That got me generally interested in the idea of marketing training – how do you teach a group of marketers, whose job is notoriously nuanced and imprecise, to do their jobs better? To see more of the market, and in a more detailed way?

In any case, it might turn out that training marketers to handle data better won’t make marketing organizations more fact-based – we’re not sure, and it’ll take a lot more interviews and thought on our part to figure out the challenges here. But I wanted to highlight some of our most popular training and development resources, just in case you’re on the same path. Here are a few steps to building a better marketer:

Identify the best training investments. Consumer products giant Unilever lacked a standardized way of evaluating their marketers’ performance across brands and geographies, and struggled to establish an objective view of overall skill level. The result was that they couldn’t figure out the highest-potential opportunities for upgrades to training and development.

Their answer to the problem was to develop a Marketing Capabilities Audit, which measured the performance of each fundamental marketing capability on the brand level, which in turn determines where the company spends its dollars on capability improvement. MLC members, click through to see what Unilever checked for in their auditing process.

Target skill gaps through tailored criteria. Most brands and companies have one or two key areas where teams, for whatever reason, don’t measure up. Microsoft tried to tackle this by simply offering more L&D opportunities – courses, webinars, that sort of thing – but the result was confusion: managers and employees didn’t know which courses were relevant for them.

In response, the company’s marketing leaders conducted a gap analysis that assessed where teams were in key skill areas versus where they should be, and embedded those areas of most needed skill improvement into curriculum documents that guide marketers through the company’s course offerings.

Embed training into marketers’ workflows. 3M, like a lot of manufacturing companies, has shifted gears over the past few years and is moving from a focus on developing superior products, to a focus on meeting customers’ holistic needs. That’s a shift that requires pretty serious lift on Marketing’s part, but the company wasn’t sure that Marketing’s existing skillset could meet the needs of a solutions-oriented company.

3M dispensed with traditional marketing training methods, and instead built a training curriculum that directly supported their business goals, working with leading academics. The result were training modules that were customized to key points of demand – such as seasonal goals or duties – increasing uptake among staff.

Have you had success with an unorthodox training solution? Let us know in the comments.

By Ana Lapter

People are an organization’s greatest asset.  No process, vision or tool can compensate for the lack of an adequate talent pool when elaborating or executing a strategic marketing initiative.   Having the right mix of capabilities and skills dishes up the key ingredient for any successful Marketing recipe.

Obviously, this is easier said than done.  To solve this challenge, a lot of marketers with whom I have spoken recently professed to employing previous talent planning experiences as a proxy for building a roadmap of future capabilities.  The major problem with this approach is that it assumes that the marketing organizations operate in relatively similar consumer, technology, business, regulatory and economic environments as in the past.

How can a Marketing organization design the right capability model that acknowledges radical change and forward looking planning?

We recently designed and deployed a survey to capture the collective wisdom of our members regarding major shifts taking place  in the Marketing organization.   The survey analysis revealed four fundamental shifts in how Marketing will operate and deliver value to an enterprise within the next 5 years:

• A shift from Marcomm activities to upstream sources of enterprise value creation, including consumer experience, more emphasis on radical product and commercial innovation, and increased business accountability for ROI generation at activity level.
• Marketing will no longer serve merely as a sporadic consumer of Market Research data in its efforts to validate pre-defined strategic planning decisions. Rather, marketers will plan every single Marcomm activity to continuously generate insight and consumer intelligence in addition to building brand affinity.
• Consumers, as opposed to Marketing departments, will lead the process of defining and positioning brands as peer-to-peer advocates, recommenders, word of mouth communicators, etc.
• Continuous change in the business and consumer ecosystem will require a transition from formal, lengthy strategic planning exercises to an agile decision-making process, emphasizing speed at the expense of complete certainty.

These transformative changes in Marketing’s value delivery roles call for different talent capabilities.  This is my list of 10 key competencies that will shape recruiting, training, performance measurements and other talent strategies for the Marketing function:

• Advanced predictive analytics, Big Data and unstructured data analysis.
• Familiarity and extensive use of technology and tools for advanced activities, such as creating a digital customer behavior or designing hyper-targeted messaging based on location, time or other contextual attributes.
• End-to-end consumer experience mapping, integrative Marketing thinking and cross-functional stakeholder engagement and dialogue with other consumer-facing departments.
• Entrepreneurial behavior, appetite for innovation and creativity.
• Risk and reputation management skills.
• “Sensing” consumer needs at local level.
• Real time insight generation at all levels of the Marketing organization.
• Authentic dialogue with consumers, permission management and engagement skills.
• Proficient use of ethnography and other observational techniques to build more accurate “Consumer Understanding” programs.
• A P&L attitude and general business orientation.

