One On One Interviews

Last week BizSugar held its first ever SmallBizFluence event, with experts sharing their knowledge and expertise on building successful online small businesses. And as part of the conference I had the pleasure of moderating a “fireside chat” with Claire O’Donnell, who leads the Selling Partner Communities and Small Business Empowerment organizations for Amazon. Claire shared a number of ways Amazon is looking to assist small business sellers to increase their ability to sell more and grow their businesses while using the Amazon platform, especially during uncertain times live we’ve been facing the past couple of years.

There are many uncertainties small businesses are facing heading into this year’s holiday season. But one thing is very certain; consumers want to shop locally and with small businesses. That’s according to the results of a recently released report from Intuit’s QuickBooks Commerce small business shopping report. To learn more about the insights coming from the report, and how they may impact the holiday shopping season, I recently had a LinkedIn Live conversation with Shilpa Reddy, VP and GM of Quickbooks Commerce at Intuit.

Amazon recently held its Accelerate event which focuses on helping sellers using Amazon’s platform with new programs and services to help them build relationships with customers and increase their sales and profitability. And I had the opportunity to speak with Dave Nadel, Amazon’s Director, Selling Partner Trust, to learn more about how the new tools and services announced during the event will help SMB sellers move to the next level selling on Amazon.

About this time every year I look forward to heading to Oracle NetSuite’s annual user conference, SuiteWorld, and speaking with its EVP and founder Evan Goldberg. But for the second year in the row we had to do our conversation virtually. And just like last year’s conversation, this year finds sellers trying to navigate a holiday season under a pandemic, we’re still doing that but with an even different situation with a worldwide logistics situation adding even more to the equation.

Like many of you I have a bunch of Google alerts set up on certain topics, with one of them being TikTok. I’m not even on really on TikTok, but I began tracking it a while back because all of the hype surrounding it, and then when a friend of mine told me about how his son had only been on it a couple months – doing a few videos making different things out of boxes - had over 60K followers - I got even more curious, which is why I did a conversation with him for this series not that long ago. By the way he’s now over 70K followers…. But then last month I got a series of Google alerts about something I hadn’t seen coming – that TikTok had surpassed YouTube in viewer time per user. And that really grabbed my attention, as I watch a bunch of YouTube videos for a variety of reasons. And with my interest growing in understanding the draw TikTok was having, my CRM Playaz co-host introduced me to, without a doubt, the most thorough and insightful series of posts on TikTok that is out on the web. And after rea

Many of you who are into gaming or serious video editing know NVIDIA as creators of the leading graphics processing technology on the market. But NVIDIA is also a leader in the areas of artificial intelligence and deep learning; specifically in how these technologies can improve how we experience graphics, text and video synthesis, and conversational AI. Some of their work was showcased in a series of videos they’ve put together called I AM AI which are a compelling look at what is (and what will be) available to us to improve how we experience the world – and each other. And recently I had the opportunity to have a LinkedIn Live conversation with Bryan Catanzaro, Vice President, Applied Deep Learning Research at NVIDIA, to hear more about their work with AI to reimagine how we experience sights and sounds.

Before he became the President of the NHL’s San Jose Sharks, Jonathan Becher was one of the premiere marketing executives in the technology industry. And it’s safe to say he brought the visionary approach he developed at companies like SAP with him to the Sharks – which has paid off during the past 18 months as the pandemic disrupted the traditional fan experience. Becher and the Sharks have been one of the more innovative teams in all of sports, which is why my CRM Playaz co-host Paul Greenberg and I were excited to catch up with Becher via LinkedIn Live to see what he and the Sharks have been up to, how they’ve been exploring ways to create more aligned fan experiences to the current situation with the pandemic, how lessons learned during the pandemic are being implemented in preparation for life after Covid, and to get his perspective on where he sees the puck going – so to speak – with how fans will experience content in the coming years, including how they become collaborators and creators with their f

Before the pandemic I was going to about 30 physical events a year. During the pandemic I haven’t gone to any, but I’ve gone to way more events virtually. And I can honestly say that in either form, events leave a lot to be desired. But at least physical events allowed you to actually see and be around people, which made up for some of the shortcomings of those events. Jon Reed, ERP industry thought leader and co-founder of Diginomica, probably goes to more events than I do, along with putting on his own events. He’s been rating events for years, which is why I recently spent A Few Good Minutes with Jon to get his take on the current state of events, and what we should expect as things begin opening up.

