Latest / Beyond Fulfillment Podcast / The Funnel Is Dead - Why Shoppers Now Buy in 15 Seconds w/ Chelsey Alexander

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The Funnel Is Dead - Why Shoppers Now Buy in 15 Seconds w/ Chelsey Alexander · Beyond Fulfillment Podcast

• 0:00
  I think we're gonna see more change in the next three years than we've seen probably
• 0:03
  in the last 10 to 15.
• 0:05
  all the challenges that you're talking about are challenges that I could take
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  out your name, put another company name in,
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  and that CEO was probably having the exact same challenge.
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  And all I wanted to do in that moment was do everything that she was asking
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  me to do for as many companies as possible.
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  all the AI people on the floor now versus where they were before,
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  it's like night and day.
• 0:28
  All right, Dave Gulas back here at Shop Talk and I'm with Chelsey Alexander,
• 0:33
  the founder of Open Gate Consulting.
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  Hey Chelsey. Hey, how are you?
• 0:36
  Fantastic. How are you doing? Okay.
• 0:39
  so tell us what is OpenGate Consulting?
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  Open Gate Consulting is a strategic consulting firm,
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  a boutique consulting firm, and I founded the agency because I found that there were
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  pockets of gatekeeping knowledge that were forming.
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  Think about the ways that consumers shop,
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  it's gotten increasingly fragmented and increasingly more difficult
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  to engage with certain consumer audiences.
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  And given that the old ways of engaging with consumers are no longer relevant
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  or as relevant as they were.
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  Once were so a consumer doesn't see an ad and then clip a coupon in the newspaper,
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  add it to their shopping list,
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  and then go shop in a store. all of that can happen within 15 seconds
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  on somewhere like TikTok shops or another marketplace.
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  And so what I found is that the consumer is the one that loses in the end with
• 1:24
  a lot of the gatekeeping and pockets of knowledge that have formed.
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  And one of the unique things about my career is that I've set on different sides
• 1:29
  of the table. And so I founded open gate consulting to sort of dismantle
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  a lot of the gatekeeping and knowledge in
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  e-commerce and retail media spaces and make sure that the consumer isn't
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  the one that loses in the end.
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  you've had a long retail corporate career.
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  Can you just talk about some of your background that kinda led to
• 1:45
  the genesis of this company?
• 1:47
  Yeah, sure. I like to think of my career as like the tale of two cities
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  or the tale of two careers. So I spent twelve years with Procter and Gamble.
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  I had a number of experiences across a number of brands in personal care,
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  and health care. and about t one year or two years before I left,
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  I started feeling like the retail landscape was changing.
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  retailers were becoming media companies and Amazon was no longer
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  the fun growth customer. They were like a top five customer.
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  And so I felt like in order to be the leader
• 2:14
  That I wanted to be in the next 20 to 25 years.
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  I needed to have different experiences.
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  so I did what not a lot of people do,
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  but I jumped. I left P&G after about 12 years and I joined a tech startup,
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  they were the number one three-piece seller on Amazon at the time.
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  I joined to be the vice president over CPG.
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  that was a whirlwind experience,
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  great learning experience. But the whirlwind,
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  like I was telling you, was three months after I joined,
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  we announced our intent to go public via SPAC.
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  I wasn't there two years before we
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  filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy.
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  But luckily I rebounded nicely and became a commercial vice president
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  at Bayer Consumer Health. But one of the interesting things about that time
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  is I was there for two years, but about a year into the role I felt like another
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  inflection point was happening in the market where the market
• 2:53
  was going to completely change.
• 2:54
  I think we're gonna see more change in the next three years than we've seen probably
• 2:58
  in the last 10 to 15.
• 3:00
  All right. So yeah, you've done your time at corporate.
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  You went on the startup journey.
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  That was quite a roller coaster within two years from the excitement
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  of going public to chapter eleven.
