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Leadership
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Manager's Prayer (with my sincerest apologies to the Serenity Prayer)
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot delegate,
Courage to delegate the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.
I was listening to the Manager Tools podcast today and they called 1:1 meeting, feedback, and delegation "the holy trinity of management," so I thought it needed a liturgy.
In this latest post on Forbes, I talk about 5 ways to bridge the sales and marketing gap referencing experts from the American Association of Inside Sales Professionals, Microsoft, and other leading companies.
Special thanks to Rakhi Voria, Bob Perkins, Shelli Keagle, and Trip Jobe for lending their expertise to this piece.
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Pointing fingers is a familiar and repetitive motion between the sales and marketing groups of many companies. “It is very common to have marketing people complain that sales isn’t following up on leads and salespeople complain about the lead quality and quantity,” explains Bob Perkins, the founder and chairman of the American Association of Inside Sales Professionals (AA-ISP). According to the organization’s 2017 report “Top Challenges of the Inside Sales Industry,” as a category "Leads" was the number one challenge for both leaders and sales reps alike. It was listed as a larger concern than quota expectations by a factor of 2.5 to 1. “This challenge moved up from previous years and indicates lots of work and change needs to happen to solve this issue,” Perkins observed. “When sales reps are not meeting their quotas consistently, the pressure is high and there are even more visibility and attention on lead quality and quantity.” The same is true across the organization as expectations continue to rise on corporate performance and the importance of sales and marketing is emphasized.
Does this sound familiar? If so, here are five best practices and approaches to bridging the gap between sales and marketing that have worked successfully.
1. Take a Walk
“On the top of my list of best practices is to have marketing listen to live sales calls,” Perkins proposes. “In and of itself, this can cure some of the ills of misalignment and the complaints that sales and marketing have about each other.” How this happens will be different for each company. “You don’t want marketing listening into more calls than the inside sales manager,” Perkins counsels. “But they should listen regularly.” It could be a standing “call week” event set each quarter or it could be tied to a specific marketing campaign that needs monitoring and optimization. In any case, best practice is to sit together and use that time not only as an opportunity not only to hear the prospect call, but to debrief on what went well and what didn’t. “By having a marketing person walk into a sales group, you send a message. That you are open to feedback and want to learn how to make sales successful,” Perkins observed. That short walk across the building can go a long way. If a walk isn’t possible, use video conferencing. Perkins said that among his members, sharing in calls provided a powerful way to get early feedback on campaign effectiveness, rather than waiting for the lagging indicator of pipeline growth.
2. Open Your Meetings
Invite sales to participate in regular marketing staff meetings. Trip Jobe, whose experience in sales and marketing leadership spans senior roles at Oldcastle, Neehah Paper, Kimberly-Clark, and International Paper, had this advice. “When you can have sales or sales leadership involved in a marketing meeting, they typically gain a perspective on the many levels of execution needed to tackle a program.” Better to do this regularly and ahead of the action to get insights that are usable by both teams. “By getting the opportunity to hear the 'sausage making' process, they gain a perspective on many of the details involved in certain marketing programs,” Jobe continued. “Sales can also shed light on what it views as priorities or not.”
And that openness goes both ways. Perkins suggests that in his experience consulting with leading sales organizations “the best companies invite a marketing representative to sit on the weekly inside sales team meetings to share updates on campaigns and feedback from the field. Both learn about the campaigns from the first-hand experience."
However, how you conduct those meetings matter. “My experience is when you can create this two-way dialogue you will more quickly gain alignment,” Jobe advises. “When either sales or marketing is preaching one way, the other side will tend to start tuning out.” Keep it a conversation with opportunities for feedback and you can watch partnership building.
3. Build a Council
Sometimes, physical proximity, the scale, or the leanness of the team prevent regular cross-functional communications. In those cases, you can build representative councils to provide input. Jobe used this approach in several previous companies to create sales councils of several sales reps (3-6 at the most) involving them in 4-6 meetings a year (mostly over the phone, but maybe in person at a national sales meeting or industry convention) and matching them with key marketing leaders. He has used the council to get feedback on product development, but it can extend to other topics like lead generation campaigns, sales effectiveness, or new marketing initiatives. “This does a few things," Jobe observes. "First, it gets sales more involved in the business and their peers know they have an advocate working with marketing. Second, it gives those marketers a few sales reps they really get to know and can use them to set up a market visit.”
