Industrial Strength Marketing

The 5 Key Factors to Accelerating a Manufacturer’s Growth with Keith Pigues, Luminas Strategy

• D. Keith Pigues • Season 3 • Episode 21

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Is your manufacturing customer at the center of  your business? They better be! Keith Pigues , co-founder of Luminas Strategy, shares his secret sauce to centering on the customer and  accelerating the growth rate of a manufacturing  business. This is a not to miss episode. 

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About the Show:

The Industrial Strength Marketing Show is a top manufacturing podcast that explores the personalities, cutting-edge strategies, tools, and technologies transforming the industrial and manufacturing sectors. Each episode, hosted by James Soto, covers marketing, sales, business development, and integrating martech and AI into industrial B2B strategies. Tune in to gain actionable insights to help you stay ahead in the industry.

Let’s connect:

Keith Pigues:

It's a secret sauce. So we ask our clients customers, right? Yeah, your supplier could do anything for you that would help you achieve your growth, strategic growth goals and objectives as you look out over the next three, five years, right? What would you have them do? In fact, your supplier is giving you their checkbook today, figuratively, and you get to write checks to invest in the suppliers business on your behalf. Oh, we get to actually determine where they're going to invest the service. Yes. So tell us a little bit about where you're going. Strategically, what's most important to you, and what you'd like the supplier to invest in? Fascinating, I'm telling you, right? We do. And we are always surprised, right? And our clients are always surprised.

James Soto:

Welcome to the industrial Marketing Show. Hi, I'm James Soto. I'm the founder and industrial marketer of industrial, a leading agency trusted by iconic brands around the world. I'm here to sit down with leaders, with marketers, with people concerned with their part in addressing the growth agenda of an industrial business. And it's all about on this show, making marketing the strength of your business today we're gonna sit down with Keith de guerra is he's the CEO and founder of Luminous strategy. He's gonna share his insights, things that affect growth and insights driven decision making, so that it can help everyone here make more of an impact into marketing that matters. So Keith is going to bring a lot of discussion, a lot of context and experience. He's founded Luminous, and that is a consultancy, that's worked with fortune 1000 companies all the way through mid market, they have a really great point of view around customer value acceleration. And they're going to really talk about insights and competitive intelligence as a way to really make more confident growth minded decisions that he's worked with like real industrials here. This is Eastman Chemical, you know, GE Cisco Systems, Sealed Air and like a lot others. And so he's also bringing the lens of the marketer so he is active in the C suite capacity as a chief marketing officer for the likes of Honeywell automotive, Cemex USA RR Donnelley bringing media and that aspect of the business as well. And so he's going to share stories, real context. So if you want to grow, you really want to look at addressing your growth agenda. This is the show for you. Let's get started. Keith, you know what, we never went down and addressed how do we exactly pronounce your last name? That's why I'm not saying it. So could you introduce yourself emphasizing your last name and for entertainment and for those just listening to the podcast and another video on the YouTube channel? I think Keith is probably one of the most handsome man people I've ever seen. So so he's just looking great today. So Keith, tell us a little bit about yourself and you know, kind of your hero's story that led you to Luminous and and where we are today.

Keith Pigues:

Well, first of all, thank you James, so much for inviting me. Thank you for having me on the show. The pronunciation of the name. It's piggies, a pig with ease piggies.

James Soto:

Alright. Stop right there. That's awesome. One, you know, we're I'm about to do like a photo shoot for my headshots for a new podcast page. And I'm like, what's the theme of the of the photoshoot? I'm just like, like, it's like with me it's like put lipstick on the pig. Right so piggies Alright, so well. It's a beautiful name. And we met at b2b marketing's ignite event with like USA. Keith just crushed it in the crowd did one of the keynotes, and really just dove in very practically to some fantastic insights through to address a manufacturer's growth agenda, b2b business growth agenda, he has quite the resume. And just topically, before we get into Keith's background story, I really want to give you a chance to get to know him a little bit. What we'll be talking about today are the five factors to sell accelerate growth in an industrial business. And this applies to B2B. But Keith really brings some great insights, some hands on expertise. And I think getting your background of where you've been like, think about our industrial audience, like you got some street cred. So if you can kind of help us along your journey, and all that bucket filling that brought you to the position you are with luminous to to really have an impact. I think that will really help us draw, you know, dive into those five factors.

Keith Pigues:

Okay, James, fantastic. So, you know, it's interesting, I have had a very, you know, varied experiences, you know, in my past which kind of brought me to where I am today in years past And people might have said I couldn't keep a job or that it was a checkered past. And now, as a consultant, they go, Oh, you've got all this great experience, right? But, but I started actually studying electrical engineering. So my undergraduate degrees in electrical engineering, and I never worked as an engineer, post undergraduate school, I went immediately into sales and marketing. So after engineering school, I worked for IBM, and Hewlett Packard, doing sales and account management in a technology industry. And my focus was manufacturing and industrial companies, right? The customers, right.

James Soto:

That's why we're instant best friends and enemies. You have one of the most scariest job titles right off the back, an engineer, a sales engineer gets everybody else in trouble. The factoring company.

