Customer-facing roles are all positions that in some way engage with the customers. In this Expert Insight Interview, Juliana Stancampiano talks about customer-facing roles and the power of teamwork. Juliana Stancampiano is a successful business leader, entrepreneur, CEO of Oxygen, and published author.

The interview discusses:

• Customer-Facing Roles
• Empathy and Communication

Customer-Facing Roles

The most popular customer facing roles are in marketing, sales, and customer service. Marketing speaks to the audience, sales closes the deal, and customer service enhances the customer experience. Sometimes marketing people do not think they have direct contact with the customers because the interaction is not two-way as in sales and in services. That is why some marketing companies started to create their strategies based on real people instead of imaginary personas. Even though these are separate departments focused on their own work, they must find a way to collaborate with each other. It is easy for sales to blame marketing why something was a failure and vice versa, but improved communication between departments will bring greater success with customers. Nowadays customer service experience will either “make or break” the deal, thus companies such as Microsoft renamed many of its services to focus more on customer success because that is where customer satisfaction and loyalty come from. The real growth comes from repeat customers, so companies have to adjust their services to benefit their current customers during the pandemic.

Empathy and Communication

The key to improving customer-facing roles in the future is to have empathy not only for the customers but for the team that you work with as well. People should continuously try to walk in other people’s shoes. For example, a seller should be comfortable to approach the marketer at any time to ask for the explanation of why something is done that way. That will enable the seller to get some value from it as well. In order for the teams to collaborate and work together, there must be deeper communication between the teams where everybody feels comfortable to ask as many questions as needed. That enhances both employee performance and customer experience. The common mistake people do is that they are afraid to ask questions. Many times, during the meetings, people do not understand things but are still reluctant to ask. Therefore, the company needs to create a company culture in which people feel safe to ask questions when something is not completely clear. Those little silent treatments can produce little mistakes, but if they pile up, it can accumulate to a bigger problem. Overall, clear internal communication within the company will make everyone to be on the same page, which will automatically improve customer experience.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

Pandemic experience is different for everyone. Many people probably use this time to reflect on their past choices and to think about the future. In this Expert Insight Interview, Jenny Fenig discusses intuition and finding your true calling. After a successful corporate career in NYC, Jenny Fenig became an entrepreneur and intuitive business coach empowering females in the online business.

The interview discusses

• Finding Passion
• Creating Relationship with Yourself
• Choosing More Quality Time

Find Passion

Everybody experiences ups and downs during their life. When pandemic started life as we know it stopped, so now it is a great time to rethink what we want to do. Was the plan we had earlier something we really want to do or was it just because someone told us that is how it should be. Making a corporate career somewhere in New York City might not be the right thing to do if your intuition, that little voice within yourself says that it is not right. It is important to find a job we love and are passionate about because that is how we spend our everyday life.

Relationship with Yourself

One good thing to come out from this pandemic is that it brought people back together. We are so busy with our lives and we are used to doing everything individually, that it is a nice feeling to spend more time with the family because that is where the most genuine support comes from. This is a great time to show to the youngest ones that even though we all feel confused now, with faith, patience, and discipline we can go through current challenges. The system we inherited was already flawed, thus the one we will rebuild will bring a positive change. However, just like how martial arts and yoga teach us, the real change comes from the relationship you create with yourself. People became so obsessed with social media and picturing the perfect life, but the real question is when all that superficial disappears and we stay on our own, do we like what we see then?

More Quality Time

Considering that pandemic affected us all, we can all take part to make a change for the future. It is unusual to see LAX, one of the busiest airports in the world, completely empty. But it does raise a question, how much will business travel change? People realized now that there is no need for in-person meetings when meetings can be held online as well. We found ways to do almost everything online which will be productive for future business in terms of cost, time, and efficiency. Less work travel both by air and ground will enable people to spend more quality time. There are plenty of beautiful destinations that may be a half-day ride from where we live that we never ever thought about going to visit, for example. Many people started visiting places by their RVs again. It feels like people started returning to basics, which can have a positive impact on humanity as well as on the environment.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

Companies usually struggle to manage their reputation during the crisis. The key is to make smart moves to benefit the ones that matter the most to the company. In this Expert Insight interview, Bill Coletti discusses how to manage a company’s reputation in a crisis like this one. Bill Colleti is a professional development expert with more than 25 years of global experience in reputation management and crisis communication.

