Nerds to Norms: Why real conversations still beat synthetic data in B2B product management

Speaker A: M welcome to Practical Product Management. We are here to talk about the ways in which product management is done in context. There's obviously lots of great books out there, lots of theory, but we love to talk about how product management happens in the context, and we like to talk to interesting people who are either in product management or adjacent to it. Um, and so today we're talking to Mike, and so I'm gonna turn it over to you to introduce yourself and then we'll dive and start talking. So tell us a little about, a little bit about you.

Speaker B: Hi, Leah. Well, thank you very much for having me on the podcast. I'm really great to be here. I'm Mike. Um, I've basically been, uh, running an agency for about, uh, 24 years now. I'm really focused on B2B. Um, before that I worked in, uh, marketing in the semiconductor industry. And then prior to that, long, long time ago, I was an engineer. Um, and just recently I've actually moved to a chairman role. So we've got someone now doing all the hard work, running the agency day to day.

Speaker A: Nice.

Speaker C: Awesome. Awesome. Well, it's really exciting to have you here, Mike. Um, you said a term that I think a lot of the people that listen to our podcast are familiar with, um, but potentially don't understand very well and might think it's boring. So you said the word B2B. Talk to us about why B2B is not boring. And it's actually a super fun place to operate.

Speaker B: So B2B absolutely is not boring. The problem is, like everywhere else, because I'm really focused on the marketing side of product. It's easy to make boring ads, and you can make boring ads wherever you go. Um, but the great thing about B2B is that the purchases are really complex. So if you're looking at consumer marketing, you're looking at people, quite often they're making impulse buys. They're not really thinking about it. Even you're selling something like a car. Um, you know, you've maybe got a couple of people. And I know certainly in the uk, primarily it's women who buy cars now. Um, and maybe the husband gets, uh, you know, opportunity to influence. Um, but basically, you know, it's a pretty simple, straightforward decision. If you're looking at B2B, you're looking at incredibly complicated decisions. So decisions that involve lots of people. They've all got different objectives, they all want to achieve something different out of it. Um, and also you're selling a product that can be incredibly complicated as well. So you get These really long projects where you've got to convince a large number of people. And that's so interesting. You've really got to understand, you know, how a finance director thinks versus how an engineer thinks versus how the CEO thinks. Um, and they're all different. You get to work with all these different people. So it's just so much fun because there's so much variety. And of course, at the end of it, you know, a B2B sale is normally quite a large sale. So most B2B companies are selling things that, you know, can be in the thousands, can be in the millions. Um, and we've got clients, you know, who sell, um, solutions that are literally tens of millions of pounds. And that's so exciting when you finally get that deal closed and you can really see it and link it back to all the work you've been doing.

Speaker C: I think it's a, I think you're right. And I kind of said that a little bit tongue in cheek because both Leah and I are on your side on this, on this discussion. I think it's really interesting from a product management perspective and not something that, that a lot of our listeners may have considered. Um, typically when you're working on an easy or consumer product, you just think about your end user and solving their problems. Um, but I think the complexity around not just solving a business problem, but all of the personalities related to both the approval of and the purchase of and the use of a thing that goes into B2B is really complex. Do you have any frameworks that you use or you would suggest people start to think about? When you start trying to get your head around all the people and stuff related to those B2B conversations.

Speaker B: That's such a good question. And I mean the B2B, the whole product question in B2B is completely different to consumer. You know, there's a lot more customization, um, a lot more tweaking products for customers rather than selling a standard product. Um, but you know, I think the way most people think about this is by building Personas. Um, and so most people will build a Persona, um, and very simplistic B2B marketers will build a Persona that's their ideal customer. Um, you know, some of the smarter marketers might build a couple of different Personas and maybe they've got a buyer and an influencer. Um, but actually what you have is, um, what in the UK we call a, um, decision making unit. In America you call a buying committee. And that can be really big. Um, and you could have lots and lots of people involved in that. And I think what goes wrong in B2B is that people forget about like building this proper model of the buying committee. And so they tend to go on fads. And so what they'll do is they'll focus really hard on their buyer. In our case, a lot of our clients sell to engineers. So focus on the engineer. It'll be technical marketing, it'll be detail, it'll be facts, it'll be tables, it'll be graphs. And you know, the CEO is kind of like, uh, it's not really understanding that. It's not my job, it's not my background. Um, and so you don't build any kind of, um, impact with the CEO. And then suddenly what you'll see is a B2B firm going, yeah, actually, um, we want to do business press. You know, that's a classic. They want to do business press because we want to reach the C suite. And so they rush off and they try and get into, you know, the Financial Times or Forbes or whatever. Um, and uh, they're still using the same engineer message quite often. So it doesn't often work. Um, and what really works is if you build out this model properly and you really try to understand these people. Um, and I've got to admit, you know, I know your listeners all around the world. You know, I'm British, I cringe a bit when we do Personas and you give them names. Um, whereas I think Americans probably quite like that.

Speaker C: We love our names.

Speaker A: They were like, and Tom, we're going somewhere.