Many Marketing organizations are still overemphasizing general “brand awareness” and Marcomm capabilities when planning to recruit staff for various departments, projects and campaigns.  Unfortunately, these are no longer perceived as the key signature of the future Marketer.  Contact me at abostan@executiveboard.com if you want to learn more about our survey or share your insights.

By Ana Lapter

Radical changes in the consumer, technology and business landscapes are forcing executives to rethink their approaches to marketing strategies.  But successful execution of these new strategies calls for an adequate pool of marketing talent.

Senior executives who are effective at talent management can generate up to 7% more in revenue than those less-focused on developing staff skills.  Unfortunately, more than 80% of executives are ineffective at talent management.  Part of the reason is that typical approaches to crafting future talent plans are infused with executive bias, as reflected in the adage “Old habits die hard”.  Acknowledging this problem, one member told us that “What got us here won’t get us there,” suggesting the need for new skills and capabilities road mapping.

We’ve been studying the evolution of marketing talent for the last few weeks, and trying to summarize my recent talent-related conversations with numerous MLC members, I came up with a list of 3 key competency areas that are necessary for the marketing function of the future:

Absorbing and activating customer insight. Generating insight is the traditional purview of market research departments, but given Marketing’s need to become more customer centric, insight creation will increasingly become a vital competency for broader staff.  Unfortunately, our data indicates that only 4% of marketing executives are satisfied with their staff’s ability to activate insight.  The keys to building this capability are: identifying unarticulated needs across all enterprise-wide touchpoints, by surfacing consumers’ desired “outcomes,” rather than generic demographic attributes; leveraging advanced analytics, such as pattern identification, text mining and social listening; and filtering consumer insights for business relevance and impact.  Here’s how a few progressive companies are training their marketing staff on insight activation.

Ability to Drive Radical Innovation: CEB’s most recent Business Barometer indicates that 58% of executives expect to introduce a higher number of new products in the next year.  We think of new product launch as “radical innovation,” as opposed to “commercial innovation” (new ways of selling existing products) or “incremental innovation” (product or service enhancement).   Our team looked at the drivers of radical innovation last year, and identified five critical sets of skills for an innovation team: passion for problem solving, emotional intelligence, analytic skills, creativity and connectivity to knowledge network.

End-to-End Customer Experience: Marketing organizations typically design their customer experience strategies to understand the drivers of customer loyalty associated with a purchasing decision and to improve traditional touchpoint communication.  This approach is likely too narrow, considering the multitude of customer contacts with an organization and the proliferation of word of mouth communication in digital environments.  A better strategy is centered on enabling an end-to-end customer experience, from product ideation to product delivery and support.  The critical skills to achieve this mandate include: cross-functional stakeholder management, project management and customer co-option in product-related activities.  Autodesk’s marketing organization does a great job of this – collaborating with the customer care department to understand key purchasing motivators and incorporate authentic user experience with product in scalable Marketing messages.

Changing consumer and business environment calls for new skills and capabilities. Next week we are launching a “The Future of Marketing” survey to capture major trends in the Marketing function and capture the critical talent implications associated with these changes. Please contact me at abostan@executiveboard.com if you want to participate in this short survey.

By Ana Lapter

Businesses are once again in the mood to grow revenues.  Unlike the pre-recession era, the source of growth, however, will no longer come from streamlining and automating processes, or from adopting systems for better management of structured data.  Since the majority of businesses have been improving processes and data management for some time, there aren’t too many gains to be had there.  Rather, the next era of growth will likely come from from understanding changing customer preferences and acting quickly on those insights.  In other words, your company needs to get smarter about using information, as compared to processes, to more effectively drive customer insight and quickly translate that knowledge into usable plans and strategies.

It’s not that organizations don’t have this data; you do. But the problem is how to effectively use all the information that companies gather about markets and customer preferences.  Over the past few weeks, I heard the words “analytics” and “customer insight” in separate conversations with eight senior marketers, while discussing the key analytic competencies that their teams need to strengthen or develop to move forward.

