Transcript: Continuing Enablement After the Sale

Video 1: The Importance of Customer Enablement

Marcus Sheridan: At this point your marketing team, whatever you want to call it, your content
team, should be as thoughtful about what content should we be producing that makes our existing
customers happy, that keeps them informed, that keeps them delighted as we do how can we find
more customers through the content that we produce? It's the before, it's the during, and the after
the sales process, which his why you're seeing more and more organizations embrace a content
philosophy that is threefold, that is truly marketing, sales, and customer experience. You combine
those three and then you have a true magical timeline. It creates that circle of life that we all want
where it just keeps feeding itself. That's why you should say to yourself not just what are the
questions that potential buyers are asking, but what are the questions existing customers,
customers that have been with us for six months, six years, what are they asking? What are they
needing? What value can we deliver them? How can we make them feel important, understood,
and solve their problems? If a content team is doing that, we're winning all across the board.

Hey, it’s Kyle from HubSpot Academy. When thinking about sales enablement, it’s easy to think that your
job is done once the sale closes. Most companies put a lot of thought and energy into getting people into
the top of the sales funnel and into moving people down the funnel and through the sales process. But you
should be just as invested in your customers as you are in your prospects. Here's Emmanuelle Skala, who at
time of interview was Vice President of Sales and Customer Success at DigitalOcean:

Emmanuelle Skala: Sometimes, you know, no one's looking holistically at the funnel and actually I
don't even think it's a funnel anymore, honestly I think it's a circle. I think we should get rid of
funnels because funnels by definition have an end, right? There's a beginning and an end and I
think that's an old school way of thinking about it. There is no end, right? Because they're should be
constant renewals and advocacy and referrals and other things, so I think we've all seen more now
than kind of the full loop of the customer life cycle, which I believe a lot more in. I'm a believer that
the sales is moving away from transactions and closing and deals and wins and all those words that
you see sometimes in the movies to more being, you know, helpful and, you know, serving the
customer, right? And so, you know, we serve, not sell. We help, not sell. And I think a lot of it is in a
couple of things. First is that you hire and the values that they have, but be in how you define
success. And if you define success as, you know, a check-mark, you know, as another win, another,
you know, kind of notch, then you're gonna be incenting people, right, to do just that, right? If you
define success longer term, if you define success as maybe partially that event, right? But that's just
an event in a journey, so I look at the win as sort of step one, right? Great, got the win, that's step
one and we'll all celebrate that success that you've met that milestone, but there are other
milestones after it that are equally as important. So, you celebrate the next milestone, and then the
next milestone maybe a renewal, or, you know, maybe an additional sale into that company. And I
think if you're showing your team that all milestones matter, I think, you know, and at the launch
and the renewal and the advocacy, you know, and the referral, and all the things you get post-sale
are equally, if not more important than the win. You breed that culture.

When it comes to sales enablement, thinking about existing customers will be a crucial part of your overall
success. After all, the probability of closing a deal with an existing customer is 60-70%, compared to less
 Transcript: Continuing Enablement After the Sale

than 20% for new prospects. If you’re serious about enabling your sales team to sell more efficiently at a
higher velocity, you need to help them tap into your existing customer base.

Video 2: Helping Customers Fire Their Old Solutions

When it comes to enabling your customers to succeed, Jobs Theory can help a lot. If you’ve watched the
class on jobs to be done, then you know that your customers are hiring your product to help them get a job
done. If you truly understand the job someone has hired your product to do, you should be able to
produce content that helps them get it done. Here’s Harvard Business School Professor Clay Christensen,
who pioneered the idea of jobs to be done:

Clay Christensen: If I hire something to do the job I actually have to fire whatever process or
experience or features that I used to have when I bought that product to get the job done. I have to
fire the old way of doing it and hire the new. Firing the old way of doing things turns out very often
is a big deal in innovation because it’s hard to get rid of the old. Almost every product that is new to
the customer entails them stop doing, stopping one thing in order to start another. I think that most
of us in marketing courses don’t even think about what it entails to fire a product.

