Why Culture is Your Secret Experience Weapon

You can't build a culture from an office on the top floor away from where it's happening. You need to be on the floor. You need to be out in the business with them.

Hello everyone and welcome to the inaugural episode of the Account Experience Podcast where we dissect how some of the world's top brands are leveraging exceptional B2B account experiences to create passionate advocates and and drive significant revenue growth. And we couldn't be more excited that our first episode is all about creating a culture of action around your experience program. In this episode, we'll cover how you can effectively anchor your programming culture to drive buy in and action. Some tips and tricks to keep your C level bought into your program, and how to motivate an entire company to serve the customer. This episode is packed with tactical tips on how you can create an experience culture in your company. So without further ado, let's dive in and get to it. Hello and welcome everybody to the official.

B2B customer experience podcast where we're going to talk about everything you'd ever need to know about how to create a remarkable customer experience for your B2B clients that drives revenue results. I'm your host, Ian Luck, and I'm here with my co host, Carey self. He's the VP of Education and Program at CustomerGage. How you doing today, Kerry?

I am doing great. I'm excited to spend some time with you and talk about probably one of the most important things in what we do is really helping companies be successful and helping people find ways to drive growth and profit.

Exactly. And I think it's definitely a hot topic right now with the current situation globally. I think a lot of companies are just realizing that you need to look at your account base and your customers to really serve them to your best of your ability so you can grow faster through that customer base. So, first episode, really exciting. I'm glad we're doing this thing finally. We've been talking about it forever and I figured we could just maybe take a moment to introduce ourselves to the audience. So everybody that's listening has a good sense for our background. So, Kerry, why don't you kick us off?

So Ian's already said this. I'm actually the VP of Education and Program Development for CustomerGage. Been with the organization now for about half a year, but I have the unique distinction of actually being a customer of Customer Gauge for three years before that. I love the relationship, I love working with them. In my previous role as kind of the champion for a customer experience program, my Role is to kind of create culture around this. How do you drive profit through your people? How do you get them to buy into the program? So working with 3,4000 employees to help them understand how do you get to that place of success and how do you take care of the customer? So working with all departments, really creating a program that generated success and excitement, how do you get that frontline person, the person that is the face of your business, to be equally as excited about growth as your CEO is? And that was kind of my mission. Yeah.

And walk us through kind of your history. So where'd you do it at? And I know you were a customer at Aerius, so why don't you start there and work your way backwards?

Yeah, you know, so Areas was a concessionaire. We did food and beverage in airports and travel plazas around the world. And when I came on board, and you're going to hear this a lot, a lot of people start these CX programs as a lone man, the one person. And there weren't a lot of resources. Sometimes a lot of companies don't see value in this. And one of the things that CustomerGage really showed me, by using the right tool, you can tie that investment, you can tie that to actual dollars and cents. One of the things that I was really challenged with early was how do I show the efforts, the training, how do I show winning hearts is going to equal to dollars in the bank? And that was kind of one of my big things. So I really, you know, everyone says start on top and work down with CEOs. I actually work from the front line, and I worked backwards from that. You know, I spent a lot of time just getting in planes and cars and spending times with dishwashers and frontline people and managers on, you know, running their business and trying to be strategic as they could to kind of see where those gaps were, where those opportunities were. And that information I was bringing back to my C suite and starting to carve out a plan. These are our gaps. These are our needs. And starting to tell stories around what the difference could be if we could just identify what the customers were asking for, what their needs were. So we started carving out programs. And the question I always asked was, what does our Frontline or what does our team need to make customers happy? It almost became more of an internal program of making our frontline happy and excited, because then in turn, they would do the same thing for our customers. So there was almost a direct correlation or a parallel between, you know, happy employees, happy customers. I know we've said that like a thousand times.

Yeah.

But every time we visit someone or roll out one aspect of our program, you would see that kind of take off. So it was real exciting.

