[E292] Solving The CRM Problem, with Jeroen Corthout (Part 2)

Jason: Welcome to part two of my conversation with Yerum Korthout. And I'm super excited that we continue where we left off, talking about business, about sales, the struggles of salespeople. Where he fits in with his experience in sales. So here you go. Part two, enjoy. Jeroen: We are focusing on a smaller, medium sized businesses because they move much faster than enterprises. Enterprises are like way behind. And so there's this huge discrepancy between what you use at home and what you use in the office, which makes that people are getting extra frustrated. It doesn't make sense. Jason: And I could totally see that. If you look at that historically with computers, PCs. What people have at home is different than what they have at work back in the day. And then it's leveled out, but it's been different. So let's talk a little bit about sales. Obviously this is a sales podcast and we chatted about this before and you're like, I don't really know I'm not sure about these kinds of topics. But obviously, and I mentioned this to you separate was everything in life is sales. How would you describe your sales style? Jeroen: I try to be as little salesy as possible. So I always try to be there for people. Try to find ways to make sure that they know that they can rely on me as the quote unquote salesperson to help them solve their issues. Try to see what triggers them. What is the thing that will convince them to move forward? Rather than trying to use generalistic techniques or trying to be pushy, I personally have a big issue with being pushy because I also really don't like it when other people do it on me. So I just can't do it. So sometimes I might maybe lose sales because I'm not pushing hard enough, but I prefer that sort of in the long term versus the short term win that we might make by doing this, maybe one extra sale where the customer in the end won't be really happy anyway, and we'll leave the subscription quickly give us a bad review, all this kind of thing. I do believe that nowadays also that is not a sustainable thing anymore. It is classic sales practices. Jason: Yeah. I completely agree with all of that. Obviously anyone who knows me knows that's what I focus on as well. And it's interesting that you started with the fact that you don't like being pushed into buying, right? Like that high pressure. So you don't do that, which I think is what happens with a lot of people. Is they have some kind of experience, good or bad as a customer. And then it shapes their sales style, right? If you had a good experience being pushed into something and you enjoy that, then that's going to be your sales mode. If you like that game and that pushing and that pressure, but for most people, they don't like being sold to quote unquote sold to, they want to buy and they want to feel like they're the one making their own decision. And I see that a lot. And I think that's valid. And I love the fact that you also added that If you did put a lot of pressure on people, it would potentially lead to customers who aren't going to stay very long. They're going to cancel. They're going to give a bad review. That's where you push the wrong person too hard to buy. Then what happens is the buyer's remorse is huge and it's either comes on really quick or it's delayed a little bit, but it's going to lead to Something negative where it's just not necessary. And I think there's a good point in the middle, which is obviously what I focus on, which is persuading the right people to move forward and not just completely letting them drive. The whole thing is guiding them there, but then not crossing that line into the high pressure. Jeroen: Yeah, definitely. I actually looking at data, even if you look at our subscription data, which is an interesting thing in SAS, because you can track. Nearly everything, when you look at people who have very short sales cycles. So that very quickly decided, maybe we even got on a call and they were quickly convinced and it's not so much the product that convinced them, but more the conversation. We see that these people go away the quickest, as we call it in SAS, they churn the quickest. It's really noticeable. If I see like people that I got on the phone, they got really excited, subscribed. Almost all of them left already, while people that on the other end of the spectrum take our trial, actually use it, feel how the software works, and even we track sort of the amount of setup steps they take. The more setup steps they take, the more likely they are to subscribe in the end, like at the end of the trial period. They are also much more likely to stay for a long time. And this is just behavior within the trial. So if within the trial. They set up sales flair further. It doesn't matter whether they do more after, but within that trial, then they're way less likely to go away quickly. Jason: Makes total sense. In your experience, why do you think that short sales cycle, let's say almost a one call close, if you will, like it was just treated in that timeframe. Why do you think those people churn so fast or churn more? Jeroen: Because they don't really decide thoughtfully. They don't make a conscious enough decision. They're really excited about it, which is nice. probably I should even slow them a bit down, but if I get excited as well, then that's hard. Jason: And I think that's tough, right? Because I've seen that too, where it's like you want to slow