If your customers have an existing solution in place when they buy a product, you want to make it as easy
as possible for them to transition to using your product. This not only helps your customers get value out of
your product, but it might also encourage your leads to take the plunge and buy from you. Here’s Clay
again:

Clay Christensen: One of our colleagues stood in the takeout line at Costco. The person next to him
was in that line with a mattress and they bought a new mattress. My friend asked him, “How long
did it take you to decide to hire a new mattress? What was the job you’re trying to do?” He had
better language than that. It turned out that he just had an achy back every morning. “When did
you decide you needed a new mattress?” “About three years ago.” “Why didn’t you buy it right
away?” He said, “It’s a complicated problem because we realized that it’s an ugly mattress and if we
put it out with the garbage what will the neighbors think about who we are.” For about three years
they spent their time not changing. What you need to do is to provide experiences with the new
mattress that makes it easy to fire the old. When I’m selling you a new mattress it’s idiot simple that
we need to have the truck come up and put the old one in while they take the new one out. There
are all kinds of things that you could do to make the mattress do it easier.

If your main concern in buying a new mattress is figuring out how to get rid of your old mattress, then the
mattress company that offers free removal of your old mattress is going to beat out the competition, even
if their mattress is more expensive or lower quality.

If you don’t sell a physical product like a mattress, helping your customers fire their old solution might not
be as simple as sending a truck to their house — but that’s where content comes in. With content, you can
provide guidance to your newest customers and continue the trusting relationship you worked so hard to
build before they closed.

Keep in mind, too, that your customers have to fire a solution even when they don’t have a product they
are replacing. Even if they were making do without any kind of product before they hired yours, old habits
die hard, and getting into the habit of using the product they bought from you might be difficult. People
 Transcript: Continuing Enablement After the Sale

buy things all the time that they think will make their lives easier but that they never actually get around to
using. You need to be creating content that will help people use your product most effectively. If you can
help people find value in using your product, they’ll want to buy from you again, and that will be a huge
help to your sales team.

Video 3: Encouraging People to Buy From You Again

As you create content for your existing customers, you want to look for ways to encourage people to buy
from you again. Please understand, I’m not suggesting that you should constantly be pushing your
customers to buy more — that will only hurt your relationship with them. But if you really understand the
job they hired your product to do, you can help them every time they need to do that job. Here's Sam
Mallikarjunan, executive strategist at HubSpot and continuing education instructor at Harvard University:

Sam Mallikarjunan: I had this friend who had a flower shop of his own in Tampa, and he had
another competitor basically who sprung up, and they were like, "They have, like, billboards." Like,
"Florists don't have billboards. It's not a thing." And they were spending money online, and they
were doing all this really expensive marketing, and at first he wasn't too concerned because he just
assumed that they were really stupid, and that they were eventually going to go bankrupt from
spending all this money — but they didn't. They didn't go bankrupt. They actually kept growing.
And so we were talking about this, and I decided that I was going to go over there and sort of
secret-shop them to find, like, what's their secret weapon that they're using here? Like, maybe they
have better prices or whatever. And they didn't. The prices were about the same, maybe actually a
little higher. The inventory was the same. They all buy from the same suppliers. There's not a ton of
innovation going on in the flower department. A rose by any other price will sell as fast. And the
shop was okay. It was interesting, but there was no obvious competitive advantage — but there was
a woman behind the counter. She looked at me, and I know nothing about flowers, like, less than
nothing about flowers. So I'm sure I looked confused and concerned, and so she saw me looking at
flowers, and she said, "Who are you buying flowers for?" Really digging into that sort of Jobs to Be
Done thing, even though she may not have known the term for it. And I said, "Well, I'm buying
flowers for my wife because it's her birthday tomorrow." And she said, "That's cool. Do you know
what kind of flowers she likes?" And I ... of course not, right? Obviously, I don't know what kind of
flowers she likes, because I can barely tell flowers apart myself. And she, instead of walking behind
the counter and waiting for me to choose something on my own, she started asking me questions
about my wife, like her favorite color. She asked me some personality questions, and how do I want
the flowers to make her feel, and these sorts of things. And she closed me. I ended up buying
flowers. It was a great bouquet that my wife really, really did enjoy. And that itself is a good
consultative sales process that focuses on, the job to be done. Right? I don't buy flowers because I
like buying beautiful things and watching them slowly die. I buy flowers because what I'm really
buying is smiles. I'm buying smiles and I'm buying hugs. I'm buying the joy that someone has when
I'm thinking of them and I do a gesture like that. And she really focused on that. She said, like,
"You're trying to buy to make her happy. Let's ask questions about you. Not your price range. That
should be the last part of the conversation. Let's really talk about what you're trying to accomplish
here." And that would have been, in and of itself, a remarkable sales experience. What she did next
was even more interesting, was she asked me, "Obviously, your wife's birthday is tomorrow. Do
you want me to remind you next year earlier in advance?" I said, "Yes, that's awesome. Please do
that. I am terrible with dates. That would be awesome. I really appreciate that." Then she said, "Is
there anyone else you buy flowers for?" I said, "Well, I'd like to buy flowers for my mom. I just never
 Transcript: Continuing Enablement After the Sale

