Sam Birkett 0:06
Hello, and welcome once again, back to Marketing Meanders with Sally and Sam. And now it's part two for our podcast anyway, I'll be quiet. And I'll let you carry on and listen to our conversation. Enjoy.

I mean, that's the crucial thing. Would you say that the communication really then and the ongoing communication and checking in is important because of course, businesses change don't they, I mean, you could be in a position where you feel you've got everything working together, but then you lose certain members of the team or perhaps as we see it, there are moments massive external pressures are enacting upon all of us at the moment. And therefore, do you think this sort of this regular, would I describe it as a health check or misalignment Health Check is important? Do you think that's the thing we should do?

Andrew Hancock 0:49
I think there are two things, I think there's communication. And also, I think there's an understanding of what each of the other people do as well. Many years ago I used to work on the McDonald's accounts, to European McDonald's account, and you physically had to go and work in McDonald's for two weeks. To be able to work on the accounts, so I understood exactly how the brand worked and was portrayed to consumers. And it was a real eye-opener because you really then understood what it is, you know, what the brand stood for, and where it was, and I think quite a lot of bigger companies, and I know they kind of go and have you can go and kind of do a job swap. So sales can go into marketing for a couple of weeks, and vice versa. And growing the brand team to understand different aspects of what the bigger picture looks like, rather than just being siloed. And going, oh, all I got to do is hit my target in sales. There's a bigger picture, my marketing budget is this and I'm running this campaign. You understand, people understand why they're doing it, and why they're doing other things on the periphery as such.

Nick Hughes 1:52
But I think are we, are we... businesses are driven by top line sales of normal flow, in my opinion, they are. And it's all about the results on a Friday, the result at the end of the month and the results in the quarter. Is it too much short-ism, in the view of the business, and the expectations set at the top? I believe that is and I believe that just slowing that process ever so slightly, to give people understanding around the rest of the business reaps rewards, a couple of months down the line, maybe even a couple of quarters down the line, where they can understand what the impact of a decision they've made in marketing, for argument's sake, impacts on sales, brand operations, or even further afield and the business as well. So I agree with you, Angela, think that understanding how the business actually operates, who its core market is what its message is, and how it wants to get there, is key. And again, I hate to come back to the John Lewis example. But it's very, very similar to that again, where they are aligned. The business understands individuals in the business understand what they're there to do. They're not there to sell bread, eggs, milk, they're there to provide the best possible service to an individual shopping for their food or whether via TV to provide the best service. And actually, that comes full circle. With people coming back to purchase stuff at a later date. I never 20 years ago, I never visits the corporate electrical retail of Currys and Dixons I never visited shopping and John Lewis very often but it's my first port of call every time now.

Sam Birkett 3:20
Am I right in saying I think that the... I mean there's the main big store in High Wycombe, you know, where they have their sort of offices and everything, don't they have, every single manage management, candidates and training, they all have to serve, you've seen about going to McDonald's or serving on the shop floor as it were, they all have to do, I think I'm right in saying in terms of an HR process, they will have to be doing the jobs all around the business to begin with. So they get very early on straight away that understanding of again, this is how the brand is represented. Actually, you know, where the action is with the, with the customers as well. So that must be one process I suppose which they have in place, which helps to perpetuate that I suppose over the generations of actually it's been around such a long time.

Nick Hughes 4:02
Well, I think during the COVID period centre, the first lockdown, we chose the distribution centre is not too far away from where I live, and the staff were and it's in an office as well for purchasing and buying etc. And the staff were kicked out to the offices and put into stores to support the stores and keeping the stock and keeping shelves full. And speaking to a member of staff who were in uniform, they were in a shirt and a pair of jeans, stacking shelves and you know, your agency staff, you're gonna have a call from head office, because we understand that actually, this is about the brand delivering what it says it needs to deliver, which is customer service. We've got stock in the shelter got stock in the warehouse, but we're going through stocking products faster than we can replenish and at the time they couldn't recruit. So getting people that experience on the shop floor, certainly, for me, seems to reap lots of rewards for the many ways that they probably still don't understand.