Keith Pigues:

You know what's interesting, that position at IBM that name, the actual title was really crazy engineering, Scientific and Industrial Automation. Rep. So that was my first sales job at IBM. So essentially, I was the guy who had an engineering degree who knew something about manufacturing technology, industrial automation. And I had customers who were large companies that were trying to improve their operations using technology. So it was great. I got a chance to use the technology, the engineering, and help them solve business problems. So from there, I went into a number of different companies in marketing and strategy roles, all b2b and mostly industrials. So I was at Honeywell, actually, as the Chief Marketing Officer for the automotive sector of Honeywell, right. And there we were manufacturing turbochargers, and engine boosting systems for companies around the world. I also worked for cimex, USA, the summit and concrete company that actually is headquartered in Monterrey in Mexico. And I was a Chief Marketing Officer for the US operations for that business. So if you can market in brand summit, I've been told you can market and brand anything. And then I serve as Chief Marketing Officer for RR Donnelley, the global Chief Marketing Officer, the you know, large commercial printer. And there we had a host of, you know, technologies that we we use large, you know, computer, a large printing presses that we sold, right, that was used to print all sorts of materials from mergers and acquisitions, documents on Wall Street, to magazines, to newspapers, etc. and directories and directories.

James Soto:

There's a directory business there some like industrial media, right?

Keith Pigues:

That's right. So you know, so I've been in a lot of businesses, all technology based in some way, all b2b, and most of them, you know, industrial. So that's why I've lived my life as a practitioner. And then six years ago, I launched luminous strategy, right, and we do growth strategy, right? for our clients, which again, you know, a significant component of the of those are industrial manufacturing companies, we spoke on the fortune 1000, some mid market clients, and we do it with companies all over the world. So we're having a great time,

James Soto:

And an impressive roster to write. You know, I think, you know, one of things we talked about, you know, before the show earlier this week, was that, like, folks really want to understand what you do, and like, you know, how you know, how the sausage is made. So like, you know, we're gonna talk a little bit about these, but like, I think what you'll hear peppered in are some actual real stories, you know, applied to real industrial businesses. So you, you've started this journey, now you're working in this really trusted advisor role, and you're really looking at addressing the growth agenda. And, you know, one of the things I think that, you know, kind of get us into this five key factors of accelerating growth, you wrote something that kind of struck a chord and said, Hey, I got to talk to this guy's like, you know, customer insight. And intelligence can't be owned by a function, it needs to be the DNA of an organization, and embraced by the C suite as a critical enabler of strategic decisions. So that seems like a great starting point. So when you think about luminess, and its approach, you know, what does that really mean in the world of industrial b2b, you know, management, marketing, revenue management and sales leadership. So as you kind of look at the factor, in your point of view, where does that all come into play? Where do we start?

Keith Pigues:

Well, I think the the place to start really is getting a real good sense of where leadership team sits in terms of its alignment, right. And so we found this to be so so incredibly valuable, right? Because you've got organizations that are trying to make decisions. You've got the multifunctional team leadership team trying to decide what to prioritize where to invest, right. And everybody might come to that with a different kind of point of view of where they should be investing, you know, time, energy, money and resources, right. So we have an assessment that we call the growth driver. illuminator, right. Yes, because that sounds really, really fast, right? It's amazing. It's amazing, right? It does sound But it's really designed to illuminate kind of, what are you thinking right now as a leadership team? So we had the leaders of the team answer two questions, right? against these five growth drivers, right? We say, okay, which of these Do you believe, are really the most important priorities in your business to drive growth over the next 135 years? Right. So what's most important? And then second, that we asked, well, of these, you know, five growth drivers, which of these are places where you have the greatest confidence in setting them as a priority? two very different things, right? First of all, what are the priorities, we find that typically there is an opportunity for greater alignment amongst the leadership team. And then we find this interesting thing with the next set of questions around competence, because we find that sometimes people are selecting a priority, but they're doing so without a lot of confidence, which is not necessarily a good thing. So what we want them to do a is figure out whether you're aligned or not, and where there are gaps in the alignment, and where there may be opportunities to increase the confidence and establish in your growth priority. So you ask where to start. That really is the place to start.

James Soto:

If you read like Patrick lencioni. And the advantage, you know it one of the premises it says that book, which I absolutely believe is there, a lot of smart companies fail, but rarely healthy ones do. And what that means is there's organizational alignment, there's trust, there's clarity, and it really comes down to folks come in with different agendas, different points of view, different assumptions. But if you're not aligned, it's it's hard to win. So that's your starting point, right? you uncover where there's that lack of alignment, you know, in clarity. So as you kind of look at that insights approach. And, you know, let's walk through that process, because this is a great journey, that's going to lead us into it. So you start off on this, you know, identification of alignment and confidence. How does your process work from there, so that those five accelerator factors start to kick in?

Keith Pigues:

Yeah. So you're after the team has a sense of its current state of alignment, right, then it's important for the team to say, okay, we maybe need additional customer insight and competitive intelligence, right? Before we just establish these priorities based on what we think it probably is a good idea to engage the marketplace. And I haven't covered the five growth drivers. So let me just sprinkle those in right now. So your listeners can understand what are the kinds of things we're asking the leadership team members to really prioritize, right? So customer planning and sales effectiveness is the first Right. I mean, how are we really doing with planning strategies for growth with our customers? And how is our sales organization geared up, and all the ways that they might need to be geared up with compensation with tools with other resources, right to go out and effectively communicate and sale what we have, and in particular, selling the differential value of what we deliver. And I'll come back to that it's also important for us to understand our market segmentation and our pricing. How are the markets that we serve different from one another? Which of those should we focus on? And how should we be pricing our offerings, right, to maximize the value that we receive? Our customer segmentation is important, not only should we segment our markets where we play for all customers aren't the same as you know, so which customers really are interested in a value proposition on offering A versus B versus C? And we believe that there's never should be a one size fits. All right, so the customer segmentation is important. And then to what extent are you engaged with your key customer executives? Sometimes the sales team is engaged kind of down in the organization, or maybe exclusively with procurement or other kind of transactional groups? But what about those executives in the company who really, really get the value from the offerings, the products or services that you provide? Is your organization really engaged with them? To what extent do you have really differential offering? No one likes to use the C word, the commodity word, however, it's really important to right size, your mindset, what am I actually selling? Am I selling something that's truly differential? Or if I'm selling something more commodity like, because that will shape the strategies? And then the last thing is business model? How are we actually where we plan in the channel and what's our expectation of what's required? To be successful in that part of the channel? And do we have a business model that really allows us to make money? Not so you know, that it's not fit, because it's last and important, right? But we got to make money. So those are the five things that we're asking the team to think about. And it takes some time. I mean, really, you really have to sit back and think about those. But here's the reality. We're making decisions today, to invest in a set of priorities, we may or may not have really given it much thought,

