0:00:01 - Alex Shevelenko
Welcome to the Experience-Focused Leaders! Now, one of the privileges of being a founder is that you get to work with customers who have innovation in their blood and who help you co-create the change you seek in the world. The only thing that's better than one of those super customers is to have that super customer come back. Eric West is a two-time RELAYTO super innovator, first as a senior leader at one of the largest global agencies Omnicom Group, now at call kodi, who's a leader in global marketing execution services, which origins from legendary RR Donnelley, the print and publishing conglomerate. Without further ado, Eric, welcome to the Experience-Focused Leaders!
Well, Eric, one of the treats is to discover people who are not afraid to take a risk, even though they are operating inside a larger institution where there's a lot of incentives not to change things. It's a hard lift to not only take a bet on a new vendor, but to implement it. Have the vision, get the buy-in for folks that may not be this predisposed to innovation as you may have in your blood. You're the change agent that I see inside large organization that combines innovation strategy and getting stuff done on the operational level. How do you make this happen? I'm sure you do it with us, but you do it with other organizations. What motivates you personally, and how do you succeed getting folks on board who don't necessarily report to you?
0:01:59 - Eric West
Yeah, great question. A lot of the roles that I've had most recently have been in the growth, product, or strategy areas. I'm fortunate to have roles where my job is to find innovative solutions and to do something different in order to help us grow or refine what our products are. It always helps to have a job where it's your job to bring up new ideas. Aside from that, I think for somebody who maybe doesn't have the luxury of that role, it's a lot about aligning what the goals are of the organization to the innovation or supplier. In this case you're bringing to the table and making sure that that connection is really linked.
Another big thing is figuring out how to separate out the big bets from the smaller incremental ideas that will help prove out potentially a larger bet.
One of the great things I enjoyed while working with you the first time about three or four years ago was when we first met. Understanding the value proposition and what it could be was initially pretty challenging, not just for me but for the rest of my organization. What was great was being able to do that incremental step of figuring out how to get a demo, how to align it and make it look closer to what our industry was at the time. Then figuring out how we can make a commercial model that makes sense where we both succeed. And then, after we had that start-up time, we made the case and were able to sell in a larger program and relationship. And I think that model applies to a lot of innovation projects. If you go in there trying to swing for a home run without the luxury of a lot of R&D and research, it's going to be challenging.
0:04:29 - Alex Shevelenko
So you need to provide a quick-win evidence that builds momentum to then build a case, versus “Let's go build the case." and that ends up like an endless process. Is the case strong enough? Is this real? Will this work? Here you're de-risking a lot of things. The way startups tend to call these things, MVP (Minimal Viable Product), you're introducing a minimal viable innovation. Does that sound right to you?
0:05:01 - Eric West
I think that's exactly right. And even though I've had relatively senior roles about bringing innovations, I've never had a blank check scenario where my job was to bring a $10 million investment idea to the board and expect it to get approved from a spreadsheet. So I think having this minimal viable innovation or product idea is almost a requirement in many businesses nowadays.
0:05:31 - Alex Shevelenko
Well, let's take a step, because almost everybody knows Omnicom Group or one of the agency companies that are part of Omnicom.
So that's the first time we've met and to an outsider like myself it would have seemed like, “Ah, it's obvious advertising agencies with all these amazing content would be kind of the earliest adapters of ours and they would just jump on board.”
But it's non-trivial. And so what are some of the challenges that you typically encounter in bringing innovation, in terms of procurement, processes, or the levels of the buy-in that you need? And what are the ways in which you manage to navigate through that besides the trial? Is it relationship building across the teams? Is it doing these projects frequently enough so you actually know what the process is to get something new? It seems that some people just know how to get it done in whatever organization they're in. And some people want to get it done but end up playing innovation tourism of some kind, then just show a bunch of slides and then nothing happens. A lot of talk but nothing happens. You make things happen, then those things succeed over time and expand. I wonder what you've learned from doing this in multiple large organizations.
0:07:00 - Eric West
The first question you asked was about like “Why?, maybe? Why does that happen? Why is it difficult?" I think it's pretty simple. I think it's inertia. There is something about being in the safety of a larger organization. There's distributed decision making, there's a public company with investors. Your jobs are more likely secure versus a startup environment. So I think with that, it's easier to go with what has already happened or not make a big splash.
I think the way to get it done, absolutely relationships is a large one.
You have to build a reputation for people to accept your point of view or some of your ideas. And be open to listening to them.
So if you haven't built the relationships where they're at least open to listening to your idea, then that's obviously going to be a challenge.
