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The Roadmap to Revenue Your CEO Doesn't Know About

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Understanding customer buying preferences and aligning processes drives explosive business growth. It boosts conversion rates, enhances satisfaction, reduces churn, and builds loyalty. Streamlined operations cut costs while increasing revenue, enabling scalable expansion and competitive advantage in evolving markets

In this episode, I talk with revenue coach Kristin Zhivago, founder of Zhivago Partners and author of the 5-star book *Roadmap to Revenue: How to Sell the Way Your Customers Want to Buy*. Kristin specializes in uncovering where B2B sales stall, fixing those blockers, and building digital marketing that consistently generates qualified leads.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristinzhivago/
https://zhivagopartners.com/

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Revenue Generation Challenges
02:33 Understanding Customer Desires and Buying Mindset
05:55 The Importance of Customer Interviews
10:56 Branding and Promise Keeping
12:28 Sales Stoppers and Customer Experience
15:34 Educating Customers vs. Selling
18:43 The Role of Social Proof in Sales
19:57 Identifying Challenges in Sales Processes
25:31 Navigating Technical Challenges in Business
26:41 The Shift from Google to AI in Search
28:21 Understanding Customer Nuances in AI
30:32 The Human Element in Sales and AI
32:50 The Evolution of Marketing and Sales Strategies
34:35 The Importance of Human Connection in Decision Making
37:32 Love, Care, and Customer Relationships
40:01 The Roadmap to Revenue and Business Growth
45:23 Overcoming Business Challenges and Flexion Points

Introduction to Revenue Generation Challenges

SPEAKER_04

I've talked to so many people now that it just say, well, I don't I don't use Google anymore. I just go right to AI because they're actually every CEO I know for the last year has been having a private conversation with their favorite chatbot, love, is simply taking care of the other person. That's it. That's love. And not having any boundaries like, well, I won't do this. You know, if you put your sweatshirt down there, I'm not gonna pick it up. I mean, you have these boundaries. That's not love. That's not taking care of people. So you're taking care of your customers. That makes your workers happy, it makes your partners happy, it makes everybody happy, your investors happy because your sales go up, and customers know it. I don't see that yet from AI. Branding is marketing making promises on the company's behalf. That's what branding is. You assume that the customer thinks this is important, and this is we promise you, we're gonna give you this. The company either keeps the promise or breaks it. And that is your brand. That's the thing people say about you when you're not in the room. That's the actual reputation you have if you read reviews and things like that. CEOs have been making the same mistakes for 50 years.

SPEAKER_01

Wow.

SPEAKER_04

And it's so sad to me because the answer for them is right under their nose, and they never do it. Okay, so what is the answer? I'll just tell you straight out. They want to sell to customers, but they never ask.

SPEAKER_00

Hi there, welcome to Business Leadership Podcast. In this episode, I had a discussion with Christian Zivago. Christian is a revenue coach and she spent years helping business owners sell more by understanding what their customers want to buy and how they want to buy it. She is also a sales and marketing turnaround expert and management consultant. She founded and runs Zivago Partners, a revenue growth services company that identifies where B2B sales get stuck, fixes the sales stoppers, then builds digital marketing campaigns that builds the qualified leaks. She's also the author of a five-star book, Roadmap to Revenue: How to Sell the Way Your Customer Wants to Buy. Before we start this episode, I

Understanding Customer Desires and Buying Mindset

SPEAKER_00

just have one quick favor to ask. If you haven't subscribed to this channel, please do so. Uh and send us your feedback, share with your friends. Your support means a lot to us. Allow us to focus on our right-direct discussions to help you grow your business on a weekly basis. Thank you again. Enjoy this episode. Please welcome Kristen Zivago. Hi, guys. Welcome to Business Leadership Podcast. Today our guest is Kristen Zivago. I hope that last uh the pronunciation of the last word last time got it right, Christian. This time.

SPEAKER_04

That's fine. It's it's Chivago, but I got it.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, perfect. Kristen, perfect. You know, the area of your expertise, Kristen, is that you know revenue generation, sales, marketing, all those areas. It's very important for business when you know we're trying to scale businesses after this uh tough economic times and whatever people go in as there financially. So there's so much to learn in this area, and and that's your expertise. I'm looking forward to learning from you, looking forward to a discussion. Thank you so much for time today.

SPEAKER_04

Oh, I'm happy to be here.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. You work with a lot of business leaders, Christian. Let's start from there. What do you see some of the challenges, the top challenges that are business leaders when they're trying to scale their companies, trying to grow their businesses? What are some of the challenges they're up against?

SPEAKER_04

I just finished a 10-week course called the CEO Accelerator. And I'm I'm happy to give him a shout-out because it was it was 40, probably maybe 35 to 40 CEOs of all different types of companies, all different sizes, and all over the world. And it was heaven for me because CEOs are my audience. And I worked with hundreds of more than hundreds probably by this time of CEOs and interviewed thousands of customers. So, you know, I'm pretty immersed in this whole idea of how to scale your revenue. Eric Partaker, who runs this course, it again, it's a CEO accelerator, and I have no financial interest in talking about this. I'm just kind of coming off a high. But he he focuses on the C he CEO themselves and trying to change the habits because you can't scale your company. You know how they say in insanity is the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. His whole premise is that you have to get your character and behavior correct and your perspective, and learn how to delegate. And you know, there's a lot of concepts that he he uh puts out there that are very valuable for CEOs. And what was encouraging is how willing everyone was to learn, and they all wanted to grow, and that was great. And we had some breakout rooms that were fantastic. But what made at the very last meeting, you know, he said, you know, tell us some of your observations and such. And I said, you know, I've been in this a long time, and I came to the realization during that whole those sessions that that CEOs have been making the same mistakes for 50 years.