James Soto:

yeah, it's, you know, one of those things that it really seems so so as you look at an organization, you're really getting into a lot of the sacred cow conversations, you know, and the elephants in the room and all of that fun stuff. And, you know, it's interesting that you start with the sales part, because, you know, your ability to deliver a value proposition right off the bat. So I'm assuming a lot of that drives into, you know, transformation, even, you know, are you set up is that the right DNA, but if, you know, a lot of folks actually have to look at the, you know, we see a big problem, you know, migrated, you know, industrial was that, for the most part in 2003, marketing, you know, in kind of like meeting the customer in terms of sales, the function of marketing was missing, mismanaged, or misunderstood. And even to this day, you see organizations that, whether it's sales, direct channel, you name it, the it is literally still Industrial Age, and it's not scalable. So, so so it's interesting that you start there, because if you have all you do all the rest, and you can't, you can't deliver that value proposition, you're going to be you're going to struggle. And is that why is that why you pick that first?

Unknown:

Absolutely. That's where it shows up. You think about you make all these decisions, right? You make all these investments you do you develop products, right? You develop pricing strategy, you develop a value proposition, you create your marketing and your positioning you do your branding work, right? You put the infrastructure in place to support, you know, the manufacturing and delivery of your products and services, right? You do all that and then you send sales people out to go and sell it? Well, if you haven't made the right decisions, if you haven't made the right priorities, if you haven't been industrial strength in preparing all those things, right? The sales force goes out and they feel it. What do they feel, they don't get traction, they don't win the sale, they come back asking for price concessions, right, they find out the product is missing something that's important to the customer. So that's the tip of the spear. And so yes, we start there, because that's where it all shows up. And what we find and you ask the question about cut, what do you do next? Right, what we find is that most organizations have a value proposition, minimally, a de facto value proposition where they thought about it or not, they have a value proposition, but what most organizations don't have is a true understanding of their differential value proposition. So that's where we go next. Right. And the way we do this very simply, is we organize a team around a customer, typically, for most of our clients is a major customer, it's a global key account, a national account, a major account, you know, places where you have a lot of investment, and places where you have to win, or you can't lose sight of the coin you're looking at, right? And so we start there with, you know, an account on account by it's made up of time saying, okay, given this multifunctional team and your organization who serves a support your sales person, your marketing person, your finance person, your supply chain, your tech service, you know, if you've got technical service, or customer support, bring a group of people together, and we ask the question, what is it that you do products, services, or capabilities that you think is truly differential as compared to the customers next best alternative? So is it your tech service? Is it your product quality? Is it your product? breath? If you've got a product? Why that product? breath, right? Is it your supply chain? What is the thing? Or what are the things that you do that are truly differential? Now we don't let them off the hook? This is more than just a qualitative discussion. Yeah, we say okay, if you believe that it is true, one of these is truly differential, you have to prove it. Well, what do you mean, you have to prove it, you have to do math, and we help them do math, you have to calculate how much differential value you deliver to this customer in the past year that's driven solely by this thing, or the set of things that you do uniquely, better differently in a way that impacts your customers p&l impacts the customer's p&l. That's right. First, we need to understand what key performance indicator of the customers, you're moving north, right? versus if they had selected some other option, and then you've got to turn that into money. So I'll give you an example. If we say we sell our products to a customer and our Customers resale our products. So that customer could be a distributor, and that and they're reselling our product, if we believe that differential aspect of our value proposition is the strength of our brand, meaning our brand is better, because of that our brand stamped on it, when they buy our product versus buying the next guy's product, they can go out and sell more of our product, sell it faster and sell it for a higher price or higher margin, we go, Okay, let's do math.

James Soto:

I have a T shirt, it's white. And when you put Gucci on it, it's worth $100.

Keith Pigues:

Yeah. estimate how many more units of your product were sold last year versus tentative at what price and or price premium, versus the next best alternative, those two pieces of information together very simply will tell you if there was indeed differential value created for your customer who resells your product, right? How much differential value. And now you have your estimate. So it's really quite simple. But what we said is, if you believe something is differential, you should be able to prove it. Whether that's your lead time, it's your delivery performance. It's the strength of your brand. It's the degree to which your technical service helps them solve problems faster to keep them up and running, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

James Soto:

Yeah, you know, in technically an industrial, it's also the, the attribute of the product itself, does it? Is it faster? Is it more efficient? Does it make their product itself? You know, because a lot of industrials are the parts of you know, go into the multiple suppliers that go into that product, depending on vertically integrated they are. And that's that's such a key factor. So you're you're looking at the sales part and their ability to deliver a value proposition kind of, they're kind of the canary in the coal mine in your process. And then you're really looking at that value proposition right off the bat, and you're saying, hey, this, is this differentiated? Is it there? And then what typically happens when you get to that question, like, what is the client KPI, you're moving north? How many of them actually know that?

