One of the biggest hurdles for me when trying out a new service or product is the inevitable harassment that follows. It always starts innocuously:

“Hey, I saw you were checking out our service. Let me know if you have any questions!”

Fine, whatever. You have documentation, so I’m not going to email you, but I understand that we’re all just doing our jobs.

Then, it escalates.

“Hi, I’m your customer success fun-gineer! Just checking in to make sure you’re having the best possible experience with your trial!”

Chances are, I signed up to see if your tool can do one specific thing. If it doesn’t, I’ve already mentally moved on and forgotten about it. So, when you email me, I’m either actively evaluating whether to buy your product, or I have no idea why you’re reaching out.

And now, I’m stuck on your mailing list forever. I get notifications about all your new releases and launches, which forces me to make a choice every time:

• “Obviously, I don’t care about this anymore.”

• “But what if they’ve finally added the feature I wanted?”

Since your mailing list is apparently the only place on Earth to find out if Platform A has added Feature X (because putting release notes somewhere accessible is apparently too hard), I have to weigh unsubscribing every time I see one of your marketing emails.

And that’s not even the worst-case scenario. The absolute worst case is when, god forbid, I can actually use your service, but now I’m roped into setting up a “series of calls.”

You can’t just let me input a credit card number into a web site. Now I need to form a bunch of interpersonal relationships with strangers over Microsoft Teams.

Let’s Jump On A Call

Every SaaS sales team has this classic duo.

First, there’s the salesperson. They’re friendly enough but only half paying attention. Their main focus is inputting data into the CRM. Whether they’re selling plastic wrap or missiles, their approach wouldn’t change much. Their job is to keep us moving steadily toward The Sale.

Then, there’s their counterpart: the “sales engineer,” “customer success engineer,” or whatever bastardized title with the word engineer they’ve decided on this week. This person is one of the few people at the company who has actually read all the documentation. They’re brought in to explain—always with an air of exhaustion—how this is really my new “everything platform.”

“Our platform does everything you could possibly want. We are very secure—maybe too secure. Our engineers are the best in the world. Every release is tested through a 300-point inspection process designed by our CTO, who interned at Google once, so we strongly imply they held a leadership position there.”

I will t