#109 - Gregg Johnson, CEO of Invoca - On creating a tailwind behind your company that makes you unstoppable

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to grow customer trust by bridging the growing gap between the online and offline world. My guest is Gregg Johnson, CEO of Invoca.

Gregg is a seasoned SaaS executive with a passion for building and bringing to market products in emerging categories. He led Salesforce Marketing Cloud’s social marketing product line, where he integrated $1 billion of M&A investments into the Salesforce product portfolio. Prior to that, he drove product strategy and development for Salesforce Chatter, helping define the category of enterprise social networking. Earlier in his career, Gregg was a consultant at Boston Consulting Group and worked in sales, marketing and product roles at several startups. He graduated from Stanford University and holds a Master’s degree from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and an MBA from the Wharton School of Business.

Gregg joined Invoca as CEO in 2017, and under his leadership, the company has experienced multiple X growth. In 2019, The Software Report ranked Gregg #3 on the list of Top 25 Growth Leaders. Meanwhile, Invoca won multiple industry awards, such as “Best Call Tracking Platform Award”, “Artificial Intelligence Excellence Award”, and the “Hot Vendor Award” in conversational intelligence.

This triggered me, and hence I invited Gregg to my podcast. (Note: we recorded this podcast in February 2020, just as the Coronavirus pandemic was starting to sweep through Europe and North America). We explore the growing challenge for many brands to live up to their customers’ expectations and grow trust in a world that’s increasingly digital, but where human interaction is a critical component as well. We also discuss Gregg’s experiences in successfully scaling his company while growing their ability to help their customers make a meaningful difference.

Here are some of his quotes:

The problem with more complex products and services is oftentimes people start the purchase journey in digital, but they end up getting consultative advice as part of the buying process.

The problem for a marketer is: once you escalate out of the digital channel to these human-to-human conversational channels, typically marketers haven't been able to understand the impact of their marketing investments on that human to human conversation.

As I like to say: if you have your best friend, and you tell them all your secrets and the things that you're really worried about in life, and then two weeks later, they show up, and they don't remember any of that information, they're probably not going to be your best friend for very long.

So really, what we do from a technology point of view is trying to help bridge that gap between what happens in the digital world and then what happens in the conversational interactions between a consumer and the representatives of a brand.

During this interview, you will learn four things:

1. That a critical to way to look at you company is not only how you are solving a meaningful problem for your customers, but also how your customers perceive you as a company.
2. How to accelerate momentum by smartly adjusting make, buy partner decisions based on different market conditions and where you are in your product market fit life-cycle.
3. How to use communication as a weapon to grow alignment, motivation and trust inside your business. Mastering this will give you surprising insights and levels of engagement.
4. That the biggest tailwind you can have is with customers that are excited about what you have done for them and their business.