Episode 40: Challenging Assumptions and Understanding the Customer Journey | Barbara Stewart

In the latest episode of the Interesting B2B Marketers Podcast, Steve and Barbara Stewart, Founder of Hiya Marketing, both have decades of diverse expertise in advertising, consultancy, marketing, and behavioral science.

They discuss a case study on an enterprise productivity platform, the importance of understanding customer feedback, and how to evolve solutions based on user behavior and insights. Other topics include the challenges of advertising and promotion, simplifying complex problems, asking questions and challenging assumptions, and how to stay focused on understanding and connecting with target audiences.

Tune in for a lively discussion full of valuable insights into the world of B2B marketing!

Connect with Barbara Stewart and Steve Goldhaber on LinkedIn.

Transcript

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Steve Goldhaber: Hey everybody, it's Steve. Welcome back to Studio 26 and the interesting B2B marketers podcast today. I'm really excited to have Barbara join us on the show. Barb, welcome. 

Barbara Stewart: Thanks for having me, Steve. I'm very excited for today’s chat. 

Steve Goldhaber: All right. Awesome. So we're gonna do the 60-second rundown over your career.

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Barbara Stewart: Okay, perfect. I have about 20 to 21 years experience. Originally coming from advertising and then decided the customer wasn't quite there, and I moved around from consultancies to marketing. To behavioral science, basically trying to learn as much as I could in any one given moment by how to be really customer-centric.

High businesses put customers at the front and at the heart of their businesses. I wasn't always pleasantly surprised, and I've ended up from working in many, many different companies. I've also worked globally, so I have worked across Europe. I have worked across Australia. And being able to work on global roll lights of projects from one country to 60 countries.

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Steve Goldhaber: Yep. You and I share that. I've had two global roles and they are very, it's very fun. Like the ability to meet different people from different cultures is great. It does always take a toll on your work life clock because it's hard to keep up with everything, but they are fine. All right. Anyway, I'm going on a tangent and I'm gonna focus back to my favorite part of the show, which is the marketing case studies.

So the first one that you're gonna focus on has to do a lot about productivity platforms. So go ahead, take it away in case study one.

Barbara Stewart: So not name any names, but this is a SaaS business. They're very much focused on improving internal calms. Project management and workflow efficiency. For me, it's a really, really good CX B2B case study because it really demonstrates how businesses should always be evolving to the needs and the actual behaviors of their customers.

The reality is this organization, were not the first in the market. There were incredibly good and very notable competitors in the space and each of the competitors and the platforms. They had incredibly unique features and strengths, catering to very different user preferences and organization requirements.

So when this. South's business wanted to come in and create a space for themselves there. There wasn't much room really, let's be honest. So they decided, they did quite a bit of research and they very much realized there's a little bit of space for the SMEs, and they very much focused on some sectors where they really believed that there was a bit more need of collaboration, a bit more need of creativity and bringing Dev specific.

Integrations into play. They absolutely knew they couldn't outspend, they cannot go big into their field of marketing. They didn't have the team. They were in, in fact, quite a, a scale up startup of themselves. So what they took on board is they had to understand their target audience's needs and behaviors better than anybody else.

That was really how they were going to make it. Any here. So whereas their target audience, they span across many industries. They really wanna define a sweet spot where, let's find something culturally that holds these organizations together. And that was very much the value of efficient communication, collaboration, and streamline workflows.

It was very much that agile think in the lean methodologies, bringing companies that were. Willing or wanting very much to pay to be able to do that. They didn't at the beginning, they really didn't know that much about their target audience. So they spent a lot of time before they actually put pen to paper, before they drew anything.

They spent a lot of time looking, interviewing. Watching behavior of these people, finding out what really made them tick, what was productivity to them? How within those teams, how do you foster collaboration and how do you simplify? Looking at doing a deep dive into all the competitors sets, what's the strengths of those products and solutions?

Where's the weaknesses? Whenever they went onto review site, what were people really saying or. Inter Reddits and subreddits to find out what people were actually really loving about the competitor set. And really not happy. So as I couldn't, I'd spend in marketing and sales, they really did bring CX into the absolute beaten heart of the whole go-to-market model and the whole business approach.

