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*This episode is brought to you by Luth Research. Check out their free webinar, The Conversation Gap: Where AI Joins the Search Journey.* The most useful emerging technologies are rarely the smartest ones in the room, but rather the ones built by people who listened long enough to know what was actually needed. Ivka Marković, Chief Product & Strategy Officer at WIM, joins host and Little Bird Marketing CEO Priscilla McKinney on Digital Transformation Success to rethink how AI tools earn their place in industries that run on trust. Marković approaches technology from an unexpected angle, shaped more by art, branding, and market research than by code. That background gives her a sharp read on how people behave and what they respond to. The strongest digital transformation platform starts with exactly that kind of understanding. Research usually informs a product but almost never becomes one, and that gap swallows more value than most leaders realize. When audience behavior shapes a tool from the very first conversation, technology stops forcing people to adapt and starts meeting them where they already work. Closing that gap doesn’t require the deepest technical background in the room. Genuine curiosity about people and the patience to hear what they actually need often matter far more than credentials. “I am not a tech person. I’m not even a business person,” Marković explains. “I’m a very curious person that loves to listen to people.” Every organization sits on more insight than it uses. The real question is whether leaders keep treating that knowledge as background reading or start turning it into something people rely on every day. As AI tools keep multiplying, curiosity may become a sharper competitive edge than complexity. The leaders who listen first could end up building what everyone else wishes they had thought of. Sponsor: Ever feel like your company is sitting on a goldmine of opportunities, but they keep slipping away? Most companies already have their next big win hiding in their database. Little Bird Marketing's Revenue Sprint is a proven system that works backward from your revenue goals to create a focused plan for building a sales pipeline and predictable growth. No massive budget required—just strategic execution that delivers measurable results. Ready to turn missed opportunities into new wins? Click here and build a predictable pipeline for sustainable growth. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

*Help us shape the future of Digital Transformation Success by taking a short, 11-question ⁠⁠listener survey⁠⁠.* Real finance digital transformation begins not with new software, but with the discipline to face the data your team is too afraid to present to leadership. Edgar Baum, Founder and CEO of Avasta, joins Priscilla McKinney, host of Digital Transformation Success and CEO of Little Bird Marketing, to examine what is actually broken in market research and business valuation. Baum has spent decades sitting at the intersection of market intelligence and growth strategy, working with Fortune 500 companies and private equity firms across four continents. His perspective challenges a habit baked into most corporate research: the tendency to measure what is comfortable instead of what is true. The incentive to protect an existing narrative almost always outweighs the incentive to question it, in business as much as in politics or academia. Baum treats that incentive as the real obstacle to accurate valuation, more so than any technical or methodological gap. What emerges is less a lesson in research techniques and more a case for the courage required to act on what research actually shows, especially when it contradicts what leadership wants to hear. "We should not do the next phase of work if we are being paid to validate our own engagement at full compensation," Baum explains. "That's a problem. That is not being impartial." That tension between comfort and accuracy doesn't resolve neatly, and Baum doesn't pretend it does. What he offers instead is a way of thinking that treats uncertainty as information rather than noise, a mindset most businesses are structurally built to avoid. The organizations willing to sit with that discomfort are the ones positioned to price, value, and grow with any real precision. The rest will keep mistaking confidence for accuracy. Sponsors: Ever feel like your company is sitting on a goldmine of opportunities, but they keep slipping away? Most companies already have their next big win hiding in their database. Little Bird Marketing's Revenue Sprint is a proven system that works backward from your revenue goals to create a focused plan for building a sales pipeline and predictable growth. No massive budget required—just strategic execution that delivers measurable results. Ready to turn missed opportunities into new wins? Click here and build a predictable pipeline for sustainable growth. Priscilla McKinney is not just a CEO; she is also a LinkedIn Influencer. The reality is that very few people are using LinkedIn efficiently or effectively, and if you’re not careful, social media can become a black hole. When you emerge, you find you wound up in a place you never intended to go and you’re wondering where all the time went. Time is precious, and trying to be everything to everyone means becoming nothing to no one. That's why she's developed a transformative 12-week course that goes beyond basic tips and tricks – teaching you how to build a strategic network and create stellar content that cuts through the LinkedIn noise. Click here to learn more, and sign up for a spot in her social influence course today! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Most brands still judge their reputation by what shows up on their own website and are confused about AEO and how it is similar to and different from SEO. We clear it up.  