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AIM High: Developing skilled and capable leaders · Two in Twenty

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_01: Hello and welcome to another episode of Aim High, the podcast for all our marketers in the Association of Investment Marketing.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: My name is Georgina Field, or Twink Field, as people call me.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: I'm the CEO and founder of White Marble Marketing.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: And today we are talking about building talent in your marketing teams, really building strength and depth in the talent that we have within our teams in investment management.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: I've got two brilliant speakers on the subject, Charlotte Lamb, who has managed teams and is a senior marketer from the investment industry, as well as Quentin Crow, who isn't from this investment industry, but is a true, pure marketeer of many years' experience, and is also been working alongside me and the wider White Marble team to help develop the courses that we offer under the Association Investment Marketers.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: Hello and welcome to Charlotte and Quinton.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for joining me today to talk about building talent within marketing departments and marketing teams.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: I think such an important time to be doing that.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: There's obviously increasing uh focus on marketing being a more influential part of uh asset managers and financial services.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: So it'd be great to get into the into the weeds on this.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um perhaps the best place to start is for you to each introduce yourselves, who you are, um, and then we can get into it.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: Charlotte?
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, I'm Charlotte Lamb.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a senior marketer within the asset management industry, um, having led a number of teams at a number of different firms covering UK, Emir, uh, Latin American markets as well.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_03: Brilliant.
• 1:49
  unknown: Great.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_03: Hi, my name is Quentin Crow.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_03: I am the Chief Learning Officer at the Association of Investment Marketers.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_03: I've had over 25 years working in marketing in various different guises.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_03: I was marketing director in the insurance sector before setting up as a consultant and then working in LD for the last 15 years.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: Brilliant.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: Good.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: So with that in mind, um, you know, in terms of the skills that we need to develop within our teams, the kind of the managing up as much as the upskilling, sort of where where do we start with that and why why is it perceived to be a problem today, do you think?
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_03: I think I mean I've been in a lucky position to have recruited and worked with marketers at various different stages of their careers.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_03: And I think, you know, the recruitment point of view, um, Charlotte and I were talking about it before we we we started this podcast, is trying to understand, you know, what the sort of the latest skills are required and whether we need a team who are bang up to date and who actually understand all the latest technologies and to what extent we need to be on top of that as well.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I think there's a real challenge between um knowing sort of the the breadth versus depth.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_03: So having experts who've got really specialist skills, but then how do they sort of develop and progress?
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_03: So could they be obsolete over a period of time and how do we actually develop that team?
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_03: So I think it's a variety of different challenges that uh that we face.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I would say from my personal perspective and personal experience, often you find people that have the very technical skills that you need in your team, don't necessarily have the industry background that you're maybe looking for.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: And obviously, whilst that's good to get some diversity of thought into the team, it can be a challenge when people are trying to describe or explain to a salesperson the per the benefits of using Salesforce or Pardot or Marketing Cloud, whichever tools you're using.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: It can be a challenge when that person who's very knowledgeable in that field but doesn't understand your industry.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: Then that that balance is sometimes hard to find.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: So getting the right balance of technical skills but also knowledge and a willingness to learn about the industry can be quite tricky sometimes.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: It is, I guess, the balance between the sort of the technical skills as much as the softer skills, and those, I guess, as careers develop and maybe it's something we'll we'll start to talk to, is sort of the balance of how that plays out over time.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: But I think there is, it's interesting how the role of marketing has changed over time.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: So thinking back to when I started my career, you just didn't have the same sort of reach around all these different departments now in terms of the requirement to really understand regulation and compliance as the technical aspects, the digital aspects, and how that's developing, as well as still being creative and sort of drive the communication strategy, look after the culture internally, how we're representing the brand kind of more broadly.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: It does feel now like there's a much broader remit for marketers that we are being looked to to own, and maybe as an opportunity for us to really um have more of a strategic position within the companies that we work for.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: Do you would you do you recognize that, Charlotte?
