Intro

0:00:18 – (Bob Woods): Welcome to the Making Sales Social podcast featuring the top voices in sales, marketing, and business. Join Brynnee Tillman, and me, Bob Woods, as we each bring you the best tips and strategies our guests teach their clients so you can leverage them for your own virtual and social selling. This episode of the Making Sales Social podcast is brought to you by Social Sales Link, the company that helps you start more trust-based conversations without being salesy through the power of LinkedIn and AI. Start your journey for free by joining our resource library. Welcome to the show.

00:00:38:13 – (Brynne Tillman): Welcome back to Making Sales Social. I’m really excited to share our new guest, Laura Patterson, who brings a wealth of experience and deep passion for customer centricity to her role as president at Vision Edge Marketing from her early days selling chocolates door to door where she first understood the power of compelling value proposition through her extensive career developing and implementing growth strategies for various companies.

00:01:09:02 – (Brynne Tillman): Laura’s approach has been consistently centered around the customer. Her expertise is augmented by her achievements as bestselling author, international speaker and recognized leader in marketing operations. Laura, welcome to the show. 

00:01:25:06 – (Laura Patterson): Thank you Brynne, very excited to be here. 

00:01:28:90 – (Brynne Tillman): I’m thrilled to having today. I know I absolutely love customer centricity and I can’t wait to dive into your expertise around that.

00:01:38:08 – (Brynne Tillman): But before we do, we ask all of our guests one question, which is what does making sales social mean to you? 

00:01:45:67 – (Laura Patterson): Okay. I think it’s a great question. And of course, in today’s very social media oriented world, a lot of people think that means putting yourself out there on all these various social media platforms. But selling is a very human interaction.

00:02:03:27 – (Laura Patterson): At least I think so. Hence selling chocolates door to door or lemonade from a lemonade stand or whatever it might be. And so it’s really about the human interaction to me. That’s how I interpret it. And I think that to be successful in life, whether that’s in business, which I know we’re going to talk mostly about, doesn’t matter whether it’s in whatever it is, it’s about relationships.

00:02:29:12 – (Laura Patterson): And you need to be able to engage with one another in a human life. So that’s my answer to that question. What do you think? 

00:02:35:40 – (Brynne Tillman): Well, thank you for asking. I actually completely agree that making sales social is leveraging relationships, rapport building, bringing value, and ultimately helping people succeed. And from the social side of things, and while I am a true believer in AI and technology, I do not believe that any technology can ever replace the human connection.

00:03:04:10 – (Brynne Tillman): So I love that. And thank you for asking. Are you going to be the only one that’s ever asked me that. 

00:03:09:12 – (Laura Patterson): I guess, it must have something to do with the social of our social nature.

00:03:13:40 – (Brynne Tillman): Maybe? Absolutely.  Well, as I mentioned, you are very customer centric in your approach, and you’ve been an advocate for customer centricity for entire career. Can you talk a little bit of why it’s so vitally important, not just generally, but why today?

00:03:33:12 – (Brynne Tillman): It’s even more important than ever before. 

00:03:36:04 – (Laura Patterson): Okay, stop me any time. Take the camera anytime. 

(Brynne Tillman): Keep going. I want all your brilliance. 

(Laura Patterson): I’m going to wind the clock back just a little bit. And to Peter Drucker way back. Okay. So I’m taking the clock back to be the tracker who said that the purpose of business is to create a customer.

00:03:57:06 – (Laura Patterson): Right. That’s the purpose of business. That’s why we’re in business and we can’t ever forget that’s who we serve. And the biggest balancing act challenge that every business faces is how do you keep the equilibrium between creating customer value and business value and so customer centricity. And in a moment, if we have time, I’ll kind of give you how it’s different from other ways of running your business, because there are other ways to run your business.

00:04:30:17 – (Laura Patterson): And I’ve been in those places. I bet you have to. And probably some of our listeners of this podcast have been in some of those other business models as well. The customer centricity is pretty simple. It’s about keeping the customer in mind and every decision that you made for your business is pretty simple. All right. So and it’s easy to forget the customer when you’re especially in volatile times, under stress.

