Customer Conversations: Recent Episodes
Sean Boyce and Stuart Balcombe
Sean Boyce and Stuart Balcombe interview the world's leading marketing, growth and product experts to learn more about how they make products customers love.
Bob is the President and CEO of the Rewired Group, a pioneer of Jobs to Be Done, the author of the Jobs to be Done Handbook and his latest work Demand Side Sales. On this week's episode of Customer Conversations, Stuart and Bob cover
- Defining and applying the demand side
- Where to start with identifying the “struggling moment”
- The limitations of correlation in assessing customer behavior
- An atomistic approach to the customers buying timeline
- Trading off money, time and knowledge
- What causes the transition from passive to active looking
Resources:
- Demand Side Sales, by Bob Moesta - https://www.amazon.com/Demand-Side-Sales-101-Customers-Progress-ebook/dp/B08FRRF68Q
- The Jobs-To-Be-Done Handbook, by Bob Moesta - https://www.amazon.com/Jobs-be-Done-Handbook-techniques-application/dp/1499339232
- Shape Up, by Ryan Singer - https://basecamp.com/shapeup
- Jobs-To-Be-Done Radio - http://jobstobedone.org/topics/radio/
- The Disruptive Voice Podcast - https://www.hbs.edu/forum-for-growth-and-innovation/podcasts/disruptive-voice/Pages/default.aspx
Connecting with Bob:
- Connect with Bob on Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/user/bmoesta/videos
- Connect with Bob on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/bobmoesta/
Michael Callahan is Vice President of eCommerce and Transformation for Maytex and Zenith Home Corp. Michael started his career in large CPG companies and has worked on national brands like Mr. Coffee, CrockPot and T-fall. Over the past 15 years, Michael has been transforming organizations to think Consumer and Digital First. He believes that the key to running any successful eCommerce business is full organizational integration… The words he lives by are “Work Hard, Stay Humble”. On this weeks Customer Conversations, Sean and Michael cover
- What it means to build a digital strategy
- Managing necessary organizational change
- Interchange from digital to brick and mortar
- Ensuring complementary online and offline strategies
- What can be done to reduce "friction" for the consumer
- Determining whether or not to offer DTC
Resources:
- Digital Commerce 360 - https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/product/b2b-ecommerce-market-report/?utm_source=GA&utm_medium=CPC&utm_campaign=2020B2BECMarket&gclid=CjwKCAjw4rf6BRAvEiwAn2Q76jrjpcDb0pI8rREID_ok2doy1vfIW0gsHZ_2Z4FyeFFShhaoxCs3eBoCC-gQAvD_BwE
- Digital Shelf Institute - https://www.salsify.com/digitalshelfinstitute
- The Digital Transformation Playbook - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27797899-digital-transformation-playbook
- The Retail Ecommerce Playbook - https://www.forrester.com/playbook/The+Retail+eCommerce+Playbook+For+2020/-/E-PLA440
Connecting with Michael
- Connect with Michael On LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-g-callahan-b3331516/
- Connect with Michael Over Email at michaelc@maytex.com
Jeff Ignacio is the Head of Revenue and Growth Operations at UpKeep, managing the Go To Market Systems and Enablement teams. Prior to working at UpKeep Jeff spanned a variety of roles at both large tech firms such as Accenture, Intel, Google, and high growth ventures such as Vizier (viz-ier) and PatientPop. In this episode of the Customer Conversations podcast, Sean and Jeff cover
- The difference between product fit vs. go to market fit
- Expanding from early adopters and engaging the early majority
- Monitoring a customers risk profile
- Defining and managing a post-sales cycle
Resources:
- Product Lifecycle - https://www.amazon.com/Diffusion-Innovations-5th-Everett-Rogers/dp/0743222091
- Crossing The Chasm - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61329.Crossing_the_Chasm
- Sales Enablement Podcast - https://www.ringdna.com/sales-enablement-podcast-with-andy-paul
Connecting with Jeff:
- Connect with Jeff on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffbethechange/
Ryan currently leads product at Basecamp, is the author of Shape Up and the host of the Synthetic a Priori podcast. Here are a few of the topics we’ll talk about on this episode of Customer Conversations:
- The role and goals of customer research in the shaping process
- The workflow breakdown of the ‘jobs to be done’ framework
- Using research in your pitch
- The main goal of prototyping your product
Connect with Ryan
- Follow Ryan on Twitter
Lucas currently leads product marketing and strategic partnerships at Gorgias and has previously founded successful companies including Venngage and Treats Happen. Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Customer Conversations:
- Actionable steps towards improving your customer support
- Generating profit from customer support
- Reducing friction to purchase
- Why you should always have an offer or promo for customers
Connect with Lucas
- Gorgias.com
- Text him at 416.388.4470
Ben is the CEO and co-founder of Tuple (the best pair programming app for remote teams). He is also the host of one of my favorite podcasts the Art of Product, a former Thoughtbotter and the creator of several educational products for Rails developers. Here are only a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Customer Conversations.
