Employee Engagement and Customer Experience: Fixing the Engagement Deficit

Stephen Baer: Gallup poll reports that 79% of employees worldwide are quiet, quitting, disengaged at work. The uh level productivity is significantly down. That's 9% of the global GDP. That's equal to the UK, Spain and Italy combined. Their entire GDP.

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Stephen Baer: Uh, one.

Corey: Hello everyone and welcome to the B2B Revenue Executive Experience. I'm your host, Corey, and today I'm talking to Stephen baer. He's a two time entrepreneur with more than 30 years of experience spanning gaming, corporate leadership and entrepreneurship. He's the co founder and managing partner of Engagency, a uh, firm specializing in behavioral expertise to foster employee and customer loyalty. Earlier in his career he served as director of marketing at Atari and was part of General Electric's prestigious sales and marketing leadership program, earning Six Sigma black belt certifications and GE's global marketing excellence award. His new book, how to build Unbreakable Connections with Employees and Customers for Life was released in February 2026 and is a practical playbook on creating forever engagement through emotional connections, purpose and trust. Steven, welcome to the show.

Stephen Baer: Thanks so much for having me. Looking forward to today's conversation.

Corey: Yeah, m. I'm excited to get into it, particularly about the hard links that you've discovered between, you know, the employee experience and the customer experience. You know, I'm 100% on board with that. I believe that. I believe personally they are linked and the data backs it up. So really excited to get going on that. But first I want to start with your journey. Right, so walk me through, like how does an art history major become a marketing leader who then becomes an employee engagement and customer experience expert?

Stephen Baer: I wish I knew. No, I do know. I do know. Uh, so yeah, I um, I did leave college as an art history major. Trying to figure out what can I do that's creative and will make me some money. So I went into marketing and uh, you know, started on the PR side and advertising side and um, I enjoyed it. I got, you know, first I was on the agency side of the business and I got exposed to so many businesses and learned about where things were going really well, where things were going really poorly and saw a lot of trends. Went back and got my MBA at Columbia and decided to go in house, uh, which was great. GE was a phenomenal experience. It gave me certainly exposure to a 300,000 person organization and multiple divisions and luckily got to do one of those post MBA rotation programs where you get exposed to so many great people and so many great projects. But I realized that I wanted to do something smaller and potentially a little more creative than what, uh, industrial business offers. So I went over to Atari and that's kind of kicked off the chapter of my career for the last few decades. What was really interesting, exciting about Atari and the video game industry as a whole is that you as a marketer are kind of unleashed to do whatever you can to get consumers engaged. And you can have a lot of fun with that. And when you build a great game that consumers are engaged with, they're not just playing the game, they're talking about the game, they're sharing the game, they're, um, collaborating with others, they're building a community. They're doing a lot of your hard work for you as a marketer. And it really made me start to think, well, if that magic can happen in that space, how can other industries tap into that? And so I spent the last two decades since then really working on trying to figure out how you build that level of engagement both internally with your employees and externally with your customers. And they are so linked. And I'm excited to talk about that today.

Corey: I think it's a powerful example. I mean, an, uh, answer to my next question, which was going to be what was that particular moment? And it sounds like at Atari, you know, you, you see these fan bases, these like community evangelists, sort of like creating themselves and then want to bring it in. Think about how you bring that in. Yeah, that's a, that's a powerful example.

Stephen Baer: Yeah, I mean that any marketer's dream, or any brand's dream, right. Like, who doesn't want your consumers to be talking about you? And you know, I think about that a lot. Right. Is that I talk about like the experience economy, um, in my book, and certainly something I've been talking about for, at work for years, is if you think about brands, we, we typically have either fairly positive experiences or fairly negative experiences. As brands, I don't think we really think about the dayto day where a brand doesn't really rub us one way or another. Right. I bring that up because whether it's really positive or really negative, we're going to probably share that experience with a friend or 10 or 20. Right. So we need to be doing everything we can as leaders, as marketers, as, you know, Executives, period, across any function, to think about how do we make that brand experience absolutely phenomenal for our employees and absolutely phenomenal for our customers. And it's not easy. Right. But there's certainly things that tried and true across different industries.

