It was a pleasure to chat with Peter Mahoney and Kelsey Krapf from The Next CMO Podcast about college sports marketing. Check it out on all the streaming platforms like Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, etc.
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marketing leadership
Annelle Barnett of Marketing Mob speaks to new hiring strategies in today's competitive market for marketing talent. Photo credit: Jason Seagle for AgencySparks.
Building a customer-centric enterprise relies on employees building relationships, acting on insights and growing alongside the needs of customers. Underlying this is an assumption that marketing teams have the personnel they need and that they are up to the task. In today’s competitive job market, companies are changing their approach in order to stay competitive, not only in the eyes of their customers, but in the fight for talent.
Annelle Barnett runs a marketing recruiting firm, a job board, and produces and hosts the popular, Marketing Mob podcast and webinar series. I joined her for a talk in February 2018 and we had a chance to chat recently about the new trends she sees in staffing.
“In the past, it was often advised to 'hire slow, fire fast' with the idea that you would spend a good bit of time doing your due diligence to ensure you’re setting yourself up with the best chance for success when selecting an employee,” she recounted. Managers are taught that it is best to take the required time to hire the best candidate with the most relevant experience and the best cultural fit. However, things are changing. “Whereas it used to take days, weeks and sometimes even months to make a hire, that is no longer the case today. Especially with high demand positions, like digital marketing and agency account positions.” Time is not a luxury that most employers enjoy today.
“Due to the competitive landscape, candidates are hired in a matter of days and even hours,” she continued. “Things can also change at their current employers. I’ve had situations where a candidate was promoted while in the interview process and they took themselves off the market.” It is a highly dynamic space and “if you’re too slow to react to finding a great candidate, you will miss out and lose your amazing candidate to someone else, perhaps to your competitor.” Nimbleness is winning the game in talent acquisition.
Filing open roles also has practical implications on productivity. If an open position is filled in January, they have 11-12 months to contribute to the goals for the year. If that same position stays open until July, the employee is only going to be half as productive that first year. Hiring fast, Barnett continues, “allows the employer to move forward, expediting productive contribution.”
If you find yourself in a battle for great talent, what can you do to speed up your hiring processes?
First, audit and measure to provide a baseline. “If it takes more than 1 month to move a single candidate through the interview process, they should consider reexamining their hiring strategy,” Barnett advised.
Second, build your process for speed. “Calendar availability of hiring managers is the number one factor that slows down an interview process,” Barnett observed. “If a company or hiring manager is ready to hire, it should be one of their top priorities.” Blocking time for interviews, being ready to reschedule, or even being available after hours or before the workday (when passive candidates who are currently employed might have more flexibility) can all expedite the process. “Have offer letters ready in advance and get them out quickly,” she continued.
“Candidates get excited about positions. The longer the offer letter takes, the more anxious they get and that excitement starts to wear off. It’s like when you’re having lunch at a restaurant and the service has been fantastic through the entire meal but then the check takes 20 minutes. The guest often forgets everything that happened before the delayed check and they will reflect that in the tip. It’s just as important to finish strong in the hiring process. The candidates are paying attention.
And finally, “I’d say the most important thing to remember is flexibility and letting go of the way things used to be,” she concluded. “There may need to be more trusting of your gut and intuition than checking every box.” Employers would do well to remember that “great candidates get scooped up quickly by companies with more nimble processes.”
This approach to hiring has implications on the organization that extend beyond hiring decision speed.
The first obvious downside to a “hire fast” strategy might mean more turn-over. “By hiring more quickly, the chances of making the wrong hire are greater,” Barnett observes. Not every hire will be a good fit. They might not actually have the skills for the job or perhaps they bring with them toxicity that could spread to the rest of the team. “A disgruntled employee has the potential for disrupting the entire company or team culture,” Barnett adds.
The impact of a bad hire can be substantial, so a “fire fast” mentality has to be adopted. “Firing fast means that an employer would let go of an employee as soon as it’s recognized that the individual is not the right fit for the role,” she explains.
This might require the organization to be prepared to spend more in severance, outplacement services, or working with employees to place or coach them into new roles within the organization. In high-impact or customer facing the roles, the risks of “fire fast” can be dramatic as you don’t want customers to lose confidence in the brand. Barnett says that in some cases it is useful to have “a training period for a month or so before the employee becomes client facing to ensure the right hire was made” before key customer relationships are fully transitioned to new hires.
