SIMPLE brand With Matt Lyles

In this week’s episode of the SIMPLE brand podcast, I talk with Dr. Cindy McGovern, author of Sell Yourself: How to Create, Live, and Sell a Powerful Personal Brand!Dr. Cindy is best known as the First Lady of Sales®. She’s an internationally renowned keynote speaker and she’s the founder of Orange Leaf Consulting which helps thousands of organizations and individuals create dynamic and robust sales processes.Dr. Cindy and I discuss her lessons from Sell Yourself all around the right ways to create and manage a personal brand. Some of the topics we discuss include:How selling is really about helping and how everyone is in sales, no matter their roleYour personal brand is the legacy and impact you leave with othersYou have a personal brand, and everyone knows it except for youHow to solicit feedback to understand how others define your personal brandThe steps you need to take to craft the personal brand you wantWhat to do when the brand others define for you doesn’t match what you’ve definedDr. Cindy’s three critical components to crafting a personal brandHow to ensure you’re consistently living the personal brand you wantHow to help your network advocate for and sell your personal brandHow to recover when you’ve gone “off-brand”RESOURCES FROM THIS EPISODE:Dr. Cindy’s websiteOrange Leaf ConsultingOrange Leaf AcademyDr. Cindy’s book - Sell Yourself: How to Create, Live and Sell a Powerful Personal BrandDr. Cindy’s book - Every Job is a Sales Job: How to Use the Art of Selling to Win at Work

This week's episode features a "from the vault" discussion with Nate Brown.Nate’s the Senior Director of Customer Experience for Arise Virtual Solutions. But beyond that, he's one of the biggest experts in the Customer Experience industry.I say he’s an expert, but Nate proclaims himself more of a perpetual student of the world's greatest experiences who simply shares his learnings with the world.And in line with his nature of sharing his learnings, Nate’s the founder and head of CX Accelerator - an online community of customer experience professionals all sharing their learnings, guidance, and mentorship with each other.Nate and I discuss having a frictionless, seamless customer experience that helps your brand stand out. And we also discuss how you can instill a customer experience mindset into every team in your organization, even the non-customer-facing teams.Some of the topics we discuss include:The customer service issues your customers bring up help you decide how to shape your customer experienceThe difference between customer experience and customer serviceHow friction points in the customer journey are usually created “upstream”How leaders can help all teams understand the entire customer journey and be better aligned with other teamsBrands that focus on short-term success vs long-term customer relationships will fail in the long runWhat The Lord of the Rings teaches us to break down silos and create a “team of one” to be a customer-centric brandHow to ensure your entire customer journey is a seamless journeyHow to use a Voice of the Customer system to understand your customerHow creating and managing a customer community can help you gain customer insightRESOURCES FROM THIS EPISODE:Nate's websiteThe Ultimate Customer Experience PrimerNate's Twitter

This week's episode features a "from the vault" discussion with Annette Franz.Annette’s the founder and CEO of CX Journey Inc., a customer experience strategy consulting firm that helps clients ensure that the customer is at the center of all they do.As a seasoned Customer Experience veteran with over 30 years of experience, Annette’s held CX leadership roles at some of the top brands in the country including J.D. Power, Fidelity, and Mattel. And her latest book was just released this month! Built to Win: Designing a Customer-Centric Culture That Drives Value for Your Business.While lots of experts talk about the value of customer-centric experiences, there aren’t enough lessons out there on how to build a customer-centric culture in your organization and how to ensure that the customer is fully ingrained into your organization’s DNA. And that’s just what Annette focuses on in Built to Win, and we take a deep-dive discussion into those lessons.Some of the topics we discuss include:The difference between being customer-focused and being customer-centric and the value of a customer-centric cultureThe barriers to creating a customer-centric cultureThe value of defining both behaviors and anti-behaviors that tie to your organization’s valuesWhy your employees should come “more first” [that’s not a typo!]How to ensure your customer experience thinking is outside-in vs inside-outHow to apply the Platinum Rule to your customer experienceRESOURCES FROM THIS EPISODEAnnette's siteAnnette on LinkedInAnnette's book - Built to Win: Designing a Customer-Centric Culture That Drives Value For Your BusinessAnnette's book - Customer Understanding: Three Ways to Put the "Customer" in Customer Experience (and at the Heart of Your Business) 