Corey: Yeah, no, I absolutely agree. And I was struck by a point that you made on one of your recent LinkedIn posts where you said, leaders who stopped managing tasks and start design experiences see a third of the turnover and 8x more revenue per employee. And I was thinking, whoa, uh, that, I mean, that's a wake up call for me personally as a leader. Right. And also thinking at a high level, you know, for revenue leaders out there who are listening to the show and thinking like, hey, my team's respected, they're paid well, they have the tools, you know, I expect them to just show up and get it done. It's like that opens a whole nother door in my mind if you're talking 8x more revenue per employee. So can you kind of walk us through where that set came from and what's behind it?

Stephen Baer: Yeah. So that stat. And one more. Well, I'll give you in a second. Come from great places to work, um, study and that they call out, you know, the top 50 organizations that are really, uh, practicing those very things. Right. The other stat that I often, um, will couple with it from their study is that they are outpacing the S and P by 3 and a half times. So if you can have one third of the turnover, eight times more revenue, and you're beating the market by that much significance, why would you do anything otherwise? And I think that a lot of organizations, they'll take the shortcut. Right. They will say, look, ultimately I need to get this quarter's revenue or I need to get this month's revenue in. I can't focus on my people right now. I just got to get this deal closed. But if you just stop for a moment and you focus on your, your people. Something I focus on a lot, uh, is, uh, turning managers into coaches and we'll talk about that, hopefully. And servant leadership. I think those two things can be absolutely transformational to most organizations. And the organizations that are on that list really focus on that, you know, consistently across the board.

Corey: Yeah. And I think it's something we're going to be really aligned on because, you know, at Value Selling, we're a sales methodology and training company. And recently I was working on with some of my clients, um, for their nominations for the Stevia Awards. And almost uniformly across the board, whether, you know, There were companies that are coming off a couple bad years or companies that are coming off in great years and wanted to go even higher. They all had that argument in play, right? There were people that were saying, we gotta keep pushing, we can't slow down now. But every, almost every one of those companies did that. They paused, they looked at, you know, one like, what kind of employee experience are we creating? Are we giving the people like the tools they need to succeed? And I also like, how is that translating to the customer experience? And that's. It can be scary, right? You have to slow down. But when you do slow down and hit pause, the, the opportunity to ramp beyond that is significant.

Stephen Baer: And I think that we could probably all think of different examples of organizations hopefully that we've been at where we've seen that in play. I'll start back in my, you know, really early in my career when I was on the agency side as a, you know, young 20 something year old and my, you know, the CEO of the organization was know, uh, 1.3 or 4 levels above me. And by the time I left, you know, I directly reported into him. But what he did was magical, right? He had, you know, an organization not huge, maybe about 1200 employees, but he ran it as a very flat and very entrepreneurial organization where whether you were 20 something years old or 60 something years old, you had the equal say. You could come in with an idea and it would be listened to. And there are lots of organizations that do a phenomenal job of that, you know, on a much larger scale. You know, Salesforce is certainly known for doing a really good job of that, where anyone could present, uh, what they believe is a transformational idea to the organization and it will be received and listened to and considered. And I think that's really important whether you're a small, medium or large organization because you never know where your innovation is going to come from. You never know where your growth is going to come from or, you know, insights that you may not have because you're looking at it with a very different lens.

Corey: That's an excellent point. And I know we're going to dive into, you know, that more transformational side of things and how the employee experience transitions and filters down to the customer experience. But first, I do want to zero in specifically on the employee side a little bit more. And you've talked a lot about the engagement deficit. How do you define that engagement deficit and why do you believe it's, you know, one of the most overlooked threats to an org today?