They were very, very much focused on creating that real, fun, customer-centric approach and making sure it gives them a position of difference. They were not going to do look likes. They were not going to copy everybody else's. They were going to basically find out what works, what doesn't work, and what do people really want, not what they say they want.

Because that's very often we get so distracted by, we do a focus groups a somebody or multiples. 

Steve Goldhaber: Yeah. Tell us they want something and we go down the crazy rabbit hole of coming up with something because one thing, one, one focus group set up. Yep.

What's the time that it took for them to get that clarity around who they wanted to go after and.

And their go-to-market approach. How long was that?

Barbara Stewart:  To my knowledge, I was approximately 18 months to really believe it. 

Steve Goldhaber: That's a long time. 

Barbara Stewart: So this is definitely a big company. If they had 18months, they had 18 months. They, they played, but they really, this was too, too much of a competitor set who could absolutely.

Let's be blunt, wipe the floor of the medic. Got it wrong. Yep. Okay, so they did it at scale. They did it with a lot of UX methodologies as well. So really observing how people behaved rather than listening to what they said. Yeah.

Steve Goldhaber: So tell us too, like it sounds like they made, at first when you started telling this story, it reminded me of the classic tech go-to-market approach, which is.

We've got this thing, now we need to figure out who to sell it for. Right? So, all right. We took a step back. We figured out how to sell it, but this, this sounds deeper than just the marketing side. It, it sounds like they actually had to change the product features. Is that true?

Barbara Stewart: They did. And the most fascinating thing is, They kept that at the very start.

How they decided the whole philosophy of the business was we're going to listen to customer feedback first. We're gonna listen to our competitors' customer feedback because we don't have our own. And then no matter what, the voice of the customer will always dictate what we do from a product serviced revolution, evolution, roadmap.

Everything is driven by customer feedback even now, and they're very, very much an established player in the market, but no matter what they do, however they decide, it is all linked back to, they still spend a lot of their budget listening to customer feedback, getting it. Watching the behavior and really stress testing what, what tools, yeah.

Need to be done on integrations. So it's always one step ahead of the customer's needs. Always predicting the unmet need and making sure if something doesn't work, if what they thought there was a pain point and they find out when they release it, it's not solving it, they remove it. They are not trying to, it's wonderful because for once there's a company not trying to pigeonhole their product and solution into something, they really are evolving it, which it doesn't really happen that often.

Yeah.

Steve Goldhaber: Okay. So they, they know who they are, they change the product, they change the marketing. What happens when they launch? What's the feedback? What's the reaction it flow to begin with?

Barbara Stewart: Because obviously people are very risk adverse, but because they very much knew that that SME business they went into.

Very much this smaller medium. That's where they found if they could get enough of them and they were able to actually create a really good referral program. Very much encouraging. They tested quite a few different methodologies in order to, to get that trial off use. And it was very much at the start.

There was up to 90 days, if I remember correctly, free trials. There was a lot of support around the onboarding being given account people to really help us success, even though that wasn't a paid for service. It was very much, let's find those early adopters within that. Small to medium, very much medium.

Get them to be the voice and the advocate, and really as they move jobs within the industries, they will be the people champion to bring us in as these people mature or as they move to different roles

Steve Goldhaber:. Yep. It's interesting. You can also tell the fo. I'm, I'm gonna make a whole bunch of guesses here for the company.

The company has to, I can never tell you. Yeah. The company has to be well funded if they're playing the long game, as opposed to trying to get something, you know, the decision maker in that quarter to do something. So it, it's great to see the companies that have the luxury to do that.

Barbara Stewart: Absolutely. We don't often get to hear about them.

Steve Goldhaber:

What's the whole outcome of the, of the case? You know, where did it go? What were, what were the lessons that were learned?

Barbara Stewart: Basically one of the top businesses now it. Never. It really is if I said the L, you would know it instantly. Mo there isn't even within enterprise, it is a common solution that's used.

