Helping Sells Radio: Newing and Improving
The enterprise software podcast about helping customers achieve outcomes has a new home
I am re-launching Helping Sells Radio. Sort of. One obvious logistical change is that we have a new home on the web. The address is helpingsells.substack.com. This new location will make things much easier for us to keep you updated on our podcast publishing schedule. It will also make it easier for people to subscribe.
If you’ve enjoyed listening to Helping Sells Radio, please consider sharing it.
The new site is very MVP at the moment, but it will improve over time as we learn Substack. Bear with me.
But that’s just the logistical change.
Helping Sells Radio is evolving, and so am I.
Authors rise up
First, over the past 60 or 70 episodes, we started receiving more requests from book authors to be on the show. Our message about becoming more customer-centric is resonating. This increase in author guests is great for listeners because it’s a free opportunity to preview a book before you buy it.
Listening to an author talk about their new book is a way better preview than reading a sample on Amazon.
Seriously.
You can spend intimate time with the author and not just hear about the book but hear about the topic beyond the book.
Plus, I love to read. So it is a treat for me personally to talk to authors about their books.
Emerging patterns in customer success
Second, we’ve started to see patterns and themes emerge across guests and topics.
In just one example, Michael Pollack (Ep. 176) of Intricately tells a story about how his team helped a client develop a new offering. Intricately is a product that helps software companies understand their customers betters using data. Not market research based on surveys and self-report data, but market research based on actual spend and use of technology like theirs.
One of Intricately’s customers, iIn studying their current market space, found data showing a new opportunity. Intricately helped them see that….prompting the software company customer to create a new product and go after a new segment of customers.
That’s helping customers beyond your product.
Helping customers beyond the product is also what Jim Kalbach (Ep. 177) talks about in his book, The Jobs to be Done Playbook. JTBD is all about helping customers do their jobs regardless of the product they use. It’s based on the idea that people hire a product to do a job and that it’s the job that matters not so much the product. Jim summarizes the entire JTBD framework with one question, “How would this job get done 50 years ago?”
This idea of going beyond the product doesn’t just apply to products. It applies equally to professional services.
Heidi Gardner (Ep. 67) talks about going beyond the practice domain that a client hires you for. Her premise is that if a client hires you for one domain, you can increase your revenue and improve value delivery to that customer, if you look for opportunities to help clients beyond that domain.
Your job as a consultant and trusted advisor is to bring in other practices to your engagement and talk through these other opportunities to improve performance. Sometimes the client will hire your firm (and those other practices) to help them in these other areas. This requires going beyond the service they hired you for.
Three episodes, one theme
See what I mean? Going beyond the product is a theme. We’ll not only bring you new episodes every week, but we will sprinkle in the occasional email explaining other patterns like this that you can apply to your work with customer.
If this is not your bag…then you may unsubscribe. The last thing you need to more emails you don’t read.
Thank you for being a subscriber and a listener.