Jani Hovila
So, you want to be a business partner? Be ready to answer challenging questions.
Most of our engagements start with a discussion about the role of the marketing department in our clients’ businesses. And what is the long-term vision and development plan for the marketing role?
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From "Christmas tree decorations" to strategic positioning
Reasons to think about strengthening your marketing function and becoming a business partner vary.
For some, there are changes you feel are necessary to the way marketing is currently perceived, or perhaps the way the marketing department operates doesn't feel optimal. Or it's something you, as a marketing leader, simply want. Or you see it so vividly that your potential to provide value to the business far outweighs what you are currently capturing. Or all of those.
For some, the drive for change is that marketing is working like a production house, an internal agency, or is at least perceived as such.
One CMO mentioned they used to be the "make anything department," from Christmas tree decorations to the most strategically important positioning. For others, you feel you are appreciated and valued by the work you do, but still, for some reason, you feel you don't live up to the full potential of what marketing could be for the business – a true value-add business partner.
Working with these visions, the typical 3-5 year vision with our client CMOs would be something along the lines of:
• Trusted Business Partner
• Influence on the strategy, not just jumping to the execution phase
• Value is thoroughly understood by our stakeholders
• Alignment on outcomes and results, but marketing ownership of the tactics
And maybe throw in something about a data-driven department, but that's a topic for another day and newsletter (or rant :)).
I like to try to simplify complex things. If you want to become a "trusted business partner," the more concretely you can describe what you mean by that, the easier it is to identify what you actually need to change to achieve it.
Four things you need to achieve to be perceived as a partner
Based on these past four years working with the topic, there are typically four things that you need to achieve to be perceived as a trusted business partner:
1. You need to be important in the important things that affect the overall success of the business.
2. You need to be able to show and prove performance against those things.
3. You need to be held accountable for your performance and your part in it.
4. Everyone needs to understand your role in the overall success of the business.
From those points, you can start assessing how far away you are from that position now and what you should focus on first.
Eye-opening questions you need to answer
A couple of my favorite questions are the hard questions that, when answered, are very eye-opening for many. They are hard, but you need to be able to answer those if you want to be a business partner:
When marketing succeeds, what in the company improves? Think processes, quality, and outcomes. Be very clear with your answer what that improvement is. And your answer can’t be that when marketing succeeds, marketing improves.
What would you do to improve those processes and business outcomes with unlimited resources to provide game-changing value? Think big here. If you are a publicly traded company, it would need its own bullet point or slide in the next investor presentation.
How professional is your marketing function? Think about non-marketing-related topics: capacity, resources, budget management, progress reporting, and performance management. These build C-level trust.
Would you be ready to show the value of your answers to the first two questions? Would you be ready to take that success as your accountability? If a big part of your salary were tied to that? Why yes or why not?
What is your point-of-view on this? Would you be able to answer these on the spot?
Dive deeper into the topic with the recent webinar and its materials
If you find this topic timely and relevant, I recommend you see our materials from the latest webinar: From support function to business partner: how to redefine marketing’s role to match business needs.
Check this brief clip from the webinar:
