Helping Sells Radio

You might think the best way to respond to a customer or prospect’s description of a problem they want to solve is to explain or demonstrate how your product can help them solve that problem. After all, you product was designed to solve that problem, right? The problem is that leaping to a product solution might be an act of  ignoring what your prospect or customer is really saying.    Michael Tuso, director of revenue management at Chili Piper joins the podcast to talk about how revenue management is really about helping customers. Of course it is also about looking for ways to optimize conversation rates and revenue expansion..but it starts with helping customers.    More about Michael: On Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaeltuso/ Chili Piper: https://www.chilipiper.com/ Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

ServiceRocket founder and CEO, Rob Castaneda posted a message in our Workplace from Facebook communication tool about books we read. His message was basically this…don’t tell me what you’ve read, show me.    I am guilty of telling. Most of the time. But on rare occasional I actually “do” a book.    After I read, Allan Dib’s book, "The 1-Page Marketing Plan: Get New Customers, Make More Money And Stand Out From The Crowd,” I took action. immediately I applied his three phase marketing canvas on a few marketing campaigns. I have the Confluence pages to prove it and everything.    So, when Allan agreed to join the podcast, I looked up my old marketing plans to have them ready to talk to him about.    When I looked them over, I realized that I had actually used this canvas. But there was a conspicuous section of his canvas that I left blank. The “After” section.    The “After" section is the part of the c

What choice would you make? Hire someone with customer success experience but not industry experience. Hire someone with industry experience but no customer success experience. Or hire someone with neither. Of course, you’d hire someone with both. Or would you. Can you see the career matrix unfolding right here in front of you?   We talk about this very trade off with Maranda Dziekonski, VP of customer success at Swiftly, board member of the Customer Success Leadership Network (CSLN), top 100 customer success influencer, and new advisor to the University of San Francisco MBA program.   More about Maranda: Her website: https://littlesaasy.com/ On Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marandaanndziekonski/   Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

There are so many nuggets in Kellie Lucas’s book, “The Customer Success Pioneer: The First 12 Months of Your Journey to Growth.” I didn’t know where to start. So I just made a list of things from her book that I wanted to talk about.    The list looked something like this…   You wrote this at the beginning: "This book will walk you through the first months of establishing a customer success function and philosophy which works in alignment with the rest of your organization’s teams to maximize your revenue growth engine …… your customer portfolio."   We put customer success in because a VC told us to do it.   Not seen as revenue target, but Customer Success should own revenue (gross and net retention rate) and track CAC AND CRC.    Theme of the book: Their success = your success AND Customer growth = Revenue growth   Your graphs in the book: Customer Success Inputs, Customer Success Processes, Customer Success Outputs.

Jennifer Chiang and I just geeked out on customer success. Jennifer is director of customer success at Yup and just published a book called, "The Startup’s Guide to Customer Success: How to Champion the Customer at Your Company.” So, of course that’s what we did.    More about Jennifer:  Her book: guidetocustomersuccess.com On Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-chiang/ Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

If you are like me, you think of design as primarily what something looks like and secondarily how something works. But you probably don’t think about all the words used in a product as part of the design. This episode will change your perspective.    I interview Michael Metts and Andy Welfle, co-authors of “Writing is Designing: Words and the User Experience about how a lack of good word design in products can get users into trouble. In just one simple example, you know those error messages you get that don’t help you get out of the error or explain what to do next? Someone didn’t design that experience.    This is what Michael and Andy do in their book…show you how to design for that experience…among many others.    Learn more about Michael and Andy: Michael is the senior UX architect manager (Conversation Design) at Allstate…you know…chatbots. And Andy is the UX content strategy manager at Adobe. The Book: https://www.writi

Empathy might be a soft skill, but empathy doesn’t mean passive. I means seeking first to understand, take someone else’s perspective, and understand their needs. With this information, we lead our buyers through a process. Not pushy. Leading. Sometimes it means leading a buy to the conclusion that our solution might not be a good fit.    Britta Fischlin combines 25 years of business and marketing background in media and high-tech with a deep level of listening, years of coaching, somatic practices, and energy healing to help entrepreneurs and solopreneurs release any obstacles and heal their relationship to business, marketing and selling so that they feel comfortable creating marketing visibility for their business and achieving their desired business success. Find out more at https://brittafischlin.com    Britta’s blog post, "Empathy is a critical Tool in our Sales Tool Box” - https://brittafischlin.com/why-empathy-is-a-critical-tool-in-sales-process/ Subscr