Here is my list of things to avoid when building an analytics-driven Marketing organization:

Confusing analytical maturity with the need for absorbing more data and information. The “Information at your fingerprints” phenomenon can easily motivate Marketing to become more analytical.  The real problem is not about getting more data and information, but, rather, differentiating between real customer insight and mere sets of facts.  A recent cross-functional survey of knowledge workers from our sister program, the CIO Executive Council, shows that Marketing relies excessively on data analysis, especially at the management level. Meanwhile, only 44% of marketers have high confidence in information from their own function, and only 34% have high confidence in information from other functions.

Interestingly, the survey indicates that despite excessive reliance on data and information, Marketing has a low degree of analytical maturity, as compared to other functions.  As a result, marketers miss opportunities to improve performance in areas such as new market identification, market strategy development, targeting customer segments and demand forecasting.

Over-relying on data as a basis for strategic planning decisions. The CIO survey suggests that progressive organizations use a combination of judgment and data when making strategic decisions.  This means that data should not be a substitute, but a complementary tool supporting experience, judgment and instinct.  From the perspective of organizational capability, Marketing should balance investments in getting better at data collection and analysis with the need to leverage the full potential of personality characteristics like creativity and imagination to drive effective strategic decisions.

Considering analytical tools as a solution to problems. Tools are as good as the people who use them.  A better approach to driving an information-driven culture is to consider tools as a means to solve a particular problem, improve a workflow or support a specific, narrowly-defined objective.  In addition, a decision to select a specific analytics tool should take into consideration the degree of organizational maturity and user involvement in performing diverse activities, ranging from basic reporting and visualizing information, to aggregating data, conducting pattern recognition and making predictions based on trends.

We will be exploring the topic of analytic capabilities as part of our upcoming research into marketing talent.  I would love to get your thoughts on the topic, so please contact me at: abostan@executiveboard.com.

Talent management, though, is not a matter of skill (most executives have the business skills necessary) or time (effective executives and ineffective executives spend roughly the same amount of time on talent management): the issue is focus.  Executives should approach talent management strategically—managing key talent like a corporate asset that is developed and deployed in support of business objectives. 

Becoming a Talent Champion outlines five key activities executives should focus on in place of day-to-day staff management, including building the high potential bench, holding the senior team accountable for talent outcomes, and owning the organization’s talent strategy.  To learn more, download a complimentary copy of this new publication or order the eBook.

MLC Members, check out our best talent management tools and insights in our Talent Management Topic Center

Well, probably not quite.  Even with things looking up slightly from last year, your buyers and consumers are still pulling your cost-value ratio through a fine-toothed comb.

So how do you stand out from competitors in your industry in a way that maintains your profits?

MLC research confirms that brands that successfully implement a talent strategy focusing on foundational marketing capabilities benefit from nearly 10% higher growth rates than competitors.*

To be competitive within your industry for foundational marketing capabilities, it’d be good to first know where your industry falls.

Take a look at this white paper showing findings when we reviewed the 43,000 first-time respondents of the Marketing Excellence Survey database.

Some highlights:

• Overall:
  • Foundational Marketing Knowledge: Retail and automobile industries scored lowest with below average scores; energy, transportation and utilities scored the highest.
  • Foundational Marketing Attitudes (e.g. customer orientation): Automobile again scored lowest with a below average score; transportation and metals/mining scored the highest.

• Competitor Orientation: Banking scored the lowest for competitor orientation – particularly concerning considering that a current uniformity in technology makes it critical to use competitive intelligence to differentiate.

• Market Analysis: Construction/engineering was lowest for market analysis which would affect their ability to analyze customer needs and measure their satisfaction, activities important for winning with a sophisticated buyer.

Conclusion:

If you’re in one of the lowest scoring industries, take the opportunity to gain a strategic advantage by adopting a marketing talent strategy focused on foundational competencies.

If you’re in one of the highest scoring industries, the bar has been set high …it’d be a good idea to assess the marketing competencies of your organization to ensure you are competing with the best of them.

MLC members, for a deeper dive into latest industry findings for foundational marketing capabilities, join us for a webinar on 2/24 at 2pm ET.  We’ll share key learnings from the MES database of 65,000 for specific industries, functions and geographies to provide you with a benchmark for gaining a competitive advantage.

This post was written by Amy Gallo for our Finance and Strategy Practice.

Everyone complains about their boss from time to time. In fact some in the U.S. consider it a national workplace pastime. But there’s a difference between everyday griping and stressful dissatisfaction, just as there is a clear distinction between a flawed manager and a truly horrible boss.