I think it's also a bit about the energy you put into it from an executional level. So one of the things I try to do but it's also, to be honest, a challenge in my career, is the split between operating at the 30,000 foot level, of having a neat idea, concept and framework, and then getting down to the five foot level and seeing how does it actually work. What does the workflow actually look like? What would the ROI have to be? And actually get into the weeds a bit. I think the pitches and the ideas come from a practitioner or somebody who's gotten their hands dirty and really understands the process, problem and the solutions. Not only does that build that respect to listen to the answer, but then you're able to also handle objections a little bit better as well. Because you can speak more accurately about what it's like to have your hands on it. So I think that's probably a good way to build some credibility.
0:09:18 - Alex Shevelenko
I love this contrast between vision and then the execution and granularity.
I think all great leaders, from Steve Jobs to Eric West, are able to combine the balance and, I guess, the thought process.
Now, being an innovative, younger organization, a vendor, my experience of working with you and getting your feedback has been tremendous because of that ability to dig in into the product, yet connected to very strategic value. Like, “Hey, we're going to win that many more deals if we do X and our customers are going to be interrupted in a delightful way versus annoyed if we do Y, and here's why and how.”
You had some of the best feedback for us in early stages of developing the platform because you were able to do that. For me, that sounds like a best practice for enterprise or corporate innovator that actually works with organizations, younger ones like RELAYTO, where we got to partner. What do you bring to some of the vendors that you work with on these innovation projects? And obviously you mentor tech stars, and so you've had experience, not just broadly in our world, coaching younger organizations on how to succeed with enterprises. How do you help them tune their product or turn their value preposition, and what have you learned from that that you could share with our audience?
0:11:01 - Eric West
Yeah, I think I've had the luxury of having some experiences. I worked briefly at Google, at a kind of a startup inside of Google environment, and worked at a healthcare technology startup in Chicago. Like I mentioned before, I had some roles responsible for strategy, and I think those experiences got me close enough to the product development cycle, both from the typical technology startup perspective, but also more mature product innovation development cycles. And because of that I had an affinity for a lot of those types of discussions and I'm so glad that you framed it as it was helpful. Because I could also imagine some of the other companies that provided feedback on the product. They probably didn't think it was very helpful and maybe another word. But I think, just having that connection with the product cycle and being passionate about delivering experience for my customers. I feel like the right companies that I'll drive with and will drive with me are ones that can feel that passion come.
And it's not about beating up a product, it's about, hey, I think this would help me and I can imagine it also is gonna help lots of other me's, so you should probably love this idea. So I think that's kind of how I approach, kind of the conversations I have with the younger vendors, and the right ones for us are the ones who are receptive to it.
0:12:54 - Alex Shevelenko
Well, we're definitely suckers for your feedback. I think it's influenced our roadmap and it's hard, obviously, as a recipient and sort of wanna say that you can't accept every suggestion, even though you desperately want to. You know, I don't know, I wouldn't call myself a pleaser, but I am a champion for the customers, right for sure, and so I would love to work our behinds off to succeed. And so how do you help people figure out what's sort of like this is a must have, right? This is like, hey, I'm thinking about your next steps, right, and you've done that really well with us. If I was you, I'd be thinking about this. This is like you know, consider it or take this away.
This has been confusing, right? Some of the feedback could be, you know, don't build more stuff. You know, simplified, right. Like you, you know you've worked with organizations where you may be super user. You may have, like some folks we love, like Nicole at Omnicom, who are, like you know, amazing, you know superstar users, but the rest of the organization may not be, you know, as excited about trying out new things. So you have this balance between sophisticated users and users like yourselves and you know folks, that, where you need to have a gradual approach to getting them on board and seeing the value. So how do you help even both startups navigate that and kind of roll out change across the broader user population? Where there are the early adopters like the start-upers was in the enterprise, like yourself and then there are folks that kind of are relatively comfortable with status quo, but let's see the value and would want to innovate if there's a value that's visible to them.
0:14:54 - Eric West
Yeah, I think you know this is probably a well-worn talk track. I definitely don't take credit for it, but I think it's really understanding in all of those instances who is the ideal customer profile for the product that you're building and it's going to you're going to be able to delight the most and they're going to be able to provide profitability to your business.
And so when I'm providing feedback, I guess with you know there's a few different populations, but when it's with vendors A because I understand this I'm very clear with them and I'm like I don't know whether this is the number one thing that's going to help you overall and, being very honest, I want this for me and if it's a great overlap, fantastic. If not, I understand, and then you'll also have to understand that that may not be good enough for me, but that's okay, because maybe I'm not your ICP. When it comes to internal, it's having that laser focus on what are the products that we do really well, what can we have that value proposition, that compelling value proposition for? And if we do this work, is it going to delight our existing customers that much more and is it going to be able to attract more of those happy customers?
And if it's not, if the answers to those aren't yes, then you really have to question why you're working on that, why you're working on that initiative, and that kind of goes both for existing companies and for startups. I think there's a lot of companies that you've seen not do so hot, and that's because there's a lot of folks innovating based off of a few folks what internal company thinks that they should be doing, and there's a not enough view of what the customer is really asking for and what they need. And I think that's what you have to just stay laser focused on.
0:16:59 - Alex Shevelenko
Well, this is fantastic, right, so you're, and we totally subscribe to the notion that again, this is actually, ironically, steve's jobs quote that we've kind of tattooed on our heads you got to start with the customer and work backwards, right, and it sounds like that's exactly what you've said multiple times in your words. So guide us a little bit on. You know, like, this podcast is about experiences. Obviously, here you've had a concrete example. Creating experiences was related to maybe other innovations that you've deployed. So talk to us about the innovation that you want to create for your buyers B2B buyers in your case, right, but they're still in the B2C universe oftentimes, right, like so they have an eye for beauty and eye for detail and eye for image and visual identity. That's, you know, on par was the best standards around that.
So guide me at those types, like do you see some customers expect a different experience? Do you see this also coming up across different types of customers? And why did you choose that area to innovate? Like? Partnering was us, you know, in the early days, because back when you did the original partnership now we had a lot to prove. Right, you took more of a risk on an unknown company, and so there must have been some kind of a pain that you felt more around the needs of those customers than weren't being met, and I think other folks would love to learn from you on how you thought about that process. And again, don't limit it to relate to. Obviously some of our audience will appreciate it, but it could be other initiatives that you've run where you kind of took this re-imagined B2B buying experience and customer experience.
0:18:58 - Eric West
Yeah, I'm actually gonna, I'm gonna judo your one of your assumptions a little bit. Your question was you know, "Hey what were some of my B2B customers lacking and how did I? You know, how did some of these innovations help those B2B customers". And really, going back to this ICP concept in the roles where you know specifically with, RELAYTO in our engagement. My customer was not actually our prospect. My customer is the sales organization. My customer is actually the, the account management organization. So it's more about sales enablement than it was really focused on the experience of the prospect, and it's kind of like those phrases where if you take care of your employees, they'll take care of their customers and I think that's kind of the approach.
So for us and and I fully understand why others view RELAYTO, as you know, a way to get innovative content and design out there and it is, you know, in a faster way, at least versus the other methods. For us, it was more about how to facilitate a somewhat complicated services discussion, since the a lot of the services I've worked with over the last five or six years are multi-headed dragons that can go into many different places of need and solution. You can't have a linear conversation right, like some other products right. You have to have the flexibility to pull up information in a more fluid way that doesn't feel disjointed and it still feels cohesive.
No one wants to hear anymore, because they've all learned that you can be everyone to all people. So how do you craft the conversation with your prospect that is both focused on them and what they need, but also flexible so that you can go into the different dimensions in which you can help them, based off of what their key pain points or needs are. And what we really liked about the RELAYTO in this example and the RELAYTO format is just the ability to build that content and design it in a way where we could accomplish both of those and have those dynamic conversations. So by staying focused, actually more about what would help our sales and account organization, and staying focused on that. That's what's going to lead to better content, discussions with the prospects, and you enabled them got it.
0:21:49 - Alex Shevelenko
So, if I summarize it, you enabled them to have both a very personalized and non-linear adoptable conversation as the conversation grew. So they were engaged in a conversation and the customer could drive the conversation as well, as the wrap had a track that they were familiar with and they didn't have to go. I'm like, oh, let me pull up this presentation or that spreadsheet or this catalog. You kind of had a joint experience. I know you also delivered it, sometimes in a digital format kind of as well. So it was sort of digital in person where you have a conversation, but also when you were not in the room at which, which you have even less control of, you know, frankly, right. So it sounds like your job was we want to give some superpowers to our team and they are the pros and they want to have those conversations anyway. It's just we've been stuck in the old way of kind of monologue tools and sales is no longer monologue.
You know, and people check out and it's a conversation, right.
0:23:06 - Eric West
I can't think of. You know, I'm obviously a buyer of services and I don't know how long this trend? It feels like it's a newer trend, but it's probably been the case with me, since maybe I'm just more impatient than others. But the second I get on a call and a sales organization says well, let me tell you that. You know, we started 25 years ago and here's our headquarter building.
0:23:31 - Alex Shevelenko
You know big building.
0:23:33 - Eric West
Yeah and oh yeah, and did you know that we used to be called so-and-so 10 years ago and we got bought by so-and-so five years ago? I'm like, what does this have to do with my problem and how good you are at it? And so you know it feels like there's been this trend of sales programs and processes over the last 10 years, but certainly definitely the last five years that's way more focused on the discovery, call, the challenge or sales method. You know, hey, what is what's going on with you let's, let's understand your business needs and then pivoting to the solution that solves those. And it's been really hard to do that with, like your standard PowerPoint, because you've got your 35 pages with 25 in the appendix and if somebody asks a question you're like quickly, you know.