4. Visit a Customer
Shelli Keagle, managing director at Canvas Research, a boutique marketing research and strategy firm, says that “the customer is the great equalizer.” Without a deep understanding and empathy with the customer or consumer (or even the channel), both sales and marketing can lose. Jobe added that he is “a big believer in gaining an understanding of your environment, your customers' problems, what do they face every day. Within your company, the more that sales and marketing can understand each other and communicate effectively, the better the combined output will be.” So, send marketers out with field sales reps to visit customers, work trade show events together, and create opportunities for the team to connect with customers together both formally and informally. Facilitate listening sessions at customer gatherings. If face-to-face meetings are impractical or incomplete, conduct and share customer research and verbatims. Videotape customers using the product or talking of their experience with products or with the sales process. Encourage marketing people to build relationships with key accounts. All of these can be important sources of common truth for groups trying to work more effectively together.
5. Scale Your Approach
Rakhi Voria is a senior business manager at Microsoft who has helped to build out a world-class inside sales organization with eight different sales center locations around the world for this leading technology company. “We now have around 1,800 sellers in our organization,” Voria explains. “One thousand of those individuals were hired in the past year alone. Seventy percent of our team was hired externally from over 70 different companies.” This represents a huge scale and velocity for the organization and a great opportunity for shared listening, but at this magnitude, it is prohibitive to rely on informal structures around customer visits or call observation. While sales and marketing leaders in other organizations “have gotten creative about bridging the gap between marketing and sales by having the teams sit under the same umbrella organization or by physically putting marketing managers and salespeople side by side, however at Microsoft, marketing and sales report up through different organizations and marketing managers often aren’t based in inside sales center locations.”
They solved the problem in a different way on a scale that matched the enterprise. “As part of our organizational design planning, we invested in creating resources called Sales Program Leaders who are based in our sales centers and aligned by the solution areas that we sell,” Voria described. These roles are hybrid roles with elements of both marketing and sales. “These individuals meet with sellers daily to gather insights and are able to use these insights to drive improvements across our products and offerings, to remove blockers, and to take corrective actions to ensure achieving business goals.” They also provide feedback on demand response campaigns, corporate account or channel programs, and real-time from conversations with customers and partners.
And the results are reflecting the intention. Here is how Voria describes one success story.
We were recently engaged in a deal with a healthcare customer in Latin America who was struggling with one of our cloud product offerings. This feedback was shared with our marketing and operations team, and within a few months, we were able to offer a new SKU in the market that addressed the concerns directly and packaged the offering in a way that was well-suited for customers in similar situations. It is this kind of feedback loop that makes us better, not only aligning sales and marketing, but also aligning the company to our customers."
These five approaches are some of the best practices used by sales and marketing teams seeing better alignment and better-shared results. These steps are, in themselves, quite simple. Easy, in fact. Maybe not as easy as finger pointing, but a lot more effective. When done with purpose, they can build and maintain the bridge between sales and marketing and perhaps even create onramps for new ideas and approaches.
Disclaimers:
Rakhi Voria is a contributor to Forbes in her advisory capacity on the Business Development Council. Also, I collaborated with Canvas Research on some original investigation into the use of IoT and high-end entertainment products in specialty consumer segments which I presented in the “Integrated Life” seminar at the InfoComm conference produced by Avixa in June 2018.
By now, you all have seen fearless girl statue by Kristen Visbal that State Street Global Advisors placed facing down the bull on Wall Street to bring visibility to the lack of diversity on corporate boards of directors. The symbolism of a girl facing down the charging bull and sticking up for herself is resonating and it has already become a popular tourist attraction in New York City as girls line-up to strike a super hero pose alongside their bronze muse.
Although the statue appears to be defiantly advocating for herself, I can tell you from experience the real key to gaining diversity on boards is to have white, middle aged men take a stand and fight for diversity. Capable women, people of color, and other minority groups require advocacy from inside “the room where it happens” (to quote my favorite political hip hop musical, Hamilton). Seats at the table are advocated from peers within that room and within the leadership ranks that exist.
This year, I joined the Leadership Search Committee for InfoComm International, the trade association for the commercial AV industry. In this role, I am working with a team who is tasked with identifying talent to fill critical committee leads, board positions, and officer roles for the organization. The committee’s conversation has focused on making sure that the nominees is capable, high integrity, engaged, and willing to serve and that we are building the leadership pipeline to preserve and growth the organization into the future.
