The Life-Long Customer

“One thing I saw recently was a stat on LinkedIn and it said that 99% of LinkedIn users don't ever post. And then it was something like 90% of LinkedIn users never comment.

And so I guess my piece of advice would be to get in the pool, right? If you want to have a successful career if you want to be recognized. Whatever you want, there is some amount or type of work that you have to be doing towards that, right?

If you want to be a great marketer, then you better be in marketing circles. You better go find marketers and go to lunch with them. You better be reading content for marketers. So I would say whatever it is, don't expect it to come to you if you don't put yourself in those circles and go be part of the 10%, that comments, and part of the 1% that posts.

And if you just apply that, take action, have a bias for action mentality. I think it will benefit you in all aspects of your life. Certainly, your career being one of those.”

- Logan Mallory, VP of Marketing, Motivosity

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“I think the other element at the end of the day, is that clients are human. When you're engaging with people, you have to remember that they are people and different people react and work in different ways.

You'll have some clients that are ultra focused on structure and documentation. Other clients will want to work it out over lunch.   You need to be adaptable and able to read and understand quickly how that organization and the individuals within that organization like to operate and work, and then adjust your style accordingly to be successful. You've got to, as well, not take yourself too seriously.

At the end of the day, you have to be able to have a laugh with your customer - Show them your human side. And so when things are good and going well, you're able to celebrate that together and enjoy that success.”

- Tim Knoblanche, Chief Customer Officer at Coates Group

Learn more about Tim and Coates Group 

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“I always say that you need to be a partner to your customer. In IT sales that's a very essential thing, to be an expert in what you sell, understand better, it's your product, or it's your service. You need to understand technologies. You need to be up to date about all the cutting-edge things that are going on in your industry and you need to be able to consult your customer. Because if you won't build those partnerships between you and your customer. As a salesperson, you are a face of a company, you represent the company. So basically the level of advice or consultancy services you would provide is actually going to be treated as the level of expertise of a whole company.”

- Anna Vorobiova, Head of Sales and Business Development, NIX

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“You can put a lot of money into marketing, you can create a ton of campaigns to get out there, but if you don't have that sales alignment that's going to see those leads come in, see them through to conversion, it's not going to work as effectively as you want it to.

I'm in a particularly lucky situation because my head of sales is someone I've worked with at a prior company.

This is our second time around doing this which is fun. We're at the point where we know each other's strategies. And I really think that whether you've worked with someone prior or not, having that collaboration at the leadership level is really critical.

You need to be the best role model you can for your teams. And I think because we have that good collaboration at our level you see that happen across the teams, which is really great.”

- Karen Parisi, SVP of Marketing, CentralReach

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“I would just hope that they would take away from this that helping your customers achieve their goals should be one of your number one goals.

We have 2300 customers and every customer means something to us, they really do. And I see a lot of reports, I see a lot of conversations happening with us and the Real Green team, our culture, we try and spread that out to our customers as well.

I feel we have a very strong culture at Real Green, how we treat our employees but it also reflects how it goes to our customers as well. Always trying to be there for your customer, answer their questions and just not put them off to the wayside, really trying to assist them to achieve their goals, make them successful.

If you make one of your customers successful, they are going to love you for life. If they've achieved one of their goals that they were going after, you will be around forever. And then you set a new goal with them. Then you take them to the next level.”

- Brian Bacigalupo, Vice President of Sales, Real Green Systems

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“I think if you break down what trust is, it really boils down to three things.

It's credibility, care, and congruence. 

You stand behind what you say and the promises you make, you care about the customers, the impact that you're having on their lives. People don't buy hammers and nails or drills, they buy the picture that they're going to put on the wall and the experience that they're going to have in their home.

So I think just demonstrating that care is absolutely important. And the third is congruence and I think it's become even more important where we show congruence of values, beliefs, and purpose orientation and the soul of the company, the DNA of the company in terms of what it is that we stand for.

Because if you don't stand for anything, you essentially stand for nothing at all. So I think if you think about lifelong relationships and this doesn't even only apply to brands and customers, I think this is true for all of us. It boils down to those three things, which is demonstrating care, credibility, and congruence.”

- Niharika Shah, CEO, Clout, A TIFIN Group Company

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“It's not about having happy years and trying to run a deal cycle, but really just doing genuine customer-centric discovery, where you are completely enabling them to go internally and figure stuff out.

And obviously, all these deals at an enterprise infrastructure level require different levels of champions and buyers and people that need to give you the green light, but something we're really focused on is how do you connect with the team that you're working with and how do you help them get to that next level? Because in AI and machine learning, these projects, they can get pushed back forever. I've met with an agriscience company the other day who's doing product life cycle planning for 2028 right now.

And it's a huge win for someone on that team. if you can get them to 2024. And so, how do you equip them to make that happen? The sooner you do that, the sooner your customer life cycle value goes up. There are a million things that you can track KPI-wise that say, okay, this is good for our business, but in terms of creating a customer for life, you really got to care about what's important for the person you're working with.”

- Thomas Hall, Head of Sales, Pachyderm

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“Even remote, as we are now, it's still a people person kind of job. And if you don't want to deal with people, if you can't pick up a phone and call somebody and start a conversation almost out of the blue, maybe you have to practice that, because it's really about relating to people and helping them relate to you.

And when you're trying to get relationships with people and not everybody wants them, ask yourself why is it that you want this relationship? Is it going to be good for both companies? It's going to be work no matter what. It's a constant, you can't just say I want a relationship today and not show up tomorrow, it's showing up every day.

And then look at it from their side if you were that customer, why would you want a relationship with you? Why would you buy from yourself? Why would you want a relationship with your company? If you can't answer that from their perspective, you maybe need to step back and think about that and change some of your tactics. And then when you have a relationship, this is an area there.

You need to make sure that relationship doesn't just reside at you and the person, your counterpart. You've got to work to extend that down through the company. Engineer to engineer, quality to quality, your boss to his boss or her boss.”

- Paul Konrath, President of Custom Control Sensors

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“Don't give up. It's going to be a grind every single day. There's gonna be something crazy thrown at you every day, whether it's an employee that quits or a pandemic that hits that shuts down your restaurant or your business or you don't get approved for a PPP loan.

There are so many things that can be thrown at you as a new starting business. And so if you're passionate about something and you love what you're going after, don't give up, man. There's going to be stuff that tries to stop you a million times, in a million different ways. And so that would be my first piece of advice.

Just go for it and don't give up and then, I'd say the other thing is to find a mentor, right? Find someone that you can trust and lean on other people because you can't do it all by yourself. And know that upfront that it's always okay to ask for help and reach out to other people and see how they can help you out.

And maybe you'll help them at the same time. So, I'd say those are two key points.”

- Jordan Boogaard, President of Sales, Eddy HR

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“I think it's helpful to remember that there are humans that we're selling to here, and it sounds so simple and almost overly simplistic but when I was on the retail side, and even today, the businesses that I enjoy doing business with and will gladly continue to do business with are ones that treat me like Will and not like my customer number.

And I think we try to enable prospects and customers alike on our side. What are your goals for your career, right? What do you want to be doing? And not only how MessageGears the software can help you, but how can we help set you up and help you speak at a conference or help you get on a podcast or help you do something outside of this transactional relationship that further advances your career.

I've had businesses do that with me and put me on a customer advisory board or something like that and make lifelong contacts and lifelong friends there. I think it all just comes down to treating everybody and remembering that everybody you're selling to is, not a data point.

It's a person.”

- Will Devlin, VP of Marketing, MessageGears

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