Yeah, yeah let me like just click, click, click, click and that can interrupt the conversation. You're not focused on your client anymore, you're focused on what you need to do to your deck in order to get to the next part of your sales process. And what the the flexibility of what we've designed which I'll credit definitely, you know, RELAYTO belt, but certainly the great marketing talent I've worked with Is the ability to take that stress off the salesperson. They can have a natural or, you know, conversation with a, with a prospect, knowing that it's a click away, or two, at most two clicks away, to get to what the clients keying in on. And that's got to be really important in today's sales process.
0:25:11 - Alex Shevelenko
Yeah,you basically can focus on listening, right, like it's sort of fundamental, is this, right? The problem was most communications is you're thinking about what you're gonna say next, and here you, you, you have a playground and then again, maybe there are other tools to do it right, like we just, I think we're advocating here a new movement, that's sort of a conversational engagement, and you're able, oh, you want to drill in here, great, or like here's, you know, we thought you would be interested in these five things, which one is the most important for you today? This one. Great, let's go in that direction. One click, smooth, you know, and then maybe you, maybe the best people in the world can't do it without visuals and have the memory you know to do this. I'm not one of them, I can tell you that much.
And I think if you're selling complex services, complex products, you also want to show right, like you may want to have a video, you may want to have a real story, so it may augment you talking to actually almost have multiple voices, multiple methods of delivering content inside that conversation, if you're in the room, and certainly, if you're not in the room, because one thing we know there's a lot of evidence for is nobody can process you know, same material at great length. You know, without some mix of you know, drill in here different learning modes. There's just a ton of evidence from behavioral science, neuroscience, that our minds are wired, you know, to digest the more diverse material, internalize it and act on it. And I don't know if you've had obviously been part of organizations that do foundational marketing work. Right like there you're executing, you're creating great marketing materials.
Did that insight of being part of marketing organizations that sell marketing services, marketing education, were you more aware that this is also the science? Or do you think it's just your own experience? Right like how, evidence driven, where you in this approach and you're saying, "Hey, we're doing this in consumer stuff, why are we selling the old way"? Or what was your thought process there?
0:27:42 - Eric West
It was a bit evidence-based. I wish I had the facts at my fingertips right now, but when you, when you look at modern marketing processes today, they're moving more and more digital. The digital funnel, especially for technology or SaaS platforms, is typically, you know, you're getting a bunch of awareness and then you may get some emails. But even when you respond to an email, what a hundred percent of people it's it's not exactly that high , low 90s percent of prospects do, is they go check out a website first, even if they're planning on responding to an email, and then what they do is when they go to the, when they go to the website. Why do they do that? A lot of people even try to get away from the landing pages. Right, because they want to see the full fat website and choose for themselves what they want to see and explore and discover. Then, once they've discovered it and they feel like they understand that this is a good fit for them, then they'll choose to do the outreach.
The likelihood, if you're getting a response and you're having that initial pitch or that initial discovery discussion with your prospect, the likelihood that they've already looked at your website, they've already decided there was something interesting to talk about, since that's proven from the digital marketing perspective. Why would you then design an initial discussion with a prospect that says, hey, I'm going to move you down my path, and not instead just ask you about what did you like, about what you saw, before you responded to me? I think that's the fundamental thing we really, as sales and marketing organizations, need to think about. You really need to fundamentally rethink your prospect discussions if you're not taking that into account.
0:29:35 - Alex Shevelenko
Interesting. What you're saying is we all are familiar with the changes on the top of the funnel. There's no big debate around that anymore. What you're saying is well, first of all, hey, if you have a bunch of PDFs on the top of the funnel and they're not engaging, maybe you should consider that. But you were focusing really on the middle and bottom of the funnel yourself and expanding relationships. In that world, assuming that at the top of the funnel you're doing what you're supposed to be doing. Are these people are changing somehow? Are they different DNA? Are their digital footprints going to be different? Because now they're the middle and bottom of the funnel, you're saying, no, they still want to do it.
By the way, the senior decision makers could be still at the very top of the funnel because they're coming in cold into some of these conversations. How do you create this welcoming environment that lets them pick their own direction and choose their adventure, feel that they're in control and it's not a one-way conversation, it's their decision and they are empowered. It sounds like that's the spirit of how you wanted to partner with your customers. You didn't want it to be a "Hey are we selling a single widget"? It had to be a personalized package of experiences and processes that you wanted to run across.
0:31:05 - Eric West
Wisdom, yeah, and it applies for more than just services, businesses but, certainly in services businesses, one of the things that we're selling is that we're easy to work with and that we can anticipate issues that you may have and that we're experts in what we do. So being able to facilitate a conversation that's conversational, but then be able to have that flexibility to move and adjust to what they need and anticipate it, there's a big thing about being able to say this is the value of my service but then if your sales conversation is the opposite of that. If you say you're economical, but then you ramble on and on about the history of your company for 10 minutes, you're sending mixed signals and certainly not on your key message. So I think that's what we really need to double down and I encourage all of our might be to be brethren to think about that.
