Alan Hale: 0:00

There's a terminology that's coin survey slapping, you know, so every time you do something, you get a five question thing. Are you happy? What do you buy from us again?

Rick Denton: 0:15

You're listening to CX Passport, the show about creating great customer experiences with a dash of travel talk. Each episode we’ll talk with our guests about great CX, travel...and just like the best journeys, explore new directions we never anticipated. I'm your host Rick Denton. I believe the best meals are served outside and require a passport. Let's get going. Today we head into the b2b world. Sure. Many of you are thinking yeah, Rick, you say b2b is different. But is it really not the same customer experience and marketing principles apply? It's all fundamentals right? Well, let's explore that. today. I'm excited to have a chance to talk with Alan Hale, the founder of Consight Marketing Group, who lives and breathes the b2b world. Along with his focus on b2b, what sets Allen apart is his unique approach to customer insights. Instead of relying on traditional methods like web surveys or focus groups, he takes it up a notch. He's a firm believer in the power of meaningful connections, conducting those in depth phone interviews with key decision makers and influencers of important and major accounts. By doing so he uncovers those invaluable customer specific insights that become the foundation for actionable strategies and tactics. Notice something in their insights actionable, that should be the norm. And yet it's not for so many companies. I want to learn more today from Alan on how the b2b world can move from just collecting data, to insights to action, ultimately, to tangible business value. It's going to be a good ride today, Alan, welcome to CX Passport.

Alan Hale: 2:00

Thanks for having me, Rick.

Rick Denton: 2:02

Let's get going after this. Now, you are not one to shy away from difficult conversations.

Alan Hale: 2:09

I get hammered all the time for things I say. So I'm going to break this beginning part in a couple sections. And then you can ask me questions and we can move on. First of all, I have done over 250 b2b market research projects in my career, I stopped counting. I've gotten so old, I've stopped counting. And I hear now a philosophy that b2b is the same as b2c. It's H to H human to human or person to person. And what would I say is it's not, it's not. And basically, b2b is so different from b2c, so different. And I'll give you some reasons. And we can talk about the insight here. But so first of all, in the consumer world b2c, you if you think like toothpaste, or bleach, you've got millions of customers, okay, and what rules the day is statistical significance. In a b2b market, you have something called the 8020 rule 20% of your accounts have 80% of your volume. So your job as a marketer, marketing research is to identify what drives each of those stakeholders. It could be purchasing could be marketing, could be packaging engineers, but in those major accounts, because if you make those major accounts raving fans, one they're less likely to turn to you can get higher wallet share. But again, they are different than b2c b2b is usually and I'm talking more complex products, not copy paper. But b2b is a long sales cycle. We could have six months, we could have two years. Right? Right. Second thing is you've got, as I said, multiple stakeholders and each of those have a different role in the purchase process. The next thing is so there's a committee and they they look at all possible solutions. They bring the vendor in. They've normally narrowed their choice to three or four vendors by the time they do the research, and then they have everyone prepare an RFP. And what drives us thing is two things risk and credibility. You don't want to look foolish, you don't want to be fired. And having ROI is the dominant factor in the evaluation process. So contrast that with B to C if you want to go in and get a apple i i pad. There's so cheap you just going to get one. You can't do that in the b2b world, you've and you've got to there's also a budget cycle. If you're if you're pitching a $3 million product, and they're not through their fiscal year, you have to kind of align yourself with that. So the what I found, Rick is that the people that are heavily in the b2b Understand this, the people that dabble in it would like it to be more like b2c because they don't understand b2b. I mean, just that that's, and I

Rick Denton: 5:31

think something some of that you said in there, like as you were starting to talk about the differences between b2b and b2c? One thing that I heard in there was, if you do well, by them, let's just use the word do well, right, create a great experience, delight, whatever that looks like, but do well by that b2b customer, they will return more often they will increase what they spend with you, they will tell their friends and family will that's actually very similar to the b2c world. So that fundamental is the same, what's different and where you describe that was, but how the purchases made, how the decisions go about into making the purchase? And then what are the factors that there's not a lot of us that think well, maybe, you know, depends on your relationship with your spouse, perhaps if you feel some sort of fear of risk, and what that might be for a purchase that you make. But the idea of having your career at risk because of a purchase that you make, that's totally different to the b2b world.

Alan Hale: 6:26

Exactly. So in the old days, there's the saying you don't, you're not going to get fired for buying IBM. Okay, I don't know if that's true, or not all right.

