THE #GIVEFIRST METHOD

EBOOK

With gratitude from

Empowering teams, delighting customers, and improving profits through unconditional giving.

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We Appreciate

You!

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With gratitude,Sonci and Jonathan

Co-Founders of Quala.io

Our Introduction to #GiveFirst

We were first introduced to the #givefirst mentality by TechStars, a global startup accelerator community where Jonathan and I mentor. They define #givefirst as simply trying to help people without expectation of getting anything back and we saw first

hand how it transforms individuals, teams, and companies.

We wanted to share this philosophy with you. So Jonathan and I asked leaders in Marketing, Engineering, Sales, and Customer Success to share advice on how to build a

culture of #givefirst within their organizations.

They happily did—offering unique tips on everything from how to do customer-centric product engineering sprints to how to turn marketing into a gift.

Enjoy the insights!

4 Ways to Drive Customer Success with the #givefirst Method

Part I

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In our #givefirst series, we’re showing how the philosophy of “giving before getting” in four different key roles—Sales, Marketing, Engineering, and Customer Success—can help your SaaS company connect with customers, improve employee happiness, and make more sales.

Customer Success leaders are in a perfect position to apply the #givefirst mentality. We spoke with Nadya Collins, Chief Customer Officer at the donor engagement and stewardship platform ThankView, and also researched the philosophy of giving in business, to show how your team can benefit.

4 Ways to Drive Customer Success with the #givefirst Method

Nadya Collins Chief Customer Officer at ThankView

Why #givefirst in Customer Success?Giving creates gratitude all around—in yourself, your teams, and your customers. “When you have a company that’s centered around gratitude, it tends to attract very empathetic, humble people,” says Collins.

When people feel grateful, according to Harvard Business Review, they’re more willing to help others, to be loyal even at their own expense, and to split profits equally with partners. And grateful workers are more efficient, productive, and responsible, too.

Isn’t that what you want for your SaaS company?

We thought so. Here’s how to do it.

When we think of giving to our customers, our minds often go right to gifts. And you start to wonder:

What if we send all our customers an Amazon gift card? Should we get our logo printed on keychains and

shot glasses to hand out on holidays?

Give Meaningful Gifts

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But when you give for giving’s sake, customers see this as an implied

exchange—that you’re only giving to get something back. “It’s great to

give, but if you don’t know what people want, then a gift could come

across as a bit of an empty gesture,” says Collins. “When you receive

an unsolicited gift that you don’t attach any value to, it can seem

insincere or inappropriate.”

That’s why Collins recommends surveying customers about their

needs and taking note of their interests during conversations. If you

have a community around your SaaS brand, this can also be a good

opportunity to listen for clues as to what would make a great gift.

Does a particular customer volunteer at a dog shelter after hours? Has

another customer mentioned their knitting hobby? These insights can

lead you to the most meaningful gifts.

Speaking of which, a gift doesn’t have to be a “thing.” A personalized video thank-you or handwritten note to

a customer can be as impactful as a physical gift. (Or even more so.) For your Customer Success employees, it

might be the gift of employee happiness instead of a branded hat. “Make sure that your employees are happy

and feeling heard, and that they feel like they can do the job that they want to be doing,” says Collins. “When

you empower your employees, it empowers them to help clients better, too.”

“It’s great to give, but if you don’t know what people want, then a gift is a little bit of an empty gesture. When you receive an unsolicited gift that you don’t attach value to, it can seem insincere or inappropriate.”

Nadya Collins Chief Customer Officer at ThankView

Right now, organizations in many sectors are suffering, from foodservice to travel. Even businesses in less-

affected industries are facing budget cuts and layoffs. And then there are the mission-driven non-profits—

organizations that can always use an extra boost.

Why not give to your customers by offering them the type of extra help that only you can offer?

“Reach out to populations that are affected,” suggests Collins. Ask how their day-to-day has changed now that

they have fewer resources, how they’re using your product differently as a result, and what kind of help they need.

Then offer extra assistance and resources that match their new needs. Some ways to do this:

Give with Purpose

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Create new toolkits just for these customers.

Offer special webinars or workshops.

Do personalized video outreach to

customers in need.

You can give even bigger by creating a full grant or scholarship for customers who need help. For example,

ThankView is developing a grant program for university athletic departments.

“They have been hit hard with the pandemic,” Collins says. “They need to revamp the way they’re using

their communication tools and strategies to keep all of their communities engaged since the legacy way

of connecting has become limited—or is no longer even an option.” The Athletic Relief Program will offer

university athletic departments free access to the ThankView platform, a special toolkit for athletics, and

extra consulting time.

But just throwing a bunch of freebies at customers is not the way to go. Collins learned from a previous

grant program that you need to set expectations from the start, because the sad truth is that a lot of

people don’t value products and services when they’re free and unlimited. Putting a time limit on the

offering, helping the customer plan how they will use it, and laying out your expectations for the customer

can help create more value around the grant.

To get the most out of your #givefirst philosophy, try setting corporate giving goals for your Customer

Success team. “I like having targets and metrics around giving,” says Collins. “It makes giving back not just

a one-time project, but a part of your identity and your culture.” This might be:

Measure Your Gifting

Spending X hours on charitable projects each quarter. (This can help employees stay engaged; businesses with engaged employees outperform other companies by up to 202%.)

Giving away X grants.

Donating $X per year.

Spending $X on meaningful customer gifts each quarter. (Remember, though, it’s quality over quantity!)

Collins suggests not only setting targets for your giving, but also measuring the impact of your initiatives

afterward. “You want to give something away, but you also want to make sure that the impact is

something that’s tangible for the customer or their business,” she says.

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Develop guides to help them with their most pressing problems.

Leverage your community. Are there any experts there who would be willing to act

as a mentor?

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Become a #givefirst CultureTaking the time to give meaningful gifts, measuring the impact, and letting your Customer Success team take part in the giving will create a #givefirst culture in SaaS company.

Trading impersonal, misleading numbers-based Customer Success metrics for human-first initiatives counts as giving, too! We’d love to share how Quala does just that. Schedule a time to chat with us.

Do set expectations before offering your time, expertise, or products. Many people don’t value things they get for free, so this will ensure they actually use and get value from your gift. (After all, a gift isn’t much of a gift if the recipient never uses it.)

Do set corporate giving goals that make sense for your team, like donating hours to a nonprofit everyone on your team supports.

Do survey customers and take notes on their interests during discussions so you can choose the most meaningful gifts for them.

#givefirst at a Glance

Don’t focus on giving only “things.” Handwritten notes, social media shout-outs, and congratulatory videos make a customer, prospect, or team member feel special. After all, you took the time and energy to think good thoughts about the recipient—and to share them!

Don’t underestimate the value of helping your customers and prospects during tough times. Offering toolkits, grants, and scholarships is a perfect way to #givefirst.

#givefirst for Marketers: The

Marketing Is the Gift

Part II

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#givefirst for Marketers: The Marketing Is the GiftIn our #givefirst series, we’re showing how the philosophy of “giving before getting” in four different key roles—Sales, Marketing, Engineering, and Customer Success—can help your SaaS company better connect with customers and drive growth.

For Marketing, #givefirst means giving without the expectation of a sale, a registration, or an email sign-up. Instead, the focus is on how to offer as much help as possible to build relationships and trust with customers and prospects. Here, we’ll show you how (and why) it works.

Why #givefirst in Marketing?In his book Give and Take, Adam Grant argues that the greatest untapped source of motivation is a sense of service to others. Focusing on the contribution our work can make to other people’s lives makes us more productive than just focusing on helping ourselves.

Not only that, prospects and customers tend to be leery of marketers, and the #givefirst philosophy gives marketers a way to align with consumers instead of standing in opposition to them.

MK Getler, Head of Marketing at the AI-powered personal gifting and swag platform Alyce, has some incredible insights on this philosophy—so we spoke with her to share how you can put #givefirst to work in your SaaS company.

MK GetlerHead of Marketing at Alyce

#givefirst Gets Creative to Help CustomersMarketers always help customers by offering the information they need to make the right decisions for their businesses. But sometimes customers need more, and #givefirst companies step up in creative ways to provide it.

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For example, when COVID hit, Alyce shared all their playbooks to help businesses weather the pandemic. And because live educational events had to be cancelled, the company published a series of webinars called “Let’s get Phygital” to “talk through strategies for keeping that face-to-face feeling in a digital environment.”

“It was meant to reassure prospects and customers that nothing is thrown out the window,” says Getler. “Everything is an opportunity...you just need to take two steps to the side and then reexamine it from that perspective.”

Are there creative ways you can reach out to customers in need? Consider how your SaaS company’s products, resources, and marketing assets position you to help. You don’t have to run a gifting platform to practice #givefirst!

“We said, ‘We don’t know where you are in relation to what you need right now, and we don’t know what your

community needs. But here’s $50, so you can give to someone who has been impacted by COVID...and make a

difference when you’re feeling so helpless.’”

MK Getler Head of Marketing at Alyce

#givefirst Helps Customers Help OthersHelping others has been shown to benefit the giver as much as the recipient: it can help you live longer, feel happier, and enjoy a sense of purpose and satisfaction. So empowering your customers to give to others doubles the power of the #givefirst mindset.

When COVID forced many people into quarantine, Alyce saw that their customers were scrambling, struggling,

and feeling helpless—and they decided to empower them by helping them help others. They sent gift cards to their customers and encouraged them to spend the money on a business or cause in their community that had been impacted by COVID.

“We said, ‘We don’t know where you are in relation to what you need right now, and we don’t know what your community

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needs. But here’s $50, so you can give to someone who has been impacted by COVID...and make a difference when you’re feeling so helpless,” says Getler. “That was a moment that we had with our customers to just let them know that we were there for them.”

#givefirst Makes Marketing a Gift, Not an Imposition

When the experience a customer or prospect has with your brand is positive—and when a marketer connects with them as humans instead of as dollar signs—that’s a true gift. Consumers get the information they need, they get it in the way they prefer, and they’re able to connect with you and your company in a way that benefits everyone.

The key is to consider how to add value to customers. “I think we have a big

responsibility to think about what we give to the marketplace,” says Getler. “How can we think about our brand as a value-add to the folks that we want to do business with, or are currently doing business with? How can we market without being interruptive or disruptive with our marketing tactics and strategies?”

Here are four ways to add value to your marketing—and turn it into a gift:

The Personal Experience approach is to create and strengthen personal bonds with everyone you do business

with by being relatable, relevant, and respectful. “We believe the key to creating sustained growth for a

company is creating a personal experience for its customers,” says Getler. “You create repeat and net new

business by building rapport, earning trust, and driving loyalty.”

A big part of this is relating to customers and prospects as people. Getler believes too many marketers today

have lost the “humanness” in their marketing. “I think marketers who solve for velocity and scale are starting

to see the quality of what they’re doing depreciate,” she says. “Their landing pages feel stiff or stale, their

emails feel inauthentic and jargony.”

Marketing Gift #1: Personal Experience

In ABM, your business works and communicates with high-value accounts as if they’re individual markets. This

means you personalize the buyer’s journey and tailor all communications, content, and campaigns to those

specific accounts, improving both ROI and customer loyalty.

But Getler tweaks ABM a bit to make it fit #givefirst: she takes it from personalized to personal. Sure, you can

merge someone’s name into an email, and you can even include information on their job or their favorite

Marketing Gift #2: Account-Based Marketing (ABM)

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hobbies. But this is just more automation.

To be truly personal, you need to solve for the person over the persona, Getler says. “You want to get one-

to-one, not one-to-many. You want to get to where you really care about the individual you’re trying to do

business with...where you have an emotional resonance with them that goes the extra distance.”

Experiential marketing is all about immersing consumers in live experiences

that make them feel a connection with your brand—and make them feel like

a person, not a customer.

“I love to push the envelope and say that every time someone interacts

with your brand, it should be an experience for the positive,” says Getler.

“The experience should leave a positive emotional mark on the person

interacting with you.”

Experiential marketing is not only a good way to connect with customers

in a #givefirst way, it also improves sales: 65% of businesses that practice

experiential marketing report a positive correlation with sales.

Marketing Gift #3: Experiential Marketing

We’ve all (sadly) seen “shotgun marketing,” where marketers throw everything and anything out there

to reach as many people as possible. This makes people feel like targets, not valued humans. Immersion

marketing is the opposite: advertising, PR, and marketing teams all work toward treating the customer to a

holistic message that focuses on their needs.

Quality content is one aspect of immersion marketing. According to Getler, content should be educational,

exciting, or immersive. You’re not throwing content at people just to get them hooked; you’re creating

content you know they will enjoy.

Marketing Gift #4: Immersion Marketing

#givefirst Reimagines the Customer ExperienceWhether you’re helping them support causes close to them, opening up your playbooks, or creating personal (instead of personalized) marketing, #givefirst is about reimagining your interactions with the customer.

“Think about the person who’s on the receiving end...and focus on giving them an experience that is above other experiences they’ve ever had,” says Getler. “They may not be a customer today...but they might be down the line if you’ve built a relationship

65%65% of businesses that

practice experiential marketing report a positive correlation

with sales.

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with human-to-human marketing.”

Ready to practice the #givefirst philosophy by going from personalized to personal with your customer success team too? Schedule a time to chat with us. We’d love to share how Quala is powering today’s intelligent, top-performing, human-first customer success managers.

Do help customers help others. Offering products, services, or even money they can give to those who are worse-off can make customers feel less helpless during difficult times.

Do make every interaction with your brand a positive experience by adding value everywhere you can.

Do use your innate creativity as a marketer to help prospects and customers. Create products and campaigns that spark interest and add value, like a new webinar series that offers solutions to a pandemic-related business problem.

#givefirst at a Glance

Don’t engage in shotgun marketing, where you try to reach as many people as possible with the same message. Instead, create campaigns that focus on the needs of a small group of people at a time. (Hint: If you’re sending the same email to 10,000 people, that’s shotgun marketing.)

Don’t confuse personalized with personal. Creating a gift-worthy experience requires a one-to-one approach.

#givefirst Helps You Delight Customers with Better Products

Part III

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In our #givefirst series, we’re showing how the philosophy of “giving before getting” in four different key roles—Sales, Marketing, Engineering, and Customer Success—can help your SaaS company better connect with customers and drive growth.

For product and engineering leaders, it’s all about empowering your team to make customer-centric decisions, act on those decisions, and then feel like they accomplished something great. (Which they did!)

Why #givefirst in Product Engineering?

What your customers want more than anything is for your product to solve their business problems—and that comes down to product and engineering teams. Success starts way before your software hits the virtual shelves, and when your engineers have a #givefirst mentality, they keep the customer top-of-mind through the entire product workflow.

We got Jonathan Tushman, founder and CEO of Quala, on the line to talk about several aspects of #givefirst, from servant leadership to the butterfly effect of unconditional giving. Read on to discover how you can instill this mentality in your team.

#givefirst Helps You Delight Customers with Better Products

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Servant leadership turns the traditional company hierarchy upside down, with the leader at the bottom empowering their team to do their best work. This management style is a key part of the #givefirst philosophy for successful SaaS companies. “You’re really there working to create the right environment for your team to be successful,” says Tushman. “You’re not just telling them what to do.”

This gives your engineers co-ownership in the process, so they feel invested in the outcome rather than thinking of product development as a set of to-dos forced on them from above.

The result? A better product for your customers. Says Tushman, “What they’re putting together is something that they’re really, really proud of...something they want to think about even outside the nine-to-five.”

Here are four ways to serve your team so they can do better work:

#givefirst empowers your team

To boost your team’s confidence and help them grow, give them a challenge that is just out of their reach.

You want to strike a balance of stretching them, but not giving them the impossible, or overwhelming

them. “Don’t just throw them into the deep end and expect magical results,” Tushman warns.

While servant leaders treat each member of their team as individuals, when problems arise they don’t heap

blame on a single product engineer. “You succeed as a team,” says Tushman. “When there’s a bug, you

never say, ‘Hey, that was John’s bug.’ You say, ‘Hey, we had a bug. Let’s figure out what we did wrong. How

can we improve as a team?’”

By that, we mean that instead of using the same management and training techniques for everyone on

your team, you try to understand each individual and tailor your methods to them. Everybody learns

differently and responds best to different kinds of feedback, so this #givefirst method can result in a

smoother workflow and a better product—which means you’re giving to your customers, too!

Traditionally, bosses make all the decisions and delegate all the tasks. In servant leadership, you instead

encourage your team members to solve problems with you (and with one another). This gives them the skills

and confidence to take on more and more. “I’m now able to trust my team with large parts of the application

and functions, so I don’t need to worry about it anymore,” says Tushman. “The payoffs are totally huge.”

1. Empathize with the individual.

2. But do take group responsibility.

3. Push their limits.

4. Co-solve problems.

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#givefirst delights customers

Investing in your product engineering team through the #givefirst method of servant leadership leads to better results all around: a 2019 study in Management and Economics Review found that opportunities for improvement and organizational climate have a big impact on job performance.

“You’re really there working to create the right environment for your team to be successful.

You’re not just telling them what to do.”

Jonathan TushmanFounder and CEO at Quala

Now that your team is empowered to make the best decisions and inspired to do their best work, you can build on your #givefirst culture to not just satisfy your customers—but to absolutely wow them by making sure that with every single line of code your engineers write, they have the end user in mind.

These steps will take your customers from happy to thrilled.

When engineers show pride in their work it inadvertently will delight the customer. It’s not just about

picking up and delivering a JIRA ticket, it’s thinking about how a customer will interact with that feature.

“If I was in their shoes, how would I want the application to behave? What would delight me, what would

make me want to share how awesome this feature is with my colleagues and friends?” asks Jonathan.

This could be as simple as thinking about adding autocomplete to a text area or a progress bar on a

callback that could take more than a few seconds to respond.

Care about your craft

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Every so often Tushman dedicates an entire week to delighting a small set of customers. “Instead of picking

things off one per week, we have a real focus sprint just on these guys and get them to delight as quickly as

possible,” he says. “We dive in to really move the needle for customers who have given to us. We want to

pay them back with a little bit of acceleration on things that are really important to them for their specific

roadmap.”

These customer sprints apply the #givefirst philosophy not only to the customer, but also to your engineers;

engineering teams often spend so much time on urgent customer needs that they don’t have time left over

to focus on individual clients. Now, they’re freed up to do this less urgent—but perhaps more interesting and

meaningful—work.

Do a customer sprint.

It’s all too easy to focus on big customers at the expense of the rest. “You can get whiplash from always

responding to customer requests and never moving the ball forward, or responding to the most vocal

customer and not building a product for your customer base as a whole,” says Tushman. “If you’re always

listening to a certain type of customer, you can start building the wrong thing, and you can actually make

your code more brittle by creating additional stuff to solve for the one single customer.”

Instead, encourage your engineers to take a step back and consider the bigger picture. Outside of the

customer sprints we mentioned earlier, is what they’re working on important to more than a tiny sliver of

your customer base? If not, authorize them to move on to work that has a bigger impact.

The trick to all of these customer-delighting #givefirst methods is to do them quietly. Do special things for

your customers just because you want to make them happy; making a big deal out of it which turns it from

unconditional giving into an implied “give-and-take.”

Get out of reactive mode.

#givefirst creates a butterfly effectThe methods and philosophies we just talked about ripple out from Product Engineering to impact the rest of your SaaS organization...your industry...and even the world outside of work.

When product engineers #givefirst, it makes things easier for the customer success and customer service

teams. And when they create products that delight customers and serve the entire customer base, word of

mouth spreads—helping your marketing and sales teams create better promotions and make more sales.

Engineering Customer Success, Customer Service, Sales & Marketing

Other companies can benefit from your #givefirst culture, too. When team members move on to new

organizations, they take all the good things they learned and experienced with them. (Don’t worry—the

#givefirst philosophy also makes it easier to attract new talent, so even when you lose an amazing team

member you won’t be lacking for long.)

Your Company Influences Other Companies

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Finally, no matter how small your SaaS company is, your #givefirst culture will reach even outside your

industry. “When people can come home after a good day of work feeling positive, their family is also more

positive,” says Tushman. “It’s not just coming to work...it has a much bigger effect.”

Your Industry Influences The World

#givefirst at a Glance

Do schedule occasional customer sprints, where you focus on accelerating product features that help a just small subset of customers succeed with their goals.

Do remember that creating a #givefirst culture in your engineering team trickles out to influence the rest of your company, your industry, and your community.

Do treat your engineers as individuals by getting to know their particular wants and needs...but take responsibility for problems as a group instead of blaming one person.

Don’t delegate to-dos from on high. Instead, practice servant leadership, where your engineers have co-ownership in the product development process. This empowers your engineers to do their best jobs—a gift for both your engineers and your customers.

Don’t focus on the most vocal customers at the expense of your wider customer base; developing features and fixes for just one customer can introduce issues into your code.

#givefirst For Sales: 3 Ways to Improve Processes &

Sell More

Part IV

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In our #givefirst series, we’re showing how the philosophy of “giving before getting” in four different key roles—Sales, Marketing, Engineering, and Customer Success—can help your SaaS company better connect with customers and drive growth.

For Sales, the three crucial #givefirst steps are:

Let’s break down how these three steps can help you align with your prospects, build better sales teams, and improve the sales process.

#givefirst For Sales: 3 Ways to Improve Processes & Sell More

Provide value ListenHelp them reach their goals, not

yours.

Why #givefirst in Sales?We talked with Ian Adams, VP of Sales & Marketing at Yesware, who is noticing a shift in how Sales views its role in turning prospects into customers.

Ask Google “What is the purpose of a business?” and you’ll get lots of definitions. Most of them are about selling products, creating customers, and maximizing profits. And it makes sense: no sales, no business. That’s why, for a long time, business was all about bringing in customers at all costs, and getting them to purchase much as possible.

Ian AdamsVP of Sales & Marketing at Yesware

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But now, Adams says, sales reps are more empathetic and customer growth is taking center stage. This attitude shift happened as customers became more empowered—but COVID has given the #givefirst philosophy a huge boost. We’re all looking for great customers who are going to stay with us—and #givefirst is the way it will happen.

#givefirst gets prospects on your side

Customers now have more options than ever. Giving first will help set you apart from the competition.

Aggressive sales tactics make people feel uncomfortable—and this

has driven much of the evolution to a no-touch sales process where

consumers can go online and purchase even high-ticket items without

having to interact with a salesperson, says Adams.

“Tactics like these don’t work as much anymore because of the options

people have today, unless buyers see added value in working with an

individual salesperson, they’ll simply choose not to because they don’t

have to,” he says. Sales reps need to offer customers a better experience,

and better information, than what they can find online. The next two

steps will show you how.

1. Provide value.

If a prospect does reach out to you rather than going through the sales process solo, it’s because they have

something they’re trying to accomplish that they can’t do on their own.

The #givefirst philosophy is to meet the prospect where they want

to be instead of trying to force them onto a call where you recite

a sales script. “Some people like to communicate via email...they

simply do not want to get on the phone or on a Zoom meeting,”

Adams says. “I’ve seen sales reps relentlessly ask them to get on a

call even though they expressed that they don’t want that.”

Whatever communication channel the prospect chooses, be sure

to listen and respond rather than trying to push them through

a sales process. “People are skeptical of your intentions when

you’re not listening to them or when you’re forcing a next step on

them,” Adams says. “They think, ‘Maybe this individual’s motives

are not aligned with mine, because they’re trying to get me to do

something I don’t want to do.’ And this erodes trust.”

2. Listen.

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Your goal is to make a sale to the right customer at the right time. The prospect’s goal is to find the best

product for their needs. And sometimes, the two goals don’t align because your product is not a good fit.

In the #givefirst philosophy, your job is to:

For example, Adams recently spoke with a prospect who wanted to email a newsletter to a single group of

10,000 people. Yesware offers a lower volume, higher quality, higher personalization approach, so Adams

shared advice on mailing to smaller segments to improve open and click rates. But the prospect insisted:

he wanted to email the same message to 10,000 people.

Instead of racking his brain trying to figure out how Yesware could work for this application, Adams

recommended that he take a look at different marketing automation softwares.

“We’ve had deals come back to us that way,” Adams says. “It’s because we explained the two different

paths and said, ‘We understand the goal you’re trying to accomplish; you could accomplish that in these

different ways. You decide.’”

3. Help them reach their goals, not just yours.

Help prospective buyers clarify what

they need.

Give them enough information to help them

make a decision.

Tell them where they can find the product that fits their needs—even if it’s

not yours.

#givefirst builds a better sales teamIf you want to give to your prospective customers in a way that helps them make the best decisions, give to your sales team first.

Sales teams value success—and for that, they need training. “Some managers badger their team to go do

more activity and get the results...but they don’t show them how to get there,” says Adams. Here’s how to

do it.

1. Provide value.

Use surveys, self-assessments, focus groups, and individual interviews to compare your sales team’s

current performance and skills to the level you want them to be at. This will help you figure out what

kind of training to offer them.

Do a GAP analysis.

These can be incorporated in your training and development plans. They’ll give your sales team more

opportunities to help the customer.

Include soft skills and business skills.

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“Jump on a call with them to listen to how they’re interacting with a customer, or listen to the

recordings, and think of how they might approach it better,” suggests Adams.

Offer hands-on mentoring.

Throughout your sales team’s training and mentoring, be sure to offer constructive criticism. “Giving critical

feedback to folks in an effective way is really valuable,” Adams says. “They can take that and use it to be more

successful in their job.”

Anyone can give a generic gift or a bland “great job!” note to members of their sales team. Here are ways

to listen to them so you can give in a way that’s relevant and authentic.

2. Listen

When Adams was a sales rep at another company, his manager gave him a coffee table book on

surfing, which is an interest of his. “It seems small, but it showed that the manager was paying

attention to us,” he says.

Know their interests

Collect and analyze sales team feedback to figure out the best ways to train them and keep

them engaged.

Test them

Know which causes your sales team supports, and get them involved in relevant charities.

Double #givefirst!

Give back

There are so many ways to listen to your sales team—from one-on-one conversations to employee

feedback tools—that it’s easy to gather all the intel you need to make this #givefirst step happen.

3. Help them reach their goals, not just yours.

While the goal of your SaaS company may be to sell more

products, every member of your sales team has their own

personal and professional goals. Know what those goals are,

and help your staff members reach them. “Then they can grow

their career, and they can take on new opportunities...whether

it’s at your company or a different company,” says Adams.

Engaged, happy employees are better for your company. So by

helping your sales team reach their goals, you’re also keeping

the company strong.

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#givefirst improves the sales processWe talked about how the three #givefirst steps can help you align with prospects and build a better sales team. Now, formally incorporating those steps into your sales process can help you streamline the process for even better results.

1. Provide value.

How do you bake the concept of giving value right into your sales process? You may need to stop thinking

of yourself as a sales team. “Even though we sell to salespeople, we really view ourselves as product

consultants to our prospective buyers rather than salespeople,” says Adams.

Revising your sales process with this in mind can help your team put the #givefirst philosophy into play for

every prospect.

2. Listen

Earlier we talked about the importance of listening to your prospective buyers: using the communications

channels they prefer and not pushing them through a sales funnel that doesn’t make sense for them. This

should be more than a “nice to have” philosophy—it should be a formal part of your sales flow.

Consider: how can you incorporate listening into your process with social listening tools or rules and

templates to encourage active listening?

3. Help them reach their goals, not just yours.

Adams was able to suggest a competing product because #givefirst is part of his company’s culture.

In other SaaS companies, sending someone to a competitor may be a fireable offense. So ensure your

sales team that this is a valid and important part of your company’s sales process. That way, they’ll have

the confidence to do what’s right for prospective buyers.

“Even though we sell to salespeople, we really view ourselves as product

consultants to our prospective buyers rather than salespeople.”

Ian AdamsVP of Sales & Marketing at Yesware

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Creating a #givefirst EcosystemIf you’re starting from the traditional “sales at all costs” philosophy, moving to #givefirst won’t be an overnight thing. Upending the culture of your company is not easy! But today, customers won’t talk to an aggressive sales rep if they can get what they want online. Shift your sales culture to give instead of get, and everyone will benefit.

#givefirst at a Glance

Do help prospective buyers reach their goals by helping them clarify their needs and giving them enough information to help them make the right decision.

Do get to know each sales rep as an individual, and analyze your sales team’s skills and goals, so you can provide training that helps them succeed.

Do offer customers more value than they can find online. Give them a reason to want to talk to you instead of going through the process on their own!

Do start moving your sales culture slowly to the #givefirst method to eventually shift your entire company’s philosophy from “get” to “give.”

Don’t resort to aggressive sales techniques; these are dying out for a reason. (In fact, they’re almost completely dead.) Sales reps need to offer prospects a better experience than they can get online...or they have no reason to talk to you.

Don’t be afraid to recommend a competing product if it’s a better fit for the customer’s needs. (And DO make it clear to your team that it’s OK to do this!)

LET US KNOW...how you plan to grow a culture of #givefirst in

your SaaS company! We’d also love to hear how this philosophy impacts your company, your industry, and

your community. You can email us at sonciary@quala.io.

Can we help you help your customers through #givefirst? Schedule a time to chat with us. We’d love to share how Quala is powering today’s intelligent, top-

performing, human-first customer success teams.

With gratitude from