0:32:09 - Alex Shevelenko
Yeah, I think this is what you're describing. This is almost a tragedy that we work so hard to get these customers in the door and then, at the moment of truth, at the fundamental time where we now have a chance to be congruent with what we're doing, if we're driving digital transformation, let's be digitally transformative. If we're driving sustainability, let's start in a sustainable way. If we're like there's just these congruency and people describe it in normal kind of coaching and training as body language, if your body language is incongruing, if I'm saying, "Eric, I'm really excited to have you on this podcast, you know, welcome, it's great Friday night". You know like this is not the same thing as like I'm really fired up, like we're going to have fun. You know this is like we've thought a lot about kind of how we could make this your experience. Let's start here. This is different. And so, people, what's the digital equivalent? We're really excited to share with your vision on digital transformation. To begin with, go to attachment number one of the PDF, page 44. Then we follow up with this answer. You know, like it's just, you think about it. It's kind of crazy, but yet we're a little bit ingrained in that. So that was like obviously we think about this and congruency in my world, but I think it runs across right, like I think we somehow. I mean, it's amazing, I see learning businesses and you have people there that are, you know, instruction designers by training.
They know, in instructing, like learning one on one, you know that people have different learning styles, right, and there you need to adapt to them. And yet when they go sell their learning services, they sell it like it's, you know, they don't even understand the first thing to the people who are also aware of that. Right, it's just mind-boggling, you know, and I kind of wonder why do we? Why do we do these things that are inconsistent? Like, what's your take? Like, is it just the force of habit in inertia, or we just don't take a step back and look at first principles that you know we don't. Maybe we don't have time enough to take a look at them. You know, I'm just curious because you're also driving change in some of your clients, so you must deal with similar issues in offering your services and products.
0:34:55 - Eric West
Yeah, yeah, a few things that will first. First, a really quick anecdote, the, the biggest example of this I mentioned. You know there's a lot of, you know, sales training out there. We were recently in the market for some sales training and you know, they all espouse kind of like this discovery model, et cetera, et cetera. And then we engage this one organization and they did their you know their pitch and they said, hi, we're so-and-so, and we started at this date and it was 10 minutes in and I'm going wait, you guys are going to go train our folks and it's like this is the antithesis of exactly what you're trying to train our organization for. And yeah, that dichotomy is so. So why are people, why are people doing that?
A, I think it's, I think it is a lot of it is inertia. You've just seen it done. Somebody trained you that way. This is the only tool set that I know that exists. There's. No, it's not great, but it's the only way we have right. So there's, I think there's a lot of those, those lies that you tell yourself. Another lie I think that folks tell themselves is you know this is completely an art. There's no way to learn this.
0:36:19 - Alex Shevelenko
There's no way to do this differently, and I think I'm a savant, I'm a sales savant.
0:36:31 - Eric West
Yeah right and, and I think there's I think that's a little bit of a fib to ourselves too.There are elements that are definitely art and finesse and panache, and and then there's parts that are pretty scientific. How do humans consume information? How do you build trust with some? You know what are some behaviors and words and things you can say to build trust versus demolish trust. How can you, how can you be consistent and congruent with what? So I think if you, if you start out with some of those first principles and you understand a little bit more about human psychology and all that, then you're able to build better experiences, better conversations and things like the you know, things like that.
So I think I think that's a lot of what's what's going on. Maybe, maybe not really really look, look inside and and decompose what you might be doing wrong.
0:37:24 - Alex Shevelenko
This is fascinating and I think it kind of says a lot about the difficulties of transition, right, like we have industry transitions. They're difficult, people struggle, organizations struggle and the technology shifts are happening much faster. Then we are able to adapt to and so, even though we may seem to you or to somebody not maybe to you, but somebody like as a big change, we've actually been maniac at shrinking the change to make it adopt on, I think, the best customers and you were describing how you were shrinking the change, making it, you know, feel really connected to some existing processes. So it feels like it's just an extension. I think a lot of people come in there and they say we are gonna disrupt this and we're gonna disrupt that. And I'm not sure that's the model of like it happens. Their industry shifts, obviously, but I've certainly in the enterprise it nearly doesn't happen that fast.
But what are your thoughts and kind of disruption? I think, kind of coming back to where you are now you're you're dealing with with some of the challenges, and I'll come, I'll introduce CalCody a little bit in my, in my kind of understanding what, like we love kind of re-imagining the digital book, but you guys are kind of inheritors of the legacy of our, our Donnelley, which has been started gosh what. Eight, eight hundred sixties, or something like that.
0:39:07 - Eric West
Yep right. Yep exactly.
0:39:10 - Alex Shevelenko
Yes this is marketing execution services arm of LSE, which is also the largest producers of book in the US and leading manufacturer, distributor of magazines, catalogs etc. So You're dealing with kind of merging digital print and you're kind of at the sort of cutting edge of adapting, transforming, changing parts of your business. So guide us a little bit. Like we talked a lot about individual human nature, but you're now kind of dealing with industry and transition and you're innovating in a in a challenging environment, I would think. So you're kind of you're bringing different pieces together, developing capabilities. I'd love to hear how you're managing that.