This week's episode features a "from the vault" discussion with the Chief Global Marketing Officer of Siegel+Gale, Margaret Molloy.Margaret’s been featured in Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, Forbes and so many others. And she’s consistently recognized as one the most influential CMOs on Twitter.The best way for your business to brand out from the crowd is through a focus on simplicity. Not only do your customers require it, they’re willing to pay a premium for it. And they’re much more loyal to you if you do provide them a simple experience. But how do you provide simple experiences? How are simple experiences even defined? What are customers really looking for? What if your business is B2B - are you off the hook? How do you get your team members to focus on simplicity too?Margaret helps you learn that and much more in this "from the vault" episode. RESOURCES FROM THIS EPISODEMargaret's newsletter: How CMOs CommitThe How CMOs Commit podcastSiegel+Gale’s siteMargaret on Twitter 

This week's episode features a "from the vault" discussion with Dan Gingiss.Dan’s an international keynote speaker and customer experience coach who believes that a remarkable customer experience is your best marketing strategy. He’s had a 20-year professional career where he’s held leadership positions at McDonald’s, Discover and Humana. He also hosts the Experience This! Show podcast and The Experience Maker Show. And Dan is the author of The Experience Maker: How To Create Remarkable Experiences That Your Customers Can’t Wait To Share.   In The Experience Maker, Dan teaches us how to focus on and create a customer experience that will actually retain customers so we can focus more on them than having to spend time, money and resources on constantly trying to gain new customers. RESOURCES FROM THIS EPISODEDan's book:The Experience Maker: How to Create Remarkable Experiences That Your Customers Can't Wait to Share Dan Gingiss's SiteThe Experience This! Show The Experience Maker ShowBrittany Hodak’s Podcast: Creating Superfans

In this week’s episode of the SIMPLE brand podcast, I talk with Melanie Deziel, author of Prove It: Exactly How Modern Marketers Earn Trust! Melanie was on the show all the way back in episode 13 where we discussed her first book, The Content Fuel Framework. This time she’s back to discuss her new book - Prove It: Exactly How Modern Marketers Earn Trust.There's a simple framework to follow to help you craft your promises and back up each claim your brand makes. Melanie and I discuss that framework to help you not only craft the right promise to your customers but also to create and deliver the right content that proves your promise without you simply saying, “Hey! Trust me!” Some of the topics we discuss include:Customers want to be able to trust brands so there’s an opportunity for your brand to stand out from the crowdWhy there’s such a lack of trust from consumers todayThe three different types of content to create to back up your brand’s claimsHow to understand the claims that our brand is already making The difference between objective and subjective claimsThe five types of claims brands can makeWhy brands need to be careful about liberally saying they’re committed to social causesHow to prove to your customers that you deliver a simple and convenient customer experience RESOURCES FROM THIS EPISODE:Melanie's websiteMelanie's book - Prove It: Exactly How Modern Marketers Earn TrustMelanie's book - The Content Fuel FrameworkSIMPLE brand #13: Melanie Deziel - How to Generate Unlimited Content for Your Brand

