Finance

Robert Riggs: What has happened in the digital age though that businesses want to immediately jump to talk, talk, talk, sell, sell, sell, never listen, never even listen to what the customer might even want or the prospect might want and all – like ROI, what’s the ROI?

Sean Jackson: Right. So I think that’s being primarily driven – since you used the financial term, ROI, then that’s the problem because that means that a sales organization is being tasked with delivering results on a quarter by quarter basis and it is all about driving that immediate return rate and it’s a financial drive that is doing that. It is not a marketing drive that’s doing that.

Brad Besancon: Right, yeah.

Sean: And I think you see this most often with companies that have received a lot of funding or they’re under some sort of financial pressure and they’re saying –

Brad: A big boardroom.

Sean: Right. You got to go sell and you got to get out there and we need numbers. But it really is a trade-off between short term results and long term success. So I think when you look at long term success, people are saying we need to listen because we don’t care about the next quarter or the quarter after that. We care about the quarters that are happening four years from now, five years from now.

Brad: Yes.