Speaker B: And it's like, what would Tom do and how would Jim feel? And you're like, cringey. It's like it's a made up person. Um, but actually it's a really effective way to discuss, you know, what's going to happen. You can almost build those discussions that will happen your customers by having these imaginary people around an imaginary table. Um, and if you do that, you suddenly realize that, you know, Tom the engineer, he really does care about those graphs. So you better keep sending those out because otherwise he's not going to be interested. Um, but you know, if you've got Kate and she's the CEO, she doesn't care about that. She wants to know what the risk is, how much money am m I going to make, you know, what's the benefit? Um, and it's very high level messages. So you then realize you've got to build very different campaigns, those different Personas. Um, and that then if companies do it right, takes you away from this like flip flopping between technical, no business press, no technical, no business press. Um, and makes it a much more integrated campaign.

Speaker A: Yeah. It's funny, it reminds me, Marilyn M Will probably resonate with this, but it reminds me like when we, we both worked at Amazon and you know, they have this whole principle of the empty chair. Like there's always an empty chair in the room that represents, represents the customer. But I think what ha. What I remember happening is that empty chair, depending on who was in the room, different people might have a different idea of who was sitting in the chair.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker A: So if I was a platform PM running the payment space, but the guy in my room was somebody who ran Amazon Digital, we had different people sitting in the chair because I had a different customer than they had. We ultimately had the same customer. But, uh, they were my customer and this was their. You know, so often I think it takes a moment of like, let's define who's in that chair and do we need to pull up a few extras? Right. Because maybe it's not one chair.

Speaker B: Yeah. And I mean the Amazon idea of the empty chairs is, it's a brilliant idea, but it's very consumer marketing.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Because, you know, typically consumer sales, that, uh, one or two people, it's pretty straightforward. You know, whereas B2B, you want an empty meeting room. Um, and that's really different.

Speaker A: Yeah. Ah, well that's, I guess that's my point is that when I, you know, when I worked at Amazon, uh, and Marilyn, I worked there together, part of what I owned was the payments platform. And you. In order to get things through businesses, 80Amazon businesses came to me and said, hey, we need to, we need the payments platform to do this. And so I had to think in terms of themes. The person in my empty chair was those businesses and their consumer. Right. But those, those were different. So I had to think in terms of like, what does digital need and what does prime need and what does fresh need and what. You know, and had to figure out how to sit that person in the chair and they weren't always the consumer. Right. And so that then meant we had to have a slightly different conversation.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker A: Because it was like, wait a minute, how am I going to do this in a way that's broad enough for all of you as a business customer? Because they were ultimately businesses showing up to get business goods from part of the platform.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker A: And so that's the only reason I bring it up. I think, I think you're absolutely right. It is designed around the consumer because that is Amazon's thinking of when they talk about that empty chair. Um, but I do think that that like our job as product managers is this understanding of all of the stakeholders that's part of the job. And so I think in the B2B space that uh, it just, it's just blown out into more complication often.

Speaker B: No, absolutely, you're absolutely right. And I think you know, when you think about payment platforms, you've actually got B2B and B2C at the same time. Which is, you know, as you say, is much more complex.

Speaker C: Yeah, I'm. Your, your bio says um, you're a self confessed geek. So a welcome to the club because you know we're, we, we are also self confessed geeks. But when you talk about Personas and really understanding who's at the table, one of the things that I have recently been playing with and I would love your opinion on is building GPTs to represent those Personas. Because uh, ah, like a Persona is usually something you stick on the wall and it's got like four bits of information and a picture and you write a name like Sally the flower vendor. Um, but I think one of the things um, that we've been trying to do is record and collect information from these broad Personas and inform a GPT to play that role in a more conversational state. What have you seen working, not working. What tools are coming to play in this area? Like read us all into the good stuff please.

Speaker B: So I love you're doing it. I mean we call it synthetic Personas. So you know, you build a Persona, it's not a real person but um, it's built out of your research. Um, and I think it's really good. I think the interesting thing we found is if you look at a lot of the work that's going on, a lot of people are trying to use synthetic Personas to generate survey responses. Um, and so they'll generate a thousand synthetic Personas. What we found, and I apologize to all the companies that do all of this because they're super smart and they do some great stuff. But what we found is the survey result is almost pre programmed in as you build those Personas.

Speaker C: I hate surveys. We'll go back to that. Like surveys are the devil's work.

Speaker B: Yeah. So I don't love that. What I love is creating a synthetic Persona with all the knowledge I've got and then talking to them like a person. So yes, the qualitative stuff that you get out, I think personally much more valuable than trying to do Quantitative?

Speaker C: Yes. I mean, so I like. Sorry for anybody that's ever worked for me or mentioned the word survey in front of me. Like, like surveys are tools of lazy people. And I think most people already know the answer before they put a survey out there. And they have no idea what they're going to do with the data. And even if they tell you a story about what they're going to do with the data, they don't actually really need it. There's a different way to get that information. Um, and so surveys hurt my heart. And I love the fact that you've said that you like, you have real conversations with these Personas versus like some survey.

Speaker B: Yeah, no, I think surveys are good sometimes. So we do a lot of PR and we create a lot of surveys that we know what the answer is going to be and that answer is going to give us the story we want to then promote it. Safe. You know, I mean the classic, um, thing.

Speaker C: Four out of five dentists recommend my toothpaste.

