Jeff sits down with the legendary Bob London to discuss Strategic Conversations. Bob has over 2600 customer conversations analyzed among sales and CS, and has put together a framework for talking to customers called the Five Customer Love languages. Jeff and Bob dive deep into the 5 love languages and talk about how to use the framework to get your customers to open up about what's important to them. We discuss how these interact with customer calls, 45-minute zombie QBR's, and also how to overcome imposter syndrome.

Additional topics include: working with Covid, schadenfreude as a Red Sox fan, getting fired, and finding your own path.

You can find more about Bob here - https://www.strategiccustomerconvos.com/

 Transcript:

Jeff  00:32

All right, we are recording Bobby ready.

Bob London  01:11

Yes, I am. Alright,

Jeff  01:12

I'm here with Bob linen. And both of us are, I think in the same stages of recovering from COVID, which will make this sound very much like an am radio. I only wish it was like last Friday because I had a real good boom in my voice with all the stuff

Bob London  01:30

that people will have to play it at React speed just to hear it at normal speed.

Jeff  01:35

And that's fine. We're usually we've talked before and we're usually pretty fired up but today's gonna very much like very mellow. That SNL when they were the two ladies in the MDRs.

Bob London  01:49

That might have been the last time SNL was good.

Jeff  01:52

I would not know it. Yeah, but that's that's how we sound old and we start doing that stuff, right? Yeah. So good. She had a nice weekend and listening to the new Taylor Swift album all weekend long. If you ever track I'm

Bob London  02:04

tired from staying up past midnight. watched a lot of baseball. You know, so I don't know if the Red Sox are out. I don't watch it. Well, but I don't know if all Bostonians celebrate this. But when the Yankees lose and get swept? That's isn't that a national? Isn't that hard? School's out today in Boston?

Jeff  02:22

Oh, it's? Yeah, it's pretty much. Yeah, it's a national holiday. It's amazing. It's like Columbus Day. Yeah, we just Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah, it's true. schadenfreude is what powers Boston. It's, you know, one of my favorite favorites for them to either fail or have like career ending injuries. You know, so yeah.

Bob London  02:43

I love it. I love it. I love that attitude.

Jeff  02:45

You have to have So Bob, for the few people that don't know who you are. Let's talk about your customer conversations she was talking about your background and sort of how you now pivoted into this interesting world of customer experience.

Bob London  03:05

Yes, first of all, thanks for seriously, thanks for having me. It's,

Jeff  03:09

I want to keep it straight here. But I usually can't have a conversation without

Bob London  03:13

I've listened to your other, you know, episodes, and it's really good. It's really real. And I do I know a lot of people talk about authenticity, it is one of the things I teach. So I appreciate the authenticity. So I am a career career marketing guy and started out in something ancient called advertising. And, you know, made my way through as a what turned out I didn't understand this at the time as a square peg trying to fit into a round hole in the corporate world and marketing and stuff, and did pretty well considering it wasn't really what I was good at or great at and in terms of managing people and leaving and stuff. And hit some ceilings got fired. And not before coming becoming an actual at least to name only a name and chief marketing officer. And for you know, startup that had a life arc, which was like 11 months or something like, during during the.com bubble, the first.com bubble, not the one we're in now.

Jeff  04:18

Was the Oh to enable or no, it was before that. Okay.

Bob London  04:21

It was 2000 Oh, yeah. Yeah. So, but I learned a lot. I didn't learn enough about myself. Because when you get fired, you have a chance to rethink. And I didn't I didn't get the message that you know, sort of what was going on and so But long story short, it led me to an amazing place of being an independent marketing strategy consultant, which I loved. I was working with multiple companies, founders and CEOs at a given time DC where I'm based Washington DC, has a pretty strong vibrant technology community. So you know, got really plugged in there and I thought I was just having a great time. And as a fractional chief marketing officer, and by the way, I was not unsuccessful as a as a in the corporate world and financially it was good. But

