Global B2B CVM: Winning Hearts Before Scaling Results
Why Listen
This week on CVM Stories, we sit down with Kaan Fişek, Head of Customer Value Management & Base Marketing at Ooredoo Qatar, to talk about global B2B CVM and why it starts with winning hearts before scaling results.
What if the biggest barrier to scaling CVM wasn’t strategy or technology, but people? After leading B2B CVM across multiple markets, Kaan shares the partnership playbook that turned resistance into collaboration — winning trust, working alongside local teams, and letting the results speak for themselves.
Winning Hearts Before Scaling Results: 5 Principles for Global CVM
Scaling B2B CVM across markets is hard. Not because the methodology is complex but because people resist change. “This would never work here” is the default response. The leaders who break through don’t push harder — they build trust first.
1. Treat Stakeholders Like Customers
Global CVM is enterprise sales — internally. You’re not the boss; you’re a vendor pitching for their business. Earn trust before asking for commitment. Tip: approach every operation like a sales prospect. What do they need? What’s in it for them?
2. Start Small, Not Big Bang
Treat local teams like B2B customers. Win them over with “teeny tiny” pilots. Once they see the value, they will trust you to scale the strategy. Tip: start small with a single segment, campaign, or proof of concept to build the relationship first.
3. Volunteer Your Team to Work Alongside Them
Don’t just send orders from HQ. Offer to embed your team and work “in the trenches” rather than above them. Tip: say “we’ll stop everything else and work with you 3-6 months” — and mean it.
4. Build Intelligence They Can’t Ignore
Map the customer’s full wallet — total spend, vendors, satisfaction, buying cycles. Deliver intel no one else has. When you can pinpoint the next tender, you’re not just CVM but a strategic partner. Tip: build a single view of customer spend and competitor share.
5. Turn Wins Into Case Studies
One success story spreads faster than ten mandates. When a market hits results, document it. Name names. Show the revenue and make heroes. Others will want to follow. Tip: track wins by operation and share them in quarterly forums.
The proof it works? In one market, CVM contribution to the top line grew from 5-10% to 33-40% in a year and a half.
Episode Highlights
- Global CVM roles face constant resistance: “this would never work here”
- Top-down mandates create friction, not adoption
- Treat internal stakeholders like enterprise sales prospects
- Start small: if they won’t give data centers, start with mobile lines
- Volunteer your team to work alongside operations for 3-6 months
- Build customer intelligence: map wallets, vendors, buying cycles
- Case studies spread success faster than directives
- Global roles involve lobbying and politics — it’s part of the job
- The result: CVM contribution grew from 5-10% to 33-40% in one market
- Partnership beats mandates every time
No one likes to be told what they should be doing. The most successful projects were always like — we think you can do A, B, C and we can work with you for 3-6 months. – Kaan Fişek
Recommendations for Growth as a Professional
To grow as a CVM leader, learn to sell internally. Speak the language of sales, finance, and IT. Build relationships before you need them. Start small, prove value, then scale. And always remember: no one likes being told what to do. The best CVM leaders don’t demand buy-in — they earn it.
Final Words
Scaling CVM globally is about people first and strategy second. When you stop dictating and start partnering, resistance turns into collaboration. And when you deliver results no one can argue with, CVM stops being questioned.
TRANSCRIPT
Kaan: [00:00:00] But when we got it, the CVM revenue contribution to the top line of the business unit was around 5 to 10%, and it became to 33 to 40% in a year and a half. No one likes to be told what they should be doing. So the most successful projects were always like, we think you can do A, B, C we are willing to stop everything else and work with you.
Exacaster: [00:00:23] Welcome to CVM Stories, the podcast on customer value management. Together, we explore how companies can be more successful and the customers happier through the use of latest customer value management techniques. Learn key commercial and analytical insights from telecoms, retail, finance and other industries that drive CVM forward.