SPEAKER_01

Wow.

SPEAKER_04

And it's so sad to me because the the answer for them is right under their nose, and they never do it. Okay, so what is the answer? I'll

The Importance of Customer Interviews

SPEAKER_04

just tell you straight out. They want to sell to customers, but they never ask customers how they want to buy, what they came when they were looking for it, what their mindset was when they set out to buy. And I define that as their desires, their concerns, because they've been burned before, and their questions. Once you get through the first two, okay, they know what I want, I'm still here. I have concerns because I've been burned, especially for tech products. And now, if you get through those two phases, now I have questions. I'm still with you and I have very specific questions. If you don't know that ahead of time, if you haven't had someone like me separate from the company, so they they're speak freely and I anonymize their results and so on. If you don't interview your customers, you never know what their mindset is. And I'm sorry, personas don't cut it. An 18-year-old guy will buy a blender for the same reason as an 80-year-old guy. Okay, it doesn't help. You have to actually know what they want, who they are, what they care about. And I'll say one more thing on this topic. I learned this at the very beginning of my career. I was running an ad agency. My husband and I founded an ad agency in Silicon Valley. And the first thing I would do is sit down with the customer and client and say, you know, what do you think is important to your customers? And they had a list, you know, five, ten items. And the thing on the top was the thing they were most proud of, the thing that was hardest for them to do. So then I'd interview their customers, and the list was never the same. Maybe there were a few items in common, and maybe, and for sure, the thing at the top was different, always different. So all of marketing, I used I've been saying 80%, but I would say all of your marketing budget is wasted if you don't actually know why your customers bought from you and how they bought and what's most important to them.

SPEAKER_00

Such a great point. That's that's very interesting. I you know, that is uh, and I'm a guilty of that. If we don't interview customers, we have a great meeting, you know, before the sales, but when the sales complete, we never go back and ask why did you buy? We're just so happy that that you know deals close, we can move on to the next items, right? Yeah, so so so let me dissect some of this. There's so many great points you made. I want to understand a little bit, but if I can push back, so don't every customer buy for different reasons? You know, you know, you could be selling the same thing, they could be buying for a totally different reason because what their needs are different, no?

SPEAKER_04

Okay, okay, there's a couple of tricks to this. First of all, you have to interview, and by the way, you can interview all you can interview only five to seven people of a given type and get bankable information. By the third call, you start to see the same patterns. They they even use the same phrases to discuss, you know, to describe what what they were doing, how they felt, what their problem was, and so on. So it's surprisingly accurate. And I've had companies, Siemens once in just insisted that I interview 40 people. Yeah, it's like Tiggs, you're wasting your money by the seventh call. I'm gonna know. Okay. Yeah. No, no, you know, we got to answer to our investors, blah, blah, blah. So I did. I talked to 40 people. And what I did is I made sure they got their money's worth because after the interview by the 10th call, man, it was just like, you know, you could script it. They were saying the same thing.

SPEAKER_00

Competitive stuff.

SPEAKER_04

They have to be of a given type. So purchasing agents have different needs than, and I focus on B2B, but our company focuses on B2B. But so a purchasing agent, a CEO, an engineer, you know, a project manager, they're all gonna have some differences. They'll still have things in common, you'll still see the big thing, but they'll have their own nuances in terms of what's most important to them. Okay. So you do have to break up your customers and talk to the the groups. By the by the tenth call with Siemens, I I I thought, okay, I'll wait till the whole interview is over. And they've given me, and one of the questions I ask at the end is, is there anything I should have asked you that I didn't ask you? Just to make sure. And I always get interesting answers to that. They'll sometimes reiterate, they'll say, No, you you really did a great job, but you know, I just want to go back to that one point because it really is important. So you really find out the number one thing.

Branding and Promise Keeping

SPEAKER_04

So it it I would then say to the person I was interviewing, okay, we finished our interview, and I'm interviewing a lot of people, which I don't normally interview this many, so I want to give them their money's worth. I heard this from some people. And if that person hadn't brought that up, I could say that, and then they would say, Oh, oh yeah, I forgot to mention that. That's that's a real problem for me, and here's how it works out. So not everybody had more to say about that, because they already said it, but at least I I felt better.

SPEAKER_00

Got it.

SPEAKER_04

Because I I didn't want to waste their money.

