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Writer's pictureRoger Courville, CSP

Marketing to build a sustainable competitive advantage | Mitchell Gooze', CSP

Why has a focus on sales NOT helped most companies? And what exactly is the source of sustainable competitive advantage?


In this episode of #ThoughtLeaderConversations, V2's Head of Strategy Roger Courville, CSP connects with Mitchell Gooze', CSP, a recognized expert in marketing leadership author of multiple books on marketing, experienced general manager, running divisions of large companies like Teledyne, CEO of mid-sized companies, and has both an MS and MBA from Edinburgh Business School, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh Scotland.


As you listen in on the conversation you will learn:


  • 3 keys to aligning your company with customer needs

  • Why marketing communications isn’t where growth happens

  • Understanding customer purchases can shift strategy

  • The value of spending time with customers

  • How customer feedback refines product and messaging

  • 2 benefits of applying process thinking to marketing

  • How simplifying offerings reduces customer confusion.


Further, when it comes to webinars we chat about:


  • The importance of creating a valuable experience that encourages live attendance at webinars

  • Why simply offering a recording isn’t enough to maintain engagement or attendance

  • How offering exclusive content or interactive elements can enhance the value of live webinars

  • The role of interaction, such as using chat or Q&A, to increase participant engagement during webinars

  • Why marketers should focus on creating a unique experience that goes beyond passive consumption of content.





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Sponsor: V2, LLC, expert virtual and hybrid event production, www.VirtualVenues.com  

Host: Roger Courville, CSP, https://www.linkedin.com/in/rogerc/   


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UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT


  

 

[00:00:00] Roger Courville, CSP: Why is the focus on sales not helped most companies and what exactly is the source of sustainable competitive advantage? Well, hello and welcome to Marketing to Build a Sustainable Competitive Advantage. My name is Roger Courville and welcome to another episode of Thought Leader Conversations sponsored by the crew here at Virtual Venues, where you can instantly scale your virtual and hybrid event production team.

But as you know, we're not here to talk about us. And I am excited actually to welcome to the stage, author of multiple books on marketing knows his stuff. Mitch Gauze, CSP is a recognized expert in marketing leadership, uh, author of a whole bunch of books, experienced general manager, running divisions of large companies like Teledyme, CEO of midsize companies, serves on boards, has both.

I love this. both an M. S. and an M. B. A. from Edinburgh Business School, uh, at, uh, Harriet Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland. I'd love to know more about that and notably accomplished as a speaker, boasting the highest earned award from National Speakers Association, the C. S. P., the Certified Speaking Professional.

That's a, that's a big deal in NSA. So welcome to the virtual stage, Mitch. Glad you're here. And tell us a little more about who you are and what you do. 

[00:01:17] Mitchell Gooze, CSP: Thanks, Roger. I appreciate that. And, uh. The other thing you left out, which I have to, uh, say because my father would appreciate it is I also are an engineer.

Okay. So I graduated with a bachelor's degree in engineering and went into engineering, but I would have been a good engineer, but. I stumbled into marketing and it turns out that was really where I belong and as to your question about Edinburgh Business School. It's a funny story. I was working on an MBA for a while, but I kept moving so I had to change schools and My problem was, and when you get to know me better, this will not be a surprise.

I would argue with the professors in class and I discovered to my great chagrin that arguing with the professor doesn't help your grades. And so, so I, I eventually just gave up because my My, uh, my goal was to learn one thing in the real world for that would work in the real world each semester and half of classes I took didn't meet that goal.

So, uh, a buddy of mine, uh, told me about online universities, which is back in the 90s was not a common thing. thing. Right. And so he told me the Edinburgh Business School had a great program and it was fully accredited. So I, I checked into them and it was really the same program that they did face to face, but they did it online.

And it was a very simple program. Pass the final, get credit for the class, fail the final, don't get credit for the class, fail the final twice, you're kicked out of the program. So that's what I did for my MBA. And then. I decided I was very interested. I have a very interesting postulate that companies whose CEOs spend more time with customers do better.

Okay. And I wanted to research that and see if, if my, uh, if my postulate was valid. And I figured, well, the best way to do that. is to get a PhD, not because I needed the degree, but I could work with a professor who understood research and he could help me do the research in a valid way. So I put the proposal together and I had a tremendous amount of feedback from a lot of CEOs that they would love this.

And so I put the proposal together, submitted it to Edinburgh. I had to get another master's degree in order to get the PhD. So That's how I got my second master's but they the professor told me that I the research was not useful I said, what do you mean? It's not useful. He said if it was useful Somebody would have already researched it.