Care must be taken to not fire too fast, however. “By firing too quickly, you may miss out on a great employee because you didn’t take the time to coach them or move them to another position in the company that is a better fit for the individual,” Barnett said. If the employee is a good cultural fit and has the right attitude, often a better role can be found to put their strengths to use. “There may also be some repercussions online with employer reputation” with this strategy, Barnett warns. “If employees are fired often, the employer brand may take a hit from bad reviews on sites like Glassdoor.” Managers should always work with their human resources and legal teams to ensure compliance with applicable laws and practices, which vary dramatically by state or country.
In order to attract talent and maximize productivity, many companies are changing their hiring practices to a “hire fast, fire fast” strategy. This approach might not always be a fit for every company, but in highly competitive roles and dynamic markets, employers may find they no longer have a choice.
This article was originally published on Forbes.com.
As a marketer, we are asked to make smart investments without all the information. The ever-increasing pace of industry, competitive pressures and rising investor and customer expectations are having their effect. To remain at the top of our game, we must demonstrate a bias for action and the ability to quickly pivot and learn. We are often asked to be change agents, which implies some conflict with internal and external stakeholders, or even our own bosses. We want to make smart decisions. We want to make a difference. We want to be confident and gain the confidence of others. How do we accomplish that? I believe the answer is in being fearless.
The word “fearless,” is often used to synonymously with fear-free. “He ran fearlessly into the burning building to save the child,” the newspaper will report of the local hero. “She has a fearless brush stroke,” they will tell of an artist’s boldness. “He fearlessly changed the business model from traditional transactions to a pay-as-you-go service business,” magazines will report. “Her fearless investments in the new market segment put her ahead of her competition,” followers will admire. "We fearlessly moved our business to the cloud, leading our industry in digital transformation," the annual report will boast. But any of these people will tell you that they have doubts. They were not guaranteed success. There is not a sub-species with superhuman abilities not to feel anxiety (although, in fairness, sometimes when I see the professional snowboarders flipping through the half-pipe or surfers attacking a crashing wave, I might be convinced otherwise). But for the rest of us mere mortals, it isn't about being fear-free, but rather they are overcoming their fears.
What does it mean to be fearless in your business and how can fearlessness be cultivated?
1. It is a mindset change
The answer might be hidden in the word itself. The term “less” is a relative word. It implies that it is less when compared to something else. I am sure you can sting your eyes with “tearless” shampoo, but it is meant to imply a relative safety to other products on the market. We use words like seamless, matchless, baseless, careless, effortless, heartless, motionless, priceless, and thankless as if they are absolutes, but they are really descriptions of relation. You can be seemingly tireless, but still get tired. So, being fearless is to fear less than you did before when faced with uncertainty. That is a choice that you make each day. In marketing, we may shift investment from traditional advertising channels or events to new digital initiatives or approaches. We may change our go-to-market structures, introduce new solutions, target new markets, go after new types of customers. All of these can be seen as fearless moves in hindsight, but if we live in the moment and in the data fearing less, we can improve our chances of success, even when we face internal opposition or hesitancy, without taking on unnecessary risk.
2. It requires practice
Extreme sports athletes seem fearless, but they train for years, risking life and limb, to build up the skills and stamina to wow us in prime time. They overcame their fear one run at a time and practice managing their mind along with their bodies. Entrepreneurs are known for their fearlessness, but that was also trained with small bets and experimentation throughout their lives.
In my experience, confidence is not the opposite of fear: it is action. Fear can be paralyzing, especially when combined with a vivid imagination, but the fearless face it down, give it a name, and move forward. Not recklessly, but with calculated intention, identifying and mitigating risks. To be fearless is just to strive to fear less than you did the day before and you do that with action. Before long, you are accomplishing things never before possible and bringing others along with you on the journey.
3. It builds confidence
I recently heard Beau Lotto, the neuroscientist whose TED talk has generated over 5 million views, say that “courage is more important than confidence.” The best leaders are right a lot of the time and are worth betting on, but more importantly, they have a bias for action. You only have confidence after someone had courage and proved it could be done. Hopefully, of course, that someone is you and you can reap the early mover advantages. Others see the success and what is possible and may live a bit more fearlessly as well.
4. It changes your priorities
You can be 100% correct about things that happened in the past (like last week's lottery numbers), but since we live our lives looking forward, we do not have that luxury. Quite the opposite. In today’s changing landscape, the tactics and strategies that worked in the past might as well be guaranteed not to work in the future. Be skeptical of anyone whose marketing plan, marketing metrics and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are not changing over time. That is something to be truly afraid of. To fear less means to learn more and that is bound to change what you are measuring and where you are aiming your attention and resources.
