June 12, 2025 • 33 mins
What’s the secret to building unshakeable trust with your customers—especially when you’re not face-to-face and your product passes through layers before it ever reaches the end user?
That question has been top of mind for me, and it’s exactly why I was so excited to sit down with Lisa Schwartz, Chief Operating Officer of Mathematica, on the latest episode of the Delighted Customers podcast. If you’ve ever wondered how trust really forms—not just in simple transactions, but in complex relationships where intermediaries stand between your company and your customers—you’re not going to want to miss this conversation. The little things we do, and the way we handle nuanced moments, can echo throughout an entire organization and set the tone for customer loyalty and business success.
I invite you to join me and Lisa as we explore the real-world power of trust. Lisa brings together an incredible mix of deep research, operational leadership, and street-smart experience (from her PhD in Developmental Psychology to her days as a bartender, practicing personalization long before it was a business buzzword). I learned so much from her perspective—she simply “gets it,” blending science, practical application, and genuine emotional intelligence in a way that makes it easy to apply to any customer relationship, no matter your industry or selling channel.
Here are three powerful questions we tackle together on the show:
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How can you demonstrate credibility and reliability when you don’t actually control the front-line customer interactions?
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What are best practices for creating intimacy and lowering self-orientation in situations where direct access to the end user isn’t possible?
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What kinds of small gestures truly move the needle in building lasting customer partnerships and loyalty?
If these are questions you wrestle with—or you want to elevate trust inside and outside your organization—I hope you’ll listen in. Subscribe to Delighted Customers on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or find us on your favorite podcast platform. Your feedback and support mean the world to me, and I can’t wait for you to experience what Lisa has to share!
Meet Lisa Schwartz
Lisa Schwartz, Ph.D., is the Chief Operating Officer of Mathematica, a leading research and data consulting firm committed to improving public well-being through evidence-based solutions. With academic roots in developmental psychology (PhD, University of Maryland, College Park), Lisa spent years progressing from project leadership to executive management at Mathematica. Since 2019, she has driven the company’s customer experience strategy across all divisions, spearheading initiatives that blend data-driven objectivity with a client-centric approach. Lisa’s expertise lies in translating academic research into actionable, scalable business practices, all while championing relational trust as the cornerstone of every client journey.
Catch Part 2 of 2 with Lisa on Episode #139!
Connect with Lisa Schwartz on LinkedIn.
Show Notes and References
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Learn more about Mathematica: mathematica.org
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Explore the Gottman Institute’s work on emotional bank accounts: gottman.com
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Read about the Trust Equation from “The Trusted Advisor”: trustedadvisor.com
Meet Lisa
Lisa Schwartz brings 20 years of
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
I'm so happy to be back with our guest, Lisa Schwartz
from who's the chief operating officer of Mathematica.
And if you didn't get a chance, please go back and listen to part
one. She really laid an amazing foundation to improve
the experience that our customers receive from us. But she did it through
the lens of the trustworthiness equation or trustworthiness
(00:22):
equation. And today, after having built that foundation,
we're going to take a deeper dive into how you can apply that and at
the same time, improve organizationally, how you can improve your
trustworthiness. So you engage with customers, so you increase their
loyalty to you and obviously get the business outcomes you're looking for. So with that
said, Lisa, welcome back to the show. Thanks. I am
(00:44):
delighted to be here. It's good to see you again. I'm happy to be able
to continue our conversation. You, too. And I do have to say, say this
again, a fellow, Marilyn Terrapin,
go trip. She got her PhD there, which is really impressive. And
it was in psychology. And she mentioned developmental psychology. So we go
through, like all the different life stages and deep dive.
(01:06):
What a great blend of experience working for a research
firm and running operations. But you also have that
psychology background. True. I also as a bartender,
so I've long studied people. So you go to school,
you do the research, and then nowhere can you get more practical application
than being a bartender. It's kind of in the reverse order. But yes, I think
(01:30):
that's right. I think that's where I decided that I wanted to be a research
psychologist and not a clinical one. Yeah. And if we could riff
off that. Tell me how. Tell me what you learned in bartending
that helps you in your career today. Such a great question. Such a great
question. And one of the things that I happen to be blessed
with is a very good memory for names and faces. This
(01:51):
is still true. My husband marvels will, like, go on vacation and I'll
see somebody and I will remember having seen them and I'll remember their name when
we run into them later. So as a bartender, I had that ability and
I upped that game by also challenging myself to
remember what the person drank. So you could walk into the bar. It was
a very small, little neighborhood bar. You could walk into my bar and I would
(02:14):
say, mark, it's so good to see you. Scotch and soda. And what that
was doing, even though at the time, motivation as a poor bartender
was to get a big tip. But what I was doing was it made
you feel special. You might have only been there one time before. And yet
I remembered not only your name but what you like to drink.
And so I think that directly
(02:36):
correlates with how I've thought about customer experience, how I
think about engaging with colleagues. Right. It's about that personal
connection and remembering and in the absence of vast amounts
of data back then, remembering something about them that makes
them feel like they registered with you as an important person on your
radar. Yeah. What a great connection to it. I bet you made a
(02:58):
lot of money as a bartender. That and stopping everything to play Jeopardy. But
that's another story for another time. Well, I
think what you're saying, if you're listening and you sell a product
or service that doesn't lean heavily on a frontline staff, like
let's say you're selling a product that's being resold or you're
selling through a distribution channel. I would still challenge you to think
(03:20):
because about mass customization, personalization
and how you can do that both. And you still have a partner
relationship even if you're not directly selling to an end user community.
But you do have that with who your client or customer is.
And you can partner co. Co create the
solution with that partner so that the end user does
(03:42):
feel like they. Somebody knows their name, somebody knows who they
are, somebody is personalizing or making them feel
like in the bar, in the stool in the bar that they felt special.
Would you agree with that? Yeah, I actually am inclined to ask you to
give me a concrete example. And let's play with it a little bit. How might
you in that circumstance create that feeling of walking
(04:05):
in and knowing that you're special? Yeah. So that's a
great, it's a great segue and a great platform to dive into
this part two with you because we wanted to get into practical
application. So we might, we might do a couple of these. One,
we'll start off with the harder version, which is when you're not
a bartender or a barista at Starbucks where you've constantly got
(04:27):
frontline staff helping end users. So a good example would be
an insurance carrier that sells PNC
products through an insurance brokerage. Right. An
agency brokerage. And so you are, you have a product
and your actuaries have come up with.
Designed a product. Let's say it is a, I don't know,
(04:49):
a business succession product for business
owners that, that provides
insurance either protection or. Yeah. So let's say
there's names for all these things that I'm not familiar with. But if one of
the executives has an issue like passes away
there's different kinds of insurance for that or if you're trying to sell the business.
(05:10):
So maybe you're selling that product through a brokerage.