Keith Pigues:

And not many? And that's what we held. Right? So I mean, this is what we do all day, every day. And majority of our team like me, we've worked on the other side of the fence, if you will, we've been running companies running big companies, we've been managing those KPIs, right. So we bring that insight. And what we really do we talk about this in the book that I co authored with customers, a playbook for b2b, we have a whole section which talks about being outside in versus inside out. And that is, there's a whole science behind that with Dr. kanem, and the University of Chicago, right, but most people, and then by virtue of people being parts of organizations, most organizations fake very inside out. So I talk about my features, I talk about my benefits, right? That's inside out how long I've been in business, you know, how many people we have on our team, how many years of experience, they have all those things that sometimes people think are like really, really valuable. And most of the time when you're saying that stuff, the customer is going womp, womp, womp, womp, womp, because that stuff's not important to the customer, unless you can help the customer understand how one of those things actually benefits them. Right? Yeah. So in that inside out approach, many organizations really fail to think about at the end of the day, how is our customer keeping score, hence the KPI, right. So if we can understand the customers keeping KPI, for example, being able to complete deliver a complete order to their customer, being able to meet their customers delivery schedule, committed delivery, being able to deliver a product with no failures. That's what the customers keeping score up and is probably what the leaders are getting paid for their incentive compensation and maybe even their jobs depend on meeting those KPIs. So we help to identify those KPIs. And we say okay, now when you think about what you're doing this differently valuable, which KPI or KPIs is it impacting, and by the way, what how has impacted that KPI during that last 12 months period, right where you thought about your differential value. And that is truly illuminating for a lot of our

James Soto:

And that's where, and that's where you can start exploring the hard work you have to do to create a differentiated value proposition. So it's not just that's my KPI. But it's like, whoa. So that's your commitment. What if we can actually make that commitment on your end faster? Because we're going to innovate on your behalf and these components, that's where they come in. And, and I think, you know, one of the things that I've heard you know, in the past is that as leader We have to center on our client or our markets and our customers and center the business on the customer. And really kind of look from that point of view. And that, you know, as you do that profit should be the reward for a satisfied customer. And, you know, we hear a lot about customers experience all of those things, you know, because it gets to be buzzwords, but that's not it. It's actually a mindset in the organization. So so so we looked at the sales component, we're looking at this, you know, KPI that, you knows, you know, you know that they need to move north. And then, you know, obviously, that starts to kind of open up a view, you know, of where you not only where you're at, right, but also where's the opportunity? So where what step are we at now? So it's kind of go through where do we go from there?

Keith Pigues:

Yeah, well, what we've done at this point really is developed really what we call an internal hypothesis, it's just the company's perspective of how they deliver differential value right? to their customer, qualitatively and quantitatively like, we understand the impact of the KPI and we turn that into either a revenue increase, or a cost reduction, you know, from the movement of that KPI, right? for that period of time that we're assessing, right, but all that's just the hypothesis, and we tell our clients, you feel good. Now I go, Oh, we feel great, because we're many, in many cases, the first time we actually gotten that level of detail, right? We feel great. And we go, Whoa, whoa, hold the phone. No, don't call anybody to celebrate Yes, it's now time for the next part of the process, which is to take this to your customer, and get their perspective. And it's not that our clients don't talk to their customers, they'll meet with their customers. But they typically have never had a conversation like this, where they go and validate their differential value proposition. Our team is skilled at doing this, we lead those discussions, but we invite our clients, representatives of our clients to come along and listen in. And we have them take some notes, we teach them how to really pick up on the differential part of the equation right in the discussion. So we go out and present, you know, our client's differential value proposition hypothesis. And we do it pretty simply, we say, this is kind of what they think they'd like to know what they're thinking about it the right way. And they'd like to know if you think about it that way, or you think about it differently. It's not right or wrong. It's not yes or no, it's really just trying to understand different perspective. And as you might imagine, sometimes they're doing things that they thought were differential and they are spot on. And the customer says, absolutely, there is nobody who does that better. And the way that you estimate that impact, we've never actually quantified it, but that helps us. Absolutely. And then there are those things that you thought you'd like to say, our customer service is better than anybody's on the planet, and we share that with their customer. And they go Hmm, maybe they haven't had an opportunity to experience their customer service the way we have. Because we don't see it that way. Let me tell you about the problems we have with the customer service. And so we learn, we get insight about the customer service. And everything that we discuss is relative to the next best alternative relative to our client's closest competitor, and the competitor selected from the customer's perspective. So we get a lot of competitive intelligence, right? They go, let me tell you, your customer service was great two years ago. And now one of your competitors made a change, they implemented some new strategy, and they invested a lot of money. And now let me tell you, we get problems resolved with order shipment and late shipments and you know, where things are in the value chain and getting things fixed and confirmed. On average, they take care of our issues in a day. You guys were the gold standard at three days, three years ago, and you're still at three days. That's a problem for us.

James Soto:

Yep. And I think there's also the so obviously, this is value perceived in value realized, right? Because it's not just like the numbers of the days, it's also what they're perceiving. And sometimes perception is reality. And that's very, you know, this perceptions change, and you're not addressing them, I think you really, you can really also get in this. And again, it's bait could be literally how they feel to and, you know, one of the things we hear a lot in the manufacturing sector is like, you know, like if you're, let's say your custom manufacturer, like hey, we're, we have high precision, you know, on time delivery, great service. And you know what, one of the things that we often say is that this is exactly why you need to do that research, because those aren't differentiators. Those are an expectation. That's just that's just an expectation for business. So So if that's the case, and you know, maybe the numbers that are contrary, contrary to that are not really compelling the perception is. And so those are kind of some key factors.