As we work on the appointment recommendations and election slates for the coming year, we are really challenging ourselves to be strategic and find geographic, racial, gender, and company type diversity to the leadership pipeline. In a male-dominated technology industry, diversity doesn’t happen without conscious and disciplined effort. I am inspired by my committee peers, both men and women, who are doing the difficult work of developing industry talent and encouraging people to serve and lead. It requires determination and persistence. It requires resourcefulness to find the qualified candidates that also represent diverse perspectives. It, like other good things, requires struggle to achieve and is best accomplished together.
The InfoComm organization is an example of one who is very purposeful about building their leadership pipeline and thinking long-term about what is best for the organization. Other organizations and companies who take this approach reward their stakeholders with great returns. I applaud the work that is being done both on non-profit and commercial boards across the country and the world, the world many of you are spearheading, to add diverse perspectives to their governance: those who are daring to grow talent and advocate for opportunities for that talent to serve. Fearless, indeed.
Originally published in LinkedIn's The Pulse
It was great to collaborate with Elisa Torres to bring some new perspectives to the readers of LeadGrowDevelop for the article below:
In every organization, there are those that are identified as key contributors to the success of the business whether they have exceptional technical skills, great relationships throughout the company and with customers, or a track record of delivering results. We often call these “high performers.” Research shows that high performers can deliver 400% more productivity than average performers. Said another way, every dollar you spend nurturing a high performer to even greater levels of achievement, could return 400% over investments you might make in others. It is worth the effort.
"It's easier to accept others, than to change them. It's wiser to understand them, than to get angry. And most of the time, it's more fun to love 'em, than to leave 'em." -Susan Clark, founder of HeartSpark
The Technology Association of Oregon (TAO) is hosting an auction to benefit STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education programs and it could be your chance to sit down with Jennifer over a glass of wine.
The educational programs play a key role in the sustained growth and stability of the economy and are a critical component to the future success of the Oregon and Southwest Washington technology industry. STEM education creates critical thinkers, increases science literacy, and enables the next generation of innovators. This year TAO announced their first annual Tech Exec Online Auction to benefit the work of STEM education programs Innovate Oregon, iUrbanTeen, Oregon Robotics, and Portland YouthBuilders.
Jennifer Davis is excited to participate in this year's Tech Exec Auction. Beginning today, September 19, through September 22, individuals and companies may place bids to spend time with a local Tech Exec. Jennifer, along with colleague Sam Phenix, Vice President of Research and Development at Planar, a Leyard company, will be offering "Pixels & Pinots" – a tour of the Planar Headquarters office in Beaverton, Oregon and a jaunt around wine country.
Learn more at the TAO Auction Portal.
In my career, I have been on all sides of mergers and acquisitions (M&As), having led integration efforts for businesses and more recently with my business, Planar, having been acquired by Leyard.
I liken the success of M&As to the work of two experienced dancers coming together for the first time.
Each partner brings his or her own strengths and style of dance, and each partnership creates something new and different.
In the same way, M&As require the participants to learn a new dance, one that takes effort and communication to get it right.
Here are five lessons that the world of dance holds for successful M&As:
It’s important to know what dance is expected. The foxtrot, the tango, and hip-hop are all different and require different moves and skills, so it’s critical to understand what to prepare before the music begins.
In the same way, a successful acquisition requires integration planning to ensure that everyone is prepared for what lies ahead.
Knowing the dance is one thing. Knowing how to adjust to a new partner is another. Without a plan of attack and clear communication, confusion and ambiguity can strip the combined organization of its productivity.
As with any dance, it’s important to determine who is leading and who is following. In M&A transactions, this is often clear, as one company acquires another or new organizational charts are established.
When Leyard acquired Planar, steps were taken to identify the roles and responsibilities of individuals, taking adequate time to determine who would be leading.
Nothing is perfect, of course, but clear roles and responsibilities, especially in the leadership ranks, help keep people focused on the dance, not on the backstage drama.
Despite the best efforts at communication, even the most experienced dancers can step on each other’s toes. Looking back over the integrations I have been involved with, I can think of dozens of missteps; times when I rushed something that required more time and coordination. Times when customers or employees were unnecessarily surprised by change.
While missteps like these are normal, it’s important to learn from them and turn them into opportunities that build trust. By being humble and open, the dance itself can teach all parties what it means to be a world-class partner.