So going back to the. Maybe we can play around with
this. Maybe. I don't know if you want to ask me the question or I'll
ask you the question. Yeah, let's play, let's see where we can take this. So
if you want we can go through each one of the four
variables of the trust equation and say, okay,
(05:32):
this tough nut is, I guarantee you there are people,
whether it's you know, third party insurance product
solutions like we're talking about or it is someone who sell,
works in a bank or who has end users all the time or
I don't even need government agent, government agency, you know, how do you
connect? And so, so let's start with credibility and reliability then
(05:55):
intimacy and self orientation. Credibility as you shared
last time really has to do with, you know,
your, they talk about words being the factor,
but really, you know, if you think about the medical doctor wearing the lab jacket
and with their name and the credentials behind that, I think I
often think about the, you know, the pest
(06:17):
exterminators that come in a uniform versus those that don't.
Yep, those are a couple of examples. But in Entrusted
Advisor, when I was part of their team, we talked a lot about
the confidence you have in whatever the statement actually is when you're
sharing it and the firmness of a handshake looking directly into
someone, someone's eyes that gives them the credibility.
(06:39):
So, and let me toss that out to you now that I spent a moment
to redefine. Now you're this insurance carrier and you're like, well
yeah, Mark, but we don't, we don't sell directly to the end users. How am
I going to demonstrate credibility? Yeah, and I just want to make sure. So
I'm, I'm selling my product through a brokerage and,
and I'm going to pretend that you are the business
(07:02):
that I want. So now I'm behind the scenes
but I want this brokerage to get your business. Yeah. So we have
multiple layers of credibility that need to be established. So
my brokerage is my front line. I might want to co
create with them what are some of the things that we want to make
sure happen in your first outreach to Mark to get
(07:25):
Mark's business. And maybe that's from. So
I'm going to use my own preferences here as my guideline,
but I might want part of that experience to include that the
brokerage firm is going to spend a certain amount of time
studying your particular business so that
they know how long it's been there. They know something about the tenure of the
(07:46):
people that are there, they know something about your business so
that when they approach you, they're already approaching you from your
context as best as they can get there. Which
one makes me feel special from the get go?
Right. It makes me feel like this is not just a cold call where you
wanted anybody's business. You've identified a need in
(08:08):
mind. Yeah. So I might work with the brokerage on something like
that to start. So let me throw out a potential
role play. Sure. I'll take what you said and then you tell
me if you would add or edit or if I'm totally off base.
But basically based on what you said. So, Lisa, we've done an
analysis of your market and your competitive landscape and we discovered
(08:30):
that there seems to be a gap or what we would call an
opportunity to serve those businesses in your market
that are really being underserved in this particular category of executive
insurance and risk management. And there are three key things
that we discovered that are missing that are not
available. And when they are available, your competitors
(08:52):
offer them a la carte in a very pricey form, or
even if they have it, they don't even mention it. Does that make sense to
you? Yeah. So that felt like you were the
insurance company behind the scenes, not the brokerage, the person with the
product. And you are now coaching or approaching this
brokerage with an opportunity for them to grow their business.
(09:16):
So one in terms of credibility. Yes. And
yes. Right. Yep. So you sounded
informed. Certainly sounded informed. You had some, some notion of what was going
on in my particular area, what was being offered, how it was being
offered. You seem to be genuinely interested in
my success as well. Right. There's an opportunity here for
(09:39):
you to expand your reach. And I probably, since we were
making this up, you couldn't have had this yet. I probably needed to
know a little bit more about the gap that
you identified and why it was a
risk to those potential customers. I wanted to know
a little bit more about how it's a potential risk to those customers. I would.
(10:01):
Not yet. So what I loved about that was you did not try to sell
me your product yet. Yeah, we haven't talked about that yet. Yeah, I think, I
think one of the, one of the goals I had would, would be
for you to say, really tell me more. Yep, yep. And I
would have, based on that, I would have asked those questions that I just asked
you now I'm like, tell me a little bit about who you see as underserved.
(10:23):
What do you know about those businesses? How long do they tend to stay around,
whatever it might be? I would probably have a bunch of questions for you. So.
Yep. So let's do a segue to the R. So let's
say you have said so. I'll end it by saying, well, if you'd
like, what we can do is provide you with a report of all the
organizations in your market that you've identified as your market
(10:45):
and the percentage of those that are underinsured
and what we believe is the opportunity so you could make a case
and we can work with you to co design the perfect product that
would fit your market's needs. It would take us a few weeks. Would you
be okay with that? So I might be curious to know if it would take
you a few weeks to produce the report. If you told me it was going
(11:06):
to take you a few weeks to produce the report, you might
have now undermined a little bit of your
credibility because you just talked with me and said that
you had all of this information and it sounded like you had it at your
fingertips. Yeah. So I would have expected the report
sooner, but let's pretend that it wasn't going to take a couple weeks. But if
(11:28):
you had just said, would you like me to send you the results of the
analysis that we did. Yeah, I guess there would be some,
some in this case study. There'd be something I would have asked you for that
was on your side that I needed to do to do the full report. So
this is making. That I'm making that up in my head that if
I come to you with a report and I really don't have any
(11:50):
information from you, maybe you don't know me well enough yet to give me a
report. So that's. Yeah. I also think that you want to start
to. It's very easy to take a call from anybody. Right. And it's
very easy to be nice on that call and perhaps
hold out the possibility. You never know, there might be some there. There. Right. That's
very easy to do. Yeah. So you want something that
(12:13):
indicates that there's a little bit more than superficial
interest and maybe not on that first call. Right. So now we're, we're trying to
see like how, how interested are you in making this
relationship happen. Right. We want to get a feel for that. Yeah. Yeah.
So. And I apologize. I skipped. I skipped a whole bunch of things going
on in my head that we talked about during our meeting and things I
(12:35):
needed from you to do what I needed to do. So, so I'm saying
this is where we left it off. Now let's go to reliability. Reliability, largely
as you shared last time, goes to keeping your promises, being
dependable, being reliable. So how would that play out if I
were the company, the insurance wholesaler, if you
will. Yeah. And we're working with, we're still working with this brokerage.
(12:58):
There's a few things that come to mind for me. One is that
I really like when people offer to connect
me to somebody who has a similar, let's say a
very similar brokerage. They serve a very similar community. They're not
a direct competitor of mine, but they're similar enough and here's
what we did with them. So for me, if you are
(13:20):
willing, without my asking, to essentially refer me to someone
so that I can get a seemingly more independent take on your
credibility and what the experience is like of working with you. That's
a win in my book. Some other things that I might do
is ask you some questions as the
brokerage about can you tell me a little bit about where
(13:43):
you've struggled in expanding your out your
footprint, your market share with executives looking
for blah, blah, blah, blah, these types of insurances. And what I might
then do if you were willing to share a little bit with me is to
offer, in addition to the analysis that we did, would it
be helpful for you if I also did X
(14:05):
and sent you the analysis and this other thing that I'm going to do for
you to help you maybe think about your challenge a little bit differently. So
those, if I then do those things. Right. So I said I was going
to do it, I'm going to do it by thus and such a date would
be, you know, is next Tuesday good for you? Whatever it is. And I do
it now, I'm starting to build up that credibility because in this game,
(14:26):
so I don't live in this world, so I'm like making up what I imagine
in this world. This brokerage is, is my customer.