Do you have a community built around your product and services? Do you want to build one? If so, this is the podcast episode for you. And Jono Bacon, author of People Powered: How communities can supercharge your business, brand, and teams, will help you avoid the mistakes that many other software companies make when building communities. The most notable mistake is building a community because it will benefit the company. That’s not exactly Helping Sells Radio approved, is it?    We do things that benefit customers. Jono wants to help you build a community that benefits your customers…and whatever broader audience you want to serve.    When you build a community…you have to provide value. Give people a reasons to discover your community, come back to your community, and help others stay in your community.    Only then will your community thrive.   Only then will you gain some benefit.    Learn more about Jono: The B

Why is a mathematician, MBA, and Marketing Executive writing a book about the soul of business? For many reasons. But one reason in particular is that numbers are backwards looking, and if someone wants to be innovative, they need to look into the future. Innovation is forward looking.    Rishad Tobaccoawala, author of Restoring the Soul of Business: Staying Human in the age of data, realized that the secret to business success is merging spreadsheets and stories. Companies that do this create value. Companies that do one or the other, destroy value.  Wells Fargo and Beoing were so numbers driven that they got caught up in scandals and destroyed shareholder value. WeWork was all story and no data.    We talked about a lot of examples like this. And we talked about what we, as leaders, can do about it.    Learn more about Rishad His Book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Restoring-Soul-Business-Staying-Human/dp/1400210542 His Website: https://rishadtobaccowala

It’s the chicken or the egg question of our times….What comes first, strategy or execution? According to Lauren Costella, VP of Customer Success at GoodTime.io, it’s probably execution. Yes, you need a plan. Yes, you need to know where you want to go. And yes, you need some idea how you will get there, but the bottom line is that you really don’t know any of that until you start executing.    When you start executing. You learn. When you learn, you can execute better. And when you execute better, a strategy unfolds. Now you can document that strategy. Communicate that strategy. And rally your entire team around that strategy. And guess what…start executing that strategy.    The modern day circle of life.   A heavy topic. And note even the only thing we talked about with Lauren.   Learn more about Lauren: On Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurencostella/ On Twitter: https://twitter.com/lcostella On the CSLN Board: https://custom

I never would have thought we’d do a show based on inspiration from a "renegade minister, a handyman turned political activist and naturalist, and an innovative educator and early feminist voice.” But we did. Thanks to John Jantsch, author of the new book, "The Self-Relient Entrepreneur: 366 Daily Meditations to Feed Your Soul and Grow Your Business.”   Although this book was written for entrepreneurs, who John traditionally serves, the lessons in this book apply to anyone. We talked about that, too. Because in his book John writes, “You can experience a spirit of self-reliance and independence no matter your profession or job title.” This is what we learned from Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller. You know, those American transcendentalists.   Learn more about John: The Book: https://ducttapemarketing.com/the-self-reliant-entrepreneur/ John’s Website: https://ducttapemarketing.com/   Special thank you to Todd Hocken

I met Kris Bondi, CMO at LogDNA at the SaaStr Scale founders dinner in August 2019. She belonged there. I was an imposter trying to keep up. We talked about all manner of things, which eventually led to a discussion of what makes strong communities.   One important factor is diversity and inclusion.   She had evidence.   According to recent Gartner piece on the impact of diversity and inclusion on performance, Through 2022, 75% of organizations with frontline decision-making teams reflecting a diverse and inclusive culture will exceed their financial targets. Diversity can improve performance and the evidence can no longer be ignored.   I wish I had my microphone.    I didn’t. So we did the next best thing. We got Kris onto the podcast, so we could good deeper into this topic.    Learn more about Kris:  On Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krisbondi/ On Twitter: https://twitter.com/kbondi LogDNA: https://logdna.com/leadership-and

I know what you’re thinking. I thought the same thing. “I work for an enterprise software company. We don’t have fans.” If it’s true that you don’t have fans, it’s because you haven’t created any fans. HubSpot has fans. Atlassian has fans. And to prove the point that any business can have fans, Hagerty Classic Car Insurance has one million subscribers to it’s YouTube channel.    David Meerman Scott, author of Fanocracy: Turning Fans into Customers and Customers into Fans, told us the story about how Hagerty Classic Car Insurance needed to figure out a better way to sell. The Hagerty CEO told David, "We specifically went out to create fans. That’s how we drive our business.”   Creating fans was a deliberate business model. It’s working for Hagerty. It’s working for HubSpot. It can work for you.    Learn more about David: David’s book: https://www.davidmeermanscott.com/books/fanocracy Speci