The interview discusses:

• Focusing on the Current Needs
• Responding to the Situation
• Conscious Decision Making

Focus on Current Needs

In crisis always follow ABC rule: Always Be Communicating. Everybody expects from leadership to be decisive, but the best thing to do is to communicate your current standpoints to the employees. For example, you can say that you are planning to bring people back to the office by Labor Day, but that you must leave space for flexibility because the situation changes easily. It is important not to get caught in the situation to choose between science and economics but to only focus on the organization’s well-being. Another important thing is to show genuine care for both employees and customers. The company needs to take a holistic approach where it manages the whole person. It will mean a great deal to employees if the organization puts effort to ensure that there is a daycare for the kids. From the customer’s perspective, reaching out to the customers to learn their current needs and creating personal relationships in the crisis time builds a great reputation for the company. This is a type of selling as well, and this human action approach will help the organization to grow stronger post-crisis.

Respond to the Situation

In a crisis, the key difference between good and great leaders is the speed of responding to the situation. The organization needs to stay truthful to its purpose and clear on its chain of command. Chain of command is usually a bit overlooked and that is okay if the leadership succeeds to be so clear to everyone in the organization to create an overall synchronization.

Good approach for a company of any size to practice handling the crisis is to open any page in New York Times during a staff meeting and pick a topic – and, then to discuss how they would handle that situation. This approach also helps to see how your employees think and where could they be placed in the chain of command pyramid.

Make Conscious Decisions

Crisis brings up different emotions in different people, and leadership cannot please everyone. The key is to go back to the organization’s mission and values and to make a conscious decision about which stakeholders matter the most. Speaking clearly and truthfully to the ones that matter the most will build the trust and ag along with the others as well.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

How familiar are you with your current financial strategies? In this Expert Insight interview hosted by John Golden, Derrick Van Ness discusses financial and tax strategies to help small businesses. Derick Van Ness is a tax and financial strategist passionate for work with small business owners to help them maximize their profits.

This interview discusses:

• Taxes
• Cash Flow and Liquidity
• Common Mistakes

Taxes

People usually choose their tax specialist online or by a recommendation. The tax code is very comprehensive, and nobody has the full knowledge of it, therefore, it is recommended to have your taxes reviewed by a new set of eyes every three years. Per $100,000 in taxable income, small businesses overpay on average around $11,000 yearly. This is a significant amount of money for a small business. A thing that separates okay from a great tax specialist is how proactive he or she is. The proactive tax specialist will meet with you at least once or twice before December 31st to see how things are going with your business and where you will probably be at the end of the year. Based on how much effort they put in their work, tax specialists can be separated into two groups, tax recorders and tax advisers. Tax adviser is someone who will really look at the numbers with you and help you to make a decision, while a tax recorder will basically just record your transactions.

Cash Flow and Liquidity

Another financial strategy for small businesses is the Money Maximization model, which helps to grow money somewhere easily accessible. With this model, the returns you get are similar to the stock market, but also if the emergency or opportunity comes up, this model offers liquidity. Thus, this method offers less risk and easy access to cash. Cash flow and liquidity are very important for small businesses. People have to be aware of their cash flow and to be honest with how long it takes from executing the sale to invoicing to collecting the payment. It is good to have one or two months of expenses in savings just in case optimistic projections about when the payment will arrive do not happen. A systematic savings plan where each month a set amount of money goes into a savings account will help you to get richer every month and to make more confident decisions for your business.

Common Mistakes

The most common mistake business owners make is not keeping the track of their cash flows. They make a lot of money, but they do not know where it goes. You should have at least a general awareness of your cash flow by going through it at least once a week. Another mistake is that people invest in things they do not really know. If you decide to invest, it should be something that you know about it, something you care about and something you control.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

Doing business nowadays requires alignment between marketing and sales teams. In this Expert Insight interview hosted by John Golden, Bryan Phelps discusses five things salespeople can do that will help the marketing team. Bryan Phelps is a founder and CEO of Big Leap, a digital marketing company specializing in SEO, Social Media, Online Reputation Management & Marketing Automation.