Right. They are who I want to delight. And they then
want to delight the executives at the company that they. Right.
That's how we have to think about this. Right? Yeah. I mean, I
(14:46):
love that example of, you know, you're. The last part of what you said
is and then I do it. And then I do it when I said I
would, I do it when I said I would. Maybe I even get it to
you a little bit early and say I was really excited
about what I learned when we looked into this issue you
mentioned that you were having. I wanted to get this to you quickly.
(15:08):
I can be available as early as Monday of next week if
you want to talk sooner. Right. So now I'm excited for you.
Yeah. That's really nice. And what comes to mind for me
is it doesn't always have to be a big thing
like a fancy report. It's a small thing. And even like just me
summarizing our meeting and sending you a follow up and saying, these are the three
(15:30):
things I'll be working on and I'll have them to you by next Tuesday. Right?
Yep, yep, exactly. It really is, I think the small things,
especially in the beginning, big things feel like you
are after something. Small things
feel like you're maybe
generous or you're really interested. Right. I think to the
(15:51):
extent we all know that we're in business, but to the
extent that we can shift the focus to how
can, how can we work together in a relationship that lasts,
that we both benefit from and away from. Look, I got to get
this. I have sales targets. I got to get these insurance products out to like
however many brokerages I have on my back. Right. The more we can
(16:13):
shift away from that, I think the better things, I think the better things go
for everybody. And it may be the case. I'm going to give
another relia. I think this is a reliability example, but it also
demonstrates for me the lack of self orientation. Right.
That, that denominator, the most generous thing that
people can do that is to say, you know what? I would love to
(16:35):
be able to provide you with exactly this. Right. Product
that, you know, after listening to you, I can see that's what you need.
We actually don't have that. But here are
two companies that I hold in really high regard that
do that. I think is that's the money. That's the real
money. That's. That is
(16:58):
credibility and reliability over self orientation. We haven't gotten to
intimacy yet because we're not actually in some kind of
relationship yet. Although I guess we could start to say that the by am
I asking about what are you challenged by? We're starting to build towards
intimacy. Yeah, 100%. And what you
said about being willing to refer a competitor if that's what's in the
(17:20):
best interest of your customer, is showing a low self
orientation. If we could we skip ahead a little bit to that one.
But let's, let's wind back to intimacy. So intimacy, you
know, we're talking about creating a safe haven for difficult
conversations. And I know you've got a vault so you know
how to react when I share something somewhat vulnerably. If that's what
(17:42):
intimacy is, you know, how can I, early on in the
discussion, demonstrate intimacy with you?
Two things come to mind for me. I'm curious to hear how
they land. Yeah. One is sometimes
it's the not so serious but
gentle self revelation so that I become a human
(18:03):
in your eyes. So I'm not going to ask you to be vulnerable with me.
I'll be vulnerable with you. So a real example would be. Right.
We started this call and I said, you won't believe what I did. Just as
I was walking into my office, I poked myself in my own eye. Right. Like,
who does that? Right. So that I didn't. That didn't feel particularly
vulnerable. But I didn't need to disclose it. And I
(18:24):
hope, I mean this wasn't all as intentional as it might going to make it
sound. But I hope that connected us person to person. Right. Like I'm just a
person that sometimes does really dumb things and I'm still
happy to be here. So it can be something small. It can be if I
called you on Tuesday saying something about like, oh my gosh, I
spent the entire weekend at my kids softball games. I hope you had
(18:46):
a better weekend than I did. Right. It can be. And it can be anything
along those lines that just again starts to
shift us from I want to make money off of you
to I want to connect with you. Yeah. Yeah. Those
are great examples and I love the willingness to go first.
I know that Charlie Greene often talks about trust. There's two people. There's a
(19:08):
trustor and a trustee. And often to get trust, you have to take the
first step. You have to trust others first to demonstrate
and set the stage. Set. The tone for this is
I'm willing to be vulnerable. I'm going to go first. And then that gives you
maybe a psychological safe place. Yeah. To share something
maybe on your mind. Yep. I think that's right. The other thing that we talked
(19:30):
about in the last episode was also being really attentive to
non verbal cues and huge.
Using those as an opportunity to just lean in a little bit with
a little bit of curiosity. Just check out. Is there anything going on on
your end that maybe this isn't the best time, Whatever it might be. Even just
the fact that you articulate that you noticed. You
(19:52):
noticed Builds intimacy. Yeah. Oftentimes in a meeting
there's someone around the table as you're talking, that's making a
facial expression or a body gesture that is not agreeing with
what you're saying. Just put it that way. Yep. And so one thing you could
do is glaze over it and keep pushing through. Or another option
is to stop and say, you know, Lisa, when I
(20:15):
just said that you had a facial expression, that brought into question
what I was sharing. Do you have. I'd love to hear your perspective on it.
Right. And how you said that is so important.
I would love to hear. Your perspective is very
different from what were you thinking. Oh, my.
But. But if you think about most meetings, I don't know that we take the
(20:39):
intentional delicacy to ask it the way that you asked it, but
it makes the world of difference. If you ask me, what were you thinking? I'm
far more inclined to say, nothing. I was, you know, whatever. I got
distracted. Sorry. But if you ask, if you tell me you'd love to hear my
perspective now, I might say, well, you know, I
appreciate all the work that you did in analyzing my market, but, you know, we
(20:59):
have our. An entire market research firm on our end, and I'm not sure
how they would feel about taking analyses from you. Right. Like,
now we've. So if that had been the conversation going back
to our little case study that we were playing with, that just blew the door
open. Right. From my perspective. Yeah. Right, right.
And if you don't pick up on those subtle hints, you
(21:21):
could miss something very important. Yeah. Yep. The other one that
I think is also really important, oftentimes in the, you know, the
call that we're playing around with, you might have more than one person on the
call and paying attention to who's speaking and who's not
being intentional about inviting everybody who's there
to have a say or designing the meeting in
(21:44):
a way that makes it easy for people,
regardless of their level and the power relationships among them, to
provide their input without having to worry that they're gonna
contradict their boss or all the other things that happen. Hugely important.
Huge. So self orientation. I know we touched on it already
again, but in this scenario of the case study, whether it's in
(22:07):
the initial meeting or follow up, what are. What's. Maybe one
application that comes to mind for you when it comes to showing a
low self orientation? So we gave two really good examples
first. Right. One was, could we sort of for free, do some analysis for
you on a challenge that you're currently facing? That was one. The
other was the referral, which was the huge One that's a huge
(22:29):
one. We might not get there too quickly. You know, I
think this is maybe more of an art, but there is an art
to knowing when to introduce
your product and an art to knowing how to talk
about it. So self orientation for me feels
like, or I experience someone as being self oriented when they start
(22:53):
by talking about how much better
their product is than X, Y and Z
competitor out there. Now it might be important
for me to know that, that here's what differentiates us
or here's where you're going to get some added value or whatever it might be.
