Speaker 1:

Hi, and welcome to The Insiders by durhamlane, where we get perspectives from industry thought leaders about strategies that are unifying marketing and sales cycles to help accelerate growth inside your world.

Simon Hazeldine:

Welcome to The Insiders sales and marketing podcast. I’m Simon Hazeldine. I’m a Sales Transformation Strategist and Sales Performance Consultant, helping my clients get more sales more often with more margin. I’m also a keynote speaker and author of seven books on sales and negotiation. I’m your host, along with my co-host, the one and only Richard Lane, who is the Co-Founder of durhamlane.

Simon Hazeldine:

durhamlane are an inside sales partner that help businesses to grow their revenue through an integrated sales and marketing methodology. Richard, you have the privilege of introducing our guest for this episode, so over to you, Sir.

Richard Lane:

Great. Thank you, Simon and wonderful to be back in The Insiders studio. Really thrilled today to be joined by Darren Cassidy. Darren is the Managing Director for UK and Ireland, and heads up the services business in Amir for Xerox, a huge global corporation. Really thrilled to have Darren on the show and I think we’ll get some wonderful insight from today’s episode. Simon, back to you to get us started.

Simon Hazeldine:

Wonderful. So, Darren, welcome to the podcast! Welcome to The Insiders. Great to have you with us. What we normally do is just ask our guests to introduce themselves to our listeners. So, give us a little bit of background and how you came to be in the role that you’re in currently.

Darren Cassidy:

Great. Thank you. Well, first of all, thank you for having me. Really looking forward to the conversation we’re going to have. So, I’ve been at Xerox for 31 years, one company. I’m not sure the generation of today are going to do that, but in that time, I’ve had about 17 different jobs – I calculated the other day. I joined as a New Business Salesperson, and I’m having a wonderful career getting incredible opportunities to work in our UK company, our European company, our Amir. I’ve just come back from five years living in New York, where I run our channels business for North America, and now back actually running the UK and looking after our services business for Amir. So, it’s been 31 years, 17 jobs and an ever-changing journey that I’m still on.

Richard Lane:

Amazing.

Simon Hazeldine:

Wonderful. Thank you for letting us know what you’ve been doing for the last kind of 31 years. In our pre-interview session, we discussed leading the change from technology to a technology-led services at Xerox, and this required what you described as “adaptive leadership.” Would be really interested in your definition of adaptive leadership and why you think it’s so important?

Darren Cassidy:

Yeah, and I think that was one example that we talked about with the backdrop being change, 31 years in Xerox, I’ve seen so much change, and yet there’s so much change ahead of us and we’re in the middle of a lot of change. So, the example you gave is one, but I think it’s really important as leaders in our business. We are open to change, we embrace change. And part of that is adapting, moving, being agile, listening, changing, and really helping our teams move through the ambiguity that some people can see in change.

Darren Cassidy:

As we go through these different cycles of change, it’s interesting to see different characters, personalities, and styles emerge. And as I said, adaptive leadership is one that I’ve really embraced as a necessity, not just in our company, but I think for everybody in the modern world.

Simon Hazeldine:

And changes, John Kotter from Harvard, I think would say something like: “75% of corporate change initiatives fail.” What would be your magic secret source, would you say, for change success as a subsidiary question to the first one?

Darren Cassidy:

First of all, Simon, I’m no guru like you. I haven’t written books, so I’m just giving you my layman’s opinion, but you know what? I think the first and the most important thing about change is mindset. How you embrace change, how your teams embrace change; how we feel about that is really, really important and actually sets the tone for so much. But I also believe that part of our leadership role is about producing and driving energy into the business, energy through that change process. And I also believe that energy flows where our attention goes. If you think about that outside of work, if you place your attention on an area, you can produce energy in and get things to move.

Darren Cassidy:

So through change, I think it’s important all the time, but through change, it’s really important that we are very, very clear where we want our attention as a leader, where we want our attention as teams and where we want our attention as a business, so that we can drive energy through the right areas and keep things moving.