They have played the long game. They have basically very much, although their startup scale up, their idea of growth wasn't rapid pace adoption. It was, we've got to find the product that matches the need. And actually get the, the journey with us and be able to get the loyalty long, long term, and they have been incredibly successful.

The product, as it stands, still is evolving. I use the product quite frequently and each time I go on, there's new integrations. They've really developed a whole community around it. Very much the community with third party apps with seamless integrations and the support piece as well. So when you're on there, unlike a lot of their competitors, it feels like a whole community.

What? As soon as you're on the platform, yeah. It's so much more than what it began, its life.

Steve Goldhaber: Nice. All right. Let's jump into case study number two. This one has to do with a workplace. Design solution. So I'm excited to hear about that.

Barbara Stewart: Go ahead. So this one is really interesting. This business very much started as a user or a very, very small s e or educational SA product and platform.

And it was, it basically accidentally realized there was an unmet need. In enterprise, but they weren't looking for that when it actually happened and they, what they could have done is one of two things they could have done. What most other businesses do realize, oh, here's something quite interesting. We have one target audience and we could actually just.

Repackage our seals and marketing change a few words, provide a few different changes in the platform. And Abra cadabra, here we go. And they held back, miraculously they held back from doing that and they, they really thought, we have discovered a unmet need and we could develop an enterprise solution in response to the growing demand, but we would.

If we do this, we have to actually think about what are the advanced requirements, what are the features? What does customization, how much does this change our business? And does this distract from our business, or does this actually grow it in a really nice symbiotic way? So they didn't just expand the product, they actually crafted a specific solution around the enterprise business, and that was very much they.

Rather than thinking, well, let's just go and talk to them. They spent a lot of time around the job to be done methodology Christian Clayson, and they wanted to understand approximately five key trends. They wanted to understand the job to be done. What, why would an enterprise around these trends, what would an enterprise need?

Why would it need it, and what are the solutions they're basically using? No. And why consider using, so the, the trends were scalability, brand consistency and control, collaboration and workflow management. And then there was a big one around security and privacy, and then onboarding. This was very much a.

So, you know, a, a very standard plug and play. You, you register, you go and do what you wish on the platform. And they wanted to know how much does an enterprise want that versus do they want customer success teams, do they want support, training, onboarding? So they spent a significant, not as much as the other business, they spent a significant amount of time really trying to understand.

What would this be if they changed their business or if they add this specific package, what does that look like? Why should we do it? Who should we do it for? And really thinking about. Is this a global business requirement that someone's willing to pay for? And how would they provide that seamless piece?

So they spent a lot of time going and interviewing the actual people who purchase the buyers, the users and the, the teams who would be collaborating and utilizing this and really understanding interviewing the current customers. So the users. B2c, the small medium companies, and also interviewing the enterprise to really see what's the difference here?

Are we going to ruin our product by trying to bite off too much or is there something really magic here that we have something if we create an evolution of it? Doesn't really solve an unmet need. So they spent a lot of time really understanding the, the why and the why they would do it. And they developed out an enterprise package.

It has advanced features. It's very much designed for and with large organizations. So there was a lot of co-creation and collaboration. It has very d very different functionality. Different features when you're on it. As I use the platform very frequently as a business owner myself, so I'm not in the enterprise.

So the first time I got to see the enterprise piece, I was quite shocked at the user interface, the UX steam. Very beautiful, but it's a completely different experience. Rightfully so. Mm-hmm. So they are interesting not just taking pieces and reshaping and making it look different. They really understood how the businesses would need the integrations with their other systems, processes, how it would all work with the full tech stack.

What is an actual dedicated support and training require. So it's people are inable very quickly. User and get going rather than be involved on having to learn or having to understand how to use this. So it's an absolutely fascinating one. Similar again to case study one, taking the time before they jump into anything to really understand the why and the nature of the based and should it be done, why should it be done?

Well, Very often we're we see an opportunity and we run at long before we've really ever even done a swap or a ties on it.

