Sales is customer success — it’s all about being the ultimate guide

In SaaS sales specifically there is a shift happening in what sales does. It’s no longer all about “selling” a prospect. It’s about helping and guiding them to a successful outcome.

Being consultative (like most say they are when selling) isn’t only about painting the picture of the end of the rainbow anymore. It is about rolling your sleeves up, being a trusted advisor and helping them get to the end of it. This is the value today’s prospects expect when they’re investing their time to talk with someone.

In today’s world … the buyer has the power and more information available to them then ever before.

Customers can learn (all on their own) about better ways of doing things that help them solve pain they’re facing, the best tools for solving these pains and how other companies have approached the same problems. Google is their first trusted guide.

They can then trial products, read help documentation, reach out to others for recommendations, etc.

This wealth and volume of information can be quite overwhelming though. Especially when your options aren’t drastically different from one another, which is becoming more common in SaaS.

Sales’ job today is (or should) be to help prospects make sense of all the noise in the most seamless way possible to help them achieve their desired outcome.

Let’s imagine a scenario. You’re in a brand new city, in a country you’ve never visited, and you’re looking for a French restaurant. You want this restaurant to have great service, awesome atmosphere, and an authentic menu. It’s important because you’re going to propose to your partner at this dinner.

What do you do?

You go to Google and read Yelp reviews and narrow it down to 8 restaurants that all meet your criteria and have the same 4-5 star reviews and similar comments.

• Now you need to find which are closest to you. The ones that are closest to you are 4.5 stars though. Ugh. You don’t want to mess this up by going to 4.5 and not 5 star.
• Once you narrow down this list a bit more you have to find best way to get there. Is it Lyft, train, or bus? What are pros and cons of each option in this new city you’ve never traveled through?
• Do I need to make reservations or can I just show up? Once that’s all set, what’s the dress code?
• When I get there … will we have a good table? How can I secretly let the server know what my plans are and make arrangements accordingly?

This is great, but man it’s A LOT of work and there are a lot of unknowns. A different, and arguably better approach, would be to call your Aunt who grew up in this country, has great taste and knows the area well and just ask her opinion.

She’s your ultimate guide. She can tell you the absolute best place (which may not have even been on your radar), can tell you how and when to get there and can call ahead since she knows the manager to ensure you have the best table and service.

Once everything is arranged she can send you a link to the menu, her recommendations on what’s best and key considerations when arriving.

All of this, in 30-minutes with minimal stress on your end. She helped you determine a clear path to your desired outcome and made it as easy as possible to get there.

She was your sales rep in this case. She organized information based on what you told her, presented it in a digestible way and overall delivered an exceptional experience.

This is what sales is today. At Help Scout we work to provide customers with the most seamless experience possible as they’re evaluating us as a solution. We guide them through evaluation, onboarding and setup as part of our sales process to ensure we deliver and they’re successful. It’s different then the old approach of sell the vision, collect the money and then ship them off to someone else to help them.

If you believe in this new way of selling, are passionate about sales and customer success and are ready to roll up your sleeves and deliver value for prospects you work with we’d love for you to join the team as our next Account Executive! Check out the Account Executive job description here.