This interview explores:

• Communication
• Building Relationships
• Constructive Feedback
• Continuous Collaboration
• CRM

Communication

We are seeing a lot of changes in all markets. The first thing these two teams need to do is to discuss this shift in the market. Marketing teams usually have a persona created based on the last five years, but now times have changed, and salespeople are the ones who can address people’s current needs the best. Thus, if salespeople communicate accurate information to marketing, marketers will be able to provide the right messaging to the audience.

Build Relationships

The second thing is to find ways to build relationships between marketing and sales teams because often there is a big divide between these two. We all like to work with the people we like, so finding time to get to know people from the different teams builds the relationship. Sometimes it is as simple as grabbing coffee together, but it can be beneficial to invite each other to team meetings as well. Inviting each other to the team meetings will help both sides to learn more about the other side’s world.

Constructive Feedback

The third tip would be for both teams to give more constructive feedback. Many times, marketing teams find new sources like paid search or SEO and spend a lot of time and money on it. But, 90 days later reevaluation shows that the investment did not really work, and that is when the blame game starts whose fault was it. By collaborating more frequently, the sales team would be able to give more information about source lead and quality, and the marketing team would be able to adjust it earlier.

Continuous Collaboration

The fourth thing is for both teams to continue working together after the lead comes in. Sales teams need to have trust in the marketing teams because marketing teams have CRM and automation tools to automate some of the steps. That way sales still have control over the product and can focus on actual selling, but the marketing expertise helps the process to go way smoother.

CRM

The last but not least tip is to keep the CRM up to date. With CRM updated we can see what is the most productive for the marketing team. By marketing teams having better returns and spending more money, sales teams will be able to get better quality leads. In conclusion, from the technical part, both teams benefit from the automation, but from the personal part, both teams benefit from communication and collaboration.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

Difficult times call for the change. In this Expert Insight interview hosted by John Golden, Gayle Lantz, author, speaker, and expert in shaping and changing the corporate culture on an executive level, discusses rethinking the future of the organization.

This interview discusses:

New Paradigm
Two-way Communication
Focus on What is Next

New Paradigm

When rethinking the future of an organization people tend to think in the short term, but to stay competitive and to stand out people will have to make radical long-term changes. The pandemic caused the businesses to enter the new paradigm and enabled them to start from the beginning with fundamental business concept questions. This is a good time for knowledge-based organizations to focus on identifying new opportunities and challenging the mindset to see positive. One way for the organizations to change their thinking is an idea of Future-proofing where leadership pre-solves future problems. For example, a lot of companies are struggling with requiring their employees to wear masks. The employees are compliant by wearing masks, but because of their dissatisfaction with wearing masks, they lose their morale. And the morale issue requires leadership to step up and interact with employees differently.

Two-way Communication

The great level of communication and engagement on behalf of the leadership is very important for change or reconfiguration. They say that there is no such term as over-communication in business, but the leadership needs to be cautious not to diminish the listening part. The leadership has the opportunity to leverage employee talent by hearing their ideas. There has to be a mutual exchange of information. Furthermore, the small-group dynamic has the power to push things forward faster. Instead of yearly strategic sessions, creating several little groups of people within the organization can help to be more productive and faster in bringing concrete solutions to the various issues.

Focus on What is Next

Smart organizations are devoting time to visioning. Different employees have different strengths; thus, the best leaders make sure to align the talent to fit the current company’s needs. Due to the home office environment, leaders need to check the progress more often. It is important to set expectations and measurements while giving the sense of flexibility that work from home offers. This is such a dynamic time, so leaders must be open to reprioritizing more than ordinarily. The biggest challenge people have is to overcome the anger and grief regarding the previous business plans. The key is focusing on the strengths and capabilities to determine where we want the organization to be next, and many leaders still have to work on it.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

In the new Expert Insight Interview, our guest is John Stoj, a financial advisor and the founder of the Verbatim Financial. His company stands out with a unique fee structure, which allows them to work only in their clients’ best interests. John’s mission is to use his knowledge and experience to help others plan a brighter future for themselves. Today he will speak about building stronger relationships and selling by listening.

