S2E7 – The Using Content and Communicating Edition with Grant Leboff

S2E7 – The Using Content and Communicating Edition with Grant Leboff

James chats with Grant Leboff, one of the U.K’s leading Sales and Marketing experts.

 

His fourth book, ‘Digital Selling’, debuted at #1 on the Amazon charts prior to being published in September 2016. This follows the success of Leboff’s previous titles: ‘Stickier Marketing’ (2014) ‘Sales Therapy’ (2007) and ‘Sticky Marketing’ (2011) all bestsellers.

 

Grant Leboff’s fifth book, ‘The Myths of Marketing’ will be published in January.

 

A thought leader in his field, Leboff’s main focus is to address the massive changes that are taking place in a world that is constantly being introduced to new technologies and an evolving World Wide Web. He continually challenges Sales & Marketing conventions that become accepted wisdom, but don’t necessarily deliver results.

 

He is a highly sought after consultant and speaker, and constantly makes presentations at conferences and events all over the world, as well as being a regular contributor to many business magazines, newspapers, and radio broadcasts.

 

They discuss changing communications channels, talking with and listening to your clients, building relationships, interrupting audiences, using content, the London Underground and delivering what your customers actually want.

 

Contact Grant:

 

www.stickymarketing.com

Click for the full transcript

James Nathan  0:54   Hello and welcome to The Only One Business show with me your host James Nathan, and in the studio today I’ve got a fabulous guest for you I think you’re really going to enjoy. He’s one of the UK is leading sales and marketing experts. His fourth book Digital Selling debuted at number one on the Amazon charts prior to being published in September 2016, which followed his previous titles Stickier Marketing, Sales Therapy and Sticky Marketing, all best sellers. His fifth book, The Myths of Marketing will be published in January of next year. A thought leader in his field, his main focus is to address the massive changes that are taking place in the world that is constantly be introducing to new technologies and evolving world wide web. He continually challenges sales and marketing conventions that have become accepted wisdom, but don’t necessarily deliver results. He’s a highly sought after consultant and speaker and constantly makes presentations at conferences and events all over the world. As well as being a regular contributor to many business magazines, newspapers and radio broadcasts. Please welcome Grant Leboff. Grant, hi, how are you?

 

Grant Leboff  1:58  I’m great. Thanks. How are you?

 

James Nathan  2:00  I’m Fantastic. Thank you. And thanks so much for taking some time out. I know you’re a traveling man at the moment. Where have you been recently?

 

Grant Leboff  2:07  Oh, gosh, North America, Middle East over Europe. Yeah, I’m always I’m always on the go.

 

James Nathan  2:13  Fabulous. And the new book coming out in January is fabulous news. That must have been a lot of hard work.

 

Grant Leboff  2:18  Yeah, absolutely. But, you know, it’s done now. And looking forward to, you know, putting out in the big wide world and seeing, seeing the reaction.

 

James Nathan  2:26  So congratulations. for that. I’m looking forward to seeing that. Where can we get hold of that will be on the major places, I guess.

 

Grant Leboff  2:33  Yeah. Be on all the, you know, the major book shops, and of course, Amazon, etc, etc. so look out for that in January.

 

James Nathan  2:40  Fantastic. And so talking about massive changes in the world that’s constantly changing must be keeping you on your toes. What’s the main thing at the moment that you’re talking about the most?

 

Grant Leboff  2:51  Good? That’s a great question. I suppose it’s just making sense of the new world order. So we always talk about the fact that, you know, the big change in communication, is really the fact that we now living in a time where everybody has a channel. So you know, we used to live in a world where it was only the big media conglomerates be there film companies, TV companies, book publishers, news, usual outlets and organizations, they were the ones that really control the flow of information. And we absorb that. And we didn’t really have much of a right of reply, you know, a few phone ins on the radio or letters to the editor. But we now live in a world with social networks and the World Wide Web and smartphone technology, where all organizations, businesses have their own media channels through their websites, and Facebook pages and Twitter accounts and Instagram accounts, etc. And then every individual as well on Facebook, and Instagram and YouTube, etc, has their own channel as well. And that just changes the whole nature have relations with business, it changes the whole way communication operates. And so it’s for businesses, it’s making sense of that new world, and how best to utilize it in their favour, get in front of customers, deliver for customers, and all of those other things that it throws up for.

 

James Nathan  4:18  So it’s great to be able to communicate with businesses, when we on this podcast, we’ve talked a lot about how difficult sometimes it is to get hold of people, or get hold of big businesses. But with all those channels available to us, we can at least contact them. But that must make it extremely difficult for businesses to manage all those channels as well as they’ve been, you know, the ongoing operation?

 

Grant Leboff  4:39  Yeah, absolutely. I think in life, always, you know, every change has positive and negative outcomes for people in business, etc. And so it’s always a question of how do you leverage the positive and minimize the negative? And I suppose for a business, the negative, as you put it is there are so many channels into a business today? Do they monitor Twitter? Are they taking personal messages? Are they getting even WhatsApps from customers or Facebook messages or whatever else? And how do they utilize and handle all those different channels into their business effectively, but of course, the positive of that is they can be much closer to their customers, understand the market demand and their customers better, and therefore deliver something more relevant and more appropriate and more vital. So, and in that way, you know, retain their customers in a better way. So I suppose there are positives and negatives. And it’s all about, you know, leveraging the good and minimizing the bad.

 

James Nathan  5:45  Yeah, I mean, there’s some fantastic examples recently of businesses doing a really great job of certainly handling the social media channels, I think was Tesco that was having a bit of banter with the people who were complaining or whatever it might have been, which I thought was absolutely fabulous. But the converse of that is businesses who pay lip service to it, I guess, you know, they say that they respond, but they respond by bot, whatever it might be. What are you seeing when you’re talking to businesses? Or you’re looking at the businesses you’re working with? What are the things that some of those businesses are doing very, very well?

 

Grant Leboff  6:19  Well, I think the one of the biggest challenges for businesses today from a customer delivery point of view, is to balance the human with the artificial if you like, because where the artificial can help and you just mentioned bots a moment ago, is the immediacy of everything. So you know, a customer wants to be able to go online and get answers straight away. And it doesn’t matter whether that happens to be 10 o’clock in the morning on a Tuesday when everybody’s at work, or whether that’s three o’clock in the morning on a Sunday when you know, the majority of us are fast to sleep. And then and there for, you know, what chatbots and bot technology and artificial intelligence can help companies do is give immediate response to those basic questions, those simple things that, you know, are repetitive. And I think if any company looks at the questions, they’re asked, you know, that the frequently asked things etc, there is repetition, and there are patterns there, and they can deliver that. But it’s complementing that, with then the more personal and relevant information when it’s needed. And I think it’s, for companies, it’s about balancing that and getting it right. So it’s, you know, being able to scale, and deliver service on scale, which does require technology, but also to know when to make that more personal, and then be able to intervene and give that personal experience. And of course, the other thing that is very important for companies to be able to do, and I think you know, it’s a challenge, is to be able to do that across all channels. So whether that is a telephone, a mobile, by way of you know, Whatsapp or Facebook message or website and be able to tie those up, to give the customer a kind of one dimensional experience, you know, where everything’s consistent. And that’s a challenge, you know, that’s not an easy thing to deliver?

 

James Nathan  8:22  No, of course, and you know, whenever businesses scale, there’s always a huge number of issues that come with that, particularly from the service and the personal side, you mentioned personalization, a bit, they’re obviously collecting huge amounts of data is really important to understand that sort of trends of your client base or your customer base. But does that, is that becoming more difficult with the, you know, the different data acts around the world? You know, GDPR in Europe, all that kind of thing? Is that making it harder for businesses to personalize?

 

Grant Leboff  8:50  Yes, an interesting question. I don’t think we’ve gone that far. I mean, a lot of lip service has been placed, you know, to GDPR. And other things. I don’t think we’re that far down the journey yet. So at the moment, I do think there’s still plenty of data out there and available for companies to be able to use that data to understand their customers better, whether that gets tightened up? Over time, we will have to see. Although I mean, I would imagine it will do I think that is the direction of travel, I think it’s happening a lot slower than, you know, it might. The only thing I would say is, I do think that, you know, if you take a slightly binary view, and I know this isn’t 100% accurate, but if you take a slightly binary view, you’ve got the companies out there with, you know, hundreds of thousands or even millions of customers. And I think they’ve got enough data points within their own service, to be able to understand their customers, you know, through website visits through the content that those customers are clicking on. I think there’s enough data that’s perfectly acceptable and accessible for them to be able to use and leverage to start to understand their customer base better, and you know, what’s driving them and what isn’t. And then for the vast majority of what I call the small and medium sized businesses who don’t have thousands and thousands or hundreds of thousands, or possibly millions of customers, you know, nothing can replace I mean, it’s just true for the biggest as well, but nothing can replace, just getting out and talking to your customers. And I do find it a bit odd sometimes, that companies don’t just spend a little bit more time just getting out there, especially the business leaders of an organization and just having conversations with customers, because although they might be anecdotal, because you might say, well, a business leader, you know, how many really good conversations, can they have a year – 30 or 40, that still gives you a tremendous insight. And you will see patterns in those conversations and the themes will start reoccurring. Yeah, and you know, business is a contact sport. If you don’t get out there and talk to your customers and really have a innate understanding of them. You’re never going to deliver the value propositions, the service that they want.

 

James Nathan  11:08  What a perfect answer if I could clap online I would Grant. We used to call it service reviews, you know, and I think in the service…. in professional services and business services industries, that kind of thing seems to have gone by the wayside. You know, I talked to a lot of my clients about, you know, when did you meet your client last? When did you go out and have a coffee with them? When do you take them out for lunch? When do you thank them for the business? And I’m hearing the answers are stretching, you know, used to be what we do that every six months? Or we may, you know, we make sure we meet them once a year. But now it’s kind of all I’m not sure I should probably do that. And I think that’s that’s bad business, actually, as well as a shame.

 

Grant Leboff  11:46  Yeah, I hundred percent agree. I think, look, all the stuff we’ve got today, you know, the WhatsApp messages, the Facebook messages, the social media, the content where you can see the links that people are clicking on, the landing pages, the data points, the research, all of those things are great, and I wouldn’t negate any of those, you know, all of that’s market intelligence, all of that’s useful. And, you know, the companies that can make use of that should be, but it’s still…. it’s not, instead of going out and talking to your customers, it’s as well as, and I do find it odd that people won’t go out and you know, diarize meetings or go to events where their customers are hanging out. And have those chats, you know, there’s lots of ways of doing it, there’s efficient ways of doing it, you know, go to some big conferences where, you know, there are three or 400 of your potential customers in the room and just have those conversations not to sell just to understand the market, understand what people are talking about. But I think there’s nothing better in terms of research than just getting out and talking to a meeting customers.

 

James Nathan  12:53  Well, you mentioned relationships are very early on in the piece and and then you talked about balancing the human, you know, you can’t build a relationship on a piece of paper or a screen. You can build it by talking to people and meeting people. And if you want to sell to people just for the sake of making a deal. That’s one thing. If you want to build a long term relationship and have that connection with a business so that they then refer you which I guess is the goal, then there’s no other way to do it. What’s what’s challenging the kind of sales and marketing conventions you talk about myths of marketing? And obviously, you’ve got a book coming out with that title, but what are the wisdoms that people believe work? And really just don’t?