But if you come in strong with that at the outset,
(23:15):
that to me again smells of. You just want the sale.
Right. So things that you could do.
For me, it's a little bit of this slowing down to go faster.
So it's spending that time up front in these early stages
of really understanding what's going on with this particular
brokerage. Right. So we've done this market
(23:37):
analysis, blah blah, blah. They seem kind of interested. They've given
us a challenge that we could help them. Maybe think about
asking somebody, what don't I know about your business that might
help me design with you a better product.
That's a great question. That's a great question. What don't I know?
Because I don't know their business as well as they do.
(24:00):
And so that's, that's one to me that I think you could do
pretty easily in the beginning that sends
a signal I'm interested in you. Yeah. What I love about that
is by saying I don't know, it
may seem counterintuitive because oftentimes we're, you know,
from grade school we're taught to be the first one to raise our hand in
(24:22):
class and be the first one with the answer. But the reality is when
you say you don't know, there's a certain vulnerability and
a certain. And then follow it up by saying, but I am curious.
Could you share with me xyz? Yep. So
you're kind of deferring or
you know, putting yourself in a submissive position, at least for the moment, in
(24:44):
saying, look, I don't. We're going to need to work together on this. I have
a lot of potential ways that I think I can help you, but I'm not
sure yet. I have to learn more. Yep. I also think what we're trying to
create. Right. We said at the beginning we're looking for a co creative process
with this potential brokerage. So I can't
come in. This is an interesting play on the. On the
trustworthiness equation. Right. I want to be credible with
(25:08):
my expertise, but I don't want to presume that that's
the only expertise in the room, and that's the only expertise that matters.
You, as my partner, need to bring your expertise to the table, not
to earn my trust, but in order for us to be able to collaborate effectively.
And so that's another piece of it. That's another piece of it for
sure. Yeah, It's. It's so powerful, what we just walked
(25:30):
through, actually. So as I'm listening here, I'm thinking everything
we just said applies. If we were frontline, if
we were a business that sold to the front line. And to. To your point,
it's like you start off with the bartender story, and I think about the
norm from Cheers just passed away. A lot of people talk about where
everybody knows your name, and this is true. And so it's
(25:53):
just instead of name in this situation, it is,
what. What is it? And we talked about this last time. As you think about
up front, you talked about asking more questions and learning more about them and their
situation and what their challenges and struggles are. How could
you make them look good? What is it that you can do to make
them feel better about themselves? Yep. And you. You can't
(26:15):
know. You. You can't know that when you first meet someone. Right. So you've got
to stay curious, don't you? Yeah, absolutely. And I also think
it's why sales lead times are really interesting to
me, because in many ways, I think if you
are taking the time and
letting the relationship just develop, you're
(26:37):
taking the time, you might end up with, you
know, a lifetime customer. And to me, that's way more
valuable than I close the deal really
quickly. It also made me think, because we did start with. We started with the
bar, and they're not the front line. And I felt in myself that
little pivot moment when I went, yes, but in this situation,
(26:59):
who's the customer? Who's the customer? And I think we want
to challenge ourselves to always be thinking about that. Who
has the choice? Who has the choice about who they're going to partner with,
where they're going to go, what they're going to do, and who is in the
position of needing to earn trust. So from a practical standpoint,
I did consult with companies over my career in insurance and other
(27:21):
industries, and I have students who sell products through other
companies at msu. And one of the most common
challenges, it relates to this case study. We Just shared is if
I'm selling, in this case, I'm selling the insurance product that has to be
resold through this intermediary, we'll call it a broker agency.
And I don't have direct access to their customers, the people who actually
(27:42):
purchase the product. Yep. But. And when that means
if I don't build up enough trust and you, you
pick the industry. But I'm. We're talking about insurance right now, then I
won't. It'll be like an opaque instead of a transparent wall.
And I won't. You won't give me access to the sentiment and
the operational data that I can maybe help you with because
(28:05):
we don't have that level of trust. Yep, exactly.
Exactly. And then what happens? So let's just say we
missed the mark. Let's just say the product missed the mark. It happens.
If we haven't built up that trust, the easiest thing to do
is to say we're not re upping with these guys. When our insurance comes up
for renewal next year, we're going somewhere else. We're not offering this product, whatever it
(28:27):
is. That's easy. The harder thing is
to keep that feedback loop, customer to
brokerage to insurance product owner, whatever.
Right. So keeping that open, which only comes with trust, to
say, here's what we're hearing when we're approaching
executives about buying this insurance,
(28:49):
or there might be things that we want to design directly into the
product that can help us understand
behaviors, choices, whatever it might be. But in the
absence of that, I, the insurance product owner,
I'm a commodity that can be swapped out at any time. If we
are partnered on this, and I'm helping you drive your
(29:11):
commitments from your customers, we're both winning.
We're both winning. We're all winning, hopefully. Right? Yeah. So when
I talk about all the things that you just walked us through, if you can
become a trusted advisor, not only will they come to you for
advice on that insurance product, they might come to you
advice on other things. That's right. That they're involved in. And if you think
(29:33):
about how your relationship, both business and personal,
fits into the long term equation, well, that could end up
making a difference for you somehow in the long run. But that's not why you
do it. That's right. That's right. That's exactly what I was thinking as you were
talking. I was thinking about, you know, they might come back to you for advice
about something else that opens up a whole new market for my company.
(29:55):
Right. That's also possible. Right. I was Also thinking about
when you're the trusted advisor, what you also might hear is,
listen, the ultimate decision maker on this is going to be this person
and their nephew works for, blah, blah, blah, competitor. Or
they get really triggered by anything that references
blank. Right. Like you start to get the inside scoop about how that
(30:18):
business actually operates. That
is invaluable. It's just invaluable information to help
you take that context, which goes back to what I was asking about at the
beginning. Right. Take that much more intimate context that you have
and really design to meet those needs. So many gems,
such powerful information. I think back,
(30:40):
boy, I wish I had known this information years ago.
Me too. Thank you. Me too. Yeah. Thank you so
much for sharing. I do have one more question for you if it's okay.
So what delights you as a customer? Oh, my goodness.
I've probably told the stories over the two episodes.
I love the small gesture. The
(31:02):
small gesture means more to me than anything
else. I'm going to give you a current example. So I was
talking with a vendor. We had a wonderful conversation. Their product
that they're selling isn't something that I'm currently in the market for, but nonetheless, we
had a really great conversation. We agreed that we would touch base later in the
year. All good. All good stuff. All the stuff we just talked about. Out of
(31:24):
nowhere, I got an invitation to go to a sporting event on their dime.
They had a box or whatever. I very honestly
responded by saying I don't really like
watching sports. I so appreciate the invitation,
but I would feel awful taking a seat from somebody who would really enjoy this.
