Transcript
WEBVTT
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Are you struggling to come up with
original content weekend and week out? Start
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a podcast, interview your ideal clients, let them talk about what they care
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MEDIACOM. You're listening to be tob
growth, a daily podcast for B TOB
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leaders. We've interviewed names you've probably
heard before, like Gary Vannerd truck and
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Simon Senek, but you've probably never
heard from the majority of our guests.
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That's because the bulk of our interviews
aren't with professional speakers and authors. Most
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of our guests are in the trenches
leading sales and marketing teams. They're implementing
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strategy, they're experimenting with tactics,
they're building the fastest growing BB companies in
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the world. My name is James
Carberry. I'm the founder of sweet fish
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media, a podcast agency for BB
brands, and I'm also one of the
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CO hosts of the show. When
we're not interviewing sales and marketing leaders,
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you'll hear stories from behind the scenes
of our own business. Will share the
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ups and downs of our journey as
we attempt to take over the world.
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Just getting well maybe let's get into
the show. Welcome back to be tob
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growth. I'm Logan lyles with sweet
fish media. I'm joined today by Mark
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Montgomery. He is the chief marketing
officer at Crane. Where mark has it
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going today, sir? Good Good
Morning, Logan. Thanks for having me.
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Absolutely you and I were just having
a great conversation about customer experience.
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We're going to be talking your uniquely
positioned, I think, to touch on
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this hot topic for a lot of
organizations today. Before we do that,
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they'll mark, as we do with
all our guests, and want to give
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you the opportunity to give us a
little bit of background on yourself, in
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a little bit of context, what
you and the team at cranewareer up to
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these days. Thank you appreciate that. I'm based in Atlanta, Georgia,
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on the chief marking officer at Craneware
PLC, and I've been in the healthcare
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it and healthcare software industry as an
operational and strategic executive for most of my
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career and I'm excited to be a
part of crane, where I've been here
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just over six years, and craneweares
a unique company. We we service providers
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healthcare providers in the US to help
them improve their margins and their operational efficiency
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so they can invest in turn that
that margin back into their care support and
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their care strategies to better serve their
communities. The Way Crane where does that
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is we provide software and solutions,
which would basically software and services that allow
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health providers, so hospitals and health
systems, of which we partner with about
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fifteen hundred of those throughout the US, and we allow them to identify and
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address risk related to their financial and
operational performance. And as my role as
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chief marketing officer, I have a
unique opportunity here to to manage the and
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help lead our teams across the entire
customer experience. So the traditional marketing functions,
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branding, a Lee generation, customer
acquisition, employee education and customer education,
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those types of activities. But then
also we have the customer experience and
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customer management teams that report into our
chief marketing role, and that is imagine
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post contract, everything from implementation,
training, support, success and renewal.
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The entire customer life cycle experience really
is the responsibility of our teams in assuring
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that we're creating the right branding and
messages before they become a customer and then
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create the optimal experience for them once
they are a customer. Yeah, I
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love it. So, as we
introduce to your official role as chief marketing
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officer there at crane where, but
you mentioned to me it's almost like you
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are a chief markets officer because you've
got operations, customer experience even some other
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market facing roles outside of just marketing, messaging, branding to mention coming up
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to your role. Do you see
that as a trend with marketing leaders?
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Is it kind of just the nature
of your organization that it kind of emerged
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that way? Yeah, I think
it's a good question and it probably is
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unique, just depending on what the
strategy and the life cycle of a specific
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organization may be. At Crane where, that marketing officer role is responsible for
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really three major areas, the typical
marketing and branding that we talked about,
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the corporate development to identify and cultivate
merger and acquisition opportunities or Business Partnership opportunities
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that may be out there, and
then the third area is the one I've
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talked about, that customer experience.
Some people will say, well, that
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just seems very unique. That you'd
have marketing and and the customer management under
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the same umbrella, reporting up to
the leadership team, and it is unique
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and I think the value, however, of it is is the fact that
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you get a three hundred and sixty
around that customer experience, in that market
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experience to be able to from everything
that you typically do in that customer acquisition
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strategy and process around branding, messaging, value, proposition, uniqueness and lead
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generation, which were all in part
of all the way through delivering those solutions
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and the experience and and identifying the
value returned and the return on value,
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that return on investment that the customers
receiving. So I would suggest to those
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that are that are in marketing.