SPEAKER_00

But so they will add something more to it, but overall, what what you well what we're talking about, they they're looking for the same thing. You know, they have a lot more common what we're saying. What about the different titles? Look for different things. Like if you're talking to a CFO, they will look for more for numbers, right? If you're looking talking to CF CEO, he may consider how this product is gonna affect their culture, how they're gonna affect their revenue, how it's gonna affect their appearance. And if you talk to purchasing guy, he may affect, you know, look for you know all that, that security and all this stuff. So doesn't it change title to title based on who you're talking to, or or is it is it uh still the same thing? They're just looking for a little more detail for for it for their roles.

SPEAKER_04

Well, there's there's another aspect to this that I've worked out over all these years, and that is marketing does branding. Branding is

Sales Stoppers and Customer Experience

SPEAKER_04

marketing making promises on the company's behalf. That's what branding is. You assume that the customer thinks this is important and this is we promise you, we're gonna give you this. The company either keeps the promise or breaks it. And that is your brand. That's the thing people say about you when you're not in the room, that's the actual reputation you have. If you read reviews and things like that, that's one of the sales stoppers. It's a big one, it's like the biggest one. If you say our stuff is high quality, and then 50% of them are rejects. I just I just went through that with a company. That's not high quality, that's a broken promise, and people never forget those broken promises, and they don't go back. If you break one of the promises that you're making that's actually important to them, they won't go back. They'll they'll just that's it, you're done. That's a sales stopper. There's a million other sales stoppers. I'm currently writing the top 15 in my blog, but that's that will make them just get a bad taste in their mouth, and then they won't want to do business with you. So the first thing you have to do is find out the promise that they want you to keep, the promises that you made that you either kept or broke. And then what we do then is we help you. We we not only talk to customers when we do the sales stopper work, we interview people inside the company as well. And they know where the sales stoppers are because people actually like serving customers, unless they're a jerk and there's not very many jerks compared to the great people. So the good people want to satisfy the customer. That makes them happy. I mean, you get everything out of the way with job satisfaction and what makes people happy, what's their happy? That is the mission. That's really your only mission, is to make sure that you make it easy for your people to make it easy for the customer to buy. That's your job. Just get out of the way. They're coming to you with money in hand, they want something and they think you can give it to them. You don't have to persuade them, you just have to make it easy for them and get out of their way. And these sales stoppers. I was just talking to these Australian developers that we're working with, made making this amazing app. And one of the things the guy said, I never heard this before. I thought I've heard all the cliches, but maybe it's an Australian thing. But he said, when you're living inside the bottle, you can't see the label.

SPEAKER_00

That's true. What are you just thinking?

SPEAKER_04

And it's true, as as careful as you are, as conscientious as you are, if you aren't hearing from real

Educating Customers vs. Selling

SPEAKER_04

customers who tried to buy from you or did buy from you, and and the ones who did buy still would run into the stoppers, the sales stoppers. But they figured, okay, have you ever gone to Amazon, by the way? And and there were like there are these reviews about the stuff wasn't delivered properly or whatever. And you think to yourself, how badly do I want this? And do I really care? Is that really going to happen to me? Those things are minor promises, and you'll you'll you'll your desire for that thing will get you past that. And that's what happens here. If if the if in B2B as well, if if the guy really needs this and you seem to have it, then they'll sort of ignore the inconveniences. And we make it really, I mean, look at voicemail. Voicemail is people standing at the door of your business and saying, you can't come in until you press one. And please listen carefully because our menu has changed. That's a lie. It's the first thing you get when you go to the company, and that's a lie, okay?

SPEAKER_00

It's it's not the menu change, it's the way you do business that's changed. You're trying to you're trying to uh change your process and you're trying to reflect that on a menu.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Very interesting. So, so how about those businesses where where they're say they have to educate customers before we sell it to them? You know, some some products say, you know, services business, you know, they have to educate, make sure the mindset is right, all that stuff. So does that also work in that? Because there's a lot of uh a lot of stuff happened because you have to now you have to well, let's use cybersecurity as an example. You may have to educate, there could be new technology, new way of doing things, there's different approaches to it. You're gonna have to spend a lot of time with the customer to educate them before you can even talk about selling. How does it work in that? And every customer is gonna have their own way of learning it. Does that also apply to those kind of businesses as well? Does it work the same way?

SPEAKER_04

Absolutely 100%. A promise is a promise, okay? Number one. Number two, you said first we educate and then we sell them. I don't think selling is a thing. I don't think we should be selling, we should be educating, we should be making it obvious from the get-go that we understand what they want. Again, this is the mindset. What are they what are they selling? Is it what I want? So when you when they come to your website, they don't want to hear these vague, you know, AI could have written it kind of promises. They they want a very specific promise that lands right on their basic need. And it's not features and benefits. I hate whoever brought that, you know, invented that. Yeah, that's that's the how the sausage is made. What you want to talk about is the outcome. You want to talk about you know this thing will put you here, this thing will solve that problem. We promise. If you use this, that problem will be solved. But you have to know exactly how they describe

The Role of Social Proof in Sales

SPEAKER_04

their problem. You have to know what their concerns are, what they've tried, and it didn't work, you know, and that's educating.

SPEAKER_00

It's not selling, it's not selling the problem and is the best. Yeah, yeah. So understanding the problem, maybe helping them discover the problem, that's where the education comes in, what you mean, what you say.

