Episode #208:
Efrat Ravid, Chief Marketing Officer at Quantum Metric, and Lina Tonk, Chief Marketing Officer at Recurly, unpack the top three B2B growth challenges from the marketer’s face in today’s market. They reveal why internal alignment, customer voice programs, and balancing short-term versus long-term priorities fall short without trust programs. Their insights guide executives to prioritize honest conversations over generic campaigns.
“Show your customer that you are listening and not just for the heck of it. You will be trusted if you’re listening to your customers.” – Lina Tonk
A candid look at what really builds trust today. Lina and Efrat share why intimate customer conversations and adaptive playbooks outperform generic campaigns. They explain how to re-center messaging on human outcomes, align executives around one story, and turn listening into action that customers feel.
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[Transcript]
[00:00:05] Steve MacDonald: Welcome, everyone, to the Contact Center Perspectives podcast. I’m Steve MacDonald, your host today. You are in for a very, very special treat because we have two experts on that are here to do a job that we have never done before, which is we are talking about the most important, absolutely most important challenges that we all face as B2B C-suite executives to grow our businesses, right, that inform our entire go-to-market strategy.
[00:00:31] Steve MacDonald: And there is a report called the Challenge Report, and over 45 different B2B C-suite executives were asked this one question: What are the two greatest challenges to creating long-term sustainable growth as B2B executives? And we’ve taken all those together, and we’ve come up with the top three challenges that we all face in growing our businesses.
[00:00:56] Steve MacDonald: And today we have on Efrat Ravid and Lina to help us decipher. What does all that mean? What do we have to do as a result of that? We all know that the traditional playbooks do not work anymore, that things just change constantly, and we need to keep up with that. And so that is the crux of the conversation that we are going to have here today.
[00:01:15] Steve MacDonald: And Efrat, you are a three-time B2B CMO. You work with Goldman Sachs as a value accelerator advisor. You are a board member. You have worked with just a number of Fortune 500 companies where we’re honored to have you on and with us here today. And Lina, you have an incredible background, not only as a CMO, but you have been a Chief Experience Officer as well, and today that carries heavy, heavy weight.
[00:01:42] Steve MacDonald: I think it was McKinsey that came out with a study in 2023 that said, amongst 400 highly profitable companies that they did in this study, that CX was the number one differentiator today, right? So that is going to play a big role in what we are talking about. But what I would love to do is give you just a chance to give a little bit more about your background before we get started here.
[00:02:07] Steve MacDonald: And Efrat, if you do not mind, I will pick on you first.
[00:02:10] Efrat Ravid: Absolutely, absolutely. It is such a pleasure to be here with you, Steve, again, and with Lina. I am so excited. A little background. I am a software engineer in my background. I started my career in a very technical field, field engineering in Asia Pacific, robotics, you know, all ERP, beautiful material, and all the very fast and heavy.
[00:02:34] Efrat Ravid: And also, over time, I moved to the US, started living in Boston. Now I ended up in San Diego. I felt like I found it after working in different functioning big organization like Dassault Systèmes, which is a big software in Europe, through small startups, and acquired Quantum Metric about seven years ago, we were less than 20 million, now we are well above a hundred million, and I love this journey. I think that I loves growth. Well, I have Goldman Sachs portfolio companies also grow fast. I have an ambivalent relationship with playbooks in general.
[00:03:10] Steve MacDonald: Well, good, Lina, I would love to hear more about your background.
[00:03:13] Lina Tonk: Yeah. Yeah. So thank you for having me and Efrat, and I, I think the listeners will probably hear a lot of similarities.
[00:03:22] Lina Tonk: We both actually come from very different backgrounds. My background has always been on pe, very marketing driven, but the early years, some of sales experience, which I think made the view of the dynamic. Pivoting and having to change, not being so selfy, maybe, is what gave me that background. But I have always had a lot of passion for experience.
[00:03:44] Lina Tonk: So being an experience officer for a period of time was only, what many would say, was just a matter of time. So two-time CMO. I am currently at, we are currently one of the coolest subscription brands right now in the market. We have had. Absolutely incredible growth in the last year and a half, and it has been really fun to be part of it.
