[INTRO] Lieti: Creating New Ways Podcast your source for bringing the power of automation to paper-based processes. Presented by Objectif Lune UK Marketing, we explore how business process automation can create new ways of communication and share sales tips and tricks on solving the integration challenge.

Lieti: Charlie Chats. This episode we have Charlie Woodhouse our customer success programme extraordinaire. We will be breaking down what the customer success programme is, and also best practise and we finally have one of the OL ladies on the podcast, Hi Charlie.

Charlie: Hi Lieti, I am very glad to be here.

Lieti: So, it’s now a thing, that in the office, those that feature as guests on the podcast, I’ve got them been playing drop that tune and can you please introduce the artist that we will be playing with today?

Charlie: Muse

Lieti: The Muse, nice, so can you tell everybody, what’s your connection and affiliation with this artist?

Charlie: um Muse are great, however my son is obsessed with them and plays them constantly, so I think this is my best shot, but they are amazing, I do love Muse

Lieti: I agree, they’re quite good value. Alright, so I’m excited, we’ve got a list of titles here and were going to see how many we can squeeze in with this topic. It should be interesting. I’ve decided that we will be awarding 3-additional points, if you manage to drop in, super massive black hole. Now guys, I’m sure your imaginations are running wild with where you can put that in with normal conversation, but I feel like with the customer success programme it might be a bit of a tricky one. So let’s see how we go. Kicking things off, can you please share with us, what is the Customer Success Programme?

Charlie: Ok so the customer success programme manages all leads and enquires, assists partners to build their sales funnel and achieve their target whether that be revenue or solution.

Lieti: ok, pretty straight forward, so how are all the incoming leads and enquires generated?

Charlie: Lots of different ways, website, customers browsing the website may request more information or a free consultation. There’s also campaigns which are both led by us and led by our reseller partners, they can be awareness or lead generation campaigns. There’s events, leads from tradeshows, speaker slots or partner organised events, which have a niche audience. We also get leads from digital marketing initiatives like SEO, paid LinkedIn and Facebook social media. We do customer service activities with the end users and also our customers who love our resellers and ourselves and give us lots of customer referrals

Lieti: oh nice, so once these leads come in, break it to me [Bell] what happens next?

Charlie: So, when a lead comes in, the first thing to do is, qualify the lead, is it feeling good [Bell] as an opportunity. The next thing to do is to check the OL systems, so is it registered already by a reseller, if it is then all the information gathered will be sent to the reseller via the OL account manager, as they know, who knows who [Bell] if not then obviously the opportunity is registered by myself.

Lieti: So, based on those three opportunity categories you ran through, it’s very important partners register any opportunities that they are currently engaged in with their OL Account Manager.

Charlie: Definitely, I can’t stress this enough. Not only is it about the first person to register the opportunity gets access to more technical help. But it’s definitely, I don’t want to be talking to an end user when a reseller is already talking to them, that’s just a mess and a waste of time for both of us. So yeah, absolutely register the opportunities, if there is a registered opportunity in the system, I just won’t go there.

Lieti: You will leave it alone, let them handle it. What are you doing with leads that have no registered opportunity, so the ones that there’s no engagement or even the ones that a purely OL generated?

Charlie: Yeah so any leads that come in or are generated that don’t have any registered opportunity on OL system, then get taken through the customer success programme and that goes through sales stages 1 – 4.

Lieti: So, when you are contacting these leads, what is the talk track? In episodes 1 – 3 of the podcast, we broke down the sales process with Matt, and he explained the little details and nuances of how the stages work. But from your perspective what’s the best practice for tackling Stage 1?

Charlie: Stage 1 is the most difficult, as far as I’m concerned and the most important. Talking to end users about how they use the software, is where I start. Asking relevant open questions to identify their undisclosed desires [Bell] and really dig down [Bell] to what’s important to the customer, on a serious note, we’re talking manual processes, try and identify where they are, problems amending documents is a big one and process control for compliance, the decision makers that you’re talking to, these are all really important things for them.

Lieti: So, we stress that Stage 2: Build the business case, is also an extremely critical stage because its where you find the detailed facts about the customer. I believe your high conversion and success rate is attributed to the fact that you are quite detailed and thorough on Stage 2. Can you share a map of your head [Bell] and explain your approach to Stage 2?

Charlie: Yeah sure, stage 2 for me, starts at stage 1 and goes right the way through stage 3. Its all about something human [Bell], there’s no algorithm [Bell] to building a business case, every business case is different because its what’s important to the customer. Its our job to put ourselves, in your world [Bell]. Every time you interact with the customer, it’s a chance for you to strengthen the business case, remember the customer is asking themselves, do we need this? [Bell]

Lieti: Well done, I like that, that drop there. Ok, so we’ve gone through Stage 2 and you’ve really focused and honed in on the customers needs, now we’ve got enough information and were moving onto Stage 3: the Technical Validation. So, this is also another critical stage but more from the professional services side. Can you please explain what happens at Stage 3? And also best practise, in regards to, obviously technical take over this stage, but what should sales be doing at stage 3.