And I think that's definitely something worth mentioning. So making sure your employee base is happy, engaged and that's going to drive a ton of benefits on the customer side. And I know mit, one of our research partners did a good amount of research on that specifically and they tied employee net promoter or employee satisfaction rates directly to customer satisfaction rates. And there's a really good paper out there. We can link in the comments in this thing. But yeah. So Kerry, I mean that's really interesting. I think you have a background in training, which is, which is I think a huge benefit to rolling out a large corporate experience program like you did at Arius. I think you were trainer at, you were basically head of training at Container Store. Right. And then GameStop. Yeah, let's talk about that real quick.

So let's go back to the Container Store was pretty, pretty amazing for me because it allowed me to really work with a group of individuals that were very passionate about what they did. Training was actually everyone wore the training badge. Everyone had ownership in the business. So when we talk about engaging a workforce, give them ownership of the company and then tell them it's their responsibility to create more owners. And everything we did, it almost sounds crazy, but was by committee. You'd walk into a unit, you'd have a hard time seeing who the store manager was or who a part time cashier was because everyone had the same ownership mentality. And we really worked on how can we make it. And you said it earlier, engaging and fun. You know, I think engaging your workforce is important. But if they are having fun doing it, that's the formula.

Yeah.

You know, the joke always with me was my CEOs and my partners never said go out and work hard or make money. They always tell me, have fun. Because if we were having fun and we were smiling, we were making money and we were having success.

Yeah. And that's such a simple concept that I think everybody overlooks. So good on you for pushing that. So, all right, a little bit about myself. So I am VP of Marketing, Customer gauge, full disclosure. And I know what you're thinking. It's like lawyers and then marketers below that. But once you get to know me, it won't be so bad. So I've run cx.

He's not your typical marketer. Yeah. Trust them, trust them.

I know, right? Marketers aren't Liars, they're storytellers. But so I ran. I started off my CX career and I was kind of in that realm early on. I did the CCX program for CIT bank in the US and for those Europeans out there that are listening, CIT bank is a SIFI organization. It's basically one of those too big to fail. So like a some trader hits the wrong button on the trade desk, the US economy goes down in flames. So that was fun. But I hacked together a bunch of odds and ends like Salesforce Marketo Tableau, set up an automated system, pipe results directly to the CEO at the time, John Thain. So I decided I wanted to try to build this as a business. And in that process I did some research and found out that actually Customer Gauge right in my backyard in Boston was already doing it. So I rang up the CEO, Adam Durrell, and get a copy with them and the rest, they say is history. So while I've been at CustomerGage, I've helped write a couple books on CX and I love talking to our customers about their strategies to create basically remarkable experiences for their clients. So, yeah, that's my story. And the obvious next thing we need to address is why are we doing this podcast? Right? So basically it really boils down to want to help. So we talked to thousands of B2BCX practitioners just like yourselves, and over the years, there's one thing that they all have in common and that's always they're trying to find better ways to serve their customers. They're trying to improve their programs, especially in B2B. With more complex account environments, it can be really difficult to serve multiple stakeholders in those accounts and collect feedback in a timely manner. And so we've been evangelizing this concept, especially at the B2B level, for years. The podcast just seemed like the logical next step. So here we are, and hopefully some of these learnings that we kick out there can benefit you all and we're excited you're on the journey with us. All right, right to the nitty gritty. Let's get into our first topic. You ready for this, Kerry?

I think so.

Alright, so culture, right? How do you establish a culture based around the customer and why is it important?

How long is this podcast?

Two hours go. Not enough time.

You know, I think culture is a word that's thrown around a lot and I think it's the right word to use. But I think sometimes people mistake culture for processes, they mistake it for reward programs and all these different things. We create and your culture is really your people. At the end of the day, when you sit back and go, we have a great culture. We have great people that are doing it. I think you have to create tools and systems and processes that. That kind of speak to the people and motivate them and make them as excited about whatever that mission is at the company's mission, whatever it might be. So where do you start with a culture? You start by, it's got to start from the hiring process. And we don't all have the benefit of starting from scratch on day one and going, well, I'm going to go hire 2,000 people. The reality is most of us step into a situation where we already had 2,000 people. We have to start making decisions on. Is this the culture we want? Can we motivate and excite that group? Or do we need to go out and maybe look for some more people?