Steve Goldhaber: Yeah, it's fascinating, especially you get into the enterprise world. Maybe a third of the whole challenge is just getting the product right, but then the other two thirds is the how does this bigger company engage with it and how do you Right size that.

That's, yeah. You know, that's the challenge. You've created something that works, but it only works in your little world. And until you start talking to the actual people in it, and unfortunately what you learn is like, oh, this isn't as simple as we thought. And it's not just one team that uses it, it's five teams.

And these five teams don't always work together so seamlessly. Right? So how do you accommodate that in a platform? Because you can't be frustrated by how big enterprises use it. You just have to to create workarounds. So that every person who does have a seat at the table gets what they need so that you can get what you want, which is ultimately, you know, a, a subscription or a big contract.

Barbara Stewart: And it's also taken into for the enterprise, the cultures are so different, you know, if you're working with the team. In Korea versus in Germany versus America, even how they interact with each other and the dynamics. So your platform has to really understand how globally the culture of the team will work and make sure it enables.

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Steve Goldhaber: it's funny.I was gonna say I've worked on a couple of intranets, like, so this is the internal platforms that, that people communicate with. I've had one organization that like. The name is so important. We have to get the name right. Then I have another organization that has said, I don't want to name this thing.

It's too controversial. We'll never get it right and we'll never agree on it, and the project will be delayed by a year. So they have like the out-of-the box branding for their solutions. It just fascinates me how culture is something that you cannot neglect as much as it doesn't make sense. It absolutely makes sense and you have to design for that.

Otherwise you can't implement a solution

Barbara Stewart:. No, and we're also irrational. Very often people think being customer experience. Centric or doing CX is, we'll, we'll run a few interviews or we'll send out a survey and we'll read that and it's without understanding the behavior that is actually driving you can.

Get very fixated on one piece of information that isn't, it's just a statistic or a piece of data. It's not an insight. And you see a lot of companies really changing their whole approach based on pieces of data that really should have been pulled apart, investigated, and. And double checked before people jump in.

Steve Goldhaber:

Yeah. Beware of the focus group where, where that one customer says something that you're inspired by. I mean, I've, I've seen it work good in bad ways, you know. All right, let's do this. Let's jump into the final case study. This is a little bit of like a business transformation story involving company in the biopharma industry.

Barbara Stewart:

So this is a biopharma business that really want to change the opportunities for the business and really, Understand all the different technology that's happening in the world, how can they move from just being biopharma to actually really doing that full circle? So making sure that they have end-to-end solutions that are not just around.

Prevention from bio, but actually prevention from monitoring, observing, traceability, everything like that. So they, as a lot of companies do, they go out on a acquisition mode and purchase several different businesses. They then have a beautiful portfolio of multiple different brands. No consistent understanding, no integration, no real definition at that moment of is there new customers, is there new opportunities?

What, what is the sum for us as a greater than anyone of the pieces and it, it was very much understanding. How did they understand the strengths and weaknesses of each of the product portfolio, and how did they understand the product portfolio as a combined solutions, very much working out. So from this, Business.

This organization, it was at a a real global stage understanding who are the new audiences, how do they actually understand the good market model and how do they even combine the solutions? From the deep research I've done, it took a long time. They purchased and actually in, from the outside, it looked like they were doing nothing for multiple years.

You know, it, it was very confusing. I, I was absolutely obsessed because there was a lot of money on the table and no action. But now having been able to get the access to the case studies, it was a deep dive into each of these products, how they can actually be integrated with each other. What does that actually look like, and integration, and who are these new customers and how do you actually go to market?

With an end-to-end solution when there's never been. So if you are the new disruptor in a marketplace that is early, early, early adopters aren't even aware that you're, you've connected the dots. It was very much deep diving into understanding micro trends, macro trends, doing research into very much understanding the consumer trends impacting.

The business trends impacting the environmental sustainability. So from the outskirts outside, it very much looked like a stand still of scratching the head wondering, but actually it was serious amounts of research in understanding how we're gonna do it, why we're gonna do it, and what does that actually look like.

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Steve Goldhaber: Tell me about, like what was your role in that? Were you facilitating, you're obviously providing like a CX lens to it. What was your role in that whole case study?

