Fixing founder tensions and deepening customer trust

Host – Grace Jennings-Edquist: [00:00:00] What really drives business success? Strong partnerships or loyal customers? The answer, of course, is both, as we’ll hear in this week’s episode. Retaining old customers can be five times cheaper than acquiring new ones. Greg Nicolle from Thrive Australia says Greg joins me today to share six clever, underused customer follow up tactics that turn one time buyers into long term loyalists. Then we’ll hear from Tom Skotidas, psychotherapist and director at Path. He explains how fractured co-founder relationships can quietly derail a startup, and why therapy? Yes, therapy can help rebuild trust between co-founders before it’s too late. From SoundCartel, I’m Grace Jennings-Edquist, and this is Business Essentials.

3 ways to get more personal with your customers

Our first guest is Greg Nicolle, group manager of Client Success at Thrive Australia, which provides marketing services and data solutions for many small businesses. KPIs focus on sales to new customers. But Greg says boosting profits isn’t solely about attracting new clients. Retaining existing customers is equally important and it’s far cheaper to. Greg joins us to share six innovative strategies for following up with customers after a sale to help build that all important client loyalty. But first, what are small businesses missing when it comes to effort placed in winning new business versus building customer retention? Here’s Greg speaking with Nicole Goodman.

Greg Nicolle: [00:01:35] 70% of Australians believe businesses plays very little importance on excellent customer service. And I think the confusion is around what makes up customer service, because it’s not your product or service that you sell that reflects client experience, but it’s everything that sits around that product or service. So how easy were you to contact? Insect. What was the speed that you received, the quote or the invoice? Was the communication throughout the sales process useful and clear and timely? And did you get ongoing engagement after the sale that you found valuable, like hints and tips, those type of things. And it’s important to get this right. My job put out a report that showed that 91% of customers won’t buy after having a bad experience.

Nicole Goodman: [00:02:23] Yeah. It’s extraordinary. And of course, central to all of this is understanding your customer base, right? I mean, there are many small businesses that might think they know who their customers are, but what are some of the best ways for businesses to kind of narrow down and make sure that they’re marketing to the right people that are purchasing their product or services?

Greg Nicolle: [00:02:45] Yeah, absolutely. And it is a tricky one, because most businesses that we speak to, when you try to get from them who their ideal customer is, they really don’t know. It’s anybody who purchases our products. So I think what’s really important here is to ensure that no matter who your clients are, that you’re allowing them to communicate with you in a way that suits them. Otherwise, you’re going to be missing out on opportunities. So I’ll give you an example. If I want to reach out to a business for a product or service, I want to call them. I probably want to talk to the business owner, and I want to talk directly to them and find out, you know, everything I need to know about that product before I got the trust to make the purchase decision. My kids, on the other hand, the thought of actually picking up the phone and actually talking to someone horrifies them, right? So unless they can book online or use a form fill or use a website chat to actually talk to someone electronically or in a chat basis, they’re going to just close that website down and move on to the next one that does allow them to do that. So I think it’s really important to make sure that you’re available to all different types of clients, regardless of how they want their client profile or client experience to look.

Nicole Goodman: [00:03:54] Mhm. If we stick with the customer where does their experience start and where does it end? And what should business owners be asking themselves about that journey?

Greg Nicolle: [00:04:05] Yeah. Look, I love this. This is a really fun exercise that business owners can do. And it’ll actually yield them a lot of areas that they can work on. So at thrive, when we’re talking to a potential new customer, we do something called a customer journey conversation. Now instead of looking at what can be improved on within their business, which is the way that they probably traditionally look at their business and the way that other consultants talk to them about their business. We actually take that business coach’s hat off, if you like, and put on the customer’s hat and then get them to walk us through exactly what it’s like to do business with them as a customer. So if I go onto Google, can I find you? If I then want to go and look at reviews, what would they say? And would that put me off, or would that be more likely to make me take that next step? How can I get in contact? And just like our last question. Is it the right way of getting in contact for the way that I like to do it? Um, how long would it take me to get a quote? Because I would get put off if I didn’t have that quote quickly. How can I pay? Is it how I’d want to pay? And then how do you keep me up to date throughout the sales process? Are you going to thank me afterwards, or are you going to give me some hints and tips and keep me engaged so it can be a long process, but it’s a very fruitful process. And, you know, it’s the sort of thing that a business owner can sit down and do themselves. But we always recommend try and get a real customer in, or try and get someone from outside of your business to put on that customer hat, because you do want a fresh set of eyes. You want someone who’s not influenced or have confirmation biases that somebody who is in the business is taking into that conversation.

