This episode is an interview with Edgar Geffroy on the topic of how companies can implement and use the knowledge of their employees in the digital environment. Have fun listening.
Further links
Introduction
Yes, another warm welcome to another episode of “Brain first, technology second.” And as you know, I say that you don’t have to do everything just because it’s digital, but you should think about it first and then do the things that make sense to drive your business forward, and someone who combines digitalization and sales like no other for me is Edgar Geffroy, who I’ve invited here today. It was my heart’s desire, Edgar, we didn’t discuss what I’m about to say at all, so it really is, we were just chatting very briefly and I said, oh, I have to hit the record button now, because you’ve already said so many interesting things. And I know Edgar, I got to know you as an author, funnily enough. So I read your books first, before I met you at the GSA, I think that was our first contact, that we met in person. And for me, Edgar Geffroy is someone who reinvents himself again and again like no other. And when you watch an interview like this, the first question is always, do I like these guys? I hope we’ve already answered the questions that I think we’re both quite likeable. The second question is, why is this whole topic so relevant? Why is reinventing yourself, dear Edgar, so relevant in today’s world as a company?
You, if I’m completely honest, then I have to say this. I’m not sure anymore. It’s my personal nature to constantly reinvent things and see things that others don’t yet see. Unfortunately, I always have to pay a price for it, because often many people don’t even see it at the time. That’s also the case with my new topic, when many people don’t yet see it at the time when I myself see it as an opportunity. That’s why this time we also have examples of customers who have already implemented it and are successful with it. In retrospect, many people say that one way is consistent. For example, I know Thorsten Höller, the founder of ??? very well. He simply went his own way very consistently and at the peak of his success last year, he reinvented his company again, but his core business has always remained the same. To be honest, I don’t know which is the better solution. I can’t change it because my nature is to constantly question and reinvent myself. Others go their own way consistently and are very successful with it. And I think you have to stay true to yourself. That is perhaps the right answer.
Well, I think there are different ways to be successful, but I’d say that success proves you right. I’ve been watching you for a while now, sometimes from a little further away, sometimes from a little closer. What’s interesting for me is that many people probably don’t know the path you’ve taken in life. We both have a few more years under our belts, but we’ve both been young for a bit longer, so we both have a five in front of the decimal point. And that’s why I’d be interested to hear from you personally, how did you come up with your topics? How did you get to where you are today, my dear Edgar?
So it’s doubly interesting, because I actually just published one of my book titles yesterday, which is now 30. So if we had said many years ago that I would ??? a number of 30 books, I would have laughed my head off as a complete utopia. I think…
I have read most of them.
Yes, many of them have become bestsellers and some are even world bestsellers. So one or what is still considered my best-known book is “The only thing that bothers you is the customer”. And with this book, the subtitle was very provocative: “Clienting replaces marketing”. I actually made a huge splash in the marketing world with it. After that, nobody from the entire marketing world spoke to me again.
That’s sometimes the case.
Yes, the lone voice in the wilderness and one of Europe’s 50 leading club marketing and sales experts. I was the youngest person in there at the time. I was just around 34 years old. Then everyone said to me, call it relationship marketing and then you can stay in. And then I thought, I associate a lot more with clienting. And that’s why I got out of it.
And it was even an anecdote in your last book. That made me smile. ??? Did you mention the short one too?
Yes, it really is like that. It wasn’t that easy, because I previously had one of the fastest growing sales consulting companies. We grew by 40% per year. Nobody knows that anymore. They all think I started with the book, because this book from 1992-93, that’s what bothered everyone, the customer is now 30 years old. This first book was published 30 years ago, and later it was on the Wirtschaftswoche bestseller list for 18 editions and 100 weeks. But it has a life. The only thing that bothers me is the customer. And that was my era as a sales consultancy. At the time, I had 20 sales trainers and was one of the fastest growing sales consulting companies in Germany with 40% growth per year. And yes, then I suddenly realized, I said, is what we’re doing here actually right? We had a huge success back then because I invented a 7-times contact system. What ??? and we taught BMW to sell out. So it was boring. We could no longer process orders because they were coming in from all sides. We all wanted to see 7 times contacts, mind you, all 35 years and more ago. And then at some point I was sitting there with my partner Jens ??? in his luxury Porsche 928 S4, I’ll never forget it. Listen, I think we’re doing something wrong. He said, why should we do anything wrong with growth? And I said, I think we’re thinking wrong. I think we’re thinking from our point of view, how we sell more. Yes, that’s right too. I said no? We should actually think about why customers buy or don’t buy. Hmmm. What are you saying, I’m just saying we’re on the wrong side. We have to cross a bridge, we have to think through the eyes of the customer. The book wasn’t even there yet. The little things and not yet invented. But it was clear to me that something had to happen differently from the customer’s point of view. And that’s where a second characteristic of mine comes in. Um, I look for the gap. I always look for what others don’t see. That’s why that’s the case again with my new topic and I always look carefully between the lines. Is there a gap and how can I exploit this gap, logically enough for companies. So I came up with the idea of saying that we have to consistently look through the eyes of the customer. We need to develop a strategy that focuses on the customer, that individualizes them. And then I came up with seven theses on how clienting can work. And today I can also claim for myself that I have created market leaders, created millionaires, in some cases multi-millionaires that I could name by name, who have consistently implemented this strategy.