Barbara Stewart: In that, I've had the pleasure of coming in later on and actually helping connect, but it was very much helping connect with the go to market and the actual research pieces.

Yeah, but this is time and time again. We're watching this happen across a healthcare industry, not myself, always involved because the world has evolved so much. And the reality is with what this case study teaches us, if you don't pause for a moment and do the research and it's very much deep dive research fitting with the business', understanding, doing the survey, doing everything that you can, you will start adding tech for tech and it.

Mm-hmm. We're seeing that everywhere at the moment. It's very much people are getting so excited of ai. And it's right. Rather than going, why do we need ai? What does that do? What? What does the, the need of the human being, how does that help us? When we just run straight into the tech, we end up creating huge problems for ourselves.

So it's very much this whole world, it's take a moment, pause and really think, why would someone be willing? What if it's early adopters? What value are you really going to give them and why? Really? Critique that value because there's great value, but are they willing to pay for that value too? Yeah. Do you have to wait for four years?

Do you have to wait for two years? When's the right moment? It's very much a different world. It's changed so much and it's changing at such a rapid pace. We all don't want to get caught up in. Do the wrong thing or hold back and someone beat us. But if we're too fast, we could destroy all opportunities as well.

Yeah.

Steve Goldhaber: You know, the first two cases as well, you know, you, you've got all the CX lens that you put into it, and since we're talking about pharma, it reminded me of some really fun research that hospital did. They needed to to be more, you know, user patient centric, and they actually started doing research where they would put executives.

In an ambulance and unload them. Right? So they would essentially say, where does our experience start? Start with the ambulance. We're gonna take you into triage, then we're gonna go to another area. And the funniest insight that came from it is they had not really spent any time on what the patient was looking at, which, if you're coming in off of an ambulance, you're looking at the ceiling the whole time.

So they started rethinking like, what do we put on the ceiling? Because it, it just was like a fascinating world of like, yeah, you would never think about that. You would always want to think about, well, it's the doctors or the, or the nurses or the techs. It's their perspective, but they started thinking about how could they put signage on the ceiling for someone who might be like disoriented, waking up in an emergency room.

And I, I always thought that was great research because it's like you literally are putting yourself in the customer's shoes and seeing what their experience was like.

Barbara Stewart:  And, and still simple, isn't it? It's still beautiful. I think that's such a, a challenge we have at the moment, especially, I think it's a, a challenge across all businesses, all organizations.

We make so much assumptions about what. Customers want. Customers need about what we want as a business, and we don't really ever. Attack those assumptions. Someone can say it in a C-suite boardroom, and then that's given, yeah, as that's, that's the fact, and we're moving on from that, and then we're in trouble from that moment on.

But research and getting an understanding of what people need or their behavior, it shouldn't cost the art and it doesn't always take time. You know, it was very much getting the executive, like you said, to sit down, lie down on a bed in a ambulance. And what are you seeing?

Steve Goldhaber:  Yeah. All right. Let's do this.

Let's jump into q and a. Tell us about your first job in marketing. What was it like?

Barbara Stewart: My first job was fabulous. It was actually in an advertising agency. It was really fun. It was two creatives who set it up, and so I got taught from a creative perspective on the par briefing and how their brains processed it.

So it was actually in a very small little advertising agency. I had a lot of fun. I learned a lot at an incredibly rapid piece, and it was very much a good grinding to begin life, but very quickly advertising. I lost my love off, specifically advertising. I realized they're focused on one very specific moment in a very wonderful spectrum, is the best way to say it.

Steve Goldhaber:

Yep, I, so I did an internship at a college, at an ad agency. I'm glad I did it. I was convinced when I was graduating that I was gonna be in advertising forever, and it was fun. But then I, I was just left with a strange, you know, what's going on here? You know, like what in every, what I learned really is every agency has such a vast different experience, depending on where you are.

I think you could have 15 people in an agency and 15 of them would have a very different experience based upon the account, the leadership. The business stage. So it's, even though I had a weird experience first, like it could have been very different for other people. It, it's just that's how agencies work, right?

