Episode #213:

Felix Bartels, CMO at Serviceplan Group, discusses how businesses can navigate today’s complexity without losing human connection. He explains why customer trust is the foundation of sustainable growth. Felix emphasizes the crucial role of proactive listening and customer engagement in data-driven strategies. He also shares how building peer communities can create a long-term impact.

“The solution to today’s complexity is simple to say but hard to execute. It’s all about the human connection.” – Felix Bartels

Felix discusses that leaders face more channels, data, and AI than ever, yet trust still determines growth. He shares why human conversations and listening systems must anchor data strategies, how peer communities reveal real challenges, and why relationship management outperforms transactional outreach. The discussion shows practical ways to simplify complexity through people-first marketing.

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[Transcript]

[00:00:05] Steve MacDonald: Welcome everyone to the C-Suite Sales and Marketing Perspectives podcast. I’m Steve MacDonald, your host. Today we have a very special guest on, Felix Bartels. Now Felix, you are the Global CEO at the Serviceplan Group. And just so people know, you are an agency network that covers over 26 different countries.

[00:00:24] Steve MacDonald: And so you have B2B clients, B2C clients, some of the biggest brand names in the world that we would recognize. So we’re very honored to have you on as a guest here today, and we’re gonna be talking about, in everything that we do, in the advent of AI and new technologies coming our way, how do we maintain human connections amongst all of our go-to-market strategies?

[00:00:49] Steve MacDonald: Right. It’s easy to hide behind the data. It’s easy to let technology do the automation. It’s easy to kind of put everything on autopilot, right? But we can’t forget the human connection. And that’s something that you are very, very passionate about. When you and I talked before, you also started out in medicine, in sports science.

[00:01:10] Steve MacDonald: Created your own company, or an entrepreneur outta that. I think you said that you started to consult with the Serviceplan Group and it’s led all the way now to be the Global CEO or CMO. So I would love to have you maybe explain just a little bit more about your background and then we’ll dive right in.

[00:01:28] Felix Bartels: Yes. Hi Steve. Thanks for having me. First of all, I really, really appreciate it. Thank you for having me. Yes, that’s absolutely right. I’m the CMO of the group now, and I started as an advisor, kind of, because we still have a special agency for healthcare marketing that helps with healthcare communication.

[00:01:46] Felix Bartels: And they asked me, or they needed someone who does understand the medicine side and kind of the public health side, and I studied both. So I studied medicine and then I had sports science with a deep dive in public health. And they said, okay, we are better by understanding what’s all about the medicine, what’s all about the sickness, what’s all about the pharmaceutical solutions.

[00:02:08] Felix Bartels: And this is how this story with Serviceplan started. And I am with Serviceplan for 16 years now. Yes.

[00:02:16] Steve MacDonald: Fantastic. Well, I also know you’re a proud CDO (Chief Dad Officer), and you’ve got three children, and so you’re very well-rounded. But here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna talk today about maintaining the human connections.

[00:02:30] Steve MacDonald: Okay. And here’s what I’m really excited about. Most of the C-Suite executives that come on here, they have the purview of their entire career and the businesses that they’re running right now. But you’re doing this across B2C, across B2B companies, so you have an experimentation field that’s much larger than most.

[00:02:50] Steve MacDonald: Right. So that’s why I think it’s just such a special opportunity to have you on here. But what I wanted to do is I wanted to start talking about there’s so much complexity in the market. I mean, we could almost get lost. We could get stagnated by just how much complexity, how many channels to the market, how many changes there are, you know, trends, technology, all kinds of things that are happening. They’re thrown all at all of us at once. What’s your thoughts right now? How do we start to navigate this kind of complexity?

[00:03:21] Felix Bartels: Yeah, absolutely. I do agree there is more complexity than ever. Yeah. First, let’s have maybe a look at the technology’s role in complexity. So the pace of advancements forces businesses to adapt. There are different channels, there’s fragmentation, there’s evolving target groups, and so on, and this is all driven by technology. Technology has a huge role, and there’s a wave coming up with AI.

[00:03:46] Felix Bartels: So this is really scaling up the complexity. But I think the solution is, it’s not so difficult to say, but difficult to execute, because it’s all about the human connection. It’s all about, how can I be in the shoes of my target groups or of my clients? How can I generate trust in a world where everyone is telling us as marketeers or CEOs how to use AI, how to reach target groups?

[00:04:14] Felix Bartels: And I think at the end, the solution is use technology to solve some complexity in the long term, for the long run. But don’t forget about that. It’s all about people. We are trying to talk to people. We are trying at the end to sell to people. We are trying to be the best brand or to really have emotions with the brand or the product. And this all starts with trust, listening, and personal interaction from my side. So I think this is, in a nutshell, the not-so-easy-to-execute answer for all the complexity we do have.