Which started this exchange about how un American and but thoughtful
(31:45):
I am. I have to tell you, like, this was like
nothing. This was nothing. This was just kind of banter. But it
was banter that again made me feel like I like
this person. Like when I am in the market for this product, I'm going to
call them because I just like them. So the small gesture will win
me over every time. I also referrals win me
(32:07):
over every single solitary time. And anytime somebody says to
me, you don't actually need X, I know you think that's what
you need. But Y, which is going to be much easier to
implement. Whatever it might be. Y is going to be smaller.
Why is going to get you there. You have my loyalty forever.
Because you chose caring about my pocketbook over
(32:29):
yours. Yeah. Really low self orientation. Yeah. Gets me
every time. Every time. What a great, great example. I would take those tickets, by
the way. Okay. I'll see if they're still available.
Well, Lisa, thank you so much. Lisa Schwartz, the chief operating
officer of Mathematica for a two part series. If you didn't listen
to part one, I said at the top of the show, you might want to
(32:53):
go back and listen to that one first. And we bookend it. And she
laid the foundation in the first episode today. We talked
about walking through the four variables in the trust
equation together as we looked at basically an insurance
wholesaler. Lisa, thank you so much for being a guest on the show. Mark,
it's been fantastic. And congrats to to you in your graduating class.
(33:15):
It's wonderful stuff. And I hope to cross paths again.
It was a wonderful conversation. Thank you so much. Thank you, Lisa.
I'm so happy to be back with our guest, Lisa Schwartz
from who's the chief operating officer of Mathematica.
And if you didn't get a chance, please go back and listen to part
one. She really laid an amazing foundation to improve
the experience that our customers receive from us. But she did it through
the lens of the trustworthiness equation or trustworthiness
(00:22):
equation. And today, after having built that foundation,
we're going to take a deeper dive into how you can apply that and at
the same time, improve organizationally, how you can improve your
trustworthiness. So you engage with customers, so you increase their
loyalty to you and obviously get the business outcomes you're looking for. So with that
said, Lisa, welcome back to the show. Thanks. I am
(00:44):
delighted to be here. It's good to see you again. I'm happy to be able
to continue our conversation. You, too. And I do have to say, say this
again, a fellow, Marilyn Terrapin,
go trip. She got her PhD there, which is really impressive. And
it was in psychology. And she mentioned developmental psychology. So we go
through, like all the different life stages and deep dive.
(01:06):
What a great blend of experience working for a research
firm and running operations. But you also have that
psychology background. True. I also as a bartender,
so I've long studied people. So you go to school,
you do the research, and then nowhere can you get more practical application
than being a bartender. It's kind of in the reverse order. But yes, I think
(01:30):
that's right. I think that's where I decided that I wanted to be a research
psychologist and not a clinical one. Yeah. And if we could riff
off that. Tell me how. Tell me what you learned in bartending
that helps you in your career today. Such a great question. Such a great
question. And one of the things that I happen to be blessed
with is a very good memory for names and faces. This
(01:51):
is still true. My husband marvels will, like, go on vacation and I'll
see somebody and I will remember having seen them and I'll remember their name when
we run into them later. So as a bartender, I had that ability and
I upped that game by also challenging myself to
remember what the person drank. So you could walk into the bar. It was
a very small, little neighborhood bar. You could walk into my bar and I would
(02:14):
say, mark, it's so good to see you. Scotch and soda. And what that
was doing, even though at the time, motivation as a poor bartender
was to get a big tip. But what I was doing was it made
you feel special. You might have only been there one time before. And yet
I remembered not only your name but what you like to drink.
And so I think that directly
(02:36):
correlates with how I've thought about customer experience, how I
think about engaging with colleagues. Right. It's about that personal
connection and remembering and in the absence of vast amounts
of data back then, remembering something about them that makes
them feel like they registered with you as an important person on your
radar. Yeah. What a great connection to it. I bet you made a
(02:58):
lot of money as a bartender. That and stopping everything to play Jeopardy. But
that's another story for another time. Well, I
think what you're saying, if you're listening and you sell a product
or service that doesn't lean heavily on a frontline staff, like
let's say you're selling a product that's being resold or you're
selling through a distribution channel. I would still challenge you to think
(03:20):
because about mass customization, personalization
and how you can do that both. And you still have a partner
relationship even if you're not directly selling to an end user community.
But you do have that with who your client or customer is.
And you can partner co. Co create the
solution with that partner so that the end user does
(03:42):
feel like they. Somebody knows their name, somebody knows who they
are, somebody is personalizing or making them feel
like in the bar, in the stool in the bar that they felt special.
Would you agree with that? Yeah, I actually am inclined to ask you to
give me a concrete example. And let's play with it a little bit. How might
you in that circumstance create that feeling of walking
(04:05):
in and knowing that you're special? Yeah. So that's a
great, it's a great segue and a great platform to dive into
this part two with you because we wanted to get into practical
application. So we might, we might do a couple of these. One,
we'll start off with the harder version, which is when you're not
a bartender or a barista at Starbucks where you've constantly got
(04:27):
frontline staff helping end users. So a good example would be
an insurance carrier that sells PNC
products through an insurance brokerage. Right. An
agency brokerage. And so you are, you have a product
and your actuaries have come up with.
Designed a product. Let's say it is a, I don't know,
(04:49):
a business succession product for business
owners that, that provides
insurance either protection or. Yeah. So let's say
there's names for all these things that I'm not familiar with. But if one of
the executives has an issue like passes away
there's different kinds of insurance for that or if you're trying to sell the business.
(05:10):
So maybe you're selling that product through a brokerage.
So going back to the. Maybe we can play around with
this. Maybe. I don't know if you want to ask me the question or I'll
ask you the question. Yeah, let's play, let's see where we can take this. So
if you want we can go through each one of the four
variables of the trust equation and say, okay,
(05:32):
this tough nut is, I guarantee you there are people,
whether it's you know, third party insurance product
solutions like we're talking about or it is someone who sell,
works in a bank or who has end users all the time or
I don't even need government agent, government agency, you know, how do you
connect? And so, so let's start with credibility and reliability then
(05:55):
intimacy and self orientation. Credibility as you shared
last time really has to do with, you know,
your, they talk about words being the factor,
but really, you know, if you think about the medical doctor wearing the lab jacket
and with their name and the credentials behind that, I think I
often think about the, you know, the pest
(06:17):
exterminators that come in a uniform versus those that don't.
Yep, those are a couple of examples. But in Entrusted
Advisor, when I was part of their team, we talked a lot about
the confidence you have in whatever the statement actually is when you're
sharing it and the firmness of a handshake looking directly into
someone, someone's eyes that gives them the credibility.
(06:39):
So, and let me toss that out to you now that I spent a moment
to redefine. Now you're this insurance carrier and you're like, well
yeah, Mark, but we don't, we don't sell directly to the end users. How am
I going to demonstrate credibility? Yeah, and I just want to make sure. So
I'm, I'm selling my product through a brokerage and,
and I'm going to pretend that you are the business
(07:02):
that I want. So now I'm behind the scenes
but I want this brokerage to get your business. Yeah. So we have
multiple layers of credibility that need to be established. So
my brokerage is my front line. I might want to co
create with them what are some of the things that we want to make
sure happen in your first outreach to Mark to get
(07:25):
Mark's business. And maybe that's from. So
I'm going to use my own preferences here as my guideline,
but I might want part of that experience to include that the
brokerage firm is going to spend a certain amount of time
studying your particular business so that
they know how long it's been there. They know something about the tenure of the
(07:46):
people that are there, they know something about your business so
that when they approach you, they're already approaching you from your
context as best as they can get there. Which
one makes me feel special from the get go?
Right. It makes me feel like this is not just a cold call where you
wanted anybody's business. You've identified a need in
(08:08):
mind. Yeah. So I might work with the brokerage on something like
that to start. So let me throw out a potential
role play. Sure. I'll take what you said and then you tell
me if you would add or edit or if I'm totally off base.
But basically based on what you said. So, Lisa, we've done an
analysis of your market and your competitive landscape and we discovered
(08:30):
that there seems to be a gap or what we would call an
opportunity to serve those businesses in your market
that are really being underserved in this particular category of executive
insurance and risk management. And there are three key things
that we discovered that are missing that are not
available. And when they are available, your competitors
(08:52):
offer them a la carte in a very pricey form, or
even if they have it, they don't even mention it. Does that make sense to
you? Yeah. So that felt like you were the
insurance company behind the scenes, not the brokerage, the person with the
product. And you are now coaching or approaching this
brokerage with an opportunity for them to grow their business.
(09:16):
So one in terms of credibility. Yes. And
yes. Right. Yep. So you sounded
informed. Certainly sounded informed. You had some, some notion of what was going
on in my particular area, what was being offered, how it was being
offered. You seem to be genuinely interested in
my success as well. Right. There's an opportunity here for
(09:39):
you to expand your reach. And I probably, since we were
making this up, you couldn't have had this yet. I probably needed to
know a little bit more about the gap that
you identified and why it was a
risk to those potential customers. I wanted to know
a little bit more about how it's a potential risk to those customers. I would.
(10:01):
Not yet. So what I loved about that was you did not try to sell
me your product yet. Yeah, we haven't talked about that yet. Yeah, I think, I
think one of the, one of the goals I had would, would be
for you to say, really tell me more. Yep, yep. And I
would have, based on that, I would have asked those questions that I just asked
you now I'm like, tell me a little bit about who you see as underserved.
(10:23):
What do you know about those businesses? How long do they tend to stay around,
whatever it might be? I would probably have a bunch of questions for you. So.
Yep. So let's do a segue to the R. So let's
say you have said so. I'll end it by saying, well, if you'd
like, what we can do is provide you with a report of all the
organizations in your market that you've identified as your market
(10:45):
and the percentage of those that are underinsured
and what we believe is the opportunity so you could make a case
and we can work with you to co design the perfect product that
would fit your market's needs. It would take us a few weeks. Would you
be okay with that? So I might be curious to know if it would take
you a few weeks to produce the report. If you told me it was going
(11:06):
to take you a few weeks to produce the report, you might
have now undermined a little bit of your
credibility because you just talked with me and said that
you had all of this information and it sounded like you had it at your
fingertips. Yeah. So I would have expected the report
sooner, but let's pretend that it wasn't going to take a couple weeks. But if
(11:28):
you had just said, would you like me to send you the results of the
analysis that we did. Yeah, I guess there would be some,
some in this case study. There'd be something I would have asked you for that
was on your side that I needed to do to do the full report. So
this is making. That I'm making that up in my head that if
I come to you with a report and I really don't have any
(11:50):
information from you, maybe you don't know me well enough yet to give me a
report. So that's. Yeah. I also think that you want to start
to. It's very easy to take a call from anybody. Right. And it's
very easy to be nice on that call and perhaps
hold out the possibility. You never know, there might be some there. There. Right. That's
very easy to do. Yeah. So you want something that
(12:13):
indicates that there's a little bit more than superficial
interest and maybe not on that first call. Right. So now we're, we're trying to
see like how, how interested are you in making this
relationship happen. Right. We want to get a feel for that. Yeah. Yeah.
So. And I apologize. I skipped. I skipped a whole bunch of things going
on in my head that we talked about during our meeting and things I
(12:35):
needed from you to do what I needed to do. So, so I'm saying
this is where we left it off. Now let's go to reliability. Reliability, largely
as you shared last time, goes to keeping your promises, being
dependable, being reliable. So how would that play out if I
were the company, the insurance wholesaler, if you
will. Yeah. And we're working with, we're still working with this brokerage.
(12:58):
There's a few things that come to mind for me. One is that
I really like when people offer to connect
me to somebody who has a similar, let's say a
very similar brokerage. They serve a very similar community. They're not
a direct competitor of mine, but they're similar enough and here's
what we did with them. So for me, if you are
(13:20):
willing, without my asking, to essentially refer me to someone
so that I can get a seemingly more independent take on your
credibility and what the experience is like of working with you. That's
a win in my book. Some other things that I might do
is ask you some questions as the
brokerage about can you tell me a little bit about where
(13:43):
you've struggled in expanding your out your
footprint, your market share with executives looking
for blah, blah, blah, blah, these types of insurances. And what I might
then do if you were willing to share a little bit with me is to
offer, in addition to the analysis that we did, would it
be helpful for you if I also did X
(14:05):
and sent you the analysis and this other thing that I'm going to do for
you to help you maybe think about your challenge a little bit differently. So
those, if I then do those things. Right. So I said I was going
to do it, I'm going to do it by thus and such a date would
be, you know, is next Tuesday good for you? Whatever it is. And I do
it now, I'm starting to build up that credibility because in this game,
(14:26):
so I don't live in this world, so I'm like making up what I imagine
in this world. This brokerage is, is my customer.
Right. They are who I want to delight. And they then
want to delight the executives at the company that they. Right.
That's how we have to think about this. Right? Yeah. I mean, I
(14:46):
love that example of, you know, you're. The last part of what you said
is and then I do it. And then I do it when I said I
would, I do it when I said I would. Maybe I even get it to
you a little bit early and say I was really excited
about what I learned when we looked into this issue you
mentioned that you were having. I wanted to get this to you quickly.
(15:08):
I can be available as early as Monday of next week if
you want to talk sooner. Right. So now I'm excited for you.
Yeah. That's really nice. And what comes to mind for me
is it doesn't always have to be a big thing
like a fancy report. It's a small thing. And even like just me
summarizing our meeting and sending you a follow up and saying, these are the three
(15:30):
things I'll be working on and I'll have them to you by next Tuesday. Right?