 

Grant Leboff  13:38  Yeah, gosh, there’s so many of those. That’s a great question. One of the things that I would say to that is that, if you think about marketing, communication. Marketing communications, used to be the art of interrupting someone else’s audience. So you know, your listeners may not have thought of it like that, but but if you just take a step back, and you think about the way that you did comms 20 years ago, you might advertise in a magazine, because the audience was the correct audience for your business. But of course, that audience belong to the publisher, it didn’t belong to you, and you would pay the publisher X amount of money to momentarily get in front of those eyeballs with your full page colour add or whatever it was. And whether it was TV, or cinema, or radio, or whatever it was, it worked in the same way. And I would argue that even something like direct mail, essentially, you are leveraging the royal mail’s network by way of stamps. So you, obviously you chose by postcode and democracy, or whatever else, which part of that network you wanted to interrupt, but nevertheless, that’s what you did. So marketing communications very much was the art of interrupting someone else’s audience. I think today, one of the things that a lot of business misses is twofold. One is in a world abundance of information, one of the most precious resources on planet Earth, today’s attention. So because we live in a world of scarcity of attention, continually interrupting audience is just becoming more and more expensive, and more and more of a challenge and less and less effective. I don’t want to say it doesn’t work at all. I don’t think that’s correct. But I think it’s harder to make an impact. And second thing is that every business and organization today has media channels, like a website, or a Facebook page, or an Instagram account, or a YouTube channel, etc, etc, whichever ones they exploit depending on, you know, who their audience is. And media channels fundamentally don’t work by interrupting someone else’s audience. Media channels fundamentally work by building an audience and retaining it. You know, if you think about the Guardian or the Telegraph, what they do is they build audience and retain it, if you think about the BBC or ITV they’re trying to build an audience and retain it, if you think about Netflix, or Amazon Prime, they’re trying to build an audience and retain it. And so companies today need to think about, really who their target market is, and building an audience in that target market and retaining it because A. it’s cheaper to do, B. it’s more cost effective in a world where attention is scarce. And C. it’s how media works. And I think a lot of businesses are just not there yet. And that causes them all sorts of trouble.

 

James Nathan  16:29  And when you when you talk about, you know, attention and interrupting,  has it changed in the last five or 10 years? Or is there a difference between web 1 and wherever we were and the evolving web?

 

Grant Leboff  16:44  Yeah, I think it’s changed, I think it’s just become more pronounced. So I think that, you know, from the onset of the World Wide Web, as more and more information has gone online, you know, buyer journeys are in recently going online, buyers are much more proactive, rather than reactive, now looking for what they want. And I think that, you know, with the onset of 4G, 5G, as it’s going to be soon, you know, become more ubiquitous, you know, better Wi Fi and broadband in most places, you know, things like video, and all of those kinds of things. And those resources are there. So I think more and more, you know, our TV watching is migrating to the web, the way we communicate, if you think in the last five years, I almost guarantee that yourself and your listeners are all receiving and making far less phone calls today than they did five years ago. Because today we WhatsApp someone rather than call them. And so, you know, everything is migrating more and more into an online world, and therefore the audience that you can build in that world and the attention that you can leverage becomes more and more important for the effectiveness of any business.

 

James Nathan  18:03  Smaller businesses find some of this a lot harder than bigger ones, I guess, because they don’t have the resources to throw at things. If you were thinking right, I need to increase my impact, I need to make sure I’ve got my channels sorted properly. I’m kind of playing at a few of them. Because I’m a smaller business, I’m not quite sure what to do. Where should they focus first, which are the channels, which would be the most effective, but also the easiest for them to do?

 

Grant Leboff  18:31  That’s a really good question. So I would give all small businesses out there three really important tips. And these tips, I think, if you want to make your communications, your marketing communications effective today, you really, really need to stick to these tips.

 

So tip number one would be to really understand who your target market is, you know, there are too many businesses out there spreading themselves way too thin. You know, they’ve segmented a market where if they added up how many businesses were in that marketplace, there’s, let’s say there’s a million, well, they haven’t got the budget to communicate with anything like a million businesses. So all that happens is…. And I know what happens, they don’t want to slim it down, because they’re worried about, you know, excluding opportunities, but they’re going to exclude opportunities anyway, because they don’t have the time and budget to hit that many businesses. So they’re not going to hit the million. So if they’re only got the time and budget to really hit 20,000, why not make it a target to 20,000 rather than, you know, do a scattergun approach and hit random businesses within that million where there’s less serendipity, less chance of building awareness amongst that market, because it’s too wide. So the first thing is to really, really understand your target market and to make your target market smaller enough, commensurate with your time and budget, in order to actually build some awareness and get known within that marketplace. So that would be number one.