Sally Green 4:57
It's interesting because I think you have to be honest to do alignment, you have to be keen and you have to be honest. And I think one of the main things businesses possibly need to do is, I would be very surprised if every single business couldn't find an example of a moment when being not aligned was a real, genuine problem. So marketing had put out a campaign without talking to sales. About what was going to be expected, saying "Okay, everyone, we will pack up all your product in a special Christmas box with a bow on it for Christmas, just buy it online, and that will be fine, great". And we launched this campaign off it went, and operations had kittens. They said, "What do you mean, we've got to put all these books in a box and put a bow on top of it? We haven't got time in the warehouse to do that." And I think you need to really come up, sit down carefully, look at your business and say, can we think of a time when not being aligned mattered? And I'd be very surprised if people can't think of one.

Sam Birkett 6:02
Yes, it's interesting, actually. Because I remember I mean, a typical business I was involved with a number of years ago where it was it there was a typical, I was actually I suppose the crux of misalignment, actually, I would say, so it was to do with actually planning of how much space we could give to certain promotional campaigns, which were promised to clients from the sales side, but there were those, there were three different sales teams and me as well. And then other pressures from internal people looking to, you know, get space, basically, in a communication. And this was a weekly meeting. And there was this sort of, vibe, literally, it's like, the horse-trading market, really which I had to preside over on a regular basis. And then looking back, you think, gosh, if there had been a better way of doing this, we could have realised so many more opportunities, rather than just solving a problem, we could have had more opportunities because regularly, you'd have the sales guys come along, say, "Oh, well, I've promised this and this, that and the other to a new client, and what can you do for me?" Or rather, "You need to do this somehow, and make it work", rather than us coming together before that meeting had happened? And going "Well, actually, why don't we try this or we could try and do this". And it made me think actually about whether you know, better-aligned teams are more innovative and can actually, you know, they've got better flows of communication about what the customer needs and where the markets going, perhaps as well as you say, if you've got one in their silo just performing to their own metrics, effectively their KPIs and that's all they're focused on. If you're actually focused on you know, this free flow of communication and understanding of what the customer needs surely you've got a better again ecosystem for innovation would you say?

Sally Green 7:47
One would hope so absolutely, I mean more eyes on the problem often solve it so that if marketing is finding it particularly difficult to find leads for this particular sales team? Don't just I mean, it's important not to sit there and half go "Oh, God, this is a nightmare". Why don't you go and talk to the sales team and say, "Let's spend half an hour actually sorting out where we think these leads are, how we can find them", because it could be that sales are pissed off they're getting the wrong leads because nobody's ever talked to marketing exact about exactly what kind of leads they want, you know, they got a whole load of leads from Austria who are interested in Austria, but nobody's told them. So we need that kind of alignment and it can solve things really quickly and it'll change... it is possible. Although being aligned takes some time and reaping the benefits take some time, there can be some really good quick wins to it. All of a sudden marketing isn't wasting its time finding purpose leads, because they've started talking to each other or they both recognize the main target that sales and marketing should share. But very often don't.

Andrew Hancock 8:52
I think also what we want to do with Konnect is to be able to give those silos the confidence to speak out and be different and to have that education and understanding that actually, don't sit there and keep schtum you know if you've got a great... if you're in sales and you've got a great marketing idea that he knows is going to work in sales, go and chat, go and start to have those conversations start having those communications don't close in those communications. So I know lots of businesses have this open door policy but in reality how much does that work? And I think with Konnect what we're gonna do is actually break down those and go, actually everyone should be the same you know, have the confidence to understand it and align it so then you can then change for the better

Nick Hughes 9:37
But that's all about that is Konnect isn't it, and that's about that alignment piece of finding that common language the common goal and Sally and I, we talk about this all the time around marketing, working on programs two to three quarters out and sales as they're looking for a program in this month, nevermind this quarter. So as you know, we've already mentioned having sales strategies and marketing strategies. Why do they need to be two separate strategies? You know, the world is changing. And, you know, I see it from a sales perspective where people are more marketing benefits slant and vice versa. So why can't they be one and the same?