What? Yes I said are you telling me I can't do novel research? And he didn't really answer that question, but basically what I surmised was, no, students can't do novel research. Students can only do research to enhance research that has already been done. So, so I gave up, settled for my second master's degree and.

moved on because I really didn't care about the degree. I cared about the research. So that 

[00:04:46] Roger Courville, CSP: was a 

[00:04:47] Mitchell Gooze, CSP: long answer to your question. But as you said, I'm a CSP, which means I can 

[00:04:51] Roger Courville, CSP: talk. Well, thank you for spending a little moment with us. You know, one of the things that I noticed in one of your blogs, You call marketing the most undefined word in business.

So just out of curiosity, let's start there. How do you define it and why is it important to get that right? 

[00:05:08] Mitchell Gooze, CSP: Yes. So if you're going to talk about something, it's in my opinion, it's a good idea to agree upon what you're talking about, right? And most people When they talk about marketing or talking about marketing communications, now marketing communications has evolved over the years.

It used to be brochures and things like that. And now it's webs and emails and social media and all kinds of stuff to communicate with target customers and potential customers. That is marketing communications. It is hugely important and It's where most companies spend most of their money, but it's not where the leverage is, right?

The leverage is in what we call the front end of marketing, which is marketing strategy, figuring out what new products and services to bring to market and then bringing them to market in a way that makes them competitive. So there, I define four roles of marketing, but the definition that we have For what is marketing is marketing's job is to align the capabilities of your company with the current and future.

needs of your customers. And the hard part is the future, okay? But if you get that right, everything else is easy. Marketing communications is, is tough no matter what, but if I give you a product people are beating down the door for, it's a whole lot easier for you to do it. And one of the things that I, that I tell my audience is, is that as a percentage of revenue, Apple spends less money on marketing or marketing communications than does almost any other company because Steve Jobs put in place in his second iteration a culture that got the product right and it's a whole lot easier to communicate.

if, if people are already demanding their product. So that's where I see the role of marketing. And I'll go further and say, if, if you want to sustain a competitive advantage, that's really the only way to do it. I can outsource almost everything in business. I'm not saying you should, but you could, including outsourcing marketing communications, truthfully.

Understanding how to align the capabilities of your company with the current and future needs of your customers is not outsourceable. You have to figure that out. And the, the, when you figure that out, you can build yourself a competitive advantage. 

[00:07:48] Roger Courville, CSP: Do I remember correctly that Steve Jobs didn't do focus groups because 

[00:07:55] Mitchell Gooze, CSP: that's correct.

That's correct. 

[00:07:57] Roger Courville, CSP: Tell me more. This 

[00:08:01] Mitchell Gooze, CSP: is another, um, sort of bias of mine and, and, and let's be clear. Steve Jobs was a genius. Okay. And if you look at the entirety of his career was amazing. Okay. Um, but in the first phase of his career, Apple one, shall we call it. Okay. He was an abject failure in my opinion.

Okay. And why do I say that? Well, he didn't introduce any product that was successful and people go, well, what about the Apple 2? That was Wozniak's idea. Okay. Steve Jobs idea was the Apple 3. You remember, I mean, I'm sure you, Roger, you must've had a series of Apple threes in the companies you worked in.

[00:08:45] Roger Courville, CSP: My first, my first computer was, uh, the, the Mac 512 with, with the extra 400 K floppy. 

[00:08:56] Mitchell Gooze, CSP: Yeah. Well, so, so, so that after the Apple three, there was the Lisa one, which, I mean, only people who lived back then remember it. 

[00:09:05] Roger Courville, CSP: Right. That was a problem. 

[00:09:06] Mitchell Gooze, CSP: And then. It was named after his girlfriend. And he didn't change girlfriends, so he had, when he came out with a new computer, it was the Lisa 2, and that was also useless.

He was working on the Macintosh, um, but it wasn't really, it wasn't customer centric. He got fired. And not for that reason, he got fired for any number of reasons. He left, and he, he started Pixar, and he started other things, and they brought him back to Apple, and I have no idea, because I don't know Steve Jobs.

An admin that worked for me many years ago went to school with him, but other than that, I have no connection to him at all, other than what I observed. But I believe something changed, because when he came back, the first thing he did was say, we are working on too many products. He cut it down to five.

Now, I know companies that are doing a hundred million dollars in revenue that are working on more than five products and they shouldn't be. Okay. He focused the company. on products that mattered. And he, every single one of them was right from the iPod to the iPad to everything else was right and was a winner.

And the, the biggest thing I've noticed since he passed away, unfortunately, is when, when, when a product came out under the second generation jobs. It didn't get recalled. It didn't have, it didn't have errors. It worked. And now they introduced products. They still do a really good job, but the product is more likely to have some tweaks need to be made to it or errors made to it.

But I believe that Steve Jobs thought that he understood the customer in phase one and he did not. In phase two, He did because he didn't change, okay? His personality didn't change. I've heard from people who've worked for him, you know, that when I want your opinion, I'll give it to you. That was kind of the approach that he took.

But whatever brain transplant, let's say that he had, he understood customers much better and got the products right. And that I think is, is what allowed Apple to not really need to spend a lot of money on advertising. Okay. Um, yeah, I mean, they did a Super Bowl ad a zillion years ago. In fact, I think it's funny because that ad, if, if you were, if you either saw it or remember it was talking about how IBM was going to control your life, right?

And what I think is funny today is if you, if you were an Apple user, they control your life. Okay. Because all their products are networked together, which is very useful, but they tell you how to use them, how they should be used, et cetera. So maybe Apple became the IBM of that. 

[00:12:04] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah, they sure did. Funny enough, I just watched that ad here a couple months ago because I was talking to my wife about it and she's like, what?

Yeah. Well, let's go watch it 

[00:12:16] Mitchell Gooze, CSP: was memorable way. So 

[00:12:19] Roger Courville, CSP: I would imagine if you're talking about, uh, not just current customers, but future needs for your customer, you've got an eye on trends. What, just out of curiosity, what, what are you seeing in kind of the big picture that, that, uh, you deem important when you're in front of an audience?

[00:12:36] Mitchell Gooze, CSP: Yeah, so the, uh, not a direct answer to your question, but I'll get to that. One of the things I tell marketing audiences, um, and I also tell CEOs the same question, same thing. Get out of your office and spend more time with customers. Stop looking at data, not that data is not important, but going and looking at customers, talking to customers, observing, uh, Being the native in their natural habitat is amazingly useful.

And I discovered that quite by accident. Okay. Remember I told you I were, I are an engineer and I, I moved from, uh, from Southern California, where I, grew up to Austin, Texas to work for Motorola, and Motorola hired me as a market, a product marketing engineer, and I took the job, um, and I, I really liked it, but the problem I had was I had met a young lady prior to moving to Austin that I really liked, and I needed to see her on a regular basis in order for Something to potentially evolve, which it did.

I married her. Okay. But, so I had to figure out a way to see her roughly monthly that was business related. Okay. And she wasn't a customer, obviously . So I would, I decided I needed to go out and visit customers. Which was a legitimate thing to do, but the primary motivation was, was to see her and she still tells a story to this day of how I had a business trip that went from Austin to Boston through Los Angeles.

Okay. And I didn't waste any company's money and I didn't use the company's time on it. I just routed myself in a way that would work. But what I discovered by accident, which was the most powerful thing I learned, was that visiting customers. was huge. It was unbelievable what I learned talking to customers and observing our sales people talking to customers and riding around with them in between calls and having them ask me questions and tell me things.

It was probably The biggest,

the biggest thing I did to, to help my career in a big way. And so I have, without regard to having a girlfriend, I tell people get out of the office. I tell CEOs they should spend 25 percent of their time out of the office because what they're occupying their time with internally It's important. I look at Sam Walton who spent, who worked six days a week, five days a week.

He was out with his customers. I, I have a number of examples. So I tell marketing people, get out of the office. Now, sometimes it can be hard, especially if you're in marketing communications, because your boss doesn't necessarily think You need to be in front of customers. And maybe if you're a digital expert, you don't necessarily have to be in front of customers, but if you have anything to do with creating content or messaging or how to communicate, you can't learn it any better.

It won't be efficient, but it will be effective if you get up and talk to customers. 

[00:16:01] Roger Courville, CSP: I love that. And In one sense, it seems like it should be a no brainer. In another way, I mean, I can think of just a couple examples, and I'd love to hear, I know you, your books are full of stories, so I'd love to hear more of your stories, too.

But, I can think of a couple off the top of my head, one for me, one actually for a fellow speaker, where some part of how I was messaging changed. based on a conversation, right? And I was like, ah, those words, those are the words that land. And it changed to change the course of one of my presentations. And, um, uh, I'm in Seattle now, but, you know, I was, uh, former, um, president of national speakers association of Oregon.