I'll give you an example of how it
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works, but I would suggest that
if you don't have that whole life cycle
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of the customer, that's fine,
because many companies and organizations don't organize that
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way. Sure, but be really
good friends with the person on the other
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side and the people those teams,
because they are delivering back content for the
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customer acquisition side that you want one
so we can use our our successful customers
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to create webinars, educational sessions,
white papers, social media posts, reference
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ability for perspective customers and we take
those stories. They we invite them to
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come and speak at our customer user
experience groups and our financial performance summit and
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we take those those story points in
those content pieces and we put them back
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into our marketing pieces so we can
then continue to brand and differentiate and show
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value for potential customers coming in.
So it's a nice life cycle that we
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can build and the key is I've
got really good people in all those areas
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that organize and run these or operations
that are interested in the success of the
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company and then also are an interested
in the success of helping one another in
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their specific roles. MM. I
love what you said they're about. If
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you are a marketing leader that doesn't
have operations and customer success rolling up into
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your functional area, you know like
you're fortunate to have here mark become good
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friends with those leaders. It sounds
like what you guys have been able to
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do is have that shared vision of
you know, when we work together,
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we're all going to be more successful. I'm glad you touched on, you
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know, this feedback loop from customer
success and operations telling the stories, pulling
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out the key nuggets, the wins
for your customers that your company is partially
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responsible for, and feeding that back
to the market facing teams, marketing and
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sales. Any advice for folks on
how to tactically do that, you know,
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if the lines of communication aren't necessarily
open between presale and post sale within
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their organizations today? Yeah, it's
a good question and I think it starts
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with culture and what the company's about. You know, leaderships roll. I
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like to describe leadership's role as the
ability to create and communicate the vision of
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what the organization is trying to do
and then enable the organization to go pursue
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it. That's what really leadership is
about and that starts creating your culture.
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And, to answer your question,
when everybody's aligned to what that vision is
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and you're empowered and able to go
pursue it, then org charts and titles
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become way less important and doing what's
right for the customer and for the stakeholders
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involved in the organization becomes the right
thing to do. I love our culture
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here at Crane, where I think
it's fantastic and it's based on a couple
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of principles, and I would say
these these can cross over in any organizations,
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and you may call it something different, but it's really around these three
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areas. At the base of the
pyramid or the bottom of the foundation,
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it's values. Right. What is
your value statements? What are your what
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are your code of conduct? What
are your sort of expectations for you and
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your team to treat each other and
to treat your customers and to treat your
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suppliers? At the top of that, then, once you have a good
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foundation and you have the right moral
fabric in the right value system, it's
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what is the vision of the company, and that's what I talked about earliers,
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is a common vision that everyone can
understand, articulate and and buy into.
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And then, finally, in the
in between there you have what I
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call velocity. That's all the operations, that's selling, that's acquiring customers,
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you know, selling your goods and
services, your products, getting them satisfied
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with those, and then finding ways
and opportunities to grow your business. And
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velocity includes how well you run.
You know, your HR function runs,
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your your technology runs, how well
you're your finance department runs. All those
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things are part of velocity and if
you have the right foundation with values and
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you have a vision that everybody buys
into. In the velocity part becomes the
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day to day and the year to
year. That becomes very important and that's
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what drives the culture. And finally, I would say this cross functional you
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know, in the communicating when you're
working across organizational boundaries, if you will,
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if people understand the vision, they
understand the plan, which is that
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velocity plan, your your tactical plan, and they know their individual role and
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how it rolls up into that,
that's where the magic happens and it's certainly
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we've all been in places where it's
work really well and we've all probably been
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in moments in our careers, if
you've been around or will be around for
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a little while, where it just
doesn't seem to be all quite working at
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the same time, and it's really
because you're trying to a line to the
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that vision, to execute the plan
and then to know what what the individual
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role is. And that's how I
think we crane. We're try to rally
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the organization. I you know,
I was telling you earlier we're a unique
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company and that we're founded and headquartered
in the UK and Edinburgh, Scotland.
