dedicated 100% to sales development performance improvement. He is also author of "The sales development framework: How to build and scale highly productive sales development program." We talked about his book, naturally, but we talked a lot less about the art and science of selling than you might think. His sales development framework spends a lot of time on culture and leadership and being proactive, and building a plan. It's an exercise in speeding up by slowing down. His framework will help you see precisely how to set up a successful sales development team in your company.More about David:On LinkedinDavid’s company, Tenbound: The Book Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

In this episode, Bill Cushard talks about the difference between defensive customer success and offensive customer success; and how to move from one to the other. Most software companies probably engage in defensive customers success, which is designed to retain customers. High-performing software companies engage in offensive customer success and grow customers. The question Bill addresses is how to move from being defensive to being offensive. Two ways: Step 1: Start measuring net revenue retention (NRR).Step 2: Redesign the company business model so that value propositions on the business model canvas align to the revenue streams, so that all a customer success has to do is help customers achieve the value propositions, such that it naturally flows to purchasing additional products and services. Enjoy the episode. Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

Three-time Helping Sells Radio guest Donna Weber is back with her new book, Onboarding matters: How successful companies transform new customers into loyal customers. You know that expression, "an ounce of prevention is worth if pound of cure?" Well, that's what onboarding is; a proactive prevention prescription for customer success. Whatever your downstream customer problem, chances are you can follow the flow upstream to a solution of improved onboarding. Donna calls it orchestrated onboarding. More about Donna:Her book: Onboarding Matters: https://www.amazon.com/Onboarding-Matters-Successful-Companies-Transform-ebook/dp/B091BH8SZ1Her website: http://www.donnaweber.comOn Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/donnaweberDonna was on episode 109 and episode 38. Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

Wayne McCulloch is one of the world’s leading customer success experts and a Top 100 Customer Success Strategist. Wayne McCulloch works with Google Cloud’s entire SaaS portfolio as the Customer Success Leader. He’s a keynote speaker and the recipient of multiple industry awards with more than twenty-five years of experience in customer-focused roles.His new book is out; “The seven pillars of customer success: A proven framework to drive impactful client outcomes for your company.” We talked about implementing customer success in a variety of business models, what customer success is really responsible for, and how someone can use his book to implement customer success in way that fits their business. For more information about The Seven Pillars, including downloadable templates and training and certification materials, visit www.cspillars.com. Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

Here's a lesson in customer education. Coinbase is hiring a director of content to "Make Coinbase *the* place to go to learn about crypto in a way that is easy to understand and approachable."Two observations:Coinbase aims to "create a market" of crypto investors, Wall Street analysts, journalists, policy makers and regulators in order to grow the entire pie......AND build trust. Creating a market is the ultimate goal of customer education......which is outlined in the Customer Education Growth Framework. More here: https://lnkd.in/gX8hz8bCoinbase is aiming to be the "Go-To" in the #cryptocurrency space. Something Theresa Lina describes in her book "Be the Go-To." I get to meet Theresa on Helping Sells Radio and discuss her book. Though we've had to reschedule because of me.Assignment: Fill in the rest of this sentence that Coinbase put in their job description for this role: "Make ___(your software company name)______________ *the* place to go to learn about __________(your mark

Mickie Kennedy is the Founder and President of eReleases, the small business leader for press release distribution, now celebrating 22 years in business. He is an expert at helping small businesses increase their visibility and credibility and he’s here today to share some valuable insights.We talked about how to increase credibility using press releases, how PR helps you close more sales, and how to hone your unique selling proposition to make you irresistible to the media.More about Mickie:His company: eReleasesOn LinkedinFree master class: How to build a PR campaign designed to get massive media coverage Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

This is Rav Dhaliwal's second appearance on Helping Sells Radio. See Episode 208. Rav is an investor and venture partner at Crane Venture Partners. He previously led customer success organizations at Slack, Zendesk, and Yammer, and before that support at Salesforce and IBM. We talked about his latest article, "The missing piece of software sales" in which he makes the case that the way we create and service software products has changed, but the way we sell it has stayed the same. And it's holding us back. The missing piece of software sales is a business model innovation that Rav says more software companies need to embrace. More about Rav: His article: The missing piece of software salesOn LinkedinCrane Venture Partners Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

Jonathan L.S. Byrnes is a senior lecturer at MIT and acknowledged authority on profitability management. His extensive experience spans virtually every industry, including healthcare, transportation, software, retail, financial services, distribution, and others. He is chairman of Profit Isle, a SaaS solution that enables ongoing profit growth.Jonathan is here to talk about his new book, Choose your customer: How to compete against the digital giants and thrive. We talked about a new way to segment customers and that is based on profit. He describes in his book three profit segments into which we should place our customers: profit peaks, profit drains, and profit deserts. Jonathan argues that the way to compete against the digital giants, and win, is to segment customers into these three profit segments and organize your entire management system around these three segments. Each segment requires a different approach, a different strategy, and a different team. Yes, a different team.More about Jonathan:Get the

Ian Bower is the founder of Graphic Rhythm, an innovative graphic design firm that helps small businesses build customer confidence and loyalty through strong visual content. We talked about the importance of bolting a design agency to your business, how to create images that convert, and most importantly for me, how to communicate effectively with a designer or design agency.Ian and the team at Graphic Rhythm is offering Helping Sells Radio listeners $100 off their first month on any Daily Design Subscription. Just click here to learn more. More about Ian:Ian on LinkedinHis company Graphic Rhythm Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