[00:04:55] Steve MacDonald: Here’s what I love about that. You focused on the personal connections, right? I mean, we can think about the channels to the market, right? We can think about the complexity that’s happening in all the ways that we have to reach our audience and influence, hopefully, their buying decisions. But the first thing that you said about narrowing down all this complexity is truly understanding that buyer.

[00:05:13] Steve MacDonald: Right? And if we understand the buyer and we have a personalized message, it’s not necessarily all about how many ways then we can reach them, but it’s what we’re saying. And we’ve lost sometimes the art of what we’re saying. Hyper-personalization, right? That’s like a buzzword these days, so much that almost it’s lost its meaning, but it’s so important. And we have so many more avenues today. We have more data on our buyers than we have ever had. We’re swimming in data. Our data is fragmented, siloed, we’re all in big data aggregation strategies to bring it together.

[00:06:00] Steve MacDonald: So we have it ready for AI. But within all of that, it’s like garbage in, garbage out, right? With AI, if we don’t put the right stuff in. But you are a big believer in the voice of the customer in our past conversations, and that even though we’re drowning in more data than we’ve had, it doesn’t replace the actual conversation with the customer.

[00:06:24] Steve MacDonald: And I’d love to understand just your philosophy on that and why you believe that.

[00:06:29] Felix Bartels: Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, my philosophy is we are all humans. And I am not talking about humans only wanting to talk to humans, and I’m not talking about not using AI or other technology to spread the word.

[00:06:43] Felix Bartels: But I think the personal touch is not only hyper-personalization by communicating, it’s also by listening. So of course you can use and should use all this technology to communicate, but you should use it to listen as well. And you said data, garbage in, garbage out. This is the main point.

[00:07:06] Felix Bartels: We should think about how the voice of the customer can be a main part of our data. The data is the base for every technology, especially AI. So if the voice of the customer is missing in the data, there’s a really important data leak in everybody’s strategy. And I think every company has two or three points where they have a kind of voice of the customer. If these are the salespeople, if there’s the hotline, if there are client satisfaction surveys, whatever, there are parts, but I think they do not use them to aggregate and to see them the same way like they’re using all the consumer data they have from the other systems.

[00:07:53] Felix Bartels: And I think maybe it’s easier to say yes, we have to communicate in a hyper-personalization way. By the way, we can now fulfill this promise that we’ve been promising for a couple of years with the help of AI. We can do this now, yeah. But we should not forget about listening to our customers and to our clients.

[00:08:11] Felix Bartels: So I think this is the philosophy: listening to your clients, to your customers, and bringing people together. And what I did with my team and the whole company here, we really executed and built some really well-working communities, awards, barometers.

[00:08:30] Felix Bartels: We have our ear to the voice of the customer by meeting them, by listening. And on the other side, we’re giving them the real chance to be part of the peer group and to be a leading voice, a thought leader of this peer group. And I think these two effects are very, very well-working synergies.

[00:08:52] Felix Bartels: And this is kind of our philosophy: listening, bringing people together, and showing their expertise, giving them a voice to the peer group.

[00:09:00] Steve MacDonald: So, you know what’s so interesting? That you’re proactively going after that voice of the customer, because what most companies do is rely on their existing business processes to listen to the customer.

[00:09:13] Steve MacDonald: So as an example, in a B2B company, it would be the sales team. The sales team is having conversations with prospects all the time. Customer success is having conversations with customers all the time, but there’s a shield up in those conversations if I’m being sold to. And even in customer success, their mantra is put out fires, answer questions, cross-sell, and upsell, right? So it’s not a space for deep meaningful conversations.

[00:09:34] Steve MacDonald: On the B2C side, you know, in our customer support departments, we have thousands and thousands of conversations with customers, right? They’re the highest voice authority in our business. But I was talking to a global head of customer experience the other day for a very large makeup brand, and he said, Steve, 90% of those calls are about somebody that’s having a problem.

[00:10:10] Steve MacDonald: But understanding my customer isn’t understanding their problem with our products or our services. So he’s starting an entire initiative just like you are to make sure that he truly understands. He’s proactively going out and saying, I can’t just sit back. I have to create conversations. I can’t just rely on the data.

[00:10:35] Steve MacDonald: And so I’m gonna kind of put you on the spot here for just a second, and I’m gonna ask you a question. So rate it on a scale of one to 10, on the importance of being proactive at having those conversations, one-on-one human conversations to augment all the data. How important is that on a scale of one to 10?

