“It’s tempting to try to be everything to everyone, when really you should be the best thing for the people who need your thing.”

– Alyssa Nolte, CEO of TruVue

This week on The Digital Download, we’re exploring the critical transition that every organization must navigate: Shifting the focus from merely acquiring clients (at all costs!) to keeping them long-term. Alyssa Nolte, CEO of TruVue and customer success visionary, joins us to reveal how businesses can adopt a retention-first mindset and why this shift is essential for long-term success.

We'll tackle questions like:

* What is driving the shift from focusing on customer acquisition to retention?

* What strategies are most effective for retaining clients in the long run?

* How can organizations better understand and predict customer churn?

* What role does customer experience play in long-term retention?

Alyssa’s journey from scaling startups to leading churn prediction analytics at TruVue provides her with a unique perspective on what it takes to retain clients effectively. Her approach to customer success combines data-driven insights with actionable strategies, making this episode a must-watch for businesses looking to put an end to churn.

We strive to make The Digital Download an interactive experience. Bring your questions. Bring your insights. Audience participation is highly encouraged!

This week we were joined by our Special Guest -

• Alyssa Nolte, customer retention expert and CEO of TruVue

This week's Host was -

• Rob Durant, Founder of Flywheel Results, a proud DLA Ignite partner

Panelists included -

• Tim Hughes, CEO & Co-founder of a DLA Ignite

• Adam Gray, Co-founder of a DLA Ignite

• Tracy Borreson, Founder and CEO of TLB Coaching & Events, a proud DLA Ignite partner, and

• Bertrand Godillot, Managing Partner, Odysseus & Co, a proud DLA Ignite partner

Transcript of The Digital Download 2024-10-11

Rob Durant [00:00:00]:

1. Good morning. Good afternoon, and good day wherever you may be joining us from. Welcome to another edition of the digital download, the longest running weekly business talk show on LinkedIn live. Now globally syndicated on TuneIn Radio through IBGR, the world's number one business talk, news, and strategy radio network. Today, we're discussing the future of business. Hint. It's retention.

Rob Durant [00:00:32]:

We have a special guest, Alyssa Nolte, to help us with the discussion. CEO of TrueView and customer success visionary, Alyssa's journey from scaling startups to leading churn prediction analytics at TrueView provides her with a unique perspective on what it takes to retain clients effectively. But before we bring Alyssa on, let's go around the room and introduce everyone. And while we're doing that, why don't you in the audience reach out to a friend, ping them, and have them join us? We strive to make the digital download an interactive experience so audience participation is highly encouraged. Right? With that, Adam, would you kick us off, please?

Adam Gray [00:01:19]:

Good afternoon, everybody. I'm Adam Gray. I'm cofounder of DLA Ignite, and I'm enjoying what possibly could be the last day of good weather in this country before winter properly lands.

Rob Durant [00:01:31]:

So Oh, so both of them have hit?

Adam Gray [00:01:35]:

Yes. 1st and last day of good weather this year. Yeah. It's, it's absolutely beautiful out there.

Rob Durant [00:01:42]:

Excellent. Thank you, and welcome. Bertrand.

Bertrand Godillot [00:01:47]:

Good morning. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Bertrand Godilot. I am the founder of Odysseus & Co, a very proud DL Ignite partner. We're creating conversations for customers.

Rob Durant [00:02:00]:

Excellent. Thank you very much, and welcome. Tracy, good morning.

Tracy Borreson [00:02:06]:

Good morning, everybody. Calling in from 7 AM where I am. So it is morning, and it's still dark outside. So I don't know what kind of day it's going to be yet. But it has been feeling rather fall over in Calgary. I'm Tracy Morrison, founder of TLB Coaching, also a proud partner of DLA Ignite, where we're all about making marketing work for you based on what you wanted to do. And I'm super excited for the conversation today.

Rob Durant [00:02:33]:

Excellent. Thank you. And, Tim.

Tim Hughes [00:02:36]:

Welcome, everybody. My name is Tim Hughes. I'm the CEO and, cofounder of DLA Knight, and, we have a beautiful day, autumnal day here in, in London. And, I'm famous for writing the book, social selling techniques to influence bars and change makers.

Rob Durant [00:02:56]:

Excellent. Thank you very much. And myself, I am Rob Durant. I am the founder of Flywheel Results, a proud DLA Ignite partner, and I help start ups scale. As I said, this week on the digital download, we'll speak with Alyssa Nolte. Her approach to customer success combines data driven insights with actionable strategies, and she will help us understand why and how businesses can adopt a retention first mindset and why that's essential for long term success. Let's bring her on. Alyssa, good morning.

Rob Durant [00:03:38]:

Hi, Alyssa. Welcome.

Alyssa Nolte [00:03:40]:

Good morning.

Tim Hughes [00:03:40]:

Welcome. Good morning.

Rob Durant [00:03:43]:

Alyssa, let's start by having you tell us a little bit more about you, your background, and what led you to where you are today.

Alyssa Nolte [00:03:52]:

I am Alyssa Nolte. I'm based in Iowa, a little town called Cedar Falls that you've probably never heard of, but we're about 4 hours west of Chicago, and that's what I usually tell people. I am an accidental serial entrepreneur. I kinda fell into entrepreneurship and then along the way have found really incredible people who are doing incredible things. And my goal in life is to build cool stuff with cool people. So I'm excited for this conversation today.

Rob Durant [00:04:18]:

Excellent. As am I. Alyssa, let's start with a foundational question. What is driving the shift from focusing on customer acquisition to retention?

Alyssa Nolte [00:04:35]:

Churn is the number one growth killer. If you think about it, if you're losing all of your customers or losing a significant proportion of your customers, all you can do is replace those customers and then get more in order to grow. And that seems like a very obvious, you know, thing that we all think about. I was actually awake early this morning, kind of getting ready. I was worried I was gonna miss my alarm because it's also a little bit early here. And I so I'm I'm panicking about missing my alarm. And I remembered a story about, when I was a new mom and I had a sleep noise app. You know, those ones that play white noise to help your baby sleep.

