Episode #28 DON'T Sell to Your Customers. SERVE Them! ft. Angela Alea
Jan 24, 2024
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Angela Alea, President and CRO of LASSO, shares her experience in revenue-producing roles and redefining sales. LASSO revolutionized the event production industry by challenging norms. The importance of having a partner, making critical decisions, and serving customers, rather than just selling to them, is highlighted.
Sales should focus on serving rather than persuading customers to buy, building relationships and providing value leads to sales naturally.
Resilience, learning from failures, and having a supportive team are crucial in navigating setbacks and persisting in business.
Deep dives
Redefining Sales and Serving Customers
Angela Alea, President and CRO at Lasso, shares her perspective on redefining sales and the importance of serving customers. She believes that sales should focus on serving rather than persuading customers to buy. By building relationships and providing value, sales happen naturally. Angela emphasizes the need for genuine passion and belief in the product or service being sold to establish trust with customers. Additionally, she discusses the significance of meaningful customer interactions in the customer success (CS) field, offering a framework that focuses on learning about the organization, teaching and making recommendations, and prescribing solutions to help customers succeed.
Navigating Setbacks and Building Resilience
Angela highlights the importance of resilience in navigating setbacks as a founder. She acknowledges that setbacks are a part of the startup journey and can help to build strength and resilience. Angela emphasizes the need to keep moving forward, learn from failures, and not get stuck in your own head. She also acknowledges that setbacks are not limited to startups, but are a part of life in general. Angela shares her perspective on the value of having a business partner or a team to support each other during challenging times and provide encouragement to persist.
Balancing Scale and Sustainability
Angela discusses the challenge of balancing growth and sustainability in today's economic climate. She emphasizes the need to have the right team in place and to leverage data to make informed decisions about scaling the business. Angela points out that scale does not solely depend on adding headcount, but also on improving efficiencies and enhancing the customer experience. She encourages founders to have their own vision for growth, rather than being swayed by external market trends or competition. Angela underscores the importance of finding the right balance between growth and responsible business practices.
The Future Vision for Lasso
Angela shares the future vision for Lasso, which is to become the leading platform serving the event and entertainment industry. Lasso aims to provide modern tools and resources to event professionals, making their jobs easier and improving the overall event experience for consumers. Angela emphasizes the focus on serving the industry by going deep and providing impactful solutions. She highlights the complex nature of event production and the behind-the-scenes work that goes into creating successful events. Lasso's long-term goal is to revolutionize the industry and become the go-to platform for event professionals.
In today's episode of Revenue Reimagined, we're joined by Angela Alea - President and CRO of LASSO.
Angela talks about her experience in revenue-producing roles, from sales to revenue leadership, despite vowing never to do sales. LASSO is a platform for event and entertainment companies, and Alea's background in workforce management and event production enabled her to help LASSO become a key player in the event management space. The industry's assumption that everything is done on a spreadsheet, including the Super Bowl, Oscars, and Grammys, is what inspired the start of LASSO. Angela's role as President & CRO has been a critical piece of LASSO's success and her thought leadership in this space will bring value to everyone watching.
During today's show, Angela shares her secrets on:
- Misleading assumptions in the early startup days
- NOT blindly following the advice of others
- Redefining sales overall and overcoming negative connotations
Any founder, entrepreneur, or business leader can steal the lessons Angela shares in this episode and use them for their own success.