SPEAKER_04

You don't have to help them discover the problem. That's another thing. Okay, so I have this little story. You're living somewhere where it has flooded, and you're at the top of your house on the roof, your whole house is flooded, and you're waiting to be rescued, and the water is rising. It's a bad deal, okay? Okay, a little boat comes along with a guy in it and has room in there for you, and you think, Thank God, I'm going to be I'm going to live, okay? Okay, and the guy stops his boat about 20 feet out from your house, and he says, You look really miserable up there. I bet you were thinking you might die. And the guy on the roof is like, What are you doing telling me my problem? I know my problem, okay? Just rescue me.

Identifying Challenges in Sales Processes

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. And we do that all the time. Marketers get proud of, especially with super technical products, and they learn and they learn, they understand it well enough to write about it, and then they overdo it. When I go looking for something to buy, I know what my problem is. I know more about my problem than you will ever know. And you just get in the way. We get in the way.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I just yeah, just run with it. So yeah, I think you to your point to interviewing your customers, then that gives you a better idea as well. Listen, you know what what the problem they're trying to solve, and you can simply tailor that uh based on that.

SPEAKER_04

And just say it. Say it. Don't go into long details about, you know, you're trying to do this in your house, and so you want this beautiful thing. And and it's like, no, I know I don't need to be educated on my problem. I know what it is. I want you to tell me how you're gonna solve it and why I should trust you. What have you done to make sure your company is gonna deliver on that promise? So I'm not gonna be disappointed.

SPEAKER_00

Got it, got it. Interesting. So, does that uh also come a social proof of that stuff? I think we touched on a little bit of X account, but you know, having a customer testimonial, having all that stuff. So that is part of that, the keeping the promise as well, uh, Kristen, what you just mentioned?

SPEAKER_04

Sure, obviously, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, because you want to build enough of that stuff.

SPEAKER_04

Those are stories. People love stories, they remember stories. You know, the reviews on Amazon are stories. Okay, here's what happened to me when I bought this $12 item. And these were the things I was curious, you needed, and I I was worried because of all the bad reviews for doing, you know, this is a story, and customers are telling the other customers their story. And, you know, you read it because it's interesting because you're sitting there right now and you're on your mind. Is that problem and you're trying to solve it with the solution?

SPEAKER_00

And stories right there. And you can relate to the story probably when you when you're watching it or when you're 100%. Interesting. Very good. So where do you think people get stuck when they take on a journey with you? They're trying to uh be, you know, go this way, simply just uh simplify the sales and after where where some of the some of the CEOs get stuck, or or or what is you know, if you look at the one successful, what do they do right or what they do wrong when they get stuck? You know, what where some of the challenges are?

SPEAKER_04

Well, they come to us because their revenue has stalled or it's or they needed to grow faster. They're just it they're they're not making the sales they think they should be making. And in my experience with working with all these companies, I developed the idea that you've got these promise keeping tools. It's your product and service, okay. Of course. If it's marketable and most people have a decent product and service, so that's fine. Usually it's fine. I'm talking about the actual experience of going into companies and seeing where the sales stoppers are.

SPEAKER_03

Okay.

SPEAKER_04

The the passion is there. These are all P words. I just did that on purpose. The passion is there because it's usually the founder. If the founder is the original person, they they still have the passion. If it's a new CEO that's been brought in by an equity firm or something, they're really more worried about profit than they are passion. That depends on the character, the person, the character of the person. So that's usually okay. And that's probably because I don't work with jerks, remember? Okay. So then there's policies, and I'm giving you all the sort of okay ones first. And if the again, if the person's a nice person, then the policies will be fair, and everybody, employers, employees and the customers will find them, you know, fair.

SPEAKER_07

Okay.

SPEAKER_04

That leaves your processes and your infrastructure that supports those processes. And this is where all the mess is. And it's getting worse. It's really getting worse because now we've got AI coming in like a tsunami and wiping out industries and changing everything and and taking jobs of programmers away. I mean, the CEO can write a program now if he learns how to prompt, he or she. It's amazing what's happening with AI. And if you're not on the AI wagon, you're you're you're you're dead, basically. So that's that the processes and the infrastructure. Now, the infrastructure is systems and the process together, really. And so it's AI, it's IT, AI and IT working well together. It's understanding where there's duplication of effort. So your ERP system doesn't talk to your order entry system or whatever, or your CRM system. So there's a lot of hand entry. These are sales stoppers, they slow people down, they make them inefficient. You can't scale

Navigating Technical Challenges in Business

SPEAKER_04

a company with bad processes. Now, the inverse of that, I keep bringing up Amazon. But when Amazon came out years ago, I looked at that company and I thought, oh, this is different. They're building a customer-friendly infrastructure that makes it easy for people to buy. And I thought that guy's gonna get rich. And he did, and he's still getting richer because that's that's all they care about is making it easy for the customer to buy. And they have like 50 ways on the product page. If you if you made a list, there's like 50 different things. What else did you look at? And here's your browsing history, and this is what customer experience.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah, it's customer experience.