And that’s what I always find so great about you. Also that things are really practicable and sometimes really offend. Well, if I stick with the new book, Knowledge Warrior, the title really irritated me, to be honest. I also said why it irritated me, because I say, there is this saying that we are a knowledge society. Yes, so because we have no resources, we are a knowledge society here, because we have no raw materials and nothing where we somehow have no oil, no other resins, minerals, etc.? Yes. On the other hand, I would also say that knowledge is now ubiquitously available on the internet. It’s not really about knowledge anymore, it’s about how I apply the topic, how I make the knowledge usable so that I can put it into practice. In other words, when I read the title, I had an initial feeling of disturbance. Then, when I read a few things… Is that something you intended, or how did you think about the choice of title, because I say, when you start a book like this, one of the first things you do is say I have an idea for this book and then this topic, what do we call the baby, comes up relatively quickly. Were you trying to be provocative or what was the idea behind the title to start with?
I asked a bestselling author when I was in Club 55. When I was at Club 55, I once asked a bestselling American author. He was jetlagged, so he was lying there by the pool and I gave him the … and said, how do you write a bestseller? Then he looked around for a moment and said title, title, title. Then he rolled over again and went back to sleep. Yes, it really was like that. So that’s actually how the basic idea for the only thing that bothers me is the customer. And then I thought about it, which is what I still do today, that I think about the title of a book for a very long time and can really only do two things. You can either provoke or dramatize, nothing works in the middle.
That’s right.
I wrote that the only thing that counts is the customer. And I believe that he is not … . This provocation, I argued about it in forums back then, back and forth, and how could I even dare to question marketing and was constantly going back and forth. And provoking or dramatizing was basically enough. Because you, if you. Streamline value is 0.0, you’re not interesting. You have to offend somewhere so that people start discussing it, preferably arguing. And I came across knowledge warriors when I was in the USA in Silicon Valley in 2018, I was right, I’d been to some of these top companies, I’d been to Facebook and others. And then I saw how they deal with big data. So where we dream of it. Today we know that Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon know more about us than I do. So when Amazon makes suggestions to me, I am always amazed that they obviously know exactly what is relevant to me and what is not. But, and here I was again, the gap finder, I was there in Silicon Valley, also in this area, where the start-up companies are basically all created and I said, yes, what don’t they have? And then I came up with the idea of saying, is there a form of knowledge somewhere that doesn’t yet exist? That’s the exciting thing about it. We have an oversupply of knowledge. In the meantime, if it’s broken… So I was here in Mallorca for three days, I come back and I have 785 emails in there because I didn’t check the email back then. So that means we have an oversupply of knowledge on the one hand, but where is something missing? And so my question was that I thought, maybe there is knowledge that actually exists but is not systematized, structured and organized anywhere. I came up with this and now call it brain data. Brain data as knowledge in the heads of employees. Never organized, structured and systematized anywhere. That’s awesome. Where can I find everything new at Google? Google has recognized something in one form or another. One of my favorite apps is Google Assistant. Not Google itself, not Chrome, but Google Assistant. And you ask Google who Edgar Geffroy is, for example. Then the Google Assistant says, yes, he’s the author of business books and, and… If I ask the stupid Alexa around the corner, Alexa, who is Edgar Geffroy, then Alexa says, I can’t know every person in the world.
So Google is like Alexa only with a high school diploma, I always say.
And and and and. Google is extremely intelligent, but Google can’t address something that doesn’t exist. And so our idea was to say that this knowledge of employees is extremely important. And why is it never recorded? And that is the core idea. And I say there is a new knowledge war. And now the explanation for knowledge warriors. There is a new, new war that is taking place, the war for the knowledge of employees. Because the employee always knows more than even the best customer could know. And in this respect, this is a very important part of our new strategy, which we now call knowledge clienting. So we combine the topic of clienting with knowledge. And yes, we do that with our clients. This time, I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t being put down again and told, “Where did you prove that? Where is the academic background? Once the tables were turned, we started to build this up the other way around during the coronavirus period.
I say you get pity for free. You have to work hard for envy. So you’ve worked hard for it. And it’s usually criticism from those who don’t book you, don’t pay you, but mostly from those who haven’t got off their butts and then have more of an envy problem. That’s my perception of such hostility, which we have from time to time.
Well, you can read about it officially for a financial services provider, I got such a compliment for a presentation that I was very happy about it. I did it in public because they simply said, but the expectations were already very high. Unfortunately, that’s not always my challenge, because people always think I can walk on water if I just show up, which of course isn’t the case. And they said that our expectations were of course very high, but what has just happened has topped everything we imagined.
