YouSaid · the spoken record

April Dunford

lines on the record: 110
first: 2023-10-22
most recent: 2023-10-22
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Yeah, so you can think of it as so first of all, the pitch structure has two big pieces. So the first is the setup. The setup piece is not about us. It's about the market and our point of view on the market. The second bit is all about our differentiated value. So why pick us over the other guys? So those pieces aren't equal. Like in a normal sales pitch situation, we don't want to spend all day in this setup part. Like we want to get to the meat, which is our differentiated value, but we can't skip that bit. So if I've got a half hour call or a 45 minute call, maybe I spend a few minutes on this up front. This upfront stuff is really important, though, and we can break the upfront into three pieces. So it starts with our insight into the market. So this is, you could think of this as our point of view on the market, or kind of like the problem inside the problem in some ways. So in Help Scouts,”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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. Sort of thing. So that's how the pitch looks in the after. But that's a really different pitch, like 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.”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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, like 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, right? It's going to 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, right? 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 in an inbox, look, here's the inbox. It's always used. Looks just like an inbox. That's amazing. Two, features so you never have to outgrow it. Look, here's how we do priorities.”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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, you know, 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 like a key part of customer service. Would you agree with that? Yeah, we would. You know, they have a little conversation. And then they say, great. Well, you have choices here, right? 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.”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hell Scout, if they did a typical pitch the way that 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, we're 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, you know, we can do assignments and prioritization and we can do this other thing and we can do this other thing. And la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la 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. Like that sounds a little bit like my shared inbox. But it also sounds like help desk software. Like, is it different than help desk software? I'm not so sure. And like 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.”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Store. They don't have sales reps. And so their approach to customer service was different. Like right from the outset, Help Scouts 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.”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We weren't used to doing any kind of like pitching in the pitch really. It was just, you know, just the facts jacks were just going to show you that. Some would do like this really lightweight thing, like, you know, here's the problem, we're the solution. Now let me walk you through all the drop-down menus. But, you know, it's 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 an example, and I'll do before and after what this would look like. I work with these folks helps out. 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.”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, sure. So, my background is I do positioning work. And so in the work that I do with clients, you know, 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, you know, essentially a glorified product walkthrough. Like if there was five drop-down menus, we're going to click on all five drop-down menus and show everybody everything, just feature, feature, feature, feature, feature. And so most of the team.”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So great to be back. We were talking about this earlier, but it feels like it was so long ago when I did the last one. Like I was one of the first guests and I feel like, man, you've been running this thing forever. And that was like a year ago.”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“40 to 60 percent of B2B purchase processes end in no decision. If you scratch on that data, the majority of those aren't saying, well, I'm not making a decision to buy something new because the old thing we were doing is better. That's not true at all. In fact, the majority of those is they couldn't figure out how to make a choice confidently. So what they did was they just went to their boss and said, you know what, now's not a good time. Let's not do it now. Let's do it next year. Let's just delay it because that is the safe, risk-free thing for that person who's on the hook to make the decision to do.”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source