Egidijus: [00:00:41] Hi, I’m your host, Egidijus. Today our guest is Kaan Fisek, a head of Customer Value Management and Base Marketing at Ooredoo Qatar. Kaan has a very unique and broad perspective on CVM because he has led multiple CVM operations and had group level perspective when working in Vodafone Group and leading B2B customer value management. Welcome to CVM Stories podcast. Thank you for taking your time. I know that you are doing on your weekend. So, um, yeah, thank you for joining.
Kaan: [00:01:20] Thanks for inviting me. Uh, it’s been the highlight of the week, I can tell you.
Egidijus: [00:01:24] I know you had. Well, you have an amazing career. You have, uh, managed the global operations of CVM for B2B sector. Now you are running CVM in a single operation. Could you briefly describe your career and how did you end up being a customer value manager?
Kaan: [00:01:46] Again, thank you for the kind words. First and foremost. And once again, thank you for the invitation. Um, a brief summary. I joined the telco industry 14 years ago 2012 out of college directly. I have a computer engineering degree, so I think the cards were slightly destined for me to take a CVM role in some shape or time, but initially I was. I joined Vodafone Turkey through a global young talent program. They had, uh, I started in product management and at the time, uh, it was the IoT, but it was called MTM Machine to Machine. It was quite thin and it was a quite exciting area. So I joined there. I did that for a couple of years and then I moved on to. You might also remember, there was a big rage in the industry around segmentation leading segments, making the organization around segments. So I moved on to consumer residential segment. It was a time where convergence were kicking in. Uh, fixed was becoming the new big thing in the industry. So we were making a move as the operation. So I was lucky enough to join the consumer residential segment at the time, did that for a couple of years. Then another opportunity came in to do the same for enterprise segment.
Kaan: [00:03:03] That’s how I went to B2B again, where I initially joined the corporate segment. I ended up heading that corporate segment, and then I became a naturalized CVM manager because at the time there was an organizational change. So they asked me if I would be interested in overseeing not only the corporate segment, but also the CVM component of it. So that’s how I got into this world, and I was hooked. To be honest, out of that, I and I hope to tell a bit of the story there, uh, what we achieved out of that achievement. I was then asked to join, uh, Vodafone Group, the central HQ operation, to lead the commercial CVM for all enterprise segments, Soho, SME and corporate segments. Then my business unit got merged into another business unit. I ended in my final post in Vodafone Group. I was heading up the Center of Excellence for marketing in CVM, overseeing both consumer and enterprise. Then, in one fateful day in 2024 summer, I was asked if I’d be interested in joining, uh, a different market uh, in a very essential role. And I said, yeah, why not? It was a great opportunity. So I came to the GCC.
Egidijus: [00:04:20] Uh, it’s a really, uh, you have a really interesting story. I was wondering, like, you know, uh, you, uh, you basically studied technology and end up in marketing. You know what it is? How do you feel like making such a huge, uh, twist, you know, from tech part to to to to super marketing part?
Kaan: [00:04:45] Well, I mean, one good thing about, uh, the Turkish education system is you have to do internships or apprenticeships, uh, during your time of education. And it was one of the reason I chose computer engineering was it was quite exciting at the time, like these, uh, Californian Fortune 500 of today. They were at the time, they were startups, and they were, like, growing exponentially. And there was a lot of rage about building something on your own, being an entrepreneur and all that. So I was quite excited about the prospect of actually developing something and doing it myself. I wasn’t going to go into corporate, actually initially, but over the internships and over the work experience I had during college, it became quite apparent that I liked computer engineering or computer science, but I didn’t. I liked the technology more than actually doing the engineering itself. So that’s when I tried to shift the direction into more of a can I do something that incorporates both technology and, uh, social sciences, and marketing was a natural outcome of that pursuit, if you will.
Egidijus: [00:05:56] Yes. It’s a really interesting, uh, twist. Um, but I remember the times when we had those MTM, uh, type of products, uh, exciting times. Uh, but, uh, let’s focus a little bit more about, um, uh, B2B customer, uh, value management. And here you had a super unique opportunity to touch a B2B CVM for multiple operations.
Kaan: [00:06:29] Mhm. Yep.
Egidijus: [00:06:31] And, uh, I would like to get a little bit of your perspective on this. So for example, how do you start working in B2B, CVM you know, what things do you check first when you say okay I need to oversee ten operations. Yeah. So what are the things that you are trying to grasp on so that you would understand how we’re doing the good job and where should we improve?
Kaan: [00:06:58] So I don’t know if what I’m going to I mean, obviously it is my personal journey and it is my personal point of view. And the company that I worked for was quite interesting in that regard. So to even lay the foundation of what B2B CVM is or what good looks like, you need to first understand that specific markets, market position, uh, whether or not they’re the incumbent or the challenger, because across Vodafone, different markets have different positions in the market. And as a result they would have different commercial strategies. That’s the first thing. The second thing I think is what I like to call understanding the CVM factory. When I say CVM factory, I’m referring to data, I’m referring to channels, I’m referring to treats, offers, propositions, whatever that landscape of operation. And you identify what’s good, what’s missing, do a bit of a gap analysis. And finally, finally, I think you essentially built a strategy that would position that relevant CVM team to success. When I say that, sorry, there was one final step that that is understanding the market in terms of the composition of segments. Not all European countries or not all countries in general are composed of the same segments. Some countries are very corporate specific, corporate dominant, and as a result, the operation that you are engaging with is geared toward account managed segments. And some of the operations are more or the countries are more heavy on Soho or semi segments. So depending on that context, the context of the market and the capabilities of the CVM factory, let’s say you essentially build a roadmap and you work with the market to bring them up to a level that you know is achievable for them. That’s more or less the approach.
Egidijus: [00:08:52] Okay. What you what you said. It’s really interesting for me, um, because we just recently did a CVM trends report in which we see like that, uh, already, uh, half of organizations, uh, have uh, uh, strategies that are aligned, basically corporate strategy and then CVM strategy aligned. So it’s only half of organizations who have this strategy aligned. And you obviously, you was on that, uh, side of half organizations, which starts from, you know, okay, we have corporate strategy, and then we build the CVM strategy based on that corporate strategy. And why would you say this is so important to start from, from this side from top down approach because many start like just doing some random campaigns and, uh, you know, trying to fight the fires.
Kaan: [00:09:54] When I think of. So at the time of heading up the B2B commercial CBM team, we would we would try to articulate what are the similarities between the consumer CVM function and the enterprise CVN function. And I always. Use the same analogy on consumer CVM or in Soho semi intensive countries. It’s more or less the approach is the same. You need to get the CVM factory operational. You need to get the data, attributes, triggers, insights in in order. You need to have the channels that execute across. You need an orchestrator, a tool or a platform that would help you launch campaigns at scale. But in markets where account managed segments, these are the large SME, mid-market corporate type of intensive markets. The CVM team acts through humans so they don’t have an access to the customer directly, like a consumer or a consumers or SMEs event would have, which brings the challenge on a. You need to understand how the customer, which is a large semi or corporate, makes their investment decisions. How do they plan for it? What is your channel which is a human needs to go through to drive the campaign that you want, driven to that customer? And what are the pain points and how you can eliminate those or enable them in doing so? And as a result, what value can you bring to their day to day? Because you are again, your channel is a human in this context.
Kaan: [00:11:35] And what is the unique value that you can bring that they can’t currently? And it ends up being more revenue for them, for their accounts. And in a more human element, it means more commission payouts as a result of the success that you drive together. So there’s an element of getting the CVM factory right. Yes, there’s an element of understanding the customer in a different way because this is a corporate. This is not an individual making a decision process. And also finally really cracking down the partnership element because you you only get to succeed in account managed segments when you when you bring people on your journey essentially. So those are the key differences that I see across in consumer or Soho. You have some leeway to say, okay, I’ll do it on my own because I have access to the customer directly in account segments you only get with people together. So, yeah.
Egidijus: [00:12:37] Uh, well, uh, uh, this is kind of kind of it’s, uh, when you work, uh, in, um, uh, B2B segment, when you work with enterprise, uh, customers and this, uh, midsize segment that has accounts. It is. It’s really great because you have a very personalized experience because the person actually, uh, works. But, uh, also there’s a.
Kaan: [00:13:07] It’s quite interesting. The channel talks back to you and they tell and they tell you what works and what doesn’t work.
Egidijus: [00:13:13] Yeah. So, uh, my question for you is like, uh, how do you bribe this channel to work for you? Really? Really. Well. I know it’s a tough question, but, uh.
Kaan: [00:13:27] I mean, bribe is a strong word, I think.
Egidijus: [00:13:30] Yeah.
Kaan: [00:13:31] Build a partnership. How do you build a I think, yes, we kind of touched base upon it. The essence is building trust in this case and, um, really understanding what they go through on a daily, day to day helps. I mean, it’s essentially what you would do in consumer or Soho. You would try to get the channel to operate flawlessly, you would try to build or remove the roadblocks that the channel has to execute the campaigns that you want to execute. In this case, it’s really talking to people and understanding how their day to day works. Identifying the small wins that would enable. And sometimes the small wins are stuff like e.g. they in having a pop up notification in their Salesforce automation tool to say go pitch this to your customer when you get to see that. It’s really small sometimes, but it really makes a difference. Um, I think gearing the CVM factory to map the customer lifecycle of an account managed segment makes all the difference. By that I mean, again, small things, but like maybe building, maybe building a data point around when they make a investment decision, when do when when does their fiscal cycle start? If you can try to map their existing technology infrastructure. Who are they getting their data center? Which vendor do they use to get their connectivity? Kind of mapping that understanding if they’re satisfied or not.
Kaan: [00:15:02] Essentially, gearing the factory to work in such a way that is fit to that customer or how they make the investment decision. That’s step one. I think building a regular governance and interlock always helps. Uh, so we would in in almost all of the markets, we would either encourage the CVM teams to go and participate in the sales, weekly meetings, monthly building that operational and strategic circle environment. So you have a forum to discuss the day to day, and you also have a forum to discuss the bigger things with leadership, because leadership buy in is also equally important. And finally, finally I think demonstrated the value of especially in B2B, you always need to build case studies around what you do so you can actually say calm, that account manager has delivered. I don’t know, €10 million revenue in six months because he did the first upgrade campaign that we asked him to do. Then he did a cross-sell campaign that he asked him to do. Then he was able to make a huge retention, and that added up to X million euro. And constantly building that case studies to communicate that, that scaled approach across the channel, I think.
Egidijus: [00:16:21] Okay. So I think.
Kaan: [00:16:23] When they see they can get the revenue growth or the commission payouts, then, then they start experimenting with you.
Egidijus: [00:16:35] I think this is a kind of, uh, um, I heard quite a few really good learnings how you basically balance the strategic part and the tactical part, how How do you make them look them look good through girls achievement and, uh, basically good, uh, use cases. And this is kind of, uh, sounds really, really. Well, um, now, um, we talked, uh, a little bit about, you know, how do you build this CPM strategy? Uh, and when we move down to execution, like, what are the, um, I would say, what do you see more important? It’s like building a good strategy or doing, I don’t know, a lot of small things. Right. You know, how do you see this, uh, function.
Kaan: [00:17:32] In operations where Soho SME dominant. It’s about getting the engine and factory working. Right.
Egidijus: [00:17:40] Um.
Kaan: [00:17:41] It’s the same as consumer. You try to build the marketing automation capability. You try to incorporate all the channels that operates and you try to execute the campaigns at scale. Yeah, and you try to make it smarter and smarter. You incorporate models, you incorporate more automation, you incorporate new capability in the channel, that type of thing in account, manage segments again, larger segment upwards. Um, I think the small things make much bigger differences. And you always scale up. So you build one small proof of concept, let’s say, and you scale up to a team. So you may make success with one account manager. Maybe then you scale it up to a team, then you scale up to multiple teams, then you scale up to the entire organization. And for those getting the tiny, teeny tiny things right has always been more impactful than because you can put anything on a slide. You can say, I’m going to grow with CVM 40% annually. It looks cool, it looks like a promise, but you can’t really prove your worth with something. With failing something. Putting in something ambitious and failing on it. So one one really small example that I remember in one of the European markets, the the challenge was not knowing who the decision maker was, because in B2B one of the biggest thing is the decision maker of your products and the users of the products differ. And if you don’t know who’s who, you don’t know who you’re marketing to. So for instance, we did an opt in campaign and in 3 or 6 months we got to first 40%. Then in six months it became 65%. So we mapped the decision makers. And that has changed everything, basically because we know who to pitch to that data center cross-sell initiative, that we want to do, that hosting space that we want to sell. We knew who to send the mail to. We knew where to pinpoint the account manager to go, to have a conversation to. And that kind of changed the entire thing, I would say.
Egidijus: [00:19:41] Okay. This is, uh, actually so interesting, uh, That, uh, the approach uh, differs so much in these two, um, kind of in Soho and then in the account because, uh, it’s also almost like you need to figure out some, uh, ways of working with every important, uh, account manager, basically.
Kaan: [00:20:08] Sort of.
Egidijus: [00:20:09] Yeah, yeah.
Kaan: [00:20:10] Obviously you have a finite amount of time and space, so you prioritize. But the goal is always to build something, scale it up, build something, scale up.
Egidijus: [00:20:20] Yeah. Mhm. Um, one uh, interesting aspect, um, which you have a super unique uh, opportunity is when working with different operations, there is obviously different, uh, large differences between operations, but there are also similarities. And for Similarities. You probably want to kind of transfer the know how from one operation to another. How would you approach this part?
Kaan: [00:20:53] So you do the traditional stuff like you do a forum, a quarterly forum where you bring all of the operations together. You ask them to present case studies. There’s a lot of reluctance. So you end up trying to consolidate, do the case studies with your team on your own to convey the message. I think again, the the in the global role, what what really worked well was identifying parts of opportunity and building projects or working on projects together instead of it’s human nature. No one likes to be told what they should be doing. No one. So we I think the most successful projects were always like, we think you can do A, B, C we are willing to stop everything else and work with you for 3 or 6 months. And if we if we do something together, it would be an amazing thing to do. And that always worked better over because you can also do this is what’s happening with the B2B, CVM landscape. This is what you need to do. You need to do it. And in the end it doesn’t really. Again, it’s like in a European market you have an opportunity for Soho. You assign one person from the team to do that project in another, uh, bigger market. Let’s say you have an opportunity to do some corporate cross-sell initiative or an approach or a whatever project or a price project. How how do you do a price up in a corner? You identify those parts of opportunity and you work with them instead of doing the traditional stuff of, you need to do this, and if you don’t do this, then I’ll then I’ll tell your boss’s boss and.
Egidijus: [00:22:42] Yeah. And at the end of the day, everybody are working very hard, but there is no result. Yeah. Yeah.
Kaan: [00:22:49] And you create friction.
Egidijus: [00:22:51] Mhm.
Exacaster: [00:22:52] If you are interested in customer value management check out our customer value Management body of knowledge CVM blog is a comprehensive guide for CVM professionals offering tips, tools and best practices to help you in your job. Visit cvs.com for more.
Egidijus: [00:23:09] But then in your case. So you would basically open up your team or volunteer your team to help with kind of a selected set of initiatives. You say, okay, we we are open to do the A, B, C, D things. And then kind of if somebody raises their hand, then you jump in and help something like that. Yeah.
Kaan: [00:23:31] Yes. Because to your point, I mean part of the global role is benchmarking capability, benchmarking maturity. So you know where the gaps are. Um, at the back end of it. You try to generate ports of opportunity to identify the small wins and build the projects essentially.
Egidijus: [00:23:50] Okay. Very interesting. I kind of, uh, have worked with, uh, a couple of, uh, groups. Uh, and not everyone has the same idea. I can tell it’s like in many situations I meet, uh, you know, uh, tough hand type of, uh, management as well. So it’s, like, interesting to hear the perspective and maybe, uh, to finish with the B2B segment. Um, so when we’re thinking about, you know, you you said that, okay, we need to identify data points about, um, our enterprise customers, like when do they make decisions, who is decision maker, etc.. Uh, one more aspect is that telcos for large enterprises usually serve way more products than to consumers. Meaning like it’s like all ICT sector, uh, comes into play. And how do you manage this part? Like when you have so many different, uh, products, how do you even start thinking, which do you cross-sell, uh, etc.?