Dancers often hurl their bodies into the air expecting to be caught, but before they do, they need to trust the strength and technical skills of their partner.
The same is true of M&A integrations, and what can build trust and teamwork faster than anything is obtaining a common view of the problem.
Business leaders talk about facing the truth, measuring performance, and being data-driven. All of these help people with different perspectives to see the same set of facts and share the same sense of urgency, ultimately creating a foundation for cross-functional teamwork.
Experienced dancers may make it look easy, but even they will dance more smoothly and confidently the more practice they have with a particular partner.
So what happens when you go right from rehearsal to the stage, as is the case with most M&A integrations? This is where experience and attitude play a huge role.
Leyard acquired Planar, in part, due to the strong and established management team, and the team’s previous experience acquiring and integrating companies has already proven useful in navigating the current transition. Today, we are six months into the integration, and although it is still early, we are making real progress towards the success of the combined company.
This article was first published on the American Business Journal's BizJournals.com website.
When a company reorganizes, hires a new leader, or when an individual’s job responsibilities morph into a new role – a common phrase is often heard when the changes are introduced, and that is “change is hard.”
But change is also necessary – for businesses to address new competition or expand into new markets, and for individuals to grow in their career.
While it can be hard, change by itself has never killed anyone. As a species, we can deal with change and are quite adaptable. Employees might worry about changes to the organization or their work assignments, but at the end of the day, they will survive.
The contrary – not changing – has led to untold fatalities of organizations. Not expanding to new market conditions, not adapting to new laws and regulations or addressing new competitive threats have all buried businesses. Without some capacity for change, individuals can’t grow, learn something new or do something better. Organizations, too, thrive because of change, not despite it.
The real danger in change, I believe is it’s traveling partner: ambiguity. Without clear direction, ambiguity kills. When the new is introduced into the corporate strategy or into the task list without explanations of why the changes are needed or the new desired outcome, the death of productivity and teamwork quickly follows. Unclear of what is expected of them, employees lose motivation and confidence. Without the ability to help each other, co-workers lose their sense of team. Conflicts arise based on misunderstandings of the priorities and urgency. Employees can revert to old, outdated ways of working or dive headlong into unnecessary disruption, filling in the gaps of the strategy with their own fears and hopes. The organization’s ability to change is sabotaged by the ambiguity that accompanies it.
So, what is the antidote to ambiguity? How can we deal with the fact that there will be unknowns in our business world? How can we conquer these unknowns without losing our productivity and teamwork?
In his book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, author Patrick Lencioni outlines the idea of “clarity even in uncertainty.” He proposes that the role of the leader is to create clarity (in job roles, goals, priorities, plans, etc.) for their teams, even if many things are uncertain. Sure, those roles, goals, or priorities might change over time (and per my earlier point, we certainly hope they do to keep up with our ever-changing world), but in the meantime, people know what they should do and that what they do matters.
I have learned these five steps to help our team embrace change and avoid the pitfalls of ambiguity.
While it is not always possible to disclose the details of why a teammate is no longer on a project or a new rule must be implemented, providing the team with background information, even at a high level, about why the changes are necessary and how they will help improve the situation moving forward helps employees feel informed and part of the solution.
Changes are usually made to improve the company, team or individual. Clearly outlining the anticipated improvements will motivate and empower employees, giving them the confidence that the changes will ultimately be for the better of the company, team or individual. Paint a clear picture of the new destination.
Eliminating as much vagueness as possible will help employees follow the new direction. Pairing changes with clear direction encourages employees to embrace the changes. Managers might find that in times of change, they need to be a bit more prescriptive than they might have otherwise been.
Questions and concerns will undoubtedly arise. Being available to answer questions and address concerns will help resolve ambiguity and create transparency between leadership and the team, giving employees the confidence to embrace the new direction. Stay involved to provide updates, as goals are met and plans fluctuate, to adapt to the ever-changing situation.
Show the team you are adapting to the changes yourself by being flexible and nimble. Celebrate when changes have improved results and where teamwork is thriving. Have confidence that the changes will lead to new opportunities and be passionate about helping the team avoid ambiguity.
And throughout, when you are facing times of uncertainty, focus on the things that you know or can control before ambiguity has a chance to kill.
This article was first published on A Thin Difference.
“Words! Words! Words! I’m so sick of words!
I get words all day through;
First from him, now from you!
Is that all you blighters can do?”