SPEAKER_04

Now they have the little AI summary on top, you know. It they've never stopped that one thing of making it easy for customers to buy. And what happens in most companies is they're proud of the product and they build their policies, and you know, the guy's passionate and he's working really hard. They're not listening to customers, they're not asking them why they bought, they're just going out there with their assumptions

The Shift from Google to AI in Search

SPEAKER_04

and spending all this money on messages that don't work. That's one mistake. Another mistake they're making right now is when people come to us, they say, we want to know which channels to use. And I'm like, well, shouldn't you first figure out what message you're gonna put in those channels? Yeah. Because otherwise, you're just throwing spaghetti on the wall. And as far as I know, nobody's gotten rich throwing spaghetti on the wall. Nobody. So it it you have to have the processes in place, and I'm really good at that. My I have people on my staff who've been in IT and and I'm now pulling in AI IT guys, and we're building partnerships so we can go in, we find the sales stoppers in the interviews, and then and we present all of that, we discuss it, we debate, we say which is the low-hanging fruit. It's either the fastest to fix or it's the most important, or hopefully that's the same thing. Yeah, usually not, but you then you make it a priority, and the CEO says, okay, we are gonna focus on making it easier for the customer to buy, and as part of that, employees, we're gonna make it easier for you to help the customer buy. Okay, so documentation, communication. I've I'm just doing a lot of work for a company right now that is very technical product. They sell into the aerospace and military markets, and quality is really important. And

Understanding Customer Nuances in AI

SPEAKER_04

it turns out they don't really train people when they come on board, they and they don't document their processes. So everybody's sort of running around with too much to do and they and they overlap. Is it just you just get all of those, you get a lean machine, a lean revenue growth machine. That's the goal.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, if you don't document it, if you don't train people when you have a turnover in sales, your number goes down. You know, then you go back to the same thing trying to figure things out.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Interesting. I know AI changed a lot in the marketing, creating content is one of the areas. You know, back to your point that you know, find out first what content you want to create, what message you want to send out before you jump to AI and create content. Did that change also a lot on a sales side as well, or strictly just a marketing side that changed a lot in a content side and a messaging side?

SPEAKER_04

Well, what really changed was search. I mean, Google put a band-aid on it by putting the the little AI summary thing at the top. And that's helping them survive in this market. But the number of people who go to Google to search for something has gone down.

SPEAKER_05

Yep.

SPEAKER_04

And the number of people searching, it's still Google's still up there, surprisingly higher than I thought they would be. But I've talked to so many people now that it just say, well, I don't, I don't use Google anymore. I just go right to AI, because they're actually every CEO I know for the last year has been having a private conversation with their favorite chatbot and asking all kinds of questions, strategy questions, business plan questions, competitive analysis questions. And we use it too. We've got, I've got some very good prompters, and we we do, in addition to the interviews, we also go out and look at the whole market scene, and we've developed, we're working on some platforms to make it easy for us to get a really good solid report. You can find out what your competitors are doing

The Human Element in Sales and AI

SPEAKER_04

with AI. You can't really find out what your customers are doing right in your niche. You think you are, but then when you interview customers, you find there are nuances. And the reason that's important, every human being knows when you care or when you don't. It's something you learn when you're two days old. That nurse is nice, or that person, that relative is nice. That relative pinches my cheek and says, Oh, you're so cute, and it hurts. Okay, I don't like that person. That's that's one of the first things you learn after I'm hungry or I need changing. Okay, that's like so. By the time we reach, you know, buying age, and that's the problem with AI. AI acts like it cares. AI says things like, when you correct it, it says, Oh, good catch. Glad you caught that. Or they know after a while, they know, and it'll it'll flatter you. Like it'll come back to me and say, Oh, well, considering your good eye on these design things, you know, you'll appreciate this. And they use your first name. And I mean, there are women looking to marry their their bots right now. It it's because they they've programmed in flattery and I'm paying attention to you, which is mostly what women want in a relationship. Don't kill me for saying that, but it's true. Yeah, so they're acting nice, but they can't care. They're a machine.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

And if you come and you're a human being, and by the way, most of our copy, well, I shouldn't say that, all of our copies written by humans, but we use AI to feed for research. We use it sometimes to say, give me a rough draft of how you'd approach this. So we use it a lot, but we make sure that the human is still in there because people can tell. And I've had a lot of people tell me I can tell right away that it's AI, and I don't even read it. Yeah, they resent it.

SPEAKER_00

Running a technology business, I get a lot of young people coming in. I hire a lot of young people, they're so keen on using AI. If I ask them,

The Evolution of Marketing and Sales Strategies

SPEAKER_00

hey, can you create a training video for style, you know, for customers? They will use AI to create a training video. So they're very keen on using it. But you know, I keep saying that don't use AI, just record a human video at the end of the day. People other side, they are human. They're trying to buy from humans other side, or they're trying to connect with you. How are they gonna make that connection with with the AI or or some uh robotic training video that you send out, right? Explain that as a human. And I think that's that's an important part of the sales, like a part of the sale, as you know, is a service, right? You're providing service before they even give you money. But that service gotta come from human to your point, you know, human-to-human connection. There's no way, no technology is gonna replace it. It's gonna hit the state, and people need that in order to uh to to make decisions.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, even the agentic, you know, the way we're going with agents now, and this is not a new idea. I I can't remember, I think it was Land's End that came up with your personal shopper, and you could put you could you could create a model that looked like you, sometimes distressingly fatter than you thought you were.

