(888) 815-0802Gifting for Growth: Unwrapping Post-Sales Engagement, with Kris Rudeegraap [Episode 1139]
This week, Alastair is joined once again by Kris Rudeegraap, CEO at Sendoso, to talk about the power of post-sale gifting and engagement strategies. They explore how personalizing gifts based on techniques like the “endowed progress effect” and “loss aversion” can drive customer success, cross-selling, and upselling. The conversation also delves into budget considerations, emphasizing the value of reallocating resources for impactful results.
Podcast Transcript:
00:00:00:07 – 00:00:28:07
Speaker
If a person did have cookies and I’d now given them cookies, are you reminding them that they now have cookies that they didn’t have before, like they have cookies? I know you want oatmeal cookies now. You want gluten free cookies, but you have cookies. How would your world be if I took the cookies away again? Exactly.
00:00:28:09 – 00:00:58:08
Speaker
Welcome back, everybody, to this week’s Sales Strategy and Enablement podcast. I’m Alastair Woolcock, CSRO at Revenue.io and I’m thrilled to have back with me Kris Rudeegraap, CEO of Sendoso. Kris welcome back. Thank you. Thank you. It’s great to be back and we had such an exciting conversation last time around. Top of the funnel and enablement, multi-channel buying and how gifting and engagement and the buying groups growing over all of that.
00:00:58:10 – 00:01:20:09
Speaker
But one of the key things that we we didn’t get time to get to, which I’m thrilled to have you back and dive in deeper on is what about after the sale? Yeah, we always worry about the start of the sale, but we never worry about after the sale. You know, I’d love to dive in there this week with you and just get your thoughts on that, Especially as companies, you know, 80% of their growth.
00:01:20:09 – 00:01:43:13
Speaker
This may come from customers you have. Yeah I yeah we always pour all the money into that And even in a recent Forbes article just on a newswire that came out, they responded that despite the rising costs 60% of marketers surveyed report the direct mail budget allocation has either increased or stayed steady year over year. And that’s surprising to me when they sit there.
00:01:43:13 – 00:02:06:21
Speaker
And I think they’re only thinking the top of the funnel. They’re not thinking of marketing. How do I apply this after that? You know, how do I go drive, expansion, cross-sell, upsell? And I think it’s a big missed opportunity in the market right now. What’s your thoughts? I don’t agree. I think for a while demand gen was just highly focused on that top of funnel building, pipeline building muscles.
00:02:06:21 – 00:02:27:13
Speaker
And, you know, there’s a bit of a resurgence on marketing teams thinking about how do they focus post funnel. I think even with ABM, you know, as part of ABM, there’s an expand part of ABM, but I think that’s overlooked a lot of times for the build your target lists, engage your target prospects when you should be running ABM to your existing customers too.
00:02:27:15 – 00:02:51:12
Speaker
So I definitely agree that I think it’s been overlooked. But in, you know, maybe recent this recent year at least, it’s getting more and more awareness now. So ABARES interesting. So account base marketing is what we’re talking about for those that aren’t familiar with the term know, ABM can take on many forms, right? You can often see it in a one, two, many all the way down to a 1 to 1 and see it by verticals.
00:02:51:12 – 00:03:22:17
Speaker
All of those things. And I agree. I think it’s a process that is very important to continue after the sale. Yes, exactly. Because you that the words I like to you is, you know, it’s you sold somebody in most cases on solving a problem. Hopefully that at least right now we went and sold and we ended there after running and adopt implementation we hand off to support and they’re doing their thing has mixed success maybe follows up with the customer once a week or has drop ins and stuff like that.
00:03:22:22 – 00:03:46:02
Speaker
But correlating back to say, are you realizing the value out of what we bought? Are you realizing value against the problem you bought us for and value realization? And ABM is one of the you know, that’s that’s a huge opportunity, right? Because now I can market it and go to those accounts and say, look, your competitors are getting this value.
00:03:46:07 – 00:04:10:12
Speaker
We want to make sure you are getting the intended value you did out of this account. Six teams should be using data to make sure value is being driven out of that. And even then, I think of once you’ve done that basic foundation and I would use and also as an example here, cross-selling, not just upselling cross-selling into a new division, he requires us to create exposure into those accounts.