- An update on progress at Tuple
- Keeping your finger on the pulse of your customers needs
- Building a product for developers and the importance of understanding your audience
- Soliciting feedback from customers from different channels
Connecting with Ben
- Tuple’s website
- Follow Ben on Twitter
- The Art of Product Podcast
Nikki Elbaz is a persuasive copywriter and email specialist at CopyHackers who’s written revenue generating content for brands including Shopify Plus, Doodle and Resident Home. She’s an expert in using research to understand why customers buy (and writing emails that make them do just that) and has shared her research knowledge for Product Led Institute, Bossitude Academy and CXL. Here are just a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Customer Conversations.
- How to be a persuasive copywriter
- What it means to be data driven in copy
- How to get Voice of the Customer (VoC) data
- Getting emotional data from customers
- How to know if you VoC data is representative of your customer base
- Different strategies to leverage to get customers to speak with you
Resources
- Paper form
- Google sheets
Connecting with Nikki
- NikkiElbaz.com
Lorin is the Founder of the Customer Intelligence Institute. She has worked with dozens of high-growth companies including best-in-class startups, emerging market leaders, and unicorn companies to contribute to successful exits and record quarters. Here are only a few of the topics we’ll discuss in this episode of Customer Conversations with Lorin.
- Early warning signs for companies that may have a positioning problem
- The first step towards repositioning around your customer
- Finding the customers, getting the conversation started and what to ask them
- Making sure you’re actually getting valuable data from your customer conversations
Resources
- Customer Intelligence Institute
Connecting with Lorin
- Connect with Lorin on LinkedIn
Lomit is the VP of Growth at IMVU. He is also the best selling author of the Lean Startup series book, Lean AI as well as a public speaker and startup advisor. Lomit has a ton of experience getting companies to and through the rocketship growth phase. Here are just a few of the topics we discussed in this episode:
- Monetization strategies for your high growth startup
- Extracting value out of customer data to help you grow the business
- Identifying the right users to grow LTV (lifetime value)
- How to properly use automation to grow faster
- Thinking about product growth in terms of use cases
- The inspiration behind his hit book, Lean AI
Resources
- Lean AI by Lomit Patel
- Marketing automation tech - Nectar9
- Lomit’s website & blog
Connecting with Lomit
- Connect with Lomit on LinkedIn
Jessica is the Co-Founder and CEO of Wonderment. Wonderment helps e-commerce merchants grow and scale their businesses. She has tremendous experience in marketing and startups. Her career expertise has included working at HubSpot, InVision and Techstars. Here are just a few of the topics we discussed in this episode:
- How Wonderment came to be
- User journey, pain points and why coding can wait
- Mastering customer research for product
- Avoiding bias in your research
- Operationalizing your product research
- Understanding the why behind what your building
Resources
- The Right It
Reaching out to Jessica
- Wonderment
- Follow Jessica on Twitter
- Connect with Jessica on LinkedIn
Chip is the Manager of Strategy and Planning at Uber Eats. He has tremendous experience in pricing and partnership strategy. Here are just a few of the topics we discussed in this episode:
- Being data driven with your team
- When do you know when you have enough data and are ready to make a decision
- Using search data to augment your inventory of customer selection
- How to make the business case once you have the data
- How to get started with data driven decision making
Resources
- Chip’s website
- Subscribe to Chip's Newsletter
Getting in touch with Chip
- Connect with Chip on LinkedIn
Claire is the Co-Founder of Elevate & Forget the Funnel. She has tremendous experience in SaaS marketing and growth. Here are just a few of the topics we discussed in this episode:
- What customer-led growth means and how to nail it
- The difference between customer-led and product-led
- The importance of creating the experience the customer needs
- How to get started leveraging customer insights
- How to think about the volume of customer insights you need
- Getting started with better understanding your customers
Connecting with Claire
- Elevate
- Forget The Funnel
- Follow Claire on Twitter
Caleb Elston is the Co-Founder and CEO of Delighted. Charles Studt is Head of Marketing at Delighted. Together they make a rockstar team of experts passionate about making your product better through customer feedback. Here are just a few of the topics we’ll discuss in this episode:
- The awesome story of how Delighted started
- Why you should dog food your own product (dogfooding)
- How to build a B2B product with a B2C mindset (and the pros & cons of this strategy)
- Why you need more than NPS data
- The importance of qualitative data to drive your product forward
- How to increase the mindshare of your team by getting to the customer
- Why Delighted funnels customer data back into their Slack account
Resources
- Back to business from Delighted (Free resources, thanks Delighted!)