[00:10:55] Steve MacDonald: One, it’s not important at all, we don’t really need to worry about that, we kind of know already, right? Ten, it’s vital to the overall long-term sustainable success of our businesses. Where would you put that on that scale and why?

[00:11:08] Felix Bartels: Well, at least at the minimum a nine, maybe a 10 from my perspective, because for having sustainable long-term success and relationships and building trust, I think it’s really a must-have to be proactive. Because otherwise, and I think AI is really speeding this up, everybody can use data on a daily basis easier and easier. So this will be the common status quo, using your data by communicating.

[00:11:43] Felix Bartels: But I think proactively listening, having one-to-one conversations, building up communities where you’re not trying to sell. From my perspective, many big tech companies are asking us if they can be part of our communities. Most of the time we have to say no, because we know you are trying to sell, and this is not the philosophy of this. 

[00:12:00] Felix Bartels: People who are coming to our communities, who are taking time out of their schedule to be part of this community for five hours a day, they don’t wanna have sales conversations. They wanna meet other people. They want to be part of a peer group, talking about challenges, hearing different perspectives, hearing solutions from other CMOs. This is my main target group.

[00:12:25] Felix Bartels: Yeah, we do have this problem, a challenge. How did you face this? And this is really a close community where everybody is really close and honest. There’s no press, there’s no salespeople, there are only CMOs. We do have several communities. And I think this is a nine or a 10, proactively trying to build up, or at least being part of these conversation forums, communities.

[00:12:51] Felix Bartels: We started step by step. We didn’t know this 10 or 15 years ago. So we started by saying, okay, we have to do something, we have to celebrate brands and CMOs. So we built up the Best Brands Award now in six countries, more coming all over Europe, and we’re trying to establish this in the US in at least two years as well.

[00:13:12] Felix Bartels: So we want to honor CMOs and marketing teams for building the best brands. This was kind of a start, and out of this we had conversations, not about selling, but about solutions. Then we built the Best Brands College where the winners talked about their successes and failures and challenges where people are coming. Then we built up a jury to nominate the CMO of the Year, also in five countries now. Yeah, we’re celebrating the CMO of the Year of each country, from CMOs for CMOs. So the jury is made up of CMOs. These have been the beginnings.

[00:13:53] Felix Bartels: But then I realized, okay, it’s all about having conversations on eye level and it’s not about sales. It’s about, okay, I’m a CMO, you’re a CMO, what are your challenges? Do you have advice for me because I’m in this situation right now? And these people are mainly really helpful, open, and willing to share insights because it’s kind of a private level.

[00:14:22] Steve MacDonald: You know, the big takeaway from what you’re saying here is that you have to have the one-on-one conversations, but you have to take the sales angle out of the equation, because then the conversation can really unfold in terms of what are they really thinking? What are their real challenges? What are they struggling with? What are they trying that’s new, right? And it’s a learning environment. A sales environment, you can certainly learn, right? But it’s not that open dialogue that you’re talking about.

[00:14:56] Felix Bartels: Yes, of course I do have a sales team as well, and we need sales, absolutely. But I think when it’s about how to be in the shoes of my clients, it’s all about listening. And having a sales talk, there’s not so much space for listening, because I want to tell you something. At the end, I want to sell something. By having a one-to-one conversation without a sales topic, without a sales mindset at least, yeah.

[00:15:24] Felix Bartels: By coming together in a community, there isn’t even the thinking about, okay, this is an agency, I’m invited by an agency, they want to sell something. No, we are just kind of the host. Sometimes we are setting up the agenda or some topics we want to talk about or giving a spark regarding a new trend or something.

[00:15:44] Felix Bartels: But then it’s a conversation, and there is time for listening. So I’m the calmest guy in the room because I’m trying to listen to everyone. And this is, from my perspective, another mindset in comparison to a sales talk.

[00:15:59] Steve MacDonald: You know, here’s where I think this has bigger context, because there are a lot of CMOs that are gonna be listening to this podcast, and there’s a very common thread amongst CMOs. They call it inside CMO communities imposter syndrome, a lack of ability to earn a seat at the table, right? A lot of times you’re as good as your last set of leads you brought in, right?

[00:16:26] Steve MacDonald: If you’re not generating leads, what is it that you are doing here? What you are talking about is a learning that underpins the entire go-to-market strategy, and the highest voice of authority in any business is the voice of the customer. In a lot of businesses, there isn’t somebody that’s responsible for the voice of the customer, right?