Adam Bittner, global head of business development and partnerships at BrandRank.AI, joins Priscilla McKinney on Digital Transformation Success to talk through who actually owns a brand's narrative once AI engines start telling it. Bittner spent his career building revenue engines for consumer intelligence, retail media, and digital commerce. He now helps brands measure and protect their standing through answer engine optimization, a discipline built specifically for how AI generates and delivers answers.  AI visibility works differently than the search rankings brands have optimized for over the last decade, and businesses that don’t understand the difference are already behind. Polished websites, product photography, and videos were built for people, NOT for the systems now answering questions on a brand's behalf.  AI models want fast, structured, and citable information, and anything locked inside a PDF or an image is functionally invisible to them. The sharper risk is misrepresentation. As Bittner explains, “AI says you don't have a waiting room, it says the wrong price point, and that's part of that ongoing brand measurement which you know is crucial to provide." A brand can show up in an answer and still get it wrong, with no warning and no chance to correct the record before a customer has already acted on it. Waiting isn't neutral here. Every quarter a brand treats this as someone else's problem is a quarter a competitor, or an inaccurate answer, fills that space instead. While this is important for all types of businesses, B2B companies have to factor in that even one missed or mangled answer can mean a six- or seven-figure deal, and that cost stops being theoretical fast. Sponsors: Tired of generic marketing firms that don't get market research? Say hello to Little Bird Marketing, the revenue generation company of choice for the market research industry. Our "peeps" understand market research inside and out. We know your buyers, craft meaningful messages that move them to buy, understand the competitive landscape and where you fit in the market. We get the industry - from qual/quant to emerging technologies. Why settle for getting the job done when you can soar with marketing that drives real revenue? Click here to get started. Priscilla McKinney is not just a CEO; she is also a LinkedIn Influencer. The reality is that very few people are using LinkedIn efficiently or effectively, and if you’re not careful, social media can become a black hole. When you emerge, you find you wound up in a place you never intended to go and you’re wondering where all the time went. Time is precious, and trying to be everything to everyone means becoming nothing to no one. That's why she's developed a transformative 12-week course that goes beyond basic tips and tricks – teaching you how to build a strategic network and create stellar content that cuts through the LinkedIn noise. Click here to learn more, and sign up for a spot in her social influence course today! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Most companies treat AI as a flip-of-a-switch fix for customer experience, but the real driver of a working digital transformation strategy is still the people behind it. Digital Transformation Success returns with host and Little Bird Marketing CEO Priscilla McKinney, who sits down with Ty Givens, founder of CX Collective. Givens has over two decades of experience in support leadership, watching the role shift from people management to operations and now to AI oversight. Her work centers on helping businesses build a customer-first culture that can actually hold up once new technology enters the picture. She’s quick to point out how tools are sold as quick wins, but the businesses that struggle most are usually the ones operating on guesses rather than evidence. Many leaders build their entire support strategy around what they assume customers want, never stopping to confirm whether that assumption holds up. That gap between perceived expectations and actual ones is where AI tools tend to fail loudest, since no amount of automation can fix a strategy built on the wrong starting question. Instead of asking the important question about what customers expect, Givens explains, “we start operating based on what we think they expect instead of figuring out what it is that they really do expect."  It’s a simple shift, but a very important one to make because a digital transformation strategy built around assumptions instead of evidence tends to break under pressure, no matter how advanced the tools behind it are. The companies that get this right treat customer experience as an ongoing discipline rather than a project with an end date, which is exactly the mindset shift this episode is built to spark. Sponsors: Priscilla McKinney here! I am very excited to tell you about my book:  Collaboration is the New Competition: Why the Future of Work Rewards A Cross Pollinating Hive Mind and How Not to Get Left Behind The book's chapters are designed to be time-efficient, ensuring busy professionals can easily integrate these transformative ideas into their workflow. From discussing the state of affairs in business to providing fundamental strategies and seven practical anchors for staying on course, this book offers a fresh perspective and a competitive advantage in today's complex business landscape. Visit priscillamckinney.com for more information. Priscilla McKinney is not just a CEO; she is also a LinkedIn Influencer. The reality is that very few people are using LinkedIn efficiently or effectively, and if you’re not careful, social media can become a black hole. When you emerge, you find you wound up in a place you never intended to go and you’re wondering where all the time went. Time is precious, and trying to be everything to everyone means becoming nothing to no one. That's why she's developed a transformative 12-week course that goes beyond basic tips and tricks – teaching you how to build a strategic network and create stellar content that cuts through the LinkedIn noise. Click here to learn more, and sign up for a spot in her social influence course today! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