SPEAKER_00

You know, but at least trying to give you something in bonus.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It didn't work because the world wasn't ready for it and the technology wasn't there. But even with an agent shopping on your behalf, you will be prompting it, you'll be programming it based on your desires and your concerns and your questions. So the human is still driving this, yeah, and the humans at the other side better be keeping those promises, the promises that you want them to make and the promises that you actually

The Importance of Human Connection in Decision Making

SPEAKER_04

keep. They should be the same. So I I'm not, I mean, I've been on the bleeding edge of tech for decades, and I I don't think it's I I will say this, as I said at the very beginning, it's wiping out entire industries. I mean, my company was a digital agency from 2017 until about a year ago, and then it wasn't. Because, and then we still do that. Once we get the message, we get rid of the sales stoppers, then we start bringing leads into this streamlined, easy-to-buy environment. Okay, fine, that's great. But that's not how I come in anymore. Now I'm just expanding what I did for years as a revenue coach and turning around a company's revenue, getting it up. I used to do marketing and sales turnarounds for everybody from mom and pop all the way up to IBM.

SPEAKER_00

So Yeah, and what uh to your point on a marketing site, you know, I was I had a discussion with our law firm yes, you know, a couple days ago. And they were dealing with the similar stuff. You know, a lot of people we used to go to lawyers to write contract documents, agreements, all that kind of documents and B2B, and whether it was NDA or any any kind of documents, these days, you can just print the document. So they are struggling dealing with the same, same the challenges. But in the point he was making that that that human side of it, it it it's uh it, you know, you can present anything in a court, but which document is gonna win you? And you know, understanding the situation, what who you're up against, what are you trying to do, that human side you cannot take away. You can get a document from AI, but is this gonna be winning document? Is it gonna win you the argument in the court? This is where the human side comes in. I think the same thing in uh what we were talking about on sales, the digital market is simply that, yeah, we can do all this stuff. I I personally believe the decision making is different than uh, you know, the sales process, right? So I don't, you know, we we can talk about that. I want to get your thoughts on it. The decision making is required more human set of things, where you know we talk about the branding, we talk about the promise you're gonna make, are you gonna keep the promise? That's where the decision making comes. Now we can do all the homework before that, but the decision making does not come from information, does not come from knowledge, does not come from your company products, services. Knowing more about it doesn't change, but that's where the human set comes in. And I think we don't serve humans in that area, that decisions never get done. You know, definitely you can make some urgent decision, but it's not gonna be you're not gonna be one of those prime services or competitive advantage. What are your thoughts on that? You know, is that is that still going to be stay with the humans?

SPEAKER_04

I think you brought up two really good points. Uh well, there were more than that, but I I got two things from that. One is remember I mentioned that the when you when you when AI gives you an answer and it's missing something, and you know what that is, and so you say, Well, what about this thing? And it says, good catch,

Love, Care, and Customer Relationships

SPEAKER_04

right? If you're in a courtroom, the other lawyer is trying to find all the holes in your argument. Yeah, and if AI doesn't give you everything from all those different angles, and there's no there's not really any creativity. I think a lot of people argue with me about that, but it's taking information that exists and turning it into a cohesive argument. But it's scary. I I will I will say that I'm a sailor. I've meant I've been sailing for like 50 years, windsurfing and then monoholes, and then catamarans, and I mean I've been this long time sailor. So when it first started being popular, I said, how do you sail upwind? Because that's a that's one of the more difficult points of sails, sailing into the wind. And for the first six months, you would have ended up on the rocks.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Every time I asked it, it changed. The bad thing they left out changed over time, but they still left it out, or they made an absolute mistake. Like a wheel, you turn like a car, a tiller, which is a stick at the back, and you move the rudder, you go the opposite. If you want to go that way, you have to turn the rudder this way, okay? And they would say, turn the tiller or the wheel to the right, or the that the other right is my husband would say, to the right, right? And uh it you'd be on the rocks, okay. So I I didn't trust it for a long time. It's getting better, no question. And it when it makes people now in in illustrations, it leaves all the fingers on. I mean, it was leaving legs off, okay. So it was pretty bad at the beginning. But this good catch thing is a real problem because again, if you're in a situation where somebody's attacking you, and that's business, I mean, your competitors are out to get you, basically. If if the customer isn't part of the AI discussion, if they if you don't feed it this stuff, you're you're gonna lose. That's a problem. And the other thing is going back to what we said about caring, my next book, which I'm gonna finish one of these days, I'm very busy right now, but it's called Love, the L word, Love, Leverage, and Logistics,

The Roadmap to Revenue and Business Growth

SPEAKER_04

how you and your company can change the world. And it's about the fact that every company is a community of people, and if they're treated fairly and they treat customers fairly, they and by the way, I was married 48 years to a wonderful man, and I learned the hard way two big cancer battles and stuff. I lost them finally.