00:04:58:02 – (Laura Patterson): Anything can stress anybody in a business, any organization, right? People can be stressed by the economy. They can be stressed by talent challenges, supply chain challenges, regulations, all kinds of things can affect behavior. Daily challenges. I’m about to leave my 87 year old mother from Phoenix to Austin. Trust me, it’s creating stress. So we all face stress and it affects how we interact with others.

00:05:27:20 – (Laura Patterson): And so by being customer centric, it means that we have the customer

00:05:31:26 – (Laura Patterson): in mind in every decision that we’re going to make. And so that is, I think, a good way to think about it. 

00:05:38:03 – (Brynne Tillman): I think that’s really powerful. And one of our sayings is detach from what the prospect is worth to you and attach to what you are worth to the prospect.

00:05:48:06 – (Brynne Tillman): And I think that’s ultimately what you’re saying, right? This is about solving their problem. This isn’t about you and selling you stuff, but if your stuff is the right solution, it will sell. 

00:06:01:03 – (Laura Patterson): What is so great that you’re bringing that up? Because you’ve alluded to a couple of other kinds of ways to run a company or an organization.

00:06:09:05 – (Laura Patterson): So there’s product centric organizations and, you know those companies because they are if we build it, they will come and think about it. It can work because look what’s going on with generative A.I.. They built it and all these people came. We’re all enthralled, right? So you can be product centric for a while, but in the end, if you are not careful and we can talk about some examples of companies who build things and people came.

00:06:36:23 – (Laura Patterson): But if you lose the nature of why you’re the problem you’re solving the pain that you’re addressing or the aspiration you’re enabling, you lose sight of that. Eventually you will face consequences and then to your other point is, which you are such a great straight person Brynnee is the idea that we can just sell, right? We can just sell it.

00:07:01:11 – (Laura Patterson): And this is a very sales centric organization and we know those people because salespeople are running the show. It is all about making a number, right? And one day you’re the hero when you’re making a number. And if you’re not making the number, you know you’re feeling the pressure. But that’s a sales-centric organization. So there’s not there are other organizations out there and they’re not customer centric in that.

00:07:25:08 – (Laura Patterson): And those are examples of companies. And I bet people don’t think about places they’ve worked and see that was collected in some of the places I’ve been.

00:07:33:11 – (Brynne Tillman): You know, it’s interesting because I’m going to go, you brought yourself back. Peter Drucker I’m going to bring myself back with blockbuster. And I if you read example. Yeah. So Blockbuster initially was they were product centric, but they were very customer centric.

00:07:50:11 – (Brynne Tillman): They put a blockbuster in every single town and made it very easy for us to get there and made it really easy for us to rent movies. But they did not keep up with what their clients needed. They were very focused on the product they stopped focusing on. The people ended up going out of business, and now Netflix… 

00:08:09:07 – (Laura Patterson): That is a great example and we can see what happens with a company like Netflix, which was an ankle biter, and that was what Netflix is turned into and we’ve seen Netflix pivot right.

00:08:21:07 – (Laura Patterson): They went from where you had something come in the mail to a streaming company. They went from other people’s content to their own content. So they’ve learned how to pivot. And I think that is, again, a reflection of paying attention to what customers want. And it’s also a kissing cousin, which is market centric, which is basically market centric.

00:08:44:29 – (Laura Patterson): Companies are paying attention to things that are occurring in the market. Major trends. The difference between a market centric and a product centric company is market centric. Companies are catching a wave right? So big wave is already sort of there and then they’re kind of grabbing on to that and allowing it to pull them through. So we’re seeing that now in your world with all the things you’re doing around.

00:09:10:25 – (Laura Patterson): And I look at how many things have mushroomed as a result of generative AI, chatgpt, birth, which I think we’re only on the verge of its second year, right? It’s an infant right like crazy. But look at what it’s all around us. And I was mentioning to you, I’m playing around with this platform, which is a brand new product that came out of

00:09:36:22 – (Laura Patterson): it in quotations, the garage of a couple of people in Germany.

