Ron GuerrierRevenue growth is critical, but with so many options available to today’s informed and demanding customer, will just selling get you there? How do you reshape strategy, rethink solutions, and use technology to shift the focus of your whole organization from selling to solving customer’s problems?
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Transcript
Sanjog Aul [00:00:00]:
Hello and welcome to the segment on CTN. To learn more, please visit ciotalknetwork.com and the topic for today is From Selling To Solving and our guest for today’s show is Ron Guerrier who is the Chief Information Officer for Express Scripts. Hey Ron, how are you?
Ron Guerrier [00:00:19]:
I’m doing okay. Yourself?
Sanjog Aul [00:00:20]:
Very good, sir. Honored to have you and the reason we wanted to get together is to discuss an interesting area which always exists in organizations. So I’ll just say it out, people love to buy, but they hate to be sold to. This concept is understood by many, but still there are organizations and individuals within those organizations and groups and departments somehow feel that if you push hard, you will get your numbers up, your top line will grow but at the end of the day, with so much changing in the way customers are keeping themselves informed, the options they have and their expectations, this could only go so far because there are always choices. So our goal here today was how do we move organizations and the culture and people within it in such a direction where they are not focused on just selling or sales instead in solving people’s problem because then sales will come because the people would love to buy.
Sanjog Aul [00:01:30]:
That said, Ron, my first question is what do you think is the recipe which will make people come to you versus you having to sell? Why do we have a sales department in the first place? What should it be changed to so that it becomes a buyer facilitation department?
Ron Guerrier [00:01:56]:
Sanjog honestly great, million dollar questions. I’d happy to answer it. Some of my thinking on this response is based off of working 20 years with Toyota corporate in the corporate offices and Toyota has a very distinct approach to supplier management. It is a mutual arrangement. I benefit, you benefit, we benefit and through those 20 years I’ve hardened my thinking on that.
Ron Guerrier [00:02:22]:
After that I joined Farms Insurance Group and now I’m a subsidiary company, Express Scripts and so the way I always see it is the sales part of it. The hard push has never ever worked for me personally. It is a little bit overbearing. It comes across in some cases unfortunately desperate and what you don’t want to do is partner with someone that comes across in a desperate manner or they think or they approaching it as if they have the Swiss army knife of all chickfils. My solution will fix every problem you had and every problem you didn’t know you even had and that’s a little offsetting for one.
Ron Guerrier [00:02:57]:
The second one is if the sales department would think of itself as a solutions department, that’ll go a long way, understanding specifically what my need is. Hypothetically, I have back pain, please don’t provide me a solution for an ankle injury, as a weird example, I’m looking for something specific for back pain. What can you do to provide that and so that’s what I’m looking for when I’m looking for a partner or a supplier partner that can help me solve my solutions with challenges that I have and be honest, if you’re not really good at fixing a certain thing, say straight up, sorry, this is not really our wheelhouse. However, this is what we can do for you. Please keep us in mind when that is the thing that you’re looking for.
Ron Guerrier [00:03:42]:
So for me, that transparency and that honesty really goes a long way.
Sanjog Aul [00:03:46]:
See such a great answer that you provided and the clarity was very obvious because you were able to see yourself in the buying shoes and very clearly articulate what you would have expected from your suppliers. Now if you were to flip this and you become a supplier or someone who has something to offer to someone else, it’s interesting to note that in many organizations the same mistakes are repeated. Even though the expectations from the people who are selling to you or you’re buying from, you’re clear but when we end up trying to offer our services or solutions or products to someone else, we end up getting into that not exactly greedy mode, but more into getting from people versus helping them offer value which in turn will result in them becoming our customer. So where is the disconnect? Do your supplier management people end up being more intelligent and more level headed than the people who are cast whip going and generating revenue?