Rick Denton: 6:35

But boy, Alan, you and I know that reference, I wonder that one's fallen out of a common vernacular. But it's still so true. But But

Alan Hale: 6:43

But what the part of the truth, the truism here is that there is a lot of risk, which means if you are trying to displace a current vendor, or you're a new vendor coming into the market, right, better have some credible ways of saying, Hey, guys, we're here. Over the long term, we're here to support you. Other big accounts have used our product, when you show them stuff from your lab on test results. They said, they're not going to buy it, you have to go to an independent lab. So you have to do everything you can to say okay, we are a legitimate trace your your first action, in my opinion, is to make sure you're one of the three companies contacted for an RFP.

Your CX Passport Captain: 7:31

This is your captain speaking. I want to thank you for listening to CX Passport today. We’ve now reached our cruising altitude so I’ll turn that seatbelt sign off. <ding> While you’re getting comfortable, hit that Follow or Subscribe button in your favorite podcast app so you never miss an episode. I’d love it if you’d tell a friend about CX Passport and leave a review so that others can discover the show as well. Now, sit back and enjoy the rest of the episode.

Rick Denton: 7:58

Well, you know, what I do want to do is, and I chuckle about this, Alan is you and I are starting to ask you a question then it shows me the passion that you have about something that I didn't even get the chance to ask you about was that difference between b2b and b2c? It's so clear that that's something that's at your top of the mind, top of mind for you. Now, I do want to go back to what I wanted to ask you. And that was there was a something you said? Or actually, I think there was a white paper that you wrote, and it was customer experience is circling the drain. Now that's a pretty bold statement. I'd really want to What do you mean by that? What Why is Cx circling the drain?

Alan Hale: 8:36

Okay, so first, I'm going to preface this, I am not a customer. I'm not a customer experience expert, tonsa expert, I consider you in that category. You know, and others, but from a distance and working with clients. The whole thing to me is crazy. And I'll put it under an umbrella marketing malpractice. All right. So you've got the CX department measuring everything in the world, every time you get touched. Every time you ask for information. There's a terminology that's coin survey slapping, you know, so every time you do something, you get a five question thing. Are you happy? What do you buy from us again, and then it keeps getting nuttier than then they use a metric some of these people called NPS net promoter score, which is not a net promoter system. And in reality that was intended to measure loyalty and risk not transaction. So to give you an example here, Rick, I probably get a special potbelly sandwich once a week. Every time I get that sandwich, I get asked to do this five questions. And that's like, as far as I'm concerned, you know, as long as there's no broken glass in it, I don't care, you know, or as long as I met, as long as I'm not poisoned, so let me kind of go back to this malpractice issues. So you've got customer experience, people putting in very complicated systems measuring everything, they don't concentrate, and the the real things that make a lot of difference. They can't prove an ROI, in most cases, to the CEO, the CEO wants ROI, or he's cutting marketing, he's cutting CX. And it just seems like this is an industry in in danger of exiting, I mean, it, you know, so there's a lot of people a lot of expenses. And, and so and they're not changing behavior, they get scores, they get, you know, 62%, or buy another tuna sandwich and pot bellies again. But it doesn't help them improve anything. And it goes to what you said earlier insights, it scores, it's not insights. And that's why I like b2b is you can drive to insights, you know, the numbers and the scores are fine. But you have to do more than this. And it's almost like I could see it from the CEOs point of view. Okay, you want another half a million dollars this year to do what? You know, and and where's the ROI? What are we getting from this? And, you know, and then I look at the CX people. So I've had some white papers on this. I had one white paper that I specifically posted in a couple CX associations. And man, it just, it drove a ton of debate. I told my wife that night, you might have to start my car in the morning like a mafia done. How can you say that? But I, you know, I'm not always right. But I just believe in calling it like it appears. And if you want it to do something, and then add all this on top of, we're measuring our customer satisfaction and customer experience, okay? But they, they they don't do anything about it. They just don't.

Rick Denton: 12:23

That is where you and I are 1,000% in line. So where are you and I probably don't see eye to eye is that I'm not actually all that worried about the customer experience as an industry, overall imploding. What I am seeing is those that are focused on survey and score. Yeah, I got my score, and I survey slap the crap out of my sandwich customers. But that's all I do with it, that part is going to fade away. Because there's no path to ROI. And there's no path of business improvement. There's no path forward with that. It is all about driving actual insights and driving actions. And that's the part that's going to keep winning

Alan Hale: 12:58

my heart agrees with you. My mind does not because what I'm seeing now is the boards are asking CEOs for the scores, and are more like vanity metrics than changes in behavior.