00:09:40:27 – (Laura Patterson): And it’s a gigantic platform, so they mushroom up everywhere right. 

00:09:47:80 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah, Yeah. And we’re actually launching one in a few weeks. So there you go. So yeah, and that’s and that’s the other thing is it’s very accessible and very easy to use open AI ultimately anyone can build on it, which is pretty cool. So you know, their product centric, but I think they have to be people centric as well otherwise things like that.

00:10:15:02 – (Brynne Tillman): The other llm’s, large, no llm’s I keep doing that large language models can takeover. Right. So like chatgpt is the mammoth in the room but Gemini for Google is pretty darn good and copilot which is Microsoft is getting it right So they have to continue to think in what you’re calling the customer centricity mindset in order to stay the magnificent.

00:10:49:25 – (Laura Patterson): Yes. So that is an example I’m playing around with this one application then we will move on to a whole different topic of course. Can hardly go through a day without talking about A.I.? So we are no exception here. But they’ve already sent information this company that builtcentre.ai about features or capabilities that they would love to have, you know, are you interested in having this?

00:11:13:20 – (Laura Patterson): Would you be interested in having that little survey? And I just want to see them use that, create the help they already have in their platform be able to do more or do more on my behalf, not give me more stuff. Does that make sense?

00:11:31:28 – (Brynne Tillman): It does, absolutely. Yeah. So I love that. So I‘m gonna kind of move to the challenge that you’ve seen your clients face when encountering kind of adopting the customer centric approach.

00:11:47:28 – (Brynne Tillman): So moving maybe from product centric or from a different sales approach to that customer centric mentality, what are some of the challenges companies that you’ve working face and how have you helped them kind of get over that?

00:12:02:13 – (Laura Patterson):  That is a great question and I think it starts with asking the question about what do you need to know about your customer to be able to make better decisions?

00:12:17:23 – (Laura Patterson): So I think there’s a stat out there Brynnee and I don’t quote me, but something like

00:12:23:06 – (Laura Patterson): most people make about 3500 decisions in a day. All right. That’s all decisions like what are we going to have for breakfast? And do I you know, for me, I have a korg machine. Which flavor coffee am I going to put in my korg, are you too? Okay, coffee is very good for me.

00:12:39:22 – (Laura Patterson): So something as small as that, Right. Two very, very big decisions, like things that I’m doing for my mom or the things I’m doing for my customers. Right. So very that whole gamut, 3500 decisions in a day. So some of those decisions are made the routine, you know, they’re just part of our life. We’re used to doing of they become very what they call that unconscious confidence..

00:13:06:06 – (Laura Patterson): Right. Something like that. The real critical thing in running a company is to be have clarity around your customers. And that is first question is who is your customer? Right. And a lot of people will, if you’re opportunistic and you’re willing to have anybody be your customer, you’ll take money from anyone for anything. You’ll say, Yes, I can do that.

00:13:33:11 – (Laura Patterson): for anything you’re probably not customer centric, you’re sales centric, right? Right. A good way to think about it. Well, I take money from anyone for anything. Even if I don’t offer it today, I’ll say yes because I feel I can do that. That’s a totally sales centric way of running your business, right? So first question is really, who are my customers?

00:13:56:24 – (Laura Patterson): And I was just telling

00:13:58:14 – (Laura Patterson): someone recently, they asked me a question about what was the worst business decision you ever made. And the answer to that question was, I spent a lot of time, energy and money getting on the government schedule, right, because I wanted to expand my customer base. And I thought that that would be a possibility.

00:14:20:22 – (Laura Patterson): But it took my energy away from where I had built a business. So much of it was a distraction in the end, not not necessarily an expansion, but a distraction. And so, again,

00:14:36:28 – (Laura Patterson): who really is your customer? So the first question I always ask people, what is the problem that you’re solving for them or the aspiration you’re enabling for them?

00:14:46:07 – (Laura Patterson): And if you don’t know the answer to that, you kind of need to step back, right? Because when I talk to people to say I’m an X, Y, Z company and I sell or I have X ABC, okay, well, why do people need that?

