Unlocking Customer Lifetime Value with Non-Financial Metrics -- Jack Sweeney, Managing Director of Middle Market Media

The CFO Corner

GUEST BIO
Jack Sweeney is host and creator of the CFO Thought Leader Podcast, a popular Apple podcast and author of THE CFO YEARBOOK, 2022. A career business journalist, Jack is today a senior contributing writer to Forbes.com and was the recipient of the Excellence in Financial Journalism Award 2018 by the NYSSCPAs. He is the former editor in chief of Business Finance Magazine (Penton Media) and the founding editor (and former editor in chief) of Consulting Magazine (ALM Media). He served as editor of Integration Management and Washington Technology (The Washington Post Cos.) Prior to the Post Cos., he worked as a reporter for CMP Media (Informa) in London. Jack is today Managing Director of Middle Market Media, LLC., a creator of audio content serving middle market business audiences.
EPISODE SUMMARY
In this episode, Nick interviews Jack Sweeney, who is the host of the CFO Thought Leader Podcast, author of the CFO Yearbook 2022, and a senior contributing writer to Forbes.com.
According to Jack, The CFO role has changed in the last 5-10 years, with finance leadership broadening, the number of finance stakeholders multiplying, and new CFOs rejecting traditional professional narratives. The early 20th-century CFOs were not leaders in the C-suite, and most managers did not want to interact with them. However, with the rise of management and finance leadership, today's CFOs have an expanded role in organizations.
Jack discusses how storytelling can help finance leaders improve their communications skills. The human brain is wired to remember stories, so interviews with CFOs that contain origin stories or anecdotes are likely to be engaging.
The conversation then moves onto technology, with a focus on the SaaS model and how it's enabled finance leaders to better understand the customer experience.
SaaS CFOs are innovators in the current business landscape, and the adoption of cloud computing has led to more computing power at our fingertips, which has enabled new solutions like AI, machine learning, and natural language technology. The conversation then mentions ChatGPT, a non-financial metric tool that can help finance leaders better understand customer lifetime value.