Ron Guerrier [00:04:54]:
That’s a great question and it’s the hard part of that is there’s a couple things I see. One, the supplier folks that are on my side, I see my supplier procurement team as our brokers if you will. I want to purchase a home. I don’t talk to the seller of the home. I go through my broker and they work on the P’s and C’s kind of the generalities and then what I do is I come in and we have a relationship that we build and we lack a better term use our supplier partner, our procurement team as bad cop
Ron Guerrier [00:05:26]:
and I think everyone understands the somewhat of the dynamic but I think what usually happens is when there’s revenue pressures on the sales team and we as a buyer know there’s revenue pressures, that’s when we start just getting things or doing things that are just not in the best interest of the organization. Here’s a quick example of that, I after 25 plus years in the industry, I know for the most part when just the year closes, a quarter closes for some suppliers and I know roughly two weeks prior to that, they give me the 80% discount and mortgage for this, the thing that I could get for 80% off because it’s trying to get a number. Me as a buyer, I tend to get really, my eyes get all wide open
Ron Guerrier [00:06:09]:
oh my god, such a great deal. I only need two products from them, but to give me a gravy deal on eight others that I don’t really need, but I might need one day. So I go ahead and buy everything and then I’m left with the two that I wanted, eight that I didn’t really need and then within a year, I get pressure from my CFO saying, hey, Ron, why do we have these 10 products? We only needed two, for other eight, we’re paying licenses, but no one’s using them. What’s going on? So it creates this weird dynamic where the sales groups, they sold and they got a good sale because they made their month end close or whatever, me as a buyer, I got a whole bunch of good stuff. Some of it I can’t even use.
Ron Guerrier [00:06:50]:
Now I’m getting pressure internal and it looks like being wasteful of our funds. So there’s just something that happened. That’s the euphoria of the closing the deal but is it? Are we doing what’s right for our customer? So quickly on that one, our customers at first steps are patients, doctors, am I doing what’s right for the patient and the doctor? I should always have that in mind as a buyer and I would really appreciate if the sales group that I’m buying from also appreciates who we’re trying to service. It helps a great deal in our discussions and our negotiations to make sure that we are focused on the right things as opposed to lack better terms. I’m faring a term from D.C. pork barrel spending.
Ron Guerrier [00:07:30]:
I’m buying stuff because it just happened to be available. I think we all can be smarter and it builds a stronger rapport within the buyer, me and the salesperson, whether it’s a technology salesperson or a supplier salesperson.
Sanjog Aul [00:07:44]:
So what you mentioned here, it’s an interesting dynamic. Now when you look at the salespeople who would like to have a killer quarter and they will find their way through to somehow sell to the people who may or may not need that solution or in additional, the other additional products that they end up selling but this behavior is somewhere coming from the expectation because you’re only measuring that sales group based on the dollars that they bring versus the qualitative experience and satisfaction. It seems like the customer satisfaction is somebody else’s responsibility within an organization and salespeople only get their bonuses because they brought a certain amount of revenue. So how do you expect that behavior to be instituted in an organization when your measures of performance and rewards and that metric is not aligned?
Ron Guerrier [00:08:41]:
So my quick thought on that is attaching an NPS. So let’s just say that a salesperson, 20, 30% of their comp is held in reserve and somehow there’s an NPS score that’s rendered six months later, whatever the timeframe that is and then you get those additional 30% of your account based on the NPS. Were they satisfied with what they bought? The solution and it gives them a vested interest to make sure they’re selling the right tools and it gives the customer satisfaction that salesperson does have my best interest in mind because in six months from now, a survey will go out and that promoter score will show, yes, I am a promoter of kind of the services and that individual or no, I’m a detractor and I am what I purchased was not what I needed and they didn’t do a good job understanding my need. So for me, that salvi the way I would potentially address that
Ron Guerrier [00:09:38]:
and on the flip side, in my technology shops, what we do is part of our compensation package, since is at my past role, our Net Promoter Score to our employees and to our agent was tied to our bonus. So we could think we’re doing a phenomenal job and then we go out to visit one of our customers and we realize what you’re using is not what was intended. That NPS has a bearing on my comp package at the end of the year and it does change behavior. It does change the way that you approach a problem.
Sanjog Aul [00:10:10]:
And is that NPS that you referred to, Net Promoter Score, is that an objective measure or is it something which when you’re offering, suppose you go to a salesperson or a sales group and say, we going to attach this as part of your calculation of the bonus and if it is not a hard math, if you will, then there would be a pushback because what they love is money. They came here to make money and not to, I’ll not say they’re not good people, but then they are going to look at the measure which is directly attributed to them and they would not say that they are the only people responsible for improving the Net Promoter Score and why should that be a measure in how much money they take home. How do you tackle that.
