Consultant Interview with Carlos Guzman from Mexico

Tell me a little about yourself, and Business in Mexico?

I’ve been part of the WSI team for 15 years. I’m based in Mexico City, Mexico where I also live. Mexico is a country filled with creativity and that is a natural fuel for my business. Besides working on my business, I enjoy running, trekking, friends and wine.

Why did you want to become an Internet consultant and join WSI?

When I decided to become an independent consultant, I started as a Management Consultant, specialising in change management processes that related with the Internet and the role that online strategies have in medium businesses. Very soon, I found myself recommending my clients to include Internet Marketing as part of their strategy… I could not deliver upon my recommendations because I did not have the necessary personal and skills to execute my recommendations, so I was generating business to someone else. I then decided to seek vertical integration by developing digital skills into my company and that is how I contacted WSI and ended up becoming an IC.

What’s the biggest value that you get from WSI? 

I get three important values:

• Training on best practices and digital products an platforms
• Access to a marketplace where I can get world class solutions only accessible to bigger agencies.
• A global community of experts that can help me with very specific needs, with support and with advice that saves time for me and increases the value to my customers.

What job/business were you in before you started your WSI business?

Before becoming an IC, I was in the corporate world for 20 years, specifically in the IT sector as a Sales Director, Marketing Director, Channel Director and CEO for several companies including Apple México and Toshiba. I also owned a training company that I sold. I was a board member in one of the first information portals in Mexico called “Todito” which, at the time, pretended to compete with Yahoo

Tell us about anyone who helped influence you into starting your own business? 

While being an executive at Apple and Toshiba and being dedicated to marketing and sales through the distribution channel, I had the chance of knowing many owners of successful dealers and value-added resellers and I always admired them to the point where I was inspired to start something on my own. But the technology IT industry was in a turmoil because direct selling models like Dell were jeopardizing the traditional distribution channels so I was clear that I would never invest on a business to resell IT equipment, I liked more the service and consulting part of the business. So, when I discovered the convergence of marketing and technology, I was immediately attracted and conceived a consulting model to help business owners understand online and design business plans to include online strategies as part of the business strategy… that model quickly evolved into not only consulting but executing and managing digital strategies and campaigns 

How long have you been with WSI?

15 years

Describe your typical work week?

I divide my week into four bins.

• First bin deals with my staff, I have a staff of almost 30 people, so I work in supporting them, meeting with them, coaching and training them.
• The second bin is for customers, I am involved in meeting with prospects, doing the initial assessment of their needs, designing the digital strategy and assembling sales proposals. I love selling.
• The third bin is clerical stuff, banks, taxes, invoicing, and alike.
• And the four bin is strategy and future, I have several spaces in my weekly schedule reserved for strategy, for the company and for myself. From implementing EOS (entrepreneurial operating system) to self-improvement strategies that I apply to myself and to my direct reports. 

What highlights have you had since being with WSI?

I have been one of the top three ICs in Latam for several years and I was #1 for several years as well. I am also part of the Top Guns group and am usually in the top 25 ICs globally which is not easy, given that the Mexican economy is way smaller than other geographies in the WSI landscape.

Aside from the pride that we get by being part of those groups, I really enjoy having the chance to talk to other Top IC's, share my experiences and get valuable advice from them. I have enjoyed being part of important groups as the ICAC (Internet Consultants Advisory Council), the Adaptive SEO Consortium, the Google Alliance, the Video Task Force and many more groups... Giving back to the WSI community is one of the things I enjoy most.

And I have enjoyed being an author of the Digital Minds books.

What are the biggest obstacles that you have faced in running your business and how have you overcome them?

Many of our services have become commodities that are evaluated by the customers solely on price, so what was once a value-added service has lost its appeal because many small agencies offer the same thing or even customers do it in-house. This creates a profitability challenge to the business.

Fortunately, digital marketing is always moving forward and there is always something new, more sophisticated where agencies like mine, can add value to customers. Understanding this, we must constantly redefine our strategy, evaluate new technologies and become knowledgeable of those new trends and make them ours. We dominate them and design new offerings that bring value to customer in services that fewer agencies offer and deliver.

What do you think are the best skills that you bring to your business?

• We understand the combination of all digital strategies and the opportunities of leveraging one another. Knowing how to recombine the existing digital practices allows us to bring better results
• Social listening, we do an in-depth analysis of the audience, we extract insights and then we design a campaign
• Strategy definition, we are good at defining the strategy even if it involves us not doing the execution.

What goals do you have for yourself that you want to accomplish in the next year?

• We want to keep growing our skills on video and be able to convince customer to pay for video production.
• We will continue with our internal improvement process through EOS and excel in our internal processes
• We need to grab two new enterprise logos.

Where do you see yourself in 5 years’ time?

I see my self as a CVO – Chief Visionary Officer for the agency, and not involved in the day-to-day operations

What advice would you give a new WSI Internet Consultant?

• Follow the system.
• Your first 3-5 years you should focus on growing your sales and in order to do that you need to leverage on the market place; starting year 6, you need to refocus more on profitability and start building some internal resources that improve your margin (do not do it prior to that because you will not have the volume to pay for fixed resources).
• When the objection is prices, change it to payment terms and be flexible on them but not flexible on price.
• Read, research, learn and research all the new trends in digital, such knowledge will be your differentiation with the customer.
• You will sell better if you have used and experience the services so try to test everything in-house before going out to sell it.
• Participate in the community, share experiences, share mistakes, ask questions.
• Attend convention and regional meetings.

What would be your personal motto?

Know more than the competition, explain it in clear terms and execute it with excellence.

If we went to happy hour, what would you order?
Red wine… but I might start with a Tequila first. 

If you could be anywhere other than here talking to me - right this minute, where would you be?

Taking a long walk on the beach