Simon Hazeldine:

So link to that, Darren. In a busy, noisy changing world, what do you do to ensure that your teams are focusing their energy on the right things? Because clearly that, like you say, where your focus goes, your energy goes, very, very important, but how do you get that to be the right areas?

Darren Cassidy:

Yeah. I have a bit of a fixation, I will declare, a bit of a fixation on one page. So my teams will know, I talk about strategy on a page, actions listed on a page, and it’s not because I’m completely mad, which I may be, but it is because I believe the art of condensing what you do into one page so that you are clear on what you’re trying to achieve. What are the areas, the KPIs that you’re going to look at, and most importantly, what are the focus areas?

Darren Cassidy:

And I typically work in threes and maximums of fives. What is the focus, if not that it’s everything that we’ll do as a team, but what are the most important things that we place our attention on and really commit to giving us the best chance of delivering the outcomes that we want? For many years, we look at strategies on a page, clear focus areas, and action plans that follow that.

Darren Cassidy:

And then part of my role is actually to make sure that we commit to that. I spend quite a lot of time working within that framework. If I’m outside of it, it’s a centre check for me to say, “Hey, am I spending my time in the right area? Have we shifted? Or do we need to change and adapt, going back to the first question, adapt where it is we’re going and how we’re going to get there?” But it gives me that reference. It gives me that framework to work within but then allows me to work with the teams and the teams to work with their teams within that as well.

Simon Hazeldine:

Yeah, that’s an interesting insight, and I guess it’s a lot more challenging to get it on one page than it is to say, “Get it on one page.” I guess that’s the real challenge, isn’t it, being able to distill it down into those three to five key areas?

Darren Cassidy:

It’s the hardest thing because when you look at most things, there are lots of things that we do and you have to separate away the things that you do that are more routine-like and the most important things. The other key is actually, it’s not just my three to five focus areas. Going through the steps that I go through; we build this as a team and I really like this. It often feels like it’s a bit slower at the beginning, but when it comes to execution, the speed up factor is enormous.

Darren Cassidy:

If you can get the team to think with you, to align, to debate, to discuss, to argue, but eventually to settle on what is it we are trying to do? What are the things that we’re going to measure? What are the focus areas? I do believe it gives you the foundation to drive meaningful change and give you a chance to really hit the execution challenge that we know isn’t even tougher one coming.

Simon Hazeldine:

And it’s about the leader’s, I think ability to invest that time. An old CEO of mine used to be really strong on: Debate, Decide, Do. So really have a proper debate and a conversation and get all of the disagreement and the tension dealt with, then make a firm decision. And then the belief was the implementation happened more because of that, but you have to go through that debate as he described it.

Simon Hazeldine:

Richard, durhamlane, you are obviously working on behalf of your clients a lot. So how do you ensure that your folks who are representing clients when they’ve outsourced to you have that kind of understanding and clear focus on what the client wants them to deliver?

Richard Lane:

Yeah. We talk a lot about partnership. Everyone has their three Ps, don’t they? We have our three Ps of Partnership, People, and Process, and partnership in our world has to be a two-way street. So, if we’re signing up a new customer, a big red flag for us would be if they’re outsourcing to get rid of a problem and not looking to engage. If you are not totally aligned, to Darren’s point, it’s very difficult to be successful. I don’t believe that we can be successful in delivering meaningful results for our customers unless we’re truly integrated.

Richard Lane:

One of our drivers to every team is: get on the org chart, whether it’s formally or informally, usually the latter actually, but let’s get on the org chart. And I think when you get there, then that’s a sense that you’ve got that partnership in place. And we’re very similar to Darren, just to sort of go back up a little bit. I’m a real fan of one-page plans, Darren. So, one page opportunity planners.

Richard Lane:

Is it Winston Churchill who said: “Sorry Mother for the length of this letter. I didn’t have time to write a shorter one.” Being concise is difficult and for some reason, the simplest things are often the hardest, but I really see them paying dividends.

Simon Hazeldine:

Yeah. It is a challenge and I guess setting a clear strategy and creating clarity is a challenge, but perhaps I guess many of our listeners would say executing that strategy is an even greater challenge. And you mentioned the importance of people’s early involvement and time. In addition to that, or as well as that, what do you do to make sure implementation happens successfully for your folks at Xerox?

Darren Cassidy:

Yeah, I think as you said, probably the toughest challenge in business is taking strategy through culture to execute, especially through change. I work with the notion of there’s three cogs. You’ve got the task cog, be clear on what it is that you’re going to go and do, be clear about your focus areas, be clear about what you’re trying to do and get alignment. You’ve got a team cog and then you’ve got a self-cog, and they actually have some different dynamics in them.

Darren Cassidy:

So, the first one we’ve just talked about, my approach, again, just the way that we adopt here, one page, clear. The team one is about that alignment. I love your 3Ds by the way. I may add my D, Darren’s 3Ds and steal that from you. I think that’s great, but that getting alignment from your team, open to debate, ongoing discussions, an environment that’s conducive to talk, but do, focus and move, fail and change. And that environment around the team is really important.

Darren Cassidy:

And then I also think that there’s a… as a leader, we all have a role ourselves in this, and I talk about moments matters. There’s moments when we’re under pressure, where how we react and what we do actually has a profound effect on the way things operate. So if I’m not prepared to commit to review those focus areas, then they’re unlikely to happen because my self-conviction is not demonstrating the actions or the commitment that I’d want as an example. And when we’re in those reviews, if there’s new ideas or challenges and we don’t embrace that properly and listen, but decide and adapt and move, there’re moments where I feel like as leaders, we have to act and show that we are committed with the team to deliver the change and the outcomes that we want, but it is the tough… I think that execution thing is business’ toughest challenge. It’s relentless.

Darren Cassidy:

The minute that your eyes go away from that, the focus shifts somewhere else. So, it is a relentless focus, making sure your operational processes are lined up to deliver the areas that you want to focus on, and you have to trust and believe that the outcomes will become the outcomes. I always say, you don’t change the scoreboard by looking at the scoreboard. You have to play the game and playing the game for me is in those focus areas, and that’s where I put the execution focus.

Simon Hazeldine:

Yeah. I think relentless focus sticks out as a phrase there. Maybe you do need to do a book, Darren. I think relentless focus, that will be a great title.

Richard Lane:

Darren, I love what you’re talking about. It feels very familiar to me. It’s sort of agile mindset. It feels very, very startup culturish, which I think is great. And I’d be interested to know how that fits in with an organization like Xerox, which is a huge global corporation. And I guess the follow-on is, has it been a challenge changing mindset of a big corporate?

Darren Cassidy:

So two things. We’re 23,000 people, $7 billion across hundreds of companies, 100 plus years old. So yes, it’s always a challenge. I will say two things. One is… And by the way, we are also highly matrixed. So when I talk about teams, these aren’t teams that people that are on my org chart, these are teams that we put together that actually are required to deliver the outcomes that we want. So often in my reviews, in my meetings, I’ve got people from other parts of the business, but actually, do you know what? It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because you need to get the people in a matrix organization aligned to what it is that you want to deliver, and my experience is people don’t care. As long as we can get the right inputs into the right areas, then you can move that.

Darren Cassidy:

The one thing about our… We’ve been through different periods in 30 years. We’ve been through in the last six, seven years, a really exciting period. We changed our CEO. Carl Icahn took a position in our company. They brought in – an incredible CEO. John Vincentin unfortunately passed away, really, really sad, but he and his team brought a focus on change and agility that shook us to our core, for me in a great way, because it was all about ambition and purpose and focus, and innovation and trying things.