[00:04:07] Lina Tonk: But what has been really fun of the growth is just that reminder that, the playbook does not fit the playbook. Kind of like what ER said, it is not something that you are writing and closing down, and that is what you are going to do. The world is changing. People are changing. We have new generations coming through, which changes absolutely everything, the way buyers want to buy.
[00:04:32] Lina Tonk: So I am very, very passionate about making that connection on what really translates into. Value at the end of the funnel of it. I have a hard time talking about people as buyers. I have a really hard time talking about them as buyers. I always want to think of them as people that are getting some value from what we are able to provide them.
[00:04:56] Lina Tonk: I think what is fascinating right now is because that playbook needs to constantly change. There is also a very old-school mentality of intimacy with customers and how we cannot lose the relationship aspect of how we communicate with our customers and the actual people that we are providing value to. So I am fascinated by all of that, and I am excited for this discussion mostly because of that, because there is just so much that we can do on the trust side.
[00:05:32] Lina Tonk: But there is so much that technology can actually advance us into in the future. But, um, for sure, do not use the same playbook, it is not going to work. It will not work tomorrow.
[00:05:43] Steve MacDonald: Well, you know, I am going to take a cue from what you just said, that you are so excited to talk about the trust side, right? So the title of the episode that we have here is The Ultimate Trust Builder.
[00:05:54] Steve MacDonald: Why The Story’s Not About You, and Oh my goodness, the story that we are going to tell about that is going to be amazing. But let me backtrack just a little bit, and I am going to talk about this challenge report and the top three challenges that came out of it. So the number one challenge to me was just really mind-blowing is that.
[00:06:19] Steve MacDonald: Internal alignment was viewed by C-suite executives. We are talking CEOs, CMOs, CROs, Chief Growth Officers, Chief Experience Officers. It was viewed as the number one challenge to growing our business. Yet we usually look externally, right? It is the market, it is the competition. What they are doing is keeping us back.
[00:06:40] Steve MacDonald: We gotta compete, we gotta get out there, right? But over 70 percent of the responses were internal challenges, and alignment was right on the top of that. So that was challenge number one. Challenge number two was that we do not have a good enough handle on the voice of our customer. And that we do not have dedicated programs to that, that we rely on existing business processes to talk to our customers, and we develop a great familiarity with our customers.
[00:07:11] Steve MacDonald: We talk about them all the time, right? But we do not really have a true, deep understanding of our customers. That was the second challenge. The third challenge was the balance between short-term and long-term. We all know we go talk to the rest of the C-suite or board meetings. Nobody is asking us about our long-term brand-building efforts and trust-building efforts.
[00:07:37] Steve MacDonald: They are talking about our quota this quarter, next quarter. What are we doing? The conversation starts short-term, and there is a pull. ‘Cause we know that today’s brand is tomorrow’s demand, right? We know that we have to work on both. So that imbalance was the third challenge. But what you each arrived on was the true hidden number one challenge.
[00:08:01] Steve MacDonald: This is what Forrester actually called the number one challenge facing B2B companies, and it was a trust epidemic that we are in today. And I am going to stop talking for just a minute and let you guys talk on this, but to really paint the picture around how bad the trust epidemic is. We all know about Edelman and LinkedIn’s Trust Barometer, right?
[00:08:23] Steve MacDonald: In the most recent barometer, it showed the continuation of decades in Europe, in the United States, all over the world, decades of decline in trust. To the point where, amongst 32,000 respondents, over 60% said that they think we, as the selling organizations, are being intentionally misleading.
[00:08:45] Steve MacDonald: Intentionally misleading. Ow, right?
[00:08:48] Lina Tonk: Ouch.
[00:08:49] Steve MacDonald: Oh my goodness. You know, I mean, our brands are trust marks. If we do not have trust, what do we have, right? Another study showed that the value that we provide our clients, how we demonstrate that, 74% said we do not buy it. We do not believe it, right. So there is definitely an issue when we talk about playbooks.
[00:09:11] Steve MacDonald: One of the things that Forrester said was, we have dedicated programs for lead development, right? Lead generation and sales enablement. But we very rarely have trust-building campaigns and programs. We just do not think about it that way. So I want to Lina, I am gonna ask you first to jump in here and just.
[00:09:33] Steve MacDonald: Comment, if you could, this trust crisis, why traditional approaches fail when we have this kind of a trust crisis that we are facing?
