Hello everyone, and welcome to Helping Sells Radio, a podcast about helping customers discover, adopt, and thrive using your software. In this inaugural episode of Helping Sells Radio, co-hosts Sarah E. Brown and Bill Cushard talk about what Helping Sells Radio is, why we are doing a podcast, and what listeners can expect in upcoming episodes.

The Inspiration for Helping Sells

First of all, let’s start with what inspired the term "helping sells". It started during the filming of our company video; the phrase “selling doesn’t help, but helping sells.” seemed to repeat itself over and over. It just came out naturally, and we knew there was something there. Watch the video. We think it is very entertaining. 

The team at SwipeMarket made that video (and others) for us.

We knew we wanted to spread the word about the idea of helping sells and we had the ingenious idea to host a podcast. When we sat down to brainstorm ideas, we discovered that there are a lot of technology podcasts, but none that specifically address the topic of helping enterprise customers buy, adopt, and get the most out of the software they use. Even more specifically, there isn’t a podcast that talks about how this idea of helping customers, without expectation of reciprocation, can actually help both customers and software vendors (or anyone that sells anything for that matter). 

Strategic Acts of Generosity

We heard Geoffrey Moore discuss helping sells in a different context when he came by ServiceRocket one afternoon for our Under the Dome series. He called it “strategic acts of generosity.” 

What is Helping Sells?

Helping sells can be summed up by looking at many of the areas in business where helping sells can help people thrive. 

For example:

• In Marketing: Creating marketing that educates people to help them make a decision.
• In Sales: Sales that challenges and helps prospects. Help prospects improve their own businesses.
• In Consulting: Geoffrey Moore described it this way: Strategic acts of generosity. 
• In Customer Success: It is not about the renewal. It is about helping customers do their jobs better or otherwise achieve a desired outcome.  
• In Training: Not just teaching features, but education people on a new way of working. 
• In Support: Proactively helping customers with things they have not even asked about yet. Anticipating their needs and addressing those, but customers think to ask.

We plan to include guests on the show that address all of those areas, discussing their particular helping sells approaches to technology and business. 

For example...

Guests We Have Lined Up So Far

We were fortunate enough to launch Helping Sells Radio with four interviews recorded and two more scheduled. 

• Episode 2: Lincoln Murphy, Gainsight

• Episode 3: Josh Zerkel from Evernote

• Episode 4: Adam Avramescu of Optimizely

• Episode 5: Nils Vinje, Glide Consulting

And we have interviews lined up with:

• Tom Krackeler and Rachel English of Zuora

• Anne Janzer, Author, Subscription Marketing