What are soft skills anyway?

“Soft skills get little respect, but will make or break your career.”  - Peggy Klaus, “The Hard Truth About Soft Skills”

Many, if not most, professionals are smart. Countless people have the education, experience and brainpower to identify and find solutions to today’s pressing business problems. And yet, they don’t all move up the corporate ladder. We all know, at some level, that it’s not solely about being smart or performing well technically that opens up executive office doors. It is the elusive “soft skills” which play a critical part.

Soft skills are hard to name and define; and thus difficult to develop.  You need to have a clear sense of what the skills are, and then you can more easily ask for feedback and measure progress. A Harvard Business Review blog cited the Center for Talent Innovation’s study that says the most important soft skill is executive presence.

3 key elements within executive presence

Executive presence connotes that others, especially existing leaders in the organization, perceive you as “leadership material”. Some young women I have mentored have heard “you lack executive presence” as a key reason why they did not get the desired promotion or growth opportunity, but they don’t get precise feedback. Here are the top 3 elements from the study:

Gravitas

67% of the executives surveyed agreed this was a core characteristic. Gravitas comes from the Roman virtues, and connotes dignity, importance with a certain substance or depth of personality. To me, it’s about confidence and credibility; it answers the question, will people feel “safe” following you.

Communications

Your verbal communications are how you demonstrate your gravitas. It is your ability to “command a room”. It is not only in formal presentations, but even in meetings with your peers. Do you listen actively? Do you ask the right questions? Are you able to relevantly add to discussions in areas outside your sphere of responsibility?

Appearance

While not the top factor, it is clear to see how appearance could negatively impact both communications and gravitas. It’s the reason why the tried and true advice is to “dress for the job you want”. Yes, it’s true that you can’t judge a book by its cover. But it’s also true that, like it or not, your appearance will contribute to others’ perception of your gravitas and to your ability to command a room.

How to develop executive presence in your team

Personally, I never had the “executive presence” discussion with any one of my managers. It was just not talked about or named. Coming up, it seems you either had “it” or you learned “it” through osmosis. And, well, that’s just not scalable.

I’ve found that the most important thing you can do to increase your team’s executive presence is to talk about it with them. Underwhelming advice? Maybe, but truly it is that easy. Just begin talking about executive presence as a factor in how individual performance will be evaluated relative to earning promotions.

I endeavor to talk about it with every person I am fortunate to have on my team. I don’t make it a single discussion or like the awkward “talk” you have with your mom or dad at 13. I just work it into day-to-day work, 1:1’s and quarterly goal setting and performance reviews. Just talking about it increases each person’s self-awareness around how they present themselves and are perceived by others. And it provides a common vocabulary for asking for and providing feedback for improvement in this area. And it requires nothing more innovative than a conversation.

How do you think about executive presence? How are you developing your team?

Building a Superstar team

"A" players hire "A" players

You may have heard this quote attributed to Steve Jobs, “‘A’ players hire ‘A’ players; ‘B’ players hire ‘C’ players”

In my career, I’ve found it to be consistently true. And, I’ve learned that it’s also rarely that simple.

Team makeup impacts everyone's performance

Any one person’s performance is, to some degree dependent on team composition: the diversity of skills, relevant experience, role clarity, work style preferences and personalities involved. And this means are times that “A” players find themselves within team dynamics that constrain them to performing at a “B” or “C” level. And this is frustrating to everyone involved

One way this can happen is if team leaders approach hiring as simply filling a role versus building a high performing team.

Superstars can lift everyone’s performance

Of course there are times when hiring superstar performers lift the productivity of the team. However, this rarely happens by accident. It requires active, engaged leadership (with help from their HR partner) to identify and articulate what the “right” A player would need to bring to the team.

Lou Adler shared his hiring philosophy that there are four kinds of work types: Thinkers, Builders, Improvers and Producers. And that while each type is necessary at all stages in a company’s life cycle, the balance shifts over time.  With companies needing more Thinkers and Builders at the outset and more Improvers and Producers as it matures.

Identify the hill to take or to take the hill?

Adler’s article reminded me of an interview early in my career where a startup CEO asked me, “do you prefer a) to be the one to identify the hill to take? or b) to be the one to take the hill?”