Ron Guerrier [00:10:51]:
And so what I would say to that one is some of it is subjective, full transparency but what I’m learning more and more, again this is a quarter century in this game is in a very small community. It’s an extremely small community. CIOs talk all the time. There’s a network, we all talk, we chat, we meet at conferences, we share notes, hey, this worked well, this didn’t work well and we do talk and there is definitely the subjective side of our organization and of our industry where you do have to make sure that there’s a constant deliverable and you are satisfying the customer need beyond just okay, did you save the customer 10% on a deal? That’s great but ultimately was the solution you sold them something that’s tangible, something that’s real, and something that’s added to value.
Ron Guerrier [00:11:38]:
The value play is extremely important and so that the dynamics of that, the mask, the catalyst definitely would have to be worked out but I can assure you that the community is a lot smaller than many people think. We do talk, we do share notes. A CIO at one location eventually becomes a CIO at another location and they bring some of their likes and dislikes to that new org as well. It’s just nature of the beast for the most part.
Sanjog Aul [00:12:03]:
Would you think the people who you have, whosoever you inherit, you can transform them into thinking in the direction that you want them to go, or does it require a cleanup and restart?
Ron Guerrier [00:12:15]:
That’s a great question. For me, it depends some, when I land at a certain location, I would come in agnostic. The way I approach it, I want to understand context. Why do we use that technology stack? Why do we partner with that supplier? Is there a long history with this is a long history of that. I always want to understand the context and then after so many months, your first a hundred day plan, you start really understanding, okay, here are the pain points. Here are solution providers that I’ve used in the path that could potentially address it.
Ron Guerrier [00:12:44]:
Some CIOs might come in and say, I’ve always done well with company X and hell or high water, I’m just going to use company X. So it depends on the persona of the CIO, the leader in the time but I believe the best CIOs in my opinion, and this is sort of where I want to aspire to get to, is I want to understand the wants and needs of the business unit, the customer we service, and also the technology team that I inherited and get all that into play and truly get diversity and thought and discussion before I say okay, effective immediately, we’re using supplier D. That’s just not my approach but don’t do that but there is a evangelizing that CIOs need to do as to why they believe the service provider of the solution is best for this certain organization. Again, not every tool is appropriate for every situation. We have to really understand as CIOs and technology leaders.
Sanjog Aul [00:13:38]:
Let’s take a quick break listeners. We’ll be right back and let’s talk about the customers today of the prospects. So they are far more enlightened than we may think and their expectations are somewhat different or maybe more than what you had in the past. Now if we had to get them to move in that buy cycle, I will stop using the word sell but in buy cycle what could we do so that we create trust, we impress them, we intrigue them and we inform them. What should be the change or how do we elevate the level at which we used to engage with them for us to tackle and rather get them as our customers or retain them as our customers for the long haul? What does it take? So please stay tuned listeners. We’ll be right back and explore.
Sanjog Aul [00:16:31]:
Welcome back. So we were talking about the level of sophistication, the level of enlightenment. The customers or the prospects in today’s day and age have reached. So we got to impress them, we have to intrigue them, we have to educate them but what’s the benchmark that we are aspiring for so that we are ahead of the customers and create and have the ability to create an environment where they are willing to buy from us versus same old and we just negotiate on price because we cannot show value. What are we doing? Where are we? How are we elevating our game, if you will, Ron?
Ron Guerrier [00:17:13]:
So as you ask the question, I have my clearly as the buyer lack of better term as a CIO perspective, but I also see where the suppliers on the other end have adjusted and made changes and I’ve seen where some haven’t. What I usually do in past lives, and I’ll do it definitely here in my current role is something called Supplier Day and what I do at Supplier Day is I invite our top suppliers that we have and we go through all our challenges for the upcoming year and here are the challenges we have, here’s what we’re trying to accomplish and then we give the suppliers and they bring in two or three representatives. Usually they don’t really talk because they’re competing as well. They come back and they say, okay, for that particular issue, this is the solution we have. That’s my way as a customer to be a little bit more strategic and very sorry at surgical in giving them our problem statement and then this is for the supplier to come and give me a very surgical response as opposed to a shotgun response.
Ron Guerrier [00:18:13]:
So that makes sure that the conversation is a lot more solution based and what I’ve seen is suppliers who understand that they do mockups, they create small little use cases that are really applicable to my need. They use dummy data, of course, but say, hey, here’s a use case on our solution takes it. While other suppliers act more like vendors and the way I describe a vendor versus supplier is a vendor is a one time transaction. If a vendor wants to give me 15 COGS, widgets, whatever, I pay for 15 COGS, widgets, whatever,. They’re on their way, I’m on my way. It’s just transactions like buying a hot dog at a baseball game.
Ron Guerrier [00:18:55]:
A supplier relationship is a little different. They get my wants and needs, I look at the quality of their work and we have a conversation and you build a rapport over time. They give me two or three widgets, we talk about it, the quality of it, then later I might need 10 more widgets. I will go to that one supplier because they have truly proven that they care about my needs and the quality definitely is up to snow and so that builds a core that’s long lasting as opposed to that vendor who’s only worried about the widgets he sells me at that point in time. So where I find it is that where suppliers definitely understand customer and they take the added effort to do the mock ups, to do the use cases, to go to the customer’s lab, which we most customers now have anyway and you can show those use cases because of the CIO. You definitely have to like win me over that you could get the job done
Ron Guerrier [00:19:48]:
but more importantly, I have to turn over to my head of sound set of marketing our digital chain. Even our attorneys nowadays said this is something that’s in the best interest of the company. I think sometimes the supplier community forgets that in some cases the CIO is the intermediary with the rest of the C-suite and we have to be able to tell a good story. The one thing I’ll say before I close on this one topic is the one thing that just is the bane of my existence is when the supplier community feels technology suppliers that I’m talking about feel it’s okay to go ahead and do an end around the CIO for the IT leadership team as opposed to working with because when you do the end around, you reach out straight to the CFO or the CEO and guarantee you nine times out of 10, there’s a great rapport between that C-suite and CIO. All they’re going to do is go back to the CIO and say, hey, I just got this solicitation. What do you think? That’s not the way you build a good rapport. The way you build a good rapport is you talk to the individual on C-suite that is responsible for that domain and you work with them.
Ron Guerrier [00:20:55]:
So I just wanted to add that because that’s something that has worked well but also has worked really poorly. When those end arounds do happen.
Sanjog Aul [00:21:04]:
And you are totally right about it, this is a great message for all the technology solution providers who will end up listening to it as to how to work together with the IT leadership which will actually benefit them, that’s great. Now, coming to the prospects that you are approaching or the existing customers you’re trying to retain as an organization, when you know what you need, you can deal with your suppliers well and you can coach them and educate them but that’s not always going to be the case when you’re dealing with your own prospects and customers and that means you’re going to navigate through some uncertainty, some darkness, some vagueness about what would pull them in. So are there certain things done using technology, using process change, using any culture shift which you feel in your experience has done made a dent, a big dent in what the outcome you were expecting?
Ron Guerrier [00:22:04]:
So again, 20 years, my DNA is Toyota blood and there’s terms that I’ve picked up over the years from trips to San and what have you but one of them that’s always resonated with me is the term called Genshi Genbutsu. Genshi Genbutsu means go look gilchri and it is kind of a kaizen approach to things. What I do in any role that I’ve been in is I go out to the customers and just like the suppliers to solicit what my wants and needs are and my challenges. I do the same thing as a CIO to the customers I service.
Ron Guerrier [00:22:38]:
As an example, at Express Scripts, we have well over 3,100 clients. These are from Fortune 500 companies to small companies that leverage our services and so we have advisory boards, and as recently as last week, we had an advisory board on the west coast and we sit there and we talk about our technology strategy and the platforms they sit on and I solicit from them what’s working, what’s not working, does this meet your need, for example, or we know in a digital world, batch doesn’t work. So we are trying to go more real time as much as possible. Here’s our transparent challenges and here’s where we’re going and will this work for you as a client and just having that rapport, having those Q&A sessions, being transparent on our challenges, definitely builds up the rapport with my client base.
Ron Guerrier [00:23:28]:
So I’ll make sure that they feel that we have their best interests and we’re hearing their challenges so we could cater our solutions to them and then it takes those learning from my client base and when I have a supplier day or I talk to a supplier, I’m giving them relevant feedback from what’s not Ron’s perspective, but what other clients of mine really feel about the solutions we provide them. So there’s that brokering that we have to do and I think it’s a really important job of any CIO or any technology leader understanding that Genshi Genbutsu, how are they leveraging the technology today? So in reason I bring this up is my first job at Toyota, whole full transparency. I was a refill guy. I was in 1996. My job was to knock on doors and say, hey, you got a car, you don’t.
Ron Guerrier [00:24:18]:
You Got to payment you don’t I need the car back and it’s a tough conversation but it has to be had sometimes and there’s been times where my device that’s in my hand gave me the wrong vintage, the wrong number for the vehicle and I inexplicably picked up the wrong car. Again this was rare, barely ever happens but it did happen back in 95 and so for me it’s very important that at the point of contact with the customer the solution has to be white, has to be accurate and has to be customer centric and that is one of my jobs, is to translate what the customer needs are to the supplier community and the best suppliers and partners I’ve had are the ones that understand that and truly are empathetic to it and find giving me the right solution.
Ron Guerrier [00:25:02]:
Well that brokering that I will I play is very important to a supply to me and those that listen the best are the ones that have those long standing relationships and I’ve had relationships for plus 18 years now because they’ve understood that, they’ve listened and more importantly they said hey, well I’m we’re really not good at this area. We’re not going to bid on this right now. This is just not what we’re good at but when there’s something in our wheelhouse we’ll definitely be there for you and I appreciate that cander.
Sanjog Aul [00:25:31]:
So when you are looking at the very product itself, let’s actually take a break when we come back but I’d like to still share the question which we’re going to discuss here is the product itself or a solution itself which is being sold or being bought. Now the thing is we have seen organizations working very hard on their sales teams and service teams, et cetera, but the very product or solution itself looks like the one which is looking for
Sanjog Aul [00:26:00]:
a problem to solve.
Sanjog Aul [00:26:03]:
So when the base product has an issue, then all of this other detail or the investment that’s been made in pushing that product is essentially you are spending more money than you should to create the value that you should. Where do we align on one hand the customer relationship and the sales but also the product development or the solution development people such that at the end of the day the value which is perceived by the prospect or the customer who you’re trying to retain is going to eventually will be the best when you have the product which is a good fit. So where is this product and solution development and improvement process get aligned and where do you think technology can help in bringing all of These different constituents together. For an organization such as yours, which you are where you are currently or in the past when you work, please stay tune listeners. We’ll be right back.
Sanjog Aul [00:29:00]:
Welcome back. So with this actually the trends that we see nowadays, that everything is evolving, we are in this digital race and organization, at least from the technology standpoint I can relate to, and I’m sure you can too, Ron, is people are launching products and solutions just to stay in the game and come across as being relevant but those solutions and products don’t really add much value or they are looking for a problem and then there is a pressure created for their salespeople and then also the executive management, while they would tell the world that okay, we have launched this series of products, but they’re also failing miserably and that’s not just in technology, it’s happening all over. So as you say, the product and solution, a good one, should sell itself, but in many cases it’s not. So where are we going wrong and how do we bring all of these different pieces of the puzzle together so the customer is eventually served? Well, how can we bring them together and where can technology help?
Ron Guerrier [00:30:02]:
That is again another phenomenal question in that the product. So let’s just say that there’s a widget being built and I think the first thing is that product has to clearly meet the need of today, but it has to have a roadmap to evolve with the needs of tomorrow and I think everyone would agree that statement. I’m into classic cars, muscle cars. That’s great at the time but today, which Department of Transportation rules I need seat belts and I need airbag. So products evolve by nature and good products that are long lasting and so my thought on that one is that given that we’re in a very dynamic, extremely dynamic technology era, and only you get even more exponential those products have to be able to grow and connect to other products. Those when I say that is back in the day you could just buy a server and that’s what you have
Ron Guerrier [00:31:00]:
but now everything has interconnectivities amongst them. So your product has to be like to be terms someone agmas to the connection points one but also you have to able to demonstrate a product roadmap and I think as customers and clients we could actually share where we want to take a solution or we want to take an experience for a customers and the product that’s being sold to us hopefully is aligned with that. That’s the first thing. The second thing I been visited silicon many times and there’s a lot of startups. A lot of great ideas out there and a lot of those ideas were one time great ideas but again the challenge is can they grow and evolve along the way? If you can’t do that, if you don’t have a pilot that does that, there are bigger, larger organizations that will share that idea and then they will actually not only make it better, but they’ll be able to take that idea and that concept and plug it into their suite of tools as well or they’ll just acquire you. So the product truly is at the heart of what we’re talking about. Sales is extremely important, the marketing aspect is very important but without a good product here, it’s a love of coal in my opinion and that should get political
Ron Guerrier [00:32:17]:
but coal is not really going anywhere for long term future use but we’ll talk about an advocates. The advocates of yesterday is not going to be the advocates of tomorrow. So we really have to make sure we as a customer inform the supply to me where we want to go but the client may have to listen to where we want to go and hopefully cater their tools and their products accordingly.