Rick Denton: 13:11

I can see any score you want. That's right. Now you're

Alan Hale: 13:15

talking about polluting mercury. Exactly. The other thing you add on to this in so we agree that customer experience is important. But how many people are using their customer service departments as a cost center? All right, they look at number of calls, handled cost per call, and you're preaching like so. Okay, so you're in a race to get some person off the phone? Because it's going to affect your metrics, rather than the metric should be? How well did we do in solving your problem? Now some of the companies are getting it, you know, where they change, you know, I'm like, Okay, how well did they do and all those, but a lot of them. It again, it's kind of back to score. So I'm, I'm depressed and disappointed, because I see a lot of activity, but it's not driving any behavior. Well,

Rick Denton: 14:11

Alan, stay depressed and disappointed because it helps consultants like me, go in and actually help turn some of that depressed and disappointed around you. Again, I preach Absolutely. On the contact center. It's a cliche, or it's a cheesy little phrase, I say, but don't have your contact center be a cost center. It is a customer insights center. So yes. Are you solving those challenges? Did you learn from what those challenges the customer had? And how are you making sure that you're not doing it again? Now? We're talking a lot about customer experience here. But you said something else that made me chuckle it still kind of gives me a little chuckle when I think about it. And you had said, you know, you had sure think that marketing is so simple based on what we see on LinkedIn posts about it. Yeah, clearly, there's more complexity and what our feed is telling us. What did you mean by Well, sure thing, it's so simple out there.

Alan Hale: 14:59

So here and get my wife to start my car, I guess. But um, so if you look under LinkedIn posts, and you kind of get several themes going on, but one is, it's so easy, all you need to do is have SEO or it's so easy, just be a good copywriter. And, and so you look at this and it's like, they're starting with tactics, they're not starting with the customer, it's not a light switch, you don't, you know, it's not a NASCAR 500, you flip the switch on the checkered flag comes out, you have to start with your customer segment, insights, your ideal customer profile, and develop a value proposition. And if you're not doing all that, you're actually doing harm for the client. And I preach a concept called House of marketing. And there's a lot of things in that house of marketing. But it all starts with customer customer segments and understanding them. And and I just had this discussion the other day with someone on LinkedIn will be an animus, but they said, Well, you want to use customer insights. But that's a long term strategy. And I said, long term, you're not gonna be around if you don't use this, you're, you're you're like a blind, folded person trying to hit a pin yada, and hoping that you hit hit it, and maybe you will, maybe it's lucky and all the goods come out. And so I don't understand why a lot of people think this is easy. They want to jump to the tactics, they want to jump to the tactics, they're real good at, you know, thanks. If I saw SEO, you need SEO, Rick, you need SEO, you know, rather than taking a step back and saying, Okay, what is the product? How do customers buy the product? How do they evaluate it? You know, the buzzword now what's what's your journey going through this? What's the best way to intercept them? How do we how do we define our ideal customer for but no one wants to do that it takes too much time. You know, I had a client will be nameless, and they wanted to jump to let's just do the lead generation. Let's do what you know what's there. And it's like, Okay, grab the low hanging fruit. But you're not going to get a big chunk of the market. You need to understand you know, where the market is what the segments are.

Rick Denton: 17:34

Oh, Alan, I'm not too worried about your car, it'd be fine. You don't need to have somebody turn on your car. There's a reason and a space for healthy discussion. And I hope that you can take that discussion a little bit different direction with me right here is I asked you to join me here in the first class lounge. We're going to move quickly here and have a little bit of fun. Okay, what is a dream travel location from your past?

Alan Hale: 17:56

Ah, I would say Paris and a Viking cruise we took four years ago before COVID were recovered a bunch of Europe it was it's just always it's it's lovely looking at different cultures, different wines, different beers in all so

Rick Denton: 18:17

Amen and Amen and Amen. Absolutely. So you've had that in your past what is a dream travel location you've not been to yet

Alan Hale: 18:26

well, I there's some cities on my bucket list like Prague. I've been to a lot I've been in Italy. I would like to go to Israel at some point. Yeah. You know, so I guess depending how long I live, the bucket is bigger and bigger. But Israel probably number one right now. So wonderful. We're doing we're doing a cruise this fall in France and in Amsterdam, but we're talking about 2024

Rick Denton: 19:05

Nice. What is a favorite thing of yours to eat?