A story from a book comes to mind. I guess not everyone watching us here has read the book. Please tell me about the lecture, the story where you had to give a lecture on 11.11. and I think there was a slightly different event in the next room. But I was blown away when I read the story in the book.
Yes, that is perhaps a very early bridge to what we do very systematically today. Because putting the employee at the center was at the very beginning of my career, IBM called and one of the bosses at IBM said we would like a presentation on employee motivation of the future. Could you give a presentation on this? To be honest, I’d never given a presentation about it before and of course I immediately said, yes, of course. Of course I can give a presentation on employee motivation. Then he hangs up. If he hadn’t hung up so quickly, I would probably have said, but wait a minute, I want to discuss it internally. When I hung up, I thought, what a mess I’ve made of things and he thought again at the end, that was by the way, of course we want to hear something new, because you have to know that our IBM Academy alone has 300 leadership trainers. And so. And then he hung up and I stood there…
That’s really relaxing, or if you’re about to do something like this ….
That’s right. I love a challenge. And then I said, okay, then my company was running around with my 20 people and then my secretary said, what’s going on? So I said, I’ve accepted the job and I don’t know what I’m supposed to talk about. What is it about? I said employee motivation of the future. Then she said, why don’t you ask us? Why we are motivated. Do we want something, why we stay longer? Why everyone is eager to work here every day? And then we put it all together, analyzed it and made a concept out of it. So, and then came this famous moment, I’m from Düsseldorf, where I always ask, those from Hamburg sometimes don’t realize it, but where I then say, when it comes to carnival, there are always three leading cities, that always says one is Düsseldorf, the other is Mainz and the third never comes to mind, so, I had all the laughs on my side and that was just the lecture in Mainz at the time, in the Mainz Festhalle and it had been 11.11. And then the people from the Rhine came and had a look, so they were wearing dark blue pinstripes, like 200 IBMers, and on the right I could see all the party people in the big ballroom. Just for fun, everyone was laughing like crazy. And then it started on 11.11. at 11 o’clock. But of course, as always, it was delayed. The IBM boss gave a speech beforehand, which I don’t think anyone was interested in, and then it was 11:10. I often have such spontaneous ideas. Then I thought, if I can now bridge another minute, then something really exciting will happen. Then I was on stage at 11:10 and then I stood there and thought, how can I get that one minute over. So then I didn’t say anything. And then they said, turn on your microphone. Go ahead, we don’t have that much time. Then I listened to everyone and on 11.11. at 11:11 … the, the, the longest 60 seconds I think of my speaking career, I have over 4000 presentations. So, and then outside next door, giants laughing, shouting, having fun. And we wouldn’t have been able to understand anything. If I had spoken now, nobody would have understood because it was so loud. Then I waited until it died down a bit. And then I said, ladies and gentlemen, I’ve actually done my job now. Everyone looked at me like I was at a train station. Look what you experienced over there. If you bring the fun into your company, then you’ve won. There was radio silence. You really could have heard a pin drop. And then I say, but I still want to tell you from my point of view how you manage to bring this fun theme into your company. So it was a very famous lecture that was actually born and held out of necessity. We’ve stuck with it to this day. So we’re talking about employees and I don’t think anyone really has that on their agenda yet. So I’ve just come up with new wording, which I call age diversity. You all know … At the moment, I think you have to be of color, young and female. Then you’re at the forefront of the diversity issue. That comes from the editor-in-chief of Focus, who said that. So diversity goes up and down, but diversity means black and white, but nobody has the topic of young and old as a diversity topic, namely age diversity. And now I’m researching the figures again. I always ask the baby boomer generation, I asked the McKinsey HR manager if she knows how many baby boomers will retire by 2035. And the number is dramatic. The first one was 16 million. I think that’s a bit too much. Focus is currently talking about 8 million baby boomers retiring within the next ten years. We have no chance of compensating for this, by the way. We are currently trying to bring in experts from abroad. Professionals say that Germany is no longer attractive enough for experts to want to come here. They go to the UK, to the USA, they go to France. But Germany has ultimately lost its reputation as an attractive country. And that presents us with a huge challenge: how do we get this issue resolved? And I always call this the Ark-Noah principle. There will no longer be room for everyone. Companies will close because employees will no longer be able to contribute to growth. The Noah’s Ark principle means that you now have to create your own economy and create this economy with employees. So you have to differentiate yourself from all the others. That is the toughest competition. It’s no longer about competing for customers alone, it’s about competing for employees. And you have to come up with some exciting new topics. How can I motivate employees? How can I inspire them? How can I appeal to them in such a way that they really enjoy being there every day? And that’s where the topic of appreciation and brain data, his knowledge, plays a very, very central role. Because the moment his knowledge is so important, we have a huge opportunity to motivate and value him in a completely different way. We are currently doing this in companies where we are involved.
How do you rate this topic when it comes to the knowledge of experienced employees? I have, so I’ve been working for 35 years now and have been a typical salesperson at various levels, from sales assistant at Nixdorf to sales management and management, so I’m actually a typical salesperson. Always and still with heart and soul a salesman. And what I’ve often experienced is that when you have old hands like that and you start to introduce CRM systems and things like that, I’m often afraid to say, okay, if I feed my knowledge about the customer into these systems now, then I’ll be replaceable in some way. How do you see this argument or objection?
