April Dunford: recommendation

Transcript context

…Yeah, sure. So my background is, I do positioning work. And so in the work that I do with clients, generally what we're working on is a shift in the positioning, which is a little bit of a shift in our thinking around, how do we win in the market? So in order to test that positioning, what we want to do is take the positioning and translate it into a sales pitch and then test it live with prospects. And one of the things I noticed right at the beginning of doing this work is that everybody's sales pitch kind of looked the same and they weren't all that great. And for the most part what was happening in the sales pitch is there was no positioning going on in the sales pitch at all. The sales pitch was essentially a product exposition, so essentially a glorified product box room. If there was five dropdown menus, we're going to click on all five dropdown menus and show everybody everything just feature, feature, feature, feature, feature. And so, most of the teams weren't used to doing any kind of pitching in the pitch really. It was just the facts Jack, were just going to show you that. Some would do this really lightweight thing. Here's the problem, we're the solution. Now let me walk you through all the dropdown menus, but it is basically the same thing like that. And so what I wanted to do was build a pitch structure that would reflect the positioning. And so in order to do that, we have to get a little bit into storytelling mode. Not a lot, but at least a little. And when we're talking about features, we shouldn't be talking about features. We should be talking about the value that the features deliver. So let me give you an example and I'll do before and after what this would look like. So I work with these folks, Help Scout, and so they're in the customer service space, so think Zendesk or whatever. They're in that space. And what's interesting about them is they were built from the ground up to serve digital businesses. So businesses that don't have a physical store, they don't have sales reps. And so their approach to customer service was different from the outset. Help Scout said, "Well, you know what? Customer service for that kind of business is really important. It's the only time you ever get to interact with actual customers." And so the data shows that if you give them a really great interaction in service, it improves loyalty, it improves repeat purchases, and it's actually a growth driver. Now, most folks in other industries see customer service as a cost center. So your telephone company for example, wants to get you off the phone as fast as possible. And they want to push you to the self-serve FAQ channels, and they don't care about giving you a good service at all. They don't care about any of that. And so they're all about driving the cost down. So if we look at Help Scout in their positioning, the alternatives to Help Scout are a handful of things. ice at all. They don't care about any of that. And so they're all about driving the cost down. So if we look at Help Scout in their positioning, the alternatives to Help Scout are a handful of things. Most folks start using a shared inbox and it's really easy to use and the reps love it. It's easy to use. The problem is, is you start growing and then you want customer service features. You want to be able to do assignments and prioritization and things like that. So then these customers end up upgrading to help desk software and now they're in this whole different world. So the first thing is really hard to use. So we're not in shared inbox territory anymore. And the second thing is that there's this attitude of we're trying to push folks to low cost channels. We don't really care about them. We're going to assign you a ticket number. You're not a person anymore. All this stuff. So that's the situation. So Help Scout, if they did a typical pitch the way I see most SaaS companies pitch, they would just expose the features. Right? So the pitch would look like this. Digital business comes in and they say, "Hi, Help Scout, let me show you how to log in, let me show you all the features. Look, there's a shared inbox thing there that's really great. Oh, look, we can do assignments and prioritization and we can do this other thing and we can do this other thing and la, la la." And I keep going until the time runs out and I don't have any more features to talk about. The problem with that pitch is the customer's sitting there going, "I don't know, man, that sounds a little bit like my shared inbox, but it also sounds like help desk software. Is it different than help desk software? I'm not so sure. And there's overlap in the features there." And so it doesn't really answer the question, why pick us over the other guys? And so a different style of pitch would be one, we would do a little bit of setup to give everybody an idea about how we fit amongst all the other solutions and what our point of view is in the market. And then when we get to exploring the features, we would do that within the context of the differentiated value. So here's how that pitch would look like. Customer comes in and Help Scout says, "Hey, digital business, we work with a lot of companies like you, and I'm going to show you the product. But before we get there, one of the things we think is interesting is that digital businesses look at customer service differently. They look at it as a growth driver rather than a cost center. And so most of the folks we work with see delivering a really amazing experience as a key part of customer service. Would you agree with that?" Yeah, we would. They have a little conversation and then they say, "Great. We you have choices here. So most of the folks we work with start with a shared inbox, and that's great because it's really easy, really easy to use all that stuff. The problem is if you're growing and you probably are, then you're going to outgrow that because you're going to need prioritizations assignments, help desk stuff. And so then your option is to go to help desk software. And so help desk software is great, does all the things. outgrow that because you're going to need prioritizations assignments, help desk stuff. And so then your option is to go to help desk software. And so help desk software is great, does all the things. The problem is that it was not designed for businesses like you. It was designed for businesses that want to take the cost out of customer service. So it's going to do some things that are weird. It's going assign your customers a ticket number and it's going to try to drive them to low cost channels. So can we agree that in a perfect world for digital business like yours, we'd want something as easy to use as a help desk, but had all the bells and whistles so we wouldn't have to migrate to something else. And on top of that was built from the ground up to deliver amazing customer service. Do we agree we want that?" Now, at that point, the customer is either with you or you're not. But if they are, then we switch to the actual demo part. If we do a demo and then we say, "Great, we've got those three things. Let me show you how that works. So one as easy to use an inbox. Look, here's the inbox. It's easy to use. Looks just like an inbox. It's amazing. Two, features, so you never have to outgrow it. Look, here's how we do prioritizations assignments, whatever. We can do all the stuff you need as you grow, and you're never going to have to switch platforms. And then last one, deliver an amazing experience. Look, the customer gets to choose which channel that they interact with you with. And look, they get to stay Dave and not ticket number 1479." That sort of thing. So that's how the pitch looks in the after. But that's a really different pitch. That pitch is designed to answer the question, "Why pick us over the other folks?" And so as you might imagine, it is a lot more effective at actually getting clients to get their head around, what is this thing? Why is it different? Why should I pick you? And it just works way better in a sales situation.…

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