00:15:01:05 – (Laura Patterson): What who wants it? What is the problem that you’re solving right? You should if you don’t know the answers to those questions, you know, off the top of your head, probably need to do some thinking.

00:15:11:12 – Laura Patterson): And then the next question becomes where else can they get it? How else can they solve it? Why would they choose you to solve it? Right? So those are the kinds of questions you need to know the answers to if you’re going to be customer centric.

00:15:24:25 – (Brynne Tillman): Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. So if they’re making that shift is do they have to shift all of their content, their website verbiage, their email campaigns, or if you’re going to move from we’re selling something to we’re helping people, is it a huge list, Like when people come to you and say, All right, our selling something just isn’t working anymore, We know we have to go Customer centric. How big of a list is this?

00:15:54:27 – (Laura Patterson): There’s a great question. And so I spent a long time about a dozen years competing in triathlons.

00:16:03:26 – (Laura Patterson): And you don’t go out on day one and say, I’m going to compete in a triathlon and I’m going to win my race it just doesn’t work like that. I mean some people some people are natural athletes are really good.

00:16:17:03 – (Laura Patterson): Maybe they were as athletes and they were runners or swimmers or bikers in previous part of their life. And they’ve really got a great base for that. But the everyday person and that’s kind of true of the other company. So the first thing I always ask people to do is where can you have your first wins in the customer centric right?

00:16:38:25 – (Laura Patterson): A lot of people want to look at the worst area and there are some bad areas that you want to show up. The first places where can you have your first wins start there. And then the second question is what is your Achilles heel at being customer centric? Because we need to fix that.

00:16:54:26 – (Laura Patterson): So that’s the triathlons. I did not learn to swim until I was an adult, All right?

00:17:00:25 – (Laura Patterson): I just didn’t have the opportunity to swim. I had never really good in the bike, but I knew how to run. First of all, I had a very dear friend in high school who was a cross-country runner, and I would run with her for training in the summer. And then I was an Army ROTC for two years and you run everywhere.

00:17:16:09 – (Laura Patterson): Okay, So I knew how to run. Do you think most people know how to run? But, you know, there’s a difference in really being a proficient runner, right. 

(Brynne Tillman):  I have track boys. 

(Laura Patterson): So, yes. Okay, great. So you can relate to that. It’s not like you just run and all of a sudden you’re a magnificent runner. So you have. But that was a base for me.

00:17:34:18 – (Laura Patterson): But as I thought about being competing in triathlons, I needed to think about where I could have my first wins and what did I need to shored up that would allow me to make aheadway while other people think, we just need to be a much better son or a much better biker, that wasn’t what I shored up at first.

00:17:53:02 – (Laura Patterson): What I shored up first was my transition times because it was an operational area that would allow me to reduce my time, and it didn’t require me to be a better swimmer or a better runner or a better cycler. It was operational, and I find that is often true inside companies that once they figure out where they can get a good win.

00:18:13:28 – (Laura Patterson): For me, it was running because I’d already done five KS and 10 KS and things like that. But then operationally, where is the opportunity? And I think for many companies, that’s the next place for them to level up. 

00:18:25:18 – (Brynne Tillman): That’s brilliant. And then the biggest gap of Achilles heel I think is brilliant, right? So your biggest win and then your biggest pain point or gap.

00:18:35:18 – (Laura Patterson): And again, for me, my first race,

00:18:38:00 – (Laura Patterson): I need

00:18:38:18 – (Laura Patterson): a huge amount of my time was just in transition. It’s a whole funny story. I’ll tell you sometime offline. IA whole funny story that my husband’s basic comment was. You don’t have to be better at anything. You just need to get this X amount of time down to this X amount of time.

00:18:51:27 – (Laura Patterson): And that’s just really bad inefficiency.

00:18:54:14 -(Brynne Tillman): Yeah, that’s so brilliant. So, you know, what are some practical steps that companies can take? So you talked about identifying your biggest win, but what are some things they can do internally to figure that out? Or what are some questions that you ask your clients where they that could be my biggest win because sometimes that’s the hardest thing.