All right, let's pause there. So sorry to jump in, but I think the piece about how do you excite those people? I know a little bit about your background because you were a customer and you presented at a couple of our conferences. So I'm going to bring something up. I want you to really get tactical, right? So, like, all right, everybody says create an amazing culture. And I, and I completely agree it's overused, but it's true. You need to create an amazing, engaging culture. And I feel like from what I've seen and what I know about you, you managed to do that, which is a very difficult thing at a company the size of Arius. So, tactically, what did you do? Did you have an internal branding program? Did you have. What was it that you did to kick that off? And I'm not talking about when you're hiring, right? Like, that's, that's. The culture should already be established and it should spill into the hiring process. But what did you do, like, when you were that lone man or woman in that situation where you're like, all right, I need to do this. It's important for the company. Bring me back to that time and kind of how you went about actually establishing that culture in the company.

I'm gonna go into my cliche toolbox here and throw a few out as I speak for sure. So you can call me out on them if you want, or let's put a counter up in the upper right hand corner. But I mean this when I say this. You have to win their hearts. When you're the lone person, you're not going to do it through emails and you're not going to do it through websites, face to face, going out, asking genuine questions and listening, doing their job. This is another thing that I think a lot of organizations are how people hire up really failed to do. But the joke with me was, you know, I spent the first couple of months of my new job title, whatever. I had so many titles, it doesn't even matter anymore because they didn't know what to call me. But what I was doing was I was just going out there and doing the job with them. And if it meant washing dishes, if it meant answering the phones, really understanding what it was that they were doing and how they were doing it. And something happens in the moment while you're working alongside with your team, where you go, hey, have you ever thought of this? Or would you like to try this? And they're open to it because they see you as someone who's been doing what they're doing, even if it's for a couple of days, even for a couple of hours. So I think that's where it really started was getting your ass out there and seeing what it is they do day to day. Walking in their shoes, that's another one. But you know, really getting out there and doing what they do. So you can understand that you can't build a culture from an office on the top floor away from where it's happening. You need to be on the floor, you need to be out in the business with them, and then you need to start listening, collecting that information. I think the second thing was a lot of what I did or what we created as a team. So eventually it became a team. But as the lone wolf, you're looking for anything that's working. Even in an environment where it feels like it's one loss after another, you're running into dead ends or sales aren't where they should be. You're looking for something that is working and you latch on to that. So I remember rolling into some location, like one location, and they had this program that the employees themselves created and it was recognition, I think they called it props. And basically the employees were putting other employees names in a box every time they wanted to give props to someone for doing something great. Hey, you know what? You grabbed that order from me. Hey, you trained that new person who made my life a little bit easier. Any little thing that they were doing. And I just remember walking in here and thinking, you know, you guys say you're broken or we don't have a program, but you guys have created your own program. So some of Your best ideas come from within your own organization. Even when you're trying to create a new culture or grow or improve a culture, latch on to things that they are doing. So we took this Props program. I remember marching back to the corporate office with it, sitting with the C suite and going, here's my first program. It's. It's props. Or you might change the name of it if you don't like the name of it. But Props ended up becoming our High 5 program, which was our way of giving a recognition, a quick high five, to someone who's done something above and beyond. And to this day, 12 years later, they're still using it in their culture, in their environment, from an idea that was born on the floor as a necessity. So I think that's another key thing, is take ideas that are already in play and latching onto that. And then the other thing I love too, is committees. I love taking the people that are going to be impacted and influenced by anything that we do and making them part of the team that's creating it. I think the first thing this does, it helps with buy in. If I come in with a really great idea, no matter how great it is, I'm already going to have a group of resistors out there. I'm going to have a group of people like, oh, here we go. He's going to tell us how to run our business. He's going to tell us how to be happy and have a good time. You know, and it's like, they don't need to be told that. They need to be part of the group that's saying, hey, this is what we enjoy. This is what makes our job great. I'm a firm believer that when people wake up in the morning, they look in the mirror and they say, I want to do a good job today. I want to go kick some hats. Right? I don't think people wake up and say, well, I'm going to do a crappy job today. I think people genuinely want to do a really good job and get recognized for it. And I think they want to be held accountable. As crazy as it sounds, they want feedback. Hey, you could do this better, whatever. But something happens between that mirror at the door when you leave your house to two hours into your shift, your boss has yelled at you. You know, a co worker doesn't have time to give you an answer. You, your email's not working. You know, the platform's not operating the way it should be. We all know the problems that happen. And I think this is all the noise that takes us away from it. But we gotta tap into that person who was standing at that mirror at the beginning of the day and saying, I wanna do a great job today. And I think make them part of that committee. Bring those people in and saying, okay, this is the benefit. Tell us how it's gonna benefit you. Tell us what you want. Then you start to form that culture around there. Now you've got. Without even calling it, you've got champions out there who are marching and talking about how this is going to benefit. They become your front line, they become your army of sorts that are out there doing your work. And I think that's where I started. If you ask where I started in the last two or three companies, Container Store had a great culture, and all it could do was add to it or learn from it. When I got to areas, it was an industry that was hurting, and we had to find a way to create a culture around that and build. So I think that's. To answer your ultimate question, I think that's where we started. We brought the people in. We looked for some key things that they were doing really, really well. We gave a voice to a group of people who didn't think they had a voice. They were creating their own culture. And how do you start marrying these little subcultures into one large one?