- Lyrics from “Show me” from My Fair Lady
As a professional woman, you’ve probably dreamed of making an impact in the community, beyond your role as an industry leader or executive. “If I only I the time,” you might have told yourself, “I’d tackle world poverty. Or start a nonprofit foundation. Or work on a cure for cancer.”
Indeed, women are the nation’s most prevalent volunteers, with more than 28 percent giving their time, compared to 22 percent of men. Part of the reason may be that women intuitively understand that their responsibilities extend beyond payroll and profits. “Women are hard-wired to be engaged in their communities,” says Dr. Val Hannemann, a psychologist in Flagstaff, Ariz. “Volunteering connects women. They share, they compare, and they adopt new strategies to make a difference in the world.”And let’s not forget, most volunteers are recruited by volunteers and so women have a tendency to invite their female networks to engage in their projects.
Yet the reality is that many women who volunteer their time work part-time or not at all. In fact, women who are primarily care-givers or homemakers can become “professional volunteers.”On the other hand, time can be a major issue for professional women, who may have less flexibility in their schedules or priorities. If you’re like a lot of working women, you’re probably already juggling family, children, and your health —in addition to a demanding job. Yet if you haven’t carved out the time to volunteer, it may be time to reconsider. Yes, making the world a better place is important for its own sake. But it’s also a critical part of your professional development strategy. Here are six reasons why you should make the time:
You’ll build your experience base
Volunteer work can play an important role in helping you get the experience you want in your career. These opportunities provide great opportunities to learn new skills, interact with mentors, and build your portfolio. And, of course, you can list volunteer opportunities on your resume and LinkedIn profile, alongside your paid work.
You’ll expand your network
The old adage, “It’s not what you know, but who you know” is true. Furthermore, it is really about who knows you. Volunteer opportunities allow you to build relationships outside your normal circle of friends and colleagues, helping you to broaden your network of folks who have had positive interactions with you and are inclined to think of you when opportunities arise.
You’ll broaden your perspective
By working with a different set of people and challenges, you’ll inevitably widen your perspective. Volunteering can pull you out of your comfort zone, forcing you to tackle new problems from different angles. It can also give you profound new perspectives that can shape both your approach to life and the way you show up on the job.
You’ll hone your leadership skills
As a volunteer, you can do things that an employee can’t. You can work outside the organization chart. You can seek out new opportunities for growth and involvement. And you can make connections between organizations. With the right volunteer opportunity, you’ll gain experience setting a vision, developing strategies, raising funds, motivating people, and reconciling conflicting perspectives—all essential leadership skills. And you’ll have the opportunity to practice those skills in a safe environment—and then apply them back at work to make yourself more visible and indispensable.
You’ll position yourself for promotion
A volunteer opportunity outside of work is a great way to demonstrate your readiness for the C-suite. By sitting on the board of a local nonprofit, managing a community-based initiative, or organizing a volunteer program for your own corporation, you’ll be required to tackle many of the same issues faced by top executives within your company. Moreover, taking on a leadership volunteer role “send(s) the signal that you aspire to leadership potential,” says leadership coach Muriel Maignan Wilkins. Indeed, taking on the right volunteer opportunity can earn you recognition as a leader—helping you to get the promotion you desire.
You’ll do good for others—and for yourself
Last, but not least, volunteering is vital to the health of our communities. You already bring so many skills to the table, and using them for the greater good makes the world a better place. At the same time, serving others gets you out of your own head and puts your own worries and problems in perspective. Research has shown that volunteering helps people feel more socially connected, wards off depression, and may even contribute to better physical health like lower blood pressure and improved memory. So, do yourself some good by doing good!
This article was published on The Glass Hammer.
Left to Right: Paul Apen, Chief Strategy Officer at E Ink Corporation, Greg McNeil, Vice President at Flex, Jennifer Davis, Chief Marketing Officer at Planar/Leyard International, Steve Squires, Chief Executive Officer at Quantum Materials Corporations, Al Green, Chief Executive Officer at Kent Displays, and Sri Peruvemba, Head of Marketing at SID
At SID's Display Week 2016 in San Francisco last week, Jennifer Davis took part on the panel of an Exclusive CMO Forum where industry experts shed light on market trends, solutions for supply chain challenges, industry best practices- and much more.
We don't care about diversity because it's in vogue. We care about it because we like winning." - Mike Gamson, SVP Global Solutions, LinkedIn
I read recently that we should not ask kids, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Instead, we should ask, “What problems do you want to solve?” This line of questioning promotes thinking about the content of the work and the impact you can have on society.