Jeff  05:09

anyway, it sounds like you weren't feeling fulfilled,

Bob London  05:13

right? I didn't Yeah, but so here's what I say. When you're and I, I started saying this to my, I have two sons that are now in their early 20s. When you're born, no one hands you an itinerary and says you're gonna get good grades, go to a name brand school, get married, have kids get a job at a name brand company and be in business, quote, unquote. But why? Why does so many people feel like that's those choices have been made for them. And you just think about it before you do it. And maybe you're an individual. So after telling one of my sons that for a year and a half, because of the situation he was in, in his journey, I realized I was talking to myself, and had to be more accepting of individualism on all counts. So. So I didn't realize it was unfulfilled. I guess the point is, and I'll say this, when I talk to people who say, Oh, yeah, I was let go. I, you know, the the fact that they ended up talking to me, whether they like it or not, they're gonna get the question of like, well, what do you was it a fit? Like, did you? Are you blaming the employer? For good reason? Was there anything you could have done differently? Were you doing what you're great at? Or, you know, and people get uncomfortable sometimes, but they're usually happy that I forced them to have that conversation. Gently force. So yeah, just because it's never look, I mean, consulting saved me. So I'll just say that, oh, say

Jeff  06:40

the same here. I think probably one of the reasons why we ended up I just realized, there was a point where, you know, for me, I've been part of all these, like, just walked us backwards into being part of some really successful companies. And then I would go join a company and they weren't on that path. And I would just kind of let it be known. And people were like, Yeah, we don't, we don't want to hear it. Yeah. But surprisingly, that works well as a consultant. Like they want your background and understanding, right?

Bob London  07:05

They want you to point things out, they want you to hopefully question things. Yeah, I 100%. And by the way, I didn't realize you said that. That's why we get along. I didn't realize we got along. So thanks for letting me know. No, I was presumptuous at first. But then I thought, oh, it's nice. He likes me. So, of course,

Jeff  07:23

on this podcast, I don't care how many followers you have.

Bob London  07:28

So anyway, as a marketing strategist, just briefly, so I would talk to these founders and CEOs, and I'd ask them some pretty basic questions. What Why do customers buy from you? Why do they sometimes not buy? Why do they stay? Why do they leave? And they couldn't really answer. And I would, I just started saying, This is ridiculous for us to be talking about actual marketing. Like, we need to go backwards, take a step back, and let me go do a listening tour of your customers. And that was something like 2600 customer discovery conversations ago. So I started with,

Jeff  08:03

like, 2678 Right, I saw the counter in the corner was

Bob London  08:08

I don't I only updated after I just went up again. Yeah, some some Yeah. So I shouldn't have encountered some somebody will come along today. That's not very impressive. Number.

Jeff  08:23

2052.

Bob London  08:24

Okay, right. Exactly. Right.

Jeff  08:26

It's like It's like the six minute abs. Right,

Bob London  08:28

right. Yeah. So good analogy. So. So I found out that this is work I really, really love to do because it really made my clients more successful. I was and I enjoyed asking more interesting questions and just listening and finding stuff out that led to better marketing strategies, you know, positioning value prop all the messaging all the like, how do customers really think, right? After doing that work for a number of years, thought out again, thought I was really happy and up the value chain and all that I ran into, I was introduced to a guy named Jay Nathan, who we both now and Jay sashing. And handsome man. He is actually you someone wrote, I think it might have been you posted something about that on the chat. Yeah, he is striking. He's a striking human. So he said, Well, what you're doing I know why you do it kind of behind the scenes, the no marketing strategy, but you we have like in customer success. We have 1000s of conversations a week with customers that are not the right kind of conversation. And you could teach us and I, I said really? He said yeah, I said, Not interested. But luckily, I paid attention. And sure enough, that is now what I do. I teach teams, sales teams and customer success and account management, to have conversations with customers that are more sort of not about features and products but above the line, you know, all the stuff that's not defined that fix customer thinks is important. And I just the most satisfying work I've ever done in my career. by a longshot, yeah, it's great. It's such

Jeff  10:09

a, it's such a neat, you know, one of my coworkers is, or she says that, you know, people renew for, for two reasons. And one of them is that you're, you're bringing value, right? But you need to be able to bring that value and just reciting off list of features, that it's just not going to bring that value, you bring that value by hearing what they're trying to do, and then trying to solve it with your software. Finding the most

Bob London  10:39

100% Yeah, I think most companies assume that their product is the value, and that the and that they don't always stop and ask the customer. So, hey, we use the word value a lot. But what what does it mean to you? Like, what does it look like for you? What would the perfect situation look like for you? And that led to some of these questions that I asked that? You know, I think a lot of people have gotten value out of,

Jeff  11:06

yeah. And then you created the love languages.

