Speaker:

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.

Richard Lane:

Hi, I’m Richard, and welcome to another episode of The Insiders podcast from durhamlane. This week, Simon and I met with Nick and Aine, two C-level executives from Mercer UK. Amazing characters and truly connected from a sales and marketing perspective, which was really wonderful to witness.

Richard Lane:

During our discussion, we talked about the never-ending relay race that is sales and marketing, how having a startup mentality is helpful even when you work in a large corporate enterprise such as Mercer UK. How putting the client in the center of our thinking is key, being curious, and that thought leaders exist throughout your business. Something we should all be mindful of. I hope you enjoy this episode of The Insiders.

Simon Hazeldine:

Hello, and welcome to The Insiders by durhamlane, an industry podcast giving you the inside track on all things B2B sales and marketing. I’m your host, Simon Hazeldine. I’m an author, sales expert and keynote speaker on all things sales and negotiation.

Simon Hazeldine:

I’m joined by my co-host, the CCO and Co-Founder of durhamlane, Richard Lane. Richard, great to be back with you for another Insiders episode. Could you tell us a little bit more about durhamlane before you introduce our guests for this episode?

Richard Lane:

Yeah. Hi, Simon. Great to be back. Thanks very much. Really looking forward to this episode. Before we get started, in a sentence, durhamlane is a leading sales and marketing agency for enterprise organizations that are looking to modernize their go to market strategy.

Richard Lane:

So, fits in really nicely with, I think, some of the conversations we’ll be having today. Big announcement, this is our first Insiders podcast with multi guests, and I’m thrilled that we are joined by two guests from Mercer UK today. We’ve got Nick McClelland, who’s the Chief Growth Officer, and we’ve got Aine Bryn, who’s UK Chief Marketing Officer.

Richard Lane:

So, Nick, Aine, welcome. I’m going to hand back to Simon. We’ll get started, and we are looking forward to today’s conversation.

Simon Hazeldine:

Wonderful. So, first question to both of you, but I think if we go to Aine first, a little bit of background, please, how you came to be in the role you are currently helps our listeners just get to know you a little bit.

Aine Bryn:

Yeah, sure. Thank you, and really great to be here today. So, my background is actually sales and marketing. So, while traditionally, I did a marketing degree, my first job out of university was selling advertising. And as an Irish person, being paid to sell on the phone was like money for nothing. It was like a sprint; I can have conversations all day.

I worked for a company called Haymarket Publishing, which was owned by Michael Heseltine at the time, probably still is. And I had the best sales training, including the best one was the Columbo Close. That’ll give my age away, right? But fast forward, I then managed to get out of pure sales and into marketing and took me into PwC or Coopers & Lybrand at the time.

And literally, the day I joined was the day they announced the merger with Pricewaterhouse. So, I didn’t know if I had a job or not, and I ended up spending the first day talking to the partners of Coopers and telling them why this was such a good idea, and that they should sign the agreement.

Anyway, I spent about 18 years at PwC looking after global financial services marketing. So, one of the biggest sectors that PwC operate around the world. And that’s really where I cut my teeth in terms of bringing in the sales perspective, but also, making it a very much client-focused thematic marketing as to how we demonstrated our industry expertise to help them solve problems and be successful.

And then, came to Mercer via JLT. That’s where I met Nick, and Mercer and Marsh & McLennan bought JLT back in 2019, and I’ve been here ever since as the Chief Marketing Officer for the UK.

Simon Hazeldine:

The Columbo Close. Folks, if you don’t know that, you’re going to have to Google that one.

Richard Lane:

I was talking about it with a group internally, Aine, just last week.

Simon Hazeldine:

Oh…

Aine Bryn:

Excellent.

Simon Hazeldine:

Oh, wow.

Aine Bryn:

The old ones are the best ones.

Simon Hazeldine:

Oh, absolutely. The good old Columbo Close. Nick, same question to you, a little bit background, please.

Nick McClelland:

Sure. I’m a bit thrilled by the Columbo Close. I’m only going to guess it’s one more thing, because I love Columbo, the show.

Richard Lane:

There we go.