Yes, that’s what we’re going through right now with the two or with the companies. There really are concerns that employees, especially older employees, have in their heads. But you simply have to convince them to say that the sum of the whole is greater than the individual parts. You put in knowledge and get ten times the knowledge back. That’s why I always like to say that knowledge is the only productive asset that increases through use and doesn’t wear out. Yes. Absolutely. And this crucial issue of saying, please let us all, like soccer is a good example, we’re doing it again right now, but nobody wins alone. So we’re not winning by playing solo for Uncle. Now more than ever, we win by developing solutions together for the benefit of the customer in order to support the customer. And if you actually realize that much more can be achieved together and the appreciation is completely different, then suddenly these experienced people, I’m not just from sales, they come from all areas. It’s the same in the other areas.
Yes, I think that’s one of the challenges when it comes to introducing expert systems, which have had their technical challenges in the past, but also always had this human element. And I think the technology has become simpler. I think the human bottleneck requires a lot of leadership. And I think that is often forgotten when it comes to the issues.
Yes, so what we … To be honest, we overlooked it at the beginning. By the way, next year we’ll be coming up with our own knowledge management software that does exactly that … first of all, it has to be easy to use. So if it’s so complex that you have to spend another three years learning how to use it, then …
Nobody does it.
But what we overlooked at the beginning is that the very first thing is that you have to take everyone with you. So the first projects we started, we had this elite circle again, which was actually already right at the top around us, until we suddenly realized that the rest weren’t even aware of it. And then we look, what are they actually doing up there again? The first thing is that you have to get everyone involved in this issue, right down to the cleaning lady. The second decisive factor is that a team culture must be created. This structure is actually what we are currently working on very, very intensively with our company, which we really, really underestimated at the beginning, because the team culture and personal value creation are the prerequisite for them to input the knowledge and say, great idea, but we’re not going to do it. Do you actually know what it really looks like in our companies? Have you ever conducted interviews? Well, these are literal reactions that we have witnessed and only when the team culture is right, only when the added value is there, only then are people prepared to actually get involved, because something completely new is created. It’s simple. We have a different kind of corporate culture. I have a company that we did this with a few years ago. One of the first pioneers, for me one of the best top managers I know in Germany, unfortunately I can’t mention his name because he has forbidden me to tell this success story. But everyone would know the company if I said the name. We make 1.1 billion in Germany alone. And he really is a pioneer, a thought leader. And he said we know what we’re doing very well, but your topic knowledge that interests me. So, by the way, similar to another story, when I gave a lecture on the subject of knowledge in the economy ??? Düsseldorf, Mr. Koch, who was still CEO of Metro at the time, came to me afterwards and said, can I have my appointment with you? To be honest, that was before we had the appointment. That was in February last year. Did you have Christmas right with me, since I was actually with you. Within a very short time. We had a very, very interesting one-hour appointment with the CEO of a 120,000-strong company. An hour, too. They actually waited in front of this glass door with their briefcases, listened carefully, understood exactly. Unfortunately, it couldn’t be implemented. There were other circumstances. Today, he is no longer the chairman of the whole issue. But the other example was also a corporate leader who said that we need to give the issue of employees a completely different role. I have the impression that you have a concept for this. And then we built up an employee-based knowledge culture in this company, an employee-based knowledge culture, and then thousands of employees called us last year, in the middle of the corona period, and thought I would tell you about it. We had a meeting. All the Group companies involved, I think they are in 60 countries. We were the only one that had growth rates during corona. And I’ll tell you why. The reason for this is that we implemented and carried out this program with you.
I believe that. That’s what you said too. I’m yes, so I don’t like this saying either, there are no crises, there are only opportunities. So it’s not always positive. Let me tell you, in my immediate environment, my mother has just had a stroke. I say that’s not an opportunity, it just sucks. So I say, I don’t like this whitewashing. On the other hand, I also say, hey, you’re an absolute reference for me. When the industry changes, when the laws change, then maybe it’s a good idea to do things differently, to adapt. And – and here you are just as much a reference for me, not just when it’s too late, because when you realize that you simply no longer have the liquidity to change things, then it’s a completely different ball game than when you’re just in good times, and I think that’s what really makes excellent managers and company leaders, that’s also the difference for me, really in the sense of real leadership and management, that someone takes a proactive approach. How do you manage to get this sense of urgency into companies? Because I always have the perception that this sense of urgency, if it is not brought in by shareholders, especially, let’s say, from the private equity sector. I know this from my own experience. They have a good sense of urgency, they bring it in relatively early on. But I often find that the pain is not great enough. The pain felt by those responsible. What’s your experience, how do you deal with it?
