In this interview, host Bob London talks with Sabina Galt, CEO of Connect Agency, and Christina McKinnon, the agency’s recruitment manager, about the agency’s approach to truly listening to clients. Connect is a full‑service PR firm that works with brands such as Crave Jerky, Kite Hill, Dave & Buster’s, and AMF Bowling. The conversation centers on the concept of “agenda‑less listening,” a method that removes preconceived questions and allows clients to speak freely. Sabina explains that she recognized her own bias and brought Christina on board because she could more easily gain client trust. Together they conducted a “listening tour,” speaking with 12‑15 CEOs (current, former, and prospective) to uncover candid feedback. A standout question—“What do people say about us around the water cooler?”—prompted honest reputation insights. They also discovered “elevator rants,” tiny, seemingly irrelevant issues that, if left unaddressed, could cause client churn. By surfacing these small grievances, the agency was able to resolve them and improve retention. The interview highlights the value of transparent pre‑contract communication, the role of a Chief Listening Officer, and how agenda‑less listening can reshape both internal culture and client relationships. Bob praises the agency’s willingness to be candid about its processes, noting that such transparency is becoming essential in modern marketing.
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Tell me about you guys. Who are you? What does your company do?
I'm Sabina Galt, and I'm the CEO of Connect Agency. I'm Christina McKinnon. I'm the recruitment manager. Connect is a full-service PR agency. We do marketing, content creation. So we do a ton in food, a ton in franchise, and a little bit of lifestyle. You'd recognize names like Crave Jerky. You'd recognize Kite Hill cream cheese. On the franchise side, you'll recognize Dave Buster's and SodBurger and AMF Bowling Lanes.
All right, well, tell the Crave Jerky people they're doing a great job. I'm really pleased with my experience. I love it. Sabina, we had a chance to meet in Portland, Oregon during your EO forum retreat, and I was talking about listening to the customer, and I saw you feverishly taking notes. I was just thrilled to hear that you were planning to go kind of do a listening tour with customers. What was it that triggered your thought to say, you know what, I know I'm busy and we're busy, but we got, we should probably listen to our customers a little differently or better.
I think that the best concept that really hit me was that agenda-less listening. Because I think as humans, it's really hard not to want to have an agenda, even though you may try really hard and say, I'm gonna have a conversation and I'm gonna be open-minded. And they may say yes, they may say no, they may say maybe, but I'm just gonna have that open mind. Well, yeah, but the questions you ask aren't necessarily with your open mind. And your thing was change the questions you're asking. And I realized that I wasn't necessarily the right person to do that because I'm very biased. It's very hard for me to put myself in those shoes. So Christina does a much better job at that.
I give you credit for having that external self-awareness or self-awareness to say, no, no, I hear you, Bob, but I'm probably not the right one to do it for a lot of reasons. So And I think it worked out well that you had someone that you trusted, someone who could quickly gain the trust of the people that you were talking to. Hello, Christina.
Hi.
Christina, I've worked with CEOs coaching them to go through this process. They've been CEOs for 10, 20 years, but they have 300 employees. I could hear your thought process when you and I talked, and I was blown away by your touch and your sensibilities and judgment. When you heard about this project coming from Sabina, did you get it right away, what the purpose?
Yeah, I mean, I was excited. I was excited about it right away because it is up my alley. I love getting to know people. I love digging deeper. I'm very curious. I'm very curious-minded, so I was excited. It did feel a little bit daunting speaking to CEOs about specific details about their business, and I worried that they may not want to share with me.
About how many companies or CEOs did you talk to?
I think between 12 and 15 clients total. Majority of them were current, 2 or 3 former, and there were 1 or 2 prospects. Overall, I was kind of surprised at how much people wanted to talk to me. Aha. Ready to talk to me. And it just took them just a couple minutes of understanding I wasn't gonna just rattle off a bunch of standard questions and ask them to rate us between 1 and 10. Once they kind of got the hang of what we were doing, then they did want to share more.
Was there a particular part of the discussion or a question that seemed to get them to open up more than others?