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Here, have some free toothpaste. What would you recommend? Uh, so, uh, I think those sort of polls have some value in marketing, but I think what we see in B2B particularly is it's really, really hard to get anything like a representative audience responding to a survey. Um, and so you'll see people with surveys and they've got 40 people, 60 people, 80 people responding and they'll say, yeah, definitely, this is 5% more, more important than that. You get. No, just one person said that if they flick the other way, then it would have been the other way. You know, it's like. So I think surveys are very dangerous because they're really hard to do. Um, it's really hard to get anybody to fill in the survey. It's certainly incredibly hard to get a representative survey. Um, and so you've got something that's inherently biased and then you place far too much kind of authority on it because, um, you know, if you've done maths and being a self confessed geek, I've done statistics and quite like statistics, you then very quickly realize that actually some of these surveys where they say this is more important than that, actually it's more likely to be down to randomness than it is actually down to being a real difference.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The random, the randomness is, it's a, it's a like soul crusher, right? When you realize like this, but the data said the thing and then you do the thing and then it's like that didn't work and everybody's like, why didn't it work? And it's like you go back and you're like, huh, that might have been random. That might not have been exactly what we're looking for. Yeah, 100%.

Speaker C: What other tools do you use to sort of pull through Personas, especially in a B2B context? Like, you have a wealth of experience. Like,

Speaker B: so there's only one tool that works really well, okay. That's talking to people.

Speaker C: Uh,

Speaker A: true.

Speaker B: You know, we've got an online, uh, Persona tool on our website, and you can build these tools that walk you through creating a Persona. But the reality is the best Personas are created by the people who've talked about to those individuals. And they've actually met Tom the engineer or Kate the CEO, and they know what they're like. Um, and so to me, I think, you know, we're in a world where everybody wants automation, everybody wants tools. But actually, sometimes understanding people really matters. Obviously, if you're really smart and you, you know, you've, um, looked at behavioral psychology, you can actually extrapolate quite a lot from your interviews. But again, it's still very much, you know, using brain power rather than magically pressing a button and getting a Persona at the end.

Speaker A: Yeah, well, and I think, I mean, I think as, um, maybe sounds overly simplistic, but I think when our product teams in B2B or B2C space are talking to real customers and getting their actual feedback, I actually think it makes such an impact on them to hear it from the person that is going to use or might use what we're doing or already uses it, that I think it actually, I always say it sort of is a, um, it's almost like a. You plug into creativity. When they talk to somebody, right. The minute that they're talking to a real person, the creative brain is like. Because you can actually tie a problem to, uh, like an actual problem statement to something you heard someone actually say instead of what we all sit around and talk about together. Because what's the thing we always say, Marilyn, you are not the customer.

Speaker C: Uh, if you're wearing the badge of the company that you're in, you're not the customer. Even though you think you might use it, you're just. You're too close. I think, Leah, what you said is super important, especially when you're talking to that person in the context of how they were will use your tool. Like, I, um. And this is where, like, I'm a huge fan of the lean canvas and like, watching people in the moment trying to do the thing. Um, because even talking to the person, if they're, you know, in an interview room, you're going to get a different response. Um, and you really want to see people in context to get a good view. But I do think that's where, you know, where, where some flashes of brilliance come from for sure.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's true. Okay, I want to ask a different. I want to take us on a tiny little adventure that Marilyn and I like to go on. Every now and then. Um, I have a different question. So we have had a couple conversations with folks about this concept of product led growth and that, you know, there's such a, you know, this, this place of product alongside marketing, owning the funnel, thinking about funnel conversion, all of this and that there's almost like a new creature being created out in the universe around product managers that are product led growth people and that, you know, if you don't know how to do that, you don't know what you're doing and you know, all this, all this stuff. And so we, we teased one of our guests who's a friend of mine. We were like, you don't even have a real job. What are you talking about? That's not a real job. And he' like, like it is it. I'm the, I'm the whatever VP of blah blah. We're like, it's not even a thing. That's a product manager's job. And but so I'm curious when you think about sort of product led growth and what people are saying about that, how have you seen that work in the B2B space? Because it isn't a traditional go get them to click and bring them through the funnel necessarily. It has, usually has longer lead times and all of that. So I'm curious what you think about that.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think product led growth, it's a really difficult thing in a lot of B2B um, environments. I mean, firstly, the one thing I'd say is, you know, even if you're in a SaaS product and you're, you know, iterating all the time, like the growth is customer led. I mean really, as customers, they're the ones spending the money. So you know what product led growth is really doing is it's optimizing the product for the customers so the customers are then more likely to buy. Um, and I think that that's a way to look at it. The challenge you have in B2B is often the long development cycles that are involved in these products. They're Big complex products. Some of them have like, you know, lots of approvals. I mean, we work with a lot of semiconductor companies. Um, you know, so they're making silicon chips. Um, and designing a silicon chip's not easy today. You know, so it can take teams of, you know, tens, hundreds of people. And uh, you know, it can take easily a year to develop a product. You design it and then you send it away to be manufactured. Um, and it basically goes and gets cooked in what's called a fab. Um, and that takes a few weeks and then it gets packaged somewhere else into a little plastic package and then it gets put on a board and then it gets sent back to you and then you plug the board in and if you're lucky there's no smoke coming out of your chip, which happens occasionally less so now, but Certainly, you know, 30 years ago in the sort of earlier days of semiconductors, quite often people plug this product in. This cost them a huge amount of money and it just went up in flames, um, because the tools weren't as good. Um, but basically that's really hard to do what someone who's in the digital side would call product led growth because, you know, your iteration cycles are potentially a year or more. So by the time you've changed it, your customers have already moved on a year. Um, and I think that's really hard. So in B2B, you've got to take a slightly different approach. Um, you can't continue to be iterating and testing. It's too expensive and it's too slow. Um, so you do have to really get under the skin of the customer. Um, and you have to understand not what the customer wants today, but what the customer wants in a year's time or two years time, if that's the lead time to develop the product.