Difficult bosses come in lots of different flavors. Your manager might be overly controlling, giving you little to no autonomy. Or perhaps she rarely shows up at the office, doesn’t give you direction or feedback, and has no idea what you do all day. Bad bosses may be insecure, incompetent, or simply new and inexperienced. First-time managers are often more likely to hinder than enhance employee performance and potential. A 2005 study by CEB’s CLC Learning and Development Roundtable found that nearly 60% of first-time managers underperform in their role.

Working for a bad boss has a large effect on your work experience. Managers have a direct effect on how you perform and whether you want to stay in your job. They are the conduit between you, the organization, the team, and your job. This goes both ways. Not all bosses are bad of course and great bosses can inspire people to do more. CLC Human Resources found in its research Managing in the Downturn: Four Imperatives to Drive Employee Innovation and Performance (for CLC members) that managers are increasingly important for improving discretionary effort: the impact of manager quality on whether employees go above and beyond the call of duty has jumped by 50% since the recession began. On the flip side, bad bosses sap motivation, kill productivity and drive everyone crazy.

If you work for someone you wish you didn’t, consider this:

1. If it’s truly bad, speak up and/or leave: If you have a boss who is harassing you, bullying you or violating other workplace laws and policies, document as much as you can. If you feel you can have a direct conversation with your boss, then do that. If not, then take your case to HR or your boss’ superior. If nothing is done, you need to ask yourself if you want to continue working for a company that tolerates such behavior; it may be prudent to move somewhere that will treat you better.
2. Accept it don’t fight it: If you’re dealing with more run-of-the-mill incompetence, there are other things you can do. Don’t continually rail against your boss. Accept that he has flaws and that you need to work with them. In fact, there may be ways that you can help compensate for them. It is always in your best interest to help your boss achieve his goals. Find out what he cares most about and focus your efforts on making him successful.
3. Commiserate: One of the most helpful things you can do is seek out corroborators among your peers or others in the company. This will allow you blow off steam by venting with others who understand the situation. You can also rely on these alliances to help you develop strategies for dealing with the situation. Perhaps someone else has figured out how to approach your boss when she’s in a bad mood, or to circumvent her if she continually gets in the way.
4. Adapt where possible: It may be not be that your boss is truly a bad manager but that he is a bad fit for you. Take a good look at yourself and see if there are things you can change about your own behavior that will make the working relationship easier. Remember the goal is to succeed not to be right.
5. Look after yourself: Working for someone difficult will take its toll on your health as well as your productivity and performance. Since many people spend more time with their manager than they do with their spouse, it’s helpful to take breaks and carve out work time when you don’t need to interact with the boss. This may be a lunch break outside of the office or a side project that allows you to work elsewhere in the company. Also, bad management can be contagious; if you are being micromanaged you are more likely to try to control those around you. Try to stay true to your own values rather than succumb to passing on bad behavior.

MLC Members, check out our Talent Management Topic Center for our best tools and insights on increasing marketer performance and engagement.

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In CEB View’s last Talent Matters post we discussed how difficult it is to work for a bad boss. But what if, instead of working for one, you are one?

Of course it’s not easy being the boss. Research from CEB’s CLC Human Resources program shows that the three areas that most managers – even great ones – struggle with are evaluating employee performance, providing effective feedback, and turning around underperformance. These are hard things to do and because the way you do them directly affects your team, any missteps are likely to create friction.

Fortunately, the recession seems to have improved many employee-manager relationships but boss-bashing is still a favorite pastime (as proved by last week’s traffic on the first “bad boss” piece). So, how do you know if your employees are just letting off steam or if you are truly difficult to work with? Unfortunately, many bad bosses are the last to know how awful they are to work under. This may be because you aren’t getting the feedback you need, you’re disconnected from your employees or you just aren’t watching out for the signs.

Here are five indications that you may be a worse boss than you thought:

1. Meetings happen without you: If you notice that your employees are getting together to talk about work and not including you, there may be a problem. When employees don’t believe a manager is competent or cares about their work, they are likely to find ways to work around him.
2. Problems blow up before you hear about them: Employees feel comfortable going to good bosses when there is a conflict or an issue because they don’t fear retribution. If you haven’t signaled that you are a partner in solving problems, or worse that you will punish people who bring them to you, you are going to be the last to hear when something negative happens. This greatly hinders your ability to handle problems early on before they become disasters.
3. You don’t know what your employees care about or enjoy doing: What motivates employees is not the same across the board. To inspire your people to go above and beyond, you have to get to know them through open and honest conversations. Struggling managers are often too consumed with themselves to learn more about their people.
4. Your people don’t know where they stand: If you are one of those bosses that complain that your employees are insecure and always asking for your input or approval, ask yourself why they might be behaving that way. All people need effective feedback to do their jobs well. Good bosses don’t hesitate or neglect to tell employees whether they are performing well. Leaving your people in the dark will only lead to disengagement and confusion about what you want them to do.
5. No one disagrees with you: Sometimes the worst bosses just assume everything is going well. They don’t hear about any problems and everyone seems to agree with every brilliant idea they have. It may be less that you are a genius and more that they are terrified of you. Open disagreement is a sign of a healthy and innovative work environment. If everyone is standing around nodding, it’s time to take a hard look at your leadership.

What To Do If It’s You

If you recognize any of these signs in yourself or have come up with a few of your own, don’t despair. Even the worst boss is capable of change. Here are some things you can do to begin the process:

• Ask for feedback: Good bosses are open to and regularly ask for feedback. Your first step should be to ask people for input on how you manage. If you’ve signaled in the past that you are not open to hearing people’s honest opinions, you will need to make clear that you are trying to change your ways and that you intend to use their input not to punish them but to inform your own development. It may be possible even with a mea culpa, that your people won’t tell you what you need to hear. In these cases, it might be helpful to hire an executive coach who can gather feedback to share anonymously with you. Be prepared — you may hear some nasty things about yourself. Listen to what people have to say before you respond. While it may sting, negative feedback is just as useful as compliments.
• Make a visible commitment to change. Research shows that those who go public with their goals are much more likely to succeed. Don’t keep your resolution to yourself. Explain to your team that you are working on becoming a better boss and exactly what that means. Are you going to start giving regular feedback to employees so they know where you stand? Are you going to hold “office hours” so employees feel comfortable talking to you about work problems as they arise? Tell them what success will look like for you and ask them to keep you accountable.
• Request help. This can often be the hardest part for bosses. It’s one thing to admit you’re underperforming, it’s another to ask for support from others. Think about what you need to change your behavior — training on how to assess employee performance, coaching on how to have difficult conversations, regular check-ins with your boss — and figure how who can best provide that —your peers, your boss or an internal or external coach. Sustaining change can be especially difficult so enlist a few people to tell you when you’ve gotten off track. Be sure to pick those who are willing to tell you the truth.

MLC Members, check out our Talent Management Topic Center for our best tools and insights on increasing marketer performance and engagement.

According to MLC research, top marketing organizations are challenged by product positioning getting lost somewhere between product and communications development, consumers experiencing disjointed messages due to lack of clarity in product positioning, and struggles to communicate brand positioning strategy effectively and simply across functional silos.

Sound familiar?

There’s a missing connection, at the strategic level, between product marketing and communications development that looks and feels like an unsuccessful game of telephone.  This fundamental disconnect is in large part fueled by the fact that your marcomm folks are not prepared to listen well on the other end of the line.

Three scary facts:

• In reviewing the latest 1500 respondents of the Marketing Excellence Survey (MES), we found that marcomm professionals actually had the lowest scores for marketing knowledge among all other marketing disciplines.  The marketing knowledge score for the group was below average when compared to the entire database of 65,000 marketers – see the chart below:

• Among the 43,000 first-time respondents to the MES, marcomm professionals overall scored below average for all areas of marketing knowledge including strategic marketing, market analysis, marketing profitability and, surprisingly, marketing mix strategies.

• These low scores aren’t just limited to a certain few companies – MarComm professionals from 19 industries (of the 22 industries surveyed) were below average.  Particularly low-scoring industries included automobile, energy, pharmaceuticals and retail.

This lack of knowledge has a detrimental effect on your brand- every time your marcomm staffers don’t spot valuable new opportunities, make less than strategic decisions to select one tactic over another, and help your agencies hone in on a creative concept that misses the mark for what you’re trying to communicate.

Considering that marketing actually equals marcomm for many organizations these days, it’s time to ensure that your team is raising their game in marketing and are prepared to listen with a strategic ear.

While you might not exactly be “carbon copying” your previous plan, determining which elements to include in your plan, as well as how to ensure you’re planning around your customer, your products, and your partners requires huge effort and a significant amount of experience and knowledge. Each step of the process requires a comprehensive understanding of various marketing concepts and tools to ensure the strongest possible marketing plan.

