One on One Interviews

Earlier this week I chaired CRM Evolution, CRM Magazine’s annual industry conference. And as usual it was a great event with industry experts, thought leaders and vendor executives participating throughout the 3 days of the event. But the most surprising person I ran into at the conference was my supervisor at my very first professional job, Jay Duff. I hadn’t seen Jay in close to 22 years and had no idea he would be there. Back in the early 1990s we helped pharmaceutical sales reps use CRM to manage their territories, but today Jay works at Chick-fil-A leading some of their technology development around analytics, artificial intelligence and speech technology. So in addition to catching up some, Jay shared a few examples of how these technologies are helping the company improve the customer experience

Brian Solis’ new book Lifescale - How to Live a More Creative, Productive and Happy Life, is a departure from his previous books, including X: The Experience When Business Meets Design and What’s The Future of Business. Whereas these books were focused on the impact of modern technology on our business and professional lives, Lifescale looks at the impact that digital distraction is having on our personal lives and our ability to be who we really want to be.

As with those previous books, I had a chance to chat with Brian about Lifescale, why he decided to write this kind of book, what he learned about himself and how digital distraction impacted his life, and what people can do to put their lives back into more balance in order to be closer to their true selves.

I caught up with Ramon Ray at a recent conference to discuss his new book Celebrity CEO, understand what he means by the term Celebrity CEO, why he feels it’s critical for today’s small business folks to become one, and what it will take to be one.

As busy as he was during Zoholics19, Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu made time for the Small Business Trends community to do an “ask me anything” session with myself and SBT publisher Anita Campbell. We covered a lot of ground with Sridhar thanks to the great questions sent in from the both the SBT and BizSugar communities

Meredith Schmidt, Executive Vice President & GM of Salesforce Essentials & SMB, joined me last week to share more about the change in how Salesforce Essentials is being positioned within the company, what will change, and how this will impact Salesforce’s SMB customers. She also touches on how new technologies like AI and voice interfaces are already beginning to affect small businesses.

Paul Greenberg and I were able to capture some of these nuggets in a conversation we had with Rob Tarkoff, Oracle’s EVP and GM of the Oracle CX business. Topics Rob touched on include the leading role data is playing in developing customers experiences, the role curiosity plays in delivering customer experiences, and who Rob believes is the most curious person (out of 140,000 employees worldwide) at Oracle is today. Below is an edited transcript of our conversation.

I spent some time with Ginger to discuss an intriguing question based on the upcoming 25th anniversary of the first digital display ads being run on websites – what has been the most significant moment in the 25 year history of digital marketing?

Ginger and I take a shot at answering that, but as you’ll see below it’s kind of hard to narrow it down to one moment or thing.

Oracle’s Netsuite division recently put out the Future of Retail report (free with registration) in partnership with Wakefield Research and The Retail Doctor. The global study of 1,200 consumers and 400 retail executives across the U.S., U.K. and Australia found a huge disconnect between what retailers think shoppers want, and what shoppers actually want. Major differences are found in areas spanning the overall retail environment, social media, personalization and the use of advanced technologies such as chatbots, artificial intelligence (AI), and virtual reality (VR).

Bob Phibbs, better known as The Retail Doctor, shared with me some of his more interesting takeaways from the study, and why the gap is so wide between retailers perception of what customers want, and customer expectations for experiences they want retailers to provide them.

To learn more about Zoho University me and my CRM Playaz partner Paul Greenberg had a chance to sit with Zoho’s Raju Vegesna to learn more about the program, how it fits with the company’s overall culture and philosophy, and how the program has led to Zoho hiring 1800 Zoho University graduates – equating to roughly a quarter of the company’s 7000+ employee base.

The inaugural Facebook 3.5 Degrees podcast features Bryan and Bradford Manning of Two Blind Brothers, who created their t-shirt business from the start to donate 100% of their profits to help to retinal research to try and cure blindness. This mission hits close to home for them, as they both our legally blind due to having Stargardt disease since they were very young.

Bryan and Bradford shared with me how they got started with the business, the central role their mission plays in it, and how by having philanthropy at the core of their business they’ve been able to raise over $300,000 dollars in the fight to find a cure for blindness – even as a startup.