[00:09:42] Lina Tonk: Yeah. You know, that is a big number, right? Over 60%. I think even 30% will be high. To see it over 60% is quite scary, and that is when you actually have to come together as a brand and really review if your brand is.
[00:10:00] Lina Tonk: Measuring to that point, to a 60%, where a buyer, here I am saying buyer, but a future customer is actually feeling that you are misleading them, then we have a big problem. That is when trust really comes through here. Through my time, I think as Experience Officer, that was probably where my eyes got opened really big.
[00:10:22] Lina Tonk: This is when AI was starting to make a difference. It was starting to make an impact. I am all about AI. I am all about the ability that it has to make us productive, to advance the work we are doing. Even in some levels, the sentiment, what we are not gonna be able to advance with AI is what we hear from our customers.
[00:10:43] Lina Tonk: And AI has a lot of different ways to actually listen to customers today, but I think the biggest problem that we have when we face trust issues is we are not sitting next to a customer. We are not talking to a customer. We are building brand and campaigns and selling points on the future of growth of the company, but we are not.
[00:11:10] Lina Tonk: Being real about what the value that it is really providing that is the customer. So to me, the number one way to go. Almost attack. This is just go get intimate with your customers. Actually, when we had our first call, the three of us, I was just sharing with the two of you that I had just come back from a New York City event and I just.
[00:11:35] Lina Tonk: Last week came out from a lunch-and-learn from some of our customers, and all we were doing was listening to our customers, what they are going through, what they are facing. There was no agenda for us to go push things to them: their energy, their sentiment, where they are going, where they need us to go from them.
[00:11:54] Lina Tonk: And by default, the amount of trust that builds into what will happen next, it is absolutely incredible. Now, if I go and have one of those meetings, for example, to be tactical, and then I come out of it and nothing changes. You do not pivot. You do not think like your brand has to maybe change a little bit.
[00:12:17] Lina Tonk: The way we talk has to change because we are hearing this, and they are going through this, and we are doing nothing, right? I am just listening, and maybe I am just gonna go change my selling points, which many do. That does nothing. It goes back into the trust bucket. They eventually feel like we are misleading them because then sales is simply going to go try to make quota.
[00:12:38] Lina Tonk: So I think. What I would say overall about trust is that you do have a way of gaining that trust by being really close to customers and listening to them and understanding where they are going, what they are doing, what they are going through. Even though we have a bunch of AI capabilities to extract a lot of that for us, which we do, and it helps us a bunch when we cannot be with them in person, but I think that two have to come together.
[00:13:14] Lina Tonk: I think you have to be close to customers. Your customers have to know you. They have to know that there is a face behind who is talking to them. That person means something good for them. So. I see it as a double approach, a traditional approach, because traditional is being in person with people, so that we today call it traditional, which is crazy, and a very future approach too.
[00:13:41] Lina Tonk: Give room for AI. Give room for those AI capabilities, but do not let them take over those sentiments and those feelings that you might not be able to translate fully when you are in person with a customer. That is how I am leaving it there day to day right now.
[00:13:59] Steve MacDonald: So one of my biggest takeaways from what you are saying here is there is nothing to replace building trust in a relationship.
[00:14:07] Steve MacDonald: And we are all in a relationship-based business. You cannot replace, even in the day of AI, and the promise is still evolving on what it is going to do with this. We cannot replace the one-on-one conversation and learning. If we do, we are gonna fall behind. Fantastic effort. So I would love to have you come in and weigh in on this.
[00:14:31] Steve MacDonald: So please.
[00:14:32] Efrat Ravid: Yeah. So first, I completely agree. Building relationship, going back to the basics of human beings. Relationship is absolutely work, builds trust. But I have to admit, when I saw 60%, I thought that next year it will be 80 and 90% of people; our companies do not trust others. The reason for that is actually the AI evolution.
[00:14:56] Efrat Ravid: Anything we see right now, including this podcast, can be mimicked by AI in seconds, right? I mean there are so many stories. Beginning of the year, Elon Musk announced he was running for president in France. Do you remember this story? Like every French publication had him say something in french like in real, real accent. Apparently, it was a project of a student in Montreal that actually did it, and it was in every French media and looked like Elon Musk, and there were so many examples like that around, as you’ll see. Now, you can see a video of anyone, any of us. My kids do my video in seconds, right? And it is easy. It is available, and you do not know what to trust when you see it, so how can I trust my agenda?