For example: assume that your team is building a marketing plan for a growth brand or product. One of the early steps in identifying sources of growth is developing an accurate assessment of current and potential markets.  Your team needs to:

• Link emerging market trends to customer and stakeholder needs
• Use market insights to build the business case for seizing new market opportunities
• Identify value driver trends across industries and segments
• Create objective criteria for assessing undefined opportunities
• Screen opportunities based on sources of differentiation

According to Marketing Excellence Survey research, however, about 1/3 of marketers (of 43,000 first time respondents of the MES) had below average scores for marketing planning knowledge.  Surprisingly, this lack of knowledge is not just limited to small companies, or industries that aren’t known for their marketing prowess. In fact, this lack of marketing capability is spread across many industries including computer software and internet, construction/engineering, financial services, food & beverage, manufacturing, retail, and telecommunications services.

Every CMO and member of the marketing leadership team needs to believe that your team is functioning on all cylinders when it comes to marketing capability. But the scary thing is that your team might not have anywhere near the marketing knowledge necessary to conduct these assessments in a high quality way. Worse: do your teams even realize they aren’t equipped to manage marketing planning, new product development, and the like?

Based on our survey, we know that most marketers are predicted to make bad strategy and execution decisions because of overconfidence. Based on a survey of 65,000 marketers, they assess their knowledge and skill sets to be 25% better than is the actual case.

Are you confident that your team has the capability to get marketing planning right?  Are they spotting early opportunities for growth and differentiation?  How prepared are they really to leverage the consumer insight and marketing planning tools that lead to discovery of these growth opportunities? Do they know what they don’t know?

MLC members, join us on October 19 for “Building Better Marketers“, a teleconference that will give you insight into the skill and knowledge gaps that could be affecting your team’s ability to run competitive marketing planning.  We’ll review key findings, comparing scores from the most recent Marketing Excellence Survey respondents to our database of 65,000 marketers.

Also, be sure to check out our upgraded marketing planning solution. MarkPlan™ 2010 is a software suite that leads you through a series of well defined steps and proven templates for building strategic marketing plans that fit your organization.  Think of it as a TurboTax wizard that will help you generate your marketing plan.  Learn More.

Starting with polycentric innovation, in a recent special report on innovation in emerging markets, The Economist described how companies like Cisco and IBM are building innovation centers in emerging markets.  These aren’t just laboratory outposts—these are major innovation centers on par with those in developed markets. These emerging market innovation centers act as a sort of crucible—an intensely pressured, constrained environment that accelerates innovation, and potentially leads to discontinuous solutions that you simply wouldn’t get in other contexts.

This crucible effect came through loud and clear in this fascinating read on how Danone is using crucible markets like Senegal to develop radically different yogurt offerings.  In this case, the kinds of constraints forced by wafer-thin consumer budgets and a very underdeveloped distribution infrastructure forces unconventional thinking, along with fast failure and correction cycles.

A similar kind of crucible effect surfaced recently in conversations with some top CMOs in the MLC membership.  As the group discussed marketing talent development, there was this realization that some geographic markets can serve as “marketing discipline” crucibles. For example, the Chinese market is far in front in using social media to launch new products. One approach to marketing talent development we discussed was to rotate talent into these crucible marketplaces for 6-12 months to develop expertise very rapidly.  Some of these CMOs came away from the conversation with the action item of formalizing a network of global talent development crucibles.  They would prioritize markets that could act as crucibles for the key marketing disciplines that would separate winning marketers from laggards in the next 3-7 years (e.g., mobile marketing, social media).

For more discussion on crucibles in the context of innovation, join us at one of MLC’s upcoming breakfast meetings, hosted by world-class innovators of W.L. Gore (July 22), 3M (September 22) and Guardian Life (November 30).  Register here.

(photo by Flickr user John LeGear)

As a very first step, companies should limit downside risks by implementing a social media policy (MLC members, click here for tips and examples).  In addition to defensive guardrails, companies should also offer simple guidelines or training to help engaged employees make the best use of social media.

Beyond this, now is a good time to redouble efforts to measure and boost employee engagement. Indeed, 46% of executives agree that surveying employee satisfaction and acting on the results is the best way to protect online reputation.

Today, a number of companies use the Net Promoter Score® (NPS) internally to measure employees’ likelihood to recommend products/services to their friends or family on a scale of 1 to 10 (more info here). Although originally designed to measure customers’ willingness to recommend a product/service, many companies have recognized the NPS as a quick way to gauge employee engagement and simplify internal satisfaction surveys (though companies should note that employee NPS scores may be lower than customer scores).