Kaan: [00:25:12] There are a couple of hygiene steps, and I’m assuming those steps need to be taken ahead of doing anything. So like you need to build what would what would we call in the previous employee a single customer view. So you need to know every corporation has a, B, C, d products. Um, at the back end of it you need what you always need to make a case in enterprise. So like it’s better if you prioritize. You can sell a million products. It’s better if you prioritize. There are always 2 or 3 star products that the organization wants to focus, so it’s better to align to those products when the execution comes in. Uh, and in the again, CVM factory data side, let’s say, ah, the what good looks like is you have a view of the account that would enable you to see this is the total technology budget of this corporation. This is the budget for data center. This is their budget for a cyber security solution. This is their budget for IoT. This is their software. You get this is their connectivity budget. How much of that budget is being spent on us if possible mapping who the vendors or the service providers are covering the rest of the budget and their satisfaction levels? There was a market where we did this, by the way, so we worked on it for a year or so, but when we got it, the CVM revenue contribution to the top line of the business unit was around 5 to 10%, and it became to 33 to 40% in a year and a half. Because you can essentially start pinpointing, oh, Aggie Corporation has an upcoming data center tender, why don’t you go and talk to Aggie Corporation? Because they will be actually making a purchase in six months. So that is much more Intel that is like, go and win the tender instead of let’s try to sell data centers to everyone we know. It’s much better this way. So this is what good looks like. Not all of the opcodes or operations are in a position to go and do that in a fast pace, but at least.
Egidijus: [00:27:28] I assume it takes time to even, you know, get this intelligence. And it’s like you need to be in a position to, to, to obtain it.
Kaan: [00:27:37] In the market that we did. It took a year. Yeah. I mean, just the data collection element. Because you mobilize your customer service agents, you mobilize your account managers. You you need to put some KPIs, targets around actually putting that data in. Um, sometimes through nice to have KPIs, sometimes through mandatory KPIs. So it’s a year to build a foundation around this. And then then we it took another year and a half to deliver numbers on it. So like yeah it’s a it’s a journey.
Egidijus: [00:28:10] Yeah. But then uh, when you are on the other end, you become unstoppable. Yeah.
Kaan: [00:28:16] It becomes really intelligent and it and it becomes almost self-fulfilling because your, your channels are now understanding the value it brings and the data or the data hygiene that they start to bring in improves over time. So your hit rate improves as a result.
Egidijus: [00:28:33] Yeah. And when you present such a case let’s say, from one operation to another. Uh, how does the adoption of these sorts of things, uh, follow? Is it like, uh, kind of. Okay, you did, uh, a slam dunk in one, uh, operation? Did everybody said, oh, my God, I want to repeat that. Or it’s like, ah, they could do this. It’s like it’s their world.
Kaan: [00:29:04] Uh, it’s more or less. This would never work in this operation. When you, uh. Or we can’t do this because of a, b, c d because we have those type of prioritizations. And, uh, no, I mean, I think global rules group roles also involve a bit of a lobbying and politics. It’s part of the job. So. Okay, you don’t want to do it. This year I tried to find someone else who would be interested in doing it. This year I start working with them. Or if I can’t, it’s exactly like a B2B sales pitch. Like, okay, you don’t want to give me your I don’t know. Huge data center project. How about I sell you a mobile line and we start the relationship? So you do something small, you demonstrate your worth, then you try to move on to bigger projects.
Egidijus: [00:29:52] So it’s like your, your CVM, uh, like your global CVM role was very similar to enterprise sales. Yeah. So now let’s move a little bit from the B2B, uh, part to your existing role and where you moved to BTC, uh, B2C world. Yes. So how is the B2C world different?