 

Number two would be you know, I’ve said that you own media channels today, businesses own media channels, a website, Facebook page, Instagram account, these are media channels. So they have to think like a media company. And what that means is in order to make sure your channels are effective, and you need enough content, you have to bulk produce, you know, you cannot make one video, in what you know, with it with a camera crew, make a couple of videos and then disappear, it’s not enough. So the thing to do is hire a camera crew for a day, you know, prime your staff go to our hotel, and make 30 or 40 little one minute videos in a day. And then you’ve got you know, if you put out one a week, you’ve got 40 weeks worth of material, for example. So you’ve got about produces the only cost effective way to do it. So that would be the second thing that I would do.

 

And the third thing that I would say to small businesses, and this pains me because businesses, big businesses don’t even try to do this. It’s only this small businesses that do is don’t do it all on your own, leverage other people. I mean, you know, I give you a really good example, James, you’re doing this now, you’re interviewing me. So you know, you are creating great content, but you don’t physically have to sit in your office and write it all, because you’re asking me a few questions. And hopefully, I’m saying a few things that are useful to your listeners and you’ve interviewed many other great guests who also say interesting things. So you’re creating a great series of content. And I’m sure you put out your own stuff as well, and your own thoughts. But you’re also leveraging the thoughts of other people who you believe will be interesting for your audience. And that is exactly what small businesses need to do, whether they’re independent consultants, industry experts, clients, partners, suppliers that have interesting things to say to their marketplace, whether they get guest blogs, they do interviews, guest webinars, they need to leverage those suppliers, partners, customers, etc, to create the content because they can’t do it all themselves.

 

James Nathan  22:11  That’s a really fantastic point. I think it’s something that I learned myself very, very early on with you know, with help, because you need to ask the people who know what they’re doing. And I think one of the nice things about sort of a podcast like this, and ones that are similar is that you get lots of thoughts. And you can take the ones that work for you. And one of the things that I learned really early on was, you know, look at your content, and look at how you can repurpose that content, what else could you do with it instead of, you know, reinventing the wheel every time you want something new. Now, you mentioned this, well, you know, there is a series of top tips that come out of this, there’s a series of best bits, there’s a lot of…. there’s so much that you can do from the content you’ve already got. But also, the other thing I find, and I’m really interested in your view on this was I started writing blogs, I don’t know, 10 years ago, some of those blogs, people read, some of them nobody touched. And some of the ideas were good. And some of them were absolutely terrible. But not many people saw some of those original blogs and actually taking them and making them or doing almost a second edition and pushing them out again and gets real reward. Is that a bad idea? Or is that? Is that a helpful thing to do?

 