Yep, yep, exactly. It really is, I think the small things,
especially in the beginning, big things feel like you
are after something. Small things
feel like you're maybe
generous or you're really interested. Right. I think to the
(15:51):
extent we all know that we're in business, but to the
extent that we can shift the focus to how
can, how can we work together in a relationship that lasts,
that we both benefit from and away from. Look, I got to get
this. I have sales targets. I got to get these insurance products out to like
however many brokerages I have on my back. Right. The more we can
(16:13):
shift away from that, I think the better things, I think the better things go
for everybody. And it may be the case. I'm going to give
another relia. I think this is a reliability example, but it also
demonstrates for me the lack of self orientation. Right.
That, that denominator, the most generous thing that
people can do that is to say, you know what? I would love to
(16:35):
be able to provide you with exactly this. Right. Product
that, you know, after listening to you, I can see that's what you need.
We actually don't have that. But here are
two companies that I hold in really high regard that
do that. I think is that's the money. That's the real
money. That's. That is
(16:58):
credibility and reliability over self orientation. We haven't gotten to
intimacy yet because we're not actually in some kind of
relationship yet. Although I guess we could start to say that the by am
I asking about what are you challenged by? We're starting to build towards
intimacy. Yeah, 100%. And what you
said about being willing to refer a competitor if that's what's in the
(17:20):
best interest of your customer, is showing a low self
orientation. If we could we skip ahead a little bit to that one.
But let's, let's wind back to intimacy. So intimacy, you
know, we're talking about creating a safe haven for difficult
conversations. And I know you've got a vault so you know
how to react when I share something somewhat vulnerably. If that's what
(17:42):
intimacy is, you know, how can I, early on in the
discussion, demonstrate intimacy with you?
Two things come to mind for me. I'm curious to hear how
they land. Yeah. One is sometimes
it's the not so serious but
gentle self revelation so that I become a human
(18:03):
in your eyes. So I'm not going to ask you to be vulnerable with me.
I'll be vulnerable with you. So a real example would be. Right.
We started this call and I said, you won't believe what I did. Just as
I was walking into my office, I poked myself in my own eye. Right. Like,
who does that? Right. So that I didn't. That didn't feel particularly
vulnerable. But I didn't need to disclose it. And I
(18:24):
hope, I mean this wasn't all as intentional as it might going to make it
sound. But I hope that connected us person to person. Right. Like I'm just a
person that sometimes does really dumb things and I'm still
happy to be here. So it can be something small. It can be if I
called you on Tuesday saying something about like, oh my gosh, I
spent the entire weekend at my kids softball games. I hope you had
(18:46):
a better weekend than I did. Right. It can be. And it can be anything
along those lines that just again starts to
shift us from I want to make money off of you
to I want to connect with you. Yeah. Yeah. Those
are great examples and I love the willingness to go first.
I know that Charlie Greene often talks about trust. There's two people. There's a
(19:08):
trustor and a trustee. And often to get trust, you have to take the
first step. You have to trust others first to demonstrate
and set the stage. Set. The tone for this is
I'm willing to be vulnerable. I'm going to go first. And then that gives you
maybe a psychological safe place. Yeah. To share something
maybe on your mind. Yep. I think that's right. The other thing that we talked
(19:30):
about in the last episode was also being really attentive to
non verbal cues and huge.
Using those as an opportunity to just lean in a little bit with
a little bit of curiosity. Just check out. Is there anything going on on
your end that maybe this isn't the best time, Whatever it might be. Even just
the fact that you articulate that you noticed. You
(19:52):
noticed Builds intimacy. Yeah. Oftentimes in a meeting
there's someone around the table as you're talking, that's making a
facial expression or a body gesture that is not agreeing with
what you're saying. Just put it that way. Yep. And so one thing you could
do is glaze over it and keep pushing through. Or another option
is to stop and say, you know, Lisa, when I
(20:15):
just said that you had a facial expression, that brought into question
what I was sharing. Do you have. I'd love to hear your perspective on it.
Right. And how you said that is so important.
I would love to hear. Your perspective is very
different from what were you thinking. Oh, my.
But. But if you think about most meetings, I don't know that we take the
(20:39):
intentional delicacy to ask it the way that you asked it, but
it makes the world of difference. If you ask me, what were you thinking? I'm
far more inclined to say, nothing. I was, you know, whatever. I got
distracted. Sorry. But if you ask, if you tell me you'd love to hear my
perspective now, I might say, well, you know, I
appreciate all the work that you did in analyzing my market, but, you know, we
(20:59):
have our. An entire market research firm on our end, and I'm not sure
how they would feel about taking analyses from you. Right. Like,
now we've. So if that had been the conversation going back
to our little case study that we were playing with, that just blew the door
open. Right. From my perspective. Yeah. Right, right.
And if you don't pick up on those subtle hints, you
(21:21):
could miss something very important. Yeah. Yep. The other one that
I think is also really important, oftentimes in the, you know, the
call that we're playing around with, you might have more than one person on the
call and paying attention to who's speaking and who's not
being intentional about inviting everybody who's there
to have a say or designing the meeting in
(21:44):
a way that makes it easy for people,
regardless of their level and the power relationships among them, to
provide their input without having to worry that they're gonna
contradict their boss or all the other things that happen. Hugely important.
Huge. So self orientation. I know we touched on it already
again, but in this scenario of the case study, whether it's in
(22:07):
the initial meeting or follow up, what are. What's. Maybe one
application that comes to mind for you when it comes to showing a
low self orientation? So we gave two really good examples
first. Right. One was, could we sort of for free, do some analysis for
you on a challenge that you're currently facing? That was one. The
other was the referral, which was the huge One that's a huge
(22:29):
one. We might not get there too quickly. You know, I
think this is maybe more of an art, but there is an art
to knowing when to introduce
your product and an art to knowing how to talk
about it. So self orientation for me feels
like, or I experience someone as being self oriented when they start
(22:53):
by talking about how much better
their product is than X, Y and Z
competitor out there. Now it might be important
for me to know that, that here's what differentiates us
or here's where you're going to get some added value or whatever it might be.
But if you come in strong with that at the outset,
(23:15):
that to me again smells of. You just want the sale.
Right. So things that you could do.
For me, it's a little bit of this slowing down to go faster.
So it's spending that time up front in these early stages
of really understanding what's going on with this particular
brokerage. Right. So we've done this market
(23:37):
analysis, blah blah, blah. They seem kind of interested. They've given
us a challenge that we could help them. Maybe think about
asking somebody, what don't I know about your business that might
help me design with you a better product.
That's a great question. That's a great question. What don't I know?
Because I don't know their business as well as they do.
(24:00):
And so that's, that's one to me that I think you could do
pretty easily in the beginning that sends
a signal I'm interested in you. Yeah. What I love about that
is by saying I don't know, it
may seem counterintuitive because oftentimes we're, you know,
from grade school we're taught to be the first one to raise our hand in
(24:22):
class and be the first one with the answer. But the reality is when
you say you don't know, there's a certain vulnerability and
a certain. And then follow it up by saying, but I am curious.