The term content creator has gained a lot of attention lately, as companies need to constantly churn out attractive content in order to grab and hold the attention of the folks they’re looking to do business with long enough to turn views into revenue. But the traditional role content has played in the business model has changed significantly in the last couple of years, especially the last eighteen months with the pandemic. During a recent episode of The CRM Playaz with my co-host Paul Greenberg, we spoke with two executives with Contentful, a leading content platform for digital-first businesses. Dina Apostolou - Vice President of Product Marketing, and Nicole France – Chief Evangelist, share with us how the role of content has evolved into a much more central role in the business, going beyond lead generation and SEO to helping to tell the complete story of the organization.

In a recent episode of Watching Amazon I got into a debate with my co-host John Lawson on whether a 1% conversion rate is considered to be a successful outcome. I’m not a marketer, so I’m thinking failing 99% of the time doesn’t sound all that great to me. I mean getting a hit in baseball 3 out of ten times can get you in the Hall of Fame, but 30% is a far cry from one percent. But, since this was a livestream convo, John was getting a lot of support from marketing technology expert and thought leader (and also my buddy) Anand Thaker, in saying that one percent can indeed be a successful outcome.

When it comes to AI and machine learning and big data, there’s really no person I like learning from and talking with than Dr. Michael Wu, recognized industry expert and Chief AI Strategist for PROS, a provider of SaaS solutions optimizing shopping and selling experiences. And recently I had a great livestream conversation with him and my CRM Playaz co-host Paul Greenberg where we took a deep dive into where we are with AI and how it is helping companies make it through the last 18 months. Below is an edited transcript of a portion of our conversation that touches on the role of ethics and inclusivity as more business interactions and transactions go digital – providing AI with the data it craves to predict and recommend things back to us.

I’ve been tracking the adoption of voice-first technology ever since I got my first Echo device around Thanksgiving of 2014 and started 20% of my sentences with “Alexa…”. And every so often I like to have guests join me for this series to see where things stand today with these devices, and how they’re being used. But I haven’t really focused on designing voice content before, which is why I was really excited to speak with Preston So. Preston is Senior Director, Product Strategy at Oracle, but more importantly for this conversation he is also author of the book, “Voice Content and Usability”.

Earlier this week Salesforce announced the launch of Salesforce+, their new streaming service focused on business content and programming. And seeing an enterprise software company launch what basically is an online broadcast network captured a lot of people’s attention, including yours truly and my CRM Playaz co-host Paul Greenberg. So we were really interested in learning more about what Salesforce+ is – and what it isn’t – and were fortunate enough to do a LinkedIn Live conversation with Colin Fleming, SVP of Global Brand Experiences, who’s heading up the Salesforce+ rollout.

James Brathwaite is a 17 year old rising high school senior in real life, but on TikTok he’s Jeb the Boxsmith. And in about ten weeks, he turned his love of building things out of boxes into over 60,000 followers on the platform. That wasn’t his plan, but the plan has now changed because of the success he found in such a short amount of time and only twelve videos he posted on the platform – with one of those videos capturing over 900,000 views….and counting. Recently I spoke with Jeb and his father (my friend Jeff Brathwaite) to learn how his passion for building things led to immediate success he found on TikTok, and to see what lessons could be learned for folks who would like to leverage the platform to connect with the audience they want to build a relationship with.