Alyssa Nolte [00:05:10]:

I'm sitting there thinking about it, and I remembered that after 2 hours, it makes a really loud alarm of, like, hey, everybody. Pay for this app. It's over now, and your free trial was over. And you can imagine as a new mom, like, the rage that I felt when that woke up my baby. And I was thinking about that because my immediate next reaction was to uninstall the app and go pay for a $35 dedicated white noise machine. Not only did they lose my business, but I left a one star review. I told anyone who would listen that this app woke up my baby, and then I spent my money elsewhere. All they would have had to do is think about me as a retention prospect rather than a conversion prospect, and I probably would have paid their 4.99 a year for their app.

Alyssa Nolte [00:05:53]:

But instead, they drove me somewhere else. And so that mindset, as we are thinking about how we build relationships with customers, is less about transaction and more about value. And if you do that well with your customers and you retain them, acquiring them is gonna be twice as easy too.

Rob Durant [00:06:12]:

So how can organizations better understand and maybe even predict customer churn?

Alyssa Nolte [00:06:19]:

I think it really comes down to understanding your ideal customer. Who is who is buying from you and what problem are they trying to solve? One of the things that we started doing a couple of years ago was putting less focus on only the decision maker or or the champion, the person who is actually writing your checks, and really looking at the value you're bringing to the organization as a whole and listening to the the users or the people that are actually engaging and and deriving value. Because you might not even know who they are, but they're quietly influencing whether or not you're gonna get that renewal. Your decision maker moves on, gets a new job, but the majority of those influencers are still there and still either loving your product and are going to demand that it stays or hating your product or your service and quietly advocating that they move on and find a new opportunity when the contract ends.

Rob Durant [00:07:12]:

How do you connect with that group?

Alyssa Nolte [00:07:15]:

It's it's a fine balance. Right? Because nobody wants to take a survey. Nobody wants to get a 1,000,000 phone calls from from your your customer support team or from your service bot. Right? So really taking the opportunity to ask the right time in the right way. So we've done all kinds of things. We've done, traditional surveys like you've gotten from your from your give us a 5 star rating or tell us how we're doing kind of surveys. But also really thinking about point in time really focused questions. One of the questions I like to ask people that really derives a lot of information.

Alyssa Nolte [00:07:55]:

In three words, how would you describe your experience with us? Not very hard to do. Right? But you get a lot of value from that. So I'd I'd ask that question for one of my clients for Salesforce, and I might hear things like innovative, big, difficult. Right? And those can tell me a lot of things about how people are experiencing their experience with Salesforce.

Adam Gray [00:08:20]:

What you said about your your baby and the white noise app is really interesting because it shows a massive disconnect, doesn't it, between how the company were perceiving the interaction that you were having with their product and how you were perceiving that interaction.

Alyssa Nolte [00:08:35]:

Yeah.

Adam Gray [00:08:36]:

And, I think that one of the challenges that that we often see in so many different interactions is that the the seller or the company, is incapable of truly ruthlessly putting themselves in the buyer's shoes. So what they believe is what they want to believe or what they choose to believe or a very twisted view of of reality. And and this would be a prime example of that, wouldn't it? You know, the the very purpose of you downloading the app was undermined by what they considered to be quite a logical next step.

Alyssa Nolte [00:09:12]:

Right. Give us the upgrade. Right? We'll put a this irritant in place, and you'll pay to have the irritant removed. But in reality, they could have just offered additional value or even just reached out to me reached out to me in an altruistic saying, hey, you've been using this app for free for 30 days. It costs us money to produce this app. If you want to keep using it, pitch in and help out. Right? There's ways to add value or build relationship that don't involve adding to the problem you're trying to solve in the first place.

Bertrand Godillot [00:09:44]:

What's what are the biggest challenges? Sorry.

Rob Durant [00:09:49]:

Go ahead. Please go ahead.

Bertrand Godillot [00:09:51]:

Yeah. Sorry. So what are the biggest challenges that you that your customers are, are facing in retention?

Alyssa Nolte [00:09:58]:

I think I think Adam really nailed it. It's it's ruthless empathy. Truly understanding and sitting in the shoes of of your customers and understanding what are you doing that brings value to the table. We sit in these echo chambers, and we sit and say to ourselves, you know, our customers, we see the value. Right? So, of course, our customers are going to see the value. But if you don't have a good way of relentlessly understanding what they care about, what brings value to their lives, even if they like you as a person, If you're not bringing value to their everyday, then they're going to move on. At the end of the day, this is business. So I think it's really about real relentlessly understanding your customers and finding ways to bring them into the conversation rather than just shouting into the void at them what value you bring to the table.

Tracy Borreson [00:10:49]:

I think this is super interesting because I'm just thinking about how humans experience value and this concept. Well, I love the phrase ruthless empathy. I wrote it down. More people could probably do that. But so often and I work with a lot of b to b businesses, and a lot of times people think that the value was in the thing. Right? The thing that we do, the software, the platform design, the number of hours of access you get to your coach and things like that. We think that that's the value, and then we forget to do the things that actually generate value for the customers, which is, I think, tied into this ruthless empathy, curiosity, like, how do we get excited about solving your problem instead of just being like, this is what we do.

Alyssa Nolte [00:11:40]:

Right. And I think there's there's something that drives me crazy when people ask like, when you say, I'm gonna I'm gonna ask these questions. I'm gonna care about, you know, this value. I'm gonna have this conversation with you, and then they don't do anything with it. Right? There's honestly nothing worse. If you're not gonna do anything with the feedback you're getting, don't even ask. Because you truly

Tracy Borreson [00:11:58]:

what I say about market research all the time too. Just don't even bother.