Sally Green 10:18
As much as I hate the word, this word "smarketing". That's exactly what you're talking about, Nick, that we should be marketing and sales should wanting the same thing. To a certain extent.

Sam Birkett 10:27
Yeah, it's interesting. You said about having the confidence as well to speak up and actually, everyone there to have that ability to honestly share, I suppose a lot of it is about that honesty, isn't it? And I suppose the beauty of having this external perspective is the... you can go in with a totally independent view of things and say, Look, this is just what we've discovered. And you're treating everyone equitably in terms of how you're investigating how they operate, what's going on. So I suppose that's incredibly valuable from the kickoff, isn't it? Really, you're just getting that independent analysis of look, this is where things are, and then you can start working on the improvements, the changes, which may not be, you know, completely groundbreaking and massive there. So there could be smaller adjustments, potentially, which then go on to help yield greater results, I suppose.

Andrew Hancock 11:17
It's for the teams to have confidence that they can kind of, you know, talk about their frustrations and their ideas that don't go straight to the board and are then just poo-pooed straight away. If then, you know, and I guarantee that kind of sales will say something very different to what marketing will say, to what brand probably say, and they'll be three very different, you know, iterations or rationales on what each of the others do. And what Konnect try and do, what we'll they try and do is take that, and then put all the bits of the key bits together and go actually now this is where we need to move forward to make you succeed, and transform your growth.

Sally Green 11:54
It speeds up board decisions, you're absolutely right, your sales, marketing and brand can come together. And say, this is what we're suggesting, the board don't have to juggle all these different sessions, which one is more important? Which idea is best? So it actually speeds up board decisions, which might mean that you're going to see a genuine change in revenue quite quickly. It's not something that you have to wait forever for alignment to make a difference. If the board is making more coherent decisions.

Nick Hughes 12:27
And for me, that part of what Andrew was saying, resonates well again, about how we go to market and connect, and who we engage with, because engaging too far down the food chain, you don't get that honesty. Whereas if we sit at board level at director level, how we engage with the business owners choose the business owner, that recognises something is... I hate to use a phrase misaligned but I would say out of kilter between what they want their brands to be or what their brand stands for in their marketing and how the sales teams are going to market as well. So it's that honesty from the top that we need, because once we got the honesty in the conversation, then we can start to move forward. And we found, certainly, I found should say, having these conversations at a mid-manager level, there's lots of protectionism, lots of "Ooh, can't say that because that might not be politically correct in this business", where it as if we can have an open and honest conversation at board level. Yes, you do fine. So there's this disjointed misaligned, not perfect approach to how to best about their business.

Andrew Hancock 13:36
So I'm just gonna throw another stat in quickly here because I was it's apt. 87% of sales and marketing leaders say that collaboration between sales and marketing teams enables growth for their business, and that was from review in Review 42 in 2021. So kind of just post-pandemic. And that just proves, that stat alone proves how important it is this collaboration word is being used, I think hugely throughout the business. But it's just what does collaboration stand for? What is the understanding of collaboration? What is, you know, how does that manifest itself, it's very easy to say, "Oh, we collaborate. we're collaborating", and then nothing changes.