Reaching out to the Delighted team
- Email the team at hello@delighted.com
Bonus Tip - “A ton of value lies with your customer success team” - Caleb Elston
Rob Fitzpatrick is a serial entrepreneur and author of the classic customer research book, The Mom Test. Rob talks to us about the importance of customer research as it applies to your business through the various stages of growth. Here are just a few of the topics we’ll discuss in this episode:
- The incredibly cool story of how The Mom Test came to be
- Conducting customer research through different stages of growth
- Overcoming objections to customer research
- How to make customer research a routine
- Why sales is all about having learning goals
- The importance of forming organizational habits
Resources
- The Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steve Blank
- Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss
- This is Marketing by Seth Godin
- The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick
Reaching out to Rob
- Follow Rob on Twitter
- Connect with Rob on LinkedIn
- Send Rob and email at rob@robfitz.com
Jenko Kent is the founder and creative director at VideGro and has spent almost a decade directing and creating engaging video content that drives serious ROI for DTC brands. In this episode, Jenko shares:
- Why rapid iteration beats perfect planning for creating content.
- The process VideGrow uses go drive outsized returns for brands.
- The types of video content best suited for each stage of your customers journey.
Resources
- VideGro Website
Reaching out to Jenko
- Email Jenko at Jenko@videgro.co
- On Twitter @JenkoKent
David Greenberg is the SVP of Marketing at Act-On Software. David shares more about his background and how he wound up helping companies like Act-On grow successfully through marketing. Here are some of the highlights of what you can expect in this episode:
- What marketing can do to optimize your sales funnel
- Why you need qualitative data from your customer to make improvements in sales, marketing and product
- How to manage a co-hort of users to get regular feedback about your product
- What you need to do to build a marketing machine that works for your company
- How customers want to make purchasing decisions today
Resources
- Act-On Content Library
- Act-On Blog
Reaching out to David
- Connect with David on LinkedIn
In this episode we’re joined by Adrienne Barnes. Adrienne is a B2B SaaS Content Marketer and strategist who’s advised and written for top B2B SaaS companies including Stripe, Drift, and Demio. She is also the founder of Best Buyer Personas. We discussed:
- Why it’s important to know the relationship your customers have with your company?
- How to apply what you know about customers to your content?
- How to get started with customer research?
Resources
- How SaaS Marketers Can Get Buy-In on Qualitative Research Projects
Connecting with Adrienne
- Reach out on Twitter
- Adrienne’s personal website
In this episode we’re joined by Louis Nicholls. Louis is the founder of Sales for Founders, SparkLoop and several successfully exited companies. He’s also the author of the Social Proof Handbook. We discussed:
-
The importance of understanding your customers goals
-
Creating shared success plans for customers
-
Why sales calls are the fastest way to learn about your early customers
Resources
-
Sales for Founders
-
Sales Survival Guide
**Reaching out to Louis
**- Follow Louis on Twitter
-
Check out SparkLoop
-
Email louis@salesforfounders.com
Show Highlights
- Personalization is all about who you are targeting
- Everything starts with identifying and solving the customer pain points
- “Once you can target, the world changes for you”
- Nailing down an effective process to enable you to move into new segments
- Learn more about the future of personalization
Resources
- Send with Scout Blog
Reaching out to Jordan
- Sendwithscout.com
- Connect with Jordan on LinkedIn
- Email Jordan at Jordan@sendwithscout.com
Hiten is a prolific SaaS founder of companies including Kissmetrics and Crazy Egg and is now working on FYI. He also runs Product Habits to help other founders develop the habits they need for success. In this episode, Hiten shares:
- His framework for identifying product ideas worth pursuing,
- How to identify what your customer really want.