Alyssa Nolte [00:12:01]:

Just don't even bother. If you're not gonna do anything about it, don't even bother. Don't even don't even ask. Because nobody likes to have their opinion asked for and then have it totally ignored. That's almost worse than not asking at all.

Tracy Borreson [00:12:13]:

Agreed.

Rob Durant [00:12:14]:

Agreed. And But it's funny you say that it's what you say about market research. That's what I teach my marketing students about market research. Adam, you were saying?

Adam Gray [00:12:24]:

Yeah. I was gonna say, so so how do companies reposition this in their in their own psyche? Because, you know, we all have pressures in our our operational position within an organization, whether that's selling or product development or customer retention or or customer what whatever. You know? We we've all got our our issues. And, actually, the this is this is more fundamental than your role within a company. This is about how the the company interacts with the world and what it's trying to achieve. And and we have always tried to do the right thing. You know, we recognize that we are there to help people and to empower people and to educate people and to hand handhold them through the process of developing the skills that they need. But I can't help thinking that the overwhelming majority of companies see you, the prospect, as a number, not as an individual.

Adam Gray [00:13:24]:

You know, you're one of however many numbers we're dealing with today. And to actually give you value, like you said about, you know, I'm gonna ask you for feedback, and then I'm gonna listen to your response, and I'm gonna do something with that. That's a massive, massive shift for most companies, isn't it? Where, actually, I don't care about you, Alicia, because I've got Rob and Bertrand and Tim and Tracy as well. So you're just 20% of the customer base. And actually, this this is this requires a huge amount of growing up and humanizing, doesn't it, within most organizations?

Alyssa Nolte [00:13:59]:

There's literally no other way to say this other than absolutely yes. Emphatically yes. It's a culture thing. It comes down to how do we view the people that we serve, not the numbers that we achieve.

Tracy Borreson [00:14:14]:

But so okay. So I have a theory from a marketing perspective anyway about culture and that, like, your culture is your culture, and the only way to adjust it really is to bring in new people who bring a different vibe and energy and culture with them. There's been a lot, actually having a conversation earlier this week with a friend of mine about this concept of culture transformation. And I think an organization has its lived values, and then it has I mean, from a marketing perspective, you could write whatever you want on your website, but then the likelihood of attracting the wrong clients, the wrong employees is very high. And so the best thing people can do is be open and honest and transparent about their culture as part of this. And so are we are we are we talking about a possibility of of a organization who absolutely doesn't care about people making a transformation in this arena, or is it more about people who are noticing that they and maybe it's new people to the organization who are noticing that we're not taking care of our customers, and now this group of people wants to take care of our customers, so we're going to do this? What are your thoughts on the, like, actually shifting the culture? Or is this serving specific cultures?

Alyssa Nolte [00:15:35]:

I think that 10 years ago, you could get away with treating your customers like numbers, but the world is different. And I think the only answer is adapt or die. Because we have so much ability to share our opinions. Think about the number of businesses that have been taken down by a single TikTok video of 1 person who had one bad experience. Right? And it's it's unfortunate because it's gonna be very hard. But I firmly believe that businesses that don't adapt to a retention mindset will not be the titans of industry that they are today. So adapt or die is is kinda my response to that.

Rob Durant [00:16:11]:

I have a a kind of contrarian question to ask in related to that. But before I ask that question, I wanna bring on some comments from the audiences. First of all, Andrew Slusser checks in. Morning, Andrew. Hey, Andrew.

Alyssa Nolte [00:16:26]:

Good morning.

Rob Durant [00:16:27]:

We have a comment from, Robert Matson, also a longtime friend of the show. The retention advantage, cost effectiveness. Agreed. Good to hear from you again, Robert. We have a comment from and I apologize in advance, but I'm going to try. It's EyeCare. EyeCare Heiden Duplessis. Eye EyeCare says, great topic.

Rob Durant [00:16:52]:

Retention is such a key factor in sustainable growth. Looking forward to hearing Alyssa's insights on how businesses can prioritize customer loyalty and long term value. Excited for this discussion. Thanks, Matt. Other comments. We have, Matt Sims saying, way to go, Alyssa. Making so much sense. And Thanks, Matt.

Rob Durant [00:17:17]:

It Talisha to I'm gonna get it. Talisha. I promise you. With it. Talisha Joseph says, I love this. How we manage customer expectations, addressing and resolving conflicting ideas, identifying what advocacy sounds like for our company, and creating engaging environments are areas that can impact retention. Most definitely. And thank you all for the comments, and keep them coming.

Rob Durant [00:17:47]:

But I wanna come back to what you said, Alyssa, that essentially, it's about retention or dying. Is attention to acquisition or attention to retention just cyclical? Are we in a, an economy right now that requires it, but once things start getting good again, well, we can ignore it.

Alyssa Nolte [00:18:17]:

I think that, like everything, if you think about that pendulum swinging, right, we are seeing a swing towards retention right now as the primary focus. But like all things, the best lies in the balance. And I think as we focus on the explosive growth that we've seen over the last several years, especially in tech companies, which is where most of my expertise lies, While they had explosive growth, they grew maybe too fast, maybe it was unsustainable, now they're swinging back towards the retention pendulum, and it's probably gonna swing too far. Right? We're gonna swing all the way back to retention, but we need to settle in the middle. There is a balance. The best way to sustainably grow, and I think someone said it in one of our comments, is about balancing retention with acquisition and making sure that both get the support and value and priority that they deserve.

Bertrand Godillot [00:19:09]:

Lisa, just for our our understanding, of course, we talked about, you know, adapt or die. I mean, kind of return or die. But from your experience, how bad is the average? So if if I'm average Yeah. You know, how how many customers am I losing?