Yes, we have analyzed that. What is actually the reason for this whole topic? Well, I’m going to say that talking about customer satisfaction today, for example, is a relatively simple story. In my opinion, many companies still haven’t really understood this. Probably … especially today … also from a customer relationship perspective. We are in the process of actively moving forward again and saying that customer relationships have been forgotten in the digital era. So that’s another keyword for you, because many believed that you could cover this with call centers and digital systems, which in my view has become a backfire. But if we stick to the topic here again, I’ve always been like that from the very beginning. I am a target group fanatic. I am, I don’t know if it tells you anything, EKS – bottleneck focused strategy. Yes, yes. I myself had the rights to the EKS strategy from Wolfgang Mewes for several years. So I was officially allowed to use EKS…
I’m a big fan of it, yes, of EKS.
I marketed one of these strategies myself. It was also a wonderful, wonderful time. So, I also received an EKS award, which is how I got together with Wolfgang Mewes. So, I’m a target group fanatic. And that’s why we’ve always had a problem defining who our customers are. So we are custom-specialized. There were industry specializations, in the automotive industry I think almost every leading automotive company has worked with us. Financial services, every leading bank, every leading financial services provider. Yes, but we have since merged. We’ve worked for about 60 industries. The next question is, what are the biggest companies we work for? Many people think that I only work for corporations, but I almost only work for SMEs, because they make decisions much faster and take a much more pragmatic approach to the topic. That is, until we figured it out and said, what is actually the type of person who makes a decision? And it’s always the top. It’s always someone at the top. To be honest, a marketing department doesn’t understand that and doesn’t make a decision. It has to be someone at the top. And then we had the definition that I now say again and again in our strategic consultations. Similar to Apple. What is Apple’s target group from the age of two to 102? Super. Is that the group? No, it’s an interest group. It’s a completely different, significant difference. And suddenly we were able to do that relatively early on, so we had 200 customers, because we have everyone from individual entrepreneurs to start-ups to the largest percentage of Germany. But that’s the explanation. And last year we also had a project for a leading software company that we all know and that likes to work with teams. But they are usually medium-sized companies. And our type comes from two camps or two, one is the challenger who says everything is wonderfully perfect. However, I have to admit that I made a small mistake and didn’t switch this off.
It’s all good, we’re live. So, dear viewers, you see, we don’t cut the stuff out. So even if one or the other says, gosh, why is this one here professionally with a green screen. Why is the other one … . One can do beautiful, the other can do content. So I say and every now and then we swap roles, so it’s more relevance over frippery and I hope you feel the same way I do. I find it very exciting. I’m not doing these interviews for you, dear viewers, because I’m doing them for myself, because I just want to ask these exciting people questions. But I didn’t want to interrupt you, dear Edgar.
I would normally want to be in the studio and do that. So they come from two camps. Is the challenger the one who says, watch out, we have the best business results, but we have to reinvent ourselves, they’re the right guy for that. So we actually want to act ahead of the times and are independent of size, independent of the industry. But the people are always the same. I could bring them all into a room and it’s the same type of person every time – a challenger on one side or a defender on the other. Their backs are against the wall. And that’s where we had Screws, the leading strategy coaches here some time ago, regularly, for many, many years and we’ve had hundreds of strategy coaching sessions. Someone came in and said, I don’t even know where I’m sitting here. I have a screw manufacturing company and we’re now at a standstill, I won’t last much longer. And the Chinese are killing us here because they always undercut us with all their prices, but their reputation is always so far ahead that they always come up with something. So, I’ll cut the whole topic short now, which is usually a one-day workshop. We ask different questions than others. The people from Silicon Valley thought the same thing and often people say why don’t we come to them on our own and suddenly they ask four questions. We hadn’t even asked them like that before and the answers were even fewer. And then I asked him, now here at the screw manufacturer, to stick with the example Do you want to make screws? It’s a bit boring, but I’ve taken over the company. In that respect, there are exciting things. I’m the engineer. I would like to work on it. I say okay. Are there any screws that are particularly important? Different ones for the Airbus engine, different ones for the Porsche Carrera Turbo? I say okay, so not all screws are the same. What if you specialized in screws that have a special safety and value? Ah, he says, I haven’t seen that before. … I’ll cut a long story short. He produces the intelligent screw today. Intelligent screws that are used by companies such as Porsche, which can also be patented by them. And in this respect, he is now a manufacturer of such screws. And the nice thing was, he called me last year and said I wanted to thank him again. Why? Yes, the Chinese came to me here and said we wanted to do a joint venture, let us produce the cheap screws together and share the profits. And so it was a screw manufacturer with its back against the wall, and that is the defender. The defender has his back against the wall. He says the clock is now running completely backwards. The great thing is that we’re both the same distance from the center line, from the zero line. I don’t get the people in the middle. I only know the challenger on one side…, but for almost 40 years now I’ve only known the challenger on one side or the defender on the other. And in the middle I realize immediately, I need seconds to notice how the Pope kisses the ground. do I know after seconds, this is a candidate for me or not? Because they don’t react because they are so entrenched in their security environment that they only react when they still can, when it’s too late. And in the end, they are the majority, but not my customers. So in this respect, I have a certain clientele that acted before the time, that says, “Man, I see the opportunities, but I want to act now. Saying Noah’s Ark is actually quite a good idea. Let’s all join Noah’s Ark, because the challenges will not become any less in the future if it continues to grow.