- What Hiten has learned from David Cancel about different go to market strategies.
- Why continuous testing drives increased product value.
Resources
- Product Habits
- Building an MVP for FYI in 5 days
Reaching out to Hiten
- Reach out on Twitter or sign up for FYI
Samuel Hulick is best known for running useronboard.com, producing pithy teardowns, and writing “The Elements of User Onboarding.
We talked to user onboarding and UX expert Samuel Hulick about:
- The importance of understanding customers desired outcomes beyond your product.
- What it means to think of products as value delivery systems.
- How to get started improving your customers path to success with your product
Resources
- Bulletproof User Onboarding
- Badass: Making Users Awesome by Kathy Sierra
Connecting with Samuel
- Follow Samuel on Twitter
- Learn more about UserOnBoard
Asia Matos is the Founder of DemandMaven. In this episode, Asia lays out the truth in marketing for early-stage SaaS companies and startups to put your product on a rocketship. Learn more about the importance of customer research, extracting valuable insights from your data, finding problem patterns for your niche and more.
Connecting with Asia
- Follow Asia on Twitter
- Learn more about DemandMaven
- Subscribe to Asia's podcast In Demand
Corey Zettler is the Director of Product Management at Chief. In this episode, Corey shares with us the difference of approach to building internal versus external tools. Learn more from Corey about measuring the performance of an experiential product, the importance of collecting qualitative data, sharing customer insights regularly with your entire team and more.
Resources
- The Design of Everyday Things
- ‘Give Away Your Legos’ and Other Commandments for Scaling Startups
Connecting with Corey
- Email Corey at corey@chief.com
- Connect with Corey on LinkedIn
- Learn more about Chief
Jonathan Bartlett is the Chief Product Officer at Troops. Jonathan shares what you need to do now to prepare to sell your SaaS product to the enterprise. Other topics we discuss in this episode include managing your product like a business, comparing and contrasting a bottom up versus a top down approach to building your product, how product management has evolved and much more.
Resources
- Anything written by Michael Porter
- Examples of Michael Porter’s Work
- Books
- 15 Must Read Books for Product Leaders by Jason Lynn
- Competition Demystified
- The Strategy and Tactics of Pricing
Contacting Jonathan
- Connect with Jonathan on LinkedIn
Chris Ronzio is Founder and CEO of Trainual. In this episode, Chris shares with us the creative methods the Trainual team uses to continuously improve their product. Learn from their product ideation process, a host of valuable product tools and more.
Resources
- Tools - Canny, Delighted, Intercom
- Podcasts - SaaStr
- Books - Impossible to Inevitable
Getting in contact with Chris
- Connect with Chris on LinkedIn
- Subscribe to Chris’s YouTube channel
- Follow Chris on Instagram
We talked to Churnbuster’s Head of Growth Community about and host of the Playing for Keeps podcast Kristen LaFrance about:
- What SaaS companies from the world of DTC Ecommerce.
- What retention based acquisition means and the impact making customers successful has on the business bottom line.
- How deeply understanding customers leads enables companies to build more meaningful relationships with them.
Resources
- The Playing for Keeps Podcast
- Churnbuster
- How to conduct an internal customer retention audit
Connect with Kristen onTwitter
We talked to Drift’s Director of Product Management and host of the Build podcast Maggie Crowley about:
1) Why "Shipped is not done" and how that influences goals and measurement at Drift.
2) "Staying close to the customer" and the processes Maggie and the Drift team put in place to ensure that happens as you scale.
Resources
The Build podcast
Connect with Maggie on Twitter
Welcome to the Customer Conversations podcast brought to you by the team at LearnWhy. My name is Sean Boyce and I’m a B2B SaaS product strategist that loves learning about how to solve customer problems through software. And I’m Stuart Balcombe a product and growth nerd focused on helping companies discover the customer insights that drive their growth.
On this podcast, you’ll hear from SaaS founders and software industry pros working in product, marketing, and customer success roles across different stages of company growth. We’ll explore how they capture, analyze, and leverage customer insights to grow their business.
If you or someone you know has experience managing SaaS products, please have them reach out to me at sean@learnwhy.co about becoming a guest on our show.
LearnWhy helps companies like yours gain insights about customers in minutes not months. To learn more visit us on the web at learnwhy.co.