it down because the data shows that if there's a more of a courtship, right? More of a Dating before getting married, then it's a better chance that it's going to last longer, right? Like any relationship, but it's tough because if someone says, this is great, how do I sign up? Let's go. Like you don't want to dismiss that. But I think the smart way is as long as you do it, it's not high pressure. If somebody is excited and they want to move forward, as long as you understand, that's where your churn is coming from. And it's not a sales failure. It's not a manipulation problem. It's just a kind of behavioral demographic of people that you sign up, then you can just discount that churn and then segment it out and look at the churn of the rest of your portfolio. Jeroen: Yeah, for sure. I then always wonder is there a way we could have prevented this? It's of course interesting to have them on a subscription for a year and they pay for us, but in the end, it's not a positive result. Is there any way in which we can make sure that they make a more conscious decision and get on board better? It's probably the key is in the last part, helping them really use it to the fullest. Jason: Yeah. And I think that's really the key. And from what I've found in my experience, especially selling SaaS. Is it's really about the expectation of what's going to be involved and what kind of relationship they're really getting into because sometimes a SAS platform is sold and it sounds really good and it's going to do everything for you. Like it looks like it's sales flair, for example, like boom, AI is going to do all this for you. It's super easy. And then somebody gets into it and they actually have to do some setup and they thought it was just going to be instant gratification. And then they realized I got to do some stuff and then. They just get busy and go back to doing whatever they're doing. Jeroen: Yeah. People thinking that nothing will be needed because we say Oh, we do most of the things for you. And then they're like, Oh, everything will just start happening for me. That's of course also not the case. We also try not to oversell that. I will never say that we eliminate all the data input or something because that just doesn't create the right experience. Jason: Yeah. And that's where a lot of sales go sideways. Once somebody becomes a customer in the short term, like right after is that set up the onboarding where people are used to literally buying something and then just having it work or using it. Yeah, people only want to buy something. They have to assemble because they just wanted to assemble. Stores literally. here in the States, you buy something like you buy furniture, bookshelf, you can pay the store to assemble it for you. So you don't even have to do that work. And so I think that's part of the kind of attitude and outlook of people, especially if someone's going to make that instant decision. They're probably that kind of person who's wants the instant setup and the instant gratification. So for yourself, do you consider yourself a sales founder, a marketing based founder or a tech founder? Jeroen: It's a hard one. I'm a bit of all three, but mostly focused on the marketing sides. Jason: As a back, what did you start out as when you started sales flare? Like what bucket would you put yourself in sales? Jeroen: In the beginning, when we started the company, we were basically building something and selling it manually. It wasn't with a trial that you could just sign up on the site or something. I would help you every step of the way because our product was just. At that level at that moment, I had to take people every step of the way, which was also very helpful because it made that we could build out the process in a proper way, seeing all the embarrassing moments, fixing those and making sure that as soon as they got fixed and we got the routine there, that we could start automating these pieces in the proper way as well. Since the very first product we had, we waited about two years. With offering a trial sign up without me being involved in line during that whole period. I would take people through it end to end, usually on Skype back in the day. Jason: Alright, that's it for part two. Hopefully you're enjoying this conversation with yay Ru that I'm having, and make sure to subscribe to the podcast, get all the episodes every day they come out. You can also go to jason cutter.com and find links for everything past shows. for the book. So make sure to buy Authentic Persuasion if you haven't already. Selling with Authentic Persuasion is available now on Amazon, Barnes Noble, also directly on the Authentic Persuasion website. And until tomorrow, make it a great day and I will catch you on the next episode. That's it for another episode of the Sales Experience Podcast. Thank you so much for listening. If you find yourself on iTunes, can you leave the show a rating and a review? It helps other sales people and sales leaders find the show and please subscribe to the show and share episodes you find valuable with anyone you know in sales. Help me on my mission of changing the way sales is done. And if you're ready to work together, go to Jason cutter. com again, that's Jason cutter. com. To find out how I can help you or your company create scalable sales success. I will see you on the next sales experience podcast episode, and keep in mind that everything in life is sales and people remember the experience you gave them.