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Yet virtually one hundred percent of our
customers are revenues and are operating margins come
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from US based healthcare providers. So
we're working across multiple time zones and ocean,
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two very unique cultures, but we
all have to rally around the same
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vision and the same plan and that
creates a lot of great opportunities and some
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some occasional challenges, but some really
great opportunities for us to try to align
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everybody and keep the messaging clear.
Yeah, absolutely, I want to circle
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back to that consistent message, especially
since you have some experience, as you
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mentioned, managing a team and influencing
the culture across two distinct cultures, to
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different countries, different time zones.
So I want to come back to that.
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But you mentioned something there, Mark, I want to hang out on
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for a second. You mentioned,
you know, defining that the company's vision
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is being that foundation for folks who
are interested to dig a little bit deeper.
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Actually, just yesterday we had Garrett
Justice from lucid on and we talked
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about a resource for looking at answering
some of those core questions for your company,
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a book called the advantage from Patrick
Lindsey ony that I definitely recommend.
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So you may want to check that
out. Mark, you kind of said
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in passing there something about finance and
you know, since we're talking about customer
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experience, in how your culture can
affect customer experience, how you can build
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a culture that is connected and views
the entire customer journey to improve that experience
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for your customers. You mentioned something
about finance and I think we talk a
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lot about, you know, sales
and marketing alignment. Okay, what's the
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experience for the customer from the time
that they, you know, see an
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ad or consume some content from marketing
and then have a conversation with sales?
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But we tend not to think about
well, how did they receive an invoice
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right? What those sort of operational
things. Those are part of the customer
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experience. Can you speak to that
maybe a little bit some of the areas
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that you guys have have realized maybe
impact the customer experience that aren't normally part
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of the conversation? Certainly, and
you know for US listeners, as a
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customer we're in the healthcare industry when
we work with providers, but as the
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unique thing as we're all patients to
we all have and want access to medical
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care and we understand sometimes the experience
as a patient in the healthcare system can
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be sometimes confusing right, whether it
be financial or clinical or whatever. I
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we could have a whole episode on
it. Another show for shows exactly.
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But the US healthcare system is incredibly
unique in that it provides fantastic care,
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yet it has these economic challenges for
people getting access to it, the cost,
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understanding what the cost etc. So
we try to take that same same
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knowledge to apply to our customers to
make it as easy as possible for them
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to do business with crane where.
We're a publicly traded company, so financial
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performance is a big part of our
success and but it's always, I would
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say, a lagging indicator. Right, if you do the right things,
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if you have the right value and
envision and you're executing and rallying the team
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to that cause, then your financial
results are going to be the lagging indicator
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the outputs of that focus. So
we try to make sure all the experience
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that we do with our customers,
how we communicate with them, how we
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treat them, and their experience and
Brandon Crane where is certainly favorable and we
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have literally world class net promoter scores. We have other specific product areas where
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we measure through third party independent organizations
that we rank in some some world class
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scoring in terms of customer success,
customer loyalty and customer experience. But your
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eye, even down to the invoice, the way they they handle on accounts
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receivable or accounts payable question, whatever
it might be, is certainly important to
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to the entire customer experience. It's
story time, and this growth story is
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about search engine marketing. Okay,
so the story revolves around e sub,
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a project management SASS company specifically for
subcontractors. Even though you sub had incredible
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customer attention, they struggled with growth. Being in Niche Service, they discovered
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that there was little demand expressed for
their solutions within search engines. To take
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on this challenge, E sub hired
directive, consulting the BB search marketing agency.
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After refining targeting, pre qualifying clicks
with an add copied and developing custom
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landing pages, directive was able to
increase e subs marketing qualified leads by seventy
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one percent while decreasing their cost per
lead by sixty five percent. I have
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a hunch that directive can get these
kind of results through too. So head
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over to directive consultingcom and request a
totally free custom proposal. That's directive consultingcom.
