Helping Sells Radio is the enterprise software podcast for people who want to help customers achieve outcomes with software. We talk to technology professionals who work all over the customer journey, from marketing and sales to customer success and professional services, to unpack innovative ways people are taking a helpful approach with customers. Brought to you by ServiceRocket Media. helpingsells.substack.com
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Andy Paul is the author of his new book, "Sell without Selling Out: A Guide to Success On Your Own Terms." Guess what we talked about. Andy hooked me very early on in the book when he said that the purpose of his book is to "turn your back on salesy behaviors," which is how he defines "selling out." More about Andy: * His book: https://www.amazon.c…
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353 Mikael Blaisdell Onboarding and the company organization chart
27:59
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27:59We are doing a special series of episodes leading up to Rocketlane's Propel22, the world's first customer onboarding conference, in which we will talk to many of the Propel22 conference speakers to preview their talks and see what we can do to further the customer onboarding category. We all know that the best thing we can do the help customers be …
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352 Jeff Kushmerek Adventures in software onboarding and implementations
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23:03We are doing a special series of episodes leading up to Rocketlane's Propel22, the world's first customer onboarding conference, in which we will talk to many of the Propel22 conference speakers to preview their talks and see what we can do to further the customer onboarding category. We all know that the best thing we can do the help customers be …
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351 Star Hofer Says customer onboarding could start as early as the discovery call
30:38
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30:38We are doing a special series of episodes leading up to Rocketlane's Propel22, the world's first customer onboarding conference, in which we will talk to many of the Propel22 conference speakers to preview their talks and see what we can do to further the customer onboarding category. We all know that the best thing we can do the help customers be …
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1
350 Peter Armaly Building a better strategy for effective go live
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23:45We are doing a special series of episodes leading up to Rocketlane's Propel22, the world's first customer onboarding conference, in which we will talk to many of the Propel22 conference speakers to preview their talks and see what we can do to further the customer onboarding category. We all know that the best thing we can do the help customers be …
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349 Rod Cherkas Packaging your services offerings to support fast growth
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24:33We are doing a special series of episodes leading up to Rocketlane's Propel22, the world's first customer onboarding conference, in which we will talk to many of the Propel22 conference speakers to preview their talks and see what we can do to further the customer onboarding category. We all know that the best thing we can do the help customers be …
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348 Irit Eizips Redesign customer onboarding to deliver first value
22:31
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22:31We are doing a special series of episodes leading up to Rocketlane's Propel22, the world's first customer onboarding conference, in which we will talk to many of the Propel22 conference speakers to preview their talks and see what we can do to further the customer onboarding category. We all know that the best thing we can do the help customers be …
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347 Donna Weber Who thinks you are customer-centric: you or your customers?
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26:20We are doing a special series of episodes leading up to Rocketlane's Propel22, the world's first customer onboarding conference, in which we will talk to many of the Propel22 conference speakers to preview their talks and see what we can do to further the customer onboarding category. We all know that the best thing we can do the help customers be …
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346 Mary Poppen Improve customer onboarding with customer intelligence
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23:16We are doing a special series of episodes leading up to Rocketlane's Propel22, the world's first customer onboarding conference, in which we will talk to many of the Propel22 conference speakers to preview their talks and see what we can do to further the customer onboarding category. We all know that the best thing we can do the help customers be …
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345 Kristi Faltorusso What is done: Defining successful onboarding
20:07
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20:07We are doing a special series of episodes leading up to Rocketlane's Propel22, the world's first customer onboarding conference, in which we will talk to many of the Propel22 conference speakers to preview their talks and see what we can do to further the customer onboarding category. We all know that the best thing we can do the help customers be …
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1
344 Ed Powers Onboarding moments of truth and moments of proof
21:26