Grant Leboff  23:21  I think I think you’re absolutely right. You know, we all need a lot of content today. Because you know, to fill a media channel takes an awful lot of content to keep it interesting. So as well as leveraging those partners, suppliers, customers, etc, that we’ve already discussed, repurposing content is 100% right. So, you know, there is no reason why if you write a blog, you can’t speak that blog. And then you’ve got a little mini podcast that you can put out there, you know, or do a video and then you know, with some customers or clients, and then take that and make that a top tip sheet. And no doubt, you know, the nature of the web, because it’s transient, is if you put a our podcast, let’s say, and it gets seen by certain or heard by certain amount of people, there’s no doubt that if you put it out again, there’ll be a whole new set of people that didn’t see it the first time around. So of course, 100%, the caveat is to make sure it is still relevant. And of course, you know, some information is more timeless than other bits of information. So, you know, obviously, don’t put out the stuff that’s kind of, you know, lost its purpose and lost its use because of the timescales. But I think there’s nothing wrong with repurposing content or even reposting content. So you know, if you do a video series or a podcast series, there’s no reason why every so often you can’t say look, in case you missed it, you know, I’m just posting this up for those that may have missed it first time around or whatever, and it will get seen by or heard by another group of audience. So I think you have to, you know, be Be careful with that. And do it sensibly. But I don’t think it’s any different. You know, I use the analogy of a media channel, and is not an analogy I really believe in, if you think about the BBC, all the BBC is is an infrastructure, it’s a set of cables with a license to broadcast. That’s what it is, what makes the BBC compelling or not, is the programs it makes. So your website, your Facebook page, or Instagram account, your YouTube channel, your LinkedIn page, all of those things are dead space on some very powerful networks and platforms. What makes them interesting is the content that you post on there. So the application is different. But conceptually, it’s exactly the same. And therefore, if you take the BBC, the BBC will make the majority of its output will be new programs. But every so often, it will show repeat, it will show something that was originally on BBC One, they’ll put it on BBC Two or something that was on, you know, eight o’clock in the evening, they’ll they’ll run again at 11 o’clock, a few nights later, a few weeks later. And you know, some classic series might have a rerun and I think it’s exactly the same, you’ve got some content in your collection that you’re very, very proud of or you think is particularly pertinent even today. I don’t think there’s any problem with rerunning that or reposting that within the framework of other new content as well.

 

James Nathan  26:16  So in your business, what have you done to improve the service that you’ve been giving people? What have you done that’s, that’s helped your clients particularly, but also added to the service offering?

 

Grant Leboff  26:27  Yes, a really good question. So I’ve done a few things, I try and create content that my customers can leverage, where they have what I call those generic inquiries. So those generic sort of the frequently asked questions the how to use that come up time and time again, to create tip sheets, and some video education that I can say to my clients, look, I have a lot of customers that have a challenge with this, there’s a bank on my website that you can go and have look at. And it will take you through the process. Because obviously, from my point of view, it’s time effective, because to keep going through the same half an hour with every single client is obviously a huge cost to me. And you know, if I’m honest, a little bit dull if you keep having to say the same thing almost exactly the same every time, but actually frustrating for a client, because you know, a client is going to go away and need a little bit of assistance with this. And then they have to email me and say, Grant are you around, and I say yes, let’s put some time in the diary. And then we’ll, we’ll have a meeting or a conference call or whatever, and I’ll take them through it. How about just saying to them, here’s a link, you know, and it will take you all the way through here’s the videos, and the and the platforms and the matrices and how tos that you can fill in, if you get stuck, come back to me, but it’s all there for you. And of course what customers like is that it empowers them, because they can do it in their own time. So if they want to do it at five o’clock in the morning, they can if they want to do it 11 o’clock at night, they can. So to make sure…..  I mean that doesn’t take away from the person, of course, but to is it as an adjunct, to give them certain automated tools and bodies of content and reference points that they can go to, to support them in their journey as we’re putting a marketing strategy together and working on that.

 

My clients find that, you know, really interesting and the other thing is, is just to take the uncertainty out of anything in your service. So we know from behavioral models, that one of the things that human beings hate the most and can’t cope with is uncertainty. We know that the one of the things that turned the London Underground around in terms of customer satisfaction was not frequency of trains, wasn’t cleanliness of trains, it was the dot matrix display on the platform. Because there’s nothing worse than getting onto a platform and staring down that black hole of a tunnel, and not knowing whether your next trains coming in two minutes or 10 minutes. And of course, because you don’t know, waiting just seems like an eon of time because you’ve got no idea. To get onto the platform, see the doctor matrix and it says six minutes, even if six minutes is a bit longer than you expected in rush hour. The fact that you know it six minutes gives you that certainty and that sense of assurance and it keeps customers happy.

 

So what I would say is always make sure you take the uncertainty. So I’ll give you an example. Just a silly thing. Like someone sends you an email. And my general manager in my office, if they send an email for me and I’m not around will always respond and say thank you very much Grant’s got your email. He’s traveling a lot at the moment, but he will get back to you in the next 48 hours. Now, if they just sent an email and it took me 40 hours to respond. And they got no idea. Did he get it? Has he seen it? I haven’t heard anything yet. That uncertainty really makes the surface level suffer. Just having an email that says yet grants go. He’s seen it. He’s going to apply in the next 48 hours, that reassurance for customers everything. So the fact that okay, they might get a response for 48 hours, in and of itself isn’t a problem when they know. Yeah, he’s got it. And he’s seen it. And I’m happy that it’s been dealt with. So I just look at your process. And is there anything that you can do to just take the uncertainty out of any aspect of your service? Because that will absolutely increase satisfaction?

 

James Nathan  30:26  Fantastic tip. It’s, there’s nothing worse than waiting for someone to respond. And they are saying to you, well, I didn’t get back to you ‘cos I didn’t have anything to say well ring them up and say I’ve got nothing to say. When you talk about content earlier, we talked about repurposing and re sharing. What do you think of sharing other people’s content?

 

Grant Leboff  30:46  Yeah, so I think that’s very useful and very valuable. You know, people call it curating content. I think that when you’re going to do that, though, you should….  There are two ways of sharing content, I think one is to kind of press the retweet by nor the share button and just let it go. And that’s okay. But I think that, you know, we call it curating content. Because if you think about where curation comes from curation comes from the museum curator, who would take all the artefacts that they have, and tell a story. So you know, I took my children, a few years ago now, to the Imperial War Museum in London when they had a particular display about World War One. And, you know, I have no doubt there were lots of artefacts that they have back in the store cupboard that we didn’t see. But what the curator of that particular exhibition that done was they laid the artefacts out that they did have, or they did put on display, to tell a story to tell a narrative that took us on a journey. And both myself and my children, that day, had a really informative and interesting time, and they really enjoyed it. And therefore what I would say to all of you is if you’re going to use other people’s content, and I think it’s a completely legitimate to do, curate it. So in other words, if you’re going to retweet something, say to your audience, I think you should see this and this is why. You know, if you’re going to share something, just say, I’m sharing this because of this, because you’ve got your own narrative, and your own story, within your company, and what you’re delivering to your customers. And if you can frame a piece of content within that, then not only you adding value to your customers through sharing the content, but you’re adding value for yourself at the same time because their perceptions are this is really no, I can see why this has been shared rather than a random retweet. And I’m not quite sure, even if the headline might be interesting. So I think absolutely sharing is a good thing to do and a useful thing to do at times. But I think it should be done in a certain way. I think sometimes it can be done very lazy.

 

James Nathan  32:48  Fantastic thoughts here. Grant, there’s so many different little tips. It’s really, really wonderful of you. Before we leave, though, I’d love you to give us your one big thing, your golden nugget, the one thing that people could do in their business today to make them benefit today and better for the years to come. What would that be?

 

Grant Leboff  33:06  Yeah, so my my big tip that I always say to any company, and it does amaze me how few companies do this, is make sure you’re looking at your products and services through your customers eyes. Because what most companies do, or many companies do is they say, what do we deliver? What do we produce? You know, products or service wise? What are we good at? What are the benefits for the customer? Now let’s go and tell them. And the problem is it always starts with source if your starting point is yourself, yeah. However not to massage those benefits into the customer and you’re trying to deliver customer value, it always comes back to source, it always comes back to you. So I would always say to any business, start your customer journey by thinking, What are my customers challenges and issues that they have, that they might come to me to solve. And think about it from your customers point of view and then work back to yourself. Because if you start with your customer in mind, you’ll be much more customer centric, and you need to look at your products and services to your customers eyes, not through yours. And if you do that, you’ll always be a better business because you’ll notice things, certainly the value that you can give and the way that it’s delivered that you may not have thought of in any other way.

James Nathan  34:21  Fantastic Grant. Thank you so so much. It’s been great chatting with you.

 

Grant Leboff  34:25  Thank you. Thanks for having me.

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