Alyssa Nolte [00:19:29]:

I'm gonna use a really big number, and then I'll go back to, easier to digest. In the US alone, businesses are losing more than a $1,000,000,000,000 in customer revenue that they don't have to. That is an an that is avoidable churn. And so if you think about that, if your business loses 10 to 15% of customers that you don't have to lose, right, it's it's not an acquisition, they didn't shut down, They didn't, you know, stop using your product entirely. 10 to 15% of your customers are switching to someone else, and you don't have to lose them. And in the US, that accounts to 1,000,000,000,000 of dollars of lost revenue, a number we can't even fathom. And so there is a huge impact. If I have to make up 15% of my customers and then gain another, you know, 30, 40, 50 percent in order to even grow

Bertrand Godillot [00:20:20]:

Mhmm.

Alyssa Nolte [00:20:21]:

I'm working twice as hard when I don't have to.

Adam Gray [00:20:23]:

So so so what is the big mistake then that everybody's making? Because clearly, this is not like a, oh, Tim's company has got this little button that I need. And, you know, that seems like a really cool thing, so I'm gonna swap to Tim now. So the the this is fundamental habitual mistakes that are being made if we're talking about that volume of of revenue that's being missed. So what are the top mistakes that you see organizations making?

Alyssa Nolte [00:20:49]:

Lack of alignment and lack of self awareness. When I stand up there and promise our products can do these three things, and I can't deliver on it because either my team I didn't have the awareness to realize we couldn't deliver on it, or my team wasn't aligned on the same page in terms of what we were capable of, or I was just straight up being dishonest and trying to win the deal, and it didn't matter what the what the reality was. I was gonna make a promise. I was gonna close the deal, and we'd worry about renewal 12 to 18 months when that time came. And so that short sighted approach to winning at all costs rather than winning sustainably, you know, we really need to make sure we understand how people are driving things forward and making sure that our promises align with reality. So that when it comes time for renewal, they've seen the value, and they got exactly what they were promised, and honestly, maybe even a little bit more, that under promise over deliver kind of mindset.

Tracy Borreson [00:21:52]:

I think this is so important too because I say this in all the time about marketing is that I will not make a promise. I do not think we can deliver in marketing because I'm just working towards breaking the brand experience, which is ridiculous about us. But I think this is especially in this, like, mindset of, like, I need to get customers. Right? There's a a lot of people who are have started creating their own businesses. Tech is really easy access now. So, like, the barriers to entry for new businesses is getting lower and lower, especially for tech. And so if I need to get customers, then a lot of times, I will just, like, try and get anyone that I can from a customer perspective. And they're not talking about that alignment piece, and they're not talking I mean, I think self awareness in general is underserved in the human population, and can be worked on across all areas.

Tracy Borreson [00:22:53]:

But when we build it that way and like you said, Alyssa, not worry about retention until 12 months from now. I mean but you're gonna be lucky to get to 12 months from now because what you did is you got a whole bunch of people signed up on a low ticket and or free, trial, like your example. Right? And you're breaking the experience before the trial's even over. So we're not talking about retention 12 months from now. We're actually talking about retention now if you want to keep those people for 12 months and you wanna be able to show, I don't know, the the MRR and ARR and whatever all these things mean. Right? Like, you have I mean, my brain is saying you have to think about it now to get to that point where you can report on those recurring numbers, but we think we don't have to think about it until the quote, unquote renewal term. I think it's shortsighted.

Alyssa Nolte [00:23:48]:

I think so too. And and let's let's be self aware too. Not every business cares about retention. Right? If you're a one off, one time product, then, you know, you don't really care about retention. The businesses that I work with are moving into this subscription economy. For for goodness sake, HP is now gonna have their printer ink on a subscription model for revenue. And so we're seeing this huge move into the subscription economy. And to Rob's point earlier, it might swing back into less of a subscription and more of a one off.

Alyssa Nolte [00:24:20]:

But businesses see the value in being able to project a a great annual recurring revenue rather than simply a good top line. And so as we're thinking about how companies treat their customers and moving into the subscription economy, I think that's where we're gonna start to see the change, and that's where self awareness really needs to come in. You as as the leader of your organization, whether you are the one person consulting business all the way up to the mega corporations in the in the Fortune 5, need to decide what kind of company are you going to be, what is your long term vision, and what are the short term changes you have to make in order to adapt to those long term goals.

Tracy Borreson [00:25:02]:

And so, Alyssa, I have a question about, even if you have, like I have a friend who runs a custom home design agency. Right? Usually, people only buy one custom home in their lifetime because it's custom to them. But I I see value in maybe not retention in terms of, like, that subscription kind of model. But in these types of industries, your brand reputation is also very important. And I I think a lot of the same things go into retention as go into brand reputation. So can you talk about and maybe it is just alignment and the self awareness, but what are some of the things that contribute in both of those categories so that even if you have one off buyers I mean, like so for example, I had one kid. I bought diapers for 1 series of diapers. Right? But, like, I had the ones I like, and I had the ones that I didn't like, and I still talk about the ones that I like even though I don't use them anymore.

Tracy Borreson [00:26:00]:

So what is the value of creating those brand champions even in the scenario where there are gonna be one off buyers?

Alyssa Nolte [00:26:11]:

This is, actually a very interesting topic when you think about the growth or or the detriment of your business. So I love TikTok. Unapologetically, I spend way too much time on there. And there was this whole story in the last couple of months about a custom wedding dress. Right? Beautiful custom wedding dress. And again, something you're probably only buying one time. However, the buyer was very frustrated by their experience. They didn't like the dress.

Alyssa Nolte [00:26:35]:

When they got it, it wasn't finished. It was late. She documented it all on TikTok and it blew up. And now this custom wedding dress designer is having to basically defend her brand. And she could have simply said, hey, I messed up. I I took on too much work. I am so sorry that this happened. I will refund you or do a partial refund or send the dress back or whatever.