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I think so.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think definitely marketing is being brought to the table in a lot more a lot more ways, and a lot more conversations are happening with marketing involved in them.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think there's also a struggle sometimes in that, especially at the moment, we're seeing budgets being cut, um headcount being restricted.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so we're asking, at the same time as we're getting this additional sort of profile within a firm, we're also a little bit under-resourced in many, many senses, and there's this sense of just running to keep sort of almost to keep still.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um so that is a real challenge because obviously you don't want to squander the opportunity that you've got to raise your profile within the firm and to demonstrate your knowledge and expertise on areas that don't necessarily at first glance seem like they belong with marketing, um, but you have to do that as well as continue, as you said, Twink earlier, to deliver the um the general marketing activity and suite of literature, etc.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: It does seem that in that environment of less budget and less resource, there's sort of there's also, amongst everything else, the need to be sort of more creative in the kind of the solutions that you're bringing forward and um so be a problem solver in in that as well.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: And think differently.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, definitely.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and I think as well, there's a still a perception issue.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_03: Um, being relatively new to the investment industry, there are real sort of comparisons to what I saw 20 odd years ago in insurance, where marketing was perceived to be almost a superfluous function, something to invest in in the good times and to cut back in the bad times.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_03: And I think where the big change for this generation of marketers is data, which didn't really exist 20 years ago.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_03: So we have much greater opportunity to prove return on investment and actually talk hard numbers, whereas in the past it was all this sort of black art and it wasn't really that robust as a discipline and therefore not taken as seriously as it might be.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's a very good point.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I do think that in the UK and European markets, we have it a little harder than maybe they do in the United States, for example, because the customer data or the data that they have in the US about their registered investment advisors, any other type of financial advisors is all incredibly detailed and they can track absolutely everything about that individual client.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: So they know if a client attended a particular event and then subsequently whether or not they invested, they can track it to the individual client level.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: So marketing really are able to demonstrate their ROI in that sense.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's a little bit greyer in the UK and European market because of consolidation, because of um just the way trades are put through books and things like that.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: So we don't have quite as much tangible data at our fingertips, I don't think, yet.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but there are ways that we can work around that, I think.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: I I think you're absolutely right.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: I think you know the the on the power to still be unlocked, really, is for sort of marketers to really have such a detailed understanding as to the investor, as to the audiences, um, so that we can do that mapping.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and and obviously data is absolutely absolutely crucial to that.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: I think we're on a journey to do that, to get there.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: Definitely.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I but I think it's um it's quite interesting now, and it's maybe something that we can talk to within how we start to look at skills and and this knowledge.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but part of that being the sort of the responsibility in the ownership of marketers to be closer to the end customer, what they want, really understand their journeys in a way that we haven't really had ownership before.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: I think I think um, you know, within our industry, it was very much the sort of accountability, the responsibility of the of the sales teams to be able to talk about what their customers wanted.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: And if we were doing any research, they'd go and talk to them and they had their network to do that.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: I think now the the opportunity is increasingly that we can actually look at much more detailed information across a much larger sample size, frankly, through all the sort of the footprint, digital footprints that we now have of our customers.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I mean it's incredible that even now, so many of us are still going through that phase of sorting out our email communications.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, things the industry has been quite behind the times, really.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: But it's, I mean, it's reassuring, I guess, for anyone listening out there to hear that not everybody has it perfect yet, and everybody is still working on getting that data, getting that email ROI data in, cleaning up databases, working with the sales teams.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, so if you're not there yet, don't worry, not everybody is a tool.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and there is so much that you can do just by cleaning up your lists.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: You get so much better data from that, and then you can feed that back to your sales teams who then have additional sort of respect for you and belief in your abilities and what you can do, because you're actually potentially able to provide them with a really warm lead, if not a hot lead that ends up being a meeting, which is which would be great.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: It does continue to demand a skill of not only the data-driven marketer that is um leveraging the budget that they do have to the greatest benefit, as well as the sort of softer skills of nurturing a company, the values of that company, the behaviours of that company, how it communicates internally, externally, how it engages their employees, how it um continues to sort of attract top talent through its brand and reputation.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: So I guess given that kind of responsibility, um, maybe Clinton, you can sort of talk to maybe some of the skill areas and ability for us to really look at um how we should be developing teams to be able to rise to that challenge.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_03: I think it's a lot of really important issues.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_03: And I go back to when I first sat on a board as a young man, looking around on the boardroom table, I was giving 20 years to everyone else there.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_03: And I think what really struck me was that there was a culture which back in the day was very much compliance driven.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_03: So we were spending an inordinate amount of time in board meetings just talking about compliance issues and no time for strategy.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_03: And on the sort of reflection, when I start to think of the role that I could and should possibly should have played, I didn't have that sort of gravitas to make much of an impact on that board.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_03: It was only when I started to challenge and make a few fairly awkward questions that people started to sort of look up and think.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_03: Um there are a whole range of sort of soft skills which I know we're going to talk a little bit later, but essentially the programs that we've been trying to develop are what do I wish I had known 20-odd years ago when I sat on that board feeling um fairly quite intimidated by the group of people that I was working with.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: That sounds familiar.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: Tell me about you, Charlotte.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_03: Um and the I think the key areas, um impact and influence.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_03: And we actually were sitting in a fantastic session with Liz Whittaker, who has developed a program um around person-to-person marketing as she described it, about how to actually identify different stakeholders internally within your organization, and how do you effectively manage them?