*Help us shape the future of Digital Transformation Success by taking a short, 11-question ⁠⁠listener survey⁠⁠.* Knowing which AI tool to use is not the hard part. Knowing what question to ask is. Mike Deinlein, Vice President of Corporate Innovation at Burke, Inc., joins Priscilla McKinney, host of Digital Transformation Success and CEO of Little Bird Marketing, to explore what it actually takes to bring AI to bear in market research. The conversation gets at a tension most organizations are living right now, where the pressure to "do AI" is pulling business leaders toward tools before they have clarity on the problems those tools are meant to solve. The gap between AI's promise and its real-world performance is almost never a technology problem. Deinlein brings a perspective shaped by years of applying econometrics and advanced statistical thinking to business questions, and that rigor surfaces throughout the conversation. Most organizations are so focused on which tool to pick that they never stop to define what a good answer would even look like, and that is where the real work gets skipped. "Ask your question first," Deinlein explains. "Think about it for 95% of the time and say, this is what I want to do, and then figure out how AI unlocks new solutions for that business question." Skipping foundational thinking does not just produce mediocre outputs. It builds decision-making processes on results that cannot be validated or trusted. The organizations getting the most from these technologies are not the ones chasing the newest tools but the ones that have done the harder, slower work of understanding what they are actually trying to know. Sponsors: Priscilla McKinney is not just a CEO; she is also a LinkedIn Influencer. The reality is that very few people are using LinkedIn efficiently or effectively, and if you’re not careful, social media can become a black hole. When you emerge, you find you wound up in a place you never intended to go and you’re wondering where all the time went. Time is precious, and trying to be everything to everyone means becoming nothing to no one. That's why she's developed a transformative 12-week course that goes beyond basic tips and tricks – teaching you how to build a strategic network and create stellar content that cuts through the LinkedIn noise. Click here to learn more, and sign up for a spot in her social influence course today! Ever feel like your company is sitting on a goldmine of opportunities, but they keep slipping away? Most companies already have their next big win hiding in their database. Little Bird Marketing's Revenue Sprint is a proven system that works backward from your revenue goals to create a focused plan for building a sales pipeline and predictable growth. No massive budget required—just strategic execution that delivers measurable results. Ready to turn missed opportunities into new wins? Click here and build a predictable pipeline for sustainable growth. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Most B2B professionals are treating LinkedIn like a digital business card when it is actually the highest-trust sales floor they will ever have access to. Mark Young, founder of Love Social Media, joins Priscilla McKinney, host of Digital Transformation Success and CEO of Little Bird Marketing, to discuss what it actually takes to build authority on LinkedIn as part of a B2B sales process. Young has spent over 13 years helping founders and sales professionals turn their expertise into buyer trust, and his approach centers on a shift most teams resist: stop broadcasting and start earning credibility. They discuss why the platform rewards certain behaviors and how understanding that dynamic changes everything about how you show up. Buyer psychology, not posting frequency, is the real driver behind whether LinkedIn generates pipeline or just noise. Most content fails not because of poor writing or bad timing but because it is written about the creator rather than for the reader. The professionals winning on LinkedIn right now have figured out how to make their target audience feel seen, and that shift in orientation is what separates a content platform from a trust engine. "Social media networks will come and go," Young explains. "But trust [in the person] is what stays." That is a harder thing to build than most people want to admit, and a much more durable asset than most people realize. The algorithm will keep changing, the best practices will keep shifting, and the tips and tricks will keep getting recycled. What does not change is whether your audience trusts you enough to choose you when the moment arrives. Sponsors: Priscilla McKinney is not just a CEO; she is also a LinkedIn Influencer. The reality is that very few people are using LinkedIn efficiently or effectively, and if you’re not careful, social media can become a black hole. When you emerge, you find you wound up in a place you never intended to go and you’re wondering where all the time went. Time is precious, and trying to be everything to everyone means becoming nothing to no one. That's why she's developed a transformative 12-week course that goes beyond basic tips and tricks – teaching you how to build a strategic network and create stellar content that cuts through the LinkedIn noise. Click here to learn more, and sign up for a spot in her social influence course today! Priscilla McKinney here! I am very excited to tell you about my book:  Collaboration is the New Competition: Why the Future of Work Rewards A Cross Pollinating Hive Mind and How Not to Get Left Behind The book's chapters are designed to be time-efficient, ensuring busy professionals can easily integrate these transformative ideas into their workflow. From discussing the state of affairs in business to providing fundamental strategies and seven practical anchors for staying on course, this book offers a fresh perspective and a competitive advantage in today's complex business landscape. Visit priscillamckinney.com for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