[00:15:49] Efrat Ravid: How can I trust what they say? And when we look at marketing specifically, we all sound the same. It is really hard, and this is why I completely agree with Lina, that it is, in the end of the day, the relationship you have with your customers. It is not when you say that, you call the quote, and when you bring your customers together with your prospects or customers together, and they talk, and they sell, and then you take what you learn and actually implement it.
[00:16:18] Efrat Ravid: So it is basic. It is listening, acting to them, and acknowledging the fact that you cannot trust anything that you see, you hear. It is so hard, in my opinion, the big challenge of AI. It is actually not the jobs that are changing, and we need to learn as human beings to add new value to the world. That it is not like to the old one, right? The old function. We all are going to replace, or we need to find a new way to add value. The issue is, what can I trust? This is why I think no one trusts marketers anyway. You remember the book? All Marketers are liars, right? Like that was before AI. Like, how can I trust my marketing function? Again, it is back to basics, back to relationship, and if you are selling to an enterprise like us, it is easier, but what happens when you are selling to SMBs, how do you build that trust? That is the biggest question, the type of when you sell to consumers, and how you build this trust. It is a lot of work that you need to do.
[00:17:23] Steve MacDonald: It puts a whole new angle on Lina. What you were saying is the importance of the one-on-one conversation, because maybe in the future, I will have a conversation like this regarding AI. I will not know if I am talking real or not, but right now, at least the conversation is real. And you cannot replace that with AI.
[00:17:44] Steve MacDonald: The idea here that you are talking about, all of you, is we have to have a plan to address trust. And one of the best ways that we can do that is not through mass media, mass outreach. It is through one-on-one conversations. This is why hyper-personalization is such a big topic these days, because it is about the one-on-one relationship in B2B, right?
[00:18:07] Steve MacDonald: That is what it is really about. Why would we throw out the one-on-one conversation during that, right? Here is what I thought was really interesting. You guys opened up my eyes to this in our last conversation. You said, Steve, internal alignment. It is one of the biggest challenges, right, that came out of the report, but it is also the foundation for building external trust.
[00:18:30] Steve MacDonald: And Efrat, I would love for you to take the lead on talking about what it is about internal alignment that is so important to build that foundation for trust.
[00:18:40] Efrat Ravid: Absolutely. I want to look at alignment in three ways. The internal alignment is so critical in general for success. You need one unique way for your organization to go in one direction.
[00:18:54] Efrat Ravid: It does not matter if your organization is 10, 20, 500 or 50,000 people, right? If you take this power in the same direction, the power is much bigger. That is one. It is simple, right? Well, how you divide the energy, that is one. The second thing is that when you have alignment and you have one story and not a different type of story per executive, per teams, sales team, to the customer, it is much clearer. It is like parents, right? And they tell you different stories or different messages, but if you have one message, one parent says, put the dishes away, the family and the work grow, it is easier for the kids to understand what the expectation is and what they need to do. Same with the customer. If we have one message and one way to see through and very clear point of view, a company needs to have point of view.
[00:19:51] Efrat Ravid: A strong company or successful company have a very clear point of view that they share with the customers. And the same thing between us. It is all about we want our employees to be happy, right? We want our employees to wake up in the morning and say, oh my God, it is the best thing that happened to me. I love it here.
[00:20:09] Efrat Ravid: When they are happy, customers are happy, everyone is happy. It is very difficult to be happy in an environment when there is misalignment, they do not know what to do. Their KPIs are not clear. Success is not clear. Why wake up in the morning, what is the mission and vision of the company is not clear, and then it is all breaking up.
[00:20:29] Efrat Ravid: I know I said three things, so it is clarity of our customer. What is the message for them? It is a one-message. It is a one energy. I live with energy, so you will hear me talking a lot about energy. It is so much more efficient.
[00:20:42] Steve MacDonald: We all have known that in many times in our careers, right? Marketing says one thing, sales says another thing, and then customer success says, what did sales say to you? And now I have got to deliver on that, right? It is like you are talking to three different companies, right? This is the very essence that just, it hit me.