Yeah, and I think that's really spot on. So I've worked for companies where there are these little mini subcultures by departments or even by regions. The trick is making one cohesive culture that everybody buys into. So how did you do that in a global organization? Right. So a lot of companies out there have multiple divisions, multiple locations. So how do you bring that culture and spread it across the entire globe?

So get the cliche counter going again. But I do think. I don't know if it's a cliche or not, but I think you need to find at least one common thread. Right. What is the one thing that everyone can rally behind? And I know the immediate thing. I know what everyone's thinking right now. Money. Right? Money in my account, money in the till, money in the bank. And look, there's no doubt about it. Money makes the world go round. Especially. That's what we're all here for. And we're trying to grow our business in our industry. But you start to discover there are other things that tie us together. Let's take the current situation of COVID I know it's like, I don't want to make this whole podcast about that, but there Seemed to be a genuine spirit about doing what's right and taking care of people and giving back. You know, we've done a few things, and I'm not even gonna brag about them. But our immediate response was not to save money, not to make money, but how could we help our own team? And how could we help our customers, our partners? How could we all come out of this? And I think that's, you know, what is the currency that brings your team together? What is it that you can rally around? And. And sometimes it is revenue. Don't get me wrong. Hitting goals. So maybe it's an individual target that we all just wanna be proud that we hit. Maybe it's bragging rights. Hey, you know what? We've been number three long enough. We wanna be number two. So what was those common things that we could rally around? And that started to help those silos break down a little bit and just start saying, okay, I can buy into that. I can get my good idea, join forces with their good idea and their fun and rally around this one mission or this one, whatever it might be. So I think that was kind of what I played at. I played a little bit part of being a customer experience champion and having a customer experience program is what are your metrics? What are the things that you determine as being successful? And for me, you know, our NPS score and our relationship score was important. Our average ticket and what we were selling. It's. It's. You know, there were certain metrics that we went after, and we just. It was bragging rights. Can we improve it? And then it almost becomes competitive. It goes from rallying around it to almost having this friendly competition of, can we grow it? Can we expand? And then instead of looking at each other as competition, before you know it, you're looking at the other guys who's running a similar business and saying, now that's my competition. And now we're going to rally against them and beat them. And I think that's what helped break down those silos, was really finding that one thing that we all could get started on and then watch it grow from there.