*Help us shape the future of Digital Transformation Success by taking a short, 11-question ⁠⁠listener survey⁠⁠.* Most businesses are moving fast on AI adoption and skipping the most important question entirely. Jim Jacobs, CEO and founder of Focus Insite and Human Layer, joins Priscilla McKinney on Digital Transformation Success to challenge some of the assumptions driving AI investment right now. Jacobs has spent over a decade building systems around human verification and emerging technologies, and his perspective on where automation earns its place and where it doesn't is earned rather than theoretical. The episode tackles what responsible AI adoption actually requires when the quality of your data determines the quality of your decisions. The businesses winning with emerging technologies are not necessarily the ones with the most sophisticated tools. They are the ones that started with the right problem. Chasing technology before understanding the pain it needs to solve is one of the most expensive mistakes a team can make, and it is far more common than most leaders want to admit. "You always [need] to keep in mind the problem you're trying to solve," Jacobs explains. "Just solve that better than anyone." Speed and scale are seductive, but they do not self-correct. The organizations building real staying power right now are the ones asking harder questions about what their AI actually knows, where it learned it, and who signed off on that. Those answers are not always comfortable, and the businesses willing to sit with that discomfort are the ones positioned to get it right. Sponsors: Priscilla McKinney here! I am very excited to tell you about my book:  Collaboration is the New Competition: Why the Future of Work Rewards A Cross Pollinating Hive Mind and How Not to Get Left Behind The book's chapters are designed to be time-efficient, ensuring busy professionals can easily integrate these transformative ideas into their workflow. From discussing the state of affairs in business to providing fundamental strategies and seven practical anchors for staying on course, this book offers a fresh perspective and a competitive advantage in today's complex business landscape. Visit priscillamckinney.com for more information. Priscilla McKinney is not just a CEO; she is also a LinkedIn Influencer. The reality is that very few people are using LinkedIn efficiently or effectively, and if you’re not careful, social media can become a black hole. When you emerge, you find you wound up in a place you never intended to go and you’re wondering where all the time went. Time is precious, and trying to be everything to everyone means becoming nothing to no one. That's why she's developed a transformative 12-week course that goes beyond basic tips and tricks – teaching you how to build a strategic network and create stellar content that cuts through the LinkedIn noise. Click here to learn more, and sign up for a spot in her social influence course today! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

*Help us shape the future of Digital Transformation Success by taking a short, 11-question ⁠⁠listener survey⁠⁠.* Market research has a productivity problem, and the industry has been too busy fielding studies to fix it. Priscilla McKinney, host of Digital Transformation Success and CEO of Little Bird Marketing, sits down with Jeremy Antoniuk, Founder and CEO of Scalafai, to talk about what happens when someone who has actually run research operations builds the platform they always wished existed. On this episode of Digital Transformation Success, Antoniuk brings two decades of hands-on experience to a conversation about why the research industry is overdue for a different approach and what it looks like when digital transformation meets the day-to-day grind of a project manager. The pressure to do more with less has pushed research teams to patch together workflows across a fragmented landscape of tools, and that fragmentation creates risk at every stage of a project. Data quality issues that force costly re-fielding, executive presentations that consume senior-level hours, survey programming that eats days when it could take minutes — these are not edge cases. They are the standard. What separates a platform built by someone who has lived that reality from one built purely by engineers is the difference between a tool that performs and one that actually fits the way researchers work. "Building software that truly helps a user get through their day faster and with less pain," Antoniuk explains, "to me, that's the ultimate measure of success." The build-vs-buy debate runs underneath much of this conversation, and Antoniuk's perspective is grounded in real patterns he is seeing across the industry. For research teams weighing whether to develop something in-house, the answer may be less about capability and more about what it actually costs in time, in risk, and in the domain knowledge that no engineering team inherits automatically. The path to meaningful marketing automation in research is not just a technology decision. It is an operational one. Sponsors: Priscilla McKinney here! I am very excited to tell you about my book:  Collaboration is the New Competition: Why the Future of Work Rewards A Cross Pollinating Hive Mind and How Not to Get Left Behind The book's chapters are designed to be time-efficient, ensuring busy professionals can easily integrate these transformative ideas into their workflow. From discussing the state of affairs in business to providing fundamental strategies and seven practical anchors for staying on course, this book offers a fresh perspective and a competitive advantage in today's complex business landscape. Visit priscillamckinney.com for more information. Ever feel like your marketing plan is just... meh? You've got the pieces, but are they really working together? We often find that even when companies are doing the right things, they may not be doing them in the right order. The results are, well, no results. Curious how you can effectively evaluate your marketing efforts? Want clarity on your next best strategic move? Take our Marketing Assessment Quiz and in just minutes, discover exactly where you stand – and where you could be going. Click here and take the quiz today and don’t leave success to chance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