At the time, I fumbled through my response because I thought it was a trick question. With time and experience on the other side of the hiring desk, I see it now for what it was. A genuine way of trying to get to know me in an interview setting.  

There isn’t a “right” answer to his question and my picking a) didn’t mean I couldn’t execute, nor did picking b) mean I wasn’t strategic. It’s simply an effective question designed to help him learn who I was, how I work and where I find my flow. This is critical information needed when assessing who to bring onto a team.

Team member diversity

Having different kinds of people on a team make it a stronger team. And that’s not just some management platitude, Harvard Business Review cited a study which confirmed when teams are diverse, more meaningful innovation occurs.

But successfully managing a diverse team can be harder on its leader. There is greater need for role clarity, communications and successful mediation of inevitable conflict. And I suspect this is may be why some managers struggle with the act of team planning and opt to forgo team diversity for homogeneity.

And by the way, if you’re interested, I prefer to “take the hill” :)

Related links:

What’s our Plan B?

What kind of Marketer are you?

Good leaders get out of their own heads

What's our Plan B?

“I love this idea! what’s our Plan B?”

Anyone who has worked with me has heard me use this phrase. I say it often. It only takes a few meetings to learn that having a Plan B is necessary in order to get an idea green lit, funded and resourced.

Don't get me wrong, I'm no "Debbie Downer". It's just that no matter how confident we are in the success of a program at the start, there is always the chance of execution error, miscalculations or just run-of-the-mill, unexplainable, under-performance. And it’s better to be cognizant of this potential at the start.

Projects are about engaging with risk, not avoiding them

An Econsultancy blog around recognizing the risk in project management says this:

Projects are about engaging with risks, not avoiding them. We engage with risk in order to achieve commensurate rewards. If we can eliminate all risks, then the project is probably trivial, the rewards inconsequential. Most of us want to work on projects that make a difference. So we have to deal with risk.

It goes on to confirm that the best time to think about risk is at the outset of the project. And to ensure the team is aware of the signs so that issues can be dealt with as they occur, not when too many of the dominoes have fallen.

2 more benefits of establishing a Plan B

In my experience there are additional benefits to teams who clarify their Plan B up front.

1. Clarity and transparency around the metrics

I’ve written about the many benefits of getting everyone singing off the same metric song sheet and it applies here too. The program team needs to be on the same page around the metrics that will trigger the decision to move to the established Plan B.

2. Fosters a risk tolerant culture

I want team members to bring me their move-the-needle ideas. And I want them feeling good about what the business learns from every test. Establishing a Plan B as part of their original idea removes much of the destructive “blame game” dynamics that could potentially come into play. 

Because the Plan B is part of the team's original idea, if/when a Plan B needs to be implemented, the program itself isn't a failure. And the focus can be on gaining learnings that can later be rolled into the next idea.

Planning for Plan B

Business-moving ideas will always involve some risk. Proactively planning a Plan B helps mitigate that risk. There is less hesitancy in calling issues out and putting the already-agreed-upon alternative plan into action. And it keeps the focus on learnings for the business vs. an innovation-crushing blame game or witch hunt.  

Happily, I have been fortunate to work in online businesses where technologies like A/B testing, content management systems (CMS) and marketing automation tools allow programs to be easily monitored and quickly adjusted to Plan B when it’s been needed.  

Tell me what you have learned about managing risk while fostering a risk tolerant culture?

The grass is always greener, Gwyneth

When I first heard about Gwyneth Paltrow’s remark that moms with “office jobs” have it easier than she does, I didn't have any reaction. Whatever, an actor with an opinion…

However, as the fervor grew around her comment and sarcastic responses were published, I felt compelled to bring a new perspective to the conversation: empathy from one working mom to another.

All moms are just doing their best

I believe every mom can also stipulate that being someone’s mom, anyone's mom is difficult - period, full stop. And just like the Anna Karenina quote about every unhappy family being unhappy in its own way; there are the big and small stresses that are part of every mother’s experience which are unique to them. As outsiders, we just can’t know or fully understand it.

We romanticize what we want, but don’t have

Unless she's struggling with mental illness, it’s been my experience that all moms are all trying to do the right thing by their kid(s) all the time. This is true whether she manages the home, works 9-5, works 80+ hour a week 50 weeks a year or is a wildly successful movie star that has to be away on location for weeks at a time. Every mom is always, actively figuring it all out for her kids.