In this interview, we explore:

• Leaving space for listening
• Building trust
• Choosing the right clients

Leaving Space For Listening

A lot of people struggle with listening because it operates on multiple levels, and they often stick only to the most superficial one. Without deep listening, you won’t be able to understand what your client’s real problems are and how you can solve them.
Your clients need space to tell you what they want. If they’ve reached out to you, it means they are interested, and the question is how to get them to commit. The key is to think strategically about when is the right time to stop speaking. The other critical factor is not being afraid of the silence. After you present them with all of the information and stop talking, it is natural for your client to need a few moments to process it. Once they start communicating, encourage them to speak more and more, and help them paint a fuller picture.

Building Trust

Developing trust with your client comes down to listening. It’s about building a relationship, and that can’t happen if you only talk and don’t listen. People will often mention some issues or things that worry them during a conversation without focusing on them. If you listen carefully, you will be able to understand those problems. Then you can bring them up in later communication and discuss some specific solutions, which will demonstrate great respect for your client. They will see that you hear them and look into what is bothering them, which is one of the best ways to establish trust.
If you have regular communication with your client and listen continually, then you may be able to anticipate certain situations and issues that can arise.

Choosing The Right Clients

People are different. They consume information differently, and different things are important to them. By listening, you are determining what kind of person they are and how you should approach them. It can also help you to figure out whether you should work with a specific person.
Not every client is going to be a fit for every professional, and that’s okay. You are trying to help them relieve stress from their lives, but it doesn’t mean you should take it upon yourself. Working with someone who isn’t a good fit will only stress you out and make it difficult to do your job well.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

How does video benefit you as a marketing and sales tool? In this Expert Insight Interview hosted by John Golden, Daniel Glickman discusses building marketing and sales through video. Daniel Glickman is globally appreciated marketing leader, author, and speaker. He’s a CMO of Wave.video, and he manages advertising, digital marketing and PR activities.

This Expert Insight interview discusses:

• Fundamentals of Video
• Future of Video

Fundamentals

In 2019 social media content started to shift from images to videos. Some businesses perfected the shift to videos from the beginning, while some needed more strategy. Video marketing is the usage of video to drive traffic and sales via email, social media, website, etc. The overall strategy behind the video is to change the workflow so that creating the video leads to less work rather than more work. One example would be to host a podcast, transcribe the conversation to blog or outsource it to someone who writes the summary, and lastly to create the SEO optimization for it. An even bigger audience can be reached if you tag the guest from the podcast. Sometimes a video can replace other activities, but usually, it is an addition to them. It varies whether the content or production of a video is more important. If the video is posted on a homepage, the production value is very important simply because it is the first thing people see and it serves as a display. However, if the video is going live, the content is what is really important there because it is in real-time and it serves as a news channel. The video brings more results than any other format. On social media, the reach is 300 – 600 percent higher for video than for image or text. Furthermore, if you already have posted a video online, paying a developer to adjust the video’s code correctly will enable you to have the video shown as a second or third result on Google’s search page. This is a great strategy, but in many cases and especially in B2B very few competitors have it.

Future of video

During the pandemic, even the business world embraced informality. Businesspeople do Zoom meetings from the bedrooms and kitchens instead of a work desk, and we all like it. This informality helps to create personal relationships and to humanize the brand. Marketers have the opportunity to strategize on it and to capitalize it. Some brands will be the leaders in this strategy, and the rest will just follow it. Since technology was dehumanizing the human level in business for years, this is the first time that technology actually brings the authenticity and sense of connectivity between people. In addition, over the last decade outsourcing became a big part of business operations. Just like in call centers, in videos, we can also hear different voices and accents. Having an international group of people working together helps to have a more specialized approach while cutting costs. Thus, in future video marketing can help businesses to embrace diverse communities and global operations.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.