Speaker C: Yeah, that's a really challenging, uh, that's a really challenging space to try to achieve and maintain product market fit. Um, and that just that cycle time M and the handoffs you were just describing between sort of like people understanding their customers, marketing trying to talk to their customers, and the people turning that into some sort of requirement and product and then that, the manufacture and shipping of the thing, um, what do you think? What do you think either? I mean, I think, I think it's pretty easy to describe why it can be troublesome because there's a lot of handoffs and a lot of time. What have you seen work well and trying to reduce that, um, conversation gap or like the, the mismatch between people as you Go along this, that could actually harm your product market fit over time.

Speaker B: So it's really interesting. I'm gonna give you two answers to this. Um, so. And they're exactly the opposite thing. Um, so one thing that works really well is to pick a lead customer. This is really common. Um, and if you want to sell into electric vehicles, you pick one of the big car companies and that could be a test, or it could be a Volkswagen, whatever. Um, and you go to them and you say, what do you want us to develop for, uh, two years time? Tell us exactly what you want, we'll design exactly what you want. And you work very, very closely. And obviously the closer you work with one vendor, the more they're prepared to share. Sorry, one customer. The. They're prepared to share. Um, and so you get a lot of information and you can build a product and it's hopefully ideally suited for them, otherwise you've done something very wrong. Um, but also it should really be suited for the whole market because it's unlikely that Volkswagen is going to do anything, you know, that different to Audi or BMW or even Ford. The problem is, is that customer's guessing as well. They're trying to predict the future. So sometimes they get it wrong, sometimes it's brilliant, sometimes they get it wrong. And you've picked basically a company you thought was going to be the leader in two years time. And actually what happens is they crash, they lose market share and you've picked the wrong partner. So obviously the way to go then is to go and talk to a large number of people in the market. Um, but then the problem is you tend to get kind of homogenized feedback, um, and it kind of falls to kind of the lowest common denominator product. So you spread out all the requirements and you miss the one or two things that are really cool that if you add, would make a huge difference. It's the classic thing that, um, uh, I think Henry Ford said if I asked, um, my customers what they wanted, they just said a faster horse. Um, and so it's really hard to go and ask people something when they don't know what's possible. So it really depends on balancing between getting in deep with customers, understanding the market, and then sometimes just saying, we're gonna go do this, we think it's the right thing to do.

Speaker C: I'm, um. Got it. I have a, um, I probably made a face like, I don't know if you know this about me, but we. We've now been talking for 22 minutes. I don't have a poker face. Um, my poker name. You know how, like, poker players have, like, cool names like the Snake Eye or like, whatever. Um, when I used to play poker, my poker name was the donor.

Speaker A: Because.

Speaker C: But you said something. You said something. There's a quote, that quote by Henry Ford that I always kind of have a visceral reaction to, because while it's true, I also think that, um, if you would have looked m. If. If Henry Ford would have looked more deeply at the problem space with a little bit more of, um. Ah, ah. An innovative mindset, he would have realized that people just want to get somewhere faster and easier. Right. I mean, they would have asked for a faster horse, but if you would have asked the, like, five whys beyond that. Um, so I. I do think that, um, what I want to sort of warn the general audience about is that quote can be used as a weapon to, like, not ask the customer what they want. And I actually think that's wrong. I think you need to go in with the spirit of curiosity and really try to understand the root problem, not what they're describing as a solution, because people will always give you a solution. Um, and like, really early on in my career, I worked for, uh, a retail foreign exchange brokerage, and we used to have people send us their margin account money, and we held it all in US Dollars. And, you know, we were trying to ask our customers what would make them happier, and they were like, cheaper wires, um, and what they really wanted was faster access to their funds, um, with no or little fees. And by pulling it back to those root problems, we were able to come up with a pretty innovative solution that didn't include wires at all. Um, and I think that's what you're describing is like, how do you really. How do you pull back and think about the macro? Um, so if I made a face at you at the. At the Henry Ford thing, it's not because you were wrong. I totally agree with you. I just. That quote gives me a rash.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And I love the way you called me out on it, Marilyn, actually. Because the honest truth is, if Henry Ford really went and asked people what they wanted, they'd have probably said, well, what we want is we want the railroad. We want a personal train that only we have, and I travel it, no one else does, and it goes everywhere. And m. It can go on short distances as well as long distance. That sounds really like a car, doesn't it?

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker A: You don't need the tracks. Yeah. But I think it's often for me it's about respect. It's respecting that the customer has a point of view and they're trying. If you're asking them a question. Most of our customers are trying to give us good information. Yeah, you're talking to someone who's really pissed off. They're trying to give you good information. If you're talking to somebody that's really happy with what you do, they're trying to give you good information. Like, they're so respecting that they have a point of view and then saying, based on that point of view, let me get to the heart of what we're trying to solve for. Right. And what do we know? Let's not throw out what we know, but what do we know? What does the data say? How do we then also respect the data we have and marry those two up? That's the hard part.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: Right. Because it's the, uh. It's the person who's like, you know, I mean, even internally, when you're. You own a product team and some other team appears and says, build me this. And you're like, what problem do you want me to solve again?

Speaker C: Yeah, right.