Nicole Goodman: [00:05:40] Okay, so for business owners who are going through this process, as you’ve described, you have some suggestions. And the first one is to create that effortless digital journey. Can you tell us what that looks like?

Greg Nicolle: [00:05:53] Yeah. Well, this is where hopefully I can share some quick wins, because there’s some easy things here that I think most business owners could jump on straight away. And and the first one is, and it sounds so simple, but be easy to be found. Okay, now there’s a few things here. First one is be easy to be found on a mobile phone because 70 or 80% of people, if they’re looking for you, they’re looking for you on a mobile phone. So make sure you know what your website, what your experience, what everything that you have out there on the internet looks like on a mobile device, because that’s how most people are viewing it. Secondly, if somebody is searching for you, you need to be on page one of Google. If you’re trying to grow your business because 90% of people won’t go past page one of Google. Thirdly, make sure you’re coming up in local search so consumers, where possible, would like to work with someone, deal with someone. Buy from someone that’s in their local area. That’s number one. Be easy to be found. Number two is consumers. Over 90% now they think we’ll check what other people are saying before they go on and make that initial contact. So it’s not enough anymore to just appear, you know, when somebody is looking for you, they’re going to go on and see what other people are saying about you. So make sure that you’ve got some good, solid reviews on Facebook, on your Google Business profile. Make sure that the way you’re engaging with consumers on Instagram, TikTok, these other social platforms as well is going to be conducive to somebody growing that trust with your business a little bit further to entice them to go on and make that contact.

Greg Nicolle: [00:07:26] And while we’re talking about social platforms, be across multiple social platforms, okay, so just to reach everyone in my house, you need to be have your message across five social platforms. That’s just for my house, let alone, you know, the local area or the state or the country. So for me, if you’re not on Google or in the Google business profile piece, I’m probably not going to find you for my partner. You’ve got to be on Facebook for my son, YouTube, My oldest daughter will be all over Instagram and my youngest is on TikTok. So you miss any of those? You’re missing a percentage of my house, so I think that’s important because human nature is. Everybody thinks that everybody does everything the same way that you do it. So if you only use Facebook, you just naturally think that everybody only uses Facebook. So you’ve got to think outside of that box. Um, and then we touched on this one earlier. But make sure that on all of these areas where people can find you, that you’re giving consumers the options to contact you the way that they would like to contact you, not necessarily the way you would like to be contacted. Think about it from the customer’s point of view.

Nicole Goodman: [00:08:31] Next, and this is becoming more ubiquitous by the day. You suggest experimenting with AI tools, which, to be fair, some small businesses are still wary of. Why is AI so important and how can it be used to enhance the customer experience?

Greg Nicolle: [00:08:49] Yeah, this one is important because business owners, particularly small, medium sized business owners, are so busy they wear so many hats. There’s so much to do. And and some of the important things to do with client experience get put on the back burner because you know the day to day takes over your time. So. The reason AI is really important and valuable is when it can save you time. Okay. By automating some of the things that you would normally have to put a lot of time into. But two, it also helps you be creative. It helps you think about and understand not only what your consumers would like to hear about, but also then creating that content to give them that. So whether it be on social posting or your website or blogs, it really makes that whole process a lot easier. So I said you can use it to find out what consumers are interested in. And that could just be like, if you sell gin, you could actually do an AI search for what are the top trends for gins or gin recipes? It would give you some great ideas, some great content, and off the back of those you can then ask to create a blog or a post or content for you that’s going to reflect each of those ideas that it came up with in the first place. And if you’re using a tool like thrive, it’ll even create that content for you across those multiple platforms. So it’ll take, you know, those top gen trends and it’ll create a nice little post for you in Facebook, in Instagram, in TikTok, one for the Google Business profile. It just makes your life a lot easier to be creative and to put content out there with the frequency that you probably should.