It's easy to demonize the "other" and assume the worst about them.  And it's especially tempting when the "other" has things in her life we have idealized or romanticized...like 24 hour nanny support, cooks and maid service or making millions in just a few weeks of hard work a year.

From what Gwyneth said, my suspicion is that she is, on some level, idealizing and romanticizing MY life.  My normal, routine, professional + wife + mother life with an almost 8 year old son.  One where I commute an hour to an office every day, take work home every night & weekend, and continually try to achieve that elusive work-life balance.

Of course, the day to day stress, drama and ups and downs in my life are things she can’t and doesn’t know. And that’s the point -- she’s romanticized the generic trappings of my "office job" life because it’s something she doesn't have in hers.

So let’s call a truce: one mom to another

Absolutely, she shouldn't have said what she said. She was having a little pity party about her life and said something insensitive. Maybe she was tired from working all day and was missing her children? I can relate to that.

Let's all remember that lesson from our mothers: the grass always looks greener on the other side of the fence.  No matter which side you are standing on.

So for whatever it's worth: Gwyneth - no harm, no foul.

Achieving "Smarketing" is challenging

Have you heard of "smarketing"?  I don’t know who is credited with coming up with the term itself, but I think it's fantastic!  

It’s a term to describe the desired alignment between an Inside Sales team and a Marketing team: Sales + Marketing = Smarketing  

I always like 'branding' complex concepts and ideas with memorable names because it provides a shared vocabulary. And, unfortunately, aligning Insides Sales and Marketing teams tends to be complex and fraught with tension. It doesn’t have to be and it absolutely shouldn’t be. If there were any two teams who need to be actively collaborating and working hand-in-hand it is inside sales and marketing. 

So why does the relationship between Inside Sales and Marketing teams get tense and complex?

This Harvard Business Review blog summarizes the key drivers of the trend of companies to move more toward inside sales.  And in includes this quote that, for me, illustrates the crux of the marketing/insides sales dynamic:

Inside Sales is a transactional engagement and the focus is on opening opportunities. Outside teams are solution and relationship based...our Inside Sales...require persistence, research and back end work

This highlights two ideas that can fuel tension between marketing and inside sales teams:

a) that inside sales is transactional and

b) the work of inside sales requires persistence and research.

Here’s the thing: if Inside Sales work is transactional, then the leads delivered by Marketing must be highly, highly qualified and just moments away from a purchase decision.  And if Inside Sales requires persistence and research, then the sales rep is accountable for actively working leads delivered by Marketing; being persistent and creative about cultivation.

So Inside Sales wants Marketing to deliver them large volumes of highly transactional leads, and Marketing expects Sales to be persistent about cultivating and closing. Tension, anyone?

I’ve found true collaboration and "smarketing" can occur if the two teams align around the business metrics that need to be optimized. And by opening the kimono around the processes of each of the teams. Active dialog on both fronts helps smooth out rough edges and keeps the expectations of each team well managed.  

In an earlier post I wrote about the many benefits of getting everyone to sing off the same metrics song sheet, and a significantly more collaborative inside sales and marketing team relationship is a key benefit.

Inside Sales is a growing trend, and Marketing leaders must embrace it. Kick it off on the right foot and actively collaborate with your sales lead. Own the process to ensure both teams are aligned on priorities and have a common view of the metrics for business success.  This will help smooth out the rough patches on your way toward true “smarketing”.

I'd love to hear from you. What are you doing to achieve “smarketing” in your organization? Any tips to share?

Recruit your customers to be marketing agents

In an earlier post about freemium business models, I talked about how customer acquisition investment ROI is amplified when you can leverage the inherent social aspects of the problem your product solves. I think of this as recruiting your customers to be your "marketing agents". Customers become marketing agents when they are doing the heavy lifting to attract new people into the product experience.

A customer's advocacy is far more effective at driving action than anything marketing can do by itself, so this approach can be highly efficient. Plus, the investment made to acquire that first customer can be spread across all of the people they eventually bring in -- increasing the effectiveness of ALL of your marketing investments.

While it is not easy to make this happen, there are some straightforward rules of the game.