Cause I lived in Portland for 34 years and we had a speaker that was part of our chapter that, that actually. Uh, showed up to a gig, saw a, a presentation title, like on, you know, the, the, the, the, the placard stand standing outside the door . And he went, oh, that's a good title. And then he saw his own picture next to it and they had mistitled his, his speech

And he went, oh, that's even better, . And he started using it. So I'm like, there you go. I mean, unless you're listening , 

[00:17:26] Mitchell Gooze, CSP: it's hard to, I love 

[00:17:27] Roger Courville, CSP: it 

[00:17:28] Mitchell Gooze, CSP: if you are out in the world. You hear how your customers and potential customers talk. What language do they use? It's like when I present to larger audiences or conferences, I go as early as I can.

Because I want to hear the other speakers. I want to see what the other topics are that people are talking about. I want to hear what's resonating and I may adapt my talk to align with or contradict, depending upon how I'm feeling. Um, what, what others are saying, because our job is to serve the customer.

The other, line I use is a key skill. Sometimes I think it's the most important skill, but it's the key skill for sure for marketers is to think like a customer, as opposed to hoping the customer thinks like you. Going back to R. T. Steve Jobs story, I believe he believed the customer needed to think like him.

in his first incarnation. Right. He still believed that in his second incarnation, but he had somehow figured out how to think like the customer without adapting his, his values. But most marketers, says me, aren't adept at thinking like the customer. They want to persuade the customer to think like them, especially if they're on the communication side.

And they don't get useful information from the product marketing team that has brought, that is bringing the product to market because they're not thinking like a customer either. So they're misled. They don't realize they're being misled and they do an outstanding job of miscommunicating to the customer.

They're very, very efficient and effective at what they think the message should be, but it's the wrong message. 

[00:19:24] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah, I, uh, Because like you, you know, part of my background was product marketing. Um, doing competitive analysis was a, was a significant part of the, part of the role. I mean, and you can't do, you can't do effective pricing, packaging, positioning.

without understanding where you fit in the world, right? You want to position yourself into the box or into the upper right on the chart and position the others out. And you can't do this unless you also know what your competitors are saying. 

[00:19:58] Mitchell Gooze, CSP: Exactly. In fact, one of the, one of the other pushes that I make to marketers and CEOs is I ask them a very simple question.

What can customers buy from your company they can't buy from anybody else or at least don't think They can buy from anybody else And you can't answer the question by saying quality and service Because I have never heard a company say look we made crap at work, but it's cheap. You're right I even had a couple of junk nobody In my audience, they don't say that either.

Okay, and it's unfortunately true that most Companies can't answer that question and then they struggle with being pushed on about price And sure, price negotiation happens all the time, but if you know what the customer's wanting to buy and you're the only people who have it, what are you going to do?

It's like, many years ago, I read a story about a guy who had traded in his third Lexus. And the newspaper guy who wrote the story I read asked him what caused him to do that. And he started by saying, well, like, was there a problem with the Lexus? And I said, no, it's the best car I've ever owned. He said, well, was there a, um, was there a problem with the dealer?

He said, no. If every vendor I dealt with was as great as my Lexus dealer, my life would be heaven. Was there a problem with the service? No. Well then why did you trade in a Lexus for a Mercedes without skipping a beat? The guy said, people look at you differently when you drive a Mercedes. That's what he was trying to buy.

When I used to live in Northern California in Silicon Valley, there was a lady in my neighborhood who drove a Porsche and her California personalized plate said, for my Ego. At least we know what she bought it for, okay? And it may not be what you and I are going to do, but who cares? It's her money, right?

What is the customer buying from you? Stop talking to me about what you're selling. And let me hear what you're, what the customer is buying. And a lot of people don't think that way and they should. Back to thinking like a customer. 

[00:22:32] Roger Courville, CSP: Mitch, one of the lines you, you used as we were prepping for this was mentioning that a focus on sales has not helped a lot of companies or most companies.

Tell me more. What do you think in there? 

[00:22:43] Mitchell Gooze, CSP: Yeah. So, um, I have three books on marketing that I've written. Um, and the second book is called the secret to selling more. Okay. And it started off as a three page article on an airplane and it's now like 120 page book. Okay. Um, and what I basically am attempting to demonstrate is that the bottleneck in revenue growth is not in sales.

It's in marketing. So we believe that marketing and sales is a business process that is driving the demand chain, just like engineering and production are the supply chain. Okay. Marketing and sales are the demand chain and we look at it as a business process. It starts with marketing. It ends with sales.

Just like 50 years ago, now probably 60, um, when there was a problem in production, the production people were blamed for it, and nobody ever considered the fact that it might have been designed poorly to begin with. Along comes a guy named Deming, and he taught us that problems in production may actually have been caused.

