Proving the Advantage that Marketing Creates

**Christopher Penn** (0:06)
This is Marketing Over Coffee with Christopher Penn and John Wall.

**John Wall** (0:15)
Good morning, welcome to Marketing Over Coffee, I'm John Wall. Today, I've got Samrat Sharma with us and Ian Kahn. They're both partners at PWC. Ian is also the customer and commercial excellence platform leader.
We're here at Connections in Chicago, and yeah, that's a good place to start, actually. Well, first, welcome to both of you.

**Ian Kahn** (0:32)
Thank you.

**John Wall** (0:33)
So how many Connections have you done? We'll start with you, Ian.

**Ian Kahn** (0:36)
That's a good question. Let's say 10

**John Wall** (0:40)
So you've done 10 most. And Samrat, for you.

**Samrat Sharma** (0:43)
Mine's between and 10 This is my first one, actually.

**John Wall** (0:48)
This is my first too, which is crazy because I worked with the exact target for years and never got to this. It was always dream for us.
Samrat, let's start with you. When did you get to PWC? What's your background? Where do you come from?

**Samrat Sharma** (1:01)
So I've been with PWC, sort of different reincarnations of this for a little over 20 years. So I came in through an acquisition about 12 years ago.
So I grew up as a strategist in consulting, kind of helping companies drive the growth agenda, develop their long-term growth strategy, etc. Came into PWC and that was around the time that PWC was growing its front office business, and I had done a lot of work around brand and stuff, and we kind of launched the marketing practice in the last few years. I've been really kind of working at the intersection of growth strategy and brand strategy and marketing strategy. So that's been a fun, exciting ride.

**John Wall** (1:41)
Ian, how about you? Your background, where do you come from?

**Ian Kahn** (1:43)
Well, John, I've grown up at PWC professionally. I'm nearly 27 years now with the firm. I was hired right out of college. After spending roughly a decade doing CRM, consulting for my clients, I had the opportunity to actually launch the Salesforce consulting business within the firm, which I led and grew for a number of years.
And now I oversee the broader customer and commercial excellence portfolio at PWC.

**John Wall** (2:16)
Okay. And so tell us about the group that you're working with. So obviously, they're all on board as Salesforce implementations that you're running with. But who are your ideal clients here?

**Ian Kahn** (2:25)
Well, we work with clients across just about every industry.
And a lot of our work is with large enterprise companies, but we also work with private businesses and high growth startups. You know, we've got a very diverse portfolio. Ultimately, you know, we're looking for clients that are transforming, you know, some aspect of their core business. And the work that Samrat and I do is really focused on, you know, starting with the customer journey, understanding where the growth opportunities are, helping our clients to identify and then pursue those growth opportunities, and providing a full range of solutions, starting with strategy, but down through, you know, the functional capabilities, the industry process capabilities, enabled by technology, and we even have a large managed services business as well.

**Samrat Sharma** (3:15)
I think what Ian just kind of highlighted is very much the reason we are all integrated as one team is because today's clients, one day themselves are going through their reinvention. And for them, it's the most important aspect of having a partner like us, is to help them not only get from establish their not star vision and strategy, but then also kind of walk along with them and help them get to the outcomes at the end of the day, gone at the days of these large slide packs that are sitting on a desk somewhere, gaining dust or large big transformations that are being done in isolation without a real connection to what the business strategy needs to be. I think what we're increasingly finding is the need of the hour and what we're hearing from clients is like, hey, we are operating in a very kind of dynamic environment, a lot of changes, et cetera. Help us think through together where the puck is going.
How should we build a business that will be successful, not only today, but sets us up for success for the long term? And help us deliver against the business outcomes today and in the future.

**John Wall** (4:25)
Okay. And so then as a major partner, what are you guys interested in? What have you seen and want to learn about here over these next couple of days? What's the hottest thing going?