Darren Cassidy:

For me, the energy that that produced was great. For many of my colleagues, by the way, it was a real problem, who had been working in a different way. So organizationally, we’re not all the same. We’re not all the same, but it’s an exciting time for us in our company. The pace and the expectation around change and the acceptance to know that we need to do it and try different things is probably the most exciting period I’ve been in 30 odd years.

Richard Lane:

Yeah. Very good.

Simon Hazeldine:

Wonderful. That’s shaking to its core, is a very powerful thing for an organization to have. And obviously when a client outsources to you, what do you do to align to their organization and make sure they get a consistent experience?

Darren Cassidy:

I love what Richard said by the way, about getting on their org, and he means that in all context, just being part of their team. It’s really, really important. Again, Richard also mentioned this, we talk about drivers. We have to understand the drivers of the business, where they’re going, what they’re trying to achieve, that we’re engaging with. We actually like to work hard to understand the drivers of the individuals that are most important to us.

Darren Cassidy:

And we do that before, even before we try and get into what are the specific needs and requirements that they’re looking us to solve, because actually for me, success comes when you can show that you have a service or a solution to meet the requirements that they have, but connect that to the drivers that are informing how they feel and what they do in a business. And that emotional connection to drivers, I think in many ways is the art of sales. It’s the skill within many skills within sales that I think is most profound, the ability to meet the requirements and connect it in an emotional, passionate, energized way to something, whatever that something is, that’s important to the organization and/or the individuals that you’re dealing with.

Simon Hazeldine:

Neuroscience shows us how powerful emotion is. Now, I guess we’ve always known it throughout human history, but now we’ve got the technology to show how important it is as part of customers buying decisions, for example. And I think that’s a really interesting concept of getting an emotional connection to those drivers is you’re really harnessing some very powerful kind of motivation from that point of view.

Simon Hazeldine:

And Richard, how does that resonate for you from a durhamlane perspective? Because obviously, as you say, you mentioned getting on the org chart and understanding those kinds of drivers, I guess, using Darren’s phraseology.

Richard Lane:

Yeah. And we’ve talked a lot about the sort of chasm that exists between the world’s or the connection between marketing and sales. And I describe durhamlane as the middleware that connects the two together. You’ve got to understand the strategy. You’ve got to understand the drivers and where that client, your customer wants to be headed. And then our job is to help enact that change and maybe connect the dots sometimes, and there are lots of things that we can do to support.

Richard Lane:

And part of the challenge I guess, is focusing on the right ones at the right time. But also, I think delivering back insight is really important. So we focus on typically four buckets of focus. I see it as inputs, outputs, outcomes, and insight. And that last one, insight, whilst everyone’s interested in outcomes obviously, I think the insight is so valuable because whether someone says yes or says no, takes a meeting or doesn’t take a meeting, is interested right now or maybe later, as a customer I’d want to know why.

Simon Hazeldine:

Just to shift topic slightly, Darren, Xerox is committed to helping your customers determine what the future of work’s going to look like. Be interested to get your perspective. What’s the future of work for sales and marketing professionals in your opinion?

Darren Cassidy:

Ooh. That is a million-dollar question.

Richard Lane:

Just throw a little one in there.

Darren Cassidy:

We have to find ways. Sales and marketing, we have to find ways of continuing to be relevant. I agree through analytics and insight data is going to be crucial as we go forward to make sure that we find ways of connecting to the most important things for our clients. But one of the things that we are grappling with right now is we’ve gone from a world where content and data was hard to get. I’m going back a few years. It isn’t now. And actually, this world of marketing and sales being two separate domains, we’re certainly challenging in Xerox now.

Darren Cassidy:

The old paradigm of marketing does marketing, sales does sales, and you kind of get what you get, I think is a challenge. I don’t know what the new word is that is there, but how do we now engage our clients in the right way, at the right time, with the right content to get the sort of movement within the sales arena that we want is really important right now.

Darren Cassidy:

By the way, sending lots of content isn’t the answer. In the world of B2B, pure marketing campaigns in my experience haven’t delivered the… very different in B2C. By the way, we’ve just acquired a business called Go Inspire that has an incredible B2C marketing engine, data driven, insight driven, B2C, very different. The B2B marketing on its own in my humble opinion, hasn’t really delivered. So there is a new thing. There’s a new way that we’ve got to go and work, which will combine account management with the content, with some of the things that we’ve seen in marketing and have a very joined up, deliberate, engagement process that will combine the physical visits and phone calls with a very robust digital experience that we’ll look at.

Darren Cassidy:

And I’m looking at the moment with another company actually, trying to think through, I think there’s something powerful in the concepts of communities, something around getting people talking with like-minded people, not necessarily about your company, your products, but just creating communities. So we can really hear. We can really, really listen to what are the conversations that will then guide us to go and meet the problems that are really out there?

Darren Cassidy:

I think there’s many facets to that. It’s going to be fascinating over the next few years.

Simon Hazeldine:

Yeah. It’s also as well, I think the question we often ask because it’s such a hot topic for many of our listeners, sales and marketing. Another way, I guess to think about it is why don’t we think about what the customer wants at each stage of the journey or the process they’re going through, and then work out how we deliver that rather than sitting, starting with those two traditional org blocks that sit there? So it’ll be fascinating, I think to see how it goes forward and moves on.

Darren Cassidy:

Even better than the customer telling you what it is that they want is actually by provoking conversations with data and insight experiences, showing the customer what they could have, gets you in an even more powerful position to then go and do.

Simon Hazeldine:

Yeah, because the customers, with the greatest of respect to our wonderful customers, they’re normally head down inside their own organizations, dealing with all of their own challenges. They often don’t have the ability, do they? To all the luxury, to scam the market and consider and reflect. And so I think bringing what could be to them is a powerful thing.

Darren Cassidy:

And they’re talking to companies like us and the listeners because they want their expertise. We need to provide that expertise in the right way. For Xerox, we’re still known as a print company, yet in the UK, 60 odd percent of my business comes through digital services, not print, and we’ve been doing that for a while. So actually creating, and it goes back to the sales and marketing model, how do you create the conversations that you want? How do you create new expectations about where clients could go? And how do you back that up and get it to the client now in the modern world where we’ve got many, many, many choices?

Richard Lane:

In a previous podcast, we talked to a guest and we came up with what I think is a great phrase, with the sense makers and the storytellers. And I think that encapsulates everything you’ve just talked about, is that we need to make sense of this ever-changing world for our customers to help them get to where they need to get to. But we also need to share stories that help paint the picture more clearly and shows them the roadmap. So I love that phrase.

Simon Hazeldine:

Yeah. It’s a wonderful episode, and Darren, when I’m working with my clients on their sales performance, I use a little model having the right mindset, skill set, and tool setting. In our pre-interview, I mentioned that, and you said in response that you saw mindset as a skill, so that’s a fascinating way of approaching it. So as a leader, how do you approach mindset?

Darren Cassidy:

Yeah, by the way, we talk about skillset, structures, and mindset. So very similar to you, it’s a really good way of just analyzing. If things aren’t going where you want, have you got the structure, skillset and mindset in the right place? Mindset for me has always been, but is now better accepted as one of the great areas that will determine success or failure in performance, especially in a performance area that has pressure around it.

Darren Cassidy:

And let’s face it, business is full of pressure. Sports is full of pressure and many businesses is full of pressure situations. So actually, looking at mindset is critical. People ask me, “Are you born with a good mindset? Is it just methodical?” And I say, “I don’t know,” but it’s where I do come back to, but I do know that it’s a skill and I like labeling the skill because there’s some rules about skill development.

Darren Cassidy:

One is if it’s a skill, you should be able to lay out what it is that you do to help you improve your skills. The second bit and the most important thing is you can improve, and with focus and practice and feedback and coaching, skills can be developed. So, my aim for me as a leader is I need to continue to develop my mindset skills, and part of that is helping the teams and the leaders in my business drive a very positive mindset to situations that we come… Again, especially when we feel pressure.