Speaker A: And they're like, no, I don't. I don't. That's not the conversation I want to have. I want you to build me this. It's like, no, I want you to tell me what problem you have so that I can. I'm happy to hear your suggested solution because I'm going to learn something from your suggested solution. But don't tell me what to build. I mean, how. Let's be honest, how many of us have said the phrase don't tell me what to build. Right.

Speaker B: All the time.

Speaker A: But it's. It's not because I think I know. It's because I want you to describe the problem so that I can ask 10 more questions. Right. I have more questions. And if you just tell me what to build, I'll never know what we were, what the question was, you know? And so I think that's. That, to me, is.

Speaker B: It's.

Speaker A: For me, it's often a respect game. Like, how will. How will I show up and respect. Every participant has a perspective to bring to the table. And then I have to sort of be the person who tries to bring that together. That's what makes a job hard and fun.

Speaker C: And fun. But I think B2B offers a really sorry. You got my brain working. Thank you, Mike. This has actually been an awesome conversation, but you've got my brain working now, and we're all in trouble. Um, it's not just about building the product for B2B, is it? Because when you think about all the people that. What did you call it? The room full of people that make the decision. The committee.

Speaker B: Yeah, the buying committee of decision making unit.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Right. So now you have to have, uh. Now you have to have something that not only solves a business problem that someone's willing to pay for, but like your infosec people probably need to be able to review it for security. You're like your CFO or your security. People also have their requirements that people want to be seen to be better at their job. So, like, there's all these characters that you now have to think about when you're both building and marketing a product that may not ever even, like, use your product.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Yes. I mean, certainly that's. That's a big issue that, you know, the people who typically sign off the money aren't the people who are going to use your product, um, because they're way more senior. Um, and I think also the. The other thing as well. I mean, we've talked a lot about prices of product podcast. I probably shouldn't say this, but in B2B, more and more people don't buy products. People buy vendors.

Speaker C: Your solutions. Yeah.

Speaker B: You know, and. And so what they're looking for is. And I hate the word partner because at the end of the day, you've got someone selling stuff and they want money off the guy buying it. And it's. It's that simple. It's a transaction. Um, but the customers, they want to know that they're working with someone. They can go forward. I mean, if you imagine, if you were. I mean, I'll give you a simple example. You know, if you were IT support and your company you're supporting, you know, even a small company, you know, maybe 500 people, and your company bought a different laptop every time somebody joined, and you had 500 different laptops to support, and it would just be unbelievable. All the laptops are all exactly the same. So much easier to support. You know exactly what happens if you have to go and replace a part. You know, something breaks, you can. You know what it is. You can probably take it out of another laptop you've got. So I think more and more, and this is a really big B2B thing, um, B2B buyers really are looking for partners they can work with in the long term. And so they're buying the supplier, they're not buying the product.

Speaker A: Interesting.

Speaker C: So interoperability becomes like a big deal.

Speaker A: Like how do you solve more problem than one? Right. Can you solve more than one problem for me if I'm um, spending.

Speaker C: Can you fit into their existing ecosystem? Especially if you're trying to come in with something new? Like if you don't fit, you don't help?

Speaker B: Well, absolutely. I mean if you're trying to come in and start winning in a new customer, you've got to work with what they've got. Obviously they're not going to throw everything out. But equally, um, if you're working with a customer, that customer is going to expect interoperability from you because they know about lock in, they're not stupid. Yeah. Um, and so they're going to absolutely expect you to be able to interoperate with other people. So it's really tough. I mean I think the world is really tough. If we look at what's happened, you know, almost everybody's got access to pretty much leading edge manufacturing. Whatever you make, you can go and get that made with by somebody who's one of the best in the world. Um, you know, people can access the technology, people can access ideas. It's not very difficult. So it's really hard to get a lead. Um, and so when you do win customers, it's all about making sure that actually make those customers successful in B2B or you know, the product makes them happy at the end of the day if you look at a more consumer view.

Speaker A: But you know, I just, it's so funny because as you guys are both talking, I'm thinking about really early in my career being in meetings where you know, I was the product person. But when product managers, I'm gonna back up. When product managers say to me like I'm not a salesperson, I'm like bullshit, you're not a salesperson.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Because I think about early in my career because I worked in payments for years, right? And being in rooms at banks, for instance, and realizing that the one guy holding out over there was the one I had to convince. Right. And my boss being like, talk that guy into it.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Like realizing that like oh, that guy from legal or it or whatever is the one guy in the room that everyone else is like Bob, Right. And you're like ah, what does Bob know that I don't know right now? Right. And so you're turn and but that's where this interoperability comes in because that's usually the guy who knows the thing that isn't going to work or is going to be a ah, hurdle to overcome. And so now I'M like, sit by me at lunchtime, Bob, because I want to know what's going on. Right? Because you're my new best friend. Blink arms. Right? But to me, that's what I think some young product managers, especially if they've only worked in B2C miss is that when you're having these conversations, you are in the room going, okay, who is the person who, who has the, has the keys and I need to figure out how they'll give me a spare set, right? And, and that is that there is an element of that that is selling. I'm not asking you to lie. It should never be a lie. But I'm asking you to figure out how to talk to that person about what you can do for them. And I think some young product managers miss that because it's not in the, it's not in the book that they read. Right. Necessarily.