Given the rise of social media, we see a host of new uses for Employee NPS. By combining the question “How likely are you to recommend our products or services to your friends or family?” with a few demographic questions, (e.g., location, function, work arrangement, tenure, age, gender,), companies can use the data to:

1)     Identify teams/regions with high NPS scores and drive social media uptake in those areas of the company

2)     Identify teams/regions with low NPS scores for extra guidance on social media policies (e.g., obligatory training and sign-off on the policy)

3)     Isolate environmental drivers of engagement and use that knowledge to boost engagement, thus increasing positive employee involvement in social media

MLC members, see how leading companies manage employee advocacy and learn about the five major components of a successful Net Promoter Score strategy.

What do these teams have in common?  Thousands of hours of practice and significant investments from many different sources that got them to the tournament in the first place.  Coaches, families, schools, and the drive of the athletes themselves, are all integral parts  of getting a team to the level needed to compete in the NCAA tournament.  Malcolm Gladwell puts the number of hours training to reach a level of mastery at 10,000.  In real terms, that’s about 10 years of practice.

Has your Marketing team put in 10,000 hours of training?  For most of us, the answer is a resounding “No”.  Well, your Marketing team – just like every NCAA team – needs to put in the time to attain a world-class level.   And just like an NCAA team, this training cannot be a solitary effort.  A successful Marketing training program must align itself with corporate initiatives and work to build support for the program across the organization.  Makes sense, but easier said than done right?

The companies who are consistently successful in their training efforts have done just that.  The Marketing Excellence Survey, a sister program of the Marketing Leadership Council, profiled Philips Respironics – and how they were able to build widespread support for their training program with fantastic results.  Philips Respironics’ shared the five keys to success for their program:

1. Align Participation with Work Projects: Respironics selected participants for the training based on project work and ensured the training was voluntary. This helped Respironics avoid participant resentment and increase engagement.

2. Build from Small Successes:  Respironics received funding for a full-time Marketing Excellence program by developing a training program where successes would be easily visible to a senior audience, such as with changes to pricing strategy.

3. Align with Corporate Objectives: By aligning the training to corporate objectives, Respironics kept its senior management supportive of the program. Every training session included a “destination statement” at the beginning of the session to reorient learners back to corporate objectives as a reason behind the training session.

4. Align with Business Unit Training Needs: By creating monthly feedback sessions with the Business Unit Marketing Directors, the Marketing Excellence Director shaped training programs to reflect changing business unit priorities in the context of the larger corporate objectives. The feedback sessions also helped to ensure the Marketing Directors remained supportive of the initiative.

5. Assign a Project Owner: Respironics felt that having a full-time staff member assigned to create, run, and track the training program was essential in making sure that milestones and deliverables were hit and that there was a driving force behind the training program.

MLC Members, check out the full Philips case study.

The work previously summarized is specifically designed to help senior sales executives prioritize investments in skill development broadly across the sales force assuming a finite amount of training dollars. In other words, what skill set improvement investments will give us the biggest bang for our buck?

Our guidance is to think about the five profiles like potential college majors – yes, everyone takes the core curriculum (science, math, etc), but everyone specializes as well. These profiles represent the different sales rep “majors” that exist.

Now, as we dig into these profiles, the relationship builders that we found are, in a sense, a “one trick pony” – squarely focused on building strong personal relationships across the customer organization, being likeable and generous with their time. This is very much a service mentality.

Regarding the challengers, the SEC’s work does not suggest that these reps don’t build strong relationships. In fact, the high-performer challengers found in the sample were above average on all of the “relationship building” attributes. They just don’t hang their hat on those attributes like a relationship builder would. Put another way, it’s not their major.

Instead, the challenger rep uses those relationships as a starting point to achieve a specific end. This rep wins by creating and maintaining a certain amount of constructive tension across the sale. They offer the customer unique perspectives – and communicate those perspectives with passion and precision in a way that draws the customer into a conversation.

It’s customer value (challenger approach) versus customer convenience (relationship builder).

Click Image to Enlarge | The Challenger profile is far more likely to be a high performer in a complex environment than any other profile.

Moreover, when we looked at the data through a different lens—the lens of deal complexity—we find something even more dramatic.  We went back to the data and divided up the high performers according to the complexity of the deals they were doing.  The bar on the left is the distribution of high performers selling relatively simple, stand-alone products (across a shorter sales cycle) and the bar on the right is the distribution of high performers selling complex bundles of products and solutions across a relatively longer sales cycle.  And if we focus on the “distribution of high performers” across the 5 profiles (as you move from the left bar to right) the challengers (the bottom slice of each bar) absolutely dominate —at well over 50% of the population.