0:39:54 - Eric West
Yeah, again, it goes back to you know the, the old chestnut about looking at your, at your customers. So I think, well, well, first let me take a step back. So, yeah, you're right, call kodi or Kodi Collective, rather has sorry, that's your website.
0:40:13 - Alex Shevelenko
Sorry, that's your website. By the way call kodi. Go to callkodi.com. There you go.
0:40:19 - Eric West
So so the Kodi Collective is a combination of a couple of different platforms. The first platform is our print platform. We've got offset and digital printing assets again. Yeah, catalogs, magazines. That's been our that's been our history and we've also got a services platform, creative services and marketing services, and so we kind of combine those From the, the legacy LSE name kind of combined all of those assets into one organization called called Kodi Collective. So in that new, with that new opportunity, this new platform, new branding, etc.
It also provides us an opportunity to rethink how, how we could be servicing our clients and what their needs really are. It's no mystery that that traditional print advertising and marketing has trunk, significantly right. There's not as many magazines, there's not as many catalogs. A lot of that's digital now. So, given that that's the case, there's multiple places to envy. How can for the amount that's going to remain, how can we be the most effective and value creation for our, for our clients there, whether that's with innovating on the actual platform itself or whether that's with introducing additional services and capabilities on top of that traditional work? And then it's also where what is what is in the same arena right, we can't be completely orthogonal, but what is maybe tangential to that world where there's additional services and capabilities that make that relationship stronger and so that we can continue to innovate in that world, if you don't have those strong client relationships and understanding, then you're not going to have the right to innovate with them because they don't know you and they don't trust you. So we have to focus on that, on that on the customer. So I think that's that's the place where we're really Starting and focusing. It's building better relationships and A funnel of getting that voice of concern consumer or customer, rather from those customers and Introducing them to new ideas and getting their feedback. We're thinking of investing in this. This is a this is something we're seeing in the marketplace. What are your thoughts? So I think a lot of this is about customer engagement and making sure that we're not just investing in the customer and making sure that you, you understand what they need.
0:42:50 - Alex Shevelenko
So even in industries where there's a lot of change, the the true north is. You know, don't dream up the next thing. Necessarily go dream it up. Together was your customers.
0:43:05 - Eric West
Absolutely. Yeah, I don't think you know. It's true there. You know you used us and Steve Jobs quotes or things that he's quoted others. But there's the the old chestnut that if anybody, if you ask people what they wanted back in the 1800s, they'd say a faster horse. Nobody would say they wanted a car. So that that is also very true. Right, there's, there's definitely space in need for For this, this massive disruption, but in in many instances and probably the industries I focus on, there's, there's a lot of, there's a lot of innovation that doesn't necessarily need to be disruptive to be Additive both to your customers and to yourself.
It's a lot about the innovation and the disruption is really the disruption of actually listening to your customers. I'm asking your customers, right, because there's a lot of talk about that, and then there's and then there's putting in the legwork to actually do it, and when you do that, you're they're gonna tell you things and that's what you have to decide. Is that thing that they just told us? Is that something we really should be helping them with? Do we make an introduction? Can you still add value that way, or is this something really we should be adding to our quiver?
Because it makes sense that we're gonna help them.
0:44:25 - Alex Shevelenko
Got it well. And actually I want to kind of add to this discussion of you know, faster horse right, like so. Sometimes we look back at innovations and we say, ah, isn't that funny like faster horse right. But actually the way to describe the automobile was to at first to say it's horseless carriage. So you still had a reference to to that.
I think one of my favorite stories that I heard recently from Chris Lockhead, who you know we had a chance to work with at success factors, he's kind of a guru of category design and he said well, Otis, which is the elevators that we all are familiar with, they had a problem introducing elevators back in the days where there is not that many skyscrapers and you know it was sort of still not a clear and how the safety worked. And so he said, well, elevator is really a vertical railroad, so everybody knew what a railroad was and they just kind of oh okay, it just goes up and down and it's safe, and it's sort of like they kind of projected a bunch of things. So I think so. That's why I think the word disruption sometimes overused, because the market needs to connect the dots between when they are and where they want to be if there is change.
It was least amount of thinking and kind of headaches and I think a lot of innovations don't happen. Like most people could not explain what blockchain Is if their life depended on it and you know, no surprise it's kind of took off in esoteric circles. You know of it, but it didn't really fulfill quite some of its promise, and so we see this time and time again with technology. Some people get all fired up about them, but the explanations aren't forthcoming in a way that resonates was the problems that people could relate to.
