Don MacLennan- Who You Know or What You Know in Sales?

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Kevin Price, Host of the Price of Business on Business Talk 1110 AM KTEK (on Bloomberg’s home in Houston) recently interviewed Don MacLennan .

 

Tell me about your firm (number of employees, location, type of companies you work with, etc.).
Bluenose was founded in 2012 – we’re a team of 29 strong and growing, with offices in San Francisco and Boise.

 

What type and size of companies do you have as clients?

 
Bluenose provides a Customer Success platform via a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution and our clients are medium-to-large enterprise SaaS businesses. Our product is not limited to this space but that’s our focus for now. Our clients vary in size and industry, including Appcelerator, BlueJeans Network, ClearSlide, Kissmetrics, LiveRamp and more.

 
What comes to mind when you see this topic?
The customer rightfully has more power than ever. It’s easier than ever to switch to a competitor and the power of social media means a disgruntled customer can discourage potential future clients. It’s not about winning a customer once and moving on; we have to constantly ensure customers are achieving their business objectives at a rapid pace.

 

Analytics – particularly usage data analytics – combined with the personal intelligence of our Customer Success Managers enable Bluenose to really be empathetic to our customer’s needs. For example, using Big Data technologies to analyze usage data provides a powerful signal about whether or not the customer is satisfied with the product. Combining that with personal checkins, NPS, support tickets and other data paints a more complete picture of if the client is achieving real value from our product.

 

What are the best practices when it comes to this issue?

 
You have to sincerely be customer-centric and empathetic. The business that truly understand its customers’ needs will be the business that’s successful.
Incorporate the voice of the customer back into your company in a meaningful way. Without your customers, your business doesn’t exist. Take their feedback seriously and utilize it to drive change throughout your organization.

For example, Bluenose enables customers to parse through event-level usage data and this provides powerful insights into how people are using your product. Let’s say this analysis shows a significant portion of customers are getting stuck at a certain point, that information can have a real impact on your Product, Support and Marketing departments.