*Help us shape the future of Digital Transformation Success by taking a short, 11-question ⁠⁠listener survey⁠⁠.* Most companies treat digital transformation as a technology problem and spend accordingly. Digital Transformation Success returns with host and Little Bird Marketing CEO Priscilla McKinney tackling one of the most misunderstood realities in business today. The failure rate of digital transformation initiatives is not a technology crisis. It is a people crisis. And until organizations accept that distinction, no amount of software spending will save them. The rate of business mortality is accelerating, and the organizations that survive are not the ones with the largest tech budgets or the most sophisticated tools. A clear digital transformation strategy matters far less than the organizational willingness to actually change how people work, think, and create value. Because transforming isn't about software, it's about people. "So many digital initiatives fail because people never asked whether their people were willing to work differently," McKinney explains. "Think differently, or let go of the way things used to be." McKinney breaks down the approaches available to organizations at different stages of readiness, and the strategic levers that determine where to focus first, arguing that the right starting point is rarely where most companies begin. Marketing automation, new platforms, and digitized workflows all play a role in transformation. But the organizations that get the most from those investments are the ones that do the harder internal work first. Skipping that step is not a shortcut. It is the reason so many initiatives end up as cautionary tales. Sponsors: Ever feel like your marketing plan is just... meh? You've got the pieces, but are they really working together? Little Bird Marketing often finds that even when companies are doing the right things, they may not be doing them in the right order. The results are, well, no results. Curious how you can effectively evaluate your marketing efforts? Want clarity on your next best strategic move? Take the Marketing Assessment Quiz and in just minutes, discover exactly where you stand – and where you could be going. Click here and take the quiz today and don’t leave success to chance. Priscilla McKinney is not just a CEO; she is also a LinkedIn Influencer. The reality is that very few people are using LinkedIn efficiently or effectively, and if you’re not careful, social media can become a black hole. When you emerge, you find you wound up in a place you never intended to go and you’re wondering where all the time went. Time is precious, and trying to be everything to everyone means becoming nothing to no one. That's why she's developed a transformative 12-week course that goes beyond basic tips and tricks – teaching you how to build a strategic network and create stellar content that cuts through the LinkedIn noise. Click here to learn more, and sign up for a spot in her social influence course today! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

*Want to win some noise-canceling headphones? Help us shape the future of Digital Transformation Success by taking a short, 11-question ⁠⁠listener survey⁠⁠ and be entered into the giveaway. Deadline is February 28th.* Growth doesn't always require more spending, it requires smarter allocation of existing resources. Digital Transformation Success host and Little Bird Marketing CEO Priscilla McKinney speaks with Eric Siano, Managing Director at Blue Leopard LLC about digital transformation as a business growth accelerator. They examine how companies can achieve measurable growth by rethinking current spending levels rather than demanding increased budgets. Siano shares frameworks for translating digital transformation strategy into executable go-to-market plans that impact revenue, efficiency, and cross-departmental alignment. Siano's experience spanning 15 industries and 17 countries reveals a counterintuitive truth, that digital transformation consulting isn't about mastering industry-specific nuances, but recognizing universal patterns in how businesses create value. The core challenges remain consistent whether working in financial services, automotive, or consumer goods - companies must develop products, communicate their value, and reach customers effectively. This perspective allows him to see beyond surface-level technology debates and identify the fundamental business problems that digital transformation strategy should solve. "Understanding that digital transformation is a growth accelerator, once you understand that, there's a lot of commonality across industries," Siano explains. "We have to create products, we have to communicate the value of those products, we have to reach customers." The shift from viewing digital transformation as a technology project to recognizing it as a digital business strategy requires fundamental changes in how departments communicate and collaborate. When teams align around shared revenue goals rather than isolated departmental metrics, the conversation moves from blame and excuses to collective problem-solving. This alignment doesn't happen through new systems alone, it emerges from understanding customer buying cycles, budget processes, and the strategic use of questions that guide organizations toward actionable solutions rather than scattered tactics. Sponsors: Priscilla McKinney here! I am very excited to tell you about my book: Collaboration is the New Competition: Why the Future of Work Rewards A Cross Pollinating Hive Mind and How Not to Get Left Behind The book's chapters are designed to be time-efficient, ensuring busy professionals can easily integrate these transformative ideas into their workflow. From discussing the state of affairs in business to providing fundamental strategies and seven practical anchors for staying on course, this book offers a fresh perspective and a competitive advantage in today's complex business landscape. Visit priscillamckinney.com for more information.   