Vanilla is NOT an option... but Pistachio is!

The one thing that has always been important to me is offering a personal service and I look for those moments where you can go above customer expectations and really make an impression. These are my natural highs and I crave them.

I’ve always worked in a sales role. Many people fall into sales and I’m in that club. It wasn’t on the plan in career talks at school. Starting my career in hotels I tried and tested every department from pot-wash to accounts and managed to find my groove in the sales team. Why? Simply, I just liked being curious. Sales wasn’t a big challenge; it was a series of stages of asking great questions that helped you lead a customer to an outcome that solved their problem and got me a sale. Boom, and just like that I fell in love with getting those wins.

As my career progressed and I moved into proactive sales roles, leading teams with big targets, I really focussed on how to stand out from the crowd. I’d spent years hearing about USP’s and had concluded perhaps they weren’t enough. I got frustrated with sales focussing on ‘me’ and what ‘we’ do and not on how you could help the customer. I looked for ways to grab attention and stand out from the crowd and encouraged my team to do the same.

Then I saw something that really took me by surprise.

Have you ever seen one of those videos that you get from a car dealership? You may have been and had your car serviced and received a video from the mechanic under your car, or perhaps you’ve looked at buying a new car and been sent a video of your dream motor… I first saw this back in 2015 and was immediately impressed by their approach. A mechanic (not a sales guy), taking the time to reach out and connect to reassure me. Customer service had leveled up.

It was a genius move from the perspective of the automotive sector. An industry that has struggled with building trust and struggling with transparency. With video, they tackled this head-on and provided real-time content to their customers. Not only could we hear about the work they had carried out, but we could also see it and they removed all our doubts.

I wanted this concept in hospitality. After all, it’s hospitality where we are keen to please and serve so friendly messages seem like the right thing to do. I figured hotels and venues needed to include video in their sales and related processes and doing so would mean they helped more customers.

Customers visiting venues were on the decline. The market was more saturated than ever before with a complete variety of venues to book. Our differentiators were getting similar and demonstrating we were ‘different’ was a challenge. To me, a video was the solution to get back in front of the customer and stand out from the crowd. Show them why you are a great choice.

We’d already grown familiar with video in the marketing world so adding video into sales seemed so obvious.

The first thing I did was contact those providers to the automotive sector to see if we could use their technology but that wasn’t an option.

I tried to send a video message in an email by myself. It was so tricky and took way too long. Make a video, edit, send to another PC or platform, the download was long… it was clunky. It didn’t look ‘corporate’ enough as I wanted to fancy landing page and footers. I hadn’t got time to faff about – who has?

I found some overseas providers that I liked but felt there could be a better way; a UK solution that offered a great price tag and above all was simple to use.

Then came the moment. I was on a train coming back from London after a meeting ranting animatedly about how every time, I sent a video good stuff happened, but my DIY approach was crushing my selling time. I decided then and there I was going to fix my own problem.

Madness! I don’t have a technical background, I’ve never dreamt of building my own business but at that moment, this idea was too important and I was going to create an app to allow the video to be sent easily via email and make sales personal again.

You have seen Dragons Den, right? I needed to get my family on board and so pitched to them the concept I had envisaged. They got it! They could see what I saw and completely supported me to take this concept to market and bring the business to life. I am grateful for my #1 fans and they are still encouraging me daily.

This was definately a spare room start-up concept. I spent my evenings putting together user journey and concept ideas. The business plan was created, and self-funding was put into place before the proposal went out to developers and we secured developers and commenced the build. Months of build and test took place to release minimum viable product (MVP) version 1.0. At the end of 2018, I left employment. I was officially an entrepreneur and Pistachio View was incorporated.

I focussed on the goal of each video message to be more helpful, grab the attention of customers, and be super personal. They remain our goals. The key objective was it had to be simple. Everyone has a device in their back pocket so grab it, make a video and get it sent. No overthinking, Oscar performances, edits and airbrushing – just point and shoot. Be relevant. Be personal. Be you.

Soon I learned that not everyone was with me at the video-party. In fact, I felt I’d arrived way too early and was halfway through the buffet. To me, making a video for a potential customer seemed obvious because I knew it got me better results. I targeted the hotel industry knowing I could fix a problem. What I learned was about the emotional piece. I was surprised by how many salespeople felt ‘uncomfortable’ with the prospect of making and sharing a video. I was literally shocked, these are sales professionals, after all, full of bravado and balls! Not true. When it comes to video, I needed to talk about how it made them feel, and how those feelings weren’t noticed by the recipient of the video. I’ve since turned this into an opportunity to now not only improve sales and relationships but to help improve confidence and level up selling skills. Win-win!

Within 4 months of launching, we were slowly onboarding new customers. These maverick first customers are legends. They were breaking the norm and are the hotels and venues that were adamant they were going to make a difference to their customers. I admire them.

We managed to slowly and regularly onboard new clients monthly and were spreading the word. People from other sectors were becoming curious and we could see a new marketplace evolving.

The first 12 months were challenging, and I upskilled massively. As a SaaS business owner, I had to develop many new attributes. I also still know I have a long way to go. The exciting part was establishing myself as a thought leader and a highlight for 2019 was being a part of the education stream at The Meetings Show. People wanted to listen to me.

Development was slower than projected. We ended up about 12 months behind schedule and this really affected the trajectory and my confidence. I look back in 2019 and realise I learned so much. Even though things didn’t go exactly to plan its part of the journey.

There have been lots learned from the customers' experiences of using the mobile and web app. Each piece of feedback was logged, investigated and explored to create the template of future versions.

The dream is big but I’m a go-hard or go-home kind of gal! I’d like to see Pistachio View in every sector of the sales world with millions of users creating personal, relevant messages for future and current customers. So right now, that’s what we are planning.

Version 2.0 is in build and test phase right now and literally rips up what we created for version 1.0 and blows it out the water! We are creating a visual platform and ensuring the type of content people find easier to consume (videos, images, GIFs) will be a regular part of the sales process and accessible to all. It will remain easy, if not easier, to make and share a video.

It's going to be one heck of a party and you’re invited. Are you ready to be more helpful to your customers; send them information that makes their life easier and images that bring your business to life? Let's get your video game ON!