[00:21:00] Steve MacDonald: I am like, oh my goodness. We all know that misalignment is a huge problem, not only in terms of our strategic direction, but also in how we communicate with employees and customers. I love that. Lina, what do you have to say?
[00:21:16] Lina Tonk: So many points in here, but I think the one that I would absolutely make is C-level alignment.
[00:21:23] Lina Tonk: It is incredibly powerful for the culture of a company. I think in older days, people would say, well, every C level is coming in to run their function and do their thing. And I think that does not work. That alone creates misalignment. I think having a C level that is actually very intimate, like we are with customers, meaning they have to be in person, they have to get to know each other, they know a lot about each other, constantly talk about the things that they are hearing, what they are experiencing, the cadence on how they hear these things.
[00:21:59] Lina Tonk: That is one. I think C level energy empowerment goes all the way through the organization and builds up that culture of, kind of like what you said, right, you know, like waking up and knowing that this is a place I want to be, I know where I am going, and I understand what we are going. There is one point I will make here, because it is surprising to me.
[00:22:21] Lina Tonk: We were just talking with our CEO in one of our sessions about this. The past research shows that for people to remember something that you have told them, you have to repeat it to them about eight different times for them to remember it. And the recent research now shows that you actually have to do it 22 times.
[00:22:42] Lina Tonk: 22. And where I am going with this is, here we make a very big point of repeating. Having the same story as a C-level group for our teams so that there is alignment into where we are going, what our goals are, how we want to speak to a customer. That is one point that I would make. But I think the second point that I think is very, very important.
[00:23:09] Lina Tonk: When you said sales, customer success, and marketing, the way I see the three functions, and I always try to make it, the commercial function, it does not matter who is running what. If you are tightly close, those three executives are tightly close, those teams will be tightly close and it becomes a commercial function.
[00:23:30] Lina Tonk: It does not become, well, marketing is running that. Let them do that while we, sales, run enablement and go talk completely different to the customer. And then success is just actually talking about something different. So. I have gone as far as saying the words we use matter. The sentiment and the energy that we use with customer resonates on alignment, and I also think it impacts trust at the same time, because they are hearing the same thing.
[00:24:02] Lina Tonk: And it might be hearing it from a different person or a little bit different, but it is still the essence is the same. So I think alignment is critical.
[00:24:11] Efrat Ravid: When we say alignment, many points, the team think that it means that we need to agree on everything. Of course, you have three executives in one room. The reason they are executive is because they have strong opinion, and they will not agree on everything. Executive disagreement does not mean they do not hold alignment. So there is a vision, and where we are growing and how we are growing it, and then we need to have an agreement and grow. But to see the postures of disagreement, it is very healthy for the organization.
[00:24:42] Efrat Ravid: I do not want the audience or even my team to think that they can agree on everything. It is actually not healthy to agree on everything, because then there is no growth, right, and they have new ideas. Then it is growing. There is a big difference between fake it, which I am completely against, and healthy disagreement. And alignment of the principles.
[00:25:00] Efrat Ravid: And that is, I think, something that we distinguish team members. It is in the roles and their maturity. Like when you are starting your career, sometimes when you say executives disagree, it is like the end of the world. And when you get mature, you understand. It is actually right.
[00:25:14] Steve MacDonald: So I want to have you add on to what you just said there, right?
[00:25:19] Steve MacDonald: Because everything that we have just talked about here is how we tell a consistent story. Create a consistent experience. But, er, you said something in our previous conversation where you said, the story is not about us. We tend to talk about ourselves and product marketing can lead the way, right?
[00:25:45] Steve MacDonald: But that is secondary. That is a distant second. What we do is a distant second to the story that is about them. If you could, and then Lina, you have got a really important story to tell about telling the story is not about us, but I would love to, Efrat. What did you mean by that when you said the story is not about us?
[00:26:06] Efrat Ravid: Our job is to serve our customers. It is their story, and their story is much more interesting than the technology behind what we are showing. The worst mistake that marketers at every level make is that they tell the product feature, function, or the value of the product, or anything about the product, and who freaking cares about the product, not.