Could you share with me xyz? Yep. So
you're kind of deferring or
you know, putting yourself in a submissive position, at least for the moment, in
(24:44):
saying, look, I don't. We're going to need to work together on this. I have
a lot of potential ways that I think I can help you, but I'm not
sure yet. I have to learn more. Yep. I also think what we're trying to
create. Right. We said at the beginning we're looking for a co creative process
with this potential brokerage. So I can't
come in. This is an interesting play on the. On the
trustworthiness equation. Right. I want to be credible with
(25:08):
my expertise, but I don't want to presume that that's
the only expertise in the room, and that's the only expertise that matters.
You, as my partner, need to bring your expertise to the table, not
to earn my trust, but in order for us to be able to collaborate effectively.
And so that's another piece of it. That's another piece of it for
sure. Yeah, It's. It's so powerful, what we just walked
(25:30):
through, actually. So as I'm listening here, I'm thinking everything
we just said applies. If we were frontline, if
we were a business that sold to the front line. And to. To your point,
it's like you start off with the bartender story, and I think about the
norm from Cheers just passed away. A lot of people talk about where
everybody knows your name, and this is true. And so it's
(25:53):
just instead of name in this situation, it is,
what. What is it? And we talked about this last time. As you think about
up front, you talked about asking more questions and learning more about them and their
situation and what their challenges and struggles are. How could
you make them look good? What is it that you can do to make
them feel better about themselves? Yep. And you. You can't
(26:15):
know. You. You can't know that when you first meet someone. Right. So you've got
to stay curious, don't you? Yeah, absolutely. And I also think
it's why sales lead times are really interesting to
me, because in many ways, I think if you
are taking the time and
letting the relationship just develop, you're
(26:37):
taking the time, you might end up with, you
know, a lifetime customer. And to me, that's way more
valuable than I close the deal really
quickly. It also made me think, because we did start with. We started with the
bar, and they're not the front line. And I felt in myself that
little pivot moment when I went, yes, but in this situation,
(26:59):
who's the customer? Who's the customer? And I think we want
to challenge ourselves to always be thinking about that. Who
has the choice? Who has the choice about who they're going to partner with,
where they're going to go, what they're going to do, and who is in the
position of needing to earn trust. So from a practical standpoint,
I did consult with companies over my career in insurance and other
(27:21):
industries, and I have students who sell products through other
companies at msu. And one of the most common
challenges, it relates to this case study. We Just shared is if
I'm selling, in this case, I'm selling the insurance product that has to be
resold through this intermediary, we'll call it a broker agency.
And I don't have direct access to their customers, the people who actually
(27:42):
purchase the product. Yep. But. And when that means
if I don't build up enough trust and you, you
pick the industry. But I'm. We're talking about insurance right now, then I
won't. It'll be like an opaque instead of a transparent wall.
And I won't. You won't give me access to the sentiment and
the operational data that I can maybe help you with because
(28:05):
we don't have that level of trust. Yep, exactly.
Exactly. And then what happens? So let's just say we
missed the mark. Let's just say the product missed the mark. It happens.
If we haven't built up that trust, the easiest thing to do
is to say we're not re upping with these guys. When our insurance comes up
for renewal next year, we're going somewhere else. We're not offering this product, whatever it
(28:27):
is. That's easy. The harder thing is
to keep that feedback loop, customer to
brokerage to insurance product owner, whatever.
Right. So keeping that open, which only comes with trust, to
say, here's what we're hearing when we're approaching
executives about buying this insurance,
(28:49):
or there might be things that we want to design directly into the
product that can help us understand
behaviors, choices, whatever it might be. But in the
absence of that, I, the insurance product owner,
I'm a commodity that can be swapped out at any time. If we
are partnered on this, and I'm helping you drive your
(29:11):
commitments from your customers, we're both winning.
We're both winning. We're all winning, hopefully. Right? Yeah. So when
I talk about all the things that you just walked us through, if you can
become a trusted advisor, not only will they come to you for
advice on that insurance product, they might come to you
advice on other things. That's right. That they're involved in. And if you think
(29:33):
about how your relationship, both business and personal,
fits into the long term equation, well, that could end up
making a difference for you somehow in the long run. But that's not why you
do it. That's right. That's right. That's exactly what I was thinking as you were
talking. I was thinking about, you know, they might come back to you for advice
about something else that opens up a whole new market for my company.
(29:55):
Right. That's also possible. Right. I was Also thinking about
when you're the trusted advisor, what you also might hear is,
listen, the ultimate decision maker on this is going to be this person
and their nephew works for, blah, blah, blah, competitor. Or
they get really triggered by anything that references
blank. Right. Like you start to get the inside scoop about how that
(30:18):
business actually operates. That
is invaluable. It's just invaluable information to help
you take that context, which goes back to what I was asking about at the
beginning. Right. Take that much more intimate context that you have
and really design to meet those needs. So many gems,
such powerful information. I think back,
(30:40):
boy, I wish I had known this information years ago.
Me too. Thank you. Me too. Yeah. Thank you so
much for sharing. I do have one more question for you if it's okay.
So what delights you as a customer? Oh, my goodness.
I've probably told the stories over the two episodes.
I love the small gesture. The
(31:02):
small gesture means more to me than anything
else. I'm going to give you a current example. So I was
talking with a vendor. We had a wonderful conversation. Their product
that they're selling isn't something that I'm currently in the market for, but nonetheless, we
had a really great conversation. We agreed that we would touch base later in the
year. All good. All good stuff. All the stuff we just talked about. Out of
(31:24):
nowhere, I got an invitation to go to a sporting event on their dime.
They had a box or whatever. I very honestly
responded by saying I don't really like
watching sports. I so appreciate the invitation,
but I would feel awful taking a seat from somebody who would really enjoy this.
Which started this exchange about how un American and but thoughtful
(31:45):
I am. I have to tell you, like, this was like
nothing. This was nothing. This was just kind of banter. But it
was banter that again made me feel like I like
this person. Like when I am in the market for this product, I'm going to
call them because I just like them. So the small gesture will win
me over every time. I also referrals win me
(32:07):
over every single solitary time. And anytime somebody says to
me, you don't actually need X, I know you think that's what
you need. But Y, which is going to be much easier to
implement. Whatever it might be. Y is going to be smaller.
Why is going to get you there. You have my loyalty forever.
Because you chose caring about my pocketbook over
(32:29):
yours. Yeah. Really low self orientation. Yeah. Gets me
every time. Every time. What a great, great example. I would take those tickets, by
the way. Okay. I'll see if they're still available.
Well, Lisa, thank you so much. Lisa Schwartz, the chief operating
officer of Mathematica for a two part series. If you didn't listen
to part one, I said at the top of the show, you might want to
(32:53):
go back and listen to that one first. And we bookend it. And she
laid the foundation in the first episode today. We talked
about walking through the four variables in the trust
equation together as we looked at basically an insurance
wholesaler. Lisa, thank you so much for being a guest on the show. Mark,
it's been fantastic. And congrats to to you in your graduating class.
(33:15):
It's wonderful stuff. And I hope to cross paths again.
It was a wonderful conversation. Thank you so much. Thank you, Lisa.
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