So one of the things I remembered from your presentation at one of our conferences was, I think it was Areas Connect was what it was called. It was like a Internet, essentially, but it was built around customer experience, right? Or what you guys called the guest experience. And it was this Internet where you could get points. You could see how the other divisions were doing with their NPS scores and things like that. I mean, that was super. Unique to you guys, but I think in my head, outside looking in, that seemed like that was the glue that kind of brought everybody together and kept it close. And that was like the real culture driver that was across multiple divisions, across the globe. Is that talk a little bit about that? Was that kind of key in your strategy?

Well, it's funny because that was almost the end product or the manifestation of what we've been working years to create. I think I like the way you describe it. It was one part training. Where do I go to learn new skills and new things about product? Where do I go to? So it was one part competitive. Where do I go to see where I ranked against my fellow teams and how am I doing? It was one part social. There's a reason why people are hooked to social media, but where can you call each other out and talk trash, but also celebrate and give back? And at the end of the day, we thought money was the driver. We were giving handfuls of cash to people to drive performance, and we didn't see change, but we had to find a currency that worked. And you're right, we used a point system that allowed people to buy gifts that they wouldn't normally buy for themselves. That's why, you know, whenever I'm talking to someone, I always say, money's not king when it comes to motivating people. It's giving them something that they wouldn't normally give themselves or they could get themselves. So you were actually offering up experiences and gifts that they would rather pay bills than to get. But we saw motivation get driven out of that. So we took all these elements of things that we were doing in different systems and. And we married them all together into one portal called Areas connect. And all 3,000 plus of our employees in the US had access to it. This ended up becoming a global olution. It's almost 30,000 people now that are running on this particular system. But it was your one go to Hub for everything that was driving our culture and our success.

That's huge. And it's so funny that you say the. The point system, like give them something that they wouldn't buy themselves. Cash for some people is just not a motivator. It reminds me of, like this, the arcade prize scenario when I was a kid, right, where there's a slingshot on the wall and I could go down the, like, two stories down and buy the slingshot for probably $10. I must have spent 80 to $90 in the stupid arcade because I wanted to win that stupid slingshot. And I did everything in my power to get to it. But you're right, it's a powerful motivator to basically say, you know what? That's. That's something I want. They could easily buy it, I'm sure, but it has special meaning when you earn it, right?

Yeah.

So.

The tickets shooting out of the machine was kind of that feeling. We were creating this portal because, you know, it all came back to. I came into the situation, I learned something, I applied something, continually got better, and I got a reward for that. And I think it speaks to kind of like this really raw kind of thing about us as human beings is we want to continually grow and improve. We want to be better than we were. And I think we tapped into that with creating this culture around growth and improving ourselves.

So, yeah, I think you nailed it. Yeah. So, all right, frontline staff, middle management staff bought in. You got all of this data cooking. You have a really nice internal digital system that spreads the culture across the globe. What about, like, your B2B vendors? Right? So you were a concessionaire, but you also, your vendors were essentially airports, Right. How did you know that you were in good standing with them?

Well, we can go even a step further. Our B2B went beyond just the airports or the transportation. We had franchises that we had to work with some of the biggest brands that each and every one of us loves and stops at on the way to work or takes the kids to on weekends. So we had them as B2B. Then we had our suppliers. Where do we get all of our product from? Where do we get our HR solutions from really big companies in the world we were business to business partners with. And we need to find ways to measure that and putting a pulse on keeping them equally as happy. Because, yeah, you want your consumer to be happy. You want the person who buys the burger or the person who kind of comes in and needs aspirins on the road to be happy. I get all that. But you got to keep that B2B client extremely happy also. And I think part of that was the same formula. You gotta. I constantly ask myself this, and I learned this many, many years ago, but you kindly. You have to stop and ask yourself this question. Ultimately, who is your customer? I don't think we ask that question enough. I think sometimes we go numb or we think we just have a job to do and we just keep plowing through it, and we keep looking at the dollars and cents we're trying to prevent churn. It's all about retention. I know all the catchphrases I get it. But who is your customer? And you know, we had to ask ourselves, I have a purchasing team and I would say, okay, stop. Who is your customer? And they'd say, well, it's not the consumer because that's not who I'm directly, you know, providing services to. My customer happens to be the person who's selling it or the management, that middle management out in the field. Okay, now who's helping you be successful with that customer? Well, that's my suppliers. That's my. And so you start to see this bi directional relationship that starts to exist and you know, here's another. Hit the cliche counter again. But it's gotta be mutually beneficial. Like, what's in it for me Is a question you constantly have to ask yourself. But our partners are asking us that too. So what we started to see when we're trying to improve this frontline culture and this middle management or this management leadership in the field culture, what we started to see with it was companies would come in. So I'm not going to throw names around, but when you're sitting across the table from someone like Coca Cola, everyone knows who these guys are, right? And they want to know, how much are you going to sell? What's the relationship like? And they're willing to throw money at you to put their product out front or whatever. And we didn't see the relationship take off or the happiness measured until we could say to them, look, let me show you this culture here that we're creating. And I just remember giving that same exact demo that I would show the employees to these big companies. And they would be like, oh my God, you're teaching them, you're rewarding them. They're competing against each other. And it's whatever you put out there to do, they would just get excited about it. And we used to see huge jumps in sales. But what we saw on the other side with our business partners were like, you care about your frontline, your frontline in turn cares about your customer. You understand who all your customers are in this scenario, you're our customer. Now. We're excited about servicing you. And we'd see more spend in marketing, we would see more investment in time. We had bragging rights. Like, we'd get more visits, not because we were in a tropical environment and people wanted to come hang out there in the summer, in the winter, they genuinely saw the benefit of doing business with us. And then they in turn would go back and hold all of their partners, all of their customers to our standard. So we kept seeing ourselves raising the bar in that relationship and the expectations would go up on both sides.

And I think it's worth mentioning right here. So I'm going to make your name drop if that's all right with you. So areas, for those of you that don't know, there are concession era airports and other types of venues. Like what? Rest stops, things like that?

Yeah, we do travel plazas, rest stops, stadiums and train stations in other countries.

Yeah, right, exactly. And I don't know if this is super well known across at least the US but the brands that are in those airports or those other areas are not actually the corporate brands. They're franchised or they're basically run by you guys.

Area, right, exactly. We build out, we operate, we staff, we train, everything is us. So if you had a great experience. Yeah. Hopefully we had something to do with that. If not, that was probably the other guy.

So what type of brands would you guys work with? Anything that we'd know.

Some small companies. Dunkin Donuts, Starbucks, Wendy's. We would everything from, you know, your favorite pretzel place to the favorite place you love to get. Sushi Panda Express. I mean the list is actually pretty rich and long, but we do everything from casual dining locations, you know, the Ruby Tuesdays of the world and things like that. Five guys, all the way up to, you know, just anywhere that you would eat and shop and visit. Street side, your favorite places you love to go. We made a big deal about bringing those into the airports. So. So we would even have regionally specific or city specific locations. Yeah, restaurants you could only visit in one city. We would be the partner that would bring that into the airport to represent that brand.

So I guess what I'm getting at is these are not smallish brands. I'm sure you had a couple local guys, but these are brands that if you don't maintain that relationship or you piss them off in some way, shape or form, they are like, hey, I'm, I'm out. Like we're not going to let you run with it.

That's going to hurt.

That's a big right.

Yeah. And think about it, it's not just in one country, we're talking global here. You know, we run all over the world. So we had the responsibility and the weight of making sure that not only did we represent the vision they had for their brand, we also had bragging rights. Some of our scores were. Or not some, most of our scores were higher than what they did streetside. So we almost carried an extra level of delivery on that because the airports had a very high standard. Departments of transportation and government had a very high standard. But, you know, to us, it was a sense of pride. We wanted to be better than anyone else out there doing it.