They, they inherit the structure and culture of their client, and you never know what you're gonna get. So. All right. So you started in advertising. What was your, your next job after that?

Barbara Stewart: I was a promotions agency, if I remember correctly. I, I've moved around quite a bit. I've basically gone to ev within the marketing realm.

I've worked in all sectors. So it was with the A company and it was very much renovating and trying out new retail spaces, and we would basically get to do their whole local marketing support launches. And it was very much realizing all the other pieces of marketing which work, which don't. And you would think you would create a wonderful toolkit and that would work.

And that was when you suddenly realized all the beautiful nuances of different locations, different cultures. So it was, it was a hard, hard lesson in life. Yeah. You know that the reason took kids don't work. Basically. I learned that at a very young age of my career.

Steve Goldhaber: Interesting. What do you like about what you do?

What gets you energized every day?

Barbara Stewart: What I love about it is the reality of most things in our world is it's actually a really simple problem, and it's a very simple solution, usually to a very simple problem. If we just take a moment and just behave like children again. If we take out all the jargon, all the words, and really just be like, what are we talking about?

Explain the problem as if you're explaining it to a kid, and as soon as you get someone to do that, It's very easy to see what the solution can be. And I think that it's the being able to have the fun and creativity of really solving what seems like very stressful problems, but actually in such beautifully simple ways.

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Steve Goldhaber: Yeah, that's, I, yeah, that's fascinating. And reminds, so Simon Sinek, who I'm sure everyone has heard of, had a story where, you know, a board brought him in and he was gonna spend three hours with the board and various people would come up. They, I think the first two or three people gave all this technical updates and just business updates and he said, I wanna pause for a moment.

He goes, I have no idea what you guys are talking about. And does everyone like, and I'm the outsider, so like, granted I'm just the new guy, but do you all know what you're talking about? And the board quickly kind of had this realization that like, There wasn't really anything going on in these meetings.

It, it just was like board presentations. People worried about their own careers sounding fancy and spectacular, and I feel like we need more of those moments of just like, why are we doing this? Why are we, yeah. You know, am I gonna judge this meeting based upon the quality of the suits and the dresses that we saw, like, Everyone is just very formal and buttoned up.

I've been in those environments before where I was like, my God, we spent 30 minutes just on procedural content to start the meeting before we actually discussed anything, and I feel like it's gotten better. I feel like tech has inspired more of that is the the roll up the sleeves mindset and it's not about.

It's not about the procedures or how you're dressed, it's about value creation. But every now and then you still get cultures who just unfortunately are wrapped up in procedural things or things that just don't matter. So it was, it was funny to hear Simon tell that story of Hugh is in a position to call that out and just say, I have no, I have no idea what you guys are doing.

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Barbara Stewart: And I think it's this such a bravery to just, I, I'm never the smart, I've never been the smartest person in a room, and I love that, you know, and being able to just be like, I think you mean this. Is that what you mean? Yeah, and actually just saying just, you know, if someone's going into it's an operations person and they're giving me full explanation, I'm like, okay, but what does that mean?

What, and I'm not being critical, I'm just kind of like, help me understand this. Cause if you can help me understand it, everyone else in the room can understand it too. And I think I get the luxury of being that person in the room who doesn't have the pressure. To look smart. I've been around a lot of very intelligent people and my role has never been to have to be the smartest person in the room.

It's probably to be the person who asks the silly questions in the room. Yeah.

Steve Goldhaber: Silly question asker. I like that. Yeah. That's an official title I like. That's a perfect job title. Yeah. I would just ask, why are we here? Why are we meeting That question doesn't get asked enough. I'm gonna ask you about what have you learned over the course of your career?

What is it that if you go back and tell yourself when you're just getting started, Do this, don't do that. What do you think your biggest kind of insights are looking back?

Barbara Stewart: Oh, I think if I was to do it all over again, I would say jump faster. I think imposter syndrome really held me a bit longer than it should have.