Priscilla McKinney is not just a CEO; she is also a LinkedIn Influencer. The reality is that very few people are using LinkedIn efficiently or effectively, and if you’re not careful, social media can become a black hole. When you emerge, you find you wound up in a place you never intended to go and you’re wondering where all the time went. Time is precious, and trying to be everything to everyone means becoming nothing to no one. That's why she's developed a transformative 12-week course that goes beyond basic tips and tricks – teaching you how to build a strategic network and create stellar content that cuts through the LinkedIn noise. Click here to learn more, and sign up for a spot in her social influence course today! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

*Want to win some noise-canceling headphones? Help us shape the future of Digital Transformation Success by taking a short, 11-question ⁠⁠listener survey⁠⁠ and be entered into the giveaway. Deadline is February 28th.* Technology enables strategy, but strategy must come first. On this episode of Digital Transformation Success, host and Little Bird Marketing CEO Priscilla McKinney talks with Alena Rossini, Head of Business Strategy for Tesco Retail Media, about how digital transformation strategy fails when organizations prioritize tools over foundations, treating technology as the answer rather than an enabler of strong brand principles and clear direction. Rossini explains why digital transformation strategy fails when leadership keeps pivoting direction, chasing technology changes instead of staying true to strategic plans. She finds that many organizations struggle with fragmented channels and rapidly changing technology, which tempts CMOs to shift brand positioning, target audiences, and messaging constantly. This creates the opposite of a strong foundation. She shares how an effective demand generation strategy requires consistency even as the landscape evolves. She explains, "If you build strong foundations, you can build really high, what is very tempting nowadays, especially with the shorter cycle of CMOs in place, is to keep changing what you stand for. And that just creates massive inefficiencies."  She also shares insights on B2B marketing trends, showing a return to brand building and emotional engagement through video content, as well as the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in marketing, distinguishing between productivity gains and creative applications. While AI excels at consistency and scale, true differentiation still requires human intuition, emotion, and boldness in marketing strategy. Music written and performed by Leighton Cordell. Sponsors: Priscilla McKinney here! I am very excited to tell you about my book: Collaboration is the New Competition: Why the Future of Work Rewards A Cross Pollinating Hive Mind and How Not to Get Left Behind The book's chapters are designed to be time-efficient, ensuring busy professionals can easily integrate these transformative ideas into their workflow. From discussing the state of affairs in business to providing fundamental strategies and seven practical anchors for staying on course, this book offers a fresh perspective and a competitive advantage in today's complex business landscape. Visit priscillamckinney.com for more information. Priscilla McKinney is not just a CEO; she is also a LinkedIn Influencer. The reality is that very few people are using LinkedIn efficiently or effectively, and if you’re not careful, social media can become a black hole. When you emerge, you find you wound up in a place you never intended to go and you’re wondering where all the time went. Time is precious, and trying to be everything to everyone means becoming nothing to no one. That's why she's developed a transformative 12-week course that goes beyond basic tips and tricks – teaching you how to build a strategic network and create stellar content that cuts through the LinkedIn noise. Click here to learn more, and sign up for a spot in her social influence course today! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

*Want to win some noise-canceling headphones? Help us shape the future of Digital Transformation Success by taking a short, 11-question ⁠listener survey⁠ and be entered into the giveaway. Deadline is February 28th.* CRM systems fail because we confuse strategy with software. On this episode of Digital Transformation Success, host and Little Bird Marketing CEO Priscilla McKinney talks with guest and CEO of aheadCRM LLC, Thomas Wieberneit, about customer relationship management (CRM) and the customer experience (CX) industry. They discuss how CRM implementation fails when organizations confuse the map with the territory, treating systems as silver bullets rather than strategic tools that require proper planning, change management, and continuous optimization. Wieberneit explains the two most common mistakes in digital transformation consulting related to CRM implementation. The first is failing to include the people who will actually use the customer database in planning discussions. The second is implementing systems to serve management rather than frontline teams. The mistake that management or buyers often make, Wieberneit explains. “Is [thinking that] another system helps me get out of [a failing CRM situation]; It's a silver bullet." By contrast, he shares how successful CRM projects focus on removing administrative burdens from sales and service personnel so they can spend more time building customer relationships. He provides expert advice on how to turn systems of record into true