5. It changes the way you work on a daily basis
Sometimes as leaders we see fearlessness demonstrated in bold business strategies or big M&A investments, but not all fearlessness happens in the boardroom at scale. It is seen in the conversations we have that are awkward or difficult. The coaching conversations with a struggling employee. The negotiations with stakeholders for input or support. The fierce disagreements that result in a strong commitment to the decisions, whether they aligned with your ideal or not. This is where the strength of our backbones are tested. Where our fearlessness and our commitment to strategy is demonstrated. This is where we build our confidence, reveal our new priorities and practice our new mindset.
This article was originally published on Forbes.com.
This article was originally published on Forbes.
It’s the chronic, and often fatal, disease of business: sales and marketing misalignment. I, like you, have seen it done well and poorly in my career as marketing leader and CMO. I have also experienced the impact of poor alignment myself, as a consumer and as a customer of B2B goods and services. Although it has been an issue since the creation of the modern enterprise, there are reasons to believe that this chronic disease is getting more deadly.
1. Your Customers Are Changing
An increasing percentage of your customers, even technical buyers in B2B product categories, are wanting to disintermediate your sales team and gather information about products and services online and on their own, according to Forrester. In 2017, the percentage of customers expressing this “don’t call me, I’ll call you” preference was 68%. This represents a 28% increase over the 2015 survey just two years earlier. In fact, only 16% said that they find interacting with a sales rep superior to self-service research.
Mary Shea, Ph.D., principal analyst at Forrester Research , said it even more strongly. “If marketing and sales aren’t aligned and if they don’t collaborate, they will be disintermediated. By buyers themselves who find other ways to get what they need or by more agile competitors," she challenged.
The data would suggest it is already happening. This puts more pressure on marketing to facilitate increasingly sophisticated customers through a funnel (or around a pin-ball machine, to depict it more accurately) without direct engagement with sales.
2. Misalignment Hurts Your Customers
Forty-three percent of B2B marketing decision-makers report that their companies have lost sales as a consequence of not having necessary content at the right time for a specific customer and 77% of the rest have experienced costly delays, according to Forrester (Q1 2017 International B2B Marketing Panel).
This is further complicated by the fact that more people are involved in the decision-making process than before. Committees, panels, and groups are replacing individuals and making it more difficult to identify the influencers and meet all their needs. This is certainly true in B2B sales, but even consumers are sharing their e-commerce or subscription accounts with more people in their household and decision-making processes can fragment at home, too.
Despite this, shockingly, only 24% of organizations calibrate on the definition of target segments or accounts that will apply to both the sales and marketing organizations (per Forrester’s Q1 2018 Marketing Benchmark survey). How can we jointly hit a target, if there is more than one?
This lack of alignment is hurting your customers and impacting your top line.
3. You Are Wasting Money And Time
Sangram Vajre, chief evangelist at Terminus and former head of marketing at Pardot (now owned by SalesForce.com), asked a provocative question: “if only 1% of leads convert to opportunities, does that mean that 99% of marketing is wasted?”
Of course, it’s an unfair question as marketing is often responsible for strategy, channel, brand building, communications, and community engagement which may not directly relate to lead conversion, but if there isn’t cooperation on customer acquisition, where else in value chain might alignment be broken?
“Without shared goals and real-time data sets to drive decisions and investment prioritization, you have to wait for feedback from sales which may be late, anecdotal and with an agenda,” added Shea. “Marketing leaders can, and should, know what content, sales tools and campaigns are driving growth.”
If there is any doubt about what is driving your growth, then undoubtedly you are wasting time and money and that is impacting your bottom line. A bottom line that is getting more attention.
4. Your Boss Cares About It – Deeply
Forty-eight percent of CEOs say that poor alignment and collaboration will be a major marketing challenge over the next 12 months, according to Forrester. And those CEOs are looking hard at CMOs to lead the improvements.
The tenure of chief marketing officers is one of the shortest in the C-suite (per Korn Ferry) and there will be continued pressure and accountability around alignment, especially in times of transformation and change. Vajre agreed that high CMO turnover could be a sign of poor sales and marketing alignment. “If sales fall and budgets are squeezed, everyone pays,” he observed.
Shea concluded that “if you are doing sales and marketing the same way you did 3-5 years ago, you won’t survive.”
Now is the time to take your business’ vital signs and ensure that you have the alignment that you need to sustain and grow, putting your customer in the center of your strategy. As a starting point, look for evidence of customer preference changes in your business, create a common goal set and customer target, use real-time data for decision-making, and regularly report on joint progress.