S 01 | Ep 29 The role of customer , buyer , and employee experience in standing out and winning Eric West has spent his career doing something most people only talk about : actually getting new ideas adopted inside large organizations , first at Omnicom and now at Cody Collective , where he leads growth and strategy for a company built from the legacy of RR Donnelley . The conversation is less about any single innovation and more about the conditions that make innovation possible at all . Eric ' s view is that inertia is the real opponent , not skepticism or budget constraints . People default to what they know because it feels safe , and the way to overcome that is not a better pitch deck but a smaller , lower - risk first step that creates visible evidence before anyone has to commit to anything bigger . Eric discusses how companies routinely sell transformation while delivering the opposite experience to the very people they are trying to convince . Eric ' s point is that the first interaction is not just a sales moment , it is a live demonstration of what it will feel like to work with you , and most organizations have not thought seriously about that .