Charlie: Stage 2 carries on for me into stage 3, but I am in the background taking notes as the end user really usually feels more comfortable with talking to the technical people. We are so lucky in the fact that we have Dan Kennington, he technically qualifies, and he’ll demo either by webex or in person. He has what I call a Butterflies and Hurricanes [Bell] effect. What he does is he identifies the really small functions, that can make such a big difference to the end user and he really adds to the business case as well.

Lieti: So now we’ve completed stage 3, and you’re in the background and you’ve taken down notes and you’ve also familiarising yourself with some of the technical stuff and we’ve gone onto stage 4: Propose & Present. Can you explain what happens here for the customer and the partner?

Charlie: Ok so for the customer, all the information that’s been gathered throughout stages 1 – 3 is put into a solution proposal. Both the reseller and the customer get a copy of that solution proposal. So, this is the, what’s the problem, how are we solving it, what’s it going to do for them, the whole business case that we’ve gathered. All the information is sent through to the reseller via the OL account manager, it’s ready to close, it’s quoted by the reseller, so I also send a quote through with that, for them and it has a target end date. What’s really important for the customer at this stage, is they’re expecting contact from the reseller to book in a meeting and its essential that Dan and the OL account manager attend that meeting because that’s the link for the customer between OL and the reseller.

Lieti: So, once you’ve handed over the business case and everything to the partner, what’s your closure rate?
Charlie: So, the closure rate is currently for deals handed over at 80%, usually closed within 3 months and so far, this year we have £130,000 worth of business that we can attribute to this process.

Lieti: Wow, that is an impressive rate. So, you’re effectively a salesperson on behalf of our partners. Their guiding light [Bell]

Charlie: Yeah, I would say so, I mean if partners don’t pick this up and run with it, then it will disappear into a super massive black hole [Bell] and the success of the programme is because we take time to listen to the customers needs and present them with the correct solution. I personally prefer help person instead of salesperson, but the customer knows and sense when they are just being pushed a product, they don’t like pressure [Bell]. We have had some opportunities progress to stage 4, and when we handed it over to the partner they thought great, let me sell a printer to the sale too. I get this but this actually blows this outside of the sales cycle, the customers turned off and the opportunity is lost completely or worse for the partner the customer approaches a different reseller. The customer is left thinking please, please, please let me get what I want [Bell] rather than being asked by a reseller salesperson to follow me [Bell] down another path which makes customers agitated [Bell]. My son is going to be so proud. I mean I think Lieti, the most important thing, is it’s called the customer success programme. We check in on our end users to make sure that they’re getting the most out of the software and that it performing as expected.

Lieti: I’m just going to reiterate, literally that last line that Charlie said. The programme is a unique pipeline builder that we offer to our OL partners in the partner programme, but it also allows them to focus on generating new business, while your existing customers are being nurtured through this programme and stay committed and locked into you guys. So, Charlie do you have any other final comments or anything else I may have missed.

Charlie: I mean I think there is one question, what happens when the partners don’t close an opportunity? You could say I go psycho [Bell], tell them time is running out [Bell], there’s an uprising [Bell], and we get up and fight [Bell]. No, a great way to get loads of song titles in, but no, I think that partners the key word here, the customer success team are here as a resource for the reseller partners, it is a two-way programme. Once a qualified stage 4 opportunity is passed to resellers, rather than it disappearing into the void [Bell] which is madness [Bell] update us on the progress and if timescales and customer motivations have changed, which we all know they do, it’s not panic station [Bell], just let us know, if an opp goes overdue [Bell] the closed target day and there has not been any meaningful contact and progress then ultimately OL customer service team will close the opportunity.

Lieti: So it would be a crying shame [Bell] if partners didn’t follow up with the customer. But ultimately as you said, the mutual goal is end-user satisfaction and the customer success programme was built to facilitate that, as well as drive partner success. So, thanks Charlie for joining us this episode, I’m just going to take a quick title song tally and we have ended on 26 songs, great job and you also managed to drop in there the super massive black hole, and that gives you additional bonus points of 3 and I feel like a game show host which is amazing because it is a dream I will never be able to fulfil except through this podcast and you end up on 29 points, good job. So, yeah you are currently reigning champ I’m sure the guys will be extremely disappointed when they listen to this with how smoothly you dropped in all those difficult titles, because they weren’t just random words like some of the other podcasts. No shade. I’m just going to do a quick summary guys. So you’ve just heard in this episode the customer success programme follows the sales process, which you can also find in the sales guide on our partner portal. We also have a customer success programme that prescribes the process we mentioned in this episode. If you have any questions, about this process, the content we covered in this episode, feel free to contact your local OL account manager or Charlie herself. Thanks for tuning guys and thanks Charlie.

[OUTRO] Lieti: You can find us on iTunes and Spotify under Creating New Ways. Follow us on Twitter @Objluneuk for the latest updates on Objectif Lune UK. You’re listening to Creating New Ways Podcast, knowledge bites about the power of automation to paper-based processes. And don’t forget to subscribe to our podcast for alerts to our new shows.