00:04:10:15 – 00:04:31:08
Speaker
Exactly. So now I am data that I and this shows me they realize value. How do I get access? How do I push on that piece? And I think the access piece is really important here. And for, you know, a lot of customers, there is a world where, you know, there’s a point your champion leaves. You’ve got to almost resell the account or resell the value.
00:04:31:10 – 00:04:56:19
Speaker
And so again, you know, some of the same top of funnel sales tactics of grabbing attention, you know, understanding problem pain points and getting that value across needs to be re instilled in some, you know, customer success and income management teams as they are re finding new champions or cross-selling the new champions. And so yeah that’s you know ties into where you know we at and our customers use gifting as part of that.
00:04:56:21 – 00:05:20:17
Speaker
How do you reestablish new champions or how do you expand into other champions or how do you celebrate and incentivize product usage, referrals, community? A lot of those things are interesting topics. Dale So, so on that, you know, when I my head goes to, I think a pharmaceutical sales, the pharma industry has perfected account transitions and movement reps better than almost any industry.
00:05:20:17 – 00:05:47:14
Speaker
Right? And they for years, long before all of the digital, I’ve always been very good about literally gifting to the doctor it especially in America to drive a commercial change to drive a rapid change and support that saying hey look you’re you’re so and so this new it’s about I come bearing gifts in their right or the old adage they’d never show up to a meeting without something for the recipient in some way.
00:05:47:16 – 00:06:10:11
Speaker
And now Ted and it’s a services in other industries I a bit of a laggard on that front right gifting is tended to be just as we discussed last episode top of the funnel is never really being stored in terms of relationship transitioning personalization in that way and the enablement piece of trying being access, how do you think about that?
00:06:10:11 – 00:06:29:05
Speaker
Are the farmer people doing it right? Should we be doing or that? And how do we justify both the expense? How do we justify that kind of more heavy manual process there? Is it worth it or do we just keep charging ahead? We will send an email in somebody and jump on the zoom. Yeah, I think Farmer nailed it.
00:06:29:05 – 00:06:49:02
Speaker
And I think you’ve got to build rapport. And I think for the last few decades a lot of tech, financial services, etc. really relied on email as the sole communication channel and as the sole way to build rapport through email. But we I think we’ve seen time and time again that that channel is becoming more and more inundated with emails.
00:06:49:02 – 00:07:16:23
Speaker
And so you’ve got to diversify a bit. You’ve got to be creative and use other channels and that’s where, you know, building rapport through gifting and through offline and through in-person really adds additional layer of value. And I think you’re right, the of the the email piece of it is just waning in success, right? All of the numbers are down on that continue to drop down and well Kris, I’ll put you on the spot and I’ll give you my answer first.
00:07:17:01 – 00:07:40:07
Speaker
You know, I’m I use several hundred emails a day. I delete 90% of them. And even for that, even if you can get to me, you know, I have a marketing email that people are actually going to and then I go my primary one that people that I actually want to connect with. Yeah, right. And a lot of I think especially see your buyers have that kind of set up as well because they just can’t deal with the door.
00:07:40:08 – 00:08:00:11
Speaker
So yeah, you have to figure out how to get to these people without the idea that I’m just going to eat to them. And I know what ABM experts who expert that’s multichannel agree it’s multichannel. We want to hit up to a five or six different channels. Yeah, but at some point you need to create a condition for me to engage.
00:08:00:12 – 00:08:16:20
Speaker
And that’s the physical pieces making that resurgence. I just I think that’s in person. I think there’s a bunch of those are the pieces and you got to figure out how to light up that channel more than we’ve ever done before. And I think that’s more expensive. So that’s where you’ve got to be selective and I think it’s at the right moments.
00:08:16:20 – 00:08:53:21
Speaker
DO So going back to the, you know, post-sale cycle of your sending a customer welcome, get your building report from day one or if somebody just added their 100th user to your platform and you send them something as a thank you, you’re kind of building that habit or you’re building that muscle memory that you know, there incentivize to do stuff and they are rewarded and they’re excited and willing to share that, or they’re taking action in your community and you want to reward those actions or even for a salesperson listening who they sign up, a customer that customers likely, you know, got a maybe, you know, eight months to, you know, maybe 36 months tenure
00:08:53:21 – 00:09:14:15
Speaker
at that company and then may move on to another company is going to be a buyer again. How do you, you know, send something a year in or as a salesperson remember, that’s their birthday in a life moment and send them something just to keep that relationship alive. And so I think that’s also really critical is how do you keep relationships alive for long periods of time?
00:09:14:19 – 00:09:37:04
Speaker
Post sales, 100%. And there is it’s if Howard can join stay bed to show coming out of the world of psychology which when we were very big into that. Yeah psychological methods of driving engagement supporting buyers. And one of the things that I think people often don’t do well and again we’re talking post-sale here is what’s called the endowed progress effect.
00:09:37:06 – 00:10:12:22
Speaker
So the Doud progress effect for everybody to be aware is the psychological technique where people are more likely to complete a process if they believe they’ve already made some progress towards the goal. And this stems from the idea that artificial, you know, how do you drive artificial advancement towards the goal or recognition of the goal. So now think I’ve maybe transitioned into the account or I am one year into a two year contract and wouldn’t it be great to go engage with more buyers in that buying group because you probably had your 16 countries running along?
00:10:13:00 – 00:10:33:06
Speaker
Yep, they’re probably at the ops level working with the day to day practitioners and you know, we probably haven’t had enough senior engagement that we need to start to set the stage for the renewal process and everything else. These so we’re 50% of the way through using the progressive act. What I can do is I can actually reach out to that person and I can tie buying value realization.
00:10:33:06 – 00:10:51:15
Speaker
We spoke up and say you were this percentage towards the goal when you bought our platform or where you bought our service. For now, here is a thank you to say we’re 50% of the way there. I’d love to sit now meeting map out how I can get to the rest of that goal and achieve the other 50% mark.
00:10:51:17 – 00:11:25:18
Speaker
Exactly. That’s a very interesting way to use a gift to open the door. But you tied in context using Dow Progressive back to create the condition to go, well, of course I want to achieve the other 50%. Yeah. So what ideas do you have Kris let’s me back. You nailed it. That’s a perfect perfect. This case. Yeah. And I think that’s the it’s the extra step that people need to take as I think the sales strategy and the enablement side out before we just sell and think that a you know, a Yeti buyout is going to do it.
00:11:25:20 – 00:11:57:13
Speaker
It’s it’s the context I think that right now. Sure, everybody loves going to get imag I suppose, but sorry I’m picking on adding but that will be, you know, is, is the context that goes with these statements or another great one I love is loss aversion. So loss of version is masking kind of where the psychologist came out of this which is where you help people feel the pain of losing something more intensely than the pleasure of gaining something of equal value.
00:11:57:15 – 00:12:18:12
Speaker
So gain in a post-sale, you’ll always focus on more value, more value, more value, and you get a lot of feature requests. And I and I deal with this in our company and often. But hold on. If a person did have cookies and I now given them cookies, are you reminding them that they now have cookies that they didn’t have before?
00:12:18:13 – 00:12:41:23
Speaker
Like they have cookies? I know you want oatmeal cookies now. You want gluten free cookies, but you around cookies. How would your world be if I took the cookies away again? Exactly right. I thought that loss aversion is key and then driving a step that says, look, this is something that is if this happened to your company, here would be the negative impact.
00:12:42:01 – 00:13:06:20
Speaker
By the way, I am here is your representative in CSR. It would be way to help ensure we do not appreciate that loss. Again. Now let’s talk through how we can accelerate to de-risk you even further based on what’s going on in your business. Loss aversion angered around the motivation of something as personalized, you need to drive the conversation so don’t feel so salesy and then go meet.
00:13:07:01 – 00:13:25:08
Speaker
I think it’s just tactics people could use really well. I think that’s perfect. And one of the things you mentioned earlier that I want to bring back up is like there is cost, this is can be expensive, but because of that there is a scarcity and there’s you’re you’re not going to get, you know, a thousand yeti mugs sent to you because that’s impossibly expensive.
00:13:25:09 – 00:13:44:04
Speaker
And so there’s a more of a selection process, the selection criteria of who get sent, what. And because of that, it preserves the channel and it preserves the, you know, kind of scarcity effect. So you’re not just going to get a million yeti bucks is like you are going to get a million emails. And so that yeah, even further drives kind of the effectiveness.
00:13:44:08 – 00:14:07:17
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Scarcities tried and tested true. It works really well. Yeah 100% there so post-sale side of this Kris what do you seeing this working exceptionally well and have you seen any data where you’ve seen it’s resulting in so much more sales or better retention. Like have you seen anything there that we could point to for our listeners?
00:14:07:21 – 00:14:28:22
Speaker
We’ve definitely seen in supporting data as it relates to kind of land and expand motion in and breaking into new contacts or new departments in expanding sales. So similarly, you’d expect that to work if it works top of funnel for an ACR, you know, an AM trying to break into new accounts or new teams or business units will work effectively.
00:14:28:22 – 00:14:50:04
Speaker
So I think that’s a no brainer. But we’ve seen it work for other, you know, parts of the customer lifecycle, whether it’s, you know, graduating from onboarding. And again, giving them something that they feel like they’re completing something, they’re going to be celebrated, you know, setting a gift or even a little, you know, trophy at times like those type of thing, just make you feel successful and make you coming back for more.
00:14:50:06 – 00:15:24:01
Speaker
They’ve also seen community engagement get rewarded using it for customer advisor board meetings, Cavs user conferences, trying to drive your customers to your user conference by way of, you know, sending them a really cool kit or gift or collateral, even if you’re trying to run customer webinars and educating them on, you know, a lunch and learn for a new product release saying, Hey, is the lunch and learn, here’s a DoorDash gift card, come for 30 minutes lunch on us, and you learn about the new product release that we just released.
00:15:24:03 – 00:15:46:18
Speaker
So some of those things are like, Hey, that’s at noon, I need lunch. Anyway, I’m kind of curious, you know, it’s just that for willingness to come in and you could increase, you know, attendance. So what I usually see is companies will, will try to figure out what are their leaky buckets or where they’re trying to optimize for and then where could they layer on, you know, gifting as an avenue to drive better conversions or better outcomes?
00:15:46:22 – 00:16:08:03
Speaker
Yeah, Yeah. I think it’s really smart. And again, as we started this call, I just remind everybody that we are very much seen in the market over 80% of revenues coming from the cross-sell up. So yeah, well, you know, the importance of driving that exposure is tantamount to company’s success right now. New customer acquisition is never being harder for.
00:16:08:03 – 00:16:36:10
Speaker
And while the companies and people are getting better and better at personalization, which is good and I’m happy about that, but the personalization now needs a physical touch combined with the digital touch. So when we think of six or seven channels, depending on what we search, reading is what the advice is these days. I think if we are not thinking through the physical channel, you’re you’re going to miss out as we’re right on the existing buyer’s now, budget, budget budget we’ve hit on a couple of times.
00:16:36:10 – 00:17:07:01
Speaker
Yeah look we established that the enabling budgets up. Okay so that’s good. So we should be thinking of that budget marketing holding pretty flat. And so maybe not as much coming there. And I suggest a lot of this opt in is coming from that area. But now let’s just talk the sales leader, because I think for some sales, like I’ll, you know, I’m out there short Yeah, fine send somebody something but they’re not really thinking this is the strategy as we’ve said, the psychological techniques, the timing by sales stage like you should have.
00:17:07:03 – 00:17:28:15
Speaker
I would tell our listeners the sales force dynamics. Okay. We’re seeing using you should had triggers. Yes. In certain stages that are saying this is an action that needs to happen in this channel. Yes, exactly. Or as a step in and out outreach. Sure. You know, sequence 100%. Yeah. It’s the you can rinse and repeat it. You can report on it.
00:17:28:16 – 00:17:52:09
Speaker
Yeah. And you can track to maybe test for CSA leaders. Same thing. They’re also living in the CRM system. You need a task in this year end system that ties to account change activities or your tying to loss aversion techniques, or you’re halfway through the contract cycle and you need to have something more than just, Hey, let’s go out and do the dinner right or let’s go do something to that.
00:17:52:12 – 00:18:19:13
Speaker
This is a way of engaging to drive the cross-sell up. So the question becomes that, am I going to pay for all of this? Is physical is more expensive. We all know that. Yep. And I’m going to be mildly provocative here and I’m a tie this into our trivia question, Kris. Okay, great. To answer our budget question, the bottom third of sales teams are responsible for how much of a company’s total sales on average.
00:18:19:15 – 00:18:54:00
Speaker
Okay, So the bottom third of a sales team is sort of answering how much of the total sales generated by that company on average, A, 4%, B, 9%, C, 17 plus percent. I’m going to go 90%. Good guess. Unfortunately, it’s 4% is the statistical average around 4%. So we’re talking a third. So you got a hundred sellers, your bottom three are only generating 4% of what the company needs.
00:18:54:05 – 00:19:15:09
Speaker
And I would tell you from Gartner, we always saw like the bottom third, the odds of a third becoming a top performer is is very I’m like, you know, getting to the 50% of 50 to 80 range. Yeah you can coach and train and do something there, but there’s still a less than optimum return rate. So now we’re talking we’ve established growth out of existing businesses are key.
00:19:15:11 – 00:19:49:02
Speaker
Yeah, we know we need to drive the cross-sell upsell bicycle is expensive. I know it’s hard for people to hear, but you have to look at the expense of that bottom third. I’m not suggesting get rid of it all, but you do have to look at and say in my scenario and seller sellers in the company three for the price of ten, which is going to be fully burdened close to call it three, three and a half million dollars pretty easily could we not move mountains and cross-sell upsell and that in that scenario in a big way?
00:19:49:04 – 00:20:12:03
Speaker
I think we can. I think it requires a little bit of rethink of budget allocation as opposed to this solely coming from the world of marketing. I don’t agree. And I think there’s other kind of budgets that could be overlapped and reallocated better, such as, you know, are your digital ads performing as good as they should, or do you should you test that in other channels, or is your TV budget as effective or can that be better used?
00:20:12:03 – 00:20:40:09
Speaker
So I think aside from, you know, pulling from like the head count budget, there’s other programs spend or even other ancillary buckets of spend that can be a no brainer to pull from and show better results at the end of the day, that’s driving better revenue. Great, great advice, Kris. Unfortunately, I’m out of time for this week, but it’s been a pleasure having you on your sites around the world of physical as a channel to drive buyer engagement.
00:20:40:11 – 00:21:01:02
Speaker
I hope our listeners come up with some new ideas here going forward. So thank you so much for sharing the insights here. Like last time, I want to finish with a favorite moment, a moment you’d love to redo something that is embarrassing or fun. I don’t know. Had last time you had, for me at least, a heartwarming one of starting those.
00:21:01:02 – 00:21:20:06
Speaker
So it’s a huge thing. You actually wish you would have done it sooner and things like that. And I think, you know, the entrepreneur in all of us says, let’s go for it, but I’m going to ask you to one more and mold what’s a moment that you love to talk about? Yeah. So I think meeting my wife, she’s been super supportive in my entrepreneur journey.
00:21:20:06 – 00:21:37:08
Speaker
So back to my last dancer. I couldn’t have done it without her. I know that a lot of CEOs take credit and founders take credit themselves, but I have to say my wife is equally impactful on where I’ve been and where I’m going and has been kind of the behind the scenes helper and in a lot of my decisions.
00:21:37:08 – 00:21:56:21
Speaker
So meeting her is one of those moments that I cherish forever. Well, I think you’re, you know, hopefully get a big hug for that one. What’s your wife’s name? My wife’s name is Andrea on there. Well, and shout out to Andrea as well. Thank you. Routing Andrea and and Kris sound like a dynamic duo. You’re building an awesome company.
00:21:56:21 – 00:22:17:09
Speaker
Keep at it. Thank you for everything you’re doing on that side. The insights here with everyone and for our listeners, please remember to like and subscribe. Send your questions in to Howard and I. We will do our best to answer them on a future podcast episode. And thanks again for joining us here today. Kris SEO I Austin So thank you.
00:22:17:11 – 00:22:20:21
Speaker
Thank you so much. See letter to me.