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21:26We are doing a special series of episodes leading up to Rocketlane's Propel22, the world's first customer onboarding conference, in which we will talk to many of the Propel22 conference speakers to preview their talks and see what we can do to further the customer onboarding category. We all know that the best thing we can do the help customers be …
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343 Kristen Hayer Onboarding and the company organization chart
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21:59We are doing a special series of episodes leading up to Rocketlane's Propel22, the world's first customer onboarding conference, in which we will talk to many of the Propel22 conference speakers to preview their talks and see what we can do to further the customer onboarding category. We all know that the best thing we can do the help customers be …
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342 Maranda Dziekonski Onboarding is the most critical part of the customer journey
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24:53We are doing a special series of episodes leading up to Rocketlane's Propel22, the world's first customer onboarding conference, in which we will talk to many of the Propel22 conference speakers to preview their talks and see what we can do to further the customer onboarding category. We all know that the best thing we can do the help customers be …
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1
341 Emilia D'Anzica You had me at Hello: Starting the renewal process at Hello
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23:45We are doing a special series of episodes leading up to Rocketlane's Propel22, the world's first customer onboarding conference, in which we will talk to many of the Propel22 conference speakers to preview their talks and see what we can do to further the customer onboarding category. We all know that the best thing we can do the help customers be …
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340 Srikrishnan Ganesan Launches the world's first customer onboarding conference
41:07
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41:07Sri Ganesan is the co-founder and CEO of Rocketlane, the customer onboarding platform. We are doing a special series of episodes leading up to Rocketlane's Propel22, the world's first customer onboarding conference, in which we will talk to many of the Propel22 conference speakers to preview their talks and see what we can do to further the custome…
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339 Bill Cushard Customer education as strategy to enable customers, grow customers, win customers, and create markets
1:00:17
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1:00:17In this episode of Helping Sells Radio, I am sharing a recording of a webinar I facilitated about how software company CxOs should think about using customer education as a way to grow. I call it the Customer Education Growth Framework. The framework makes the process of developing customer training predictable. You just follow the steps. And when …
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338 Jared Orr Going all in on a customer success career
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38:32Jared Orr is senior customer success manager at Electric and founder and host of the Founders & Mentors podcast. We know each other from being connected on Twitter and Linkedin. We finally met IRL on Helping Sells Radio to discuss customer success, his podcast, and going all in on his career. Side bar: I say we met IRL. It was on video. But I still…
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337 Bill Cushard How to build your SaaS customer education annual plan
1:02:33
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1:02:33In this episode of Helping Sells Radio, we share a recording of a webinar we did about how software company customer education teams should build annual plans and learn to forecast instead of asking for a budget. Forecasting is a critical capability to learn, especially as your company prepares for possible IPO. Forecasting is a way to create your …
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336 Paula Courtney Trying to surprise and delight customers is an illusion of progress
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51:50Paula Courtney is the CEO of The Verde Group, a leading customer experience consultancy. She recently ran a study of 9,400 consumers with Thomas Robertson from Wharton, to find out what customers consider "wow experiences." Harvard Business Review published an article to summarize the findings called, "Why Customer Loyalty Programs Can Backfire." T…
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1
335 Diana De Jesus Delivers customer success at a customer success company (Catalyst) for customer success managers
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54:13Diana De Jesus is the Customer Success Manager Strategist at Catalyst.io, which is a brand new role for her and for Catalyst. We talked about two of her Linkedin posts that caught my eye. One about her first year at Catalyst and another about what life is like using a customer success software tool, instead of a CRM, to do her customer success job.…
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1
334 Mel Bilge Negotiating the renewal - Part 2
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49:46This is part two in a two part series in which Mel and Bill talk about owning renewals, negotiating the renewals, and lessons learned building a customer success team that does own the renewal. More about Mel on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melihabilge/ More about ServiceRocket: * Visit ServiceRocket.com: https://www.servicerocket.com/ * O…