Stephen Baer: First of all, Let me quantify, um, what, uh, you know, Gallup Poll said is an $8.8 trillion deficit. Right? Meaning that, uh, because once again, Gallup poll reports that 79% of employees worldwide are quiet, quitting, disengaged at work. The level of productivity is significantly down and to kind of maybe, uh, give a sense as to what $8.8 trillion is. Right. That's 9% of the global GDP. That's equal to the UK, Spain and Italy combined, their entire GDP. So not insignificant. Right. Like, and what's getting us there? Right. You know, people have every tool at their disposal, but they are really checked out to a large degree. Customers are switching brands, employees are quitting their managers. And I think that's an important point. They're not quitting companies, they're quitting their managers often because they don't feel seen or heard or developed. So, I mean, that's the engagement deficit. You're losing people because you're not putting time or effort into that. On the flip side, we see that the organizations that do are hitting those numbers that we talked about earlier. The, you know, significantly dropped off in, in turnover, 1/3, 1/3, 8 times more revenue per employee, and beating that market by three and a half times. And it's just, it's a, it's a corporate mindset of am I going to spend time on my people, am I going to develop them, am I going to really make them feel seen, heard, grown, or am I going to take shortcuts? And that's where the deficit's coming from.

Corey: Uh, it's an excellent point to make, and I think it's really timely right now because we see a lot of businesses continuing to pour billions into AI and yes, AI is powerful, but we haven't seen a lot of hard returns in many cases on those numbers. And, you know, we, we see some businesses, you know, axing half their staff overnight in terms of AI. Right. So I think there's a real prevailing, I don't want to call it wisdom, because I frankly don't think it is. But, you know, there's a, there's prevailing attitude right now that, hey, we can, you know, it's the whole, we can always do more with less. And now it's a time where people are thinking they can do a whole lot more with less. But I, uh, what would you, what would you say in this moment, like, why it's especially vital to. Yes, maybe AI can give you advances, yes, maybe you need some restructuring based on that. But it really does come back to People a lot of the time. And that, that is sort of the backbone.

Stephen Baer: Yeah. Well, so, uh, like every, everyone else in the corporate world, AI has certainly been, um, front and center for me. And one of the things that I've been working on with a lot of our clients, uh, is navigating what that means within their organizations. I'm seeing that the organizations that are winning are the ones that are using AI to amplify, um, or to facilitate humanity but not replace it. And so what do I mean by that? You know, I look at organizations like Ritz Carlton who do I think a phenomenal job of using AI to power a lot of the information that really almost any employee has at their disposal about their customers. The reality is, is that, uh, whether I'm at the front desk or I'm a maid or I am someone else in the organization, if you come to me with an issue, first of all, I can quickly look up who you are, what we know about you, and I can have a conversation with you based on everything that we know about what's important to you, not just as a generic customer. That's pretty powerful. Right. And that really empowers me to meet you where you are, but it doesn't replace me. Right. I don't think a machine can do that and uh, deliver that level of empathy and that level of connectivity that humans are capable of doing. You know, sadly, maybe eventually we'll be able to. I hope not. I, uh, think that will put a lot of people out of work. But right now it's an amplifier and I think it's an important one.

Corey: But for sure, for sure, I agree. I gotta self track, so I want to learn more about this. You know, how did you Quantify, was

Stephen Baer: it 8 trillion, oh, $8.8 trillion? Yep. That comes from a Gallup poll.

Corey: Okay.

Stephen Baer: Yeah. Uh, and it's phenomenal. Once again, when you just look at the 9, 9% of the global GDP is pretty impactful. And so, you know, certainly need to be thinking about how do we avoid that. Right. You know, one of the things that I think about is organizations that really connect with their employees see a much greater return overall. And so, you know, I, I think I often talk about a marketing campaign that Apple had In the early 80s, um, which was the Think different campaign. And obviously in their case they were targeting consumers. But in many ways I think that marketing campaign, it could be a playbook for how organizations to be running their internal companies. And so if we remember what the things were, was honor, individuality, um, celebrate curiosity Question norms, encourage dissent, and expect breakthrough ideas. Right. And if we as managers kind of treated our employee base that way, where we really think about who they are and let them loose and give them agency to be successful in our organizations, there's a lot we see that comes to the surface that would not otherwise.

Corey: Uh, it's definitely an important point. And, uh, so I think we've been traveling down the path of the benefits, right? It's so tempting to say, like, hey, we get it, right? Here's what it's going to do. We're going to chip away at that deficit. But I suspect that there are many organizations and many leaders out there that are operating in good faith. You know, they might think everything's fine, or they might be running a management playbook, you know, that, um, subconsciously, like, they grew up on, Right. It was the management playbook that was implemented on them. And, you know, whether or not they've really critically dived into it, that's kind of what they've moved forward with and it seems to be working. But what are some of those hidden signs that you do have an engagement deficit going on right now?

Stephen Baer: Yeah, well, so I think when you think about what's the culture feel like, is there a level of toxicity? Right. I think that when you think about, are, uh, people collaborating, is there innovation happening? Right. What's the morale feel like? And I think those are all, all really important ones. You know, is there a sense of micromanagement? Is there a sense of that's not how we do it here? Right. Well, okay, maybe that's not how you did it there five years ago, but should we reconsider that? You know, I think all those things, I think that, you know, so that's the first thing is thinking about what's the general feeling. And by the way, the general feel it might be very different on the executive level, on, um, the front, you know, front line. And so I think you need to kind of really look at that carefully and honestly and figure that out. One of the things that I did in writing this book and, uh, is focusing on organizations that have done things incredibly well, organizations that do things really poorly, and organizations that have transformed over time. And so, you know, one of the ones that I love, uh, to talk about is Microsoft, uh, and I talk about it under the leadership of Steve Ballmer, where they did see that toxic culture, right? There was a lot of competition as opposed to collaboration. There was really slow innovation, morale was very low. And when Satya Nadella came in, you saw a lot of things change. Right from the top down. You saw collaboration was front and center. There was a huge innovation rebound. Uh, it was not just Steven's success. It was the entire team that Steven was part of being successful. Right. And I think it's important not just talk about all those things that might feel good, but what was the impact on the business? And you saw that both of them. Steve Ballmer ran the business for about 10 years. Satya Nadella has been running the business for about 10 years right now. And you saw a gigantic spike in Those same timeframes, 10 years of both revenue and profit. And I can give you five more examples like that where that is consistent. If you change the tone and the expectations and the openness to your, uh, people to kind of run with it, and you give them agency to do so, and you give them instructions on how to do so, and you coach them along the way. Not micromanage, but coach them along the way. You see the gigantic lifts.

Corey: Absolutely. And I kind of want to dive into the Microsoft example a, uh, little bit. So at a high level, what were some of the symptoms that were immediately identifiable, you know, when that leadership change happened, and then what was. What were some examples of the new playbook that was put into place?

Stephen Baer: I think the big thing was the competition was really, uh, big. And this was across the business. A lot of people were pinned against each other. And, you know, if you think about any organization, it's pretty rare that any organization sees a win because of me or you. You typically see an organization because of what we've all done together or what different people have done together. And it's important to recognize that, you know, we think about often the ones who get elevated within organizations. They often get elevated because they're the loudest or the most politically savvy, but they're not doing it themselves. And so that was a big thing that, uh, you know, people were pinned against each other, was very, very competitive. I also, there was a lot of bureaucracy in the organization that was really preventing them from being as innovative as a lot of their competitors were, you know, during Steve Ballmer's, uh, watch. And, you know, I think that the biggest thing that Satya Nadella did under his leadership when he first came in was to think about how do we build an organization focused on collaboration and how do we build an organization focused on shared success? Now, you know, every organization has, I think, their own, you know, success, uh, components. I think those are the two that are most important under his leadership. And it really did change the culture tremendously. If you talk to people who, um, you know, spanned both of their leadership, you'll. You'll hear that consistently.

Corey: Um, it's such an important point too, because a lot of times, you know, I'm just going to say for all leaders out there, you know, be mindful of the loudest person in the room a lot of times. I think that's advice that we all need to hear time and time again. And also I think that it's easy to confuse collaboration with competition in some environments and that it merits a hard look.

Stephen Baer: I would agree with you on that.

Corey: Going off that, uh, I think that a lot of leaders also, and I myself have been guilty of this, using engagement and connection interchangeably. But I'm getting the sense that they're very different terms to you. So can you dive into that a little bit more and help us out?

Stephen Baer: Yeah, this is something that I'm really passionate about. So, um, I often will look at connection, engagement, and a liking connection to Velcro and engagement to glue. And so what do I mean by that? Velcro sticks really fast. Um, Velcro's super convenient. Velcro works until it's under pressure, and then it splits. Splits apart really easily. Glue. It takes more time. It requires chemistry. It holds when things get messy. And so this goes back to what I was talking about earlier, which is like the. Don't take shortcuts. Right. Ultimately, you want to build your business off of engagement. You want that hold, and you want that hold with both your employees and with your customers. And so when I think about both those things, I talk about just starting in the customer space. I talk about connection. I'll give you two examples. Maybe let's look at, like, the apparel space Sheen, which is a, uh, you know, gigantic brand out of China that, you know, sells over, uh, 6,000 new SKUs. They bring 6,000 new SKUs to the market every day. All right, that's crazy. I don't think any other brand does that. Right. And they sell to, you know, kids, like my teenage daughters, you know, and, uh, who will look, uh, and get the cheapest, most amazing algorithm, you know, generated design, and have it at her front door within two days, uh, you know, for a fraction of what you, uh, would pay from M anywhere else. And how are they doing that? Right. They're connecting with her. They're looking at the way that she's searching things. They're looking at. They're, you know, certainly taking all of her data. They're, you know, in some cases, Presenting things to her that haven't even been designed, I mean, haven't been, you know, constructed yet. You know, they're using her data, they're using trends, they're using hyper personalization, they're staying consistently in front of her. So that's a lot of connection. Right. They're looking at her and they're using technology. Now I'll contrast that with a different brand, Life is Good, which is a brand that really speaks to me. Right. Life is Good is, uh, it's a 30 year old brand that, you know, they basically are focused on, um, lots of, you know, silly little, you know, designs that talk about positivity. It's a message that sticks with me. It's that, you know, different scenarios of their characters stick with me because I can relate to them. And I have stuff of theirs for 20 plus years now and I'll buy something every year or two. Am I spending the same amount as she is? No. Do I have a much larger amount of engagement with their brand and, and association? And will I stick with them and be loyal a lot longer than she will until the next cheap brand comes out? Absolutely. You know, and I think that's the difference, right. There's connection that is using technology and goodness knows we have all the technology at our fingertips. And there's engagement, which is really leaning into the way we feel our emotions, our heartstrings, and that's what creates loyalty.

Corey: I love it. I love the example. And I, um, would. And I can't resist being a nerd here because I'm looking at the COVID of the book and I noted immediately that it was PVA glue or for listeners that don't know what that means, white glue. And you're thinking, right? You're thinking, uh, oh, that's the glue I used as a kid on art projects and stuff like that. And yes, however, any woodworker out there, anyone who's ever worked in a wood shop, will know this if you give it the time to set up. Yes, it takes longer. Like you said, like super glue. 30 seconds, you'll be done PVA glue a few hours in some cases. But once it sets, it is so incredibly strong for something that's so cheap, so easy to work with.

Stephen Baer: And it's worth taking the time, right? It's worth the extra few hours because otherwise you take a shortcut and you're unhappy with how it turns out.

Corey: Exactly.

Stephen Baer: Yeah.

Corey: Okay. Stephen, you often frame this conversation within a broader context of sort of the experience economy. So for listeners like myself who aren't really familiar with that. Uh, what does that mean? And sort of what distinguish as a company that's excelling at the experience economy versus one who's maybe lagging behind.

Stephen Baer: Every time we interact with the brand, we're having some level of experience, right? It may be one that we forget. It might be really positive, it might be really negative. I often use the example of Trader Joe's. Um, if you're not familiar with Trader Joe's, it's a grocery, uh, store chain, I think maybe have something like 400 locations across the US and what I love about them is a few things. One is every time you interact with anyone who works there, it is a very pleasant experience. In fact, part of their job is to just be as helpful as possible to any consumer. And you see it, right? If you want to know where something is, they don't tell you aisle four. They walk you over to aisle four, they show you the box, they'll tell you about the ingredients versus anything else they have there. If you need them to open it up, they're in. They're encouraged to open up the product and show you the product. I mean, like, who gets that anywhere else, right? And by the way, they do it with a Hawaiian shirt and a smile on their face at the same time. And like, you know, that is an experience. That's an experience that makes me want to go back there the next time there's a, a story that I was like, this can't be, this can't be real. But it apparently is because they have it on their site. Um, this was back, you know, maybe about 15 years ago, uh, during a gigantic snowstorm. This 89 year old in the middle of Pennsylvania was stuck in his apartment and his daughter called all the grocery stores around to see would anyone deliver some food to him. And the person gets on the phone from Trader Shows and they said, well, we don't do that, but yeah, I'll do it, sure. And you know, and they kind of talked to, well, what do you want me to get this? And want to get this and get this? And he went and shopped, um, and brought all this stuff, brought it over to the person's house, you know. And the reason I bring that up is the other thing that's phenomenal about Trader Joe's is it's about giving people the agency to do what's right for the customer and giving people the agency to do what's right for the organization. And so that's not in their handbook. Their handbook isn't we Deliver or we don't deliver it is be helpful. And so that's what they're doing. That's the positive experience that you have there. And you can have just as bad an experience with a brand. That's the experience economy. And it pays, pays really well for organizations that do positively, and it really hinders the results of organizations that don't.

Corey: That's such a fantastic example. And yes, I will speak to the Trader Joe's experience. Uh, I don't know if it's because I grew up on the east coast, moved out to Colorado, um, nearly 15 years ago at this point, but I remember the first time walking into a Trader Joe's and everyone was friendly, everyone was helpful, alarmingly. So where I'm thinking like, yeah, what's going on here? You know, it's like almost a little bit disarming. Like are some grocery store culture cultures. Everyone here just fantastically well paid. But you know what's. But yeah, no, that's such a good story. Right. I love it. Coming back to the agency, you know,

Stephen Baer: and by the way, uh, two. Two other things to mention about them. Um, one is that they overstaff in comparison to all their competitors. So because they want to make sure that people could be on the floor and able to help as much as possible. And by the way, because they give them that flexibility, their turnover is much lower. Um, so they don't have the extra cost. It kind of offsets the cost of overstaffing with the cost of having to recruit and hire and train. Right. So it. That's a pretty break even. Um, the other stat that's worth mentioning is if you look at their profitability as a percentage of revenue, they are outpacing all the major players by somewhere between 2 and 10% in, in total profitability. So you're like, they're doing it right. They're not taking the shortcuts. They're focusing on what's right for the business, right for the customer, right for the employee. And the results show. Wow. Wow.

Corey: And I think it's also worth noting that it's pretty affordable too. We're not talking like a luxury good chains for anyone not, not familiar with this. So. Yeah, that's incredible.

Stephen Baer: Last thing get on my, uh, my soapbox for Trader Joe's. But you know, the other thing that's interesting about them is if you look at their SKU count is significantly smaller than most of the large players out there. So you think to yourself, okay, well, that's not great. Right? That's kind of inconvenient for most consumers. And the point is, is that consumers don't care. Right? M. Maybe some do, but the reality is they have a longevity, they have a loyalty. It's not. People aren't looking at, is this convenient? They're saying, is this giving me what I need? And, you know, is it giving me enough of what I need? And the answer is, 99% of the time, yes. And that's what every brand wants.

Corey: Yep. I mean, uh, that goes back to some classic marketing advice that I think, uh, a lot of marketers forget, myself included, is that, you know, you don't always have to have something new to talk about. Sometimes it's equally, if not more effective to just talk more loudly about the one thing that you do exceptionally well. And, you know, in traders Joe's case, it's not 10 types of garlic cheesy bread. It's the garlic cheesy bread gondolas, which I will buy every time. But anyway, so getting back to, uh, this employee engagement versus the customer, uh, engagement sort of dichotomy there, Steven, you've often argued that you need to start with the employees, and then that will translate to the customer experience. Why is that?

Stephen Baer: Look, when we engage with any brand, let's take Trader Joe's as an example. Again, if I went in there and the guy was. Or the gal was grumpy or dismissive or, you know, lack the social skills that I expect when I'm going to talk to anyone I'm going to buy from, would I come back? Would I even stay? The answer is probably not. Right? That behavior that you generate from your employees is infectious. When they're happy and they're smiling and they're curious. As a consumer, I'm probably gonna. That's gonna rub off on me. And I may be the same way. Right. When you know that every time you come to Trader Joe's, Stephen is working there and he's gonna be there. Well, you have a sense of loyalty to not only the brand, but Steven and comfort. And so it absolutely starts with making sure that your employees are where they need to be emotionally and are able to deliver that personality, um, and sense of invitation to your consumers. And when you do, your customer experience is gonna be great. It's gonna have great business results. And you gotta reinvest that right back into your employees. Because that cycle, that engagement cycle, is critical to any business.

Corey: It's such an excellent point. And, you know, it's something that we often say a lot of times is like the interaction, like, you Said most of the time it happens with a customer service person, it happens with a salesperson. Right. Is that, that's the customer's experience of your brand? Right. Uh, sales is so much the ambassador for your brand in many cases. So one that's going to, uh, you know, fundamentally change how the customer experiences your brand. And also depending on that interaction, I think you're kind of like training the customer in a way. If the salesperson, you know, if you operate down a traditional path, you're going to negotiate hard, there's going to be discount and all this. You're to going, you train the customer to come back and do that same thing at renewal.

Stephen Baer: A hundred percent, 100%. And by the way, if you think about, you know, who is front and center to your customer, some organizations, it's, it's everybody. Right? So, you know, I go back to the Ritz Carlton example that we were talking about earlier. Whether you are a maid, whether you're in concierge, whether you are a manager, you are able to offer the customer up to $2,000 to address any issue that they're experiencing without going to your manager. And so it's ingrained in their organization that we want this customer experience to be amazing and we're all going to entitled to do our part to make that happen. Um, and I think that that is really important for any organization to kind of take that, that approach.

Corey: Yeah, no, I think, I think they should take that approach because otherwise, I mean, look at, look at what's the traditional approach, right? It's like as a customer, you know, you're taught to escalate because that, that's what has to happen. Right. But what, what happens when people escalate? They're rude a lot of times, they're confrontational. Right. And so it just creates one, it creates a drag on the employee experience. The customer is working themselves up to make, you know, to go up to the next level to be upset so that they can get what they want. However, like you just said, if you took care of it right there, if it was easy, that's just easy for everyone. It makes, it makes sense.

Stephen Baer: And not only is it easy for everyone, but going back to kind of the, you know, experience economy, right? If I have a bad experience and something goes wrong and the maid tells me, I will make sure that $2,000 is taken off your bill, am I going to keep that to myself or am I going to probably tell 10 friends or family members? This is why I go there. I expect excellence. Something went wrong. They took care of it. And I didn't have to even talk to 10 levels. I said it to one person and it was addressed. And I think that is what people expect more and more in today's economy is they expect to be pampered, they expect to be taken care of. If you want their loyalty, you need to do right by them early and often.

Corey: Absolutely. Um, couldn't agree more. Okay, Stephen, as we move toward the end of the show, there are two questions we ask every guest. And the first one is, we're recording this in March of 2026. Let's fast forward. Let's go five years out, it's 2031. What's the biggest shift that you see coming for the employee experience that not a lot of other leaders are talking about right now?

Stephen Baer: A lot of organizations, when they talk about the employee experience, they talk about the amazing kitchens or the amazing gym that you have, or the unlimited, uh, days off that you can take, although you can't because you're shunned for doing so. Right. Like, at the end of the day, those things that are kind of gimmicky, they prove over and over and over again not to, uh, deliver the results for, uh, employees. And so whether I see this coming or I hope this is coming, it's really more of a hope is that more organizations will see that it's less about, uh, having an incredible cappuccino, uh, maker, but more about having incredible managers. And I'll even change that to say, incredible coaches. Gary Ridge, who is the, uh, now former CEO, um, and chairman emeritus of WD40, talks about changing all, uh, managers into coaches. You know, one of the things that we see is that 60% of new managers fail and move out of that role within two years across industries. And, you know, this is for a variety of reasons, but, you know, we're seeing that they're insufficiently trained, they have lack of leadership, uh, skills, they have the inability to delegate poor emotional intelligence, all the above. Right. And so one of the things that I think organizations need to do, and I hope more and more will, is focus on that middle management level to make sure that they are empowered to really help provide the people below them with everything they need to grow.

Corey: Yeah.

Stephen Baer: Right. And I think with that, that outcomes really true employee engagement as opposed to surface level stuff.

Corey: Yeah. I mean, that distinction, you know, the manager versus coach, it's. It's a trap we've been falling into for, uh, God knows how many years. Right. It's you. It's the classic formula of you, hey, someone's a good individual contributor. You promote them to a manager and then you give them no training and have no idea they have the skill set to actually coach. And a lot of times what you tell them from a leadership perspective you want them to do is you, you want them to just monitor the people below them and report on them. Right? It's like a numbers coming up, the food chain type deal. But yeah, like you said, that's why there's so much churn. That's why there's so much, so many bottlenecks and so many problems right at that middle management level, because people just aren't developed. Right. And they, they don't have the tools they need.

Stephen Baer: Bob Chapman over at Barry Wehmiller, um, if you're not familiar with them, they're, um, a industrial manufacturing, uh, company that builds like, huge equipment for, like Coca Cola or for trucking companies, whatever, right. They have 12,000 employees. And I love what Bob Chapman says. He says that every One of his 12,000 employees are somebody's son or daughter, husband or wife, brother or sister, mother or father, and that in the 40 hours a week that they are at his company that are under his care, and he needs to make sure that they are taken care of and growing in that timeframe. And by the way, under his leadership, they've grown from 18 million to $4 billion in business. So he's doing something right. He has the mindset of, I'm going to take care of my people and I'm going to grow them and I'm going to treat them like they're my own children. And I know that sounds incredibly cheesy and probably a lot harder than most people want to do, right? Or maybe people don't treat their children that nicely. I'm not sure. But, you know, the point is, is that if you shift your mindset to this, is someone here in the case of managers, and then for managers in the case of employees that I'm going to spend time on, everyone's going to win over and over again for sure.

Corey: For sure. Okay, final question for you. Uh, looking back on your own career this time, going back five, 10, maybe even 15 years into the past, what's one piece of advice you would give your younger self and why?

Stephen Baer: I think I would continue to. I've been very lucky in that I've run two companies and I've surrounded myself with absolutely brilliant people and quite honestly, good people. And I, you know, I think that, that I would say don't change that, right? I think that it's so easy as a manager to be. To feel like you're the most important or the best or the smartest person in the room. And quite honestly, you set the temperature for that room. And to me, I'm there to learn. I wanna learn from everyone around me, uh, whether they are my clients, whether my employees, whether my colleagues, whether my bosses. And I think that I would keep that mindset because it served me really well.

Corey: Yep, that's a fantastic mindset to have. Okay, well, hey, Stephen, this was a lot of fun. Thanks so much for joining us on the show. If people wanna learn, we're gonna more about you, more about stickology. Where should they go?

Stephen Baer: So stickology you can get at any book, uh, store out there, uh, which is great. To learn a little more about me, uh, you can go to Stephen Baer dot com. Um, that's S T E P-H-E N B A E R dot com and love to chat. If you're looking for any, any just nuggets of, uh, experience or, uh, insights, um, I'm happy to share. So thanks so much and, uh, appreciate you having me on.

Corey: Our pleasure. Thank you.

Narrator: You've been listening to the B2B revenue executive experience. To ensure that you never miss an episode, subscribe to the show in itunes or your favorite podcast player. Thank you so much for listening. Until next.