11 min
Episode 163: Michelle Accardi on Creating Synergy Across Revenue Teams to Serve Customer Needs Sales Enablement PRO Podcast
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- Business
Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO podcast, I’m Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space, and we’re here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs.
Today, I’m excited to have Michelle from Star2Star join us. Michelle, I would love for you to introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience.
Michelle Accardi: Great. Hi everyone, I’m Michelle Accardi. I’m the president and chief revenue officer of Start2Star, a Sangoma company. Star2Star is a communications company that is able to handle all of your cloud communications and collaboration needs, whether that means you need assistance with communications on-premise with an SD-WAN or directly all in the cloud, as well as any other cloud needs you might have with regards to bringing a secure workspace that has communications all baked into your organization. Thus, enabling you to get all your applications and communications and collaborations in the cloud via our connected workspace. That’s what Star2Star does. Happy to be here today.
SS: Extremely happy to have you as well. You have a wide range of experience, and I want to click into some of the things that you’ve done along the way during this conversation, but you have a ton of experience leading teams across the business including marketing, sales, and operations.
I’d love to understand from you, Michelle, how does this experience across many types of revenue-facing roles really influence your approach as a revenue leader?
MA: Well, it’s important to me as a revenue leader to know that whatever I’m going to sell is going to be able to be implemented and give a really, really good customer experience. Having been in all of those different roles, I really learned how important it is that an organization becomes a well-oiled machine between its operational backend and the message it puts out into the market and the promise that it makes to its customers.
SS: Absolutely. Now, you also, in a recent interview, stated that one of your secrets to success is empathy. How does empathy improve your effectiveness as a revenue leader?
MA: Well, first of all, we’re all human. We all have different stressors and challenges, whether in business or in personal life. For me, being an empathetic listener and someone who can relate to the different challenges that my employees, that my partners, that my customers have, really makes me more effective. I can come at solving problems from the perspective of those employees, customers, and partners. At different times in our lives, we all go through different stressors, and I think that when your leader is someone who you can confide in and can explain where you’re having troubles and that person can be honest and open and transparent with you around where they may have also overcome challenges can be very uplifting. Whether that’s leading an organization or whether that’s partnering and helping a business grow, being able to share the pains and trials and tribulations I think make people closer. That’s why I think empathy is so important.
SS: I love that. I think you’re spot on, it’s absolutely critical. How can teams across the revenue organization embrace and utilize empathy with customers to improve the customer experience that you’ve been talking about up until this point?
MA: First, I think it’s just leaning into understanding what are the customer’s pain points? Why are they talking to you right now? What’s the thing that they’re trying to solve? Versus saying, I have this thing that I’m trying to sell. Let’s take a step back and say, what problem are you trying to solve?
Also, understanding the impact that it might be having on a customer. You might find out that if that project doesn’t get done, that person may be on the line or they’re experiencing some other challenge that
Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO podcast, I’m Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space, and we’re here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs.
Today, I’m excited to have Michelle from Star2Star join us. Michelle, I would love for you to introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience.
Michelle Accardi: Great. Hi everyone, I’m Michelle Accardi. I’m the president and chief revenue officer of Start2Star, a Sangoma company. Star2Star is a communications company that is able to handle all of your cloud communications and collaboration needs, whether that means you need assistance with communications on-premise with an SD-WAN or directly all in the cloud, as well as any other cloud needs you might have with regards to bringing a secure workspace that has communications all baked into your organization. Thus, enabling you to get all your applications and communications and collaborations in the cloud via our connected workspace. That’s what Star2Star does. Happy to be here today.
SS: Extremely happy to have you as well. You have a wide range of experience, and I want to click into some of the things that you’ve done along the way during this conversation, but you have a ton of experience leading teams across the business including marketing, sales, and operations.
I’d love to understand from you, Michelle, how does this experience across many types of revenue-facing roles really influence your approach as a revenue leader?
MA: Well, it’s important to me as a revenue leader to know that whatever I’m going to sell is going to be able to be implemented and give a really, really good customer experience. Having been in all of those different roles, I really learned how important it is that an organization becomes a well-oiled machine between its operational backend and the message it puts out into the market and the promise that it makes to its customers.
SS: Absolutely. Now, you also, in a recent interview, stated that one of your secrets to success is empathy. How does empathy improve your effectiveness as a revenue leader?
MA: Well, first of all, we’re all human. We all have different stressors and challenges, whether in business or in personal life. For me, being an empathetic listener and someone who can relate to the different challenges that my employees, that my partners, that my customers have, really makes me more effective. I can come at solving problems from the perspective of those employees, customers, and partners. At different times in our lives, we all go through different stressors, and I think that when your leader is someone who you can confide in and can explain where you’re having troubles and that person can be honest and open and transparent with you around where they may have also overcome challenges can be very uplifting. Whether that’s leading an organization or whether that’s partnering and helping a business grow, being able to share the pains and trials and tribulations I think make people closer. That’s why I think empathy is so important.
SS: I love that. I think you’re spot on, it’s absolutely critical. How can teams across the revenue organization embrace and utilize empathy with customers to improve the customer experience that you’ve been talking about up until this point?
MA: First, I think it’s just leaning into understanding what are the customer’s pain points? Why are they talking to you right now? What’s the thing that they’re trying to solve? Versus saying, I have this thing that I’m trying to sell. Let’s take a step back and say, what problem are you trying to solve?
Also, understanding the impact that it might be having on a customer. You might find out that if that project doesn’t get done, that person may be on the line or they’re experiencing some other challenge that
11 min