Kaan: [00:30:25] It’s dynamic. And I did B2C, uh, in the initial years. So, uh, I realized I missed it a bit as well. Um, because I think one of the main differences is on B2B? You need to get the small things right. You roll it over and you slowly scale. Whereas in B2C this scale of the customer is much more bigger. While the wallet share is much more small, the scale is also like you do something and you if you get something right, like it’s easy to go and scale up. That’s quite nice. I think one thing in the I haven’t been to all GCC countries yet, but, uh, I think one parallel that I see in this region is family is a quite important thing culturally.
Egidijus: [00:31:12] So okay.
Kaan: [00:31:15] Being in a family, the the decision making of a customer or the thinking in the region is much more almost like having an account for a customer type of thinking. So every business, not only telco, uh, banks, government agencies, you always have a household decision maker and the remainder of the household who would be part of the services or the products that you are trying to sell. So all of the businesses are set up in such a way. That is. Yeah, it’s consumer, but there is a decision maker and there are a set of users of the services that you provide. So I, I even think I mean, my boss would keep me straight on this. I even think this dynamic is partly why I got the role. Uh, because you operate a matrix similar to B2B in a sense.
Egidijus: [00:32:09] Yeah, that sounds so, so, so interesting and so, so fun because a lot of, uh, telecoms are moving away from the, you know, serving a single line to serving an account or a household. Ideally, uh, but they have a lot of challenges, you know, to go from theory to practice because everything is set up under, you know, Msisdn or under the subscription. No household identification, the same family gets bombarded with the same offers, etc.. So, um, could you tell us what is the journey to go from thinking about a single line to thinking about the household and what are the basically key, uh, aspects of this thinking?
Kaan: [00:33:09] Very similar to what we discussed in the B2B section, building a view. That’s the starting point. You need to know what you’re operating with. Uh, I think then building the thinking, because telco is such a big and complex business, you have KPIs and you have visibility on different sets of things in any given time. But the building, the thinking around how do we prioritize what we are going to provide for that customer. Uh, is a bit of a journey. So like let’s think about the customer instead of let’s thinking thinking about, uh, I don’t know, a prepaid line or a postpaid line or a mobile Wi-Fi device. Like, let’s think about eggy. Eggy is a household. Six people. I’m making it up. Yeah, they have needs for a, b, c d e. They are currently in this stage of their life cycle with us. So logically, eggy needs this. So that thinking both internally for the team and also with your cross-functional stakeholders takes a bit of time.
Egidijus: [00:34:18] Okay. Can I think we are moving to the part of the podcast where we, uh, where we ask all our guests, uh, for critical questions, uh, about their career? Uh, as a, uh, a kind of, uh, throughout, uh, your career, which is like one, uh, kind of you’re really, uh, super telco guy. You know, it’s like, uh, all your career is in telco, you know? So through that beautiful career, I think you definitely had some moments where you would be super proud of what you were able to achieve. Could you, uh, could you share a moment or two?
Kaan: [00:34:59] We talked about it. Actually. The most thing that I’m proud about is the account landscaping cross-sell initiative that I previously alluded to, where we we got the thinking right. We got the infrastructure right. We started mapping the customer’s ICT wallet. We started mapping the windows that were supplying that iced wallet. We managed to map their customer satisfaction with the vendors that they had. We managed to, at the back end, run commercial campaigns at it, and we managed to also materially improve the business contribution that the CVM team was making on B2B from 5 to 10% to 3,334%. So that’s something that I that I’m quite proud of because it kind of showed everyone that it’s doable, actually. Um, yeah, definitely that one.
Egidijus: [00:35:54] Yeah. And this is like a this sounds like a huge deal, you know, from 5% to 20 to 30, uh, something. Yeah, it’s it’s a lot.
Kaan: [00:36:07] Like I said, it took three years to get there, but yeah, there was no question around CVM bringing value to the organization at the time.
Egidijus: [00:36:17] You closed this topic. It’s like, uh, sounds really good. During the same years, I bet that you had some, uh, projects that you could learn from. Yeah. And kind of and, uh, not everything goes right. Could you share your horror story with us?