Sanjog Aul [00:32:39]:
And so you do refer to the supplier community and we ourselves are a supplier to someone else. So if we were to look within and you as a technology leader are you invited to help streamline communication, collaboration, product development? It’s the feedback from customers and everything else leveraging technology in some way so that at the end of the day, your product evolves to something which will sell itself, as you rightly said.
Ron Guerrier [00:33:13]:
Yes, that’s the direction and the one thing I would also say is as technologists, our role is far greater in my opinion, just the technology solution. It is the process that goes around the solution. Quick example, if I join an organization and they do 10 steps to deliver a certain solution or a product to my in clients. My job is to challenge, do we need 10 steps? Should we do it with seven? Can we do it with five? We do with one and then find the technology that could actually optimize that experience. So it’s a little bit of both the technology play, but also the process play.
Ron Guerrier [00:33:51]:
So I’ll say a supplier and I’m a supplier again to my clients is to find ways to make life easier, make it simpler that’s extremely important. The user experience I’ve gotten really easy where my daughter could create a website in 10 minutes and it costs pretty much nothing. I tell my clients that, oh, you want a website, it’s going to cost you $20 million. It’s going to take a year and a half. I better have a reason why it costs that much and why there’s so many steps. I should be trying to make it more efficient and more cost effective to my client base and there go through the value chain, my suppliers should also do the same.
Sanjog Aul [00:34:35]:
So if we are going to look at the different avenues where we are going to capture the information with respect to sales interactions and like, for example, we use a lot of CRM systems and sales for integration systems, but then those become more transactional in nature, but then it doesn’t have, or would you say the technology has reached a point where whatever notes that a salesperson puts in there or customer service puts in there, we could use some intelligence or we can call out some insights from it to understand what does this customer want and let it not be subject to an individual’s opinion, but essentially getting into the heads of your customers, which not only tells you how to approach them, but also take it all the way back to what that product and solution should be. So it’s not developed because a product manager thought this is the feature and function we should have. Let it come from some primary data shared directly or indirectly through the interactions we’ve had with these prospects and customers. We’re trying to retain.
Ron Guerrier [00:35:47]:
Absolutely that feedback, that data point is crucial and the other thing on the product though is I would make sure the product thinks of a solution or problem state of tomorrow, fixing something of today is great but if it also is forward thinking that’s even better. It should be something where, take a step back. The supplier community, those that actually lack better term wow me are the ones that really challenge on the art of the possible. Why can’t we do this? Why can’t we do this and my product can do that and I’ll give you an example of where it’s done
Ron Guerrier [00:36:21]:
it. I think goes a long way when it comes to the dialogue within like myself and supplier but also given I’ve been in automotive, auto finance, insurance P&C and now healthcare works across industries. I think sometimes the product is focused siloed to an industry or solutions siloed to an industry but what I’ve learned through my experiences is you can learn so much more just looking across the across the face of other industry and say how do they solve for that? Like finance has a whole bunch of regulations. Healthcare has a whole bunch of regulations. However, at the end of the day we’re trying to get data and information to our clients in a trusted manner that’s important to both industries. How are they doing it across the aisle and how could I do it as well and a product that actually can look across the aisle and a solution provider could do that goes a long way because there’s a hardened use case that it can be done and that’s what interests me on a strong product and a strong supplier that was able to do that.
Sanjog Aul [00:37:22]:
And when we talk about successful companies they are mostly when they have a lot of repeat customers, not just selling one widget and be done. So if we are to make an organization or build a sustainable organization which has a long list of customers so keep buying a lot of different pieces have to come together. So if you were to wear your technology leaders hatch and say this is going to be my playbook of supporting the business in this, achieving this end goal. What would the chapters of that playbook look like?
Ron Guerrier [00:38:01]:
I won’t go through chapters 1 to 50. We don’t have time for that but I’ll give you the abridged cliff notes. So the first chapter is just get to know your customer, get to know the need for the walk which is what we discussed earlier on the talks. The other one would be to the transparency, the honesty of what the product can do, what it can’t do goes a long way.
Ron Guerrier [00:38:23]:
It’ll get exposed in due time if you can’t do a certain thing but the one thing I’d say above all when it comes to building sustainable relationships and growing your revenue and growing your customer base. More importantly, retaining the customers you have. There’s certain companies, I won’t name them, but they’re, they are amazing at this. They use customer testimonials in a way to sell the product. They invite CIOs, IT folks, marketing people, digital folks, to conferences, to discussions and it’s just a dialogue. This is what works for me. This is how this product helped my need.