Anika Zubair is the VP of customer success at InSided, a customer success community platform aimed at customer success teams and community professionals looking to increase engagement, advocacy, and effectively gather product feedback. Anika is also co-Founder and community leader at the London Customer Success Meetup. I'm not done.  She is host of two podcasts, InSide Scoop on Customer Success and The Customer Success Channel.More about Anika:Anika on LinkedinThe London Customer Success MeetupThe InSide Scoop on Customer Success podcastThe Customer Success Channel podcast Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

Ross Fulton is the founder and CEO of Valuize, which builds customer success strategies and operations that help companies grow their customers and revenue at scale. We talked about product adoption as a means for helping customers achieve the value they sought when they bought our software. In other words, product adoption is not the goal. Product adoption is a means to the end of helping customers do that job they hired our product to do and realize the value they intended. The point here is linking product use with outcomes. More about Ross:His company, Valuize.The first article we talked about: 5 keys to sustainably reduce customer churn.The second article we talked about: How to create an ideal customer profile to increase retention. Interview on ideal customer profiles with the Congruity Group. Ross on Linkedin Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

Bruce Bower is the founder & CEO of Swytchback, an insights platform authoring lightning-fast, engaging & gesture driven surveys grounded in proven research principles. We talked about how he pivoted his company from a wishlist product designed to connect people and sell products to an insights survey tool design to collect preference data. They took a design first approach to their survey product with a goal to get people to “love taking our surveys.” With completion rates in the 80s and 90s percent, I think it’s working.  More about Bruce:  On LinkedinSwytchback Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

Bob Moesta is the founder, president and CEO of the Re-Wired Group, which specializes in demand-side innovation, changing buyer behavior and helping customers make progress. Bob is also an author and has written this book: Demand-side sales 101: Stop selling and help your customers make progress. I first learned about Bob from a talk he gave at the Business of Software Conference. I was blown away by the nature of how he turns the perspective of sales from supply side (product first orientation) to a demand side (customer first orientation).  We talked about his book, how sales should solve for the customer struggle, how to see things through the customers’ eyes, and how to change from thinking of sales as a funnel to thinking of sales as a timeline. More about Bob: On LinkedinHis company: The Re-Wired GroupHis Business of Software session His book Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

Emilia D’Anzica is the managing partner & CEO at Growth Molecules, which helps companies grow with strategic programs, scalable systems, and enabling teams to lead customers down the path of proven value. Emilia is also a co-board member with me on the Customer Success Leadership Network (CSLN). This is Emilia’s fourth appearance on Helping Sells Radio (episodes 15, 48, 79) We talked about high touch versus low touch customers success, how she helps her clients think though these engagement implementation issues, and at the end Emilia had some great advice about sorting through issues and decisions by writing them down. Great advice.  More about Emilia: Her company: Growth MoleculesThat articles we talked about: 3 Building Blocks for a Successful Customer ExperienceOn Linkedin Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

Dana Alvarenga is the director of customer experience at SlapFive, a customer marketing platform that helps capture the voice of the customer and then spread it throughout our organizations.  We talked about customer marketing, which is a much broader and important discipline than most of us think. It involves advocacy, reference programs, and content creation. In just one story she told on the show, Dana has a customer that created 1,300 pieces of content in her customer marketing program in just a few months. This blew me away and inspired me to get going.  More about Dana: On LinkedinMore about SlapFiveHer Linkedin post on customer marketing Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

Chris Hickens is the co-founder and  CEO ’nuffsaid, a workflow intelligence company working on some interesting things to help customer success managers and other teams sift through everything people are working on and decide what to focus on work on next. We talked about a blog post he wrote recently that really blew my mind called, “Is your low-touch model really just customer support *plus*?” We talked about the various engagement models, high, low, and tech touch and when to use which. I wish I read his blog 18 months ago. More about Chris: His company: ’nuffsaidThe blog postOn Linkedin Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

Guy Nirpaz of the founder and CEO of Totango, a leader in the customer success space. Guy has recently led Totango through a transformation from a sales-led to a product-led growth strategy and has seen tremendous growth of over 300%. He recently posted about it on Linkedin and that’s what we talked about.  More about Guy and Totango: Totango.comGuy on LinkedinHis Linkedin postHis blog postHis book: Farm don’t hunt: The definitive guide to customer success Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

Security auditing says to your customers, “we are aware of the vital importance of cyber security, we are working on it, and we are continuously improving.”  Jenna Waters is a Cybersecurity Consultant at True Digital Security where she specializes in assisting clients with cybersecurity program development, cloud security, and threat intelligence. She collaborates with clients to create and execute strategies to assess, test, and improve cybersecurity strategies, controls, and compliance. She is also a dedicated consumer and data privacy advocate.  We talked about security and privacy and what tech companies need to be aware of, including incident management versus assessments, security as a pain avoidance exercise, and the two most important things to do in security, which is infested in the 80/20 rule applied to security. More about Jenna: On LinkedinHer website True Digital Security Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

Mathew Sweezey is the director of market strategy at Salesforce and author of The context marketing revolution: How to motivate buyers in the age of infinite media. We talked about a changing world of marketing and how Mathew is proposing a new definition of marketing based on the shift from a limited media environment to one of infinite media. He calls this new world "the context marketing revolution" and to quote from the book: "Today helping people achieve their immediate goals is the only way to break through the noise and motivate consumers to act.” That is very Helping Sells Radio. And now you know why we had Mathew on the show.  More about Mathew: His bookOn TwitterOn Linkedin Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

Marija Skobe-Pilley is customer success manager of EMEA at Intelex Technologies, founder and host of Women in Customer Success Podcast, Certified Customer Success Manager Level 4 (CCSM4) (the highest level), and a professional musician. We talked about her shift from being a professional musician to a technical customer success manager how art influences her business and technology career and lessons from her podcast. More about Marija: On LinkedinWomen in Customer Success Podcast Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com