Kaan: [00:36:37] Or a story that I can think about is one of the price ups that we did. So in, in, uh, in Turkey, when I was setting up the corporate segment and CVM team, there was it became the market became inflationary. And as a result, your. You needed to adjust the prices to reflect the inflation. And in especially in higher corporates like key accounts, global accounts you have bespoke pricing. So and in some cases that bespoke pricing detail is lying around somewhere in a spreadsheet. It’s not recorded in the system. So we got a couple of price ups wrong. And uh then we had to say we’re sorry. We had to do some manual, uh, adjustments, reconciliations. But as you might imagine, like when you get tangled in and when you get it wrong with a big account, then you’re tangled in and solving that problem. The escalations that you get, the heat that you feel is quite intense. So I think those price ups would be one of the horror stories like, you know, like it was tough to get. We got 95% right. But the 5% we got wrong, I mean, we felt a lot of heat at the bank.
Egidijus: [00:38:07] Yeah, yeah, I can imagine. It’s like even, you know, even one bad invoice can cause a lot of trouble. But yeah.
Kaan: [00:38:16] And we upset some serious customers at the time. So you might imagine. Yeah. There were there were some fiery discussions.
Egidijus: [00:38:23] We talked in the beginning, uh, that, uh, uh, your studies were more technical, Uh, and now you move to marketing. And, uh, I don’t know, a lot of studies in the world that would teach customer value manager management. Uh, but there are people in the world who would like to become customer value managers. How would you recommend to learn for them?
Kaan: [00:38:51] I think the best way to learn about this is actually doing it. If if the opportunity presents itself, I think go ahead and join one of the customer value management teams. Ideally, try to work with someone who there are amazing, brilliant people in this field of, uh, field of area that we work with. So, uh, it’s best to learn on the job, I would say, because there isn’t. I agree with you. I mean, there isn’t a major that you can do, and you would be it’s more of a it’s more of a on the job thing. But if you want to I think read about it, learn about it. I think uh still, the major consultancies publish a lot of good stuff around the art of possible case studies around people who got it right, not only in telco, in banks, uh, in quick commerce and e-commerce, I think. Have a look at the top consultancy firm, Case Studies, where you would get the inspiration of what it looks like and what would be possible as a result.
Egidijus: [00:39:56] Yeah, it’s it’s like it’s tough. You need to cherry pick your sources. Uh, actually. And uh, uh, the last and most difficult question, uh, we are on a mission to make customer value managers famous. And the question is how to make those customer value managers famous.
Kaan: [00:40:19] Well, I think forums and podcasts like this, I think that’s a huge step up on its own. But I don’t know if you would agree. One barrier that I find myself having difficulty in explaining what I do to people who have no clue about what customer value management is, including my parents. I mean, I think that naming convention is very ambiguous, and our cousins in quick commerce or e-commerce are calling this growth marketing, which is slightly more easy to comprehend. So apart from the wonderful work that you’re doing, I mean, we need to build the forums. We need to spread the word out. Yes, but I sometimes think it would help all of us if we would agree on a new naming convention that is much more understandable to outsiders.
Egidijus: [00:41:09] Mhm. Okay.
Kaan: [00:41:11] So that’s my $0.02 on it. I don’t know if it makes sense.
Egidijus: [00:41:14] Yeah I think it makes sense because uh, the challenging part is that um, the current convention is ambiguous. And uh, the other part is that, uh, uh, there is no single convention. It’s like sometimes you are called segment manager, sometimes you’re called retention manager, sometimes you’re called, you know, customer relationship manager. And uh, it’s like, uh, the, the, the naming is all over the place, actually. Okay. Uh, thank you. Can, uh, it was great talking to you. Uh, really interesting insights. I learned a lot about, uh, both, uh, B2B, CVM and transitioning to the B2C world, especially in the household. So thank you a lot.
Kaan: [00:42:07] No, thank you so much for having me. And thank you for the kind words. I really appreciate that chat as well. And who knows, maybe in the future we’ll have another chat.
Exacaster: [00:42:14] Cvm Stories is produced by Exacaster. We help companies take their customer value management to the next level. To stay updated on our latest episodes, subscribe to the podcast or sign up for an email newsletter at Exacaster CVM Stories.