Learning how to learn might be the most important thing you learn in life. Especially now…in a world that is moving fast and conspiring to distract you. Our careers depend on it. The problem is that most of us never actually learned how to learn, and we cannot afford not to have a learning method we can trust. Scott Young gives us a method for learning in his book, Ultralearning: Master Hard Skills, Outsmart the Competition, and Accelerate Your Career.    To make this episode as useful as possible, we talked to Scott about how to apply his ultralearning principles to learning more about our customers and thus advancing our careers.    Learn more about Scott: Scott’s book: https://www.amazon.com/Ultralearning-Master-Outsmart-Competition-Accelerate-ebook/dp/B07K6MF8MD/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=ultralearning&qid=1578179067&sr=8-2 Scott’s website: https://www.scotthyoung.com/ Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

You know that stat…..that 57% of the buying decision is made before a buyer calls you? Well guess what…it’s baloney. That stat is made for sales people who want to sit around waiting for the emails to come in. Professional sales people don’t wait around for the phone to ring. No professional, in any career or job type, wait around for something to happen. They make things happen.    Mike Weinberg, author of #SalesTruth: Debunking the Myths. Apply Powerful Principles. Win More New Sales, reminds us that professional sales people proactively work into accounts before buyers are shopping, seek to truly understand a customer’s needs, does effective discovery work, is motivated to solve a customer problem, tells a compelling story, and is committed to delivering valuable outcomes. His words, not mine.    It’s true though. Isn’t it.    The episode is a breath of fresh air to focusing on helping people as a means for improving our sales results&

If you have listened to at least a few of the lat 30 episodes of Helping Sells Radio, you probably noticed I cite the invoicing processes as a step in the customer experience that is largely ignored by the chief customer officer because “that’s a finance thing.” And that there aren’t that many accounts receivable managers who think about the customer experience. That’s not really their job. Who could blame ‘em. Collections is kind of important, wouldn’t you say? But a bad invoicing process can negatively affect the customer experience.    In this episode, I speak with Tim Teeter, VP of Business Development at Yaypay, and accounts receivable management tool that thinks of itself as a customer satisfaction tool. We talk about helping customers use software versus helping them do their jobs better, the negative impact of a poor invoicing process, and how we can sell outcomes instead of features.    To learn more about Tim connect with him on LinkedIn

When I spoke with Resa Gooding, we talked about how to align sales and marketing teams together in service of how customer actually buy. After all, sales and marketing teams are notorious for not getting along with each other. There’s this tension. Marketing says, “Why can’t you close deals, we send you plenty of leads.” Sales says, “We’re not getting good leads from you.” The real problem is that the buyer suffers.    The question then is how do we get sales and marketing to work together in service of the buyer. Maybe it’s about creating experiences, not generating leads.    Learn more about Rosa Gooding: Cacao Media: https://www.cacaomedia.co/ Resa on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/resagooding/ Resa created a special page for Helping Sells Radio Listeners: https://www.cacaomedia.co/helpingsells Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

“But I’m not a sales person.” How many times have you heard that? How many times have you said that. Dr. Cindy McGovern went from college professor (the opposite of salesperson) to selling insurance and realized that although she never thought of her self as a salesperson, sales is what she had been doing all alone. She wrote her book, “Every Job is a Sales Job: How to Use the Art of Selling to Win a Work,” to help us mere non-sales mortals how to get over our “ick” factor and start selling at work.    Like Dr. Cindy said in the episode, if you buy the book directly from her website, you get something extra……a bonus chapter on building your personal brand. A big part of also improving your selling. Use the phrase “helpingsells” at check out here: https://drcindy.com Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

Rob Gallo, founder and CEO of CompLinks, joined us to talk about customer loyalty. Though he runs a white-label consumer engagement SaaS platform helping companies generate revenue from their customers, Rob reminds us that sometimes building loyalty starts with a very simple concept: build stronger relationships with customers and take a genuine interest. Pick up the phone. Call a customer. Go visit them in person. Learn more about real loyalty from Rob. He created a special page for our helping sells community to help you learn more about customer loyalty: https://complinks.co/helpingsells/ Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

What people say and what people actually do are two very different things. When asked, most of us say we eat healthy. But if you look at what is actually in our kitchens, you might find a lot of Gino’s pizza rolls and bags of chips with the phrase, “Made with Natural Ingredients” on them. What does this have to do with customer experience? Rachel Lane, The Customer Queen and Solutions Principle at Medallia, tells us that the best way to understand our customers is to look at the voice of the customer and their actual behavior through signals and data. After you listen to this episode, you can find Rachel on Linkedin with a simple search or go to the Medallia blog or find her on twitter @RachelLane. Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com