Absolutely. And I’d like to say that one topic you mentioned earlier is the issue of older, experienced employees and younger ones. I’d like to share my experience, because I always hear so many of these pigeonholes and prejudices, where people always say, oh, they’re the digital dinosaurs and on the other side are the young ones, the digital natives. I have a 26-year-old daughter who has now been in her first job for a year and I can still remember the first time she was a working student at Siemens during her studies and she studied math for her Master’s degree. So she didn’t quite fall off the tree. But then her boss asked her if she could put together this Excel spreadsheet. And my daughter called her in the evening and said, “Dad, I didn’t have the courage to say I’ve never worked with Excel before. We don’t work with Excel in math class. Can you help me with how it works? Well, and that’s the way it is. My wife is a professor at the Beuth University of Applied Sciences, she also has these school leavers who I always notice can type WhatsApp five times as fast as the two of us. So their thumbs are somehow trained differently than ours, I’ll say, which we’ve been doing for a while now. But when it comes to productive work, they need just as much support, and I think we sometimes even overtax them because we assume they can do everything. And now for the other example, I did an introduction in a company and they all thought it was great, right up until the moment when we said, well, we’re taking away the 400 laptops that we’ve had in the field so far in two months, because we’re working iPad only, not to increase complexity, but to reduce it or to read. Yes, I need all that and none of that works, etc. . And then the 62-year-old chairman of the works council, who was also in sales, stood up. He said, “Guys, I like working for you, I’m happy to stand up for you, but you have to get your own ass up and Jekel has shown you how it works. I have understood. Let me show you how it works. Six and six. So I say, I’ve got a combination of more experienced but over 60-year-old works council members, where we also have our prejudices, what are your experiences? You’ve been working longer than me. What is your experience and your attitude towards it?
So the truth lies in the middle. So my favorite answer is what is the right strategy, I always say both, because people always want to have such a simple solution. My son is 27, so maybe he works for the leading digital consulting company, which is also very interesting. And the conversations or discussions are always very important. To be fair, I’m not typical of course. I’ve always been a technology maniac. I’ve always bought products that didn’t work, but I was the first to have them. I knew that from somewhere. But it was fun to be one of the first, no matter what, to walk around with it, because I wrote the book in 2010. “The only thing that bothers me is the digital customer.” Incidentally, it sold out on the same day and back then it was always called the Internet. And we all said, why don’t you call it the internet customer? I said, because digital goes further than you think right now. And I’ve organized 70 events on this topic for the BVNW alone. The only thing that bothers me is the digital customer held by tens of thousands of entrepreneurs. But it was always very specific. That means I was able to say first, second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth very specifically. I received a compliment from Google. One of the leading Google people once said, you know what? Honestly, we do clienting. We just didn’t know it was called that. Yes, that’s great. What you’re saying is actually what we’re doing now. I could explain it in more detail now, but I was always the one who brought this pragmatism into this whole digital world. And in all respects, the topic of trade was all things that we had already been doing for a long time. The bottom line again is that I got to know young, old and old young people. So I just know. Good point. I have to be told off in the family because I’m constantly playing around with my iPhone and doing something. And it’s my 18-year-old daughter and my 27-year-old son who pick on me the most. That has nothing to do with being young or old, but with attitude. And I simply have the attitude that I enjoy working on topics like this again and again and try to inspire them. So the slightly older ones on the subject used to be that, the older ones didn’t use it. Today, the older ones are more heavy than some of the younger ones. So I don’t think you can create such a divide between them today, it’s just that the usability has become so simple that people all see the advantage of working with this system.
Sometimes I even go one step further and say that you don’t have to do every single thing digitally just because it works. For example, I recently had an open seminar where I was in a room that I didn’t know before, so I went in and they had a digital flipchart there. And the first thing was that I couldn’t find the pen. But regardless of that, I asked, do you have the color version here or the black and white, no, the black and white version, to say yes, what can it do now somehow. And now I’m saying there was a paper flipchart at the back of the room, where I said, I haven’t yet understood this concept of a black and white digital flipchart for myself, what makes it better, but it’s just a 1:1 implementation of an analog process without making it better, where I say, if you then say okay, I have a whiteboard app on the iPad, for example, where I can then search up and down continuously, so that in a large room even those in the back can still read it well, then technology is used sensibly. But if I simply implement a flipchart 1:1, then it’s sometimes even worse in the digital world than in the analog world. So that’s why I always say, first switch on the brain, then the technology. Do you also experience this in your projects, so that sometimes technical shit is done, where I say, let’s start with common sense before we start with artificial intelligence, right?