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333 Mel Bilge - Negotiating the renewal - Part 1
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34:41This is part one in a two part series in which Mel and Bill talk about owning renewals, negotiating the renewals, and lessons learned building a customer success team that does own the renewal. More about Mel on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melihabilge/ More about ServiceRocket: * Visit ServiceRocket.com: https://www.servicerocket.com/ * O…
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Mel and Bill talk about customer advisory boards (CABs). More about Mel on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melihabilge/ More about ServiceRocket: * Visit ServiceRocket.com: https://www.servicerocket.com/ * On Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/servicerocket/ * On Twitter: https://twitter.com/servicerocket * On Facebook: https://www.fa…
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331 Mel Bilge On Documenting Customer Success Processes
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56:04Mel Bilge and Bill Cushard discuss defining and documenting the customer success process. More about Mel on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melihabilge/ More about ServiceRocket: * Visit ServiceRocket.com: https://www.servicerocket.com/ * On Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/servicerocket/ * On Twitter: https://twitter.com/serviceroc…
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1
330 Emergency Podcast: Aaron Thompson QBRs are stupid
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42:25Aaron Thompson, CRO at SuccessHacker, wrote a Linkedin article called "QBRs are stupid. Naturally, we had to talk about it. The problem is QBRs is that we say they are focused on the customer, but we deliver them as all about us. Aaron is begging us to re-examine the nature of our QBRs to make them actually about the customer and for the customer. …
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329 Mel Bilge In a QBR, sometimes you just say, "Tell us what we don't know?" and let the customer spill the beans
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44:13Mel Bilge and Bill Cushard discuss implementing quarterly business reviews. More about ServiceRocket: * Visit ServiceRocket.com: https://www.servicerocket.com/ * On Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/servicerocket/ * On Twitter: https://twitter.com/servicerocket * On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ServiceRocket/ * On Instagram: https://…
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328 Mel Bilge Net revenue retention (NRR) is our north star
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26:57Mel Bilge and Bill Cushard discuss why net revenue retention is a north star metric and a growth metric. More about ServiceRocket: * Visit ServiceRocket.com: https://www.servicerocket.com/ * On Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/servicerocket/ * On Twitter: https://twitter.com/servicerocket * On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ServiceRoc…
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327 Debbie Smith is helping customers earn their CEUs and PMI PDUs. Are you?
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56:45Debbie Smith is the senior manager of Smartsheet University and vice president of the Customer Education Management Association (CEdMA) and joins us on Helping Sells Radio to talk about helping customers beyond the product. This all started on a Linkedin post, which talked about how software companies should consider building the school that teache…
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Mel Bilge and Bill Cushard discuss the importance of account ownership in SaaS customer success. More about ServiceRocket: * Visit ServiceRocket.com: https://www.servicerocket.com/ * On Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/servicerocket/ * On Twitter: https://twitter.com/servicerocket * On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ServiceRocket/ * O…
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325 Mel Bilge Choosing a high touch customer success engagement model
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36:36Mel Bilge and Bill Cushard discuss high touch customer success and why being scalable and low touch isn't all it's cracked up to be. More about ServiceRocket: * Visit ServiceRocket.com: https://www.servicerocket.com/ * On Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/servicerocket/ * On Twitter: https://twitter.com/servicerocket * On Facebook: https:/…
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1
324 Steve Harper Be a valuable resource and customers will pull you in
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53:05Steve Harper is the author of The Ripple Effect: Maximizing the Power of Relationships for Life & Business and creator of Ripple Central, a services consultancy that helps harness the power of human connection to transform your team, your career, and your life. Steve had me on his podcast, The Ripple Effect Podcast with Steve Harper, and now he's o…
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323 The Business Model Innovation of Customer Success
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17:01This article originally appeared on the Customer Success Leadership Network blog. We are thinking about customer success all wrong. We think it’s a function. A department. A post-sales team. The enlightened among us think customer success is a philosophy or even an organizational design principle. That’s better, but still not quite right. I mean, w…
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322 Asa Hochhauser If a prospect doesn't know what to ask, you ask it for them. Then answer it.