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  You came back to bear a couple of years and then ~ yeah,
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  you weren't feeling the corporate so you decided to make the jump and start your
• 3:15
  own business. So what was that process like after kind of all your experiences?
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  Like what made you finally decide like,
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  no, this is the time I'm gonna bet on myself?
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  It was actually an interesting moment.
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  So I was connected with someone,
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  a CEO from a personal care company,
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  basically said they were looking for someone at a senior level to run digital.
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  Like a dream job for me. Like if you had asked me five,
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  six years ago, I would have been like,
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  that's the job that I want. Absolutely,
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  I would say yes before they interviewed me.
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  I had a conversation with this person and they're telling me about
• 3:46
  the challenges that they're having in digital,
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  and I just couldn't shake this
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  feeling of like all the challenges that you're talking about are challenges that
• 3:54
  I could take out your name, put another company name in,
• 3:56
  and that CEO was probably having the exact same challenge.
• 3:59
  And all I wanted to do in that moment was do everything that she was asking
• 4:02
  me to do for as many companies as possible.
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  So what I said in that moment is I was like
• 4:07
  Hey, you know, this definitely sounds like something I have the skill
• 4:10
  set to help with, but I don't think I'm the person that can commit to helping,
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  within your company in a full-time role for the next two or three years.
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  But I would love to figure out how to help.
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  And that is literally how my business started.
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  That turned into my first client and then it went from there.
• 4:25
  Wow.
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  Okay. So you had such awareness to realize that those problems were
• 4:30
  not unique to just that company.
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  So rather than just accept that full time role,
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  which it would have been perfect for you,
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  you said, why don't I take you on as a client and solve those same problems,
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  but then scale out and go to many other companies facing the same challenges
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  and help them in that way. Okay.
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  So you use that, that was your first client what's been the process
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  of kind of building this agency out as a first-time entrepreneur?
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  I think the first thing was I know this sounds super simple,
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  but what am I good at and then what do I like to do?
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  And listing that out because one of the challenges I found when you're first
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  starting to talk about the idea is it's my baby,
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  right? So like, you know, I could talk about it and it makes sense to me.
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  But making it make sense to other people and so really,
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  really cleanly articulating what are the top three things that we do.
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  I think the second thing for me is the willingness to pivot.
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  I think that's been a big one for me.
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  Like I just did my yearly planning this summer for the next year.
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  I had three primary services that people typically reach out to me for.
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  So we were talking, it's usually e-commerce or something retail media based.
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  And then there's also sales and commercial operations.
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  But there's been some new conversations that folks have wanted to have with me.
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  So like coaching as an example.
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  So high performance coaching was one.
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  then another one is retailers are actually interested because of my background in C.
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  CPG and branding, they're like,
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  well, we would love to have your help in understanding how do we go after more brand
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  and media dollars because they're trying to expand their retail media capabilities
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  and partner better with brands and from that perspective.
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  So I would say a willingness to pivot to what's relevant for the market.
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  And I think the third thing, and this is the biggest one for me because
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  I came from a pretty traditional background,
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  P&G, Bayer, consumer health, there's no playbook.
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  I'm Writing the playbook and there's no awareness driving team.
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  I'm the awareness driving team.
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  So that's been a big one because with consulting work,
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  there's ebbs and flows. And during those flow periods,
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  one of the things I've been trying to push myself on is how are you still going
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  to deliver your mission when there's flow periods?
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  the client work is great, but
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  When there's no client work, how are you still going to live out your mission?
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  So one big projects for me is putting myself out there more so
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  in terms of education. so I just did a webinar with IAB recently as an example.
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  So doing more things like that to still execute the mission even when there aren't
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  clients.
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  right. And so you mentioned the willingness to pivot and
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  all these different opportunities are coming your way how do you kind
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  of narrow down what's most important and not get too distracted if there's
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  too many different kind of verticals or types of work coming your way.