The word strategy caused me stress for a very long time. I, I remember a lot of people saying it's the words that's used when people don't quite know how to articulate themselves. The word strategy will be thrown in there. And to the point I had to go and do a master's to, to really be like, and then when I did my mentor was like, I told you, it's just a, people have misunderstood this.

I'd say Stay inquisitive, challenge more. Don't go to the gadgets and gizmos. Really remember all of this is about human beings. You know the reality, even when you're marketing, think about the person that you're really, really think about the person that you're trying to connect with. Yeah. You know, if you can understand them in in an emotional way.

Simon Sinek always does it so beautifully. The reality is we're irrational. We're emotional human beings. It doesn't matter that it's b2b, that that person is a person. So understand the stresses, understand when you're speaking to them, what's going on in their world. What stereotypes are you coming and talk like that Really.

Try and be a friend. We're so much of marketing. If we took the way we behave in marketing and put it into dealing life, it would be the f. I mean, you could make a TV program out of some of the ways brands talk to potential customers. I'd say, yeah, let's scrap back and get back to the ways of really understanding and thinking about a human being and how.

Is the best way to communicate. Sorry, that was very long-winded, stink.

Steve Goldhaber: It was good. I, I love the part about the confusion around the word strategy. It is a word that is crazy, and one of the former folks I used to work with, his name's Tony Weisman, had a great distillation of strategy and he goes, it's just a bet.

That's all it is. So a strategy is an informed decision based upon like where are we going? And sometimes that's on data. Sometimes that's on intuition or marketplace knowledge. But I think every time I kind of try to distill that for people, it's just, it's a bet. Where are we going? We go left or right.

And sometimes strategy gets so confusing that we don't know what the bet is. So we have to make it overly complex with models and vinn diagrams. And I think the people and the companies that do great strategy are simply just. Here's what's happening. We're going over here. And having the confidence to do that, I think too is that most good strategies should make you a little nervous.

I think that companies get lost in more job security related strategies. Like we're just, we're gonna continue doing what we're doing really well. But yeah, every now and then you see really bold strategy that people kind of rally behind and it inspires them to do great work. All right, so last question for you before we wrap the show up.

Since you, you are deep into the world of CX for folks who. Obviously know about cx, but they're not day-to-day practitioners. What are some things that you could encourage them to do so that their B2B marketing efforts are better, are more grounded into customer insights? 

Barbara Stewart:The first thing I would say to anyone is remove all the dog and don't even think about cx.

Just think of anyone I speak to. The first thing I'll always say is, when was the last time you, as a marketing person spoke to a customer? If it's six months ago, great. If it's more than that, how well that you know if it's doing a survey, if it's getting onto customer service and understanding what someone sounds like when they're really angry, if it's sitting with the seals reps, if it's being part of the onboarding, sit in and watch them.

Look at the body language. Look at the words that are used because. We need to understand that that world, we need to encompass that so that when you're doing your marketing and your demand gen, you have to remember that person, what that was. There's. So many amazing tools and it's overwhelming and it's, you know, everyone's saying, do this, do that.

Just take it all down to how customer centric are you? If you are creating a marketing campaign, do you really know that person? Do you have a clue? Could you describe them as a friend? If you met them for a coffee, do you know what's going on in their world? Yeah, that shouldn't cost you lots of money, and that takes a lot.

A long way. You know, if you can't do journey maps, that's fine. If you can go and talk to a customer, that will take you so much farther. Yeah.

Steve Goldhaber: Good advice. I like this. I like the themes of simplicity. I feel like we could, we could go to a, a Buddhist retreat and have some fun together. Oh, that's sounds fantastic.

Calm down. Don't complicate things. It's all easy. So Barbara, thank you for joining us on the show today and sharing your story. And Steve, it's a pleasure. Yeah, and thank you everyone for listening, and you can listen to us in all the places you might find a podcast. You can go to Spotify, you can go to Apple, you can go to the 26 characters websites.

We have all the old episodes. Archived up there. So once again, thank you for joining Studio 26 and the interesting B2B Marketers podcast. Until next time, take care everyone. Bye-bye.

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