Jason M. LemkinCEO, SaaStr · Co-Founder of SaaStr AI, SaaStr Fund, Adobe Sign

Don't Sell to Customers, Understand and Engage Them

5 Aug 2018 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

1:02

A short transcript from a YouTube talk (by Jason M. Lemkin) arguing that customers do not want to be 'sold to' via mass, irrelevant outreach (e.g., spammy marketing emails). Instead, customers want engagement from companies that understand who they are, their values, and personal preferences. The speaker outlines a vision: build systems that deeply understand customers and shift from high-volume outbound outreach to a pull model that delivers a small number of highly valuable, wanted communications (e.g., one meaningful email rather than hundreds).

Chapters

We don't want to be sold to. When's the last time you got up in the morning? You're like, I got to check Gmail. I got to check Gmail so I can delete 47 emails that I don't want. That's just, it's so irrelevant these days. And, you know, so spam is just kind of like this pass a, you know, blah, blah. We just kind of gloss over it, but it just, it's astounding how many companies still don't get it. They're just like, you know what? I'm just going to keep emailing you until you buy something. I'm going to, I'm going to sell to you, I'm going to market to you. But we want to be engaged with. We want to feel like the companies that we do business with, they understand who we are, they value us. They understand my personal preferences. Our vision is to build a system which is what we're delivering, that understands who you are, what you value, why you do the things that you do, and instead of sending you 200,000 emails this year, is send you one. But that one is so valuable. You want that email. You know, it's a pull model. I want to be engaged.