What's Next! with Tiffani Bova

Welcome to the What's Next! podcast with Tiffani Bova. This week on the podcast, I'm interviewing Nancy Duarte. Nancy is a communications expert who's been featured in Fortune, Forbes, Fast Company, Wired, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and on CNN. Her firm, Duarte Inc., is the largest design firm in Silicon Valley as well as one of the top women-owned businesses in the area. It's the global leader behind some of the most influential visual messages in business and culture creating more than a quarter of a million presentations. As a persuasion expert, she cracked the code for effectively incorporating story patterns into business communications. She's written five best-selling books and is ranked #1 on the list of the World's Top 30 Communication Professionals. Her TED Talk, The Secret Structure of Great Talks, has over 1 million views. Nancy's expertise in the world of communication and presentations reveal how people can use stories to make real connections. In a B2B situation, real connections go beyond PowerPoint or pitching off of a slide deck. It's about doing your research, asking the right questions, and not wasting anyone's time. In this episode: 3:24 – How to NOT drink your own Kool-Aid 4:06 – How your words can change the world with an idea 4:24 – Are sales people selling a product or change? 5:02 – What is a story? 5:50 – How stories are empathy-builders 7:06 – How companies are challenged with trust 7:23 – The lack of storytelling is hurting executives 8:35 – How executives can create an emotional connection 8:59 – How to create emotional connection in our social world 10:08 – Finding the moment of inspiration 12:00 – Should you be transparent in front of customers to inspire them to buy? 13:06 – The impassioned plea, how all sales calls start 13:33 – How slide docs are beautiful, modular, collaterals 13:53 – A bad example of pitching to get $100,000,000 and what to do instead 15:37 – Machine learning + AI + pitching 16:44 – Can AI learn the secrets to the human heart? 17:46 – Human + Machine + AI 18:10 – Will AI replace sales people? 18:43 – AI + Machine learning predicting outcomes 19:46 – What is a data story? 20:15 – Bias in the data 20:35 – What happens when you make 25,000 sales calls? 22:14 – How to create a hook on a sales call 24:50 – Why the customer knows so much more than they used to 25:05 – Are people emotionally invested in brands? 25:59 – How to be prepared for the face-to-face 27:20 – Why you need 4-5 different stories 28:03 – What's next for storytelling? 31:32 – How to be better at storytelling Running Time: 32:54 Subscribe on iTunes Find Tiffani on Social Media: Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Find Nancy on Social Media: Website Twitter LinkedIn

Welcome to the What's Next! Podcast with Tiffani Bova. This week's guest is Tamara McCleary. Tamara is an international branding expert, a technology futurist, and the CEO of Thulium. She was named the #1 Most Influential Woman in MarTech by B2B Marketing and ranked by LeadTail as the 3rd most mentioned person on Twitter by CMOs. Tiffani and Tamara talk about What's Next! in the future of marketing, sales, AI, customer experience and let's not forget 3D printed shoes. It's fascinating to understand how all of these components fit together into one conversation. People have changed; expectations have changed; and, the future of retail, artificial intelligence, and customer success is changing daily. In this episode: 3:40 – Is 3D, instant gratifications commerce the future? 4:48 – The future of shopping 5:47 – Hyper-personalization of products 7:48 – What is artificial intelligence? 8:18 – What is machine learning? 8:34 – Tesla, the great example of machine learning 9:05 – Why machine learning is fascinating 10:53 – Why do some retailers are failing while other are thriving? 14:13 – Using data in new, competitive ways to access the customer experience 17:19 – How can salespeople get better in segmenting by using data or AI or machine learning by understanding behavior? 17:38 – How to ask the right questions of data 20:50 – Machines have bias 21:37 – Customers experience on the new battleground 22:32 – Who owns customer experience? 24:18 – What's a common metric by which to measure customer success? 25:08 – What CMOs say about customer success 28:33 – How incentivizing increases the lifetime value of a customer Running time: 33:12 Subscribe on iTunes Find Tiffani on Social Media: Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Find Tamara on social: Website LinkedIn Twitter Facebook

My amazing guest is Naomi Simson. Naomi is the founding director of Australian online tech success story RedBalloon and Redii. She's been blogging for a decade at Naomi Simson and is one of 5 Sharks on Network 10's business reality show Shark Tank in Australia. You can join Naomi's private online community at www.joinnaomisimson.com. After spending 3 Days with a Shark, Tiffani shares her favorite lessons learned: Naomi is committed: to her people and nurturing her staff Naomi admits that she's better at leadership than management; she wants people to be aligned to the values and working toward the greater good. Even though she's successful, Naomi pushes herself every day. She's still very hungry. She works so hard because want to be an equal with the people on her team and the community she serves. She doesn't forget where she came from. Personal motto: if it's meant to be, it's up to me. I don't expect anything and I'm happy to keep sharing and being a role model to others. It's not about the budget, its what you do with them that makes the difference. Knowledge and reputation aren't just attached to businesses. You get focused on the return dollars and time. I can never buy another hour. Time for reflection is equally important as productive time. If you know what the tasks are the people loathe, you can potentially find solutions to make their lives easier and create a better place to work. Take the criticism that you'll inevitably receive, and celebrate the greatness too. Everything is transparent with social media, so you have to really listen to the concerns. In this episode: 5:07 – Commitment to people and nurturing the staff 6:18 – Management vs. Leadership 8:07 – Know your weaknesses (or non-strengths) 8:36 – Why you should surround yourself with the right talent 11:31 – Don't forget where you came from 11:48 – Naomi's personal motto 13:49 – Challenges small businesses face 16:55 – How to think about your time in a strategic way 17:32 – How Naomi's book writing process took 14 hours a day but saved time in other areas 18:44 – How do I choose what is the one thing to focus on? 19:12 – If you're relying on your phone, you are not in control of your life 21:15 – Why you should track your time 22:23 – What is RedBalloon? 26:44 – Why it's about the experience of the experience 29:06 – How to take constructive criticism Running time: 34:05 Subscribe on iTunes Find Tiffani on social: Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Find Naomi on social: Facebook Instagram Twitter LinkedIn

Guest Seth Godin, bestselling author of 18 books and advocate for doing the right thing in business, discusses topics such as the importance of serving rather than selling, how to generate leads in an authentic way, why companies are prioritizing experience over product, and advice for new marketers.

Welcome to the What's Next! podcast with Tiffani Bova. In my 20+ years in the sales industry, I've met so many cool people and have had some fascinating conversations. There have been too many times I've wished a microphone was on so I could record my conversations with amazing people and share them with you. I take a practical approach when I work with tech companies, to help define growth strategies and go to market models. I am always on the outlook for emerging technologies and disruptive shifts in buyer behavior. Then I translate pragmatic plans into sales transformation. I have been told the combination of my operational and research experience is what positioned me as one of the leading thinkers in the area of sales transformation and business model innovation. My current conversations center around one objective: customer success. My conversations inspire me as a speaker and when I write for publications such as Harvard Business Review and Huffington Post. Meeting innovative and creative people push me to do better and be better too. I feel selfish keeping those conversations to myself, and my goal with the What's Next podcast is to share these inspiring conversations with you to keep you thinking and to challenge you to think about what's next. This is a window into my process. Enjoy! Find Tiffani on Social Media: Facebook Twitter LinkedIn