Speaker B: So I, I think the thing about selling is so important. I think the interesting thing for me about B2B versus B2C, we talked a lot about that. So I'm going to talk a little bit more about that. Um, when you're a consumer and you're buying something for yourself, a lot of it is around optimism and opportunity. You're buying something that's going to be cool. I mean, I, I recently bought a new road bike. I'd love to imagine I was like a professional cycle. I really am. Not particularly when I start going uphill, you know, and I'm, I'm too big, I'm too unfair, I'm too old, I'm never going to go. But I get on that bike and just a little bit of me feels like I am. Um, and it's amazing, it's super positive. If you look at B2B, basically most of the decisions, the decision making process is all about fear, it's all about reducing risk. Um, because most buyers are in a situation where there's 4, 5, 6, 20 suppliers that will give you a product that's good enough. Um, and typically the best product is not that much better than the average product. Um, it's probably a little bit better, but you know, at the end of the day, give it another six months, that average vendor will probably catch up, you know, so buyers want to buy from a supplier that's not going to let them down. So I think this risk, this fear, this wanting to be reassured, that's super important. I mean, that's great because we're seeing a lot of marketing, particularly getting taken over by AI, but there's still Definitely a need for people, because people are much better at reassuring than machines are.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's.

Speaker C: Oh, that is. And even if I think there's a. If there's a perception of machines, people are less. Less reassured. There was a, uh. Oh, there was an article I was reading where someone put out, like, a customer service agent. I don't remember what it was. I'm gonna. So I'm gonna get this totally wrong. No one correct me because I'm not gonna look at the comments. And it was like, you know, they had an AI agent named Trevor or something, and it had a really high satisfaction rate. And as soon as they told people that it was an agent versus a real human, they changed. Nothing else. The satisfaction rate dropped. Like, I think people still want to talk to people.

Speaker A: Right? Right. Um, yeah.

Speaker B: I mean, we work.

Speaker C: AI is good.

Speaker B: Yeah. So sorry, Marilyn. We. We work with a. A client who, um, supplies, you know, AI customer service. They supply these agents, and it's really interesting because you talk to them and their biggest concern is working out when to hand the conversation off from the AI agent to a real human. Because actually, if you've, for example, got a delayed flight and you type in, my flight's delayed, I need to, you know, to change it to another flight or, you know, it's been cancelled, please get me another flight. If the AI agent can go, I've booked you on this flight. Is this okay? You're done, you're happy? It's fine. If it gets complicated, if there's problems, then you start needing to get transferred over to that human. And so it's really interesting that there is an area where AI works, where machines work, where people trust them, but it's very transactional, I think, still, and where you need someone to empathize. I mean, having a chat bot empathize with it really doesn't work.

Speaker A: I mean, I'm now totally suspicious of all the AI that makes. That tells me I'm smart. Right? It's like, oh, that's a great idea. I'm like, it's not even a good idea. What do you mean it's a great idea?

Speaker C: Exactly. Right?

Speaker A: It's not even an idea. Like, stop it, ChatGPT. It's not even an idea. Right.

Speaker B: The new Chat GP is much, much better, actually. It's much less. Oh, you're awesome. That's amazing. I don't even know why I'm here, but I just.

Speaker A: I am. You're right. I am brilliant. If ever you need a booth, just go ask. It'll be you are. And it's like, am I as good at the competition? Yes. Meanwhile, the competition says the same thing. Right. So, yeah.

Speaker C: Good.

Speaker A: I want to ask one, um, question based on something else I saw in your profile. You have this kind of idea of, um, you know, the mo, like the nerds versus norms, like the normal people. Right. The moment that a product shifts from sort of early adopters to mainstream. Right. And how does that show up in B2B? And what should product managers do about it? How should they think about it?

Speaker B: That's such a great question. So nerds versus norms is a really interesting nerd phrase. Um, because it's actually interesting. I think most people think that really nerdy people are not that self aware. But actually most nerdy people know they're not norms, they're not real people. So it's okay. These real people are different and we don't understand them. Um, and actually, I mean, to answer your question directly, Leah, just go buy a book. There was a book written in, uh, 1980 something, I think, um, by Geoffrey, uh, Moore called Crossing the Chasm. Um, and anyone who's really old, like me, who was in technology back at the end of last century, God, that sounds so long ago. Um, would absolutely know this book. Um, and what he says was, you know, you get this normal product adoption curve that looks very much like a bell curve, you know, and you get the early adopters, you get the majority, and then you get the laggards. Um, and he said that's not true when it comes to technology. And he said the problem is you've got these people, um, and we call them nerds. He was much more polite. But, you know, basically people who love technology, who try technology out, who go and buy something because it's new and because it's, you know, does something you couldn't do before, they might find out it's rubbish and they never needed to do that thing in the first place. But they'll still buy it because it's really cool. Um, and that's a very different decision making process from norms of the ordinary people who look at it and go, is it really going to help me? Is it really going to benefit my life? I mean, I was using, gosh, uh, Palm Pilots. So, you know, back in the day, you two are probably too young to remember them.

Speaker A: No, no, we're not.

Speaker B: Back in the day, a few nerds had what was called PDAs, which was personal digital assistants. And they were little things you could write your calendar and, um, you know, it was like a diary. And they were fundamentally impractical and didn't work all the time and got things wrong and lost.