engagement platforms by improving audience segmentation, automating mundane tasks, and prioritizing user adoption over key performance indicators (KPIs) and management reporting. McKinney and Wieberneit also discuss the role of emerging technologies, such as agentic AI and large language models (LLMs) in CRM systems. Wieberneit provides real-world examples of where these technologies create genuine value, versus where they become expensive solutions in search of problems. He shares a valuable use case of how Siemens uses LLM-based helper tools for technical service questions, allowing human service personnel to focus on complex problems that require relationship building. The conversation emphasizes the importance of outcome-oriented implementation that creates a unified customer experience by prioritizing customer needs, thereby generating business value for the organization. Music written and performed by Leighton Cordell. Sponsors: Priscilla McKinney here! I am very excited to tell you about my book: Collaboration is the New Competition: Why the Future of Work Rewards A Cross Pollinating Hive Mind and How Not to Get Left Behind The book's chapters are designed to be time-efficient, ensuring busy professionals can easily integrate these transformative ideas into their workflow. From discussing the state of affairs in business to providing fundamental strategies and seven practical anchors for staying on course, this book offers a fresh perspective and a competitive advantage in today's complex business landscape. Visit priscillamckinney.com for more information. Priscilla McKinney is not just a CEO; she is also a LinkedIn Influencer. The reality is that very few people are using LinkedIn efficiently or effectively, and if you’re not careful, social media can become a black hole. When you emerge, you find you wound up in a place you never intended to go and you’re wondering where all the time went. Time is precious, and trying to be everything to everyone means becoming nothing to no one. That's why she's developed a transformative 12-week course that goes beyond basic tips and tricks – teaching you how to build a strategic network and create stellar content that cuts through the LinkedIn noise. Click here to learn more, and sign up for a spot in her social influence course today! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Every company today operates as a technology company, whether they realize it or not. On this episode of Digital Transformation Success, host and Little Bird Marketing CEO Priscilla McKinney talks with Dr. Tracy Tuten, VP of qualitative research at Illuminas, a Radius company, where she leads the qualitative practice. They discuss how companies across all sectors must recognize they're operating in a technology-driven marketplace and adapt their digital transformation strategy accordingly through strategic brand positioning. Tuten shares her expertise on emergent positioning dangers and grand flag concepts, explaining how businesses can navigate competitive landscapes through strategic research and positioning. She demonstrates through real-world digital transformation case studies like ONTIC versus Resolver and Stripe versus Audion how companies can understand the B2B customer journey and uncover the right positioning strategy using market research to differentiate themselves in crowded markets and even redefine entire industry categories. The conversation addresses the high-stakes nature of product launches and market positioning in today's competitive landscape, where companies have limited budgets and marketing automation resources. Tuten emphasizes how understanding buyer psychology and strategic research provides the foundation for confident decision-making in these critical business moments. "Research is the antidote to risk," Tuten explains. "We have a limited budget. We need to see success from it. Research is the investment that you make to have that antidote to risk." McKinney and Tuten also discuss practical frameworks for avoiding common positioning pitfalls, such as kitchen sink messaging, parity positioning, and attempting to win where competitors already dominate. They emphasize how engineered positioning strategies enable companies to establish a foothold on competitive ground they can actually hold and defend. Sponsors: Tired of generic marketing firms that don't get market research? Say hello to Little Bird Marketing, the revenue generation company of choice for the market research industry. Our "peeps" understand market research inside and out. We know your buyers, craft meaningful messages that move them to buy, understand the competitive landscape and where you fit in the market. We get the industry - from qual/quant to emerging technologies. Why settle for getting the job done when you can soar with marketing that drives real revenue? Click here to get started. Priscilla McKinney is not just a CEO; she is also a LinkedIn Influencer. The reality is that very few people are using LinkedIn efficiently or effectively, and if you’re not careful, social media can become a black hole. When you emerge, you find you wound up in a place you never intended to go and you’re wondering where all the time went. Time is precious, and trying to be everything to everyone means becoming nothing to no one. That's why she's developed a transformative 12-week course that goes beyond basic tips and tricks – teaching you how to build a strategic network and create stellar content that cuts through the LinkedIn noise. Click here to learn more, and sign up for a spot in her social influence course today! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What if the difference between business success and stagnation lies in distinguishing flashy metrics from insights that beat your competition? On this episode of Digital Transformation Success, host and Little Bird Marketing CEO Priscilla McKinney talks with Andrew Elder, SVP for Advanced Analytics at Illuminas, a Radius Insights company, about the critical shift happening in quantitative research and competitive analysis. They explore how AI tools are transforming the baseline of what clients can accomplish independently, forcing research professionals to evolve beyond traditional metrics like Net Promoter Score toward more sophisticated competitive positioning strategies. Elder also explains how B2B decision-making complexity creates unique challenges that AI cannot fully address, particularly when dealing with collaborative organizational decisions involving multiple influencers across different timeframes and contexts. The conversation reveals why understanding your competitive position requires moving beyond simple recommendation scores to capture the nuanced reality of how brands elevate within their specific market categories. "The competitive context is absolutely crucial," Elder explains. “The reality is that companies need buyers to not only think positively about [their] brand, but also think about how that fits [their] needs relative to other options.” The discussion also covers Illuminas' "Science of Winning" methodology, which builds on over 10 years of research demonstrating that relative brand position predicts future outcomes far better than absolute scores. This approach helps technology companies understand that becoming the most recommended brand within their competitive set matters more than achieving high scores in isolation, whether they're competing at the platform level or within specialized technology stacks. Sponsors: Priscilla McKinney here! I am very excited to tell you about my book:  Collaboration is the New Competition: Why the Future of Work Rewards A Cross Pollinating Hive Mind and How Not to Get Left Behind The book's chapters are designed to be time-efficient, ensuring busy professionals can easily integrate these transformative ideas into their workflow. From discussing the state of affairs in business to providing fundamental strategies and seven practical anchors for staying on course, this book offers a fresh perspective and a competitive advantage in today's complex business landscape. Visit priscillamckinney.com for more information. Tired of generic marketing firms that don't get market research? Say hello to Little Bird Marketing, the revenue generation company of choice for the market research industry. Our "peeps" understand market research inside and out. We know your buyers, craft meaningful messages that move them to buy, understand the competitive landscape and where you fit in the market. We get the industry - from qual/quant to emerging technologies. Why settle for getting the job done when you can soar with marketing that drives real revenue? Click here to get started. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Technology buyers can't make decisions based solely on immediate needs. On this episode of Digital Transformation Success, host and Little Bird Marketing CEO Priscilla McKinney talks with Jay Shutter, CEO of Illuminas, who has spent three decades interviewing CIOs and senior IT leaders across every major technology transition. How do you use tech products when you’re studying tech products? Interesting question and a good place to start when talking to an expert on market research in the tech space. McKinney takes the opportunity to get a finger on the pulse on how tech companies are struggling to understand enterprise buyers and how they gain a competitive advantage. Shutter gives an informed explanation of how technology purchasing decisions have evolved as systems become more integrated, requiring buyers to consider three to five-year implications because technology stacks create vendor dependencies. He shares insights from launching Radius Tech, which combines decades of technology research experience with AI-powered tools like Radius IQ for real-time qualitative probing within quantitative surveys. "Technology buyers today can't just think about what they're buying for today," Shutter explains. "Because technology changes so fast, you as a buyer have to think about today and the future." They go a bit deeper, examining how marketing automation platforms have reshaped partner ecosystems. This part of the conversation reveals how market research can identify and address common positioning mistakes when companies try to reach skeptical enterprise buyers. In the end,  digital transformation consulting approaches must evolve beyond traditional methodologies, and while AI levels the competitive playing field technologically, customer service excellence and human relationships are the standout differentiator for technology companies. Sponsor: Priscilla McKinney here! I am very excited to tell you about my book:  Collaboration is the New Competition: Why the Future of Work Rewards A Cross Pollinating Hive Mind and How Not to Get Left Behind The book's chapters are designed to be time-efficient, ensuring busy professionals can easily integrate these transformative ideas into their workflow. From discussing the state of affairs in business to providing fundamental strategies and seven practical anchors for staying on course, this book offers a fresh perspective and a competitive advantage in today's complex business landscape. Visit priscillamckinney.com for more information. Priscilla McKinney is not just a CEO; she is also a LinkedIn Influencer. The reality is that very few people are using LinkedIn efficiently or effectively, and if you’re not careful, social media can become a black hole. When you emerge, you find you wound up in a place you never intended to go and you’re wondering where all the time went. Time is precious, and trying to be everything to everyone means becoming nothing to no one. That's why she's developed a transformative 12-week course that goes beyond basic tips and tricks – teaching you how to build a strategic network and create stellar content that cuts through the LinkedIn noise. Click here to learn more, and sign up for a spot in her social influence course today! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices