The team at Salted Stone is excited to sponsor the next #HUGPasadena event -- because when else do you get to network, snack, sip beer, and learn more about sales and marketing best practices!?
We'll be learning about customer success & support processes from HubSpotter Flora (Yuan) Wang - but, before we compile our list of questions and pour a glass (or two) for our special guest, we thought we'd get to know the sales and support expert a little bit better.
Tell us about yourself! Who are you and what do you do for HubSpot?
Hello! My name is Flora (Yuan) Wang and I am a Sales Engineer at HubSpot. I spend my day working with executives, marketers, engineers, and everyone in between to improve their business processes. As sales engineers, we assist the sales team through technical consulting in order to quickly close more deals. We provide prospects with relevant information and set them up for success with the HubSpot software.
You’ll be chatting about formulating a customer success strategy at #HUGPasadena. What is "customer success"? Why is this juncture of the buyer's journey so often overlooked?
Customer success is viewing the success of your customers as a key growth engine of your business. By becoming more proactive and less transactional, customers will be better serviced and happier with your product. Consumers have more and more options when choosing a provider today, so a big market differentiator could be the care your team takes when they solve for the customer.
Traditionally, when we think about customer success, it's seen as a cost-center, so the buyer's journey ends with the prospect purchasing...
But we’ve come to realize is that if we can service and help our existing customers it will help us more easily attract and sell to the next set of customers. This becomes a more cost-efficient way of acquiring new customers than just traditional marketing and sales processes. I can’t wait to share more at #HUGPasadena!
What new trends are you seeing take shape in the sales space? What new tech is changing how we approach growth and development processes?
As buyers need to depend on salespeople less for information, excellent salespeople differentiate themselves by becoming more helpful. The way to win business now is to deeply understand the business problem they are facing and empathetically craft solutions. In conjunction, consumers have become impatient with traditional routes of communication and expect to be able to reach businesses through more means of communication including live chat, phone, text, email and more.
There is now new technology that helps us connect more easily with prospects- from shared inboxes to
Before you moved into your Sales Engineering role, you worked in a support role. What did this teach you about crafting comprehensive support processes around a tech product?
Working in customer success is one of the best experiences for someone starting out in tech because you are at the frontline of conversation about your product. You get to hear all of the use cases and opinions customers have about your product, which helps you broaden your mindset as you look for solutions.
It was incredibly enlightening to see the ingenuity of customers and what they were able to accomplish with our software. In addition, you gain client facing, technical and business experience. All of this has helped me become a more well-rounded professional and build processes with the customer first in mind.
When crafting a customer support process, it’s important to think about the expectations you have when you’re a consumer. For example, think about the frustrations you have when you don’t hear back from customer support or get an irrelevant response- these are the kind of experiences you should aim to solve for in order to turn that frustration into a better support experience. This stellar and streamlined support experience will become a considerable business advantage and a growth engine for your business
GO! GO! GO!
Oh man, this was definitely a hard pick but... my first thought is that I love any Dogfish Head beer... and especially the 90 minute IPA!
Excellent choice! We'll see you at #HUGPasadena, Flora!
See you at our next #HUGPasadena event! RSVP here and be sure to bring your questions, ideas, and your appetite.