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53:24Asa Hochhauser is the VP of Sales at McGaw.io, which helps companies harness the power of Marketing Technology and Data. He is also a member of the Revenue Collective and founding member of Sales Hacker. He knows a thing or two about sales, sales enablement, and designing sales tech stacks. Rolling out the right sales tech stack is the key to produ…
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321 Kay Formanek Beyond D&I and the quest for customer congruence
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55:42Kay Formanek is the founder and CEO of Diversity and Performance, a company that develops conscious diversity leaders. She was managing director for 25 years at Accenture (though I did not meet Kay then, we shared time at Accenture) where she contributed to the agenda of diversity and inclusion and talent development. Kay’s expertise is in the neur…
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1
320 Maureen Burns The book [Winning on Purpose] is about the soul of NPS
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48:26Maureen Burns is a senior partner in Bain & Company's Boston office and a leader in Bain's Customer Strategy and Marketing Practice. Maureen is out with a new book, Winning on Purpose: The Unbeatable Strategy of Loving Customers, with co-authors Fred Reichheld and Darci Darnell. I asked how Maureen, who has a background in investment banking and se…
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319 Darci Darnell NPS implemented correctly reveals how a company lives up to its purpose of loving customers
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50:14Darci Darnell is the head of Bain’s global sales & marketing practice and an active leader in Financial Services and Strategy practices with nearly two decades of management consulting experience. She also has particular expertise in customer retention strategy, NPS®, and employee engagement. Darnell is out with a new book, Winning on Purpose: The …
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318 Fred Reichheld Great businesses love customers
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48:08Fred Reichheld is the creator of the Net Promoter® , founder of Bain & Company's Loyalty practice, and the author of five books including the New York Times bestseller The Ultimate Question 2.0. Reichheld is out with a new book, Winning on Purpose: The Unbeatable Strategy of Loving Customers, with co-authors Darci Darnell and Maureen Burns. The ult…
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1
317 Sangram Vajre Go to market has a new roommate: Customer success
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53:50Too many of us think that go to market is a sales and marketing exercise (some think it's only marketing), but as Sangram Vajre, author of Move: The four question go to market framework and 3X Helping Sells Radio (Ep. 68 and Ep. 154) guest says, go to market requires marketing and sales and customer success to work as one. Where most companies falt…
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1
316 Jeff Coyle AI and machine learning are coming to content marketing and your customers will thank you for it
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55:13Jeff Coyle is the co-founder and chief strategy officer at MarketMuse, which helps marketing teams improve the effectiveness of their content. As Jeff says, "We do the the why for content." This is the right question to answer before entering into any content publishing initiative, and the answer cannot be, "Because my boss told me to write these 1…
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1
315 Simon Severino Once you've experienced scaling, you then understand systems
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57:28Simon Severino is the founder and CEO of Strategy Sprints, which helps B2B founders double revenue and save time, money, and energy by systematizing "everything." We talked about the value of systems, and as he said in the podcast, once you have experienced scaling, you then understand systems. And until you do, you cannot really understand the imp…
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314 Barry Kelly and Rob Castaneda Thought Industries and ServiceRocket define the future of customer education
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48:08This 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 …
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313 Tim Riesterer When selling 'defeat' the status quo, when renewing 'defend' it
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51:09I 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. …
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1
312 Sasi Yajamanyam Reimagining customer success
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55:41Sasi 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 a…
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1
311 Wayne Mullins Imagine a marketing team spending one third of their time on existing customers
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58:10Wayne 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…
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310 Dave Derington joins ServiceRocket to reinvent technology services with customer education
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39:10What 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.education * On Linkedin: https://…
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309 Emergency Podcast: Dave Jackson and Bill Cushard Debate the ultimate measure of customers' success
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1:00:56Dave 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 w…
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1
308 Tyler Kemp Reach and attract your ideal customer with intent
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51:41Tyler 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 priva…
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1
307 Jon Picoult You must impress (not satisfy) your customers
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51:36Jon 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 gro…
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1
306 Mary Ann Pruitt Traditional media is dead. Long live traditional media...especially that billboard on the 101
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52:27Mary 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, "Traditio…
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1
305 Ben Worthen How can you get repeat customers for your ideas
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52:28When 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 b…
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