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_03: Um lots of really interesting techniques that she picked up on, but at I think a fairly practical level, even the way that marketers dress, the way they deport themselves, the way that they communicate often online is crucial in terms of building that sense of um influence.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that's right.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think you can have the best strategy in the world, but if you can't actually land it, if you can't persuade or articulate your senior management as to sort of the reasons to listen, um, I think that's a whole nother skill that needs to be alongside your strategic thinking.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I remember the CEO of an asset manager telling me that one of the things he's looking for whenever his head of marketing is coming in to see him is the confidence in the wish uh that she's actually positioning the strategy in her thinking.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: Because if she's not confident in it and she's not able to articulate it, then he's not very interested in listening.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I know it's a common issue, is this imposter syndrome is a phrase that uh kept on coming up.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_03: And I know we had quite a number of people on the program who felt they suffered from it.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_03: Um strangely enough, it was mainly female.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_03: I think men have a greater ability to blag.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_03: Um but I think there's a there's a bigger issue here as well, which is looking beyond the limitations of the existing industry.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_03: And I think marketers have a strong position to be looking not just at the immediate competitive environment, but also looking at the major potential existential threats which are coming from beyond the industry.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and there are some extraordinary dynamics which are starting to come into play right now.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_03: And I think marketers who take the initiative and start becoming subject matters expert experts in those areas have the real opportunity to be taken more seriously at C-suite level.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: And to some degree that's easier said than done, isn't it?
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: Because there's a lot of confidence embedded in becoming a thought leader.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I think there's always that sort of nagging doubt of why would anybody listen to what I have to say on another matter.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's also sort of the journey to sort of getting to a position where you you do feel an authority and that you can articulate it.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and and that comes obviously also from genuine interest to continue to sort of be engaged in.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think that's what I was going to say, that comes down to passion, I would say.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, it's one of the things that we've talked about on the courses, you know, you do you to be good at what you're what you do, you really do need to have passion for it.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: And you don't need to have passion for necessarily every single aspect of your role, but if there's one area of your role that you're passionate about, passionate about, or the industry that you're passionate about, and if you can make that bit your area of expertise, the passion that you deliver any messaging around that with will come through, and that will encourage people to listen to you.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: Comes back to the point of the CEO and the strategy.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's it absolutely transcends when um talking to C-suite, but I think there's also obviously that role of being a leader within your team as well and infusing your team with the same kind of passion um and and being a sort of leader and a mentor almost to the team that you're um sort of responsible for.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: So it'd be good to um, I know we keep talking about it, but maybe we can get into the to the nitty-gritty as to sort of how as a leader, how are you going to um sort of look at your team, think about the sort of skills and the skill gaps, and how do you support them in addressing those?
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: What are the main things that we should be looking for, Quinton?
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I think one of the key skills is now coaching.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_03: Um, this idea of sort of running from the top and command and control methodologies, I think, now being proven to be obsolete.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_03: And I think one of the key skills that any leader now has is the ability to coach and to get the best out of the individual members of the team.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, first of all, you've got to get the right people on the bus.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_03: So the whole recruitment process needs to be fairly um fairly robust.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm not convinced that many organizations recruit particularly well.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe it's something we can pick up in a bit more detail at the moment.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_03: But once you've got the right people on the bus, you as your responsibility as the leader is ultimately to make yourself redundant.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_03: So you've got to be creating the next leaders, and the coaching skills that um underpin that are, I think, the key skill requirement now.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: No, I think I would agree, coaching is is crucial because without it, people just end up doing the same things and they stay in those executional roles, they don't progress, they don't have any job satisfaction after a while, and people and you get channel and you get people leaving and moving on to the next thing.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_03: I think there's there's a there's a very useful framework or a model which I came across, which is this idea of developing a pool versus a stream.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_03: And the idea behind it was actually developed by GE, where a pool is uh uh effectively works very well in professional services where you have a talent, a group of talented people, but the energy has got to be created by the leader.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_03: And every now and again they're probably going to there might be a dead fish or a bit of um that needs to be pulled out, or you need to add fairly ruthless, or you need to put some oxygen in to actually stimulate um the growth in the pool.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_03: Or alternatively, if you have a stream model where you're recruiting and bringing energy in from outside, but you've got to be fully cognizant that they might not be with you for that long, it might be only a matter of a few years before they move on, and you have to have clarity as to what your your model is is whether you bring the energy in or whether it's you as the leader stimulated.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I think there's a bigger challenge within marketing departments to think about what type of model do we actually want to adhere to.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so I guess Quentin, to your sort of view coming into our industry and sort of looking at the sort of core competences that in skills for marketers, um, you know, moving on from the competence side, you know, sort of assuming that that being one and that being one that um people need to be proficient in to do their job.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, where else do we need to rather sort of focus our time and energy to sort of bring through this the talent that we were talking about within our teams?