Richard Lane:

Do you call each other out on that?

Darren Cassidy:

“Call out” might be a bit harsh. We actually, we worked over 20 years with a company called Gazing Performance and have a model that’s red to blue. It’s one of the most empowering things that we’ve got, blue is on-task, mindset on-task. You’re on focused and depending on the team or the situation, you start to describe what that is. In fact, the New Zealand All Blacks worked with them. After not winning a World Cup for two world cups on the trot with the best team by a long way, and started to get really focused on what was their blue side thoughts when they’re under pressure? When the referee made a bad decision and the whole of the world seemed to be looking at them, what did they want to think? What was their mindset going to be? And could they do that individually and consistently as a team?

Darren Cassidy:

So mindset, red to blue, and then red is diverted. We’re humans, right? To think that we’re all going to be in the zone, on task. All the words that you hear all of the time is impossible. We’re human beings and we have moments hundreds of times a day where our attention gets diverted. This model though allows you to recognize it. Once you recognize it, you empower yourself to make a decision that says, “Do I want to stay there or do I want to make a decision to go back onto something that I really know is going to be more helpful to drive the outcome?”

Darren Cassidy:

So do we call it out? We talk about red to blue. We talk about… In fact, I’m training, after this call we’re training 20 of our newer, younger people who joined our business through kickstarts and a couple of others. One of the first programs we’ve taken through is red to blue because I think it’s powerful in the work context, but it’s powerful for us as humans in life.

Darren Cassidy:

So call it out. We’ll talk about red to blue, “Sounds a bit red side. Are you okay? What do you want to do?” Our job as leaders is to help people at times move from red to blue, but once you recognize it and you empower yourself in a very profound way actually, to make decisions on your own under pressure in the time, in moment, which is the best bit.

Simon Hazeldine:

Yeah. Like you said, because pressure’s not going to be going away anytime soon, right? In a modern, demanding, competitive business world. So I think building that resilience or the ability to deal with it, I think will be the key skill, isn’t it? And that’s great to draw on models from outside of business sometimes that can absolutely help.

Simon Hazeldine:

Last kind of question… Well, penultimate question, actually. You mentioned that one of your challenges, and I think many of our listeners will identify this one, was expanding your contact base in a customer. It’ll often be the typical seven to eight people that most people will have, but how do you get to the 50, 60, 70 people you’d really like to engage with elsewhere in the organization because of all the opportunities that might bring for Xerox? How are you going about tackling that challenge?

Darren Cassidy:

Yeah, this there’s a real topic of one. We’ve got an incredible legacy base, has been a managed print provider in some of the biggest names around the world, and that’s an incredible legacy that we leverage. In that, we typically deal with certain parts of the business over the years and we have deep relationships with one, two, three, four, five people that have worked well. As I said, our company has changed and is changing rapidly. We’re moving into, as I said already, moved into digital services. You’ll hear us a lot more talking about software, other based services. We even do 3D metal printers that are on navy ships.

Darren Cassidy:

So our challenge is how do we leverage the relationships that we’ve got, but not let it restrict us to go and navigate a much wider set of contacts in our clients? And one of those challenges is again, back to our mindset, our belief that actually, we don’t want to work around these very loyal and fantastic contacts that we’ve got from our legacy business, as we are looking to drive into the different conversations.

Darren Cassidy:

When we are talking about outbound marketing campaigns and using data, the people that have been buying print really have nothing to do with that part of the business. So part of it is we’ve got to educate ourself that we need to be very comfortable, exploring much wider in organizations. The good news is the data around who is doing what is so much more available from different places, but then we get back to the question that Rich and I were talking about earlier, is once you know who they are, how do you engage 50 people in an account?