Alyssa Nolte [00:26:59]:

Instead, she pretended and acted like nothing was wrong and it was all actually the buyer's fault and she put all of the blame on the customer. Well, in these days, guys, we have receipts, we have text messages, we have screenshots. And so then it became this whole saga where you have half of TikTok versus the other half of TikTok defending the dress designer and then, you know, blowing up the TikTok of the of the buyer. And then all of a sudden, it comes out that actually they it was on the designer. And if she would have just owned up to it, it wouldn't have been a thing. But instead, she has millions of people who know her brand for the wrong reason. And so, same with my my sleep app. I left a one star review.

Alyssa Nolte [00:27:37]:

I wrote I wrote a review in my my postpartum rage. I was very, very upset. I could have been as simple as, hey, this app didn't work for me. But instead, it was not only did this app not work for me, but it woke up the child that just spent 2 hours rocking to sleep. And I've had, you know, a very very bad experience with this. So, it's not just about getting a good referral, it's about protecting yourself from bad ones too.

Bertrand Godillot [00:28:03]:

Eddie said, just

Rob Durant [00:28:04]:

Along those lines, oh, Andrew Slessor asks, are companies now treating their customers as disposable like their products?

Alyssa Nolte [00:28:15]:

I think that they used to. I think that, you know, many, many years ago, especially some of those larger companies to Adam's point earlier, saw their customers as a number that's easily replaceable. And the sky was the limit and blue blue ocean thinking. Right? Blue sky thinking. And it didn't matter how many customers you lost because there was always the next customer. And I think that that is what's changing is that companies have to give up that disposable mindset and focus on every customer as a customer worth having if they fit our ideal customer profile especially, but that you might not know who your ICP is. I might say my ideal customer is this person, but discover, actually, I solve an entirely different problem. So being self aware and being open and reflecting on what's best for the relationship that I'm trying to build, not what's best for tomorrow's forecast sheet I have to deliver.

Adam Gray [00:29:11]:

But but most organizations don't. So so you mentioned the subscription economy as being an an example of this. So, I guess every company wants to tie their customers into a subscription, because I know that you're gonna buy ink, in the case of HP. I know I know that you're gonna buy ink every year. Now I know when you're gonna buy that ink, because I'm gonna send it to you whether you need that ink or not. And what I see time and again is that some products lend themselves really well to the subscription economy. So Microsoft Office, for example. You know, you buy an annual subscription, and in a year later, they email you saying, we're about to take the money for another subscription.

Adam Gray [00:29:56]:

Are you okay with this? And you go, yes, and then it refreshes. Great. That lends itself very well to it. Equally, on your phone, you think, oh, I I would like to have a camera with a bit more control, so I'm gonna download this app. And it's 6.99 a month. Every month, it's £80 a year, or whatever the cost is, which is a a ludicrous amount of money. And I I think that that so many organizations are are joining the subscription economy based on profiteering on the company on the the customers, rather than saying, does this suit the customer well? Does this suit the product well? You know, it's like that SaaS mindset. We're gonna hammer the SaaS mindset into whatever it is you do.

Adam Gray [00:30:41]:

Like BMW having that that thing where they said, well, every car is gonna come with heated seats. And if you want the heated seats enabled, that's a subscription service that's gonna cost you $10 a month or whatever. You know, this is madness. And and they're building the the the seats, the heated seats into every car anyway. So to do the right thing by the customer would say, this is an upgrade which comes as standard on every car we do from now on. But no. And and and, I mean, I'm not vilifying BMW because all of these organisations are trying these new ways. But often, you know, they they are, as we would say in this country, putting the cart before the horse.

Adam Gray [00:31:24]:

You know, they're they're not thinking about what's best for the customer. They're thinking about what's best for them. And then then they're dressing it up as being, oh, this is for the benefit of the customer. So so how do organizations not fall into that trap? Because let's be honest, you know, more money is a very beguiling thing for the company, isn't it?

Alyssa Nolte [00:31:42]:

Oh, absolutely. Nobody I mean, we're all here to make money. Right? This is business. And so if you have that opportunity to to do that and to make that money, that's great. I think it comes down to having a short term plan with a long term view. If in the long term and Rob and I kinda touched on this before the call started. Like, don't ask me where you're gonna be in 5 years. Ask me what got me to this point today.

Alyssa Nolte [00:32:06]:

And think about how you have gotten to this point today and what shifts you can make to continue to grow and outpace the competition. If you fundamentally believe that in 5 years, subscriptions are gonna be the way that your business makes money, then absolutely that's how you should prioritize it. But be honest and be focused on how do you make sure that you're still around in 5 years, not necessarily or or still at the top in 5 years if you're if you're a big too big to fail kind of a company. But sitting here and saying I'm just gonna jump on the bandwagon is not is not going to be a long term strategy. You need to acknowledge then this is a short term play and something we're gonna do in the short term to make money, and we have weighed the risk benefit of of turning this short term profit for long term brand perception. And if you've weighed that risk benefit and you've decided it's worth it, then you go ahead and do it if you're not super worried about it breaking your brand over time.

Tim Hughes [00:33:04]:

Well, one one of the things that always concerns me is the fact that we quite often talk about churn, which is a lagging indicator.

Alyssa Nolte [00:33:12]:

Mhmm.

Tim Hughes [00:33:13]:

And you talked earlier on, thank and and thank you about that, about, the fact that we need to be proactive about it. Because kind of if we're if we're measuring churn, the customer's already left. One of the things that I quite quite often ask companies is, who's allowed to talk to customers? And and when we go back to you know, we talk about and we all pat each other. Yeah. We need to talk to customers and and and and and things like that. And then when you say, so who can talk to customers? It's what sales can And who else? Well, we don't allow the techies to do that because they're techies, and we don't allow marketing to do that because they're marketing. We and we don't you know? And in the end, it's only the salespeople. And and salespeople see things through a particular lens, don't they, which is how can I sell you something? Yeah.

Tim Hughes [00:33:59]:

So so in a way, what we're doing is that we're creating this culture in the organization, which will be through that lens.

Alyssa Nolte [00:34:06]:

You make such an important point.