0:46:26 - Eric West
And you know my background. I've kind of migrated more into the sales and marketing and product spaces, but my background is actually in engineering and a lot of that's because you know it was a well-worn path and pretty risk averse. A lot of the areas I gravitate towards are actually usually more of like the steady eddy environments and the innovation really is more about some of the. It's like incremental innovation, if you will, and it's about exactly that. And a lot of those the Otis example that you gave and the horse, the horseless carriage example a lot of those feel like just really good product management combined with marketing.
So fine, you asked the horse, you asked them what they wanted with their horse and they said a faster horse. Well, you, technically, you decomposed what they really wanted, which was speed, right, and then you delivered a solution that had speed, even though it wasn't exactly what they asked for. That's good product, that's just good product management, and I think that's a lot of what we're seeking to do. And certainly what I have sought to do in my career, at varying levels of success, is figuring out what we need to do to make our clients successful and then figuring out what that means in terms of how we, what we need to build in order to do that.
And I think it's as simple as that. I'll leave. I'll leave the giant blockchain discoveries to someone else.
0:47:59 - Alex Shevelenko
Well, and so you're kind of creating a new category at Kodi Collective, what you call it marketing execution services. You've brought together a disc different resources I think I'm looking at some of the companies that come came together as digital lizard, new marketing production services, Hudson Yard Studios. So tell us about that process, because it sounds like there is a new category of unified service. You're bringing in different capabilities. It's probably not trivial mixing cultures and different people that specialize in different areas. When was in marketing and creative industry still are probably different. So guide us a little bit about, kind of, the thought process behind that and how that transformation came about, and did you think about that space in general as marketing execution services, as a new way to deliver service to your customers? Is this something that you've always had in a roadmap and it's just kind of emerged organically, kind of would love to hear your perspective on how these transformations happen.
0:49:20 - Eric West
Yeah, the through line on all of the legacy organizations and the acquisitions that were in our portfolio and ultimately became Kodi, the through line a lot of those was a focus on subject matter expertise and delivering value, usually through either improved quality, lower cost or the same, but just really that maniacal subject matter expertise and really being able to solve the problem for the customer, whether that was on difficult and challenging ways of getting your catalog to look different, or different coatings or different experiences inside that catalog or whether it was helping source or build a marketing execution organization, a sourcing organization inside of some larger companies.
The through line of that was really about trying to marry the more science of execution with the art of really understanding that subject matter. And so, since that was the through line, it made a lot of sense to combine all of those different organizations underneath exactly that header. The marketing of it, if you will, is you're going to call Kodi Collective.
0:50:43 - Alex Shevelenko
Yeah, it worked, because I got confused myself and I should know that. There you go, so it's sort of like I'm calling Kodi. I like it.
0:50:51 - Eric West
There you go. Yeah, the concept was to call Kodi in order to have somebody else take care of it. Go to the experts that can take care of it. Whether it's something like on the print platforms or whether it's a service, you're going to experts that are going to be able to support you. So that's kind of the impetus behind that and what the real work is now.
Well, let me pause there. And that was all driven by customer feedback, right? What are you looking for? Well, you can't just, in today's market, can't just be a printer. What are you looking for? Well, in today's market, you can't just be a middleman.
So, figuring out, you know, taking that feedback and creating this organization where we have the best of both worlds, that was customer driven. What the next level of that looks like is what are those additional services? What is the model? The delivery model need to be? How do we need to prove value, not just to our immediate clients, the buyers, but how do we provide value or explain it better to the folks that those people report into? So it's not just solving the problem, it's also communicating the results, it's all of those things. So that's the next level, and I think that's what the next level of innovation looks like at our organization getting digital tools, even for things that are still physical, and improving the communication and analytics that come from the work that we do, because data is everywhere. So that's, and a lot of that's, being driven by what our customers are telling us now.
0:52:37 - Alex Shevelenko
And so it does come back to this topic that we came out on the beginning as to why we connected in the first place. Because you're bringing a set of capabilities together but not everybody wants all the same capabilities, so you can't cookie cutter it right. But they want you to know that there's one place where they can go and have a trusted partner that could meet their needs, or find other partners that would support those needs, but like one throat to choke I don't know if there's a better term for it.
0:53:13 - Eric West
One nose to touch.
0:53:14 - Alex Shevelenko
We prefer one nose to touch, one nose to touch, yeah, one champagne and one caviar, you know to taste.
0:53:25 - Eric West
There's, your French is showing.
0:53:26 - Alex Shevelenko
Yeah, it's French intention here. Interestingly a side note I tell my team that one of the inspirations for some of the things we're doing for RELAYTO is walking past a petit cerise in Paris and seeing all the little macaroons and how they have different colors and flavors and saying wouldn't it be great if we could? You know, this is sugar stuff, obviously, and it's tasty, but it's couldn't look good, good stuff, feel and taste and be experienced in the same way. So I think there's something to the French way. But the back to your situation.