Sam Birkett 14:20
That's it, as long as it's that following through and I suppose, as I alluded to, before, this idea of leadership seems to be pretty crucial to me, I mean, this true leadership, which is very much embracing everybody involved so that, you know, you are putting in place, you know, the processes, the support to help see through your vision. So as you say it's not just completely top-down and actually there's that uncommon understanding, I suppose. Again, this comes back to that word, understanding business. What is collaboration mean? How does it manifest itself? Is it purely you know, excuse me, someone could say, well, we have a team meeting every week, and it's okay, well, let's dig into that a bit. What is that team? sheeting, what's on the agenda? Who gets to talk? What are the actions? What are the follows up? What's the culture? I think that's the fascinating element of this is, isn't it?

Andrew Hancock 15:09
What are the goals? What are the goals? What do you want? You know, at the end of it? What do you want out of it?

Sam Birkett 15:14
Yeah, exactly. Rather than on paper just to sort of, well, we're, you know, we've ticked a box, and something's happening, but it's it. Yeah. Did you have a common goal that you want to achieve? And then how are you accountable for that? I suppose as well, I mean, are people actually then saying, Well, yeah, we do have goals. And you could have goals, which is a standing goal, which never really get checked off. And, you know, do the things actually happen, I suppose, the doing isn't it really in that observing of the doing the changes that you want, either well, either maintaining a situation or all the changes that you want to make? And then I guess it's just those best, I say, best practices, good practices, which you need to have in place, don't you? I suppose, which I'm guessing the kind of recommendations and things that you might be going into with businesses, I would presume without giving away your thinking. I'm not sure that. But yeah, that strikes me as that would be really critical to then, you know, enact change, if, as and where it's needed in an organisation.

Andrew Hancock 16:13
I think it's really interesting, you said something there, which was a word I picked up, which was accountable. And, it's making sure, you know, the right people are accountable. And that, then, you know, accountability is then actioned upon. So, you know, it kind of goes back up to the top again. So it goes that you make it a little board that business owners are accountable, and what happens with the bigger picture?

Sally Green 16:35
Yeah, I mean, because at the beginning, it's going to, it will involve change, and people do hate change, and resist change and don't like it. And you've got to make sure that the shareholders and the people on the board are noticing that those now weekly meetings that you're having are actually producing something, you're not just all sitting there being really pissed off because it's a waste of time. But you've actually said, "Oh, yes, we've had the weekly meeting". It's for the senior management to say, the senior leadership team to say, I want to know the results of that meeting. And not just "Yes, we met, and so and so said this", but "we met seven so said this, and this has changed as a result", it's not just good enough to say, "oh, yeah, we've had the meeting", because otherwise, you haven't aligned at all, you've just got cross in a meeting.

Nick Hughes 17:21
I had a conversation with someone about a month ago, who isn't employed by a business as a Change Manager, and not too dissimilar to what we do here. They've offered to develop some Intel systems to help communication within the business. And all that happened was the existing directors and managers relinquished the responsibility to the Change Manager and they're probably in a worse position than they were three months ago because they're not bought into the process and the whole thing.

Sally Green 17:51
I mean, alignment does have to be bought into by senior management, the senior management leadership team, have to have agreed around the board meeting, we are going to do this with our business. And they will then start driving it through the business.

Sam Birkett 18:06
And is there really, I suppose I'm fascinated by the human aspects? Well, humans are all... all the people we're talking about are all human beings, of course, and as we quite often come back to this podcast that goes back to the actual human dimension of it, so I suppose as well, in this, you know, there has to be that joint understanding of say, how other elements of the business work, that joint purpose, etc. But does also have to be that sort of motivation? So people are really thinking, Well, yeah, this is you say, it's not just another thing for me to do in my day, it might have already very busy day, it's actually something which is it's really important, or it's critical for the future success of the business and my future success within my role, and my team. So I guess you have to really try and get that across and then build that I guess what we're trying to say, like an understanding, but also a kind of a, you know, on a manager or director level basis, they've got that real "Yeah!". This is actually something I am bought into and yes, I can see that it's, it's having positive results for the business as a whole, but also for me and my team. But I guess you need sort of some metrics or some level of degree of understanding to that, do you think to actually make that then successful across all the different teams that you might be working with do you think?