I’ve been asked time and time again, what is digitalization from my point of view? I have a very simple answer. Digitization is an advantage if you can create a customer benefit that was not possible before. A very decisive sentence. So that means we have to digitize ourselves through digitization, I … always digitize electricity in my presentations, pull the power out, it no longer works. So today it’s no longer about discussing digitalization or not, but how do we use digitalization for the benefit of the customer? And when we look at what all the leading companies around the world have done, for example, they have no longer developed product strategies, they have developed platform strategies, which we didn’t realize in Germany in this area, and didn’t even realize that Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon have conquered the whole world with platform strategies because they can create customer benefits via such platforms that weren’t really there before. So in this respect, platform strategies are still a very central topic in Germany. We have also just signed a contract for a platform in which I will be involved. That’s also an exciting topic for next year. But the question is always, well, I always have my customer glasses on. The question is always, does this bring an advantage from the customer’s point of view? And if it brings an advantage from the customer’s point of view? And we are still at the very beginning in Germany. I believe that only 10 to 20 % have recognized the possibilities of implementing customer benefits digitally. I didn’t want to say that just to rushed digital customers, and they found that in the presentations, that was also very concrete. It was extremely important to me that I could say to the experienced 50, 55-year-olds, do this, don’t do this, don’t do this, don’t do this, and present an action plan that we could implement. And then, of course, the confirmation came from the Google perspective that this is something very central and relevant that can be done. So in this respect, digitalization is a very central topic that will be the focus in the future.
Absolutely. And what you also said earlier, that this topic, that some people have perhaps exaggerated in terms of contact centers. Making everything digital. I always say that digitalization can help to reach a customer in addition to presence. For example, I’ve just had a discussion with a bank about how they want to increase their usage rate for their banking app. So now he says, I have 70,000 customers in my area alone as a regional bank, until I’ve invited them all to my place, you can’t give that many presentations, Mr. Jekel, we’re both not that old. So we thought about how we could reach them via additional channels, i.e. omni-channel banking and omni-channel communication with customers. So I would say that it certainly makes sense. And I always say that if I manage to increase the sales-active time of a sales representative by relieving them of alternative tasks, then I have an indirect customer benefit again, where I always say, so I always have to say 100% with you, digitization makes sense if you create more customer benefits, if you enable new business models. And I always like to add to that, but always with the background of telling customers, of course, if you make your processes leaner and thus simply become more profitable, more productive and thus simply have even more sales-active time. For example, I have now completely automated my bookkeeping in such a way that I can say dat is somehow an hour away and I have time like I do here now, so I create value by exchanging ideas with exciting people, by learning, by developing myself for my customers, by being visible to the outside world, by being with customers. So I think there are even more opportunities. And to come back to your book, I think there is a lot more knowledge in the organizations than is being used today. And perhaps the question for you, to come back to your book, what percentage of knowledge capital do you think German companies are exploiting? What is your estimate?
2 %, 4 %, if at all. So when I started with the topic of customer satisfaction, customer orientation, there was one figure, and that was 96% of companies are not customer-oriented. Only 4% 30 years ago on the subject. I believe that this figure for knowledge-based companies is at least the same, if not less. So that means I estimate that at the moment 2 to 4 % of companies are really knowledge-based, above all … . I’ll come back to a very important top argument in a moment. So first of all, that’s half of the rent I just told you about. So the book was almost finished. From the point of view of brain data, the successes were already there. Then of course I said, I’m the customer expert, what does that mean from the customer’s point of view? That’s why I wrote this book for longer than I’ve ever written a book before. And then I suddenly realized that there was another huge advantage. That’s why I immediately had a solution for the bank with your app idea. There are huge deficits with customers because they never know what a provider company and what the employees in that company know. So that means. We call this knowledge nuggets. Knowledge nuggets are highly valuable knowledge that helps customers to be more successful. Gladly with. Go to your bank with this sentence. This highly interesting knowledge, which they don’t have, is something that is in the heads of the employees. And that’s why we’re now building the bridge between brain data. But knowledge is bridged to the benefit of the customer and, in this case, digitally available for the benefit of the customer. So at the moment, we’ve just created two market leaders with it, by the way, it’s also ready to go. I’m really pleased that of our twelve customer projects, one of which was this year, we have five industry winners, five companies have each won the Broker of the Year Automotive Award of the Year, for example, customers of ours with our strategies. Of course, that makes us quite proud that the industry actually reflects this. So the Knowledge Nuggetd are now, if you like, the third distinguishing feature. We currently have a number of trading companies. Trading companies have advantages and disadvantages at the same time. Trading companies are not tied to products, unless they are Ford cars, but they are interchangeable. One street over, one town over, you could buy the same product in the same way. Where do they differ? Meanwhile, they are all the same in terms of service. So that means that if the product doesn’t have a distinguishing feature, if the service has been leveled, then where do I differ? Then you could argue that they all prefer to be nice people, but that alone won’t be enough. And so we are building a third pillar. We say we make the following products, service and now the knowledge of what we use for the benefit of the customer is the distinguishing feature. This sets us apart from all other providers and we have our sensational successes with it. Really sensational. So one um, very exciting, one dealer can say Oliver Bohnen, now one of my favorite customers, car dealer, big car dealer up north, who says in five years we won’t be around like we are now. Anyway, so you want to have fun with the subject. And then he was happy to say that he would only give us one challenge. We have 500 employees, I think, but we have to start at 50. So we have to hold workshops. Workshop strategy workshop with 50 employees. Do you want to, can you do that? I say yes, of course we can and we held a future workshop with 50 employees. And then at the workshop, I skipped the whole set-up time again. He got the award for that, because Automotive Word of the Year, one of the employees keeps saying, if we look at mobilization and fast, it’s not just cars and not just e-cars, which are being bought less and less at the moment, but all the e-bikes and e-scooters and everything that has to do with them. What if we were to focus on this e-mobility beyond cars? The result would be a brand, namely mobile leisure. Mobile leisure became a brand. This is the company Kuhn und Witte with Oliver Bohnen at the helm and his entire team. And they then had a hall that was used for this purpose, which was converted into a mobile leisure hall. I spoke to him on the phone last week. 60% of the customers are new customers that they have acquired outside of the Audi and VW world, and there is a whole question of knowledge deficit when it comes to emobility. How do I do it right? What do I have to consider? And then we find ourselves in this predicament again. Again, a concrete example of our customers, we are again very much in this knowledge nugget, and if we now bring both together, on the one hand, this leads to knowledge nuggets, customers know that we can mediate. On the other hand, of course, we have a new, unique advantage over all our competitors. That’s it, what is it?