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I think there's a couple of areas.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_03: Um I think the first issue, I think, in terms of skills, uh, is research.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, market research has sadly it seems to just fallen off the radar.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_03: I think we're spending so much time in execution, we're not spending enough time really digging deep and thinking about our customers.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and so I think it's a general piece of advice for any marketers to really focus on building up the research skills, um, you know, and making sure that you've got a really good understanding of what good um quant and quo looks like.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_03: I think there's so much fixation on quant at the moment, we're losing sight on real customer insight in the qualitation.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's interesting, isn't it?
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's you know, almost back to the top of this conversation around, you know, with tighter budgets, where do you where do you kind of leverage it, where do you use it?
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: And it's always it seems to be that sort of research, market research seems to drop off.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: I think it still goes on.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's still quite a lot of it taking place, and people are still participating in it, but it comes back to to time.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think for me, one of the biggest challenges that the that we face at the moment is really sort of cutting through the noise of everything.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a discipline, as well as a very display.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: Because it really is, you know, as you as you rightly say, with so much sort of increasingly sort of going into our own boxes and onto our desks, it's quite hard to step back.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: But it but it's absolutely essential to the point of us as marketers, you know, there's an opportunity there for us to be taken more seriously by us focusing on the value add, the insight, you know, what does this data, what does this research really tell me that's gonna sort of change our strategic views and opinions?
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_03: And I think so.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_03: Picking up that, one of the things I really noticed is there's a fixation on looking at retrospective data.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, the prevalence of NPS, yes, it's a useful tool, but my goodness, I'm seeing so many industries which are now using it as a reward device as well.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_03: Um, it's so easy to manipulate.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_03: What we're not really looking at is the future.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_03: So trying to anticipate, which is the definition of marketing, what customers really want in the future.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_03: So we're spending a lot of time, I think, looking at data in rear view mirror and not looking at the right data or the right insights to try and predict where customer behaviour is going to be moving in forward.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: So I think I think we're sort of inadvertently really talking to sort of your diagnostic, really, um, Quintin, around making marketers more strategic.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think to some degree we've covered off the need for competence, tick, um, but also you know, that consumer or customer insight as well, sort of being such a sort of crucial part.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: I think um, you know, thinking about distribution teams, the sort of relationship we have with sales, is it worth us touching on commerciality?
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_03: Undoubtedly.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_03: We have to talk the language of the boardroom.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_03: And the boardroom, whether we like it or not, is still driven by finance.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_03: And possibly one of the weakest elements that marketers um, or one of the areas that marketers have failed to do over the years, is we tend to talk in the wrong language.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_03: So we tend to talk about you know brand awareness and a whole range of metrics, which really most other C-speak people are not interested at all.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_03: We have to talk hard numbers to be taken seriously, and obviously we have to understand the industry.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_03: Um, the expectation that everyone else in the room should understand marketing, I think is possibly another area.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_03: But I'm not the industry expert, I'm ready to see the news here, so I'll be fascinated to hear your thoughts.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah, no.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely, commerciality is, I think, undoubtedly a slightly weaker area for marketing.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: Partly because of some of the things we've talked about before, and that we haven't been able to necessarily have the same information on the ROI that marketing delivers in our industry as say an FMCG type company would be able to have.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: But there are ways that we can get around that, and there are things that we can that we can do, even just simply as saying, okay, we've signed up to this event, it costs X amount of money.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: We saw this many people of whom we knew already 30%.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: So that means 70% of the people that we met were new.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: Of those 70%, how many of them agreed to have us send emails?