In this week’s episode of the SIMPLE brand podcast, I talk with Carmine Gallo, author of The Bezos Blueprint: Communication Secrets of the World's Greatest Salesman!This episode is Part 2 in my two-part series with Carmine. You can listen to Part 1 in Episode 91 here.Carmine’s here to talk about his latest book - The Bezos Blueprint: Communication Secrets of the World’s Greatest Salesman. In this episode, Carmine and I go further with his lessons and dig into more tools you can use to simplify your communications. And we talk about some of the habits that leaders instill to help them continuously improve how they communicate to and motivate their teams. Some of the topics we discuss include:Simplifying your communications is counterintuitive but powerfulReducing the number of words you use gives your message a stronger impactThe ability to take something complex and make it simple will help you stand out in your careerBLOT (Bottom Line On Top) is an effective way to help save your audience’s time in your writingThe best leaders know that they’re never done learning and improvingThe best communicators are voracious readersImproving your communications doesn’t happen overnight - it’s an iterative process over time RESOURCES FROM THIS EPISODE:SIMPLE brand #91 - Part 1 of this interview Carmine's websiteCarmine's book - The Bezos Blueprint: Communication Secrets from the World's Greatest Salesman  Carmine's book - Talk Like TED: The 9 Public-Speaking Secrets of the World's Top MindsCarmine's book - The Storyteller's Secret: From TED Speakers to Business Legends, Why Some Ideas Catch On and Others Don't Carmine's book - The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience

In this week’s episode of the SIMPLE brand podcast, I talk with Carmine Gallo, author of The Bezos Blueprint: Communication Secrets of the World's Greatest Salesman! I’m doing something a little different with this interview. I’m releasing it as a 2-part series. My interview with Carmine is jam-packed with so many lessons on improving your communication that I don’t want you to get overwhelmed by having to digest it all in one listen. My hope is that splitting it up makes it a simpler listen for you.Some of the topics we discuss include:Learning to write well is actually hardNo matter your skills, you need to constantly be growing in themUsing metaphors is a powerful tool for helping your communications resonateThe questions to ask before you start to invest in customer service technologyDeveloping great writing and communication skills are valuable for all of your employees, no matter their role or functionWhy Jeff Bezos banned PowerPoint in Amazon meetingsFocusing on the “big idea” first will help your audience more easily buy into your messageHow “simple is the new superpower”For your communication to be effective, write for an 8th-grade-level audienceUsing short words helps create simple, and more powerful, communications RESOURCES FROM THIS EPISODE:Carmine's websiteCarmine's book - The Bezos Blueprint: Communication Secrets from the World's Greatest Salesman

In this week’s episode of the SIMPLE brand podcast, I talk with Bill Price, author of The Frictionless Organization: Deliver Great Customer Experiences with Less Effort!Bill and I discuss his lessons around seeking, finding, and eliminating all the friction that can happen in your customer experience.  And more importantly, we discuss how to proactively ensure that friction doesn’t get into the customer experience in the first place. Some of the topics we discuss include:Why the best service is when the customer doesn’t even need to contact youBill’s definition of a frictionless organizationThe value of proactively communicating with your customersEducating your customers can curb customer service calls and reduce frictionThe questions to ask before you start to invest in customer service technologyThe need to proactively go upstream and prevent customer service issues from happening in the first placeHow delivering a frictionless experience actually demonstrates respect to your customer The right way to proactively plan on how your customer experience will be frictionless instead of solving customer service issuesWith customer expectations always changing, creating a frictionless experience is not a one-and-done approachThe habits and values that customer experience leaders should embrace RESOURCES FROM THIS EPISODE:Bill's websiteBill's book - The Frictionless Organization: Deliver Great Customer Experiences with Less Effort 

Adrian’s one of the leading voices in the Customer Experience industry.  As the host of the CXChronicles podcast, he talks with customer-focused business leaders from around the world to share their perception of Adrian’s Four CX Pillars: Team, Tools, Process, and Feedback.Some of the topics we discuss include:Focusing on developing and managing the right team is foundational to your Customer Experience operationHow making “happiness as a habit” is integral to your customer experience and employee experienceThe leading principles on customer experience are the same for employee experienceBreaking down organizational silos helps executives buy into and invest in a customer experience mindsetIt’s not just customer-facing teams that impact the customer experienceAdrian’s Four CX Pillars that are the essential building blocks of a winning customer experience operationThe ideal habits and values needed to thrive as a customer experience leader RESOURCES FROM THIS EPISODE:Adrian's LinkedIn profileAdrian's websiteAdrian's podcast - CXChronicles