Tim Hughes [00:34:08]:

That. What can we do culture wise and leadership wise to actually look at at, you you know, in terms of talking to customers and getting more people talking to customers?

Alyssa Nolte [00:34:18]:

You make such an important point. I I worked with a company for, a while as a consultant, and the only person who was allowed to talk to them was their account manager. Now they had a sales team of, like, 6 people on some of these customers, and only one person gets to have those conversations. And, by the way, that person has 25 customers that they're responsible for, and the last thing they wanna do is go deal with a closed one deal. Like, I've I've already closed them. I'm on to the next one I need to close.

Rob Durant [00:34:48]:

Spend the money.

Alyssa Nolte [00:34:49]:

I've I've got the money. I I have to go get the money now from the other guy. And so, having your salesperson or sales team be the only ones that are talking to customers means that you're missing out on those customers that have already closed their deals. They're only focused on on the next day, which no shade to salespeople. I I have been for 1 many, many years. Like, you need to go close your deal. That's what you're measured on. That's what you're successful on.

Alyssa Nolte [00:35:14]:

And so I think it's important to, 1, create an unsiloed culture where people share information and you're not incentivizing people to hold things to the best. Right? The other thing is I think you need to create a team whose job it is to have that conversation, empower them to do it, incentivize them to do it, and then incentivize them to share what they've learned in a way that meets the communication styles of the teams that they are responsible to communicate with. To your point, if I'm gonna go to a salesperson, I'm gonna say, here's some information that you're gonna need in 18 months. They're gonna say, cool. Come talk to me in 18 months. Right? But put systems in place that allow salespeople to have the information at their fingertips when they need it in the way that they communicate and consume information. If you're gonna deal with the product team, there's a very specific way that you're gonna communicate feedback to the product team. Have systems and strategies in place for the people who you've tasked with hearing your customers to then take that information and communicate it in a way that the team that needs to act on it can consume it and will consume

Tim Hughes [00:36:23]:

it. Because the conversations that you often have with customers are such that, they will say things to you that you won't get it will not get passed on to you. Some people won't pass certain things onto you because of the fact that they they they they only think around you know, it's binary.

Alyssa Nolte [00:36:42]:

Right.

Tim Hughes [00:36:42]:

And and and it's and and they're taught to only have money conversations. Whereas there's certain things about the product that the the person that that the customers may tell be telling you that will have an could have an impact to the whole strategy of the organization. You may be searching for the wrong parts of the ICP. The classic example is Slack

Alyssa Nolte [00:37:02]:

Mhmm.

Tim Hughes [00:37:02]:

Which is was set up as a, the the Slack company was a company that was a gaming company, and, which was a game that was gonna be for good and found out that nobody liked playing it because, actually, people only like games where they kill people. Yes. And and and what happened was that they built this tool internally where they communicated because it was a fully remote, company. And in the end, what they did was that they sold the internal tool rather than the game. But it was only because of the feedback that they had from customers where people were saying, this is a really, really great great tool that they actually went ahead and did that.

Alyssa Nolte [00:37:42]:

Absolutely. I I think it's it's really, really important to create a system in place that reflects the expectations you've laid on the people. So if you if you paid your salespeople on the number of customer discovery and market research interviews they did, you better believe you'd be inundated with customer feedback and customer discovery, but that's not what you're incentivizing your salespeople to do. So if you're going to incentivize your salespeople to make sales, then that's what they're going to do. And so you need to create systems or put tools in place that will will collect that information or organize that information or or ask those questions without having your salespeople be involved in it because you're not incentivizing them. You're not paying them to do that. You're paying them to close deals, and that's what they're doing, and that's what you want them to be doing. So don't ask them to do something for the good of the company if you don't have a plan to incentivize them to do so.

Bertrand Godillot [00:38:41]:

So Lisa, we talked a lot about the, the processes and and and the roles that you could put in place to, actually have a better interaction and better understanding of your customers. What what role could technology like AI, if any, play in that retention process?

Alyssa Nolte [00:39:04]:

There's a huge explosion in that right now, and that's, I'm not going to go into an infomercial, but that's basically what we're working on over at TrueView is how do we collect that information without bugging your salespeople or or making it harder for them. So there's a huge opportunity, us and and many other businesses who are out there trying to leverage tech to to get that information. The, the thing that I fear is we're gonna go too far, and it's gonna be, you know, robot to human experiences, and we're not going to actually get what we're looking for.

Bertrand Godillot [00:39:35]:

Mhmm.

Alyssa Nolte [00:39:36]:

So I think the companies that that those are available. That is possible. But it's really important to remember that business is human to human at the end of the day, even when you're interacting with an AI or interacting with a tool and and keeping that humanity as much as we can while automating the drudgery of the process.

Bertrand Godillot [00:39:57]:

I think we're all sold on that here.

Rob Durant [00:40:01]:

Good. Alyssa, Tim had mentioned that churn is a lagging indicator. What are some of the things a business can do to identify possible churn? I'm in particular curious to hear any thoughts you might have regarding what a small business could do, some someone that doesn't have technology enabled.

Alyssa Nolte [00:40:28]:

Mhmm. Yeah. So there's a lot of different things that you can do. We we we do a lot of work for companies that are doing churn prediction surveys, essentially, or churn prediction research. So it's a process where we're collecting these signals that people put out. But if you're a if you're an app, you can do, usage analytics, and you can see, are people logging in? Are they using my product in the way they intend? If you're a small business, one of the most powerful and terrifying things you can do if you're, like, a consulting business is ask the hard questions. Are you getting value from our interaction? Are are we providing value? Are we helping you? And really understanding what why did they engage you in the first place? What does success look like? And how will I know when I've helped them achieve it? And then constantly checking in in order to to ask those questions. If you're a small one person, it can be terrifying to ask your customer the, am I doing a good job? Are you happy? Or or is there anything I can do differently kind of a question? When I was interviewing for jobs out of college, the question I always like to ask at the end of my interview, which would always stump the people that was on the other side of the table, I would say, based on this conversation and based on this interview, are there any reasons why you think I wouldn't be the best person for this role or the best candidate for this role? And they would look at me and you'd see a little bit of panic in their eyes of, like, now I have to either say, like, you're the best one, or I have to give you feedback right on the spot.