Keith Pigues:

Sometimes it's real, it's sometimes it's real. I mean, although they're they're expected sometimes, particularly if you're in a, for example, one of our clients in a textiles industry, and they believe walking in that some of those things like customer service was just, you know, it's just table stakes, right? It's table stakes, right order management, order fulfillment, it's just table stakes. And they thought that their products were really I mean, the cat's meow, right? It's our product. Well, what we learned in the validation is that actually, your products are me to what your service is incredible. And in fact, the value proposition was completely reversed after it was validated by the customer. So something that we might have assumed was just customer service. It's table stakes, right? It's expected, but they did it so much better. Yep. Now, now, remember this, if you actually can commit to me that you're going to get an order of your textiles to me on x date, and I only need one week lead time. What does that do if you have a 95% performance on those two metrics, versus your competitor that has a 65% performance, I'm able to plan my manufacturing, I'm actually able to take orders from my customers, I'm able to forecast when I'll be able to deliver that final product to my customer. And you actually allow me to realize sales, that I would not have been able to realize otherwise. That's real money. That goes into my bank account, because of your customer service performance. Now, now customer service takes on a completely different light, right?

James Soto:

Well, yeah, it's quicker to revenue, right? Like, like, the quicker to revenue is one of the best metrics you can get. I manufactuing so..

Keith Pigues:

Right, so if you're that customer, you're saying, Oh, absolutely, your differential value attribute, if you will, customer service is really important to us. And now we even understand in this discussion, just how much more valuable it is to us than we estimate it. Because we hadn't done those calculations around game, the sale, being able to not miss a sale, in the margins associated with those sales, that timing of those sales that allows us to be more competitive in the marketplace. And oh, by the way, we talk a lot about having these discussions to validate your differential value proposition, the people you talk to in the customer organization matter, right, we talked about one of those five factors of force and one of those five factors being customer engagement. And I mentioned, you really want to talk about those people who are the beneficiaries of value, not just procurement, for example, right? Well, in that instance, that I mentioned, with that textile manufacturer, the ability to help them deliver on sales, deliver faster and meet their customer commitments, the beneficiary value as a sales leader, the VP of sale, how many times does a sales rep in a industrial textile manufacturing company, meet with the VP of sales in the customer organization? Never until this engagement. So you're now sitting down and having conversations with

James Soto:

Increases close rates, and you know, that it's a it's a missed opportunity. And so so, you know, in looking at it, you know, just because, again, the expectations services, like great service and time, you know, the marketers like, you know, in sellers in that business, lightbulbs should be going in their head, oh, this is where we're positioning ourselves, we're looking at that time to market we're looking at that, that different conversation. And still they even have Okay, everything else is me too. There's also like the innovation front that they also could look at, and saying, hey, what can we do to take the core product, so they can even try to double dip there and say, hey, let's, let's hit the core product. But also, let's like, absolutely leverage the service and how we think how we communicate how we market? And so it's a yes, and potentially,

Keith Pigues:

Absolutely, you're great, straightforward person, because the next part of the process right after we validated the current differential value proposition is to talk about the future. We call it future opportunities, right? And we use something we call the checkbook question, right? So we give a little bit of secret sauce here, right? So we add

James Soto:

Everybody listen. So everybody, listen, everybody lives the secret sauce time, I need to have a little like sound effect for secret sauce time.

Keith Pigues:

It's a secret sauce time. So we ask our clients customers. Yeah, your supplier could do anything for you, that would help you achieve your growth, strategic growth goals and objectives. As you look out over the next three, five years. What would you have them do? In fact, your supplier is giving you their checkbook today, figuratively, and you get to write checks to invest in the suppliers business on your behalf. Oh, we get to actually determine where they're going to invest a service. Yes. So tell us a little bit about where you're going. strategically what's most important to you, and what you'd like this supplier to invest in? Fascinating, I'm telling you, right, Jamie? We do. And we are always surprised, right? And our clients are always surprised. And so, you know, we say, Okay, what are they, and then they start walking through, oh, here's our strategy, here's where we're going. Here's how we're prioritizing our growth, or this is how we're trying to manage our costs. And here are the 234 things, right, that we think that if this supplier could do these things, it would really impact us in a great way. And they would continue to differentiate themselves through this innovation, right? To help us be better off fascinating. Now, after we take our clients customers through that experience, before they vote, before they prioritize those five items, they've come up with we go, you know, our client actually is working on some things now in their innovation pipeline that they'd like to introduce, before you vote and you can decide to include or not include these items in your prioritization and your voting. So we work with our clients in advance, say, what are the things you really want to get feedback on? What's that short list of things you're working on? Right before you pull the trigger? And so then we will offer those up? And can I tell you, you might imagine what the results are? Yeah, typically, they'll include them. Sometimes they include them, because they, I never thought about that they're working on that. Absolutely. Put that on the list and included in our voting, sometimes they include them to be nice, they don't really want to say that it's a bad idea. It stinks. It might be good for them. But why would we want to do something like this, so they'll include them. But when we do the voting, they get zero votes, sometimes, you know, our clients customers are really, really just straight up, Frank and say, that's a stupid idea. I understand how that would help improve their operational efficiency. But that slows things down for us, that makes us worse off, please tell them don't do that. And it's a really interesting opportunity for clients to what we call get customer driven innovation ideas, where the customers actually are making a decision about whether you should invest in that or not, why and why not from the customer's perspective.

James Soto:

So you're looking at it both from the standpoint of, hey, what is those things that we can do? If you you know, if you know, we were making an investment with you, here's your investment money, how would you spend it on your behalf? Like what would what can we do for you, but at the same time, you're also vetting, saying, Hey, we're thinking about this, you know, these things? And would that be of value to you? And then they're saying, Well, not really, you know, so and like, in any business model, you want to vet it right, before you create the whole business, you know, validate. So so it's part of customer centered innovation, right? This is what we see. This is wow, if you could do this for us. And then there's a Oh, by the way, we have this great relationship, hey, we want to bounce in a bounces off of you now sudden, you know, you're making again, the great thing about both of them, they're customer centered.