And so in today's world, when you have a production problem, design and production get together to figure out what the root cause is and fix it. Well, in the demand chain, we still believe the problem is in sales. Lack of revenue, missing sales quotas is a sales problem. And we fire sales people, we ultimately fire the sales manager, and then we start the process over and over again.

Okay, and. Companies have learned that I can steal the top salesperson from another company and they won't bring any business with them because the customers buying what they want from the other company. So that doesn't help you. So, and, and with all due respect to my friends who are excellent sales trainer, sales training is necessary, but it's not sufficient.

If it were, problem would be solved. Okay. So I'm thinking about all that and I'm trying to figure out what the problem is. And I finally figured it out. The problem is marketing. And I don't just mean marketing patients. I mean, understanding what the customer is buying. Okay, and if you get that right, you could, then you can communicate it to sales, but let's think about this for a second.

Let's just assume that we have no marketing department at all in our company. Okay, we don't do anything. Salespeople have to do everything, including figuring out what the customers buy. Well, how many different salespeople are you going to have and how many different ideas are you going to have, including my favorite, which is what's the customer buying from us?

Me. Okay, me. That's why you have to keep me because if I leave, all my customers are going to leave with me. So, marketing's job is to figure out what the customer is buying from you that they can't buy from anybody else, or don't think they can buy from anybody else. Teach that to sales, and then help them leverage it to their advantage.

with communications efforts and things of that nature. So that's, that's in a nutshell, what's in the book, but people should buy the book anyway, just kidding. 

[00:26:17] Roger Courville, CSP: No, I think that works. Um, and just in case you're listening, but not watching Mitch's, uh, primary website is on the screen there, customer manufacturing.

com. Let's hit, let's continue down that path a little bit, because you talk about sustainable competitive advantage. Right. So there's, there's getting it designed and built, right. So that it's desirable now, how do we sustain that? 

[00:26:44] Mitchell Gooze, CSP: So you have to understand how the world is changing. Okay. It was funny. I was with one of my audiences earlier in the, earlier this week, they were talking about, um, texting and emails and, and other people were talking about, we need to talk to people.

And, and I said, look, let's think about this. The original email was a Telegraph. Okay? That was the original email. It was one at a time. I telegraph to you, you telegraphed back to me, right? The telephone displaced the telegraph, because one of the things we've learned about people is. It's more effective if we talk to each other.

And now, they're trying to replace the telephone with the telegraph again, with email and text and things like that. And they're running into the same problems. I believe that we have to understand where the world is going. Absolutely, we have to do text. We have to do social media. We have to go the way the customer wants us to go.

is listening. But we also have to think about what, what is changing in the customer's life. I was having a conversation day before yesterday with a client that I've had for quite a while, and they were talking about a potential new product that really isn't necessary today, but in five years it will be.

Okay. And they explain why. Okay. And, and I get it, right? That company is not a PI doesn't, doesn't focus on being a pioneer and innovator. They're a fast follower. So fortunately for them, their primary competitor has just introduced the product. So now they can watch and see what that company does incorrectly.

Now they run the risk that that company will own the market, but it's hard to predict. to own a market for, for a long period of time. But the key is what are the trends, what's changing. And by going out and talking to customers and potential customers, they'll tell you. what they see changing. So you don't have to be the genius to figure out what in every industry, what's different.

They'll tell you if you get out and listen to them. But the truth of the matter is, and it's fun, the world doesn't stay the same. It definitely changes. But as somebody said a long time ago, the more things change, the more they stay the same. And some companies And I find this interesting. They get bored with their offering.

And so they want to introduce new stuff because they get bored with it. And that's not focusing on the customer. That's focusing on you. Now, could argue that why do we have new cars every year? Because they don't want to sell the old car over and over and over again. Okay. But if you go, if you go back in time, Henry Ford's idea of a car was transportation and his Believe it or not, his goal was to lower the price of the car each year.

So a 1915 model A would be X and a 1916 would be something less than X. And he eliminated all costs that he didn't feel added value. Which is why he really did say you can have it in any color you want, so long as it's black. Because black dried faster so it was more efficient paint. wasn't that he liked black, it was just more efficient.

He was wrong. And Alfred Sloan at General Motors figured out that there was other things customers were buying. And Ford went from having more cars on the road than anybody else to being the number two automobile company because Sloan was looking at what customers were buying. Ford was trying to dictate what he believed customers should want to buy.