Bob London  11:11

Customer love languages. I didn't invent love languages. I stole them.

Jeff  11:16

I have talked to my agent here.

Bob London  11:18

I know, I'm waiting for the lawyer to call my lawyer. So the guy's name is amazing. Actually, Gary Chapman wrote a book called The Five Love Languages. And yeah, I, it's so brilliant, what he did, and it's amazing how many millions of people be touched. So I, I was out in this CS 100 event. And I was going to give a talk called the Five customer love languages. And when I would talk to people that I've just kind of chatting like, Yeah, I'm gonna be talking and asking him to, to laugh at all the right places. And so many people not only had read the book, or were familiar with it, but read the book, but they said, Oh, yeah, my love language is quality time, like real, like, they're just volunteering it to me. And I've become, and I'm gonna say, for the record, I'm not great at this at home. I mean, I'm okay.

Jeff  12:15

Palmer sake is always the weakest.

Bob London  12:16

That's right. But at work, I'm, I'm an authority now. So self proclaimed. So yeah, so the love languages thing. And I think the way it landed in in the CES 100 event, would lead me to believe that, you know, we're onto something here as a group, like, I'm not an expert on customer success. What I'm an expert is in the framework of how to get your customers to open up about what's important to them, which you can put into buckets called Love Languages.

Jeff  12:45

Oh, and I'm not coming at this from a patent infringement angle. But I used to use that every once in a while, over the last few years. So again, I just got a million customers online, I actually used it a little bit more facetiously, because I'm like, here's a term that, you know, get some laughs and things like that. But I actually started resonating with people like you, right? We do need to, but it's still how we need to be able to understand how our customer likes to hear.

Bob London  13:09

I claim no ownership. I really, I mean, everything I do is kind of open sourced. And so I'm just using it as a hook. I No, seriously, I mean, I'm, I'm not getting the, you know, I'm not trying to get the domain name and stuff like that. I respect this guy. I respect this guy, Gary Chapman too much. I know that now here's something else say, when you search for customer love languages, the first thing that comes up, it might be it's I think it's a McKinsey article. And what what these people do, it's almost like you can tell that it can't not McKinsey, but all the blog posts customer love languages. It comes from we talked about this before the before the session here, we have a content calendar, we have to fill it. What about customer love languages and so they took the approach which I don't like, which is they took him Gary Chapman's five love languages, and define them in customer terms. It doesn't work. One of them is physical touch. Yeah, like hello.

Jeff  14:06

Come on, mate. You mean your customers don't like that. I mean,

Bob London  14:08

no. Well, that's what I said in Utah was like that's kind of a hard now. Receiving Gifts. Oh,

Jeff  14:13

touch on the year? I think.

Bob London  14:15

So. I'm not going to address that. Receiving Gifts. was another one like now, sometimes illegal. So I rewrote them based on what I believe in my body of work and talking to tons of customers. I booked me and I rewrote them but so I didn't. I'm not gonna say it was lazy but I you sort of like you just can't. You could take the concept and not steal this poor guys five love languages and just write something.

Jeff  14:40

You re-platformed

Bob London  14:42

I did. I did. It's like, anyway, so too long of a sidebar. It's a horrible story, but I'm not going to tell it right now.

Jeff  14:55

We can do those as the bonus. Patreon knows there's no editing room. The floor. Yeah. And the cutting room floor. Do you mind just walking quickly? Like we'll move on with the five? I do not mind is there a $13.99 cent charge?

Bob London  15:09

No charge. So here, here are the here they are in no particular order, but this is how I presented them. One, be mindful, this is in the customer's Voice Be mindful of my time. And I can go back through any of these in more detail.

Jeff  15:29

So don't have an hourly, hour meeting every week if there's no value.