Keith Pigues:

Yeah. Again, at the end of the day, if you look at what we're doing, right, developing that hypothesis, differential value proposition qualitatively and quantitatively, internally, within assessing that, right, you know, what's differential or not, why or why not? Why not customer insight, competitive intelligence, right? And then get an A real view of your, your current differential value proposition, and then focusing on the future, right, those future opportunities, right. And even testing, right, some things that you're thinking about that are in your innovation pipeline, but coming out of that, right, with confirmation, customer driven, the vetting, right, all of that, for what purpose, for a single purpose, to help leaders make more confident decisions as it relates to investments they make to grow their sales and profits. That's why we're in this game, right? So everybody wants organic growth, everybody needs organic growth. And we find that the challenge and where we help organizations is making those decisions more confidently. So we talked about how the sausage is made and how we get sausages made and how we get down into to do that. But we raise all that up and say, Okay, now, we had an assessment on the front end that grows Robert illuminator, your perspective of importance and where you have competence and where the team's aligned or misaligned. Now that we have the customer insight, and the competitive intelligence that comes from our customer value accelerator work that we just described, now we can make recommendations, these should be your priority. These should be the most important for you to drive growth and profitability. And we're in areas where it's important, but you don't have the confidence we might suggest you take a deeper dive. So for example, routinely, we find that customers validate more differential value than some of our clients. estimate, because our clients are either don't really understand the amount of value they're really creating, which is what happens most of the time. Or sometimes they hold back, they're being a little bit conservative. Right? And so once the customer says, No, actually, you deliver 10% 15%, you know, more value than you estimate it. The first place you should look, right is, where can we price higher? Right. But most of our clients don't have value based pricing as a priority when they complete the initial assessment. But when we learn that that's the case, right? We go, the first place you should look is whether or not you should move pricing, nor now you might need to do a pricing study to get a little bit more to get a little deeper in that. But on the surface, this is really an opportunity for you. So you should think about prioritizing value based pricing as a growth driver. That makes sense.

James Soto:

Oh, yeah, absolutely. In the sense that, you know, you want to innovate, right? You need that quantification, you know, before we start orchestrating it, and but to the extent that you're able to quantify that client value, and what they realize is the benefit, that's your connective tissue to the value based pricing you're going to have, right? So it's got to be in some level commensurate, right for value perceived and realized by the by the customer. And so that that's a that's like a no duh. But it's a mindset, again, because a lot of organizations still do do value based pricing, because they're not connecting the dots to the value perceived and realized. And the fact is, you're commanding that premium, but they're not perceiving it as that because you know, the numbers, and they've told him, so.

Keith Pigues:

That's right. And then you talked earlier about customer centricity, right? We have a perspective on that we think that all organizations should work at being more customer centric every day. But just say that you're customer centric, or launching some customer centricity initiative, and watching a few, you know, videos on it and reading a book on it, you know, that's important to get yourself grounded. But that does not make you more customer centric. And so we asked a question on the cover of the book, winning with customers a playbook for b2b, which we think is the question.

James Soto:

And by the way, oh, well, we'll put that in the show notes, everybody, so so you'll be able to check out this book, and we'll have it in the show notes. So so just make sure you take a look at it when you're done.

Keith Pigues:

And that is this. Do your customers make more money? doing business with you? period? Full stop, the end of question, no need for anything in quotations or in parentheses, you know, afterwards? Do your customers make more money doing business with you, in b2b and industrials. At the end of the day, that's what makes you competitive, keeps you in the game, and allows you to grow your business with your customers. If your sales team tells me that, really what keeps you in the game is the relationship, I would say yes, the relationship is important. But what aspects of the relationship keep you in the game. And I'm sorry, the best golfers in the world and the best entertainers in the world will not keep a customer engaged and growing, because they play golf. And because they entertained them. Because those customers have KPIs to deliver against, they have revenue or cost targets they have to hit. And the golf game and entertainment, while important are not a substitute for being able to deliver measurable differential value and answer the question, how do we help our customers make more money doing business with us?

James Soto:

And it's absolutely about the nature of the relationship, right. And, you know, relationship and trust, right takes time. And but that context in in, it's really a point of view of what a relationship means. And I think it can really look at it in terms of a mindset across the whole organization, when it comes to a customer. What does that what does that relationship mean here, and it really means that we're here to help them succeed, help them grow their business, help them save money, help them make money, and, and essentially be willing to, you know, constantly look at addressing their needs, their changing needs, and sometimes present things they're going to need in the future before they need them. And sometimes, it's also going to be really making some tough changes, you know, based on their changing needs, but if that mindset isn't there, you know, I think you're going to be at a strategic competitive disadvantage. And, and but one of the things that when organization looks at Addressing the growth agenda, and there's a number of similarities, it is the mindset. And it is the fact that the organizations ultimately have a lot of work to do. But what really works and what's great about this, Keith is, I found that leaders really respond well, the frameworks like this, give a process. It's logical, and to the point where it just makes sense. But and I said it, I said, engineering me, right, yeah, it's that engineering to you. And if you don't have a framework by which you make customer centered decisions, I think your talents, I think the other thing that you bring that's really critically important is that a lot of these leader teams, leadership teams, out of the customers, everyone that they're there, they're looking at this relationship as separate entities. And I think what you're able to do in where you have a very unique advantage and services, organizations and consultancies, and we have an advantage as we bring outside perspective, and we have the ability to not be too close to it, and really just give people the insights they need, and a framework by which to, to evaluate, consider, and, you know, and take action, measurably as perceived by the client, the customer. And so so I think this is a fantastic summary. So we ended the business model, right, is that where the process ends, where you've gone through this process, and you know that the ultimate reflection that you find that that happens from time to time?