So if I was, if I could predict trends. Perfectly, I would have you pay me to do this. Okay. But what I can tell you is you need to observe things and I you know I kick myself over the years because i've seen trends and didn't capitalize on them. Okay, um shame on me, but You know, I've also seen some trends that didn't actually happen, so, you know, it's, it's, it's the hardest job in marketing is to figure out what the customer is going to need tomorrow, shall we say.

[00:31:24] Roger Courville, CSP: Right. You know, one of the things that, um, I mean, I, I imagine everybody, everybody uses Apple as an example, probably plenty, but you know, One of the things that, I saw them beginning to do, I forget how far along ago it was sometime in the last 20 years, but there were certain applications where they started taking features out of the application, right?

They started actually, right? Cause we always think, well, you know, I've been in software for since the nineties, right? But we always think more, more, more. And they actually started skinnying some programs up, uh, and I would just, I thought that was kind of like, at first I was like, I was, well, I was pissed because they took out a feature that I liked.

And the second, I'm like, what are they doing? What are they seeing here? And I'm like, well, you know, every potential feature. And this would be true with a car or, or anything else, any potential feature, not only cost something to design, but it costs something to maintain and update and et cetera. And I'm like, ah, I'm going to learn something here.

[00:32:37] Mitchell Gooze, CSP: It also costs something in consumer confusion. Okay. 

[00:32:41] Roger Courville, CSP: Yes. 

[00:32:42] Mitchell Gooze, CSP: Or in consumers feeling like they're being forced to buy something. that they don't need or want, therefore, the product should be less expensive if it didn't include that. But as you and I both know, software is free, okay, in that it doesn't, it doesn't add to the bill of materials, if you will, for the, for the product cost, but it's not free.

And if you confuse your customers, you, if nothing else, you will increase your support costs. And one of the things that some companies are, are beginning to catch on to is listening to customer service calls. What is the customer calling about? What are they, what are they confused by? What are they asking about and thinking about, you know, what, maybe we should just take that out of there and, and cause less confusion.

But again, internally, we're not thinking like a customer. I mean, one of the reasons why product marketing slash product management, right? marketing function exists is because engineers can't think like the customer, at least most of them can't. Okay, and so if you let in, if you let a typical engineer, and I'm allowed to insult them because I are one, but if you let a typical engineer develop products, they're really cool, but nobody can use them.

Okay. And, and so you need marketing to, to balance out the innovation with the target audience.

[00:34:16] Roger Courville, CSP: I started multiple companies and, uh, two of them, I, uh, started with, uh, a long time friend passed a few years ago, but, um, he was always the product management to me, to my product marketing. And he used to say, and he would say it over and over cause we'd sit in an exec meetings at any time things got. Two outta hand, he would go, what problem do we solve for who and what are they willing to pay to solve that problem?

[00:34:45] Mitchell Gooze, CSP: Good for him. 

[00:34:46] Roger Courville, CSP: And, you know, over and over and, you know, I, I've just never forgotten it, but I've also applied it in some, some odd places. Like, you know, I've been in the virtual events business for 25 years, and I even think about that with regard to like Marco, because one of the challenges that some industry segments are seeing is that, is that.

They're seeing declining attendance rates at virtual events, one, because they're out there actively messaging going, please, please, please, please, please register for our webinar. And if you can't make it, we'll send you the recording. Well, if the experience is no different than passively attending a YouTube video, well, then maybe a challenge with, with the kind of experience you create.

But one of the challenges that I always thought about was like, great. What, what are we going to, what problem do we solve for who and what are they willing to pay even for a free webinar would be, what are they willing to show up at 10 a. m. on a Thursday for? 

[00:35:52] Mitchell Gooze, CSP: And what, and, and you, and use up. 

[00:35:55] Roger Courville, CSP: Right. Okay.

As opposed to, uh, as opposed to something else. So anyway, um, little wrap up. 

[00:36:02] Mitchell Gooze, CSP: Reminds me of a story when I was a kid. Um, uh, a group of us put on. On a, a play. Now I'm talking where, you know, like 8, 9, 10 years old. Right. And we're putting on a, on a play. And the audience, you know, our, our, our neighbors are sitting on the other side watching and it was horrible.

Okay. It was horrible. And the audience started chanting, we want our time back. . And, and that's the thing, when I think about attending a webinar. Um, I need to understand why I need to attend it live because if I, if I get the recording and it isn't useful to me, I can either fast forward or kill it. Okay.