Sally Green 19:21
I think you're right, and I think you have to be in a position to hear some quite tricky answers. As a manager, you're going to get people saying, "well, I can't go and talk to sales about that, because I haven't got time". And you're going to have to have some tricky conversations where you say, "actually, we're going to have to change what you do as your job because it's so important that you talk to sales about this, that I want you to not do this". So people may have to actually change people's work structures, which can be difficult and awkward. So it's not as if alignment is just oh, well, yes, we'll all just become aligned just all we've got to do is hold hands and then it's all fine. That's you can't sort of align, you have to have it in people's consciousness. And so people are going to have to give things up to become aligned, potentially, or do things they don't want to do.

Nick Hughes 20:11
That's what I thought, some of the early parts of your question was talking about if it means more work for me. For me, that's a bit of a misnomer, because all we're doing is changing behaviours ever so slightly, not asking people to do more, but actually, it becomes easier, because the team, your team, and the other teams around you, and then ultimately, the business start to think in one way. And if you think going back to the football analogy, if you look at how the England women's team did recently, and they're probably ranked fifth or sixth, in their technical ability, globally. But actually, they understood the very, very clear communication from their manager, everybody's individual role, every department within the first 11. And then everybody played a part within the team. So whenever they came on, they all knew the same language, what was expected of them, and how they moved around the field as a team, they move forward as 11. They came back as 11. They stood in the middle as 11. And that's ultimately how they won that championship. Technically, they weren't the best team and that's accepted by the manager in the post-interview. There were actually more technically gifted teams there. But they operated as a complete unit on the one understanding of the principle, fantastic communication.

Sam Birkett 21:33
Yeah, definitely. I mean, I like that analogy, because it makes it easy to say. So as we said before, it's that common understanding of how the different facets and people in the teamwork. And it's also I suppose, that communication, but also the word we used earlier on as well, the confidence, isn't it? I mean, they say, in sports psychology is that you know, you can be greater than the sum of your parts can't you, through that confidence of you know, you've got confidence in knowing how other elements or how other people work within an organisation, then, you know, as you say, you're not necessarily creating more work. You should think, well, I'm not responsible for that. But I know very well, that's an area where this team, this person, this individual does that and I can focus on this strength or this area that I'm supposed to focus on. So you're not actually having to do more, as you say, you're actually you know, you have greater, you know, there's less, I suppose less duplication or crossover, perhaps in roles as well, potentially. So absolutely, yeah. Very much not being something where you have to do more, take more responsibility, or do more work in a particular role. Yeah, that's really, like, that's a lot.

Andrew Hancock 22:33
It's almost, you know, working smarter, not harder. And, you know, the German team going back to that communication that the German team came on with a piece of paper, I don't know whether you can remember in Iraq as their communication tool, and, you know, I think England, they knew exactly what they're doing from the get-go. They didn't need any bits of paper coming on, as you know, it's kind of changed direction as a result.

Sam Birkett 22:57
Do you know what I remember exactly that piece of paper at the time, I remember shouting out watching this on hold it actually, I was watching it with Italian commentary. But I could see what was going on and I remember that piece of paper, like a sort of an a5 piece of paper coming on. And I've never seen anything quite like that. I've seen people play and being briefed before they go on by an assistant coach, and then they've got "Okay, right, you're switching there, you're going there". But there seems to be a huge amount of scrutiny that's going right. So let me just take you through this. And there's a five point plan here. And this person is a substitute going on and talking through this, this very complicated idea. And I thought, exactly that. Yeah. Why do you need to do that at this stage?

Sally Green 23:39
What they needed was a PowerPoint.