Meanwhile, look what happens to the relationship builders as we move to a more complex environment (top slice of each bar in the illustration).  The likelihood that they achieve “star status” falls to nearly zero.  Reflecting on this page, it’s the perfect snapshot for why so many of us struggle with the migration to solution-selling.

What this tells us:  if we’re not buying or building challenger reps, chances are we’re going to come up short as our world becomes more complex.  These are the high performers we’re going to need to sell the more complex solutions many of us currently (or will eventually) rely on to survive.

We’ll discuss what we should be doing as marketers to support this high performer profile in an upcoming post.

• Your company hasn’t created a standardized set of marketing competencies and capabilities. You may have a sense of what general areas to focus on, but intuition is a poor man’s reference guide to functional improvement.
• Marketing’s functional scope has significantly increased over the last several years.  A marketing manager may be leading an agency negotiation one day, the next she could be working on a segmentation project, and maybe she’s doing a pricing re-boot a day later.   

Even when we do create development plans, our tendency is to link them to short-term projects (e.g., “did you or didn’t you complete that digital campaign, and was it successful or not?”), which results in general management skills development. Or we align IDPs toward developing very specific skills relevant only to one project, when we need to focus on basic – but incredibly necessary - marketing competencies like marcomm mix management, segmentation, or channel management that enable success across a future projects.

Like I said, it can be tricky…so, one of MLC’s sister programs, the Marketing Excellence Survey (MES) created a job function guide to help you and your management team build more meaningful, marketing knowledge-oriented IDPs by framing development in terms of the marketing knowledge gaps most commonly found in different marketing roles. For example – what are the key marketing competencies needed for (and frequent gaps found in) product managers vs. business development professionals?

By building IDPs around the specific functional knowledge areas staff in different roles need, marketers can set their staffers on a course that will result in transferable skills – rather than general management skills or single-minded capabilities that relate only to a specific project. 

My suggestion: don’t just use this job function guide to create plans for your direct reports, you can also:

• Pass this on to your own managers so they can use it with their teams
• Help yourself out by passing it on to your HR business partner who probably could really use the help understanding and creating a common vocabulary for basic marketing competencies
• Pass it to your staffers who are wondering about the kinds of knowledge they need to acquire to progress the next level or to a different role. 

• The Challenger (27% of the sample) – These reps are the debaters on the team.  They have a deep understanding of the customer’s business, and based on that insight, the Challenger rep is not afraid to assert his/her views…even if those views differ from the customer.
• The Relationship Builder (21% of the sample) – Sales reps that fall into this category have a tremendous service mentality.  They are adept at building and nurturing customer relationships by being highly accessible to the customer and responsive to needs.
• The Hard Worker (21% of the sample) – These are the folks that are always willing to go the extra mile.  These sales reps are self-motivated, nose to the grindstone, and don’t give up easily.  They run to feedback and seek out opportunities for improvement.
• The Lone Wolf (18% of the sample) – These reps are self-confident – they follow their own instincts instead of the rules.  We love them because they bring in the number – we hate them because they’re both hard to manage as well as hard to find.  These reps are probably best described as the prima donnas of your sales force.
• The Problem Solver (14% of the sample) – Detail-oriented reps that are reliable and naturally drawn to solving client issues (particularly the kinds of post-sales service issues that can really bog down a client relationship).

Who Wins? By far, the profile most associated with high performance is the Challenger profile.  Again, these are the reps that love to debate and use his/her deep understanding of a customer’s business to provide that customer with a different way of thinking about their business and how to compete.  In fact, when you dig into the data, they do three things well:

• Teach – Providing insight in the moment and teaching customers something new/valuable about how to compete in their market
• Tailor – Crafting the message being delivered to resonate with the customer’s specific priorities
• Assert Control – This does not mean be aggressive or abusive; this is about the ability and willingness of a sales rep to stand their ground when the customer begins to push back.

Who Doesn’t? Less than 10% of all-star performers fall into the Relationship Builder profile.  To be clear, the data doesn’t suggest that we shouldn’t have relationships with customers, but it tells us that building familiarity with your customers shouldn’t be your primary strategy for growing revenue.

Up next: we’ll look more specifically at the ramifications of all this for marketers.