Bob London  15:35

Exactly. And I'll tell you that we inflict QBR is on people. And by the way, we see us doesn't like them either. But you know, the,

Jeff  15:48

I mean, this is a huge topic for a different day. I think we just spoke about this on that panel. And we shouldn't be having unnecessary meetings that provide no value

Bob London  16:00

100%. All you have to do is ask a customer, like why do we think they're not engaged because Jeff Bruns Beck has also written very eloquently and effectively I think about this from getting retained. He, so I'll give you one of His, one of my ideas are kind of best practices. And one of his be mindful of my time means Yeah, don't just get into this sort of zombie like quarterly rhythm. Because we, because we said so and then the content is sort of, we're here to help you help us help you help, you know, like, what and, and so we're going to talk about all the things that you need to do, or that you could have done to get value if you're not already getting value. So one way that to do it is send the slides in advance. And what I like to do in my world, is a little screen capture video, that's two minutes. And it's a preview, Jess into this was send a pre read a one page pre read, and it's like, here's everything, we want to cover everything you need to know. And it allows both parties to zoom in on quickly on what what's most important and what needs to be discussed as opposed to the performance stuff. What to me what that does, well, it's so these are the love languages are intertwined. I don't want to move on before. So be mindful of my time. And I the marketer in me will also point out, think about it as differentiation, wouldn't you rather be the one vendor who says, By the way, I mean, you could say, by the way, not much going on this month, let's skip it. Or, by the way, let's cut it to half an hour. Don't just do an hour because your boss expects you to do an hour. And so you'd also

Jeff  17:42

on that note, like on the video is just turning something off that say you're in that, that QBR or whatever, and they're like, hey, what's what are we gonna plan for for the next three months? What are our goals here and people like, Oh, I'd love to see some more movement in this area. And then if suddenly, three weeks later, you're seeing some movement in that area. Yeah, record a quick video to quick loom or screencap, or whatever. When we talked about going in the right direction, look forward to seeing more in this book done like

Bob London  18:08

100% 100%. I think the idea of time shifting, you know, where they can watch that video, a pm if they want or 8am, they don't have to schedule look, scheduling calls is just out of control. Which one of the other points I made was, it's not about time necessarily, but it has to do with is what I'm asking the customer to do valuable to them, or just me. And that is audio only. Now I know you need to. When I do customer discovery calls, I realized there is no value. It's all ask right for me to say, Okay, we're gonna have a zoom call. I don't need to see their body language. And Lord knows they don't need to see mine, because I'm hunched over taking notes and concentrating. And so I actually get customers thanking me saying, but I was just really excited to see this was audio only. They would thank me and say, Why are you thanking me, you're giving me your time. Now this is great. It also creates more of a confessional feeling to it. It's more intimate to beat remember, those of us old enough to remember being in a dorm and having a whole phone, landline and you sort of Bobby the phone for you. I think it's a girl like you sit you end up for the next two hours sitting with your back against the wall on the floor talking and like it totally immersed. There was no video like that. And

Jeff  19:27

then you had to say me too, because you couldn't say I love you. And then all your roommates would be like saying Go ahead say it.

Bob London  19:36

But that's actually hilarious and really funny. Anyway, comes back. I mean, everyone says empathy. But that's a platitude. You know, you got to bring it to life for customers. Be mindful of my time. That's the love language. That's one of them. Yeah. That's great. Shall I continue or do you want to talk about

Jeff  19:56

no link, link to your SlideShare from this? I wouldn't We can do some conversation points. Oh my gosh, yeah. Because I saw one when I was going through them, where it was more of a conversation point. But it was about being agenda lists. Now, a counter to that is some people need the structure, right? Just, you know, you think about your classic CSM and 20 to 40 accounts, opening up their CSP everyday just to figure out what they should be doing, because they're just, you know, having a hard time navigate from it. So I feel that there's some structure that needs to be had. How do you do that in a way that's not in this, like, death march right on through that's that, you know, besides just listing off the fire, I wanted to get some more

Bob London  20:46

conversation. So I think you raised the right point, I, this doesn't mean don't have an agenda, what it would have meant, what it means to say is there should be you should carve out points in the relationship where there is no agenda other than to let them talk about what's important to them. So it doesn't mean so I have a friend, one of my closest friends, a very senior strategic sales executive. And he says that all the time, you got to he says, If you'd say agenda list one more time, you're gonna lose me, you know, like, it's sort of like in sales, you have always have to have an agenda. But the challenge with that is customer. So let's say that sales puts you through this rigid agenda and they want their driving.

Jeff  21:30

Let's be clear, 657 slides.