Yeah. And I think the amount of effort that you guys put into your program and the amount of effort that you guys put into training and I mean, that is not a small thing for a company of that size. That is multiple people working full time to ensure that this thing is running at maximum capacity and completely optimized for the customer. So, again, that's, I think, super interesting. And it's really. I think areas specifically has a really interesting use case because there is kind of that mix of B2C, B2B. And a lot of our clients do similar things. We work with a ton of B2B clients, but we also have a mix. Right. So there are some really interesting parallels between these companies where B2C, right, you got to serve an end consumer and it's really important to make sure they're happy. But then there's this whole other element, and it has. It carries this massive contract value too, that like this B2B side of like your vendors, your distributors, if you don't pay attention to that as well, you could be in just as much danger. So these companies, not only they have to do it at the B2C side, but they have to also do it just as well on the B2B side. And that can be a lot of complexity for a lot of these companies out there. And some just don't know what to do or where to even start. So I really wanted to start with you first because specifically you've done it on both sides. B2C. B2B. I know this is the official B2B Experience podcast, but I do think, just like in marketing, there are things that the B2C side can inform the B2B side. And that is a great example of how to create culture on the front line. Bring it to your B2B side on the vendor side, on the brand side, the distributor side and supplier side, and really take those learnings and apply them directly to the B2B business, which I think is just really hard to do. And I think you guys did it exceptionally well. So I want to commend you. But I think it's also a great story to share with our listeners, is that there are things you can do on both sides of the fence and they're mutually beneficial. Cliche button. But I mean, honestly, it's just a really Inspiring story. And I really wanted to kick off this podcast with just kind of exploring your brain and kind of your experience on that side of it. Anything else you want to add to that story before we maybe wrap up this culture episode?

Well, you used the word a couple of times, and I really want to talk about. One specific word is effort. A lot of companies think throwing a lot of cash at something is what's going to create change. And I do think you need to invest. I'm not going to lie to you. There is a certain amount of investment in people and in the right tools to get it done, without a doubt. But nothing replaces effort. A lot of our biggest successes came from effort, not from the other two, necessarily. But you need good people and good tools to deliver that. And I just remember I can go back and very quickly share, like, probably 10 different stories of where just putting the effort together of a group of people coming together, working a little bit harder, and then taking another thing that you said, too. Sharing your wins. Tell your story. You could have a hundred bad stories, but take that one good story and continue to share it over and over again. And, you know, tell your B2B partners, tell your employees about the B2B. You know, that's what really gained success for us and helped us grow quickly. We kept celebrating, and we don't. I don't think we celebrate enough as companies, those little wins and those little successes. So if you're gonna put effort out there and there is any level of success that comes out of it, celebrate that at the top of your lungs, because I think that's where that reward and recognition comes from. It's the beginning of that culture. They're celebrating it.

Yeah, I think that's really well said. And you're right, it goes for any company, right? Celebrate the little wins, the big wins, the medium wins. Celebrate everything. I mean, if there's good news, especially right now, you guys got to celebrate that. And all of you B2B practitioners out there, you're not alone. We hear you. Hopefully this was helpful. Kerry, thank you so much for joining me today. That was fantastic. Hopefully the insights were valuable to everybody else. We're going to be doing this probably every week here, so we'll be releasing episodes. If anybody wants to get involved, hit us up. We'd love to have you on the show, but we're going to try to share with you very tactical tips to maximizing the impact of your B2B experience program. That is, I think, the toughest thing that we've encountered is A lot of these people that come to us, they just, they don't really know where to start. They don't really know how to take it to the next level. That's really what we're going to try to do for you guys is just provide as much information as possible so you guys can make better decisions at your company and increase your buy in for your program and hopefully generate a bigger return on your investment. This has been the official B2B experience podcast. Thanks for listening. And now a word from our sponsors.

This episode of the Account Experience Podcast is sponsored by Customer Gauge, the leading B2B account experience software that ties revenue to your experience data in real time to help you make better account centric decisions that drive revenue growth. Quick question. What do you guys think is the number one reason B2B experience programs fail? Believe it or not, it's Lack of C Suite buy In Customer Gauge's research with mit, they found the quickest way to align yourselves with the C suite is to actually align with what they care about most, which is revenue. That's why Customer Gauge is literally built from the ground up to maximize and track the revenue contribution from your experience.

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