ValuClarity

Your customer value comes from your differentiation. Tom Brady, VP of Business Development for Flow Pharma and I talked about Flow's differentiation, which is pretty powerful. We explored what customer outcomes can be achieved using that differentiation, and then what markets/customer groups most desire those outcomes. Flow is building a business exactly along those lines Learn more about your ad...

Rhys Ryan leads Ekkobar, who leapfrogs social media analytics. Where analytics can tally clicks, likes, shares, seconds on a page etc., Ekkobar's social media insights figure out what people are thinking about you, how bad that misstatement was -- or wasn't -- and what they intend to do about it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Peter Voss is the founder and CEO of Argo, whose AI has upped the chatbot interactions that companies can have with customers. We talked about what AI currently does, and what AI can't yet do that makes AI so artificial. We also talked about how AI helps clients provide value to customers better than chatbots. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I've been ruminating lately about the challenge of helping big organizations sell and price value more effectively...vs. the challenge of helping more agile companies become more holistic in their pursuit of customer value. There's a huge difference. Doing the first is straightforward and pays well. Doing the second requires searching for that rare company who's ready to do something special - whi...

Darrell Amy and I are kindred spirits who believe in the importance of customer value. He co-hosts the Selling From the Heart Podcast, and his book "The Revenue Growth Engine" is on my bookshelf -- extolling how to coordinate sales and marketing functions in your organization. We help somewhat different clients: he likes working with companies who sell a repeated purchase that is differentiated by...

David Newman has released his newest book, "Do It! Selling" (the latest in his "Do it!" series of books). David is an old friend, and serves speakers, coaches and consultants who have strong intellectual property, but who aren't confident in their ability to get more of the right clients at the right prices. This latest book is a home run for those audiences, but is a great sales primer for anyone...

Tim Rohrer wrote and published "Sales Lessons of the World's Greatest Mentor" as an homage to the most influential person in his career. This was a work of love, and shares lessons in story format -- super impactful, and a super easy read. This is a highly recommended book! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Julie Roehm has held positions with some of the world's greatest companies, most recently as Chief Experience Officer with Party City -- is there anything more "customer experience" than a company that helps the world celebrate stuff? Julie and I talked about some of her very sophisticated -- yet simple -- innovations that she drove. What an incredible interview. Thanks, Julie! Learn more about yo...

Keith Dorson owns Win-Win Investments, a financial planning firm. He's not the first financial planning professional on the podcast, but he's the first to call his clients owners; they own their lives, their journeys, their stories. Keith treats them like that. It's pretty cool to hear him share his approach to practicing customer intimacy. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Learn more about yo...

Carl Kwan is the founder and head of Kwan Multimedia, and helps his clients produce video content that reinforces your value and moves customers through their buying process. He has over 18 years (since the infancy of YouTube), plus years before that as am image coach, making video content that does precisely that. We had a great conversation about not only the (obvious) importance of video, but t...

TIm Hyde's company helps its clients avoid having a customer journey get stuck by understanding various customer journeys and building your sales/marketing activities and asset help customers through those "stuck spots". TIm and I are kindred spirits and it was a pleasure getting his perspective. Thanks Tim! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sky Cassidy founded and runs MountainTop Data, a data company that sells leads -- but differentiates by selling 1) guaranteed lead quality 2) a la carte: that is, you buy (not rent) a certain number of leads without an ongoing contract commitment. Seems simple, but that's the beauty of it. We talked about some of the practices in his industry, and the large competitive white space some major compe...

Depending on how it's measured ("at least one goal met" vs. "most or all goals met"), about 50-70% of projects, especially software projects, FAIL. Holy cow. Joe Pusz leads the PMO Squad, and is a national leader in promoting great project management -- which he defines as "meeting client goals", rather than "successfully installed". What's that worth to you? Thanks for a super-educational convers...

Marc Appleman has had a stellar career in the sports and media space. He's currently in a venture that is leveraging a vast trove of historic sports articles and photographs, but he was also the CEO of SABR, the Society of American Baseball Research (an offshoot of SabreMetrics, of "Moneybag") fame. Marc transformed SABR into a thriving community of people passionate about baseball, and we talked...

Brion Crum is an executive with Caliber Investments, one of the country's fastest growing companies, and a business who differentiates by bringing quality real estate investing to groups who seldom have access to the kind of deals that big institutional investors are able to take advantage of. Caliber partners with experts in specific markets, and specific project types to bring a diversified flow...

TIno Go founded and leads Baru (hellobaru.com), an innovator in the furniture and cabinetry business. He partners with companies around the country (there are quite a few of them) who have purchased computer-aided manufacturing equipment for furniture and cabinetry -- machines that only run a small percentage of the time (almost all of those). This means that these items can be manufactured thousa...

Park Howell believes, just like I do, that customers buy outcomes from doing business with you. He helps his clients compose stories that light up the limbic brain, or as Park calls it, "the movie theatre of the mind". I'm a big fan of how he simplifies the story format...by studying the art of story from experts in moviemaking, novel writing, and yes, marketing, he's distilled the art of story bu...

Nelson Griswold leads Next Gen benefits, a consultant-to-consultants who teaches benefits experts how to deliver better healthcare to employee populations at lower cost. We talked about how he does that, how so much of his effort is devoted to selling through a channel of healthcare consultants. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Loren Fogelman consults to accountants and financial professionals, focusing particularly on weaning them off of the "hourly rate trap". She has a great process for helping accounting professionals understand their value, build value-based programmatic pricing, and have great sales conversations with their clients. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Daniel Hammond's practice is centered around what he calls customer-driven leadership. In addition to leading a company with focus on customers. This includes the real, external customer, but also internal customers. I loved that perspective Daniel is passionate about building high-performing organizations with a customer focus Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Olle Ljundqvist is a founder of the Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) society. ERAS is a collection of small changes to patient care, pre-, during-, and post-surgery. As Olle points out, most hospitals are already practicing several of them...just not as consistently as they should, not as measurable, and of course, not the rest of them. Getting a healthcare provider to increase compliance to...

Rod Collins is an author and keynote speaker whose work in organizational effectiveness is focused on changing organizations from hierarchies to self-guided teams of peer-to-peer networks. Democratizing work like this is the way of the future, according to Rod. I worked in a famous example of this kind of culture, and we discussed it in some depth. We also talked about how much more effective it i...

Adam Kipnes has provided strategic consulting for his clients for many years. He believes in involving everyone in the process, but also in a very simplified strategic document, so that people use and live up to the strategies they develop together. We talked about the value of a strategic approach that works because it gets used, and also spent some time talking about his "100 day sprint" that cl...

Mark Stiving is a kindred spirit -- and we always have great conversations about selling value. This time, we talked about how Mark has captured some of his wisdom in his book "Selling Value. How to Win More Deals at Higher Prices". We talked about the book for a bit (I recommend it, as I got the chance to comment on one of his draft manuscripts), but we also talked about how important value selli...

Jac Arbour is exceptional, personally and professionally. He's an author and philanthropist, all pursuits that derive from his excellence as a comprehensive financial consultant for his clients. His approach is to really know what drives each person he serves so that he can become a genuine partner. What a refreshing difference from other financial advisors who really sell point solutions, under t...