Solutions for Customers - The Sales Engineering & Customer Success Podcast

The Career Opportunity this week is with Intensify who is searching for a Rockstar Customer Success Manager. Check them out @ https://intentsify.io/careers/ learn more!
Shown Notes: This week we had the privilege of hosting Matt Toy, Director of Account Management with Fastly. Fastly's edge cloud platform provides a content delivery network, Internet security services, load balancing, and video & streaming services for brands all over the world

We dive into the various descriptions or assertions many have on what Customer Success is or should be vs. the reality. One key area that is discussed is not how to support B2B or B2C, it’s P2P, aka People to People which is often overlooked these days.

Matt shares a few instances on his journey into customer success and why it's critically important when scaling a business, protecting protentional customer churn, and much more. We clearly run out of time to dig deeper into the analytics and myopic views which can spawn hours of conversation. So, that just means we need to host Matt again on the show!

Check out Fastly.com to learn more about their Edge platform
Connect with our guest Matt Toy @ https://www.linkedin.com/in/mtoy5/
About the Host, Gary Sloper
For 20 Years, Gary Sloper has led high-performing Tech Sales Engineering and Customer Success teams Globally. Growing up as a programmer and eventually a Sales Engineer, he explores the scrappy environments people in these roles face and the fun they have. After years of being nudged by his colleagues to come to speak to the masses about the inner workings of supporting customers in fast-moving Tech, it's now here for all to listen and interact with. Please join future topics!
Connect, chat and interact with Gary on
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/solutions-for-customers-podcast
or www.SolutionsForCustomers.com

Buzzwords. They exist all over Tech and quite often are overused in the industry by more and more people including Solution Architects and CSMs. However, the use of buzzwords is not worded out of malice but more by convenience. This episode was requested by the audience who asked/suggested we discuss not using buzzwords as much as possible replacing well thought out responses. Why? CIOs and other tech decision-makers are product fatigued and will cast aside your solution if they hear nothing but tech word buzz talk. The amount of presentations they see & hear which contain buzzwords has become staggering.

We take a look at a few articles in the market a narrow into some independent research. For example, a Buzzword Soup scenario could look like this:

We are a CLOUD based solution that enables you to effectively embrace DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION providing you our INDUSTRY LEADING AGILE platform which DISRUPTS traditional AI & BIG DATA competition. Wow, that was a mouthful of buzzwords and I still don’t know what we are selling..ha!

Top 10 Hated Tech Buzzwords - Megan Headly

https://www.trustradius.com/buyer-blog/top-10-hated-tech-buzzwords-2019

Tech Buzzwords – GroWire Team

https://www.growwire.com/tech-buzzwords
About the Host, Gary Sloper
For 20 Years, Gary Sloper has led high-performing Tech Sales Engineering and Customer Solutions teams Globally. Growing up as a programmer and eventually a Sales Engineer, he explores the scrappy environments people in these roles face and the fun they have. After years of being nudged by his colleagues in the Ecosystem to come speak to the masses about the inner workings of supporting customers in fast-moving Tech, it's now here for all to listen and interact. Please join future topics!
Connect, chat and interact with Gary on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gsloper/ or email: [email protected]

Often, meetings on-site can take a turn for the unexpected very quickly. Sometimes, these changes can be prevented in advance with additional planning.
In our episode this week, we explore a couple of tricks to take along when meeting with customers at their location. I have witnessed everything from fire alarm evacuations to floods which alter a scheduled meeting and one you can't really fix!
What about walking into an unknown conference room and hoping your presentation will load on the customer projector?
How do you reconcile what you drew on the whiteboard?
Let's dive into a few tips to make your meeting less theatrical and more productive for everyone!
Oh and these tips can be used by Sales, Sales Engineering and Customer Success Managers who are often on-site with their client partners.
For 20 Years, Gary Sloper has led high-performing Tech Sales Engineering and Customer Solutions teams Globally. Growing up as a programmer and eventually Sales Engineer, he explores the scrappy environments people in these roles face and the fun they have. After years of being nudged by his colleagues in the Ecosystem to come speak to the masses about the inner workings of supporting customers in fast-moving Tech, it's now here for all to listen and interact. Please join future topics!
Connect, chat and interact with Gary on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gsloper/ or email: [email protected]

Today we sit down with arguably one of the best Solution Architects in the industry, Brad Loomis. Based in Boston, he is the Director of Solution Architecture at Cloud Technology Partners a HP company.
Brad talks about early beginnings as a SA with Exodus Communications (later SAVVIS) who first commercialized the colocation and managed hosting business as we know today. He shares tips and tricks on how to control your learning curve and ways he consumes material quickly.
There are a couple of stories Brad shares around how to deal with sticky sales situations and building relationships anyone could learn from regardless of your tenure level in the industry.
About the Host, Gary Sloper
For 20 Years, Gary Sloper has led high-performing Tech Sales Engineering and Customer Success teams Globally. Growing up as a programmer and eventually a Sales Engineer, he explores the scrappy environments people in these roles face and the fun they have. After years of being nudged by his colleagues to come speak to the masses about the inner workings of supporting customers in fast-moving Tech, it's now here for all to listen and interact with. Please join future topics!
Connect, chat and interact with Gary on
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/solutions-for-customers-podcast
or www.SolutionsForCustomers.com

Today we hosted Tom Gleason from Snyk.io where he leads the Solution Engineering organization. Snyk empowers software-driven businesses to develop fast and stay secure. The Snyk open source offering is what many engineers are quite familiar with and I was eager to have Tom on and discuss the organization further.

Tom and I discuss his career background and how it has come full circle supporting customers in a pre-sales role and now a leader within Synk.
I highly encourage anyone interested in learning more about Snyk to check out their site or connect with Tom directly as you will not be disappointed.
www.Snyk.io
Connect with Tom: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomasdgleason/

About the Host, Gary Sloper
For 20 Years, Gary Sloper has led high-performing Tech Sales Engineering and Customer Success teams Globally. Growing up as a programmer and eventually a Sales Engineer, he explores the scrappy environments people in these roles face and the fun they have. After years of being nudged by his colleagues to come to speak to the masses about the inner workings of supporting customers in fast-moving Tech, it's now here for all to listen and interact with. Please join future topics!
Connect, chat and interact with Gary on
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/solutions-for-customers-podcast
or www.SolutionsForCustomers.com