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All right, let's get back to
this interview. Let's circle back to
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what you were talking about mark with
that consistent message. You know, as
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you and I were chatting offline,
you echoed something I've heard from from other
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marketing leaders and you know that's the
CMO or the marketers marketing leaders dream is
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to have everybody in the organization understand
the mission, the vision, the value
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prop of the company and be able
to communicate that well, communicate that consistently.
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So with some of the the opportunities
that you guys have, with different
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cultures, different time zones, a
distributed team, what are some of the
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ways that you tackle on a regular
basis, because it's not something that you
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just we've arrived of now everyone can
communicate the value prop across the organization,
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because that changes. People Change.
Can you speak to some of the things
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that you've done tactically and you maybe
have it empowered your team to do to
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try and get better there? I
think none of us are ever, you
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know, a hundred percent, but
some of the ways that you have helped
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to improve that at crane where that
other marketing leaders might be able to learn
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from I think it's a great question
and it's a difficult challenge because as as
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a marketer, as a anyone who
leads marketing or is involved marketing, I
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think one of your goals, is
you may not ever get asked this,
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but it's really one of your goals, is you want everybody in the company
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to have the same answer to the
questions of what does your company do,
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how do you do it and why
are you different? Right? And if
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you haven't answered those three questions and
haven't socialized those answers across your organization,
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I think it's a great challenge and
opportunity for you to do that because you
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want regardless of the role, whether
it be an individual contributor a chief executive
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or your sales team, your Customer
Management Team and engineering team, your product
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functions, whatever they are, you
want them to have that same answer.
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So we try to do that through
constant communication. At course we have obviously
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cultural and time zone challenges. We
have a great internal web based program that
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we we communicate with across organization.
It's an Internet, it's our we call
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it core, and we have the
ability to post success stories, internal and
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external customer success stories. There,
we can post announcements upcoming events, but
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we can also continue to brand ourselves
through that opportunity. We've now just moved
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that into a mobile application, so
everybody has a subset of that content on
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their phone, because we're always looking
at our phone. So we now have
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the ability to communicate through that.
We create a strategic theme program every year
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where we announce here's the top four
or five headline objectives that we want to
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accomplish as a company, and we
create a printed document like a like a
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customer brochure, and we create that
and give that to every employee, whether
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they're there at the beginning of year
or they join us throughout the year and
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and on that. On that document
we get to do a little a little
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marketing and we we list the answer
to those three questions that I just described
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on there as well. We talk
about what we do, we talk about
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some of our key quotes, some
of our key thoughts and and messages that
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we want to stay on message with. So we do it digitally, we
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do it verbally and we do it
literally in print, and we do it
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as often as we can to try
to keep everybody in line with them with
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the message. That makes a lot
of sense, marky. You know,
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when you look at marketings, roll
to not only help the the market and
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your perspective, customers understand what you
do, how you do it, why
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you're different, but making sure that
that you do that same thing internally.
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You have to apply the principles of
good marketing, clear messaging. You've got
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to do it in a variety of
channels, which you guys are doing in
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print and on mobile. You know, it reminds me of something I took
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away from the four disciplines of execution, a great operational book that we went
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through as a team here at sweet
fish, and it talks about you need
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a visible scorecard that people can look
to. You know, you're not so
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much talking about metrics, but they
the objectives and those things, keeping those
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in front of people, invisible through
the mobile APP, for that's connected to
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your intranet and those printed pieces.
So I can definitely see how those are
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valuable and how folks can, you
know, put their own spin on that
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and and use what you're saying.