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  I try to match it up with the relevancy of my kind of like where to play,
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  how-to-win choices. So one of my favorite strategy books is Where to Play,
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  How to Win, for me, like who do I want to focus on?
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  And then for me, what are my how-to-win choices.
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  And I bump it up against that and that's how I prioritize.
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  So as an example, someone reached out and said,
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  Hey, I'd love to learn more about your capabilities.
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  and we talked about my mission,
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  which is dismantling gatekeeping,
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  like I want to solve tough problems.
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  And this person reached out and said,
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  I'm kind of looking more so for like future market forecasting.
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  So they wanted like, hey, talk to me about what the industry's gonna look like
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  in the next five to ten years,
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  something that I can showcase to the board,
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  that type of thing.
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  That's not a where to play focus for me,
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  that's not a how to win focus for me.
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  that's not a big part of my mission right now at least.
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  that's a deprioritization right there.
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  one of the things I did learn early in my career at P and G was that,
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  strategy is just as much about what you're not gonna do as much as it
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  is about what you will do.
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  Yeah, so important. it's a brand new business,
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  right? It's your baby, there's all these things to do and you focus
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  on what you're good at and then like you said,
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  it's so important to decide and what not to do.
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  How have you kind of handled the scaling process and delegating
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  all those other things that really need to be done that but you shouldn't be doing?
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  I'll be honest, that's a work in progress in terms of scale.
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  What I will say is I've been very,
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  very meticulous about scaling different parts of the business at the right time.
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  And the reason I say that is because I mentioned the tech experience that I had.
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  So one of the key learnings coming out of that was knowing when to scale
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  is so crucial and it's such a fine line,
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  and I think a lot of
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  times founders will overshoot it.
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  the instinct is to scale no matter what right away.
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  and so I will say that there are times frankly that I'm very intentional about what
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  I'm putting out there or what I'm focusing on in terms of content
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  and what I'm focusing on in terms of conversation to be very mindful of what
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  I have the capacity to do.
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  Okay. All right. And so we're here at Shop Talk fall twenty twenty six
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  and so much AI agents, so much shopping assistants,
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  so much how to get the brands in front of consumers So given your deep experience
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  in retail, like where do you see
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  this kind of new world we're in with the AI shopping agents and all this
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  new tech that's involved in the competitive landscape.
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  Where do you see retail going in the next couple of years?
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  Yeah, it's great question. I think that retail is definitely going
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  to shift significantly in terms of how we think about the consumer journey.
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  I believe that there's a tension right now the old and the new.
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  there's a tension between the old way of communicating to consumers
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  and articulating their journey,
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  which is that the funnel is collapsing or changing.
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  We used to think about the consumer journey as you drive awareness,
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  you drive
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  Interest, you drive desire, and then you drive action,
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  and then maybe loyalty at the end.
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  But the reality is that's not how consumers shop anymore.
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  And so I do think that there needs to be a shift in how we talk about it.
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  And I think the future is that a lot of brands are gonna have
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  to start thinking about how do you engage with consumers where they are.
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  It's all about sort of tracking and attracting people to your brand based
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  on where the audience is thinking about shopping.
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  So you're gonna have to have a strategy you have a strategy.
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  for in-store for Walmart and Target and others,
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  you're gonna have to have a strategy for every single platform where
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  an audience is and how you're going to engage with that consumer.
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  And then how are you going to move them,
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  whether it's through interest or desire,
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  how are you going to move them quickly to conversion or quickly to action?
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  And I think then you have to think about how building compounding relationships.
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  I think in the past we talked a lot about loyalty,
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  but the reality is consumers are increasingly less loyal as more options come
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  on to play as well as their wallets are shrinking or their disposable spending
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  is not what it was. And so for me it's more about building compounding relationships
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  versus focusing on loyalty. and so I think the teams are built on the old still.
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  teams now need to be built for the new.