SPEAKER_00

But I'm sorry, Therapy.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, uh yeah, it was really hard. We were best friends and still in love at the end, so it was hard. But what I learned was love is simply taking care of the other person. That's it, that's love, and not having any boundaries like, well, I won't do this, you know. If you put your sweatshirt down there, I'm not gonna pick it up. I mean, you have these boundaries. That's not love, that's not taking care of people. So you're taking care of your customers, that makes your workers happy, it makes your partners happy, it makes everybody happy, your investors happy because your sales go up, and customers know it. I don't see that yet from AI at a most basic level. Again, I still think people are saying, oh yeah, that's AI copy. I they don't know who I am, what my real problems are. And that and the other part of that is if they get to know you, the customer during the buying process gets to know you and they decide they can trust you because you do care. They they feel it. I just interviewed a bunch of people that work with it buying from a company, and man, the big number one thing on their list was that these people really take care of their customer. I've had nothing but good experiences with those people, and I'm looking for opportunities to give them more business. That's leverage. That's where the book talks about leverage, and then logistics. I'm gonna try to make this a living book because the last section on logistics is gonna be changing all the time. And I'm going to be I'm interviewing IT and AI people up the wazoo because there's a lot to logistics. Okay. I'm pretty technical, but you know, I don't know the the bottom.

SPEAKER_00

It changes all the time. And it changes all the time.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Okay.

SPEAKER_04

Anyway, so it's the caring thing. And I think you're right. I don't, I just don't see AI replacing it, or another way of saying it, if everybody's doing AI, you're gonna stand out if you really understand the customer and you really care about them.

SPEAKER_00

And it depends on your instructions to the AI, how good the instructions are. If your instructions are a little faulty and you don't have a right mindset, your words are not right, the e you know what you're asking for is gonna give you what you ask for. If I'm not a lawyer, I'm not a lawyer and I'm asking for code documents, I don't know what to put in those code documents. I'm gonna get what I'm asking as a business owner, not as a lawyer. So definitely there's there's that disconnect as well. It depends, it strictly depends on your instructions. What you're trying to what you're trying to give them. Very interesting. So let's talk about the so how did they come up with the book, the roadmap to revenue? That that was but 20, 2015, or 20 is it was it published around that time, uh, Christian?

SPEAKER_04

We published it in 2011, and I knew, having been in tech so long, that I had to write it so it would still be valid now. And I did an audible version, uh, I guess about a year ago, and it it forced me to listen to the whole book again. You know, I read it like 18 times before I published it, but and I was I was actually kind of proud of myself because I met that goal.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, a very interesting book. I just gone through it. You use a lot of examples, a lot of stories in it. What interesting book. It's just uh, you know, sometimes you get the sales your sales book, you get out of same other pattern stuff, but but you know, your I think your take on uh listening to customers, you know, interviewing customers, all that stuff kind of in a book. It was it was very interesting for me. I simply just Gone through it, learned so much from your book.

SPEAKER_04

Good. I'm glad.

SPEAKER_00

Good stuff. And the new ones coming out later on this year, or when you when are you going to publish that one?

SPEAKER_04

I'm not giving you a date.

SPEAKER_00

I will hold you to a second interview again for the second book.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, well, I'd like you to actually. I'm actually done with the first two sections. And I'm just really making sure that the last section is going to be up to snuff. And thanks to the CEO accelerator course, I actually have more time to get my writing done now because I've changed the way I go to bed, get up, you know, how early I get up and so on before the day hits me with uh Slack messages every five minutes. So it's it's going to get out there in the next, I'd say, 12 months, but I want it to be much faster. So we'll see.

SPEAKER_00

Got it. Do you still working with the clients? Like if they want to have a discussion with you, where can they find you? How can they connect with you?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, actually, we're starting something we're calling the revenue growth power hour. And it's going to be just like three CEOs and myself in a 90-minute session. So we're not just giving you an hour.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

And I'm just going to be helping, and the other people on the call will be helping, and we'll make sure that they're not competitive with each other in any way. I learned so much from the breakouts in that CEO class. We really helped

Overcoming Business Challenges and Flexion Points

SPEAKER_04

each other get perspective. We helped each other get outside of that bottle and look at the label, you know, and understand what where where the issues are. Other people can see it much faster than you can, especially if you have a revenue coach and a couple of other CEOs. It's it's I'm very excited about it. We're rolling it out. So the book is on Amazon. It's Kindle and hardcover. It's actually better in hardcover, believe it or not, just because I lay out the buying process for different types of products and services. And they're just easier to read the diagrams that way. The our website is Chivago. And by the way, that there's my name down there, is it's a G-O, it's C H I V A G O. Just just I should have mentioned it before we started talking. So that's chivagopartners.com, where I write a weekly blog. I'm also on LinkedIn, of course.