They're as we were chatting a little bit
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offline. You've mentioned, Mark that
you guys have an internal podcast or an
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internal communications system that you're using some
audio or video to be able to keep
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everybody in the loop. Can you
speak to that project a little bit,
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how it came about and how maybe
that has helped, because I think maybe
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some folks could take some ideas from
that strategy of internal communications, getting everybody
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on the same page, which again, you know, increases and improves the
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customer experience, which you guys are
obviously doing a great job at. Sure
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will. We just this past year
of have been the process of celebrating our
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twenty anniversary. So we had actually
a cranwhere celebrate event where we brought the
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entire company together for several days to
be able to share successes, look at
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our history but, more importantly,
share our vision for the future and create
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team building and relationships that would last
well into the next several years. And
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as part of that, the run
up to that we were do doing podcast,
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we call them cranewere conversations, where
we would take individuals and regardless of
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the role, and just give them
ten to twelve minutes of a podcast to
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introduce themselves, talk about their personal
and professional interest their background. What craneware
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means to them etc. So Post
that event we've extended that and continue that
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with what we now call cranewhere conversations, which are a combination of podcast with
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individuals, and then once a quarter
we also do a live recorded Webinar with
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three or four guests where we just
talked about their their role in the company,
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what their excitement about being part of
cranewhere is and a little bit about
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their personal life and their career.
So it creates a way to connect people
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that we work with on a daily
basis. We play send emails, we
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get on a skype call, we
have to ask them a favor. I
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always think it's better if you have
to ask somebody a favor, which we're
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inevitably going to have to ask somebody
in our company of favor or help,
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because the situation all rise, it's
better to have some type of connection with
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them before you have to start reaching
out for those favors. And these are
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just ways that we can do that. We can cross the ocean, we
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can cross the time zone difference in
the culture differences by connecting the company through
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these conversations. And once you know
someone's story it's much easier to understand who
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they are, what they are and
you're human nature says it's much more willing
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to want to to work with them
as a team member going forward. So
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those are some of the things we've
done to continue that culture of conversation and
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connect I love that, mark.
I mean, as we've talked about,
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you know, culture is going to
impact the customer experience. We obviously hear
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at sweetfish talk a lot about why
podcasts work to help you connect with your
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customers. I think you make a
great case here in how you can build
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connections between your team members, especially
if you are distributed. On that note,
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if anybody listening to this works in
or leads a distributed team or a
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team with multiple locations, you may
want to check out the distributed podcast.
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I forget the name of the host
and who puts that on, but the
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if you search apple podcast or your
your podcast player for distributed it's not one
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we're involved with, but it's one, as a remote team here at sweet
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fish, that several of our team
members have gotten value from and one of
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the things I heard in a recent
episode really echoes what you were saying here,
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mark, is that when you work
remotely and and you know your messaging,
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slack and email with your coworkers.
When you only know them digitally,
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you kind of have this mental picture
of them that may or may not be
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a hundred percent accurate and you don't
necessarily have that same connection. So anyway,
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if you have a remoter distributed team, that you can build stronger connections,
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more understanding across your employee base,
the stronger culture that you're going to
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have and leading back to today's topic
of customer experience, it's going to ripple
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out to to your customers as well. So I love the way that we
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wrapped up on that today, mark
with some good tactical advice for folks.
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Mark I, anybody listening to this
would like to stay connected with you or
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reach out ask any follow up questions. Marketing leader may be intrigued by some
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of the things that you're talking about
here and would like to pick your brain
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a bit. What's the best way
for them to connect with you or reach
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out? Certainly you can find me
at cranwhere I'm on our website. You
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can follow our company on twitter at
at cranware. On linkedin we have a
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page, a community page. I'm
also on Linkedin at Mark Montgomery. I
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also have my own twitter. It's
at cranwere CMO, and happy to DM
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or interact with anybody there and happy
to share ideas and learn ideas of things
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that you guys may be doing.
That would certainly be helpful for us.
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But appreciative for the time today.
Going to appreciate the opportunity to to spend
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some time and share with everybody.
Absolutely mark, I really appreciate you sharing
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your unique perspective chatting, marketing and
customer experience today. Thank you so much
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00:23:41.009 --> 00:23:47.240
for being on the show. You're
welcome. Thank you. We totally get
327
00:23:47.279 --> 00:23:49.960
it. We publish a ton of
content on this podcast and it can be
328
00:23:51.079 --> 00:23:53.920
a lot to keep up with.
That's why we've started the BOB growth big
329
00:23:55.039 --> 00:23:59.430
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