Where if I'm, if I'm watching it live, I, if I kill it, I may have missed something that I would have seen later. But, um, so I need some value proposition that has to happen live, or I tend to, you know, Just get the recording and not attend it. So, 

[00:37:05] Roger Courville, CSP: uh, one simple way to do that is to offer something to live attendees.

that you're not otherwise going to distribute. So for me as a, as a professional speaker, and that's what I wrote my books about was how to present virtually. Um, I was never one to give away my PowerPoint slides, but every once in a while I would create what I always did was I would create a separate handout that summarized everything, but also included additional resources that I didn't cover in the presentation.

And. drop that into chat. Now, the only way you get it is when you're there live and, and, you know, if somebody emailed me afterwards going, Hey, can I get that? Of course I would send it to them. Right. But the whole point is you just took care of somebody for honor. I mean, you got to honor their time because they've just honored you by showing up.

[00:37:56] Mitchell Gooze, CSP: Right. And what, what, because I have no real experience, even remotely like you do, um, when I was forced into virtual events, you know, during, during COVID. Um, What I tried to do is make it more interactive So that there was actual value because one of my hallmarks in my live presentations is interaction So I try to extra hard to make it interactive The problem I ran into which of course you already know is that a lot of people are just sitting there They're not interested in being interactive and it would frustrate me, but that's I'm not the customer.

So it doesn't matter 

[00:38:34] Roger Courville, CSP: Well, part of that is enculturation, right? I mean, and we're here to talk, you know, hear from you, not me, but part of the enculturation, because I call it the Uncle Joe syndrome, right? It's, it's, it's like, uh, I want to learn to golf. Uncle Joe knows how to play golf. I learned to golf from Uncle Joe, and I don't really realize that Uncle Joe is a hack.

So I learned to write and the typical marketer coming back to that generally is, is their KPI is getting the lead, right? And, and they get the lead when somebody registers, regardless of the quality of the presentation. And, uh, sadly. We've conflated the medium with a, a, a, uh, format, right? We don't open Microsoft Word and think there's only one way to write a technical manual in a poem or two different ways of writing.

Both could happen in Microsoft Word. And yet somehow we think a webinar is 45 minutes of me talking at you and a little bit of Q& A at the end. No, it doesn't have to be that way. So it probably my one little piece of advice there would be. 

[00:39:47] Mitchell Gooze, CSP: And that's really good because that's thinking like a customer.

[00:39:52] Roger Courville, CSP: Well, I mean, just like, you know, your business really well. I know my business really well.

The easiest thing to do is to set a completely different expectation. The minute you open the program. Right? I mean, you have to, it has to start being interactive in some, in some way so that, and for me, one of my favorite things is just to open the chat so I can call on people by name and ask a question and, Oh, Julie says, and Mitch says, and Kyle, Oh, good point.

Kyle says, and, and that way they know we're making eye contact, so to speak. And, um, you know, it's not perfect, Plenty of people still show up to just sit there passively and listen and that's okay. And in a way that's not wrong It's not unlike you and I just pre recording this right? 

[00:40:43] Mitchell Gooze, CSP: So it's what they're doing, but This whole thing reminded me of something.

I saw in the news the other day, which is You know here you have the UFC the ultimate fighting championships, which which try to evolve boxing to another level. Well, the guy that owns that is now created, um, I don't know what exactly he's calling it. Basically, you slap each other. Okay. And I mean, you were, you slap them really hard.

Okay. And there's some rules about how you can slap them, but I watched a couple of outtakes, sir. And I go, Wow. And he thinks this is going to be bigger than the UFC. So it's an evolution. I don't know if he's right or not, but it's an evolution. And I suspect that people will look at it for no other reason than to see what it is.

And they'll decide if they like it or not. The clips that he had was, I wouldn't have imagined it would have been that interesting. So, you know, things change and Sometimes they stay the same. So 

[00:41:52] Roger Courville, CSP: Mitch, when somebody calls you with regard to consulting, 

[00:41:55] Mitchell Gooze, CSP: yeah, 

[00:41:56] Roger Courville, CSP: what question or two would they really benefit from asking?

[00:42:02] Mitchell Gooze, CSP: Um, so we're, we're, we're a boutique consulting firm. And so all of our partners are the only people that you can hire that we have no associates. Um, if, if, if, um, if work that doesn't require Innovation is required. You can outsource that elsewhere. What, what we do best is provide advice and training on the skills that we have.

And we, we work the entire process. And then the other thing that we really love to do, and it's probably the biggest frustration of our career in this field is that we believe marketing and sales is a business process and we believe that if you apply, apply process thinking to marketing and sales, you will dramatically improve revenue.