SPEAKER_00

So I will include all the links below this video as well. So people can click a button. There's there's so much to learn from you. I you know, I think one of the challenges CEOs uh struggle is a gaining perspective. You know, we all you know need a different perspective. You not only one, you want to get it from many different angles and see which one works for you. And I think that that is that is you know, you're talking about the you know, accelerator program or you know, your you know, there's always need for perspective. And I think you just given a different perspective, different way of looking at it in you know, sales, talking to customers, interview people, and and and get get a little bit uh you know more insights and then build a sales, work backwards and build the sales process. Very, very insightful. So I learned a tons. Business owners you know are watching us, or business leaders are watching us. So, you know, strongly recommend in there's gonna be a link below this video. Click a link, reach out to you for conversation. There's so many blind spots, especially in a revenue with growth area or sales. There's so many blind spots. You know, you need somebody to uncover those blind spots and help you get up those inflection points wherever you stuck at. And and uh you know, get there much faster instead of wasting time with the trial and trial and adorant approach, right? So good, good, good insight. So, any any thoughts, any any any message you want to leave for business leaders who are trying to uh grow the company, that's you know, they're trying to scale the businesses, Christian and they're stuck at somewhere, you know, whether it's 10 million, 20 million, wherever they're stuck at, they're trying to bypass, you know, get over that. What where can they start from?

SPEAKER_04

I think looking back is going to get you to move forward, understanding from the people, like you said, you you re basically setting it up. I love engineering, and I I think what we've done is we've made it possible to remove the friction, but you reverse engineering a successful sale. That's what we do, and then you can create new sales and quantity because you're right on target, you're doing the thing that made people buy from you, and you're going to make it even easier and faster. You can shorten your sales cycle big time by streamlining the buying process. It's amazing. Marketing can do almost all the work for you if you do it right.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, you know, every business has a flection points. Mine businesses are more than enough. You know, tech business have a flexion point. What works in a five million is not gonna work in a 10 million, what works in a 10 doesn't work in a 15, 20. It has those flexion points. And every time I'm stuck, I'm looking backwards, say, what can I do to get over this? And that's what the you need a perspective. That's where I think people like you, you know, this is where we we need help to to get over the flexion point, get to the next one, and then we'll figure out what to do there, right? So, but but those those are critical uh moments where you need a perspective, you need to help like people like you to get over that. Otherwise, you stuck there for so long and you waste so much time just trying to figure out yourself.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, and the market windows close faster than you can. I mean, it's fast, you know, it's just one minute you're there and everything's fine, and all of a sudden, boom, whoa, what happened? Nobody wants this anymore. It's very sad.

SPEAKER_00

I was awarded for that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

No, I I I love I love engineers, I love tech people, I love CEOs, I I love entrepreneurs, people who are bold enough to step out and do it. Man, it's a hard job. And I think anything to help them.

SPEAKER_00

It tech people are engineers, we are so logical, we train so logically in our field. And and we even with sales, we're looking at from a logical standpoint. If it if I did two and a two, it gotta come to four. You know, it cannot be 3.5 or 5, you know, 4.5. It has to be four. So we look at it from a logical standpoint, but as you know, in a sales, there's so much emotional stuff happens, so many other things happen for the decision. And I think that's where we mess out, and and there's so many blind spots, and that that's why we need a people like you to fight people like you to you know discover those blind spots and help us get over some of those challenges.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, uh the thing I like about this method is it's logical. I have never had a problem understanding with a with a technical person understanding the logic of oh, why are we guessing? Why are we assuming it doesn't pay? Why not look at the basic issue, which is we want them to buy. These people have already bought. Why not ask them why did they buy? How did they buy? Let me learn what you're thinking was, okay. Engineers and and IT guys and programmers, all those people understand once that perspective is in front of them, and then they're really excited because it makes so much sense. And I will say, the moment that I come back with everything, now you know what you shouldn't be doing anymore. You can just get rid of that. That's part of what they teach you in the CEO accelerator class. What you don't do is actually more important than what you do. You have to just get rid of all the stuff that's getting in the way, it's noise. You want the signal, not the noise, right? Yeah, so we just help you find that signal, and then then you're in the money.

SPEAKER_00

And if if uh if I was if I'm lucky enough with the customer, if I can record that on a video of the customer, why did they buy it? I can use that for a lot of customers. So listen, this person bought it for this reason. Do you have the same reason we can we can go forward?

SPEAKER_04

That's interesting.

SPEAKER_00

Many many different ways you can you can you can use that.

SPEAKER_04

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00

Very interesting. Any message you want to leave for people who want to start? Where do they start? You know, definitely your your you know book roadmap to revenue. That that's a great start. I would say, listen, get a copy of the book, go through it. That's that's a great start, and then reach out to for conversation. Anything they can do themselves if they want to start on this journey working with the customers.

SPEAKER_04

I think it's really easy to get in touch with me. Okay, if you use AI or Google and just put my name in, I'm all over the thing. But I also at the end of my blog, each blog, I say, you know, if you want to get in touch with me, text me. Here's my my cell number. I want it to be accessible. I'm removing all the barriers to the sale. And we can just have a conversation, or if they if they end up leaving a message, I'll call them right back. I mean, that's that's a very good way to get in touch with me because everything else is you know pretty busy and stuff.

SPEAKER_00

That's just strongly recommend. Click a button below, have a conversation. You know, we had a discussion, I learned so much from you, and definitely I get a different perspective. So I'm sure business leaders who you know reach out to you for conversation, they're gonna get totally different perspective and and learn something, maybe help them get over those flexion points that we got stuck at.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Pleasure, it was great talking to you, Kristen. Thank you so much. You were very generous with your time. Thank you so much for time, and uh, hopefully we talk soon.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, I hope so. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00

Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_04

Bye.

SPEAKER_00

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