The Great Customer Resignation & How to Reduce Customer Churn with Craig Charlton, #211

The past three years have seen radical shifts in the B2B sales landscape. From sales organizations having to go from in-person selling to virtual selling, to shifting how prospecting is done by leveraging online tools – there has been a lot to navigate. As sales leaders and sales teams have been focused on prospecting faster and more efficiently, there has been a quiet epidemic happening in the background.

Getting prospective customers into the sales funnel is part of the battle, but converting them and keeping them as customers is a whole other challenge. With so many options on the market and an oversaturation of generic sales and marketing messages, the retention strategies and personalization techniques used to retain customers must also evolve.

But, exactly how to prevent what one sales expert calls the "Great Customer Resignation" is the topic of this episode of the Modern Selling Podcast.

I'm excited to welcome a phenomenal guest who spends quite a bit of time researching the ins and outs of customer satisfaction and retention.

Craig Charlton, CEO of SugarCRM has spent over 25 years building and running high-growth businesses. Prior to joining SugarCRM in 2019, he was CEO of Oildex, a provider of financial automation software and services for the oil and gas industry, where he helped the company achieve 150% bookings growth, leading to the company's acquisition by Drillinginfo. Before joining Oildex, Craig was CEO of Abila, a provider of financial and CRM software and services to associations, nonprofit organizations, and governmental entities. Abila, which was acquired by Community Brands, grew its revenues threefold and transformed its revenue base to a subscription-based (SaaS) model over a three-year period.

Prior to that, Charlton was senior vice president and general manager of Asia Pacific at Epicor Software Corporation, an industry-leading ERP solution provider, where he developed and executed the company's regional strategy, achieving consistent revenue and profit growth.

Craig's insights into what B2B sales organizations should be doing to boost customer retention is why this is a must-listen-to episode!

We'll dive into the recent stats from SugarCRM's Impact Report and decipher what the data tell us about what customers are looking for and how sales teams should be positioning their prospecting efforts.

Download the full episode now and listen until the end to get every customer retention nugget!

How Has Customer Churn Changed Since The Pandemic?

As most sales leaders have seen, there have been noticeable shifts in how we are approaching and interacting with both prospects and customers.

Here at Vengreso, our specialty is in helping B2B sales leaders and teams prospect better. Over the past 18 months, through our own research, we've found that 69% of sales professionals agree that prospecting is the hardest and most time-consuming part of their role.

I wanted to know what Craig is seeing on the other side, once a prospect becomes a customer, and what's the current trend with customer churn.

The data he shares is truly eye-opening, "Last year, the Global Research survey revealed that customer churn was costing midmarket companies $5.5 million a year. Our research, this year, shows that 58% of sales and marketing leaders say that churn has gotten worse over the last 12 months. This is now likely costing companies even more than $5.5 million a year! For every two customers coming in the door, one of them is leaving."

This is a remarkable number – $5.5 million in lost revenue!

Join the conversation to hear what Craig says is really causing churn rates to explode and what sales leaders must do now to stop the bleeding.

What Role Can CRMs Play in Reducing Customer Churn?

As a sales evangelist by trade, I'm always curious to know what technology can do to help right the tide and get sales teams back on track.

At Vengreso, we use a host of automation tools and systems to help us not only streamline how we prospect, but also to leverage key data that tells us how we can personalize each customer touchpoint.

I wanted to hear Craig's perspective on what CRMs can do to mitigate this growing customer churn rate, especially since his company's findings suggest that 56% of sales organizations don't have the customer data they need to be effective.

He shares three key insights:

• Increased visibility. CRMs can help sales leaders have a better view of what customers are likely to churn so they can proactively reach out to nurture that relationship.
• Improved personalization. When sales reps know what a customer needs and can tailor any communication to what's relevant to that customer – it's a win-win. A good CRM can be critical in creating highly personalized nurture, onboarding, and engagement campaigns.
• Better sales tracking. Without a robust CRM, it's hard to ever truly quantify how effective prospecting and marketing efforts are. According to SugarCRM's current research, some 54% of all leads are either poorly or underqualified. Having a proven CRM solution can easily identify the gaps in prospecting and sales to help reps and sales leaders figure out a better path forward.

What's Holding Sales Teams Back From Keeping Customers?

This is a rather loaded question, but Craig and I dive deep into what the real solution may be.

In my view, there are a host of factors at play. However, I'm a big proponent of the importance of providing world-class training to all sales reps that focuses on how to prospect with intention, personalization, and communicating value in mind.

Our PVC Methodology for Prospecting outlines each one of these critical steps to engage with prospects in a way that makes them want to become customers.

I have Criag walk through his ideas on the topic, "The biggest drawback to reducing customer churn is CRM adoption. Many sales teams have a CRM of some sort, but they're usually not properly trained on how to use its automation and are often unaware of the full features their CRM may offer. Sales teams should be leveraging AI as much as possible to know exactly which customers are at risk of leaving and how to best engage with them. Sadly, so many B2B sales teams aren't doing this."

Automation is a BIG productivity driver for us at Vengreso. This is why we've created THE best business productivity tool on the planet – FlyMSG. With it, sales teams (and other teams too) can reduce the time waste copying and pasting messages to customers and free up their time to focus on other strategic tasks.

But, FlyMSG is just one tool we talk about. Towards the end of our conversation, Craig shares a host of actionable tools and steps sales leaders can take right now to get the most out of the CRM to instantly boost customer retention.

Download the full episode to get in on this valuable insight.

Want access to the full 2022 CRM Impact Report: The Great Customer Resignation and the Path Forward?

Click here to download your complimentary copy.