In the same way that this is a good method to frame things for children, it can also work for executives. I recently reflected on the kind of problems that I strive to solve in my work. Identifying the problems is harder than it would seem.
I could easily identify the activities of my days and even my over-arching objectives, but framing them as problems was a good exercise. Especially because I, like you, consider myself and my company a solution provider, and those who provide solutions must deeply understand the problems they are solving.
These are the problems that I spend my days solving as a marketing executive and product strategist:
The challenges of prioritization and allocation of time, energy, and resources to the most important things required for us to grow our business profitably.
Cracking the code to bring our brand and product offerings to the forefront in the minds of potential buyers and to create identity for our products and harness demand in the market for our products that we can deliver to our sellers globally.
The problems related to recruiting, retaining, coaching, and celebrating our employees. Talent is at the heart of everything and creating a happy and inspired work environment is key to keeping talented employees a part of your team.
Solving the balance between my responsibilities in the office (and to our customers, partners, and employees) with my family and with the communities of which we are a part (i.e., the AV community, the business community in all the cities where we have offices, the marketing professional community, our neighborhood, and a group of students and mentors that is served by a local non-profit with which I serve).
What problems are you solving in your role at work? What problems are you solving at home? When you take the time to look at your roles from a different perspective, you might just get your next big idea or at least discover a way to improve your productivity and make your day-to-day more meaningful. We should all be problem solvers first and foremost.
This blog was featured in Women On Business blog.
Jennifer Davis was a mentor at Portland Business Journal's 2016 Mentoring Monday event.
When my company reorganized several years ago, we went from a business unit structure to a functional organization, and I was considered for a position that would run marketing as a member of the executive team.
As part of those discussions, I negotiated to have the role include both traditional marketing functions, such as advertising, PR, events, and sales tool development, but also product strategy in the form of product management and road map planning. Why? I had three reasons:
1. MarCom Is A Pink Ghetto
As a female executive, I was sensitive--sensitive to my observations and the reputation that marketing (and human resources, by the way) had of being places where women got stuck in their careers. Careers focused in these areas resulted in professionals who were often pigeon-holed and excluded from real participation in the business strategy.
I am not sure who coined the phrase, but I had heard it applies here: the pink ghetto. It's a place where women are seen as a support function for other more “important” roles, such as sales, finance, or R&D--roles typically held by men, at least in the technology industry. I didn’t want to get stuck and had worked throughout my career to gain broad experience that made me a better business person, not just a better marketer.
In my role, which combines both go-to-market and market requirements, I have broad impact on the company, and my team is able to impact the direction of the business overall.
2. Marketing Is The Center Of The Hub
Being responsible for products, I am at the center of creative ideas and cleverness. I get to work closely with R&D to determine what can be done and the relevant and high-value applications of technology. I get to work closely with the sales team to determine how to aim them and equip them to capture the market potential of new offerings. My team and I get to be in the center of the hub and are tasked with combining what can be done with what should be done to create new possibilities for the company.
3. Customer Empathy Runs Deep
True innovations are grounded in customer empathy. Understanding the customer problems is the foundation of “solutions,” which companies are so anxious to talk about but execute so poorly. And that customer understanding not only affects the products we bring to market, but how we market them.
This may involve creating sales tools that require a deep understanding of the product in order to simplify the customer experience and accelerate the buying process. Without responsibility for both the product road map and marketing communications, this connection would be more difficult to make and would cause “marketing” to be less strategic and more reactive, instead of leading the charge of innovation in the marketplace.
This article was posted on CMO.com.
"We all want to be treated like insiders." - Chris Brogan
Marketing ROI has never been sexier… or more possible.
With today’s data analytics, digital marketing spend, and marketing automation systems, the opportunities are ripe for changing the ways that we approach marketing and its management.
Direct marketing professionals are ahead of the trends here, having focused on response rates, revenue generation, and list management long before these things rose to their current level of popularity.
See Also
There are new positions showing up in marketing organizations to address this need, ranging from marketing operations managers to marketing data scientists. CEOs across industries are now learning a whole new set of acronyms (like SEO and SQL) as the CMO and CIO are working more closely together.
This change has very real implications for the marketing organization overall. People who were attracted to marketing and have performed exceptionally well in their previous roles might make a smooth transition to the new world of data accountability.