really think to, until it's like the absolute last minute for Mother's Day or something." She's like, "Do
you want me to remind you before Mother's Day and before your mother's birthday?" I said, "Yes,
that's awesome. Please do that." And this random flower shop had managed to get me to the point
where I was buying consistently from them, like five or six times a year. And what they had done,
the reason they were able to spend so much money on marketing, they were able to spend so much
money on getting customers, is because they were really good at keeping customers.

As you think about enabling your customers, remember that everything you do should be mutually
beneficial: Your efforts should help your customer do the job they hired your product to do and also
encourage them to buy from you again. As you focus on building a relationship that’s good for both you
and your customer, you’ll achieve a level of customer loyalty that wouldn’t otherwise be possible.

Video 4: Helping Your Customers Do the Job They Hired Your Product to Do

As you think about content you can create for your customers, you need to focus on the job they hired your
product to do. If you send your customers content that isn’t relevant to the job they hired your product to
do, they’re just going to get angry. Todd Hockenberry, Owner of Top Line Results, experienced this
himself:

Todd Hockenberry: I have a really great example. This just happened to me yesterday. I bought a
car three years ago. I won't say who it was from, but I bought it from a certain dealer. So these guys,
they understand their value now is to provide ongoing service. So they're trying to connect, create
these loops with me. They want me to come back and service my vehicle there. They want me to
buy my next one there. One of their new tricks is they always call and say, "Hey, we've got some
special, and there's this big demand now for your vehicle. It's three years old, and there's a lot of
people who want to buy this, so we'll buy your vehicle back." And what they're trying to do is get
you to trade it in to buy a new one, to get you to keep that payment rolling forever. Well, I'm a buy
and hold kind of guy when it comes to cars. My last car I drove 250,000 miles. I buy them, I own
them, and I keep them as long as I can. So this care is only three years old. I'm gonna have it for
another 10 years probably. They call me every month, for three months, trying to get me to sell my
car to them. And I told them, "Please make a note in your CRM. You have a CRM right?" "Yep." I
said, "Make a note in there that I am not gonna sell this car anytime soon. Do not call me again." So
I gave them three times, but I said, "I'm running out of patience." And the third time, I told them, I
said, "If you call me again, I promise you I'll never step foot with your dealership again, ever, for
anything." They called me again, and I said, "That's it." I said, "I warned you. You couldn't put the
notes in the context. I'm never coming back to your dealership again. I will never buy anything from
you again." I said, "I hope you're recording this call, your management hears it." And sure enough,
the boss called me an hour later, and she was apologetic every way up and down. And she said she
was gonna send me a little something to, like a certificate for some free service or something like
that. But I told them. I warned them. And their customer service followup people betrayed the trust
they built for three years. And I was happy with them. I had no issues. I love the vehicle. They did
great service, but their marketing just about killed them. So one mistake ruins the entire
experience.

This is a crucial piece to keep in mind as you implement a post-sale content strategy: If you help people do
the job they hired your product to do, they’ll love you for it, but if you try to help them do some other job,
they’ll just get frustrated. Here’s what that car dealership should have done:
 Transcript: Continuing Enablement After the Sale

Todd Hockenberry: I want simple, fast, easy, accessible service to my vehicle that I'm gonna keep
for a long time. Help me keep this thing going for 10 years, because I just told you what I want.
They should have a plan. If they were smart they'd have come back to me with a plan and said, "Oh,
sir you're one of our buy and hold buyers that keeps the vehicles for a long time. We have a specific
program that we set up for that to help you. Here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna send you
service recommendations every three months. We're gonna give you offers, and if you commit to
staying with us, I might even try to sell you a program. We're gonna keep that vehicle running for
200,000 miles. It could be anything, but you gotta think about it, number one. How many
companies even think about that kind of stuff after the sale, really put themselves in the customer's
shoes and think about it. If you throw it over to marketing, marketing will do what marketing does.
But you don't want to have a marketing department like that. If they're aligned with sales, service, if
the whole company's aligned as an inbound organization, using the principles that we're talking
about, then you should avoid that.

It all goes back to understanding your customers and the jobs they’re trying to get done. That car
dealership was trying to solve for car owners who want to always have the newest model, but Todd was
looking for longevity. Conceivably, there’s also a third category of automotive customers who prefer to do
maintenance themselves. For those customers, providing a program of regular maintenance would be just
as infuriating as the upgrade offer was for Todd. Instead, they might want content explaining how to do
that maintenance and offering them factory-direct tools and parts.

Ultimately, your customers should feel like you’re invested in their success. Here's Kathleen Booth, Vice
President of Marketing Strategy at IMPACT Branding & Design:

Kathleen Booth: I want to be a partner to the company's I work with, I don't want to be a vendor. I
think we've really done a lot of soul searching over the last decade of providing services to our
customers. We've thought so much about, what is it that makes customers successful? Our mission,
our purpose as a company is helping our clients win.

So how do you know what kind of content your customers need? Ask them. Sometimes the most helpful
thing you can do is check in with your customers and ask them what they need. Here's Ross Brockman, co-
founder of Downeast Cider House:

Ross Brockman: I think it's ... It sounds a little corny, but it has to be a good situation. Both sides
have to get what they want out of it. If a place wants ... Sometimes a place will just need attention.
The fact that you went in there, somebody took time out of their day, to stop into your bar and say,
"Hey, how's everything going? Is there anything that you need? Is there anything that you haven't
been getting out of us that you want?" And just the fact that you went in there and did that, and
they appreciate that, is enough.

If you can’t ask your customers directly, check in with the people at your company who can. Just as
marketing can work with sales to get a better idea of what prospects need, marketing should also be
working with customer support to understand what customers need. Here's Josh Harcus, founder of Huify
and author of A Closing Culture:
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Josh Harcus: I really feel like customer success can be stemmed — it's more than this, but it can be
stemmed on expectations. How well were their expectations set and how educated were they when
they came on as customers? Marketing has a massive role in that because what you communicate
on the website or what you don't communicate on the website can actually hurt you a lot down the
road. Really at the end of the day, it's what do people need to know to make a good, well informed
decision to buy and then to trust basically the company they're buying from? That plays massively
back into customer success, and if customer success isn't providing good feedback back into
marketing, there's no loop, there's no feedback loop. Because customer success absolutely knows
what's coming from marketing, and they know what the customer is experiencing because the
customer was like, “Well, it says on your website that this happens.” You're like, “Yeah I know. I
don't know why it does because we don't actually do that.” They are, “Well that’s why I bought.”
You’re like, “Well how about this?”

So help your new customers fire their old solution and help all of your customers see opportunities to hire
your solution over and over again, but always be sure to keep your focus on the job each customer hired
your product to do. If you do these things, your customers will love you for it, and they will buy from you
again. And that will provide your sales team with a wide new world of high-quality leads to work with.