Ron Guerrier [00:39:04]:
I’m not a salesperson, I’m a peer just like you and it has worked for me. So I’m not here to sell the product. I’m just telling you my experience with the product that goes, that goes extremely long way from the buying side of the house because I’m not just hearing a salesperson talk. I’m hearing someone who has the same pain point, experiences challenges I have and they’re telling me, says this product or this tool or this service has met my needs and I am very satisfied. That is a live NPS right in your face telling you, hey, I’m a promoter and I’m so confident in those products I purchased from the supplier that I’m willing to stand in front of you and tell you my experiences, the good ones along with the bad ones and I think those suppliers that have mastered that, they build, they retain, but they also build in a different way
Ron Guerrier [00:39:55]:
and I see it to be very successful.
Sanjog Aul [00:39:59]:
So everyone in an organization should essentially be a salesperson who whenever touch the customer. So prospects they should be able to or they should be enabled and empowered to get them to make a buying decision. That means I’ll just take an example of say a service technician, the person who may be coming in for a post sales service. That person essentially in today’s world is mostly measured on how well did you solve a problem versus them being extended or the training be extended to help them show more options to that customer that not only do you solve the problem that they had currently, but also put a seed in their head to say hey, how about this? Without coming across as that hey, you did not come here to solve my problem, but instead trying to sell me more as someone who’s a value creator on behalf of the companies like a brand ambassador and does the things which essentially converts that customer to be giving us even more revenue but we in that process, the technologies that we give that individual to do their job, they are not being aligned to make that individual a touch point with that end prospect or a customer to be able to increase the sales they increase. The lifetime value of a customer is this done by design, or is this like an opportunity which can be leveraged by organizations and technology can help here?
Ron Guerrier [00:41:36]:
I think it’s a great opportunity and as you spoke, I was thinking about the Ritz Carlton approach to customer service, which is legendary and it’s the same way Disney approaches things, is that every person that works on their property, any cast member, if you will, at Disney, every interaction is an experience. Every interaction is a brand. You’re a brand ambassador no matter what you do and so in the supplier community, let’s just say there’s a product, I bought the product for you two years prior, and we’re having an outage and I’m not naive to know that we have outages. It happens,
Ron Guerrier [00:42:10]:
it’s the nature of the beats and our job is to address those and hopefully reposit and mitigate it but when there’s an outage, what you want is the supplier. Now you’re beyond the sales. You now have a relationship with the supplier and when an engineer from the supplier is on a call, so we’re working on things. A supplier who, so back office, the wizard of OSRA is engaged. Are they engaged? Do they care about my needs? Are they responsive to an outage? I think a lot of suppliers, not a lot. I wouldn’t say that several suppliers don’t see that interaction, but once they’ve sold it, they’ve moved on to the next conquest, which, if I understand that
Ron Guerrier [00:42:48]:
but there has to be a sense of ownership throughout the organization, say, okay, every interaction is a sales opportunity. It’s not like a sales opportunity that I’m selling you something at this point, but I’m also selling you an ongoing brand. My brand is responsiveness. I’m interacting, I’m proactive, I’m providing a simple solution. It has to be systemic throughout the organization. Just like at Ritz Carlson, it doesn’t matter if you’re the doorman.
Ron Guerrier [00:43:15]:
It doesn’t matter if you’re the front desk clerk or the valet. If you come with a question, if they don’t have an answer for you, they will literally walk you down to the person who has the answer and do that handoff and I know it’s a little daunting because a lot of times a lot of transactions that happen, but instilling that sense of ownership throughout your organization on the sales side is extreme importance in my world right now. From my client support people to my CTO to myself, every interaction we have with the client is important, and we want to put our best foot forward to show that we definitely care about their needs and wants. It’s such a personalized environment we live in. Digital has allowed us to do that, but the human interaction has to be as personalized as the digital interaction that we profess. So I think that’s an extremely important point you just brought up.
Sanjog Aul [00:44:06]:
Let’s take a quick break, listeners. When we are back, let’s talk about how organizations can balance between shareholder expectations and what the customers want. Please stay tuned. We’ll be right back.
Sanjog Aul [00:46:28]:
Welcome back. So we are talking about making the customer feel good about how we approach them and then help solve their problems in the process make them as happy buyers and that’s of course the right thing to do. Now also we have shareholders to take care of and Wall street in case of a public company that we are not being hit there. So how in your view, Ron, can organizations deal with sales numbers which need to keep going up and at the same time helping customers stay loyal and be happy with that experience we are offering them?
Ron Guerrier [00:47:12]:
That is again a fundamental it can be seen. My quick thoughts on that are it can be seen as two totally diametrically opposing forces. I want to make sure I maximize shareholder value, but I also want to maximize the experience of my client base and my take on it, again this is my opinion is that if you focus on the client side and you ensure that you create raving fans, you create loyal retained customers, the revenue will come and that revenue hopefully will build upon bringing in even more clients. So your revenue, sorry, your retention stays hopefully and grows, but you also bring in and conquest more and that will in turn will create and create more shareholder value but I think in the time that we’re in today with social media, with public sentiments and how things are quick tickers because information is just so readily available now, shareholders, how do I put the shareholders definitely want to increase their value and all that stuff but I think there’s also something that’s changing a little bit is we also want to make sure that we’re shareholders of companies that are doing the right thing. It’s there, they have a mission
Ron Guerrier [00:48:33]:
and sometimes in some cases, and I won’t call out these specifics, but sometimes in lieu of revenue or increased share of value, the company just does the right thing and while it might give a blip short term to the shareholder values, there’s a long view as to some of those decisions. Again, I could cite some of them specifically that will go down that path but some major companies have made some waxy bedroom controversial decisions, but they did it for social consciousness or they did it because they felt it was just the right thing to do in lieu of shareholder value and they really feel confident, in fact their value story will stay intact as more of a strategic play. So it’s very complicated, I would say, to close it up, but I think if done right, you can actually maximize both with the right messaging.
Sanjog Aul [00:49:26]:
With what all we are trying to accomplish as an organization, which requires a cultural shift, a different way of managing things, looking at things, and the leadership mindset. So if you were to articulate or rather outline for the listeners the kind of leadership style and approaches we should use to get to a point where the whole organization, every department, every individual starts focusing on solving versus selling, what would that look like?
Ron Guerrier [00:50:04]:
So the way we’ve approached it in my parents role and past roles is inventus. Maybe this is my style and sometimes you take the style of the person who leaves you at the time, but mine is one of empathy. I like to have an empathetic approach to the solutions I carry. I try to put myself or my family in the shoes as the customer. How would they leverage this tool? How would they leverage the service? Would they want to use it? Would they want to, would it add value to their lives and one of the things we do is we create personas, okay, but here are the personas of people who might use this product and am I catering a solution for persona A, B, C or D or whatever persona you choose and that gets contagious because at the end of the day, you really get to see what you’re doing. Adds value back to the customer and then you put a little bit more extra in it.
Ron Guerrier [00:50:59]:
So when you get a call at 2AM of an issue, you feel a vested interest. It might be disruptive to me at 2 AM because I’m getting this call, but on the other end, a customer or client can’t get something accomplished and we’re disrupting their lives. So it really creates a sense of ownership, accountability, through an empathetic approach. Now, empathy doesn’t sell products. I understand that empathy doesn’t increase revenue, but it does change the behavior. Make sure it’s a mission for everyone to follow and for me, that’s always important, whether you’re a Heiji veteran of 60 years of life or you’re millennial just coming out of college looking for that great opportunity. Missions matter to everyone.
Ron Guerrier [00:51:41]:
So creating that mission and driving people towards that mission I think is a huge deal to get things together.
Sanjog Aul [00:51:49]:
On behalf of the show and our listeners, thank you so much, Ron, for sharing your views on how organizations can transform themselves so that they can focus less on selling and more on solving customer problems and deliver an overall better outcome for all involved. So thanks so much.
Ron Guerrier [00:52:08]:
So thank you Sanjog. This was great and great dialogue and appreciate the opportunity.
Sanjog Aul [00:52:13]:
Thanks once more. Please like us on Facebook listeners, hope you got some values out of what we discussed here today and search for CTN. Please be sure to follow us on Twitter and join our LinkedIn group and of course we have podcasts on iHeartRadio, iTunes, TuneIn, Google, you name it, we are there. Please listen, rate us so that more people discover us and benefit. So thank you again for listening to this segment on CTN. This is Sanjog Aul your talk show host. Till next week take care and god bless.
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