Here are three ways to help:
Demystify Data
Wanting to make data-driven decisions is all well and good, but if the data that would drive those decisions are not easily accessible, then the effort is for naught. Make sure that the metrics you want to see are available to your team.
This requires the insight to be in data form (that is, systems and report structures in place) and for the team who needs the data to have permissions to access it. I have heard of organizations where the marketing organization wanted to measure lead-to-opportunity conversions, but didn’t have access to the CRM system from which this data might be pulled.
This article was published in the Puget Sound Business Journal, Denver Business Journal, Los Angeles Business Journal, as well as other American City Business Journals.
“Success is making those who believed in you look brilliant.” – Dharmesh Shah
AMA Marketing Insights featured Jennifer's career highlights.
Last week, we celebrated “Back to the Future Day.” The day to which Marty McFly and Doc Brown set the time machine at the end of the movie Back to the Future: October 21st, 2015. The day came and went without mass market hover boards or funny futuristic clothing, but it brought to mind to me the strained relationship we have with the future and the change it implies. And how often, like Marty, we are swept into the future without a strategy for making change happen, and instead let it happen to us. In short, we back into the future, instead of diving in with purpose and resolve. This kind of drama is great for the movies, but is difficult for our organizations and teams.
Below are four ways that you make change work in your organizations to take maximum advantage of changing conditions, business circumstances, or technological advancements.
1. Give Up Nostalgia
The “good ol’ days” of how things used to be, weren’t always so good, so make sure your memories don’t take on mythic proportions. In the movie, Marty was told his Dad was a pedestrian hit by a car and that caused Marty’s Mom to notice him, when the truth was something slightly different than that (I won’t spoil it for you, in case you need to watch the show again). Unlike in the movie, you can’t go back to the way things used to be, and even if you did, the past may not be entirely as you remember or how it has been depicted by others. The past is warmly familiar, but let’s not forget that it had problems. Problems that prompted solutions we now rely on and take for granted. You have to be willing to agree that change is inevitable, and possibly good, to be able to move forward.
2. Listen to Yourself
As you face periods of uncertainty and change, don’t neglect or downplay your emotional reactions. Although irrational and impulsive, they will often identify some underlying risk or unrealized opportunity. Your gut is trying to tell you something. When that happens, get curious. In your curiosity, note what you are feeling and why. Bréne Brown in her book Rising Strong, talks about writing out a SFD (“shitty first draft” - her words, not mine) to describe how you feel and why. Reading that private description back, you can see more clearly the flawed logic and alarmism and focus on the facts you need to pay more attention to next.
3. Listen to Others
Everyone has a different tolerance to change. As vocal and unapologetic optimist, even I can tell you that there isn’t one approach that is best. Because risk mitigation begins with risk identification, the most positive and fluid in your organization might not be the best at helping you face the future prepared. Inspired, perhaps, but not fully prepared. So, get the most conservative members of your team to envision the future. Facing forward in this way, listen to their concerns. Listen not to change their mind, but to pick their brains. You’ll be better for it.
4. Take Heart: It’s the People that Matter
We often talk about technology changing or evolving. At the most basic level, however that isn’t true. One technology generation actually replaces or supplants another making the previous obsolete; this is especially true in the disruptive developments that shape industries and create tipping points. From covered wagons to Uber. From encyclopedias in the reference section of the library to the Internet. The same is true of disruptive business models, market conditions that set new standards of performance, or even changing customer sentiment. The generations of technology may play leap frog, but the people are the ones that make the mental jump. Only people change with the circumstances and evolve. And there we find our comfort and our challenge. Because people, like us, have been proven to be highly irrational, cruel, and fear-driven. And we have shown ourselves to be generous, adaptable, and capable of radical change. How we show up in the midst of change at work depends a lot on the leadership and how we are given opportunity to listen to ourselves and others, permission to loosen our grip on the past and our stories around it, and how we take care of each other in the process of change, knowing that our relationships are the things that endure.
The future might not look like the scenes from the movies, but as we move through different time periods, circumstances, and use different technologies, the characters are the same. Biff Tannen, George McFly, and all the other characters in Back to the Future showed how circumstances can bring out the best (and worst) in our personalities. Whether it was 1955, 1985, or 2015, the choices that we make are strikingly similar because we ourselves bring ourselves along for the ride. So, when the credits roll, make sure you are the character that chooses to face the future facing forward.
This article was published on LinkedIn Pulse.