Nicole Goodman: [00:10:22] And your third recommendation for creating a strong customer experience is to make it personal. How can businesses do that?

Greg Nicolle: [00:10:31] Yeah, again, it’s a challenging one because you would think this type of thing is going to take a lot of time to create personal messages for each of your different types of customers. But there’s a few easy steps. The first one is make sure you have a system, a CRM system that enables you to capture a lot of information about your clients. Okay. So their birthday, the products or services that they’ve bought, ones that they’ve showed interest in for the future, preferences around certain things, all that type of information. Secondly, you have a system that can then automate the communication so that it happens no matter what. So too easy. We get busy. It gets pushed to the back burner. If you have a CRM that allows you to push communication to customers preferences and it happens automatically, then you know that it’s just happening in the background. And the cool thing is, I think that with lots of personal information and a system that automates that communication, it becomes really, really easy to personalize it and customize it and then have an ongoing, valuable dialogue with customers before, during and after the sale so that they feel like, you know, they’re an important part of your business as well.

Host – Grace Jennings-Edquist: [00:11:44] That was Greg Nicolle, Thrive Australia’s group manager of client success.

Why do Co-Founders need therapy?

We’ve covered customer relationships, but co-founder relationships can also make or break a business. Tom’s Skotidas is a psychotherapist and founder of Everpath, and he says that when trust between co-founders breaks down, decision making can stall and that can mark the beginning of a startup’s downfall. But there’s hope. Tom focuses on guiding co-founders and leadership teams through the complexities of high stakes relationships. And he says psychotherapy can help these partnerships succeed. Many of us haven’t heard of psychotherapy for business leaders, so to kick things off, Tom tells Nicole Goodman what’s involved and what needs urgent attention within high functioning leader relationships.

Tom Skotidas: [00:12:35] Specialist psychotherapy for high stakes partnerships is psychotherapy. Uh, it has been adapted to the unique environments that high stakes partners find themselves in that includes co-founders or family business co-owners or executive duos and leadership teams. And it is an approach to helping these teams. These partnerships deal with conflict, overcome conflict, rebuild trust and be able to collaborate at an enhanced level so they can get back to growing their business. The reason I saw a need for this in the market is that in my private practice, I work with individuals and couples and families, and within that clientele there were many co-founders I worked with either solo who had come to work with me on overcoming the distress they were experiencing with their co-founder and family business owners as well. So it was obvious that this type of cohort in particular was dealing not just with the interpersonal challenges and the distress that’s causing them, but also with the system around them. When you’re in a family business or co-founders or executive duos, it’s not just the 2 or 3 of you, but it’s also the investors, the boards, the teams who expect lots from you. So I found this to be a sorely lacking field in terms of psychotherapy help.

Nicole Goodman: [00:14:17] From your experience, what are the most common sources of tension in these high stakes partnerships, especially if you think about small to medium businesses? And how do these unresolved disputes end up derailing execution and growth of the business?

Tom Skotidas: [00:14:34] Yeah. Good question. The tensions focus on vision a lot, and where each co-founder or co-owner wants to head toward. Interestingly, you’d think that they would have discussed this at the beginning and ongoing. Many would expect that co-founders and C-suite duos would be having these regular conversations and recalibrating. But it doesn’t happen. Just like couples in my private practice can often go for years without addressing key areas of their lives, especially core values, and where they want to be over the next 12 to 24 months. It’s the same with these high powered duos and high stakes teams. In fact, I think the business of getting on with the business can be so dominant in their work lives that it allows them, in many ways, to ignore or suppress, avoid those very awkward conversations about who we really are as humans and what we really want. And of course, that avoidance Accumulates and tensions arise from that avoidance. So it’s vision. It’s also risk tolerance. One partner might have a appetite for risk because that’s how they see the world, whereas the other partner is more risk averse. And that creates tension as well. And then there’s also inputs from outside the company or even within if they have a board. Sometimes you have hidden factions that support one over the other. So it’s a systemic issue as well. And that’s what I see. And that happens with couples and families as well. But with these high stakes partnerships to a much greater level, because their systems are much more pressurized due to the financial implications. And that is very tricky to navigate, especially when you go home at night at the dinner table. Are you still working partners or are you brother and sister?

Nicole Goodman: [00:16:43] Can you talk a bit more about the impact that these dynamics or challenging relationships has on the business and the people staff around them? How is everyone impacted?

Tom Skotidas: [00:16:55] It’s quite sometimes hard to watch when you see when I see two perfectly capable people, intelligent, educated, go getters get stuff done and suddenly there’s decision paralysis. A decision is put off for weeks when that decision could have been made within a day or two. It also what’s interesting is you’d think that the teams around them might isolate the conflict just to those two or just to those three leaders. But in reality, the conflict that takes place within the duo or the trio, or the higher the larger team actually affects the teams around them. There’s stats that show peer reviewed research that shows that any conflict within any duo will affect the entire team around them, disrupt their performance. So there’s a cultural tone that these high stakes partnerships set for the entire company. And if you as a key duo, are dysfunctional, you can expect that to actually poison. A big part of the company, and we know from recent news that even at Atlassian that $50 billion iconic Australian company, the two co-founders had significant conflict, according to a newspaper article, and that affected the entire culture of the company. Noah Wasserman, in his book The Founder’s Dilemmas, found that 65% of startups fail due to co-founder conflict. That is a shocking statistic. And to put that in real life perspective, can you imagine if Google’s co-founders had reached a state of conflict where Google never actually took flight or Airbnb? We don’t think about that because they’re behemoths today. But we could have lost Google or Airbnb or Apple when they launched because of co-founder conflict. So I keep thinking, how many of these amazing companies have we already lost?

Nicole Goodman: [00:19:15] You also work with family owned businesses and leadership teams. How did the dynamics differ across co-founders, family, co-owners, and teams? And how do you adapt your method for more complex group settings?

Tom Skotidas: [00:19:29] Yes. Good question. Firstly, the key differentiation is on the size duos versus teams with duos. They are remarkably similar to couples in couples therapy, 1 to 1 conflict, whether it’s avoidance or whether it’s aggressive conflict with each other, it’s always 1 to 1. But interestingly, with teams, you have different structures emerging. You have, for example, with trios you often get two versus one with quads. So teams of four, you often see two versus two emerging, even if it’s silent. And with teams of 5 to 7 you see hierarchies emerging and silent factions. And it’s incredible and humbling to work with different team sizes because you see those unique, I suppose, anthropological elements emerging in how they self-organize. So that’s the key difference is working with duos. You see key patterns unique to to duos and with teams, you see these interesting other complex patterns with family business. Something else is very interesting in my work, the dual relationship, you see husband and wife or two siblings and privately their family blood is thicker than water, but at work there’s often hierarchy and that is very tricky to navigate, especially when you go home at night at the dinner table. Are you still working, uh, partners or are you brother and sister? There’s research that shows that nearly 70% of family owned businesses never make it to the second generation, and a key reason for that is high interpersonal conflict. That’s just a shocking stat for me that these family businesses just cannot make it past that first generation because of conflict. It’s just it actually makes me sad. And part of the reason for me launching this practice is to ensure that family businesses, as well, can flourish and be able to navigate the delicate balance between family and professional relationships.

Host – Grace Jennings-Edquist: [00:21:57] That was Tom Skotidas psychotherapist and founder of Everpath. Thanks for joining us on this week’s episode. Follow Business Essentials podcast across social media and head to BusinessEssentialsPodcast.au for more. Business Essentials is a SoundCartel podcast. Producers are Nick Schildberger, Nicole Goodman and myself. Technical production is by Pete Letts. I’m Grace Jennings-Edquist thanks for listening. We’ll bring you more Business Essentials next week.