Nick Hughes 23:42
I'm sure why, you know why? Because in their training, and in the lead up to that game and into the other games, they didn't understand what that alignment meant to that team and if something went wrong, they will counteract it. And yeah, we've all laughed and joked about this bit of paper over the last couple of weeks or so. But TV cuts in different ways. But even when England brought a substitute on, I didn't see anybody getting the flip charts, I would say you do this, you do that. It was just to players there stood saying "go on, you know, you gotta do".

Sam Birkett 24:14
Yeah, and there was also the consistency of the selection wasn't it? I mean, it's the same starting 11 every single time and clearly... I mean, okay, you know, we don't want to go too far and these weren't injuries but there was that consistency wasn't there I suppose, as well that consistency and they knew, you know, their leader, their manager had this clear vision and clearly to be very well communicated, and it was living and thriving. I suppose that's the thing. I was trying to get to the human side of it something like this has to live and thrive in the minds of the people in the business because that's ultimately what it is, isn't it? It's all the individuals, all the human beings who are actually delivering and working on this vision, whatever it might be, for whatever enterprise, that's where it lives. And of course, it's manifested in the experience of the customers and, you know, evolves with the experience with customers, but it's something that has to live and thrive and be supported by the tools that each of the processes I guess, in the organisation to help you continue to deliver that that sense of alignment, I suppose if that makes any sense at all.

Andrew Hancock 25:13
And if you bring that back into the business world, that vision is your brand strategy. As your brand tone of voice, that's where the brand sits above it all. And then it's pushed out. Everyone is talking, feeling engaged in the same way.

Sam Birkett 25:27
Perfect. Gosh, I think we've all sort of hit a sort of a note though, it's gone well, we've bit cracked it.

Sally Green 25:35
Let's all sing Sweet Caroline.

Sam Birkett 25:39
What a perfect note to end on, funnily enough, I've got the music. Wow! Well, I personally feel, I think we've done a really interesting exploration of the subject there, actually. And I found it really fascinating hearing from all of you about, you know, and clearly, this being a clear issue, or a challenge that can be can be addressed, can't it? And I think it's a really interesting proposition that you have, with Konnect. So I don't know, I suppose I'll throw it out there to any of you who wanted to just give a maybe perhaps a sum up about where Konnect is, how you're, you know, how you can be found and, and what sort of any of the next steps might be for anybody who's listening to this, who's, you know, looking into this area, perhaps anybody likes to take up the reins on that?

Sally Green 26:25
Okay, if anyone would like to talk to us, we have a website, it's konnectsolutions.co.uk. And that's konnectsolutions, one word, .co.uk. And you'll be able to find our ethics there and what we're trying to achieve for you. And it's got some very interesting stats on there, which will show you that those people that do connect, it makes a big difference. So it's not just something we've kind of manufactured and think, Oh, well, we'll just worry everybody, there's some real evidence on there that shows that it does actually work. And if you want to email us, you can email us at align@konnectsolutions.co.uk, or you can find us on LinkedIn as well. And we'll be really interested in talking to anybody, whatever level in the company you are, if you feel that there's a problem, or you feel that you could be doing it better, we would love to talk to you to see how we might be able to help.

Sam Birkett 27:17
Great, thank you very much. Well, that's marvellous. And I'm sure people will be interested to look into there with you guys. And it's obviously it's always a pleasure to talk to you all as well. It's fantastic to have you and to have welcoming back Andrew and Nick on the pod and I'm sure if anybody's looking up they can find you guys on LinkedIn as well as approaching you individually as well. So we'll link that in our descriptions. Posting this. But yes, I think it only really remains for me to say thank you very much, Nick and Andrew and Sam of course as ever. Thank you for your contributions today. If anyone's looking for us, you'll be able to find us on Marketing Meanders on LinkedIn, we're on Facebook and you can also if you want to email us, you can email us at meanderspod@gmail.com with any questions or interesting topics you want to discuss and we'll take it from there. So thank you very much once again, everyone. Really enjoyed that and yeah, bye for now.

Sally Green 28:15
Thank you. Bye, everyone.