But most of our calls still come from people with a tactical problem. Okay. Um, my, my, my website's not pulling my, my advertising's not pulling my, my products are not doing as well as I should. My sales team isn't doing as well. Our product launch is not going as well. Whatever the case may be. And we can, we can solve all those problems.

But what makes us different is we won't. If we aren't convinced that that it's probably the root cause of the problem. All right. Because if you tell us that your problem is X, And we solve it and it doesn't get the outcome you were looking for, which is more revenue. You're going to blame us. Cause let's face it.

If I have to blame you or me for whether this webinar works or not, if it doesn't work, I'm blaming you. If it works well, I'm taking the credit. Right? And so we're, we're looking hard at trying to get people to think about process and how to process to, especially to creative marketers, in their mind, they think bureaucracy and they're going to constrain me and I'm not going to get to do what I want.

No, no. Process is about doing what matters and figuring out where the bottleneck is. We created a tool 10 years ago. We can tell any company. Now, if it's a huge company, we talk about a business unit, but any company, we can figure out. Where the bottleneck is in a week without occupying a whole bunch of people's time.

We have a tool that, that they use and we analyze the results and we can tell 'em exactly where the bottleneck is and we'll be. Right. And it's funny, one company that that used our tool when we came, when we got the answer, we thought, oh my goodness. 'cause the answer wasn't marketing or sales related.

And we'd never seen this before, but it's what the answer said. So we called the sponsor up and we said, the tool says your bottleneck is you guys don't communicate with each other and, and people don't know what they're supposed to do. And it's a huge communication problem. And the phone went silent for like 30 seconds.

And he said, Oh my God, he said, that is exactly right. And that's when we knew the tool was for sure bigger than we thought it was going to be. But we don't get calls to use it much because people believe what they want to believe, and they believe the problem is X, and they want us to solve it. And if we, if we have a reason to believe that they're probably right, we'll solve it.

Assuming we have the skill to do it, but we would much prefer that they work on the right problem. Not the problem that 

[00:45:59] Roger Courville, CSP: funny we have I've had similar kind of thing when because you know, I mean, I got my CSP teach people how to do things virtually and The, the opening phone call was almost always someone wanting training on a tool.

We want to learn to use WebEx or GoTo or Zoom or whatever. And I teach soft skills. I'm like, You know, you're, that's like, and I would use this analogy, I would say that's like me teaching you how to use Microsoft Word when what you really want to do is learn how to be a better writer. So Mitch, what, um, what question would you love it if I had asked you, but I haven't asked you.

[00:46:54] Mitchell Gooze, CSP: You know, I think you asked. or gave me the opportunity to answer all of my key things that, that mattered to me. Um, and I got to talk about some of my historical stuff for fun also. So you, you, you, you did a great job and, and I'll tell you, I was worried. That we wouldn't be prepped enough for this because, you know, we booked this a week ago and I didn't hear from you, but I figured, wait a second.

He's a professional. He's a CSP. It'll happen. And sure enough, it did. And it's been great. It's been great. 

[00:47:28] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah, I got not only hammered with responses from fellow CSPs, which was a beautiful. But then I was out of town for a couple of days, which is anyway, so I was just, I literally lined them up and started going, okay, first person I got to communicate with this is, is this person?

Because that, you know, that first interview was Monday morning and away we go. So 

[00:47:52] Mitchell Gooze, CSP: we're great. And I appreciate it. Well, a lot. So 

[00:47:55] Roger Courville, CSP: Well, thank you for, for your confidence. And, uh, yeah, the, the, the folks that are a little farther out in the future aren't gonna be quite last minute as, as this one turned out to be.

So thank you so much for taking a moment to share some of that, the, the depth of wisdom in your head. Um. Besides CustomerManufacturing. com, do you have any other way that you prefer people to connect with you? 

[00:48:21] Mitchell Gooze, CSP: I have, I have a speaking website. So if you're, if you're looking at me from a speaking perspective, MyName.

com Not MyName. com, MitchGuzet. com or MitchellGuzet. com both get you to my speaking website. So if you're more interested in having me speak, at an event or to your company or whatever. That's the simplest thing to do. Customermanufacturing. com tells you about what we do and it has a bunch of free resources.

We've got over 100 white papers we've written and they're all free, um, that you can download. We don't hunt you down as a result of that. 

[00:48:58] Roger Courville, CSP: Well, thank you again to our guest Mitch Gouzet, and thank you again for spending a little time with us here on Thought Leader Conversations, and sponsored by Virtual Venues, and we'll see you on the next episode of Thought Leader Conversations.

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