00:19:21:06 – (Brynne Tillman): Like, okay, we’re going, my God, absolute Laura. This is brilliant. Where do I start? 

00:19:28:07 – (Laura Patterson): Okay, so we have to start with data, right? So I’ll ask I’ll start asking questions like one question I’ll ask you often times is how many customers do you have? So here’s a thing. A lot of companies can tell me what their revenue numbers are.

00:19:43:09 – (Laura Patterson): They can’t always tell me how many customers contribute to that revenue, nor can they tell me, for example, how they organize or think about those customers. So here is a good example of one of our customers has a couple of hundred customers that make up their revenue, which is in the millions, right? So a couple hundred customers make up multimillions of dollars.

00:20:07:05 – (Laura Patterson): And then I ask them what percentage of those customers are your biggest customers and how much of that revenue do they contribute? They have to really think about that. Finally, they settled on something like 15 customers contribute 80% of our business. Okay? They didn’t know that off the top of their head. So getting into that conversation, then, my next question to them was, well, of those 15 customers, do you have all of their business or are only a small part of their business?

00:20:38:12 – (Laura Patterson): Could you have more or not more? That’s a customer centric kind of question. What’s in your data, for example? And what about so that’s 15? That means there’s 185 other customers. Who are they? Are any of those people you also do more business with and if you looked at them, do you have a huge number of them in a particular market?

00:20:58:20 – (Laura Patterson): Is that a market that you excel in for ABC Reason? Could you do more there? What is it about that market that you the problem that you solve, or is there a smaller group here that if you were paying more attention to or a bigger opportunity? It all comes down to really knowing who your customers are, knowing what your opportunities are, and then asking the question, what’s my competitive situation like?

00:21:26:00 – (Laura Patterson): I like these ten customers over here. I love to do more business there, but I’ve got three primary competitors and the only way I’m going to get more business is if I poach from those companies and I don’t have the resources to poach. Might not be a good win right? 

00:21:45:21 – (Brynne Tillman): Really hope that’s like a mike drop moment. Right?

00:21:48:24 – (Brynne Tillman): See, I can build a list all day long. The customer that I want. But is it practical to go after them, are those the big wins? Maybe my Achilles heel is not knowing or understanding that.

00:22:04:16 – (Laura Patterson): Well, data is a huge challenge for many customers. And I always ask this question What is one decision that you need to make, one business decision?

00:22:17:00 – (Laura Patterson): You to me, what information do I need to have to make that decision? Do I have that data to make it or do I need to go get that data to make it? Is it so just start with one decision. What is one customer centric decision I need to make? Because if you don’t know what decision you need to make, you don’t know what data to go with that.

00:22:43:13 – (Laura Patterson): And I think that’s a big challenge for a lot of companies, especially smaller companies who are overwhelmed by the amount of data that they have available to themselves, available to them today. Right. And so they’re overwhelmed by all of that. And I think they have to look at all of that. And I always ask the question of what is the decision you need to make?

00:23:03:09 – (Laura Patterson): Then we can figure out what data to look at.

00:23:05:17 – (Brynne Tillman): 

Gosh, I love this so much. I want to keep going. I do want to ask one question around principles and values and mission, because I feel like customer centricity is really about a value, right? It’s coming. It’s coming out of my mission is to help people to sell things.

00:23:29:24 – (Brynne Tillman): That’s right. So so tell me just a little bit like if you were to say, like the top three principles values that a customer center company should bring to the table, what are three principles that you recommend? 

00:23:48:17 – (Laura Patterson): I love this question, and you are right, There is a culture associated with customer centricity, just like there’s a culture associated with sales centric or culture associated with product centric, right?

00:24:00:20 – (Laura Patterson): It doesn’t mean that you don’t can’t be innovative in any of those, right? So you have to be able to solve people’s problems. You have to want to solve people’s problems or help them get to where they want to go. Whatever way you want to find them. You have to want to do that. You have to be responsive, right?