Bob London  21:33

Yeah, like you're, you're, you're marching them down the path. And customers don't want to be always marched down the path they want to talk. And they want to talk about what's important to them. And actually, the number one, I guess the number one buying criteria or buying influence, according to the rain, we're pretty good. Sales consultancy is just doing a better job at Discovery. Yet they rate sales is doing very poorly on that. And then the same with listening. And so by the time let's say they buy, then they get to customer success, and they still haven't been listened to. So who's gonna let me just mean, so agenda list? Yes, there's tons of stuff that has to be structured tons of stuff that is, I would argue a lot of it's kind of below that imaginary line that we have to talk about this. It's important. But there has to be some time. And I'll just point out that the first love language, be mindful of my time, helps free up time to help let you be agenda list during parts of the conversation. So you don't always have to be driving through an agenda. It's exhausting.

Jeff  22:44

No, absolutely. You know, one of the things we're talking about, I don't know where it kind of falls into the five is this concept of the imposter syndrome. And people are afraid sometimes of having these open and real conversations, because they're gonna be like, Oh, my God now, kind of exposing myself. Right,

Bob London  23:02

right. I think what? So yes, one of the things that I hear from Customer Success VPS, or directors is, Bob, we want to do some kind of training, our team is intimidated by the idea of asking questions about the customers business that had that, in other words, asking questions that aren't about the product that we're pretty comfortable answering, we're asking. And I think that, as I understand it, I mean, I'm not dismissing that at all. But what I teach people is we customers are not experts in your product, they're looking for you to teach. But when it comes to what are they experts in their business? So let's ask them about that. And that's when they really open up and then it's okay for you just to be a student. Just ask questions, just being curious. And by the way, the younger you are the earlier in your career, you are as a CSM or account manager or in sales, the more the customer actually respects that you're curious, or prospect, like, oh, yeah, like this person really wants to learn. And so it's a it's a good this idea of being the student, like we're all taught to talk. But we're not really taught to be students of our customers business. So I'm trying to influence that a little bit. So it's a good point, you asked a great question.

Jeff  24:25

Yes, framework for better questions and conversations essential,

Bob London  24:29

better questions that don't put your your customer or prospect to sleep, like what keeps you up at night? You know, it's these cliches that require no effort to ask and it just the customer zone out and got to wake them up a little bit with one of the questions would be, you know, if I could sneak into your board meeting, what do you think is the number one thing that they're talking about? And it's just engaging and it shows the customer or prospect that you're not there to just be typical? You're just not there to be typical. and you're there to understand things that maybe other vendors aren't trying to understand. And again, I go back to that differentiation count for a lot between vendors.

Jeff  25:10

Right? Because it's some of the times, especially in the sales aspect of things, but features could all be pretty similar. Right? You know, you know, oh, okay, great. Well, I, for me, it's got 15 features that I need. And Platform B has got 13 of those, but two other ones that I write like, there's not that much differentiation sometimes. So I like the way that they ask questions, and then be able to come back with a value conversation of this is how you would use as you'd be able to get this amount versus like, Oh, we've got this feature. We've got this reporting, we've got X, we've got Y.

Bob London  25:44

Yeah, I think that there is a dirty little secret in the tech startup, especially community is like this, ours is the best widget. And we need to position and sell it as such. And the reality is that, that it's like the Mike Tyson, everyone has a plan until they get punched. And when you're in sales, and you take that what your is all spun up to be an amazing value prop. And you need to differentiate, you take it out into the market, and you get punched, because people were like, you know, it sounds like this or that. And you could talk all you want, but once you've fallen into their that mental map that they have, you know, you've you've lost an opportunity to really then you have to explain and I don't know who said this, I love it. Once you have to explain you've lost, you know, if you can't grab them. And that's why asking questions first about what's important to their business, it allows you to do something very important, which is positioning, how do you position your solution, either post presale or post sale in a way that means something to them in terms of budget and prioritization?

Jeff  26:49

Absolutely. One of the reasons why, you know, because I put the languages up in front of me that I kind of didn't want to dive too much into because you're right, they're all kind of intertwine, right, he's got the instinct of me being contextual. Being real curious about the company, I feel like we've kind of gotten over a bunch of those concepts. One of them I love that's not what would you classify it as it's on your slide, but it's not one of the one love languages, I believe, which is, do you say you're going to?

Bob London  27:16

Yeah, so I'm just gonna bring that up. So the way I present this is, here are the five customer languages. And what I say to an audience is, what's, there's something on here that's missing? What is it, it's obvious, and, and so so then I, I build that little yellow smiley face that says, do what you say you're gonna do. And the reason I do it that way, is because I'm, I'm really trying to focus on the love languages that are in the above the line, the unspoken, unexpected stuff, the do what you say, you're gonna do, if I have to teach you to do that, then you got big problems, like the product, make sure the product works the way it's supposed to support. are you responding quickly? Are you? You know, do you have the right kind of training materials and links or whatever, you know, are you adding some value based on what you told them? That's all stuff that's in the licensing agreement, it was in the pitch it's in it's an it's something it's written down, it's obvious and explicit, you have to do what you said you're gonna do. And that, that is table stakes. If you're not doing that, then these other five love languages aren't really going to work for you. But I'm glad you highlighted that, because it's, it could make me look like an idiot if people see The Five Love Languages above the line. And then they say, Well, what about the product? Well, the product is the thing that should be working, you got to get that working before you can start adding value. Does that make sense?

Jeff  28:49

Absolutely. What's What do you feel? Did you go in around you're talking with all these companies? Like what is the the actual biggest problem when you're dealing with CES? Is what like, what is the actual, we were like talking about the gun overall, the sort of Love Languages and everything. But what are the behaviors that you find are, are not happening the most there, you will develop those?

Bob London  29:12

I think, being curious about my company. So that's again, in the customer's voice, like the number of times that when I asked these more interesting, disruptive questions of a customer and they thanked me, at the end, like no, Bob, we can you know, we're wrapping up 29 minutes into the converse into a 30 minute conversation he

Jeff  29:31

calls Correct.

Bob London  29:33

zafra Welcome to our call. And I I start to wrap up and it's like, you know, I do have time for one more or you know, thanks for your time. They said, No, no, no, this is important. We I can give you another 15 minutes. And then at the end, they thank me. Why? Because they say because nobody's asking us these questions and they're important. So I think if you all you did, was to just be more curious of About the customers company, not their department. Not their job, all important. But what's going on? That's why that board question. It's just so disarming, because it just says, Wow, they're really interested in what's going on at a higher level. And it's self serving. I mean, it helps us help them. So I think that's the one that I think is is, look, I mean, I said, we talked about, I didn't call it I say the cobblers children have no shoes. You've talked about plumbers. Yeah. Having cracks or something. Now, you said the plumbers. Thank God. Yeah, yeah, that, you know, there's so many different ways I can position and market my content. But but the one thing is, be curious about the customers company. And it's such a wedge into the conversation that gets them to open up some terrific, terrific.

Jeff  30:55

So that might be it sounds like, if you were to do one thing, that one sneaky hack that the doctors don't want you to know.

Bob London  31:04

Yes, because everything else on here would be mindful my time be in sync with me be contextual, be real. Those are, those are the things I think we could all agree are important. And they just happen to fall into buckets that I call love languages, but being curious about my company is probably the freshest. And and to your question is, it's the hardest, I think, to get teams to adopt. Partly because they don't have time, partly because they're intimidated to ask questions at a more strategic level, about the company. But again, take the pressure off yourself, ask the question and just be a student. You don't have to teach them something at that moment.

Jeff  31:45

Got and when you're training other companies on this, if somebody brings you in there, are you then working with their teams? Are you giving them materials or you are a multi week period? Like? Yes. Just curious. Because if people are asking like, it sounds interesting, like what is the sort of? What does that look like? If people like, Hey, we're not doing any of these things, we should get Bob involved?

Bob London  32:04

That's kind of you to ask, I do a deep dive. Everything starts with this deep dive. Here's what customers really believe you're not listening enough. We collectively are not listening enough. It's important. Here's what comes out of it. And when you do it, right. Here's some disruptive questions. Here's how to listen, once they open up, you know, basically, I call it dollar sign Tfu. Like, it looks like a business card. Oh, right. Right. Yeah. And, and like how to just shut up and let them talk about what's important. So that that takes 90 minutes to two hours. But the the cool part is at the end, I say, okay, and I want you to get out your phones or your calendar. And I want you to write down three meetings you have coming up in the next two weeks. And I want you identify to identify which three meetings, customer meetings, you're going to ask a couple of these questions and why and which questions you might ask and just take 10 minutes, write it down, then they have a plan. Yeah. And then I then I say great news, you get to execute that plan for two weeks. And then two weeks, we're going to all get on the phone together again on the Zoom. And we're going to go around the table virtual table, and you're going to tell me how it went, you can play me a clip of the recorded call recording, you can just talk about how it went, where you're going to talk about how it felt to ask these questions that are a little disruptive and unusual. You're going to talk about what you learned, you're going to critique what you might do differently next time. And then we're going to go around the table and everyone else is going to have a whack at giving you constructive feedback. And then I'm going to give you constructive feedback. So we can do three to four of those per hour. So if it's a team of 20, it might take you know, five weeks, but it's that's really where the hook gets sunk. I don't know what

Jeff  33:50

the needs are repetitive behavior. So

Bob London  33:52

we'll just Yeah, I think people say like, are we gonna do role playing now, I would take any ounce of energy that goes into role playing and say, just go out there and talk to your customers and do it in real life and nine times out of 10 CSMs or CSRS that do this find out that it's actually more fun for them than the way they've been doing it. So that and that's why I really want them to try it is because it's more interesting and fun. And if you survey them and you say what do you want to do? What do you want to do differently about your job? And then you say they say I want to just be more strategic and want to have more of an impact, right? Here's your chance. And so it aligns well with, you know, individual goals and team goals as well.

Jeff  34:38

That's awesome. Probably a good place to leave up or jumping into something else because honestly the ties here also you hear some massive backing going on behind me

Bob London  34:48

so I'm not sure I can't hear anything. I actually can't

Jeff  34:52

usually if I ever get a better microphone, that's somebody that's somebody's cue to print something on the printer next a landscaper who has come over? Cameron. Exactly. That's going on couple of doors now. So I'm not getting. So, you know, where we pray we previously were asking about what was your big COVID Things were, I'll turn it into the leaves and the trees are getting pretty and falling down. What's your what's your big winter thing that you've got planning that you're gonna do while you're all buggered inside the pickleball is to like, what's your what do you plan for the winter?

Bob London  35:34

We, we are fortunate to have a property a couple hours from here by the it's not on the ocean, but it's a few miles away from the beach. And I'm really looking forward to spending time there with my wife, and maybe our kids will stop by like just hanging out because it's a it's an investment property. So it's rented a lot during the high season. And I don't need to be there during July 4. Anyway, it's just drives me nuts, the crowds. So I'm looking forward to that, and probably have to paint a little, you know, like, but I I'm looking forward to that I'm looking forward to bought my first real bike. And I'm looking forward to using that bicycle, motorbike, and stuff like that, you know? Yeah. And here, it doesn't get as bad as it does in Boston. And so I'm just looking out the window. I'm looking forward to being outside and stuff. That's great. I was in Boston, in the winter, at MIT walking across that bridge. Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. I might have been the coldest I've ever been. There's a reason

Jeff  36:43

why that's like what sports teams used to do that for hazing and everything. Yeah. It was brutal. Bob, just thanks so much for being open with your time here, especially through your cover lessons, I appreciate it.

Bob London  36:59

I appreciate you giving me something to do. Now you're you're a natural interviewer. It's not even interview. You're a conversationalist. And I think that's a great skill. And I can see why you're successful because of it. It's just, it's so effortless for anyone in this seat, to be talking to you. And I really appreciate that. In addition, of course, being smart about what you do. It's just really nice. And that's really good.

Jeff  37:22

I play that back to my kids, because I'm just the guy who doesn't know how to do their geometry.

Bob London  37:26

I'm happy to talk to your kids anytime about how to talk about how great you are.

Jeff  37:32

Hold on one second. We're gonna wrap up here. We'll put links to all your stuff in the in the Call Notes. I'm going to put it on through your LinkedIn but what's the if somebody wanted to go one place? Oh, yeah, we're talking about what's the use of

Bob London  37:44

strategic customer Convos Seo ngos.com.

Jeff  37:49

Got it. Yeah, well, one quick second. We'll wrap up.

Bob London  37:53

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you.