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's a start.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's not necessarily still the language quite of the boardroom, but it's getting to that point.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: So we can therefore say this event cost us X amount per new lead, which is a start.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: And that's sort of that's something, but it is it is hard.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um and it's a journey.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I and I think it's also rooted in some of the sort of confidence points we're talking in, is that if it's not language that we're used to, then it sort of feels quite alien, quite sort of, you know, that imposter syndrome is definitely going to kick in at that point when you're sort of trying to present things in a way that isn't hasn't necessarily been sort of how you've done it before.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: And and I think you know, the the sort of relationship with with sales and distribution has been such that it's sort of been their patch to talk to in terms of you know fee pressures and consolidation, and what does that mean for our product ranges and our customers?
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I think there is now more than ever the requirement for sort of marketing to really be able to um sort of sit right alongside sales to be able to understand their world better, to talk to their world better, so they can deliver more impactful marketing and then collectively have that language and reporting mechanism to be able to influence the C-suite.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I think there are definitely people out there in the industry who have that.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um I can think of you know one or two at least from my last place that really are demonstrating that um ability and that insight, which is great for the future.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think again, one of I was lucky enough at a time in my career to work on the direct-to-consumer business.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: Now, that is an area where you can actually really see the value and the you see the ROI on your on your output, but there's no sales involved there.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: So it's all just done through through the direct marketing to existing shareholders in the funds.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: But that was that was really insightful.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: And it was quite a shock when I moved from that world to the sort of intermediary world to sort of see the difference and the the sort of lack of data that was available to us then.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: And actually, to uh to conversation we were having previously, sort of just around the kind of what you're measuring, the metrics, and being able to sort of talk about the interpretation of that, you know, sort of making sure it's not just also just a sea of numbers because you're told the boardroom wants to see numbers, it's also which numbers and what do they actually mean?
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: Where to next though on the sort of wheel of diagnostic fortune?
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I think we're probably closing in nicely on the whole credibility piece where you know how do marketers get taken seriously?
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_03: And I think the today's conversation has really been drawing us to this point is to how do we raise our profiles, how do we get taken seriously?
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and I think one of the key areas is finding an area of expertise and starting to create content and create a profile around it.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and maybe it's a nice opportune moment just to be sort of talking about the sort of the leadership program which I know Charlotte has been on, where we've been encouraging senior marketers to find an area which Charlotte talks about in terms of passion, something they're really, really interested in, whether it's technology and new platforms, whether it's changing customer behaviors, for example, millennial investment or an aging population, whatever it may be, and starting to build your profile around it.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, do your research, start writing blogs, start writing, ideally, you know, moving towards white papers with the end intent of potentially presenting at a major event or an industry event about that subject matter.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_03: At that stage, you're now becoming a real expert and a go-to authority, and that's helping to then change the perception of marketing.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: And something from again from a personal perspective, something that really helped me, and I've encouraged people in my team to follow a similar sort of path, if they're interested.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's not something that I've ever forced on people, but um early on in my career I did the IMC, the investment management certificate, which you know, as a marketer, you don't necessarily need to need to have, but it demonstrates to the wider business that you're interested in the subject matter of your industry and an ability to understand it to a certain level and things like that.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I think again, something like that demonstrates that you're not just there to deliver a message and sort of build a website or whatever other sort of definition someone outside of marketing might like to lay at the door of marketing.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um I would have thought that a lot of marketers would find that a daunting prospect to sort of start to sort of think of themselves.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: And part of it is what's our own sort of branding that we give ourselves.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what sort of what am I an expert in?
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so what how do you go about that sort of process of self-discovery, I guess?
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_03: Having been in the privileged position of working with a number of um the candidates on the leadership program, it was a real voyage of discovery.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_03: I think for every single one of them, where they started their initial ideas and where they ended up were very different places.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_03: Um, it takes a period of time to dig beneath the surface.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_03: And I think Charlotte's word of passion, I think, sounds bizarre in such a uh sort of almost mechanical industry, but having a uh a passion, something you truly believe in really helps.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_03: And the coaching process that we went through to get you to that point and various others on the program was fairly involved and took a number of instances to get there.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: It did.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: Brilliant.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I guess to some degree, even just starting to vocalize some of your ideas like that can be really helpful just to sort of sifting it through, so just the articulation is sort of quite part of the process, as much as you know, sort of absolutely the challenge that comes back, no doubt.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: And that was one of the things that for me was just absolutely great about the leadership programme was having that environment where you were with like-minded people, everybody was in the same boat, all very similar boats, and all struggling, as Quentin alluded to earlier, with some of the same issues.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: But it was a very safe and very collaborative and very warm environment that that we had, and I feel kind of incredibly privileged to have been part of that.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it was a very special experience.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: Fantastic.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_01: This wasn't meant to be a sort of advert for the programme, but as it turns out, no.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um thank you for that.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um so so I think just as a maybe quadrant, if you're happy to, just to sort of talk through sort of the final sort of recap around the sort of diagnostic as you see it, just again as a just to really clarify and solidify in people's minds the areas and the skills that they need to focus on to really help them on this journey to be that more influential marketer.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_01: And then maybe just we can finish off with a couple of tips, I guess, for doing that.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, be delighted.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_03: So, the first of all, it's um a classic number letter combination that all marketers love.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_03: So there's five C's and an S.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_03: Um so we've talked about strategy, really, is the key point.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_03: How do we become influential in terms of the strategic uh direction of the organizations?
