Keith Pigues & Jerry Alderman – Winning with Customers

 Episode 41 - Keith Pigues and Jerry Alderman [45:29] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

As MIPtalk continues to evolve and grow, we’ve consistently been asked (and we’re asking ourselves), “what is the broader objective for the show/site”? When we really stopped to think about it, the answer was perhaps a bit more complicated than we realized.

In addition to pursuing a passion of seeking out and telling interesting stories, we’ve been fortunate enough to align ourselves with thought leaders in a variety of industries who have created successful businesses and brought new ideas to market. We’ve met authors and activists, CEOs and creative entrepreneurs; individuals with different backgrounds, nationalities and perspectives. Each of them has shared lessons and ideas that contribute to our growth and development.

We recently met D. Keith Pigues and Jerry Alderman through our partnership with The CMO Club, an exclusive professional networking group bringing Chief Marketing Officers together in an environment of openness and contribution that enables them to become better at what they do.

Keith and Jerry are leaders in B2B (business to business) marketing and operations. Since we work primarily in media and entertainment we’re not as knowledgeable with all the challenges facing this business segment but were eager to learn more. Their just released book Winning with Customers: A Playbook for B2B poses a fundamental question that every business needs to answer “Do Your Customers Make More Money Doing Business With You?

During our in-depth discussion, the authors explained the methodology behind a concept called Customer Value Creation or CVC. Here’s the basic premise:

In all business transactions a value exchange is at work. Companies seek products and services to meet their business needs and (most importantly) help them improve profits. In most value exchanges, neither party has a good way to measure how much value is exchanged or how it is shared.

If you really think about it the ideas behind value creation relate not only business but to all sorts of daily interactions. We touched on a lot of other areas from the book including:

Engaging Employees In The Value Conversation
How To Operationalize Ideas
Understanding The Differential Value Proposition (DVP)

In the end we discovered that “Winning with Customers” offered an invaluable framework for how we will grow our business and make the MIPtalk Network a must-have resource for our partners, customers and listeners.

Even if you’re not a business person, we hope you’ll enjoy our discussion with Keith and Jerry as much as we did.

For select excerpts from our interview, please visit the MIPtalk YouTube Channel.

Stay tuned for our much anticipated site relaunch (it’s coming soon — we PROMISE).