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/ Get on the email list at helpingsells.substack.com

Helping Sells Radio

304 Henry Trevelyan Thomas Create the right environment for your CS team and customers to succeed

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 Get on the email list at helpingsells.substack.com

303 Ben Bensaou Innovation is about anyone anytime anywhere

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 Get on the email list at helpingsells.substack.com

302 Sam Richter Don't ask customers what keeps them up at night

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/ Get on the email list at helpingsells.substack.com

301 David Wachs In a digital world, send more handwritten notes at scale

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.green-leads.com/On Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelfarrell24/ Get on the email list at helpingsells.substack.com

300 Mike Farrell Generate pipeline when your ICP is X, persona is Y, and messaging is Z

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/ Get on the email list at helpingsells.substack.com

299 Kris Rudeegraap Why sending gifts is good for customers and employees

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/ Get on the email list at helpingsells.substack.com

298 Joseph Fung Teach customers the job to be done and create new markets

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 Get on the email list at helpingsells.substack.com

297 Verl Allen Customer data is not useful without context

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_itOn Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidjacksonuk/ Get on the email list at helpingsells.substack.com

296 David Jackson Wrote the book on customer-led growth

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-ceo-needs-to-know-about-customer-success/On Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davecblake/His company, ClientSuccess: https://www.clientsuccess.com Get on the email list at helpingsells.substack.com

295 Dave Blake What your CEO needs to know about customer success

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 Get on the email list at helpingsells.substack.com

294 Peter Voss Your customers need a chatbot with a brain

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-Market-Customers-ebook/dp/B088RKV1WF/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=be+the+go+to&qid=1631277389&sr=8-1 Get on the email list at helpingsells.substack.com

293 Theresa Lina Charge more and have your customers love you for it

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. Get on the email list at helpingsells.substack.com

292 Bill Cushard Be a customer whisperer

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/ Get on the email list at helpingsells.substack.com

291 Anita Toth The secret to customer exit interviews is purpose (and a curious mind)

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/ Get on the email list at helpingsells.substack.com

290 Kristi Faltorusso Reveals the 7 reasons you need customer success software

In the software business, Selling Doesn't Help. Helping Sells. Helping Sells Radio is a podcast about helping customers discover, adopt, and thrive using your software. Co-hosts Bill Cushard and Sarah E. Brown will talk to experts about helping sells in software adoption, customer success, sales, marketing, customer training, and more. Subscribe and listen to get insider tips for leveraging "strategic generosity" to grow your software business. Brought to you by ServiceRocket Media.

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