Darren Cassidy:

We’ve got 45 different services that we can go and provide? How do I choose which are the right ones for that account? And then how do I warm up 30 while I’m engaging 10? And I think that goes back to that conversation about, there’s got to be a new way that combines marketing, account management, sales, calling that allows us to do all of this in the model world. Have we got that figured out properly? No, but we’re working hard on that, and where we do get wider contacts, we have better conversations. We get to know more about the clients and it works, it’s the way, for sure. We just got to work out how to do it more often consistently.

Simon Hazeldine:

Yeah. You’ve just got such a fantastic legacy base, haven’t you? That I guess people would chop their right arm off to have and what a great opportunity to go looking for all those additional contacts. So yeah, we wish you every possible success with that. And the very last question, Darren, we’re building The Insiders Spotify playlist, and we’re asking every guest to include a song which we’ll add to the playlist. As you might imagine, we’ve had a very diverse group of guests and therefore it’s a very eclectic mix of music and artists from all sorts of genre. What song can we add to the playlist for you?

Darren Cassidy:

Oh my goodness. You did mention this and I forgot to think about it so [inaudible 00:31:02]. Symphony, Symphony would be a song that I walked down the aisle with my now wife. So that would be it, that would have to be the song. But if you were to ask me which song would I sing along to or karaoke to, it would be an Elton John song. So I’ll go with ‘Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word’ or ‘Saturday Night’s All For Fighting’ – one of those two.

Richard Lane:

Excellent.

Simon Hazeldine:

Well, we did say to everybody which one song, but unfortunately Richard couldn’t decide and had to put four songs on. So I think Richard has lay that we could probably add all of your choices, Darren, I think to add to the list because Richard’s broken ranks on us.

Richard Lane:

It’s what it’s like being a disruptor. What can I say?

Simon Hazeldine:

Richard, in terms of closing thoughts from you, some fantastic conversation themes there, what are the standout one’s for you?

Richard Lane:

Wow. Where do I start? Darren, thank you so much. On behalf of Simon, myself and our listeners, I think that’s been really, really insightful. And just for me personally, highly motivating in terms of your approach, some key themes during out, we talked a lot about mindset. I think that’s such an important… When we’re training new durhamlaners coming to the business, we spend our time on mindset because it is, I think the key that unlocks your success.

Richard Lane:

I love Simon’s “Debate, Decide, Do.” We talk about moments mattering and planning, one page planner is great and planning is amazing, but then get on with it, which I think we’ve spoken about, morphing sales and marketing together. That’s a current and consistent theme on this podcast. I drew a little diagram of marketing sales and account management. It’s something we call rev ops inside of durhamlane Darren, and you put the customer at the center of that and then have everything work towards that customer-centric approach.

Richard Lane:

And then finally, I think you talked a little bit about communities and how you can build communities to help us better understand what our customers are challenged with, what they’re thinking, what they’re looking to do, what excites them, and that then can get fed back into our business. And from an insight point of view, we can use that to go back into our planning, and with the right mindset, we can drive all of that forward. So yeah, loads to think about. Hope everyone’s really enjoyed it, but I certainly have. Thanks again.

Speaker 1:

Thank you.

Simon Hazeldine:

Yeah. Wonderful. Thank you very much. I think Darren, I really liked your treat mindset as a skill set, because we know we can do something about skillset. That’s a great perspective. I know from all the research I’ve done into neuroscience, that neuroplasticity, which is the ability of the brain to grow and adapt remains constant throughout somebody’s life. So definitely, mindset can be definitely developed from a scientific point of view. The proof is kind of there, I think which is great.

Simon Hazeldine:

So thank you very much. Thank you for all of your sharing your wisdom and of course your choices for The Insider’s Spotify playlist. So thank you very much. So hope to all of our listeners, you’ve really benefited and enjoyed Darren’s wisdom in this episode. Just invite you to subscribe to The Insiders podcast. So you’ll be notified of all the new episodes which come out on a regular basis, and also, go and have a look at the previous episodes because we’ve had some fantastic guests and sharing some great insights and wisdom, and we hope all that will help you with your sales and marketing effort. So thank you very much for listening in.

Speaker 1:

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