Written by Josh Grenzsund, CPSM.

To mark its 45^th anniversary, the Society for Marketing Professional Services entered a new era in its relevance to A/E/C business. At the SMPS National Conference they proclaimed a new vision: “Business Transformed Through Marketing Leadership.”

As a whole, the conference and the brand launch was an exciting and energizing experience aimed at creating disruption and challenging preconceptions. The tagline to go with the vision is “Flip the Script” – challenging us to see what is possible if we invert our assumptions while still focusing on the same goal. When I do just that, I see two huge preconceptions about the thousand or so people who attended the annual SMPS conference in San Diego last week.

Preconception #1

People in general, including many of our “non-marketing” colleagues at the A/E/C firms where we work, may assume that everyone going to an SMPS conference is narrowly specialized as a “marketer.” Nope.

A fair number of people attending Build Business 2018 were in fact the executives and other top leadership of their firms. Attendees included people with titles and roles such as president, vice president, principal, associate principal, partner, and chief strategy officer.

By definition, executives and C-suite leaders are not specialized as “marketers” per se.

Preconception #2

Given those executive and C-suite titles, people may believe that not everyone going to an SMPS conference is a marketer or business developer. Nope again.

If you allow yourself to “flip the script,” isn’t it the top leaders listed above – the ones absolutely accountable for making or breaking their firms – who are at their core the ones most concerned with understanding their clients, winning their business, and delivering service in line with their brand promise? Aren’t they the true embodiment and essence of a marketer and a business developer?

They should be.

The Limits of Non-Executive Roles

As professionals dedicated to marketing professional services, we are skilled, capable, positive, and gritty – relentlessly pushing toward excellence. However, without top-level leadership to solidify a company’s culture around a core purpose that is relevant to potential clients, the reality of marketing professionals’ efforts can be akin to pushing a rope.

Without top-level leadership to solidify a company’s culture around a core purpose that is relevant to potential clients, the reality of marketing professionals’ efforts can be akin to pushing a rope.

It’s clear that the SMPS brand launch is telling marketing professionals that we are going to be the leaders who transform business. While that may be a true aspiration, I see three things within that aspiration that we need to understand before we launch off back to our firms with taglines and visions.

First: The current presidents, principals, partners, and officers in A/E/C businesses should also be leaders in SMPS. The ones at Build Business 2018 seem to be well on their way, and they and their firms are better off for it. We not only need to encourage these leaders, we need to help them create opportunities to impress upon their peers why they should also make SMPS an integral part of their professional life and a resource for their firm’s success.

Second: Marketing professionals have to help others see why transformative change should happen. Holding to the status quo in business can seem like a safe route into the future. I’ve seen strategy sessions year after year resolve with a commitment to “pretty much keep doing what we’re doing” even when technology, talent, concerns, expectations, and the economy never cease to evolve. The status quo is actually a terrifying option that puts any firm at risk. It’s akin to driving so defensively that you back up traffic – slowing productivity, breeding frustration, and even creating a safety hazard. These days, when artificial intelligence and machine learning are already driving cars next to us, we cannot allow our leaders and colleagues to believe they can get by just fine without adapting to the pace and character of business.

Third: Change evokes fear. When people are afraid, defensive behavior and even offensive behavior feels personally justified, but is corrosive and destructive to everything and everyone it touches. When you bring up the vision of “business transformed through marketing leadership,” be sure you have absolute situational awareness and watch out for those in your audience who may only hear “I think you’re a terrible leader,” or “I’m coming for your job.” And maybe they are a terrible leader, and maybe you are coming for their job, but how organizations deal with that reality should be based on collaborative win-win intentions and actions, not competitive zero-sum battles. You need to find a way to flip the script that transforms everyone and everything, including yourself. Demonstrate vulnerability and leadership by showing you are willing and able to change as well.

When the shared vision in business is to apply the whole firm’s effort to win and keep clients, that firm, the teams that make up that firm, and the individuals that make up those teams will be resilient, effective, and unstoppable.

Top 10 Push Forwards

I attended a lot of excellent sessions at Build Business 2018, but I can’t offer you any “take-aways.” Instead, I have something better. When you approach people about transforming business during the next 12 months, or when you take time to reflect on it yourself, consider these “push forwards:”

#10: Focus more on your expression, posture, tone, and cadence than on your words. As humans, we take 55% of the meaning from posture and expression, 38% from tone, and only 7% from the words. Prioritize communication to be in person, by voice, and as a last resort, by email or text.

#9: Ask questions based on your context and reality. Taken and applied at face value, best practices and advice are basically superficial fads. Bring the practice or advice into your operating reality, then question and critique to adjust and customize it…or pitch it all together because it just doesn’t fit.

#8: Be curious, genuinely curious. Start by moving the emphasis on your questions: From “How are we going to (meet this sales goal, win this project, earn this client)?” to “How are we going to (meet this sales goal, win this project, earn this client)?”

#7: Ignore people when they should be ignored. Focus on inspiring true believers, not convincing skeptics. You have limited resources, don’t let people take yours when their intention is to make sure you get nothing in return.

#6: Improve teamwork by finding people’s similes. One person on a team may think about the business task at hand like designing a bridge, while another thinks about it like playing a game, and another thinks about it like a street fight. Share each other’s quirky perspectives to find a common language and a shared context.

#5: Remove options and resources. Find your team’s inner MacGyver. Amazing insights and answers can become really clear when you actually restrict what you have to work with and how long you have to get it done.

#4: Technology. Millennia prove that technology transforms — everything. Understand what’s moving, how fast, in which direction, and what it means for you and your firm. This will keep you prepared to move — whether it’s to get on board or get out of the way.

#3: Negotiate everything. Always start collaborative and win-win. Match the other party’s move. If they go win-win, stay win-win with them. If they go win-lose, you go win-lose, hard. If they switch back to win-win, be forgiving — once. If it becomes truly collaborative, go “below” the issue to get at each party’s deep interests, and get creative to bring new things into the conversation to make a win-win package deal that builds the relationship.

#2: Be positive and helpful. We are all in the helping business.

#1: Be mindful of confirmation bias. Our brains are attuned to see the evidence and patterns that we expect to see. While common wisdom says confirmation bias is something negative that has to be resisted or managed, imagine if each of us is positive and helpful and we expect to our colleagues to be positive and helpful. That’s a bias we’d all like to see confirmed!