Alyssa Nolte [00:41:55]:

And I that would give me an opportunity to address that feedback because I don't want to leave them with a question mark in their mind. So it was my way of putting a period on this interview and saying either, I am the one and you're gonna admit it to my face, or you're gonna give me an opportunity to dress address your concerns right then and there, and there's gonna be no ambiguity between us. And, it it always it always took them off guard, but it was a healthy conversation and gave both of us the right expectations. So I'd encourage you to basically have that same version of that question for your customers. Based on this project, is there anything that you think meant this project wasn't successful or that I'm not the right company to work with you?

Adam Gray [00:42:39]:

If if I was interviewing somebody and they were fresh out of college and they asked that question at the end of the interview, I'd give them a job on the spot for just having asked that question.

Alyssa Nolte [00:42:50]:

I got a lot of I got a lot of offers. Those kinds of a job.

Rob Durant [00:42:54]:

I can imagine.

Tim Hughes [00:42:55]:

Yeah. So, so what do you think about, Net Promoter Score, MPS?

Alyssa Nolte [00:43:01]:

I have mixed feelings.

Tim Hughes [00:43:02]:

Just to explain to everybody, what happens is that you'll get any so you'll use a service and then you'll get an email that says, score us between 0 and 10.

Rob Durant [00:43:12]:

Mhmm.

Alyssa Nolte [00:43:12]:

And

Tim Hughes [00:43:12]:

then you score them between 0 and 10 and there probably will be some free form text which which and they ask for a comment. That's all you get. And a lot of companies, McKinsey supports it. It's a it's a well known so so what do you think about NPS?

Alyssa Nolte [00:43:27]:

I have mixed feelings on NPS. I feel like NPS is something that overpromises and underdelivers, does the exact opposite of what we have all sat here and said, you know, you wanna you wanna deliver great value. At the time that NPS was invented and created, it it solved the problem. We needed a simple way to collect feedback quickly and to give us a a gut to validate a gut feel. Right? Or to point us in the right direction. However, companies have taken it to the point where they look at the NPS as the golden standard, the the the perfect indicator of what's going on in your business. And in reality, it was never meant to be that. It was just meant to be a an indicator, not a decider.

Alyssa Nolte [00:44:10]:

And so, I think that people will just have misused NPS to the point where it's not valuable anymore. Because if you ask me how likely I am to recommend a software, I'm probably gonna give you like a 7. And that puts me into the promoter category, I think, or or close to it. If I give you an 8, I think I'm in I'm in neutral. If I give you an 8, I'm in a promoter. Right? But I don't really care that much. What really matters is have I referred your company? Have I talked about it positively? So we can try to sit here and say, my likelihood is an 8, but let's talk about reality. Did I or did I not refer that company? And that's what really matters for companies.

Alyssa Nolte [00:44:49]:

Is that simple binary, did did you or did you not?

Rob Durant [00:44:53]:

Well, this is

Tracy Borreson [00:44:54]:

I just quickly wanna comment on the NPS piece because I think I trained in NPS. And one of the things that I think a lot of people don't understand is that it's a customer service methodology. So what I'm supposed to be using the score for is to understand what is your experience at these different parts of our process so that I can do something about it. But what it has mostly become is a benchmark. Yeah. So, like, I have a net promoter score of 80. So good job, me. No.

Tracy Borreson [00:45:28]:

The point is to see, like, who's a detractor? What's creating that? How can I address that with operational changes? And if I get promoters, how do I engage those promoters? How do I turn them on in the digital sense so that people can see that? And this is the thing. We talked about surveying earlier. Right? If you're surveying just a survey that you don't have the benefit of the thing, but the the if the intention behind it is to do something meaningful with the information and you have the systems behind it to do something meaningful with the information, then it can work. But I think and I I mean, I'm not, like, a number 10 for both for NPS. But I think it's a lot of times these things, they get misinterpreted. And then in the market, they get misinterpreted as they have, like, very marginal value, where if they're implemented properly, they actually can have a lot of value for your organization. If they're implemented poorly, they can have very poor value for your organization. So, really, the key is this, like, underlying the the thing that keeps coming back for me is this way of being.

Tracy Borreson [00:46:36]:

Right? Like, do I have a corporate way of being in solving problems for people? If we all show up here every day and we're solving our problem for people. How would we do that? What does it look like for the marketing team to solve this problem? What does it look like for the sales team to solve this problem? What does it look like for customer service? What does it look like for product design? What does it look like for delivery? And we're all in the same conversation about what it is we do here. We solve this problem. And, yeah, what it looks like for marketing to solve that problem will look different than what it looks like for sales to solve that problem. But that we're all in this together because, no, we're not here just to make a dollar. Right? We want to help these people do these things, and it costs x amount of money for them to do those things. But this is what I I don't know. I just keep coming back to this, like, way of being.

Tracy Borreson [00:47:31]:

And if we can make these decisions based on what we're trying to accomplish, how we're trying to help our customer, then I think, at the end of the day, we're not the the the tactics and the systems and things, like, yes, we need them, but they will fall into place if we have that strong enough drive from a beingness perspective.

Adam Gray [00:47:49]:

But I I think it all comes back again to that putting yourself in the customer's shoes. So, Alicia, you said about, you know, you you give, like, a 7 or an 8, which kind of makes you just about a promoter, but have you actually told any and no. I'm a 5 on pretty much everything out there. You know, I I'm neither a promoter nor a detractor, because, frankly, I don't care. You know? I've bought your product to do a job. It does the job. Okay. Well, that's a that's a 5.