[00:26:33] Efrat Ravid: It is all about what is the problem of the customer and how it builds in the customer’s eyes? My favorite part of my job in the customer advisory board is to listen to the customer, not only about how, for example, Quantum Metric can improve its commercial line better. It is nice, it is interesting, but I want to hear about their entire ecosystem. When I see an organization, I work with their company in the middle and then everything around them, I know that there is a lot of work with this company. Companies that look at themselves as if they are in the middle are making a huge mistake. Take this chart which you try to expand your platform and put the customer in the middle, put your customer there, and then put on the platform, and your platform is one of them. The issue is that customers and consumers do not trust them because of the issues we’ve discussed. How they are trying to grow in this unstable environment is the story. It needs to make sure that they can keep their team working and avoid layoffs.
[00:27:36] Efrat Ravid: Many times we talk to companies, and especially now, and they say, I need to lay off 10% of the company. How can I pay for your service? I said, okay. Let us talk about how we keep your ten percent of your value growth, fantastic. But this is not about me selling you a platform. It is you growing, you hiring more people, and you are successful. And that is what I meant, it is a story about them, and we are one of the platforms that tells them. So, yeah, very passionate about it.
[00:28:06] Steve MacDonald: Well, um, here is what I would love to do. The story is not about us. It is something that is so important. The example that you just gave. It is not about whether my platform and I survive, it is about.
[00:28:21] Steve MacDonald: The focus was on them and solving them their challenge. Right. We cannot lose sight of that. And Lina, your company took this to what I would say the nth degree. I do not want you to name names or anything, but you have recently, as a company, brought on one of your dream clients that maybe was even thought to be out of reach at one point, but it was how.
[00:28:47] Steve MacDonald: You did that, which was so interesting, I would love for you to tell that story, please.
[00:28:52] Lina Tonk: Yeah, so I will tell that story, and then I will add a little bit more into kind of like how I view customer-first branding and storytelling. Before I tell that story, I think it starts with how we perceive our brand. So I think the last two.
[00:29:13] Lina Tonk: Companies I have done, I have done a full rebrand from the get go, because when I arrived to the brand, I realized. It was a brand all about the product. It was all about themselves. Even the tagline, the winning inspiration, everything was about the company itself. Never about customers we were to acquire. So I would say as a tactic, that will be something that any CMO should always be looking at and understanding like, is our brand speaking to our customers or is our brand.
[00:29:49] Lina Tonk: Speaking to ourselves, because that is the big mistake and a very common mistake, because the company itself feels powerful because the employees understand it, right? Because I work in the product every day, so I understand it. So I feel connected with it, because what your customer absolutely does not feel connected to it at all.
[00:30:11] Lina Tonk: So I think brand strategy is a major part. On being customer first. And then the second point I will make on the program is let your customers speak for you. You do not have to be speaking for yourself all the time. We do this, we are amazing at this, our product is incredible. Like all these things. I love what you said of when you said their stories are so much more interesting.
[00:30:40] Lina Tonk: A hundred percent. Because what we are solving for them is bigger than. Use of the product that they are having. What we are solving for them is some type of growth opportunity, likely transforming. I mean, we see it in subscription probably a lot more than in other SaaS areas, but it is like, it is so exciting to hear how it transforms them.
[00:31:03] Lina Tonk: That is another point I will make about that. So. I will be happy to tell you both. And since we spoke, we have had two more of those stories, and the way I talk about them a little bit is brands that I think in the past, very currently, I do not believe they were out of reach. I believe that our story and how we were connecting with the customers and what we actually did was actually not aligning.
[00:31:32] Lina Tonk: We have known that in the past, we will go and present to a prospect, and in most of these big, big prospects, and you are flying in, and you are going from the top, from the bottom up, and you do not know who is gonna show up in the room. These are enterprise sales. And we are likely gonna have five, six people in the room, and two of them will not be surprised.
[00:31:54] Lina Tonk: Guests saying they be one of your decision makers. So there is a lot of planning that goes to it. So we tried this with one of our new, bigger customers early in Q1. It was such a fun process. We call it a war room. I think we need to find a more positive, fun way to call it. But we got together as a commercial team actually.
[00:32:16] Lina Tonk: We sat together, and we started doing deep research into them, while others were doing deep research on if we presented to them, what was they gonna do for them. So then both groups came together. We understood their mission into a whole other deeper level. Once we did that, we transformed that into the way we presented to them.