00:24:19:15 – (Laura Patterson): You have to be the responsive to people. And you can almost always tell a company that isn’t responsive by some of the interesting ways they behave when you call for help right? They have a script. They can’t vary from their script. That’s not a customer centric company. This is the script, folks, right? I get very frustrated when I just have a very specific question and they have to go to like 20 questions before I can ask my question of which the things that they want to know about me.

00:24:51:04 – (Laura Patterson): Absolutely irrelevant to getting an answer to a very easy question that has nothing to do with my my data, my personal information or whatever. Right. So and then I think you have to be collaborative both internally and with your customer. I think those are three things that are kind of very common inside companies that are customer centric.

00:25:12:24 – (Laura Patterson): They want to help, they’re responsive, right? They return phone calls, they answer the phone, they respond to email, whatever it might be, and they’re collaborative in the way that they engage with people. 

00:25:28:07 – (Brynne Tillman): So what I’m hearing that I’m loving is in order to really have a customer centric culture, you need to empower your employees to serve those customers.

00:25:41:09 – (Laura Patterson): Yes. So what one of the people I worked for for a very long time in my corporate career had the philosophy when it came to customers taking care of a customer, ask for forgiveness, not permission, as long as you were taking care of a customer. Now, that didn’t meet all rules, it did not mean you could violate all the rules and ask for forgiveness, but it was to take care of a customer, to serve a customer, and to solve a customer’s problem, solve their problem.

00:26:11:13 – (Laura Patterson): We’ll worry about how you did it later and then what you what we need to fix operationally so that we don’t have to have you violate rules or what you need to learn how to do better so that you don’t have to violate rules, right? 

(Brynne Tillman): We just changed the rules.

(Laura Patterson): That’s what he said, right, we may have to change the process, right?

00:26:32:24 – (Brynne Tillman):RIght right. Love them. Oh look you’re brilliant this was so much fun. I so enjoyed this. My last question is, what question did I not ask you that I should? 

00:26:25:90 – (Laura Patterson): That is a great question. And I think that one question would be around Can you measure it? Because I think every business needs to be able to measure how customer centric measures.

00:27:00:02 – (Laura Patterson): So when you have a revenue number are you have a profit number, that’s great. Love that. If you have a customer sap number, that’s great too. But I really encourage people to think about their customer measure and do they have measures that reflects how they’re engaging? So one very measure we talk about is how hard or easy are you to do business, Like how much effort does a customer has to have to engage in this in order to do business with you?

00:27:29:04 – Laura Patterson): As a simple measure, you can start asking customers, Are we easier to do business with? And on a scale of 1 to 10, right, it can be very simple. We actually have a blog post on measuring customer effort, but that is an example. Whether that’s getting the order or signing the contract or paying the bill or scheduling an appointment, whatever it might be.

00:27:49:11 – (Laura Patterson): So that’s an example, 

00:27:52:17 – (Brynne Tillman):Really just unbelievably great information that and I know that you brought enormous amount of value and you are audience centric because I know that everyone’s like at the edge of their seat right now. So if someone’s in a company that really says, you know, we are product centric over sales centric, but really want to move toward being more customer centric, how do they get a hold of you? Are you willing to talk to them? What’s the best way for them? 

00:28:21:20 – (Laura Patterson): I would love to talk with them. We have on our website a way just book a meeting with me for free for 30 minutes. Happy to have a quick conversation at Laura P at Vision Edge Marketing dot com. You can email me. I’m on LinkedIn, you can send me a note.

00:28:40:12 – (Laura Patterson): I try to be available because I am customer centric. You know, I’m sure I make my mistakes and stumble too, but my head is in the right place and that’s what’s important. 

00:28:55:08 – (Brynne Tillman):You have your heart, your heart right.facing it. Well, I am absolutely grateful that you invested your time with us, and I’m really excited to be able to showcase your your knowledge out into the world.

00:29:08:10 – (Brynne Tillman): So as we close today, out to all of our listeners, when you are out and about, don’t forget your sales social.

Outro:

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