“Be a Practitioner to Create a Bingeable Podcast” with Gabe Larsen of the Customer Service Secrets Podcast
As part of my series of interviews about “5 things you need to know to create a bingeable podcast”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Gabe Larsen. He serves as VP of Growth and leads Kustomer’s worldwide marketing efforts, including advertising, brand, communications, demand, and Digital.
Prior to joining Kustomer, Gabe was the VP of Marketing for XANT (formerly InsideSales.com) where he helped create the sales acceleration category and grow the company from six to nearly one-hundred million in revenue. Gabe oversaw the brand transformation, establishing XANT as an industry thought leader, and pioneering a new enterprise go-to-market motion.
Before XANT, Gabe served as a senior managing consultant at Gallup, Inc. where he helped establish their Middle Eastern headquarters in Dubai, sell a $10M dollar deal, and lead customer transformation projects for companies like Toyota, Honda, and IKEA.
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Can you tell us a bit of your “personal backstory? What is your background and what eventually brought you to this particular career path?
Most of my career has been built on the foundation of customer experience and I’ve been fortunate enough to put it in action at a number of leading companies. My first project at Accenture was a $100 million customer transformation initiative to modernize the customer experience at CalPERS. At Goldman Sachs, I experienced first hand the power of the customer as the financial crisis hit and words like ‘consumer confidence’ plagued big banks. At Gallup, I led the customer experience program for multiple international brands such as Toyota, Honda and Ikea and learned the power of what Dr. John Flemming called Human Sigma: managing the employee and customer encounter. And lastly, at XANT I taught thousands of sales reps that customers have changed, and that focusing on buyer intent and communicating through buyer-preferred channels is the only way to win the sale. I’m now at Kustomer, which is solely focused on helping to revolutionize the customer experience with technology.
Because of my rich background in managing the customer experience, I decided to start a podcast focused on that very topic. The podcast platform allows me to share some of my knowledge and the best practices I’ve learned with a wide audience.
Can you share a story about the most interesting thing that has happened to you since you started podcasting?
I started the podcast mostly just for fun and a passion project focused on the topic of sales and customer service. It was amazing to watch my audience grow from 0 to over 20,000 listeners organically and almost by accident.
Can you share a story about the biggest or funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson or takeaways you learned from that?
Without a doubt, the funniest (or most embarrassing) mistake I made was when I fell asleep during an interview. In my early days, I was trying to get a lot of episodes done at once and was burning the candle at both ends. I’m not sure what happened exactly — I must have just leaned back in my comfy chair while my guest was speaking and the next thing I knew, I could hear the guest asking repeatedly, “Are you there?” Ooops!
The biggest lesson I learned (besides making sure I get enough sleep) is the importance of maintaining focus on your guests. For me, audio alone wasn’t enough. I now ask all of my guests to join me on video as well as audio so I can make sure we keep eye contact. Not only does this help with focus, but makes it more like a face-to-face conversation and a more natural dialogue.
How long have you been podcasting and how many shows have you aired?
I’ve been podcasting for 3 years and have done nearly 300 episodes.
What are the main takeaways, lessons or messages that you want your listeners to walk away with after listening to your show?
I think podcasting is fun and it’s enjoyable to just listen to two people talking about interesting things but I wanted my podcasts and the take away to be different than the typical podcast. My hope is that after listening to one of my shows, listeners will be able to take those learnings and walk into the office and do something different that day to dramatically change their business. I wanted to share secrets that would ultimately help sales and customer service leaders transform their business.
Check out the full interview in Tracy Hazzard’s Authority Magazine article about Gabe Larsen!
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Podcaster Influencer, Gabe Larsen of the Customer Service Secrets Podcast shares the best ways to:
1) Book Great Guests. LinkedIn is a great method to book guests. If you have a big show, include the stats and previous guests so people understand how cool you podcast is
2) Increase Listeners. Make sure your guests share your podcast to their audiences. Share your podcast on all your social channels. Repurpose your content into other formats
3) Produce in a Professional Way. Start basic and use a tool like zoom to record you and your guests and then work your way up.
4) Encourage Engagement. Offer prizes or giveaways to get reviews. Pull guests on the show with small snippets of their voice or questions they send you
5) Monetize. Grow your audience as you can’t monetize without an audience. Once you have a big audience, build a small offer and then start reaching out to potential prospects to pitch it.
In your opinion what makes your podcast binge-listenable? What do you think makes your podcast unique from the others in your category? What do you think is special about you as a host, your guests, or your content?
Check out the full interview in Tracy Hazzard’s Authority Magazine article about Gabe Larsen!
