Convert Your Users’ Contacts into Leads & The Three ‘Rs’ of Selling [Episode 661]

Jay Gibb, Founder of CloudSponge and Bridget Gleason, VP of Sales for Logz.io and my regular partner, join me on this episode.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

First guest: Jay Gibb

• The biggest challenge Jay sees facing sales reps today is failing to personalize the message to the prospect. Jay gives a shout out to G2Crowd. Andy notices messages that are authentically personalized to him.
• CloudSponge is a SaaS company for online businesses that want to generate leads or customers from their existing users’ contacts. It works with plugins and APIs to access contacts natively within a website.
• CloudSponge started in a pivot. The founders were building something else and they needed address book importing ability. They tried open source software, scripts, and apps. They ended up building it themselves.
• In developers’ forums, they saw others were working on the same thing they had already created. They decided to market what they had built, and it took off. Airbnb uses CloudSponge contact buttons in their referral program.
• The contacts do not stay on the CloudSponge server. They are active in memory while the session is live and purged when the session is closed. Nothing is stored except for metadata about the transaction, not the contact.
• The process usually offers a coupon or discount on the referring party’s or referred party’s first or next purchase. DropBox offers 100 MB of free storage with a referral. Jay mentions how companies guard against fraud and abuse.
• CloudSponge has a plugin that allows the customer to import an address book from CRM. Jay explains use cases with Gainfully and Yelp as examples.
• Fundraising and crowdfunding are other use cases. This works for event invitations by ecard, as well.
• What does a site owner have to do to integrate CloudSponge?  In the easiest case, it is a turnkey task to drop in the widget. Setting up a CRM import may take a couple of hours on your server, depending on the scope.
• CloudSPonge has EAQs and self-help resources, and if you email for help, they will provide assistance to help you get the most out of CloudSponge for your case.
• The easiest way to get a customer referral is to ask for it when closing an order. The customer is willing to share. Dropbox, Airbnb, Yelp*, and NextDoor all ask for referrals at signup time.
• CloudSponge makes it possible for companies with smaller budgets to compete with industry giants.

Second Guest: Bridget Gleason

• Andy is on the Whole30 reset program. He misses the adult beverages even more than sugar. He has become extremely conscious of what he eats and drinks. Meanwhile, he had signed up for a 62-mile bike ride.
• Today’s topic is the three ‘Rs’ of selling — Readiness, Relevance, and Resilience.
• Readiness is the mastery of the basic behaviors and habits of sales that allow you to connect with and engage on a human level with another person, inspiring trust.
• Relevance refers to the buyer-perceived value you bring to a meeting. It is your depth of product knowledge and how your customers derive value from it, and your depth of knowledge of the customer’s industry and their needs.
• Your company has few resources to devote to developing your relevance. Dive into your education. Learn all you can learn about selling, your product, and your customer. Be curious and make the investment to become relevant.
• Resilience includes the work it takes where the payoff is not immediately evident. The only thing that’s 100% predictable in sales is that something will go wrong. Resilience counters adversity.
• What are you doing to continue to improve, to serve your customers, and to increase your relevance and readiness?
• The Three ‘Rs’ are basic building blocks. The simple things make the difference. One of Bridget’s sales reps says, “You’ve got to be brilliant at the basics.”