Nick McClelland:

Anyway, so, not as salubrious a background, I have to say, as Aine, but I started off my career in 2001 as a professional rugby player, so, nothing to do with sales whatsoever. But at university, I was studying law, I was playing professional rugby, neither worked out, it’s fair to say. So, I ended up joining a little-known business at the time, a startup with about 25 employees called Thomsons Online Benefits, now known as Darwin and another Mercer business.

And I was there for very happy 12 years, boy to man. I was doing marketing and sales, and implementation of platforms and all kinds of things, but ultimately, I think my true calling was in the sales landscape. And that ended with me becoming UK Sales Director for a number of years, directing enterprise sales across Europe for a little while. And then, I joined JLT where I was Sales and Commercial Director across, well, across multiple territories. And that’s when Aine joined, and a new love of sales and marketing thrived with two Irish people who connected on a new level.

And so, like Aine, I joined Mercer in 2019 as part of that acquisition. And since then, I’ve held a couple of different roles running sales and growth across our health business, doubling up that to join the career aspects together, which we are advising companies in all their HR strategy. And in the last 12 months, becoming Chief Growth Officer for the UK, trying to drive a sustainable growth trajectory and join up the dots for a very complex organization to talk to clients as one. So, it’s been a fun journey so far.

Simon Hazeldine:

Wow, wonderful. Thank you very much for giving us your background, both of you. We had a conversation before we came on air, and in our pre-interview, you mentioned that you work hand in glove with each other, and it’s, to quote, I think the best sales or marketing partnership you’ve experienced.

Simon Hazeldine:

And I’m sure our listeners would obviously be fascinated to hear your insights about why it works so successfully and how sales or marketing can work effectively together.

Aine Bryn:

So, yeah, it is, and it’s interesting. So, my career is book ended with sales starting, and now, into marketing. And I think with Nick, I found a kindred spirit in terms of you can’t sell without marketing, and you can’t market without selling. So, if you work collaboratively, you benefit each other, so it’s mutually beneficial, so why wouldn’t you work together?

Aine Bryn:

Whereas, I can imagine some people are listening thinking, well, my sales team don’t want to see me as a marketeer, and the marketeers don’t really want to engage with the selling. So, this is very different, and we look at it from a baton pass and I use the analogy of the never-ending relay race. And the baton goes back and forth in terms of what are we actually trying to achieve, what commercial objectives do we have, where do we want to get to, how does marketing help us, how does marketing engage with the sales team and the consultants and the client teams and the clients themselves? And it’s that feedback loop, and it’s that content loop, and it’s basically finessing each of our aspects.

And I think, actually, we bring out the best in each other’s area, and it pushes us to achieve even more, because we’re always looking around the corner to say, well, okay, how do I, then, pass that? What’s the next phase? It’s like that lovely neat jigsaw, there’s always a gap for you to fit in, so that you can actually drive ultimately the commercials.

And the other thing I would say is we have a very clear focus on the commercials. Marketing for marketing’s sake doesn’t happen. We look at it in terms of what is the ROI, and sometimes, there is a revenue ROI, and sometimes, it is a case of actually we need to landmark companies that we want to work with, because we think we can help them. How do we do that collectively, and as a joint team? So, we bring out the best in both sides and we complement each other.

Simon Hazeldine:

That’s a fascinating insight, and I think we’ll return to your comment about never ending relay in a short while, because that, I think, would be interesting to explore a bit more. Nick, your comments on your hand in glove kind of relationship.

Nick McClelland:

Yeah. I think there’s a couple of things. I mean, Aine’s put it so well, but a couple of things I would add, maybe more from a personal perspective, because one, I think that I was very fortunate to work in a startup to begin with, and then, a startup where I was exposed to, what was very immature marketing at the time, but marketing nonetheless where I had to work really dual role at times where we were doing marketing effort as an individual and you’re also the salesperson, and so, naturally, it helped me probably without any design to it, certainly, by chance sort of understand the world of which the individual roles can work.

But I think most importantly was that, actually, when I joined JLT, and probably four or five months in whenever Aine joined, it was an education for me and just how little I actually understood about marketing. And so, I was very fortunate to join an organization that had invested in somebody with the experience Aine had who came in and actually educated me on what marketing could really do if we got that engine going.

And so, Aine is absolutely right. That connection, that commercial connection was there from the off, because I was, I guess probably quite open to learning at the time as to what could be done. Aine came with ideas that I hadn’t seen before. And so, suddenly, it was a bit of that kind of mutual sharing of style approach that I think worked for us both.

And the thing that brought us together consistently was a belief held around more of a thematic approach to marketing where we wanted to understand the big trends that were affecting our clients in specific industries, understanding what was going to interest the clients, and how we could funnel that client through a journey with us, ultimately, where they would meet one of my team, or one of the consultants in our business.

And I think we quickly realized that if we work better together and we could learn from each other, and I certainly did, that we could have a really successful story to tell at some point.

Simon Hazeldine:

Ah, it’s interesting, I suppose those philosophical threads, or maybe some of the things that bring that the thematic approach, I think, is an interesting one. And just to return to your comment around, sometimes, it’s described as how and when should the baton be passed from marketing to sales. And I would just like to get both of your perspectives, I think, on that metaphor or analogy about it being a never-ending relay race.

Simon Hazeldine:

Yeah, I mean, Nick, could you just give us your perspective from the sales side, and then, we’ll come to Aine for the marketing thoughts?

Nick McClelland:

Absolutely. Absolutely, Simon. I think that it starts right at the beginning of any, let’s say, the start of the relay race, to use the analogy. So, if you’re going to take a new concept, new idea, and try to take that to market, then, it starts with understanding your go to market strategy and understand what thematics you’re going to lead on to make sure that your clients are going to be hooked in.

So, in a sense, the relay starts, I think, with the fact that Aine and I will be in the same room having that discussion to start with. If we’re going to market, it’s not a fantastic idea from a sales individual, or a sales leader or whoever might be, it’s an idea that needs to go through the engine, which includes marketing in that conversation.

And so, from my perspective, it starts by us both being invested in the idea at the start, and then, the relay starts. And of course, at this point, I’m not going to go through every phase and I don’t want to interrupt Aine’s flow on anything. But if there is something that we need to push into the market that we need to drive a particular thematic conversation, a point of view that we want to bring on a particular subject, that then leads to a client engagement, that then leads to an interaction with a salesperson, it can’t stop at that point.

We’ve got the feedback, what we’re hearing from our consultants and our clients on the ground, back into the engine, back into the marketing team. And that doesn’t end. It keeps going. And I think, often, in business, there are a lot of projects, there are a lot of initiatives that go on, a lot of initiatives that suddenly stop one day. And I think a lot of that is because conversation stops. The baton doesn’t get passed back. And so, there’s no learning. And I come back to that word learning. It’s a constant iteration, it’s a course correction if we’re not hearing the right things from the market. And for me, that’s what it means. It’s that constant cycle of conversation that we don’t just stop because we forget to have a meeting with the consultants or the consultant doesn’t want to interact with marketing again. We keep going until it’s exhausted, if at all.

Simon Hazeldine:

That’s great. Thank you for that insight. And Aine, from your side, what would you add to what Nick said?

Aine Bryn:

Obviously, I’m in violent agreement to what he’d just said. But I would expand it and say the thing that makes this work for us at Mercer, is we keep the client at the center of the conversation. So, we’re not transactionally-orientated, and that means that we’re not product pushing. We figure out what are the issues that are affecting the client, as Nick said, that’s where it starts, and it can never end because those issues don’t go away. They either change, or you pivot, or you solve one, and then, you butt up against another problem on, and then, you can help the client deal with another hurdle.

But it’s all about that open curiosity. And as Nick said, we’re constantly looking and measuring, and this is why it keeps going, this is why it’s never ending. We’re always measuring the impact. We can see what happens. We can… If we do an email campaign, or the consultants are having conversations, we track everything. And we use that information. And I think, at the moment, we’re in this data age, and it’s like data analytics this and data analytics that, that only gets you some of the way and this is the relay back and forth.

It’s that feedback loop, because data without interpretation and analysis is just an absolute number, means nothing. Well, we say, well, why is it? And that mental curiosity to keep asking the questions of each side of the baton, why is it working here, or why is it not working there? Why is the client engaged? Why haven’t they engaged? And that natural curiosity and focus on, are we actually helping the client achieve something? Because that keeps it fresh.

Now, propositions change, propositions move forward. The client solves its problem, and it moves on to another issue. Then, it becomes kind of the next level up, because you’ve got consultants who’ve had a tip of the spear conversation with that campaign, but they’ve opened up a whole world of conversation with the client that the client didn’t really either know we could help with, or we’d never broached them before, because they only buy a certain thing from us, and they go, “Actually, I didn’t realize you did that. Tell me more”.

And then, the baton was passed yet again. And then, the client team’s go, “Well, if I can do that with this, what could we do with X, Y, and Z? There’s no such thing as perfection, right? There’s always hiccups and trials and error. But because that fundamental client focus, we’re not product pushing, we’re trying to solve problems and make people successful, so that’s a continuous conversation. No one ever wants to stop that conversation.

Simon Hazeldine:

Yeah. That’s a powerful conversation to have, I think, in all of the organizations from our listeners’ perspective. So, yeah, Nick, did you have a comment?

Nick McClelland:

I did. Sorry. I just wanted to… Just in terms of pass the baton back for a second, Aine.

I think the culture of the marketing team is really important in this as well. And I’ve worked with a few marketing teams in my career, and all have had strengths and weaknesses and so on, but particularly, the thing that Aine mentioned there about insights coming from data, but I want to talk about the culture of the marketing team within that, and it’s led by Aine, so I’m maybe semi giving her a bit compliment here. But it’s the curiosity.

There is a genuine curiosity that comes from our marketing team, which I haven’t seen before.

Genuine interest in the market trends that are affecting our clients, and our clients are radically-affected by everything going on in the world right now. So, we’re in a good position to solve lots of problems and engage with clients from that topic. But sometimes, I think marketing functions can be quite reactive, can be just fire and forget a little bit. There’s a genuine curiosity from our marketing team on what is happening, and that’s the other key part.

If there wasn’t that curiosity, I don’t think Aine and I would spend as much time together having conversations about the big problems and challenges that exist. And so, Aine leads that, but her team, and I’ve watched this develop since our time at JLT a few years ago, her team have that infectious curiosity in that as well. So, it means that when they’re engaging with my teams around the business, and we’ve got reasonably big teams, both of us that interact with each other as well, that there is that fueled curiosity happening on both sides.

And those insights, then, are coming from the client, they’re coming from our consultants, they’re coming from our sales professionals, they’re coming from our marketing professionals. And that’s a difference that I notice in how we work together.

Aine Bryn:

I’ve had experience where it doesn’t work like that. And I think… Thank you, Nick, for the compliment, I’ll take it. Thank you very much. But I would also say, on the other side, on the sales side, Nick has got a team, and his approach to being open to the why question, not seeing it as a why you asked me that? I’m not defending myself or my strategy. More as an opportunity to go, “Oh, let me tell you why”, boom, boom, boom. It’s almost like absolutely, this is great. But I’ve been in environments where marketing, oh, you’re not fee earning, you’re a cost, therefore, the less time we have to do with you, the better.

Whereas, at Mercer, because we look at it from a return-on-investment perspective, so yes, you’re not a fee earner, but actually, you help generate revenue through that baton pass. And so, therefore, there is an openness on the part of the sales teams, and the relationship managers, and what Nick has created to say, actually, you can help me be successful, why wouldn’t I want you in the room?

Because, I mean, again, I’ve been in situations in companies where marketing is shut out of leadership meetings, it’s shut out of sales conversations, it’s shut out of client conversations, and it’s, “Oh, can you run me a webinar?” Or “You can organize that dinner for me,” and that’s marketing. Yes, marketing can do all that, but that’s not even scratching the surface.

And so, when people are asked… I always encourage my teams that curiosity is, why is a positive question. It’s not a negative. And if someone has difficulty answering that question. So, if you’re a marketer and you’re listening to this, and you’re asking the sales team why they want to do a certain thing, and they can’t articulate it, then, there’s a flaw. And even if you did exactly what they asked you to, it would not be successful. But it would be deemed marketing’s fault, not the requester’s fault. And it goes both ways; ask marketing, why are you suggesting one strategy over another? But if you have that why question, because it makes it everything better, because then, you can edit it and polish it, so that actually, you’re feeding off the skillsets of both sides. Because as I said at the beginning, marketing and sales are two sides of the same coin. You can’t do one without the other. And when they come together, oh my god, how powerful you can be.

Simon Hazeldine:

So, it’s an interesting cultural aspect to it, the curiosity and the why question. I think also that never ending baton relay race, which I think is a great analogy. Richard, a durhamlane perspective on the never-ending relay race?

Richard Lane:

As listeners will know, I’m a big fan of the baton analogy. I love the idea about it being a never-ending race, and it absolutely should be. I describe durhamlane guys as often as the middleware that connects marketing and sales together, because what I’m hearing from you both is a really, really well-connected organization from a sales marketing piece, which is great. But actually, is fairly unusual, unfortunately. Shouldn’t be. And I think the word curiosity has come up almost half a dozen times I think so far on this recording.

Richard Lane:

And that probably sums it up, doesn’t it? If you’ve got two groups of curious people that are working as one team, then, success is very nearby, I’d suggest.

Simon Hazeldine:

Yeah. And I think being relentlessly curious about your customer collectively, I think… Because it’s a very powerful thing for an organization to have. And that leads on to, I guess, a follow-up question, Aine, headed in your direction, the client-centric approach and lots of organizers, you know, we are client-centric, we put the client first. You mentioned that your perception was maybe quite strong perception, some companies don’t actually really know what that means.

I would be really interested if you could just expand upon that comment that you made in our pre-conversation.

Aine Bryn:

Yeah. Well, part of it is… I always say, what do you want to be when you grow up? And I say that to people, “Oh, I got this proposition I want to sell”. Okay. Well, but what is it? What do you want to be when it grows up? And part of it is also about, you can sell one thing once, but if that’s all you’re going to focus on, product push, product push, you’ll get one opportunity to do it. And you might make a sale once, but you’ll rarely make it twice, because they get you now. You’re just trying to sell me things, you’re not interested in me.

By putting the client at the center, and yeah, people… Cliche, “Oh, clients are at the center of everything we do”. No, they’re not. Your bottom line is you can do both. Clients are not immune to; you’ve got to make money as an organization. Yes, ultimately, you have to sell, but actually, if you get an ongoing relationship with this client, you can exceed your expectations on what you can sell, because you’re actually solving their problems.

And I look at it in terms of, we want to do two things at Mercer. We want to solve problems, but we don’t always want to be the kind of plumber who comes in at the late minute fixing the sink that’s exploded or whatever. We want to also be able to help you look around the corner and see what can you anticipate, how can you be more successful than you already are, and given the current economic environment, all the more so.

Because the advisors that stick close to their clients now, helping them through this, maybe not making a lot of revenue, but helping them, advising them, they’ll be the ones who are remembered that you were by my side to help me through this. You didn’t just sell, oh, you’re not buying anymore. I’m not interested, and do that call calling. And that’s where, I think, it’s the really important piece.

Simon Hazeldine:

Yeah. That’s an interesting way to approach it. And Nick, you mentioned in our pre-conversation, it’s sort of a follow-on question to the client-centric question that large companies can often become inwardly-focused. So, your thoughts on switching that focus, and helping to add to the client centricity?

Nick McClelland:

Yeah. It’s a good question, Simon. I think when organizations grow organically, and they go through inorganic activity, and they become big, naturally, structures start to get created. So, you end up with businesses and divisions that are focused on certain things.

And so, as a result, internally, you’re creating almost names and brands for your business as a result. And the danger is that, actually, your people, the people who are going to face clients, whether that’s a sales professional, a consultant, a client relationship manager, they start to own the internal brand a little bit. They start to own the structure that they’re in, and they project that onto the client.

And of course, that’s not how the client sees the world. The client sees the world through the words we mentioned earlier, they see the world through their issues and their problems and their challenges that they’re trying to solve. So we’re not perfect at this by any stretch of the imagination, we’re a big company, we’ve got structures. Our people will occasionally fall into that trap of projecting our internal structures onto the client. We’re lucky and fortunate, I think, that, in our core, we’re a consulting business, and as a consulting business, you’ve got naturally bright, inquisitive people who are typically trained to ask the client about their world.

But very occasionally, you can slip into that sort of risk factor of projecting your internal structures onto a client, particularly, as you get big. And that’s because… If I go back to my startup days, we did one thing. So, it’s very easy to just go out and be engaged on that one topic. But when you’re a complex business with multiple business lines and multiple things that you can solve for clients, or if we use another language, sell to clients, then, it becomes more of a challenge to make sure you are consistent in driving that type of client-centric conversation to start with.

And so, we use mechanisms which are all about driving our people to have issue-based conversations, and making sure that we understand their industry that they’re in. We call it belief-based engagement inside our business, but it’s all simple stuff. In many ways, it’s about understanding our client. It’s about understanding the industry they’re in. It’s about understanding their specific challenges. It’s about talking about them, talking about them as a business.

And if you breed a culture where that’s the default mechanism, you’re going to have a lot more success in terms of building those trusted advisor relationships that Aine just mentioned.

Aine Bryn:

Something that I was thinking about, in terms of the culture of an organization helps the success of the sales and marketing teams as well. But also, in terms of, back to client centricity, if you are client-centric, then, you will… As well as an eye to your commercial objectives, you will also be looking for the greater good for that client.

And it’s all about allowing yourself to be comfortable with the uncomfortable, asking a question to the client that you don’t know the answer to, but that a colleague might. Is this of interest? I know I’m talking to you about pensions, but is wellbeing an issue for you? Oh, God, yes, we’re really… Whatever. Well, let me introduce you to whatever. And that’s how you grow a business. But that’s where marketing and sales can encourage that uncomfortable feeling of asking a question you don’t know the answer to. But don’t worry. No one expects you to know all the answers.

And even if you’re in marketing or in sales, ask a question you don’t know the answer to. If you only focus on what you know everything about, you’re going to be very dull, you’ll repeat yourself at nauseam, and you’ll never innovate. And the business won’t grow.

Simon Hazeldine:

So, sometimes, you have to kind of pluck up the courage to ask the brave question, and see where it goes.

Aine Bryn:

Well, yeah. What’s the worst that can happen?

Richard Lane:

Aine, I’m so with you on that. We have our methodology selling at a high level, which is consultative question based from a DNA perspective. I always think that, we spend our lives being curious and questioning from the minute that we can talk. You get into business, and suddenly, all common sense goes out the window and people clam up and only talk about the one thing, and don’t ask questions, or are afraid to be quizzical. It’s just extraordinary what happens. So, it’s great to hear you saying that.

And I think if that’s a company-wide initiative, we try and promote a similar thing, be curious… We talk about being inquisitive, not interrogational, but it needs to be inquisitive, and be interested. Our third mantra should be interested to be interesting. The more interested you are in someone else, the more interesting you become to them.

Nick McClelland:

Richard, this maybe a little mild obsession of mine at the moment, so sorry for surfacing it here. But I think it’s quite an interesting area, which is, that I think it is, as you already said, in our personal lives, we’re naturally inquisitive. We have conversations over the dinner table, or with friendship groups down the pub or whatever it might be. But we do clam up in business. And I do think that the other thing we’re working quite hard on at the moment is… And I think this is really important, this business’ deal with the pressures that are going to exist economically, financially, over the next couple of years as we’re expecting, is two words, more Cs, but coaching for confidence.

Because I don’t know whether, in business, people have the same level of confidence to have an inquisitive conversation we do with our friends down at the pub. And actually, people managers in many organizations are highly pressurized environments. They’re under a lot of consistent pressure to deliver short-, medium- and long-term results. And actually, sometimes, people management and individual relationship are very in-the-moment dealing with the pressures of the situation. And the good people, managers become good coaches, and they coach, I think, for individuals to have that confident conversation around these areas.

But if you don’t invest in that layer in having those confidence conversations, then, I can see how difficult it is for somebody who maybe has been a deep technical specialist in their career, to suddenly branch out and have a conversation about the variety of thematic issues that are going on in the client’s world at that point in time. So, coaching and building confidence in teams, I think, is such a crucial skillset as we go into this very uncertain time for the next few years.

Simon Hazeldine:

I really like the emphasis on it being a conversation, which may flow, and may not be as structured as perhaps some salespeople might have been used to. I think that’s where it gets advanced, Nick, and I’m with you. I think that’s a real coachable topic, and certainly, something I think that leaders can definitely be helping with. Aine, on a slightly different topic. On your LinkedIn profile, you mentioned insights and thought leader development. What do you think is most important for organizations about making that effective in 2022?

Aine Bryn:

Good question. I need to revisit my LinkedIn profile. Seriously, I would say that the word thought leader is used incorrectly. You’re only a thought leader if people follow you. Who are you to just say that you are a thought leader? And that is the crux of it. As long as your content and what your message is saying is grounded in reality, is achievable and deliverable and simplistic; problem x, here’s a way of getting there, and that narrative and that storytelling, that’s what thought leadership is.

And it could be a paragraph. It could be a conversation that you have with a client. It could be a report. So, there’s ways in which it is, but I think if I think about what companies are trying to achieve, if you have a commercial objective, you’re basically saying, come to us because we know what your challenges are, we know your industries, or we know your clients, and we know how to help you sell to your clients. So, you can do it that way as well. You can help them do their job while you’re doing your job.

And it’s all about having an open dialogue. And actually, not being afraid of disagreeing with your clients. It’s okay to be in violent disagreement on a principle, or an approach, because that is the curiosity piece and going, okay, maybe you have a point. Well, what about if we did it this way? Oh, okay. And it becomes that conversation.

And again, it doesn’t mean you have everything cookie cutter because, again, whether it’s marketing or whether it’s sales, if you project there’s only one way of dealing with this problem and this is it, it’s like, well, that’s an ‘off the shelf’ solution. You’re not looking at me and my challenges. You’re not being real to my organization and what I want to achieve.

And ultimately, back to my sales training, sales is all about the ego. Make the person look good in front of their boss, so that when they’re recommending you, they look great. Oh, brilliant idea. Why didn’t I think of that? Let’s hire Mercer. Let’s work with them. And that’s what thought leadership is all about.

In previous roles, we would do third factor war and peace reports. That’s thought leadership. But then, where I got reacquainted back into sales was like, well, how do you go from that to a conversation with a big bank, or a automotive company, but help with the problems that they do. And I use, again… I love my analogies. Again, this is a kind of dinner party trick, how do you go from Kevin Bacon to any movie or any other actor? There’s seven degrees, and you get to him, right?

And I use the same thing. You have this thought leadership; you have a perspective. Within minimum, I prefer a power of three. How can you go from that, what that issue that client has? And again, it’s like whether you’re having that conversation internally to help enable your campaign, whether it’s a sales or a marketing campaign, then, that gets people go okay, I didn’t know you can go from A to Z to B again. Ahh… And that gives you that perspective.

Because ultimately, people are buying your insight. And again, it’s like, but it’s not a data point, because it’s multifaceted and multidimensional. It’s like, I know I’m an expert in X, Y, Z, but I can regurgitate it any which way to help you solve your problems.

Simon Hazeldine:

I love your comment. You’re only a thought leader if you’ve got followers. That’s something for our listeners just to reflect on, all those thought leaders out there. And Nick, question to you. Obviously, many organizations want to diversify their offering, find new revenue. Obviously, something easier said than done. What are your thoughts, guidance for our listeners if they wanted to do that? Which I’m guessing the vast majority of them will want to.

Nick McClelland:

I’d hope so. That’s the topic de jour Simon, I mean, diversification and driving new lines of revenue, innovation, however you want to term it, I think is a huge challenge we all face as businesses today. Because for all the reasons we’ve talked about today. There are businesses that are in fixed pattern of work, there’s deep technical specialists, there’s diversifying away from that. So, I think this is a challenge.

I actually, I’d probably start with, not counteracting, but a slightly different viewpoint on the client-centricity, which we were talking about earlier, which particularly, when we’re trying to diversify and innovate within business, and therefore, drive new lines of business into our clients, we can fall into a bit of a trap that by being client-centric through the way that we deliver to clients and the way we put them at the heart of the business, that we can fall into the trap of the client, or customer is always right.