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  I think you're gonna start seeing a bit of a shift change in terms of
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  How brands need to think about building relationships with their overall consumers
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  moving forward. I think the tension that brands will need to be aware of
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  is that is the consumer building a relationship with your brand or
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  is the consumer building a relationship with the platform?
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  I think TikTok shops is a great example of that.
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  Like, do they have a relationship with the influencer and TikTok shop,
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  or do they have a relationship with your brand?
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  And I think that's gonna be a tension that brands need to be mindful of.
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  I think in terms of AI,
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  And agentic shopping and things like that,
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  I think it is already changing the game.
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  I mean, think about all the AI people on the floor now versus where they were
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  before, it's like night and day.
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  I do think that there needs to be a conversation and difference
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  in conversation between the capability and what it's capable of and
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  how it's being leveraged and integrated within the organization.
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  I have conversations with people at all levels within organizations now
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  in my new work, and what I will say is the aspiration
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  aspiration at the high levels,
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  does not match the capacity, the know-how,
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  or the desire at the middle level.
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  and it's fascinating to watch.
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  but I would say that is honestly the the biggest again I keep talking about
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  tensions, but I think that's a big one.
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  ~
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  So if there's such a disconnect from the senior levels down to
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  the lower levels where stuff actually begins to get implemented,
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  how do you solve that disconnect?
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  one of the things that I've noticed in my work consistently is that there's
• 13:01
  a lot of conversations about pieces of what needs to be done to get a brand
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  to a consumer or whether it be from a brand or a retailer standpoint
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  or even a third-party agency standpoint.
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  There's a lot of conversation about measurement.
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  about product specs. how much innovation do we have.
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  there's not a lot of conversation on the strategic priorities
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  and the strategic vision
• 13:18
  for the business and then how are you gonna know whether or not it's
• 13:21
  You've been successful against those strategic priorities.
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  And so one of the things I think will drive a lot of change is clarity
• 13:27
  and strategic vision and priorities for each of the businesses.
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  But then the secondary piece that I feel like often gets missed is
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  if the strategy looks good on a page,
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  often what's missing is management systems and operational discipline
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  to make sure that you're actually going to execute against those strategic choices.
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  and the reason I'm talking about that,
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  I know it sounds like, well, yeah,
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  of course.
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  you would do that. But oftentimes I find that the conversation starts with
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  Well, what's AI gonna do for us?
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  Or well how are we gonna measure success?
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  it's all gonna depend on whether it's a strategic priority for you.
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  So as an example, not necessarily talking about AI and agentic shopping,
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  but do you have an efficiency premise or an efficiency desire on your business that
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  AI could serve, whether it be team capacity or whether it be actual like execution
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  of like media as an example. So I think those are two of the
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  big areas that I think could drive out a lot of the complication.
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  and then I also feel like, we used to call it straight talk within P&G where
• 14:23
  it was like, okay, let's talk about what's really going on.
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  And one of the interesting things is,
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  and I believe that the external economic factors are playing a big part in this,
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  but particularly at the middle management level,
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  there's a reluctance to have a real conversation about like,
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  hey, this thing isn't working as well as we think it is,
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  or it's actually adding a lot more work to my plate right now because
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  I to train this thing to do the work in the way that I want to.
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  so I think a culture of transparency.
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  bottom up,
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  Up down of how is it really being executed and used from a day to day basis?
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  And if people want to find out more about open gate consulting,
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  where can they find you?
• 14:57
  They can find me on LinkedIn. they can also find me on my website,
• 15:01
  so www.opengateconsultants.com.
• 15:04
  Consultants, yep, opengate consultants.com.
• 15:07
  and also this is new, but you can also find me on YouTube where you
• 15:11
  can find some educational content as well.
• 15:13
  Okay. And we'll link all that in the show notes for everyone.
• 15:15
  Excellent. All right, Chelsey,
• 15:16
  thanks so much. Yeah, thank you.