Adam Gray [00:48:17]:

And the reason it's a 5 is that's why I bought the product. That's my expectation is that it's gonna deliver on this. If it was magical, then maybe I'd be more than a 5. And if it was less than magical, maybe I'll be less than a 5. But, fundamentally, it's it's like when people say, oh, well, you you explained to this person what it is that you do, and then they'll go and tell people. No. They won't. They're not gonna sell your product because they're too busy selling their own product to worry about selling your product.

Adam Gray [00:48:41]:

Yep. And I think that that this this idea about absolutely about this is driving using the net promoter score and using the feedback to actually learn lessons. Back to your first point, Alisa, which was, there's no point in asking for feedback if you're not gonna actually adopt that feedback and do something with it. And so often, you know, oh, yes. You know, you gave us an 8. Therefore, you're one of our top promoters, but you've not told anybody about my product or service. So, actually, you're not a promoter. You're completely ambivalent.

Adam Gray [00:49:11]:

Yeah. And I think that that so often this boils down to the fact that, you know, I'm passionate about my injection molding machine because I've invented an injection molding machine, and that's what I do. So, clearly, it's the most important thing in the world. But it's not to you because you're making rubber ducks. So the most important thing to in the world to you is rubber ducks.

Tim Hughes [00:49:31]:

So so, Adam, Robert Matson asks a question about your guitars. Do you only ever score them 5 out of 10,

Bertrand Godillot [00:49:38]:

or

Tim Hughes [00:49:39]:

or do you go

Adam Gray [00:49:41]:

well, the the the ones that I keep, I I I score more than 5 out of 10. Yeah. But I I think it's that's true for everybody, isn't it? You know, there are products that that do more than the product needs to do. So the iPhone, maybe, if you're if you're a fan of Apple, the iPhone or the Imac is a good example of that. You're buying it to do a purpose. It does more than what it's supposed to do, because it's a thing of beauty, and it just works, and it's really easy. And the same is true if you smoke a Zippo cigarette lighter. You know, it's simple, but it's the best way of lighting a cigarette.

Adam Gray [00:50:14]:

And, you you know, all of these different products that do more than it says they're gonna do on the tin. And I I somebody in the comment said, under promise, over deliver. Absolutely. That's what it's about. You know? I'm buying it to do this job. It does that job, but it does it better and with more elegance than I would have any reasonable expectation for it to do. Therefore, I am a fan of that product. And it can be something expensive or something cheap.

Adam Gray [00:50:39]:

It doesn't matter.

Alyssa Nolte [00:50:41]:

I'm gonna bring it

Tracy Borreson [00:50:41]:

back to

Alyssa Nolte [00:50:42]:

oh, god. Sorry.

Tracy Borreson [00:50:43]:

No. Sorry. Go ahead, Alyssa.

Alyssa Nolte [00:50:44]:

I'm gonna bring it back to to to 2 key ideas that I think keep coming up over and over again. Human beings do not fit on a number line. And if you leave the humanity out of your business, then you are going to struggle in or to to really understand them and really understand where they're coming from and and what they're looking for. So if you're just trying to package people into a single number, then you're never going to be able to understand them. Secondly, do something. Like, that seems to be the theme that keeps coming up and up again. If you want to to move forward, if you want to to really understand your customers, you have to do something. And it's not enough to just say you're an 8, you're a 9, you're a 10, because those mean different things to different people.

Alyssa Nolte [00:51:28]:

But are they doing something for you, renewing, promoting, whatever that may be?

Tracy Borreson [00:51:35]:

If you want the thing, you gotta do the thing. That's what we say. I'm so

Rob Durant [00:51:40]:

Along those lines of doing something, we've now determined, that there's a potential for churn. What are some interventions?

Alyssa Nolte [00:51:52]:

There are some incredible people out there who are much more expert of than me on this. So I'm gonna speak to, basically, what I've learned from other thought leaders over the years. My role has always been to point out the problems, and then other people get to do the the hard work of retaining them. But as simple as reaching out to them and and saying, you know, what can we do to make this right? How many times have you had a bad experience with a company and they simply ask the question, what can we do to make this right? And then, again, empower your people to actually do something about it if it's within the guidelines and the brand of your company. There was that story that went viral for, several years ago about I think it was Chewy was the brand and someone's dog had passed away and they returned a box of toys outside of the return window. And instead of saying, hey, no. We're not gonna take those those toys or that food back. They took the return and they sent flowers.

Alyssa Nolte [00:52:46]:

And so thinking about that story of, you know, that person when they get another dog, they're gonna go to Chewy to have, the access to their toys or their dog food or their medications. They could have very easily said, hey, it's not within our policy. You're you're outside the return window, you know. Sorry about that. Maybe you can sell it on Facebook Marketplace. Right? No. Instead they took it back and then they went the extra mile to to sunflowers. So I think that there's little things you can do, but it comes down to just genuinely caring about the customers that you serve within the guidelines that your company is has empowered you to do so.

Alyssa Nolte [00:53:22]:

Mhmm.

Rob Durant [00:53:23]:

Alisa, this has been great. How can we learn more? Where can people get in touch with you?

Alyssa Nolte [00:53:30]:

I am very active on LinkedIn. Come connect with me on LinkedIn. Come hang out with me. I love to talk to people. Alissanolte.com has all of the various projects that I'm working on. And, I've had the pleasure of talking to many people on this call on my podcast called Taking Back Monday. So shameless plug for, Rob and Tim who've been on the podcast and go check out their episodes.

Rob Durant [00:53:52]:

Absolutely. We now have a newsletter. Don't miss an episode. Get show highlights beyond the show insights and reminders of upcoming episodes. You can scan the QR code on screen or visit us at digital download dot live forward slash newsletter. On behalf of myself and the other panelists here, to our guest, Alyssa, to the very active audience, thank you all for being a part of today's digital download, and we'll see you all next time.

Adam Gray [00:54:27]:

Thank you.

Tim Hughes [00:54:27]:

Thanks, Alexa.

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