marketing

Here is the question of the day: "How far do you go to help a customer adopt your software?" I ask this question to many of our guests, and there isn't one right answer. As you can imagine, there are many answers. In other words, "It depends." My favorite answer now comes from Arjun Devgan, VP of global customer success and services at Percolate. His answer is to create a methodology for adopting the software, publish an eBook describing it, and then publish tools customers can use during their implementation or digital transformation. 

Are you creative? Most of us business people do not think of ourselves (or our professions) as creative. When we think of creative people, we think of artists and musicians and actors and writers. This is just one of the mistakes we make about creativity. Allen Gannett, founder and CEO of TrackMaven and author of The Creative Curve: How to Develop the Right Idea, at the Right Time, explains that anyone can be creative because creativity can be learned. He did the research and provides a way of thinking that will help any of us believe we can be more creative. 

How well do you know your customers? Do you know their lingo? Do you use their lingo in your communication with them? Do you really? Jeffrey Shaw, author of the book Lingo: Discover Your Ideal Customer's Secret Language and Make your Business Irresistible, joins Helping Sells Radio to help us, help our customers say to themselves, "They so get me." One tactic Shaw suggests is for us to use self-identifying questions so a customer can screen themselves to us. He calls it to help "customers how up 80% positioned." Shaw explains, "When you know your customer so well you really embody their emotional triggers that you can pose questions in your marketing and on your website that ring so true for your ideal customers their typical response is "WOW! It's like your in my head." 

According to Ari Hoffman, customer success is kind of like being a professional sports coach. The coach's number 1 priority isn't to fill the stands with fans, help the team get new sponsors, or worry about the price of food at the concession stands — it's to help the players win games. Help the players succeed on the field (or court, or wherever they play). It's just one of the reasons why Hoffman, Customer Fanatic at MindTouch, spends his days listening to and sharing stories with customers, colleagues, other people in the tech industry, and even his friends and family. He wants to hear it all because he's curious about the stories that "engage people and raise the bar for everyone."

#HelpingSells Podcast Ep. 75: @arigobie reveals the Secret to Telling Stories that Resonate with Customers: https://ctt.ec/m7G3L+ #storytelling #CustomerSuccess

In the world of paid advertising, social media channels are a hard to be successful with. Mainly because we're not on social media looking for something to buy. Jessica McGlory, Director of Paid Social at Jellyfish, says the challenge with it is that you're interrupting someone's day, so it "better be something they want to see." Jessica joined Bill on Helping Sells Radio to talk about how paid ads really are good for B2B, why it's important to remember the people you're talking to, and the myth that advertisers are listening in to people through their smartphones without their knowledge (FYI, it really is a myth).

Ep. 72 #HelpingSells Podcast: @emceeglory believes in talking to people with her #PaidAds (and you should too): https://ctt.ec/pdR9f+ #Marketing

Today's episode features Sujan Patel, founder of Webprofits, a content marketing agency that helps companies like Linkedin, Salesforce, and Zillow and others grow their businesses through content marketing. Sujan joined us to talk about why most marketing and sales teams are not aligned and how content can be the catalyst for bringing sales and marketing together to provide useful information to prospects and customers to accelerate the sales cycle. As Sujan says, "You don't need to be the creator of the information, but you need to be the source of information." Now that's a helping sells approach.

 In this episode, Oakland-based novelist and strategist Eliot Peper joins us to discuss his fourth novel, Cumulus, a dark, gritty science fiction story set in a near-future San Francisco Bay Area ravaged by economic inequality and persistent surveillance. Eliot shares how his entrepreneurial background and embracing a "helping sells" approach has helped him become a highly successful self-published author.

Ryan Battles Co-Founder Harpoon

Sarah and Bill started off the show talking about a recent a16z Podcast with the CEO of Optimizely, which reminded Sarah and Bill of the interview in Episode 4 with Adam Avremescu, the Head of Education from Optimizely. The a16z Podcast is a great podcast if you are into following distruptive technology and startups. 

Anne Janzer Writer, Content Marketing Consultant, Author

In this episode, Anne Janzer, writer, content marketing consultant and author of Subscription Marketing: Strategies for Nurturing Customers in a World of Churn joins us to discuss lessons from working with a hundred technology companies and clients that include serial entrepreneurs, industry thought leaders, and technology pioneers. 

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.