Speaker A: You know, stylist, too

Speaker B: little stylist. Right. And. And you couldn't write real letters. You had to write, like, fake letters because it couldn't recognize real ones. And. Yeah, just all sorts of really funny things. And nerds put up with it, and they were like, it's all worth it because I can have everything I need in this little machine. Um, and the Palm Pilot never crossed the chasm. It just stayed with nerds, basically. Um, whereas what happened was someone like Steve Jobs can really understand technology, and he can make technology very accessible and make it work. And I actually think one of Steve Jobs greatest achievements. If anybody uses an Apple product and there's a problem, the first reaction is to blame yourself. The Apple product crashes. You go, what have I done? What did I do wrong? Oh, no, it's me. Um, because people are so convinced it's going to work, and it's because he's so taken out this issue of complexity and problems and failures, and people just assume it's going to work. Um, and I think that's a great example of two different products. One that didn't cross the chasm and one that was straight over there and into the majority almost immediately.

Speaker A: Yeah, uh, that's true. I mean, I carried. I remember the moment that I had to make the decision to give up all the little keys on my BlackBerry for a phone that had a, you know, a stylist, you know, use my finger and all. And I was like, oh, I don't know, but I have these keys.

Speaker B: I'd argue that BlackBerry was actually a mainstream product. I mean, it wasn't as successful as the iPhone, but, yeah, I mean, a lot of people used it. It was great.

Speaker A: Marilyn and I were, uh. We built a product once, and a man that. Jeff Bezos. Let's just say it. I'll just cut to. It was like, will this work on my BlackBerry? And we were like, no, absolutely not. And we didn't. Luckily, we didn't have to say it. It wasn't us.

Speaker C: Yeah. It was someone else.

Speaker A: But to say, no, Jeff, you'll have to get a better phone than that. So we're like, no, it will not. So, all right, let's do Lightning Round. Are we ready? We can actually jump right into Lightning Round with that. With you talking about that, I would love to know what piece of technology you first fell in love with.

Speaker B: Oh, I first fell in love with. Yeah. So there was a home computer called the ZX80 in the UK. I don't know if you, you know, there's some listeners in the uk remember this, People outside won't. Um, and it was about the time that the first Apple computers came out. And it was famously advertised as being powerful enough to run a power station. Which I think was one of the first, if not the first, um, uh, cases where someone had to change an advert because it was lying about technology, certainly about lying, but it was so cool. And I got this computer. Uh, we had to wait. I think it was 10 months late in delivery. Um, and when it arrived it had certain little problems. Like to make it run and not get too hot, you had to put a cup of ice on the top of it. Um, so I ran my little ZX80 with a little cup of ice. But anyway, that was the first thing I really fell in love with. That was amazing.

Speaker A: I love that. Ah, Marilyn Witchers.

Speaker C: I mean, I think I realized over the course of this conversation that I'm a nerd and I don't know if I'd ever had that self realization or not.

Speaker A: So therapy.

Speaker C: Uh, I love everything on the, the things I'm currently obsessed about are, um, have you guys seen the flora plants? They're LED plants that react to either the weather or your music. Or like you can get little house plants or you can get huge tree installations. And I'm freaking obsessed. Um, so I'm obsessed with that. I don't need one. I'm trying to convince myself not to buy one. Um, I might be failing that. And then Leah also knows I, like, I really want a robot dog. Like I want a spot dog from Boston Dynamics to run around my property and like be my guard dog. And I love it. I love it. I'm the, I'm the early adopter. Like I'll buy it and love it even if it doesn't really work and then not use it ever again.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: I have, I have a whole closet full of dead bodies of things that I tried, have discarded.

Speaker A: She doesn't have dead bodies, people. Dear nsa, if you're listening, she does not have real dead bodies.

Speaker B: They're robots.

Speaker A: They're robots. Robot bodies. Technology bodies, not real bodies.

Speaker C: What about you, Leah?

Speaker A: No problem. Just making sure you're safe. Um, so my. For the first thing I remember falling in love with was I remember getting one of those little calculator watches. Oh yeah. And just being like, yes, I am now. So cool. Because I can calculate things on my wrist and it's like I couldn't do much, but I could do it on my wrist, right? And I was so happy about it. And that was a big deal in my family. Like, we, like, I had to save all my money. It was like a whole thing because we didn't have anything. And so that was like, all of my birthday money and, you know, anything I could save for a while. And I just remember being. And of course, it lasted a hot minute because it was ultimately, by our standards now a piece of junk. But at the time, it was real cool, right? So that was one thing. Um, and then I think just along the way, there have just been little moments where I was like, oh, yeah, that's cool. You know, I remember my first, like, actual Apple computer. And, you know, it was a bit of a beast and you had to, like, lug it around, you know, so. But I. But. But it was, you know, purple or whatever random color it was went back then that I could buy it in. Right. And it was just. I just loved those things, like, along the way, I've loved so many different things. And I'm like, that's. That's cool. Right? I'm, um. Marilyn and I were definitely early adopters, um, of everything they would let us test at Amazon. We were like, yes, sign me up. Yeah, I wanna. I'll test it. Right. So put me on the list. Okay. Um. What? So if you could make a marketing word or buzzword disappear, or technology. We'll use technology buzzwords, too. Disappear. What would it be? What. What phrase or concept would you just be like? Goodbye.

Speaker B: Oh, wow. So that's a really tough one.

Speaker A: Marilyn's ready.

Speaker B: Marin. Go on, Marilyn. You give me time to think.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah,

Speaker B: yeah. I mean, that's a tough one. I think I'd get rid of vanity metric.

Speaker A: Yes, please.

Speaker C: Why?

Speaker B: So it feels to me as though it's meant as an insult, but it sounds like it's an excuse.

Speaker A: Got it.