Leverage what is social about your product
Your product's experience must take advantage of the social, viral behaviors inherent in the problem it solves. Stay focused on your customer's problem, remembering that social happens whenever one person shares an experience with another person and that social is not just Facebook, Pinterest and Sh#t Silicon Valley Says meme videos. Understand how people interact together in order to address the need today and insure your product experience takes this into account.

Lower the bar to sign up
It must be drop dead easy to sign up. No one wants to inconvenience their friends/coworkers, so they will not invite others in unless their own sign up experience was friction-free. Spend the time to optimize that experience and it will absolutely pay back with increased viral growth.

And if you utilize social sign up (and you should), make it clear what data you will be accessing and that you would never post or share without their permission. Users like the ease of social sign up (not another user name and password to remember!) but fear having their privacy comprised or unwittingly spamming their friends.

Make the free experience valuable
It's not enough that you make it easy to sign up. All new sign ups must quickly see the value provided and, ideally, personally feel the benefit. This is especially true for those users who are invited in by other users. Invited-in users are influenced by their relationship with the person who invited them to check it out, but their tolerance for any speed bumps in the getting-started process is lower so their 'time to value' needs to be short and sweet.

And when they experience the benefit, it is positive feedback for the user who invited them in because his experience just got better.  And with positive feedback he is that much more likely to continue to being your marketing agent.

Activate, activate, activate
A solid nurture and engagement strategy is another necessary element for success. You must encourage adoption of those product features that best address the user's need and which benefit viral, word of mouth sharing. In-product, triggered messaging as well as email and social channels must all work together to make it happen.

The benefits of turning your customers into your marketing agents are significant and worth the investment of your and your team's time. You'll be a hero with your CEO and CFO as well as in your customer's eyes.

Data, collaboration and singing off the same song sheet

I often hear "data-driven decision making" cited as a desired tenet of a company's culture. And we all also know that every person on today's marketing teams need to know their way around a spreadsheet (What kind of marketer are you?).

But how do you make being data driven a reality? First, everyone needs to be singing off the same song sheet. Literally.

One song sheet builds a common vocabulary
Ok, I don't mean the team is literally singing, but I do mean using one common dashboard. At minimum, a weekly document tracking the critical business metrics plus the associated driver metrics. And where all sources are clearly articulated and calculated or derived values are clearly defined.

Having one "song sheet" that everyone uses insures that a common vocabulary is used across the business. This is essential for needed alignment across cross functional teams comprising finance, marketing, product, sales and support team members.

Whenever I start a new assignment, this is one of the first things I tackle. And having done this a number of times now, I am no longer surprised when the effort inevitably uncovers a misalignment. It can be as small as a misunderstanding over the definition of a conversion rate or as large as inaccurate source data. In my experience, it has even highlighted executive dissonance around what precisely is the most important business metric: new sales growth, profitability, revenue or acquisition costs?

And, always, there are team members who privately admit to me that they had not previously known what the critical business metrics were nor understood how metrics were sourced, calculated or forecast. Employee engagement increases when individuals understand and can articulate how what they do contributes to the overall success of the business. Creating a common metric dashboard is worth the effort just for the impact to increased engagement alone.

How do you get to Carnegie Hall? practice, practice, practice
It's not enough to simply have a common song sheet, everyone has to know how to sing off it. And that takes practice. It will take multiple repetitions and review before your entire team is consistently fluent with the data, its trends and how this knowledge and insight applies to the work they do and decisions they make each day.

I like to establish a regular time each week with the team to review the metrics, current trends, share insights and any planned actions. The regularity and repetition helps the entire team start to understand and internalize the rhythm of the business. And as programs and products launch and/or optimizations are tested, the impact is seen in the metrics. And through regular conversations around this cause and effect, the team learns the activities that positively impact the critical metrics and begin to apply that knowledge in their day-to-day prioritization and decision making.

It's a process, not an event
Create a "song sheet" and "sing" off it doesn't sound like rocket science and it isn't. But you may be surprised about how many organizations say they want to be data driven, but don't take the steps to enable team leads and team members with the tools they need. And a key element of success is repetition and creating a routine around the review of the metrics. Building a data driven competency is process, not an event. And it's well worth the time invested.

What kind of marketer are you?

"What kind of marketer are you?"

It's a great question and, coincidentally, over the past few months, I was asked this question a lot by different start up executives at various events. I am happy to be hearing the question more regularly because it demonstrates an increased understanding about the breadth of the marketing discipline and differences among marketing professionals. 