Keith Pigues:

Well, actually, where we end, you know, we take the insights, and we take the intelligence, right, and those areas of growth drivers, and then we apply a specific set of recommendations for that engagement. So for that client for that business in with that customer, or that those group of customers, and we conclude with a workshop, we believe that this information in these recommendations are so important that they should not be left in the cloud or on a hard drive, that they should be baked into the revised or advanced growth strategy for that major customer or that segment of the business or that division. And so we bring all those key players back, and we facilitate a workshop at the end, to bake those into the existing strategy and planning going forward. Right. And speaking of innovation, we had a client several years ago that actually recommended that, and we've made it a standard part of our process, right so that it does it, it lives in the decisions and the actions and the investments going forward.

James Soto:

And it could be so many things, you have to address how you communicate how you leverage data, how you're really addressing real needs in terms of like communicating and revising, actually leading questions, the leading value propositions, you know, that you're putting out there, how you're actually appropriately pricing in the market, it literally touches multiple business functions in r&d. And that's why we operations, finance, marketing, sales, you know, product roadmaps.

Keith Pigues:

And that's why we include that entire multifunctional team, within our clients organization, in the engagement. It's not just sales, it's not just marketing. It's all of those people. Why because they all contribute to differential value. And they all need to understand what the true value proposition is, and the impact that they make. So we talked about customer centricity, you know, raise that question that you know, that we include on the book, do your customers make more money doing business with you? Well, we have a secondary question. If you drill down, right, the secondary question is, is your customers business? At the center of your business? Is your customers business at the center of your business? That's the ultimate question of customer centricity. And it's just the point that you made, right? It's about all of the functions. It is about all of the ways that you touch that customer's business, it's about all the people and functions that are involved to deliver what you deliver, right? We have to come together to deliver this value proposition. And sometimes we find that critical functions and portions of the team are left out, we bring them all together. And then the other thing that's really important is for senior leadership, to hear directly from the customer, probably the most impressive feedback that we've gotten from our clients is when their executives sit in and listen to those customer validation interviews. It's not filtered. It doesn't come to the sales force. It doesn't come to the marketing organization. They hear it for themselves from those key beneficiaries of value in the customer organization, and they go got it. I really understand what we're doing. Well now that's delivering differential value, understand where we're challenged and why I under Stand where competitors have leapfrogged us, and I understand what our customers want us to prioritize going forward. Now, we may not make all those decisions consistent with what the customer wants, but at least we've done some vetting, and we can make a more confident decision.

James Soto:

And it's not just that too. I mean, that's so important. That's so key. And it just makes sense. But it's also so important to know that there's someone having these conversations, where a client, a customer can be frank, right? Because you're coming in, you know, to get the good, the bad, and the ugly. Right, and, and hopefully, some opportunity from there. And so I think we've got

Keith Pigues:

A mixture of all of those in every case, yeah.

James Soto:

We probably need to do an episode on the need to sometimes bring in outside perspective. But I think that's fantastic. Are there any kind of as we kind of round the band here? Are there any kind of key cases and point where the, you know, where he started briefly to, like, you know, how this process played out? Where in a manufacturing related business, you know, what, you know, what are some of the kind of, you know, maybe a notable, you know, you know, the name names, if you don't want, you know, case where you came in, you went through this process? Here's the problem, here's the solution as a case study solution. What's a notable, you know, real, relatable story?

Keith Pigues:

I'll give you a couple of them. In fact, we put three in the show notes, actually, for people to see written version and video version of them, but one of them, and I mentioned the texels client before we just Millikan, you know, and they've been very happy to publicly talk about this case. But in this business, it's in their workwear a business right, where they provided textiles that are used to make uniforms, right for people who wear uniforms to work, right, whether it's in a manufacturing facility, or you know, what have you, right, and they really walked in thinking that their competition was North American manufacturers or their competitors. And they thought that their products really were driving the majority of the value. And as I mentioned earlier, they found that products really weren't driving value significantly as compared to the competitors. But their customer service was key, it was far beyond any competitor. And it drove real differential value that mattered for their customers. Aha, from a future perspective, they learned that, really, the real game is in Asia, they thought the game was in North America. But the real game was in Asia, and the customer told them that customers told them that over and over again, the big action that they took was an understood, they understood now we need to get closer to our customers in terms of delivering being closer to them to deliver product to shorten lead time. And they meet immediately made investments in the supply chain, so that they could be closer to to their customers in North America and in Central America. So insight, they were all validated. And they were clear. And they had the confidence to make those decisions immediately after the work we did with them because of the approach. Right? When the general manager of that business sat in on those meetings. Then he heard it for himself.

James Soto:

Yeah. And and was this a year or two ago? Yes. So you think all the supply chain issues that are happening right now, you know, due to COVID, and transition, the e commerce and accelerating buying cycles, wondering if that was good timing.