That’s brilliantly simple, yes, knowledge on the subject of e-mobility. It’s very ubiquitously available, but you just have 500,000 search hits on Google and instead, if you then have your trusted partner who says something like this is relevant for you now and here you have relevant knowledge nuggets that help you to be more successful, can apply just as well…
can diligently continue to spin the thread, so to speak, wherever I learned about toothpaste, but wherever valuable knowledge. For example, we have market leaders in the field of wastewater treatment plants. So, there is … the whole issue would not have happened if the knowledge, which unfortunately my customer had not yet digitized at the time, had been available to them as employees in the sewage treatment plants. It was simply a thesis of mine that things would not have gone as far as they have now because there are simply deficits. So we interviewed some of the customers. That’s why we got a little closer to them. These are all examples where I say that this is now the great opportunity to drive a new strategy with the knowledge as a new claim, with which we can differentiate ourselves from all others, is the goal of Blue Ocean. That’s what we’re doing. We can achieve a Blue Ocean strategy. We can find ourselves alone in a blue ocean with this … . Yes, you realize, now I can become an AI fan again but…
I think that’s great. I can listen to you for hours. I find it incredibly enriching because, on the one hand, I think we have a relatively high degree of compatibility in our approaches, but of course you have a whole lot more experience, and everyone always has their own perspective. That’s why I find it so exciting. So I know why I asked you if I could interview you. I know you’re also hard to get hold of. Keyword hard to get. What’s the best way to reach you when someone says exactly what Edgar Geffroy has just said, that’s what I need in my company? What’s the best way to get in touch with you?
Let me be very clear about one very important experience. I don’t know what the problem is. People think I don’t talk. So you could, believe me, I live somewhere in orbit or … Yes, it’s totally phenomenal. Someone was standing next to me at the coffee machine after a lecture and didn’t have the courage to speak to me. He then sent me an e-mail afterwards. So please forget everything. So I have to approach people at all times, in all places and one of my best friends once said that I’ve known myself for a long time and I’ve changed 0.0. So wherever I can help people, I do. That’s my basic approach, the basic idea, our business is to help so that our customers can do better business themselves. Helping is therefore something very central. And to that extent, there are no barriers, just listen, take them by the hand. Reaching Geffroy in all possible ways is relatively easy. You can either simply send an e-mail to team@geffroy.de or call us in Düsseldorf. And once Geffroy is omnipresent, you could spend three days with him. So send a message at some point via him or Facebook or whatever. I’m happy to have a 20-minute appointment to talk about it for 20 minutes. Sometimes I also say then it’s not happening together or the priority is different. But it’s important to take the initiative and get in touch with me. That is my biggest challenge. When people say I’ll talk to them personally, yes, he clearly says, who else do you want to talk to? So…
Yes, you are a star. But from the side, an approachable star, someone who has something to say. Someone who has successfully overcome more than one crisis in their life from their own experience. And I do say that I don’t like being told how to swim faster by a non-swimmer. I have a set of beliefs and there is someone who has definitely swum free a few times in their life. So that’s why I highly recommend reading his books. I don’t think I’ve read all 30 of them, but I’ve read the most important ones and Knowledge Warrior is a must-read. I found it very enriching, just like the other books. On that note, I could go on for hours, but I would like to say a big, heartfelt thank you to Edgar Geffroy. For me, he really is an absolute reference colleague on the subject of simply using technology, first switching on your brain, then technology, simply being strategically more successful. And that’s what it’s all about in the end.
Thank you very much, dear Geffroy, all the best for you, your family and your company.
Thank you Thorsten.
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