I may have mentioned before that I was a college DJ during the time when hip-hop music came of age. And one of my favorite songs of the era was Sally, by Stetsasonic. And years after my college DJ years (but I’m still a DJ…virtually at least) I had the opportunity to moderate a tech panel at Georgia Tech, and one of the panelists was Glenn Bolton, aka Daddy-O… co-founder of Stetsasonic. It was great hearing Daddy-O talk about technology and his experiences in business and the impact modern tech has had on the creation process. But at the time he hadn’t picked up the mic in a while. But a few years ago I started seeing videos of Daddy-O rapping again. And then I was on LinkedIn one morning and saw that he posted a sneak peek clip of Daddy-O and the whole Stetsasonic crew teasing a new song. The fact that they hadn’t made an album/DVD is about 30 years but still sounding great really stopped me in my tracks. And the fact that I saw this first on LinkedIn – and not YouTube – really stood out to me… that

Almost a year ago I had an opportunity to talk with Craig Cuffie, EVP and Chief Procurement Officer for Salesforce. It was just a few months after George Floyd was murdered, and about 4 months into the pandemic-induced shutdown. It was a heavy time. It still is a heavy time. Which is why I was so glad to speak with Craig again to see hear how the plans Salesforce had begun in response to the social unrest inspired by the George Floyd situation.

Those who know me, know I’m a big Los Angeles Rams fan. Even those who don’t know me, but watch any of the LinkedIn Live conversations I do for this series know that, as I where at least one piece of Rams gear on every one of the convos I’ve done. Needless to say I have a problem. But I’m not alone in this, as rabid sports fans of all kinds go to Fanatics.com on a regular basis to spend even more money on whatever the latest piece of gear is. Which is why I’ve been wanting to have a conversation with Carolyne Truelove, Head of Global Fan Experience for Fanatics. During a recent LinkedIn Live conversation, Carolyne shared why Fanatics talks in terms of fan experience instead of customer experience, why employees are called athletes and managers, and why she feels employee experience and corporate culture are directly connected to the experiences fans have with the company.

When Google announced at the beginning of the year they will be phasing out the use of third-party cookies in their Chrome browser it provoked a strong reaction in a couple of ways. Some saw it as a nod to improving customer data privacy, as cookies allow companies to track where you go on the web and create opportunities for marketers to “stalk” you with ads wherever you go. And marketers who worried about not being able to stalk you wherever you go on the web. And it’s those dueling positions – customer privacy vs marketers need to market - that is proving difficult to phase out those cookies, as Google announced a nearly two year delay in their cookie phase-out plans last week. The delay seems to be brought on by a hesitancy of some websites and tech companies to implement the tech Google is experimenting with as a cookie replacement - based on the Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) approach. This is supposed to provide a level of abstracting individual user information by creating groups of people

I’ve been fascinated with voice speakers and voice assistant technologies since getting my first Amazon Echo device in November of 2014. But I had been using a voice assistant since 2011 with the introduction of Siri on my iPhone. And with 2021 marking the 10th anniversary of the voice assistant in our lives, I was very excited to have a LinkedIn Live conversation with Bret Kinsella, CEO and founder of Voicebot.ai, the leading source of information on voice technology on the web. Bret shares his thoughts on the pandemic’s impact on voice adoption, why enterprise business application vendors have been slow to integrate voice-first tech into using their software, and what kinds of use cases are on the horizon that will get our attention sooner rather than later.

At the end of May Salesforce announced their latest quarterly revenues of $5.96B, estimating they are on track for annual revenues of $26B this fiscal year – adding up to a 22% year-over-year growth. OK this ends the CNBC segment of this post, but I wanted to point out the big numbers because these numbers came while Salesforce has also been growing and deepening their efforts with corporate diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI). So revenues continue growing alongside efforts to make the entire Salesforce ecosystem more equal and inclusive do as well. Which is one of the key points that Minea Moore, Ecosystem Diversity & Inclusion Director for Salesforce, made clear during our LinkedIn Live conversation from earlier this week.