Keith Pigues:

So what what's interesting about that, and they've shared this as well, what they learned, and the actions that they had begun to take, actually helped them as they pivoted during COVID to focus on a healthcare, textiles business, which was a nascent business for them, which grew significantly during the pandemic, and the learnings that they had taken away from that were just prior to the pandemic, accelerate their ability to go in there and do well in that business. So, again, you know, having that at your fingertips with confidence, right, you're able to make those decisions. Another example is in the chemicals business. Eastman Chemical is a client of ours, right? And we'll share this case study as well. And there we really focused on their global key accounts, right, a couple of their global key accounts. And in one instance, what they found was that they really had some challenges with understanding how their products created value in use in the customer, and the customer with a with a major automotive glass manufacturer. And so they had a perspective of how their product work again, they thought their product, drove some efficiencies, move some KPI is right, in ways that they found, did not. And in one of those meetings, and you'll see it on the video, the customer who was head of manufacturing for EMEA stood up in a not so nice way and let everybody know that that perspective was wrong. A little bit of pounding on the table. In a little raised elevated voice, but he became engaged, and they heard the truth. And they were able to quantify the negative impact. And they jumped right on it. As a result, that relationship improved significantly grew after, you know, that period of time at a rate that they probably would not have grown other wise, and the the connection, the engagement with senior leadership, whether the level that they'd never experienced before. And so one of the things that always happen, as a result of this work, is that the relationship improves the transparency, the collaboration, in understanding that there is a mutual value exchange that can take place for both parties, because we talk about the right things, differential value in the right way, what's working what's not qualitatively, quantitatively right at the right time, not too long after you actually close the fiscal year and talk about what happened during that fiscal year, which is fresh, right. And with the right people, those beneficiaries have value, who may not be your day to day contacts for yourselves or account team. But those people ultimately who own those KPIs who get paid based on them, and again, sometimes keep or lose their jobs based on their ability to deliver against them. So that's really what it's all about.

James Soto:

Absolutely. What is right, what is wrong, what is missing? What is confused, you know, what's the reality, like Kaizen is changed for the better, you know, like small steps, incremental, continuous improvement, and gamma crisis, as you go to the source of the problem, you go to the customer. And I think there's a lot of buzzwords, right, like, you know, customer experience, things like that. But it's just a buzzword, if you truly are not centered on the customer and their challenges. And if you really don't, you know, reimagine the nature of the relationship. And what that means, you know, we talked about like culture here a lot, you know, our company, and it's like a cupcake, someone told me once and it's like, you know, you have the cupcake and has all the great fluffy things you see visually on top, it's the frosting, basically, you know, that's like the, that's the fluff, but the culture is the cake. It's the cake. And I think when you look at that same metaphor for this, is you really have to dive in past the surface layer, you have to really look at where the cake is. And now all the ingredients. Yeah, it's not golfing. It's not golf. Right? And if you're really going to grow a business, and and I think, to the point, not just compete, you know, when, Heck, even before that be competitive, yes. Like, you know, a lot of people want to compete and get in the game, but it you know, you got to be competitive, right? Because it is the perpetual game, right? You never, ever win. But I do think you have to always be a state of being competitive. And it's, you can never let your guard down. And so I think your framework is outstanding, you know, the fundamental question of, do your customers make more money? Because they're doing business with you? And, you know, I think the fundamental question that I think anyone listening to this show should also ask is, is the customer truly at the center of your business? If not, you need to listen, you need to call Keith and his team, and you need to really look at these key five factors to accelerate growth, as leaders, do you think I think, you know, this, you know, in your, your founder of your business, as well, that we try to figure stuff out sometimes, you know, because that's what we are. We're like, you know, we're leaders, we're entrepreneurs. And sometimes you get to a point where, when you really look at growing your business, you got to realize that, that next phase technology's changing, or wherever it may be, that sometimes you have to go to folks like Keith, other people who have figured this crapola out for help. Because I think, you know, that's, that's a huge advantage. And so to the nature of the relationships you have, if that's the same thing, how are you making them money, and and you're helping them basically the same way you're asking them to do it. And so I appreciate you, Keith, for the folks that I know will be interested, how do they reach out to you How do they connect? Where do they find you? What are you up to? We're gonna have a boatload show notes here. But just before we go, like how can folks connect with you?

Keith Pigues:

Yeah, they can connect with us at luminous strategy, that's l u m, i n a s strategy comm you can can find everything you need there. You can also find us, you know, on LinkedIn luminous strategy on LinkedIn as well. And as I mentioned, we're going to include this growth driver illuminator, we typically provide this to our clients, but for your listeners who want to take a stab at that we're going to provide that that in that link and they can go in and and perform that self assessment. I think they'll find it very interesting. We're also going to find we're going to provide three case case stories that are all in industrial In nature, both the printed version, as well as the video version, so you can actually hear our clients talk about the questions that they had the problem they were trying to solve and the results and how this helped them. So hopefully those things will be valuable to your audience. And they can, can can look us up and reach out if they want to talk.

James Soto:

So hey, we're gonna take it easy with Keith piggies right, like so. So, man, what value has been dropped here today. Thank you so much for for your insights, your passion for what you do. This makes a boatload of sense. And I think if you're listening, you would do really well to reach out to Keith. So on that note, thanks for being on the show. Keith. I really appreciate it. My pleasure, James. Great to be here. Awesome. So as we wrap up, I just want to thank you in the audience so much for just like making time in your day to listen to the industrial strength Marketing Show, I just hope you learned one thing, one Golden Nugget that just helps you really look at your business and really look at how are you helping your clients succeed? And as you do that, what are those areas that you have to even look at the marketing sciences to make marketing and selling even more a strength of your business? How do you take these insights and learn how to really communicate differently and really express the real value and just even pivot around communicating the right things that folks even out here? So for more insights for from industrial marketers and leaders like Keith or if you'd like to just reach out to us visit industrial strength, marketing comm or we are industrial comm check out the podcast. definitely give us a review. And most of all, keep joining us. We'll catch you next week.

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James Soto

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Virginia Roberson

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