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_03: And then to do so, we've identified five key areas.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_03: We've talked about competence and we've also looked at commerciality, we've talked about customer insights, the communication skills, those soft skills that we haven't really talked about presentation and other areas as well, which are equally important.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_03: Um, credibility, and those sort of five C's, then if we get those all aligned, will help us build our strategy.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_03: So the way that we like to run the diagnostic is to look at it in two dimensions.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_03: So the first is of each of those six different dimensions, how important do we think they're going to be to achieve where we want to be?
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_03: So we normally start the exercise with a sort of a five-year goal as to what we're hoping to try and achieve.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_03: Um, then having established with those six different dimensions how important each might be, we then look at where our current skill levels are.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_03: Again, we use a 10-point like scale just to help us.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_03: And then we measure the gaps.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_03: And it's it's quite a revealing exercise.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, it's quite alarming.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_03: I did it to myself the other day and realised what I've got to do as well.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_03: So it's one of those useful devices that we can use every stage of our career.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_01: Brilliant.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I guess to the point around communication skills, I think again, it can be um, I think we talked, you know, we've nodded to it a bit, haven't we, in terms of that ability to really articulate and persuade.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um and and so much of that is also managing up well and sort of managing down well.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I think, you know, I think it's something that's evolving, which is the focus for marketers to have the confidence to be given the training, whether it's presentation skills or or otherwise, you know, making sure that you're really clear on your message and your sort of objective of what you're trying to do and achieve.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um so thank you both so much for all your time talking around this whole area.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's been really fascinating.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_01: And it'd be great, I think, just to, if you're happy to, just to wrap up what I'm trying to do is a couple of tips for marketers.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, kind of what are the things they can start doing differently sort of next week, having having heard this and uh that to try and make a difference in their career.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_01: Who'd like to go first?
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_03: I personally think I refer back to that wonderful TED talk of Amy Cuddy of fake it till you make it.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_03: I know if you've got a huge following.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_03: Using basic body language and using some of those techniques that she covered so that you are in the right state of mind before you go into any challenging environment will help break down all manner of barriers.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: I would say um don't be afraid of asking questions.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if someone comes and asks, says, I need this, I want to do X, ask them why.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_00: What's their objective?
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: I think we often we have got used to just saying yes and delivering things, turning things out.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: But if you throw something back, not necessarily throw it back, but if you ask someone the question, so what's the objective?
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: What do you hope to achieve by doing this?
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_00: If they can't really give you a proper answer, or if you have, if you already are working on something with that person or for that person, and you say, Well, is this more is this new thing more important than the this thing that I'm already doing?
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you'll soon start to be able to weed out some of the things that you don't actually really need to focus on, and you make sure that your energies are focused on the things that really matter.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_03: Brilliant.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_03: Do you mind if I change mine?
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: No, I think you let's just have two.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_01: Let's just change it.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_03: I think it picks up on Charlotte's point.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_03: I think a key thing is just to be inquisitive and to be constantly asking questions and constantly challenging the status quo.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's interesting, isn't it?
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think you know, we're almost uh we inhibit ourselves in that regard.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_01: We sort of always sort of put the blocker on ourselves like that.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_01: There's actually nothing really stopping us asking a question.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think the environment is there.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_01: I think we just have to sort of jump in and uh and and trust ourselves and back ourselves to be asking kind of in sort of interesting and intuitive questions.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, or wrap that point up.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_03: I think it's a classic sort of journalist issue where if you're asking the questions, actually you have the control and the power.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_01: Brilliant.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_01: I think that is the perfect point to which to finish.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you very much to Quinton and Charlotte for coming today to talk about all of this really fascinating subject of developing talent in our marketing teams.