Michael Skriver spent his career leading complex B2B organizations across Europe and Asia — after starting in finance and IT and, as he says, upgrading to sales. In this conversation he and Lee Levitt work through what customer centricity looks like when it's an actual operating decision instead of a line on a slide.
The spine of the episode comes from a CEO Michael worked under: you say you're customer-centric and you actually care about it — I want to see that in your decisions, else it's just a slogan.
They cover what it takes to make that real. Executive sponsors with skin in the game. Incentive systems that quietly steer commercial decisions in the wrong direction. Technical and commercial sellers deployed as a pair. And then a long stretch on selling across cultures that includes a Japanese general manager who said the same sentence three times until Lee finally heard it, a boss who destroyed a relationship by asking to talk business too early, and a karaoke invitation that was actually an examination.