Alan Hale: 19:11

I love steak, and scotch. All right,

Rick Denton: 19:17

we're done here. Episode end, hit stop. Let's leave you know

Alan Hale: 19:21

I'm trying to be careful the red meat thing but once a week I'll have steak and there's nothing like ending the week or ending a client call with a Scotch or just thinking about things and it's got to be single malt though.

Rick Denton: 19:35

So listeners Al and I are recording this at Friday

afternoon. 1: 19:38

47pm Central Time. I am now thinking of steak and scotch and cannot wait to explore those options. Now Alan, this is the other direction. What is the thing your parents forced you to eat but you hate it as a kid.

Alan Hale: 19:55

I gave you two answers. So one was brussel sprouts.

Rick Denton: 19:59

Amen. Okay, yep. All right.

Alan Hale: 20:01

To me they they taste like old shoes, you know? Now it's funny because as I've gotten older one of my daughters had a boyfriend that taught you how to make brussel sprouts in maple syrup and bacon. And I seem to like that a lot.

Rick Denton: 20:23

Got a mascot with maple syrup and bacon maybe just start with a better base. Closing out the lounge with the travel question what is one travel item not including your phone not including your passport that you will not leave home without?

Alan Hale: 20:39

Does iPad count or no? Is it more towards your iPad there? I would say I pad and yeah, I would say my iPad.

Rick Denton: 20:57

Alan, the iPad is has shown up in the show several times. So it isn't acceptable out answer for sure. I can see why folks would want to make sure that that is there one item they will not leave home without. Hey, we've been talking a lot about the challenges of customer experience marketing and and what that looks like, well, we know what's going to solve it. All right, right. It's the topic du jour its technology. Its AI its digital, that's going to solve everything right?

Alan Hale: 21:23

Which chit chat GPT is the new guy, right? I mean, I think they're opening up a church in our neighborhood. You know, so, again, all this technology is good. But you have to master the technology, you cannot be a servant to the technology. And some technology is great at getting data. But again, I always start start with the customer. Start with the customer relationships don't just automatically jump to the technology. And yeah, you know, I don't want to sound like okay to a guy with a hammer his hand everything is a nail. But it all starts with the customer. And you have to understand how they buy, how do you keep them happy? How do you make them raving fans, I mean, in the end of the day, you know, you have to make a profit. But marketing really has two big objectives, bring in new accounts, and make sure existing accounts don't churn. I mean that that kind of covers all the sins. And it when I see is everyone's worrying about new new accounts. Everyone's in love with the new technology. And and you couple this, Rick with a statement that Bain consulting made on in b2b, only 21% of companies identify and act on insights, one in five. Yeah, one in five. And I believe that that's even higher than what it is because they probably sampled into larger. So basically, you've got people run around, they don't want to talk to the customers, they'd rather play with their technology, their chat bots or AI. And in b2b, it's just, it's amazing. I mean, it's it's, and the more technical toys we have, the less we want to talk to customers. It's just, and I'll just say, marketers, get off your butts, you know, go have some discussions with these people find out what they like about your where they want you to improve how you stack up with the competition. And so I get a lot of reasons why they don't want to do it. But we need to change this.

Rick Denton: 23:50

Yeah. And I'm curious, though, so all we hear about is data, right? Data does data analysis, this data science, all of that there's so much focus on data, and we talked about in the intro talked about as you were talking about b2b and b2c, that companies have a rich trove of data. But you just said there's some that shocked me clearly, this idea that only one in five actually do anything with the insights. Why? Well, I mean, if it's there, why do we see so obsessed with data

Alan Hale: 24:18

thing? Tech now they're not using the appropriate methodology to get the insights, you know, you send a web survey out, you get a lot of numbers, it's cheap, you don't get a lot of insights. And, and there's a fear of talking to customers, the CEO thinks it's too expensive. It's gonna gonna get the competition to know what you're doing. The reality is, it's a paradigm. You know, what I hear over and over again, which is hilarious as we know what our customers want. They don't and some research projects I will have senior management take a modified server A versus their major customers. And the funny part about this wreck is if they're aligned very well, they're harder on themselves. If they're not aligned at all, and I had a client, this is a true story, I had a client in the construction equipment industry. And I'll just leave it like that. And we talked about the Net Promoter Score. And we said, you know, if you took your top 20 accounts, what do you think on average, your net promoter score would be, and they're gone off 30% 40%. And we went to the market and talk to their top customers, it was minus 46%, minus 46. Boy, you said you gotta seek, you're not aligned, you're not in the same page, you're not in the same library, you're like, in different cities. And there are a lot of reasons for that. But it's just, in my mind, that just kind of said, okay, no matter what you do, it's the management team. Like they're not, they didn't seem to care that someone made them do this survey, but