[00:16:52] Steve MacDonald: It can’t be sales. They have a mantra. They have a specific goal. So what you are laying out really is the way that the CMO has a seat at the table, really can have direct, meaningful impact on every department, every aspect of the go-to-market strategy. Because it’s like the Amazon principle. I don’t know if you ever heard of Amazon. They have the empty chair concept. And that chair represents the customer. If the customer was sitting here, we might be in an operations meeting, right? If the customer was here, how would that influence our decision? What you’re talking about can influence decisions all throughout the organization.

[00:17:35] Felix Bartels: Absolutely, from my perspective, absolutely. This is my daily business. This is why I love to work here for more than 15 years. To be honest, maybe it’s an easy one because this is an owner-driven company, and the owner is really convinced about the voice of the customer. And we don’t have this empty chair principle.

[00:17:54] Felix Bartels: We are trying to really have the customers in our house of communication, at our events, to really be part of our decisions. Of course, we are not discussing with them our strategies, but there’s always the voice of the customer regarding, or in, our strategy. There’s even kind of a mantra when you are building a new company or building a new product, there’s always a challenge you have to go through.

[00:18:20] Felix Bartels: Does the client or customer understand what this product solves? It must be described—or even better, it must be seen—in the title. The title needs to be a “speaking title.” Does it give an understanding of what the product or service is about?

[00:18:42] Felix Bartels: And I think this is really a deeply integrated philosophy or mindset: the customer is part of our decisions. Whether inside the company or with our clients, I don’t just want to “have a seat at the table.” I believe we are building tables where people—peer groups—can meet. And this is what I mean by being proactive.

[00:19:02] Felix Bartels: Honestly speaking, we are a German company, founded more than 53 years ago. Of course, there have been awards and communities along the way. But we tried—and we found partners—and we pursued it even more consistently than others. Because we said, we really want to try this, we really want to go this way.

[00:19:25] Felix Bartels: I think this is part of the development of our group, of what we are doing—or I am doing here—that the voice of the customer is a crucial part of our strategies and marketing. And just as a side note: yes, I do have a sales team, but most of the people working in that team are relationship managers. That is their role.

[00:19:53] Steve MacDonald: So this goes back to our title, right? Maintaining Human Connections. By retitling and refocusing the sales department on relationships. Tell me a little bit about that, and why you did it.

[00:20:10] Felix Bartels: I think it’s two-fold. The sales team, of course, is still doing sales as we know it—social selling, telephone calls, all of that important stuff. Don’t get me wrong. But there’s another part of the team, and the hardest KPI for these people is not filling the pipeline or bringing in contacts.

[00:20:32] Felix Bartels: It’s building a relationship over years. They attend our events, meet the clients, and follow up with phone calls. Some of our clients know our relationship managers very well. And I’m lucky, because some of these managers have been working at the group longer than I have—20 years or more.

[00:20:51] Felix Bartels: That means they sometimes have relationships with clients that go back seven or ten years. They guide them through personal and professional development. Some clients change jobs every three years—no problem—but the relationship with our managers continues.

[00:21:15] Felix Bartels: We’ve been focused on relationship management for 12 years now. I started that initiative. And sometimes clients even ask our managers for advice about their next job. That’s the depth of trust.

[00:21:41] Felix Bartels: So it’s really two-fold: we have salespeople doing sales, and we have relationship managers focused on genuine relationships. Of course, at the end, there’s still talk about products or needs—but the core is the relationship.

[00:21:53] Steve MacDonald: I love that. This relationship, this human connection—if we’re learning from the voice of the customer, then relationship management is a big part of the execution. But how do we take this idea of human connection into marketing? How do we bring it to market?

[00:22:01] Steve MacDonald: There was a study by McKinsey of over 400 highly profitable companies—both B2C and B2B. The number one differentiator in terms of shareholder value was customer experience.

[00:22:22] Steve MacDonald: I shared that with a three-time B2B CMO, and he told me: “If I know more about my customers than my competition, I will create a better experience for them. And that’s the biggest differentiator today.”

[00:22:50] Steve MacDonald: In today’s AI world—where code, product features, and benefits are becoming commoditized—differentiation is no longer product and price. It’s customer experience. So I’d love to get your perspective on the connection between the voice of the customer and creating that experience.

[00:23:10] Felix Bartels: Yes. One of the big challenges we face is: how can we implement the voice of the customer into existing and emerging AI capabilities? This is a topic we all need to think about in the coming months. How can we ensure that the voice—which, at the end of the day, is data—becomes part of our data strategy when using AI?

[00:23:37] Felix Bartels: This is a challenge or an opportunity at the end. We should talk and think about it. Till now, I think it’s how to execute it or how to bring this to market. So regarding some of the communities or the barometer, we do have, in 11 countries with more than 1,000 participants, all CMOs, also marketing decision makers.

[00:23:59] Felix Bartels: So we are giving them a voice, and we are talking then about the summary or the outtakes. I think this is one direction, how to bring this to market. Talking about, these are the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 main challenges. Yeah, these are, um, the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 thoughts or threats or something. This is kind of bringing the voice of the customer to market, talking about these.

[00:24:26] Felix Bartels: Insights. Sharing these insights, and then of course, talking about possible solutions. Bringing experts to the table, offering expert talks by, okay, if these are your challenges, maybe this can be a solution, or building use cases with some clients. Or maybe regarding AI, we started with use cases for our company, talking with clients, hey, do you have the same issue as we do have?

[00:24:53] Felix Bartels: We tried this for us. Maybe this is a solution for you as well. But I think this is only possible, or it’s easier, when you have a relationship with your client or prospect. Because we are not only talking to existing clients. Because having the barometer, having the best brand study and award, having all these communities, we are talking to people who haven’t been or maybe never will be our client. But they are part of this peer group, and they do have a voice, and we are listening to their challenges.

[00:25:29] Felix Bartels: So this really gives us a broad view and broad insights of these challenges. I think this is key, or this is the answer to how to bring to market. Talking about these challenges, summarizing this, and then thinking about solutions. Talk about your own solutions maybe, let other people talk about their thoughts and solutions, because if you have built the ground and the trust of yes, you are part of this peer group.

[00:25:58] Felix Bartels: As a company or as a person, it doesn’t matter. Yeah, because I’m working for the Serviceplan Group. So then you have the trust, and then you can listen. Then you can talk about possible solutions, and it’s not perceived as sales. It’s perceived as, okay, thanks Felix for that advice. Oh yeah, that sounds interesting.

[00:26:17] Felix Bartels: Can I meet your expert? Can we have a half an hour shortcut on this? Yes, of course. And then the relationship is kind of, okay, I heard this from Felix or from the Serviceplan Group. I’m interested, and it’s not sales.

[00:26:33] Steve MacDonald: It’s not, and in fact, one of my big takeaways from your entire conversation here is when you said, not only can we earn a seat at the table, but we’re creating tables, like we’re creating these conversations.

[00:26:49] Steve MacDonald: And it gave me a big visualization of literally, like getting around the dinner table, right? Like getting around the table and talking. We’ve talked about so much, and I have a feeling we could go on for hours ’cause this is fascinating. But if there was one main takeaway of everything that we’ve talked about for the executives, the C-suites that are listening here today, if there was one thing that you wanted them to take away from our conversation, what would that be?

[00:27:16] Felix Bartels: So don’t try to let the complexity we do have lead you to complex solutions. I think it was, it is, and it will be always about the relationship to your prospects or to your target group. And think about, how can I start in small steps? We started with 20 people having our first event. We started with five people having our first community.

[00:27:45] Felix Bartels: Think about and just execute, try, and don’t have KPIs behind it, saying, okay, the ROI has to be this or this. Just have trust, saying if I’m talking with people, if I built a table or if I’m part of a table, it will pay off. This is maybe my key takeaway. People try and don’t have always, of course we do have KPIs.

[00:28:12] Felix Bartels: Of course, I have to see and report what is the return of this initiative and all this what I’m doing. But there should be some trust by having a relationship, and this is something which has to grow. This is something you can’t do with one or two calls or meetings. This is an investment, but.

[00:28:32] Felix Bartels: Be bold and have the trust that this investment will pay off. This is what I’ve learned, and this is why we are or have this philosophy of building tables. 

[00:28:42] Steve MacDonald: You know, have trust that this will work. Also, we are in the middle of a trust epidemic, both from B2B to B2C companies, and all you gotta do is look at the LinkedIn Edelman trust barometers and things out there, but you are building trust.

[00:29:00] Steve MacDonald: As you’re building these relationships, as you are learning, right? There are multiple levels of what you’re doing here, and I just wanted to say that, you know, the mission of this podcast is to bring together C-suite voices, perspectives that are unique and different so that we can all learn from each other.

[00:29:21] Steve MacDonald: It’s a lot like what you’re doing in these tables, right? In these communities. And if we can do that, then there is a rising tide that lifts all boats and everybody benefits. And I just wanted to say that I think you’ve been a phenomenal part of that rising tide today. I just wanna say thanks, Felix, for coming on to the podcast.

[00:29:39] Felix Bartels: I’d love to, Steve. Really enjoyed this. Thanks for having me again. And yeah, you know, I love being part of a table. I love to have conversation and I love to listen. So thank you very much, and to everyone who listened.