We know that the most effective marketing teams require a wide range of talent to effectively address the revenue and growth needs of each of our unique businesses. And while every marketer needs to be data driven, you must not hyper-focus solely on optimization or you will lose sight of the forest for the trees.

Who do you need on the team?

This fun infographic summarizes some marketing roles (personas) that are on today's best marketing teams: a web designer/developer, a content creator, a technologist, an analyst and a campaign manager. In addition, every well-stocked marketing team also needs professionals focused on user insights, branding/positioning and as well as on pricing and packaging. And depending on your business, you may also need marketers focused on sales readiness and programs for upsell and activation.

Effective marketing leaders are able to align all of these different specialists around one integrated marketing strategy. Of course each marketing leader has his/her unique strengths, weaknesses, blind spots and areas of genius and these are informed by both her inherent DNA and his unique path to leadership. Some, like me, "come up" through quantitative acquisition marketing with its analytic rigor while others "come up" through branding or PR or creative tracks.

Regardless of how any one leader starts their marketing career, in order to be effective in today's marketing environment, they must understand and appreciate how each specialty works and how each complements the other. Without this understanding and appreciation, a leader runs the risk of crafting and executing a lopsided strategy.

And business priorities can and will change from year to year. Today's marketing teams must be flexible and, potentially, virtual. Marketing teams need to stay nimble and be constantly skating to where the puck is going to be (Wayne Gretzky). I prefer to lean on consultants and agencies for critical, specialized activities and hire marketing professionals who can strategize, manage and lead multiple activities and only those functions where we need to own that core marketing competency in the long term. But these kinds of decisions are specific to each business.

Leaders think beyond their specialty.

For those up and coming marketing-leaders-in-the-making, my advice is to find ways to extend your horizons beyond your current specialty. Talk with your current manager and find external mentors. Find opportunities to spend time with other marketing specialists on your team and learn from them. Lay the groundwork now because this insight and experience will be necessary when you're running the show one day!

What you miss when you hyper-focus on optimization

Lately, I fear some marketing leaders may be losing sight of the forest for the trees. They are veering too far toward the sole goal of cost-optimization and moving further away from the business goal of driving demand and increasing revenue.

For all of the right reasons we got closer to our CFO's and learned how to justify our budgets through achieving ever-lower CPL's (cost per lead) and CPA's (cost per acquisition). We fell in love with A/B testing our copy, creative and landing pages in order to squeeze another point or two out of a conversion rate. We hired analysts and learned how to manipulate pivot tables with the best of them.

And as fun as data analytics can be (and I am one big geek...), it is dangerous when the value of marketing is seen to be in the act of optimization...not in driving demand. Adam Needles from Annuitas recently wrote a blog, "Is the CMO the problem?" and characterizes the problem as, "CMOs obsess about their marketing ROI; however they focus on activities and their costs, not on demand and revenue."

Don't get me wrong because optimization is my middle name (see geek reference above). Closely watching acquisition and retention metrics and managing costs is a necessary part of marketing program execution. However, it is necessary, but not sufficient.

Optimization is a tactic, not the strategy.

Given pressure to justify marketing budgets and departments, some marketing leaders have over-corrected and lost sight of their role to provide the customer insight driven strategy needed to create and sustain long term growth.

To combat this, I second the suggestion from the McKinsey & Co blog "Why can't we be friends" that the CMO and CFO collaborate to identify marketing's success metrics to ensure the set addresses both the short term and the long term health of the business. Short term metrics will be primarily financial: new sales, reduced churn, and customer acquisition costs to name just a few. While long term metrics may include: brand awareness & consideration and Net Promoter Scores.

I didn't say it would be easy.

The conversation with your CFO to get agreement on short and long term marketing success metrics may not be easy. We all know that many CEOs and CFOs can be biased to be focused on the short term financial metrics. It is marketing's job to continually bring the long term view into the conversations. Getting consensus will solidify the wider value the marketing team provides and will facilitate the necessary conversations around the investment needed to sustain revenue growth, not just short term cost optimizations. 

If one of your 2014 New Year resolutions is to build a better relationship with your CFO, getting to a common set of both short term and long term metrics is a great way to start.