Rick Denton: 26:03

let you know, Alan, we're coming close to the end of time here. And that actually triggered a thought for me. And that is, you've been around a lot of marketing leaders and a lot of leaders, and you've seen them come up in many different paths. What are some of the paths that you've seen that a marketing leader that they've come up with, that really helps them drive more towards the customer, or perhaps drives them away from the customer? What are some of those different paths that you've seen someone come to that point of marketing leadership,

Alan Hale: 26:30

so I'm gonna give you kind of two paths I've seen. So one path is if you take a high level marketer and b2c, they understand the importance of the customer importance of insight. They do ethnography, they do focus groups, all that stuff. And when you put them in a b2b environment, they still have, you know, we got to talk to the customer point of view, what what's really happening in b2b is, there's a race towards using technology, like you'd mentioned. Also, what I've seen as the vice president of marketing of sales, and marketing, has come up through the sales side about 80% of the time. Okay. And what that means is that when, when sales are down, they reach the arrow out of their quiver, pull it, work harder, build the funnel, close, they don't do a lot of marketing, you know, they may work with an ad agency for for branding. And the funny part is, I don't blame the individual, I blame the company, the company should be training these people in marketing, using like an executive MBA class, yet a generalist marketer to mentor this person, and they can figure out what marketing activities they have. You know, it's like, if you were handed a map of Cleveland, and you're in Chicago, and you're not making any progress, you don't just say, well work harder, read the streets better, you know, so they they need they need some tools. But everyone is in a race to close existing sales, build the funnel make the quarterly numbers and and it's a it's a self fulfilling prophecy. I mean, you know, everyone else is doing it. We'll do it. We'll join on. And I guess if I would just say one thing is, don't be alarming. Look to see how your company can best girl. And it's always on the customers, what do they want? What do they value and don't don't push products at the customers understand how to sell to the customers.

Rick Denton: 28:41

Let's end right there. That Alan, we're gonna go no further. That is a wonderful place to end if that listeners cement on those last three sentences. Everything else Alan said was phenomenal, too. But capture those last three sentences. That was that was gold. Alan, Alan, if folks want to gain more gold from you get to know a little more about your approach to marketing your approach to b2b, your your insights around the customer overall, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you,

Alan Hale: 29:06

they can either send me a message on LinkedIn at Alan Hale, or we have a website www.consightmarketinggroup.com consightmarketinggroup.com. And let's see kind of the stuff that we do. Again, we're all business to business, a lot of voice of the customer loyalty, turn company, turn customers, etc.

Rick Denton: 29:34

Some listeners, as always scroll down, all those links are in the notes. You don't have to leave the episode, click there and get in touch with Alan to learn a bit more. Alan, again, thank you so much for being on the show. I hope that you do find your way into a scotch and steak somewhere later this afternoon.

Alan Hale: 29:49

It's icing up now. Oh, yes. Oh, well, you've

Rick Denton: 29:52

inspired me. I still got a few more meetings. But yes, you've inspired me. And the insights around b2b Yes, there's that fundamental piece of the fact that do customer experience, right? And you'll get that return loyalty and increased value but so much is different in the b2b world. And I'm glad that you helped amplify that for for me and for the listeners, Alan, thank you for being on CX passport.

Alan Hale: 30:12

And thank you for for having me, Rick. This has been a great discussion. I'm I'm very passionate about getting these concepts out.

Rick Denton: 30:25

Thanks for joining us this week on CX Passport. If you liked today’s episode I have 3 quick next steps for you Click subscribe on the CX Passport youtube channel or your favorite podcast app Next leave a comment below the video or a review in your favorite podcast app so others can find and and enjoy CX Passport too Then, head over to cxpassport.com website for show notes and resources that can help you create tangible business results by delivering great customer experience. Until next time, I’m Rick Denton and I believe the best meals are served outside and require a passport.