Speaker C: It is meant as an. I mean it as an insult when I say it.

Speaker B: Yeah, but kind of people use it as an excuse. It's like, well, you know, of course our CEO needs vanity metrics, so we've got to do it. And it's just like.

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker B: Yeah. Ah. It's just like. Okay, so, uh, you're kind of saying I'm going to do the wrong thing, but this is my excuse. Yes. I don't really like that. I think. I think we should get rid of that as a phrase because it, you know, you can blame someone else with it. It's down to the CEO's vanity. It's not. It's down to laziness.

Speaker C: Should I just say dumb metric then? Instead of

Speaker A: these dumb metrics, let's measure

Speaker C: your stupid metrics that make no sense.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I can't get rid of this because it's impossible to get rid of at this stage. But because I'm working in consumer right now, I wish that I could get rid of the Google quality score on websites. I wish that I could make Google the doom that is Google making me build pages that are shitty customer experiences. I wish I could make it go away. Right? I basically am like, it feels like they're over indexing on, you know, steroid, um, purchases and weight and like protein powders. Like buy now. Buy now. 30 off. Buy now. Like that's what Google, the Google vanity score quality score wants. Right? And I'm like, you can't do that on a page that needs actual experience. It's just lame. I don't want to put a click button here. Right. So it just. So it's finding that balance between good customer experience and feeding that particular beast when you're using ppc.

Speaker C: Right?

Speaker A: So that's my, I'm like, I know it's not exactly a buzzword, but I hate it. So, um, okay, last one. What habit? Uh, of like you were early on, you were an engineer. What engineer habit have you never shaken?

Speaker B: Oh, God, I love numbers. I'm sorry. I think it's, um, you know, having dist. Vanity metrics that only became popular because there were lots of numbers there and people felt good by them. I love numbers, but I love people who really understand numbers. Um, and I think can actually get information out of it and they can understand sample sizes when you come to looking at data.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, as an example, I mean, sample size is probably my pet peeve. Um, you know, people compare three, uh, three things and go, well, definitely thing A is bigger because this one is. And the other two are like, no, no. Um, so, so yeah, I think people who, who understand maths, I, I, I really like that. Talking numbers, talking data.

Speaker A: Love it. Marilyn, what would you ditch from your earlier versions of you?

Speaker C: Oh my gosh. I mean, what would I do? So I was just going to agree with everything.

Speaker A: Sorry, what would you keep? Not ditch.

Speaker C: What would you keep?

Speaker A: Sorry I changed this.

Speaker C: There was so much of my earlier life I would ditch. Uh, no, I, I'm gonna agree with Mike here. Um, like everybody should know this about me by now. But I like, I think there's A difference between qualitative and quantitative. I think you need both. I, um, think that understanding data is really, really important. Um, and agree with you, Mike. I hate it when people are like, this was 30% better. And you're like, yeah, ah, but what. It's also the hard number there. Because if it's 30% better because three people said it, it's not real. And you're just trying to make me do your thing by giving. By presenting the information in a way that tells your story instead of the whole story.

Speaker A: Yeah, because data's still using. Data can still be. There's still a storytelling element. Right. Like, so, um, so I was an accountant in the beginning of my career, so I. I mean, this week, this will be the fourth time I've made this comment that if you're $0.10 off, you could be $10,000 off. And so go find the difference. So if you try to reconcile something, if you're trying to get to the bottom of something, and you give up when there's just a tiny thing you don't know, that thing you don't know might be huge. And I think that's true. When you're writing code, I think it's true. When you have an outage, I think it's true. When the money's missing, I think it's true. It's true. It's true. Because the tiny thing you see could be a bottomless, uh, pit. When you open it up, we just. You just don't know. So you gotta go find. You gotta go chase it.

Speaker C: I love that. It reminds me of a place where we used to work, where we used to talk about leakage a lot. And I was, like, floored by the fact that we just accepted that, yeah,

Speaker A: these accounts won't balance. Marilyn and I are like, what?

Speaker C: Why is that an okay answer? I don't understand.

Speaker A: Exactly. So, yeah, super true, Mike.

Speaker C: Thank you.

Speaker A: This was so much fun.

Speaker B: Leah. Uh, M. Marilyn, thank you. I've really enjoyed it. It's been a great conversation.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's been so much fun. Thank you for coming and sharing your wisdom and having a fun conversation with us. We always enjoy learning something new and getting to talk about things that we find fun.

Speaker C: Wait, when is your book. When is your next book coming out, Mike?

Speaker B: Yeah, my next book. Sorry.

Speaker C: I feel like you should write one. I feel like there's a book here, my friend.

Speaker B: So I have written a book which is probably not going to excite many members of the, uh, audience. So I wrote a book about my speed skating club.

Speaker C: Oh.

Speaker B: So about nearly 10 years ago now, it had its hundredth birthday, and we read a book, and there were three of us, and we got together and we got all the history, and it was really awesome. And we actually ended up selling. And believe it or not, there's about 200 people involved in speed skating in the UK and we sold about 200 copies. Um, so I didn't get rich on it, but it was super fun. Um, so, yeah, that's nearly 10 years ago. Maybe I should write another book.

Speaker C: You should write another book.

Speaker A: The B2B world needs it.

Speaker C: Yes, it does.

Speaker A: Awesome. All right, well, everyone, thanks for joining us once again, and we will see you in the next episode. Thanks again, Mike. Bye, everybody. Thank you,

Speaker B: Sam.