[00:32:40] Lina Tonk: The deck was not our recruiting deck. The deck was a deck that was all about them. The visuals on the deck was more about that, and the video, the motion, everything we presented, we knew we had to do big things for this type of deal. Even today, this customer actually was featured in our commercial kickoff sharing that one of the moments they knew that we were the solution of choice for them.
[00:33:14] Lina Tonk: Had to do a lot with the team behind it to think, not necessarily the product. Then knew a bunch of this practice saying, but our product was gonna get them there. But a lot of the people involved. But that they will still always remember that first presentation when they presented, and we were far. From anyone else that had presented, all about them.
[00:33:36] Lina Tonk: A deck that looked just about them, and then all of a sudden they were seeing themselves into this deck and the transformation that was already gonna happen for them. They, we close the deal. They would close the deal very fast, and I am happy to report, and not only we would close it being our largest deal in history as well, we were also able to implement them.
[00:34:00] Lina Tonk: In a way that was absolutely incredible. So now they are talking about that too. They are saying just you were so connected with us from the beginning that you understood even what came next was so important to us. So I just think if we could make more time for understanding what their outcome needs to be, but if we can merge ourselves.
[00:34:27] Lina Tonk: From a brand perspective into their brand. I think that is what they found most interesting. And we mirror today, and I will be as skeptical as whoever is listening to share that actually we ended up having one level of design today that only works on Prospect X because that is how impactful it has been for us.
[00:34:51] Lina Tonk: So it is a great story to have. We have been able to duplicate it as well, and it just shows that it is not about us. It is not about what we get out of it, it is about them.
[00:35:04] Efrat Ravid: We have also, especially from this year. The secret that is mentioned about having the story is super important. We also learned that they are having very similar discussions here. They can save some money. They look internal, and in the organization, it is great. The customer record, which is a game for them, and if there is anything we can mold here to look better to new customers, it is not even their story, it is a customer story, and improving that, that is, for us, was a winning story or the winning solution that we could. For a long time, we have talked about how we can turn empowerment recently with AI and new features of our wheel will actually succeed to help them, and that is the story that actually even crucial matter. It is almost like the customer capital of growth.
[00:35:57] Steve MacDonald: You know, going back to trust. I just hear when you are not focusing on ourselves, we are focusing on them and their story, which is really how they impact their customers. That builds trust, right? Because they know that you are doing the right thing, you have the right focus, you have the right passion, the right direction, and that separates you from the rest.
[00:36:24] Steve MacDonald: Immediately. I would love to talk for another two hours, but we do not have that much time. But I want to give each of you the chance to answer this last question, which is we have covered so much. If there was one thing. These major challenges that we are facing as B2B executives, if there was one thing that you wanted to leave the audience with today as a takeaway, what would that be?
[00:36:57] Steve MacDonald: And Efrat, I will ask you to take the deck first there.
[00:37:02] Efrat Ravid: There is one thing, which is building the trust. Trust is such an important thing. It is so hard to build. It is so easy to ruin, and be close to your customer. Listen to them, not in a simple survey. Do not do it as a task box task checkbox. You know? Yeah, I listen to my customer and survey one a month. Customer experience and customer service are every executive’s job.
[00:37:30] Efrat Ravid: It is not one job while executive wants to put it in their calendar to be with the customer to make them understand that, to have a real empathy, what it means to be an executive in your role, to understand sales customers, and that is the only way you can bring trust or a real understanding of your customer. By being in the shoes and building the trust, see it as one of the most important things you are doing every day.
[00:37:58] Steve MacDonald: I love it. Lina, how about you?
[00:38:01] Lina Tonk: It is listening for me. It is simple. Listening to your customers and taking action on what they are saying. Show them that you are listening, so listen not just for the heck of it, but listen. And once you take action on listening or whatever programs, or the product, or anything like that.
[00:38:24] Lina Tonk: It will all become very, very powerful and trusted if you are listening to your customers.
[00:38:32] Steve MacDonald: Well, the mission of what we are trying to do here is to bring perspectives on the most important challenges and problems that we have as B2B companies, and growing. And if we can all bring our different experiences and insights and perspectives together, that is the rising tide that lifts all boats and.
[00:38:51] Steve MacDonald: I just want to say thank you because the rising tide that you created today was incredible. Thank you for coming on. Thank you for being a part of this.