I feel like the there's a shift that's been going on, but it's probably even more important now where you know there was a sort of wow market. We're all growing, we're going to try new things. You know, a little bit pre, like always in the growth spurts you know there's people are a little bit more open, not not we're looking at the cost draconically, and they tend to have, at least in technology, there was a proliferation of of solutions, but also, I think, in services, and I think the world is changing because, hey, I'm a complex, large organization. It's hard to have multiple vendors and coordinate between all those vendors, and so I want to have one partner that you know is accountable for results, and we see some of this kind of in our world. Like we started was one content format, you know, presentations, and then we now have support 20 content formats from various types of documents and to videos and so on, and so that's been really interesting.
And then the use cases you know, in our case expanded, in your case you know they're very, very broad, and so we're seeing that there is people always like some, they do want this quick start sometimes and a quick win if it's a new customer, but in general there is the kind of this appetite for knowing that you can expand and trust and grow as a service. And it sounds like that's your, your entry point with existing customers or new customers. But it's hard to communicate that when you have, you know, a slew of things that they may need right. And so this is where you you're coming back to how do we create this experience that allows you to the deploy complex suite of services and capabilities without overwhelming you with complexity?
0:56:09 - Eric West
Absolutely yeah.
And if you think about that, if you think about what it might want, like the nightmare scenario of working with a company like us, that might mean you're talking to seven different account managers from all of our seven different you know services and you're getting seven different invoices and you have all these different phone numbers to call.
And so, yeah, thinking, thinking critically about what that experience needs to be like once you're already with us, but also translating that back to our earlier theme translating that and telegraphing that all the way back to the first conversation. If you, if you know already that you can't service a client by being confusing and frustrating to work with once you start working with them, you can't also start that. You certainly then can't start the conversation where it is confusing to get the information that I want and all of that. So, so you know, we do have this wide breadth, we do have, you know, physical assets that produce physical products and we also have services that are, you know, just our team of experts. But, depending on who you're talking to, sometimes they just need one or the other or a subset of one or the other, and if you go in there and you spend 25 minutes trying to explain all of that you're already not listening to them, you're already not paying attention to their needs.
You're already difficult to work with. So finding the right way to communicate. It is really important and I that's why I take my role in kind of this sales marketing, sales support leadership role. I take it very, very seriously because it really goes to the essence of what it's like to work with us and that has to start at, even at that prospect discussion.
0:58:08 - Alex Shevelenko
Amazing I think this is a great summary of some of the topics that we covered which is you never get a second chance to make a first impression right, and I think in your case, whether it's a digital first impression or in a meeting that is supported with digital experiences, it's fundamentally being starting with the customer and then working backwards, and it's just amazing to see you articulated so clearly. Thank you for inspiring us on the journey and co-creating this types of experiences together. I think anybody who's listening to this who has a complex product or service or physical complex solutions that they need to deliver, I think you should really to your point or knock yourself out a little bit of status quo of this is the way we've always done, because the customers are changing, at a minimum, in their consumer digital behaviors and if we're not catching up with that as the B2B innovators, whether we're in marketing, sales or delivery, we're not doing anybody any favors. We're not delighting customers, we're not driving our customer experience team later in the journey to be held to a higher standard, and I think it's been interesting with kind of.
I think surprised me actually, and probably really good for people to know, is that you were the enabler for the people that are interacting with the potential customers and was the customers and doing that. So it's not all about kind of top of the funnel, kind of a journey, it's sort of across the journey. So, Eric, any last thoughts of wisdom that you want to share with our audience on the journey that you've taken and what you've changed, like you've worked, applied, even our solution you applied in multiple iterations. What have you learned from this and what tips do you have for maybe, what you wouldn't do? We talked about what you did. What wouldn't you do now?
1:00:23 - Eric West
Yeah, I think let's see any parting shots. I think we covered a lot. Focus on customers, actually listening and talking to them and getting that feedback is immensely important. Making sure that you're congruent with what your brand message is, and then all steps of your process, not just the delivery of it, but also in the beginning. And I guess the only other thing I would add in from what maybe what I wouldn't do is, like I said, I have an engineering background and that operational background and I tried to take marketing and sales when I first got into this area a lot more like that approach, a lot more linear. It's just simply an equation and something to solve and I think, allowing yourself to question your, the existing behavior whether it's the existing behavior of the industry itself or yourself and really thinking about what that process needs to look like and what your customers really want, breaking yourself from that. So I think that's something I would. I hope I wish I learned that a little bit earlier, but I'm certainly glad I have.
1:01:46 - Alex Shevelenko
Amazing, amazing insights. Eric how can people find you? What's the best way to follow you and Kodi Collective.
1:01:59 - Eric West
I'm actually on a pretty good social media diet myself, so I'm found mostly exclusively on LinkedIn. But you can reach Kodi Collective at callkodi.com and we look forward to hearing from you.
1:02:14 - Alex Shevelenko
Amazing. Thank you so much, thank you.