One of the more interesting ones that I really, really liked was, "What do people say around the water cooler about us? What's our reputation? Good or bad?" We got some really interesting feedback from some clients that actually left.
Sabina, was there a business driver behind this, or was it just good business practices? We should just be doing this.
I think it helps us be better and strategize better when we know what the client really thinks. When Christina started talking to clients, they would tell her things that some they told us, some we would find out and they weren't really important, but some were absolutely crucial and they would have never come and told us that. To give you an example, she talked to somebody and, and, and that client had an issue in the very, very, very beginning. And it was so silly and so small. It had nothing to do with the work that was done. It had nothing to do with the people that were doing the work. It had nothing to do with the company. It had nothing to do with any of that. It was literally something so out of this world, like, oh, well, you know, so-and-so, when we were in the negotiation process, said this. It had nothing to do even with the business, like absolutely nothing. And it was something that really bothered that client. And it was interesting to see that as soon as we brought that up with the client, we were like, hey, by the way, everything's going well? And yep, everything's going great. Well, you know, we were thinking back in our starting point and this happened. Oh yeah, well, you know, I just really don't understand it. So we explained why that happened and the client was like, oh, oh, well that makes perfect sense. And since then it's been, you know, rosy and unicorn. But if I would, but that client would have never come to me and told me that.
Ever.
You had to ask, you know. I would have never known, and that client by now may have been gone.
I call this the elevator rant. So it's the stuff that the client maybe hears or thinks, or maybe a prospective client, and they bitch and moan on the elevator afterwards. They just have it in their head and they don't let go of it. And then when you ask them, they say, well, you know, now that you mention it, now that you're opening the door for me to give you this feedback and you're not You know, it's agenda-less, as you say, so they're more likely to bring it up. So if you're on the elevator with a trusted advisor or a peer of yours, how would you describe the importance of listening?
I'd say that when you run a company or work for a company, you live in a very tight ecosystem and you tend to take what that ecosystem gives you and portray it on the outside world. But what that also does, the flip side of it, is it stops you from being able to hear what's the world is telling you, because you're constantly telling your message to the world. And I think that this is the magic in what you do is while you're asking questions, you're not asking questions to prompt a certain answer. You're asking questions that just let the other person respond to however they want. Your philosophy really opened up our eyes to what the opportunity is to let somebody else talk. And, and I think Being able to take that outside of the organization, but also inside of the organization, it's been fantastic for us. And I can't thank you enough. My pleasure. I'm so lucky that we get to work together.
Well, I feel the same way. You guys teamed up to do a great job. So thank you. Appreciate it. It makes me feel good that this worked for you. I'm gonna anoint you both Chief Listening Officers because you're both so into this. I love it. For all our millions of listeners out there and viewers, thank you so much.
Thank you, Bob London.
All right, take care.
Bye-bye.
Is it okay if I give you some feedback? Um, when we met Sabina, I asked around the group for people to talk about their businesses, and I, I asked the question about what do you think your customers don't like about your industry? And I've worked with a lot of PR firms. I've hired, I've had successful relationships over the long term, and I've had to part ways with some. I think you nailed what it is that PR firms sometimes wrestle with because they don't listen. So I wanted to compliment you on that. I have never heard a PR firm talk that way about itself. You were so candid about the way you set expectations before the contract is signed. I remember saying, "You mean you say all that before the contract is signed?" And you said yes. So that kind of transparency, I think, is the new way of marketing and doing business. There's nothing— you can't hide anything. Clients find out everything eventually. So I wanted to applaud you for that because it fits in really nicely with the kind of stuff I talk about.
Thank you.
So, you're welcome.
It's so interesting to hear what the other person thinks and not just what they think, but how you could potentially improve. Because ultimately we're here to make them successful. And how are we going to make them successful? How are we going to, to get them to that next level? And oftentimes, I mean, look, we're people dealing with people who deal with more people. We're not machines. We're not programmed to think if 1, then 2, if 2, then 4. And that's something that we want to make sure that we keep elevating and growing, um, within the relationship. We're getting paid a lot of money and we want to do really well.