And actually, when you’re trying to innovate, that can be a bit of a fallacy that businesses fall into the trap of, I believe. Because ultimately, innovation doesn’t tend to come from client demand. Innovation tends to come from true thought leaders with followership as an example. Or it comes from great collaboration within a business and looking at new challenges in a different way, looking ahead at the futures of the themes that are coming through.

And clients, ultimately, I mean, we deal a lot with HR departments and finance departments as a business. They’re in the throes of just dealing what’s in front of them within the business. So, to expect a client to heavily input into the innovation that might be required within a business to diversify, I think that’s a mistake organizations do. Let’s go and listen to clients about what they want.

You know, you could throw out the Henry Ford example here, if I’d asked people what they’d wanted, they would’ve said faster horses, rather than a motor car. Or Steve Jobs, the analogy with a wider keyboard that stuck out of the phone, rather than building it into the screen. Our clients aren’t designed to come up with the solutions to the problems that are happening. That’s where we need to step up as businesses.

So, I think that it’s a challenge firstly, because you can fall into that trap, where the client or customer is always right. When it comes to innovation, that’s probably rarely the case. In fact, you have to come with a point of view in a different… When engaging with clients from that side. And then, the second thing is people behavior within an organization. Because, of course, when you are used to being an expert in something, which many of… The people who will hopefully be listening today will have deep technical experts in the business.

People who are excellently-skilled in a particular software, or in a particular consulting methodology or whatever it might be, you’re also asking those people to change how they work, change the topics. And that’s where we come back to some of the things we just talked about, like having the curiosity, giving people the confidence to have a different conversation. These are the things that, then, become important. So, you as an organization, could have great thought leaders, great ideas and so on, but going from idea to an execution of a diversification strategy where you have new ideas genuinely embedded in driving game-changing revenue in a business is a very hard journey with lots of potential pitfalls along the way that are that conventional wisdom, I guess.

And so, I would encourage anybody listening to think about that journey, and understand that there are potential pitfalls there that we can fall into, traps that we can fall into, and think about how… And again, coming back to the handoff between marketing and sales, how you are working as an organization to go end to end on new innovations, and look forward and go “What does good look like?” And recognizing that actually things like even structure and how… Going back to, again, other things we talked about earlier, how your internal structures might prohibit diversification currently.

So, rather than looking at let’s just go drive our sales people harder or our consultants harder, maybe there’s some more fundamental issues about how the business is organized that are actually stopping the innovation, or stopping the actual revenue growth off the back of that innovation happening.

Simon Hazeldine:

There’s a lot of insight there. I think those questions that you’ve both answered, so thank you very much. We do have one more question for both of you. Slightly unusual question. We’re building The Insiders’ Spotify playlist, and we’re asking each of our guests to choose a song, please, to go on the playlist. It’s a very diverse and eclectic playlist, if you want to find it online.

Richard Lane:

It’s curious, Simon, it’s a curious playlist, I’d suggest.

Simon Hazeldine:

Yes, absolutely. Aine, what would your song choice be, please?

Aine Bryn:

Oh my god. I have a very eclectic list on Spotify. Range everything from Nirvana, to a bit of Elton and everything in between. I think for this one, for the feel-good factor, I would go Club Tropicana by Wham!

Richard Lane:

Awesome. That’s going to sit really nicely next to the sort of punk rock opera track that one guest chose.

Simon Hazeldine:

You took me on a journey there. You went Nirvana, Elton John, Wham! I wasn’t expecting that. That came a little bit left to field. Nick, your choice.

Nick McClelland:

Again, very like Aine, I’ve got a very eclectic mix. I was going to go for my get me up song, so I have a song that if I’m about to go and do a pitch, or a big presentation or stand on stage somewhere which is… I’ll tell you what it is, it was Saint Motel, My Type, which you may not know, but it’s a bit of an uplifting kind of… You almost want to just dance to it.

Nick McClelland:

But I changed my mind yesterday on this, because I was listening to a song which I think is a modern classic, which in 20 years’ time, we’ll be reflecting on the same way we do with other songs today. And that’s… and if you don’t know it, I recommend listening to it, which is Love It If We Made It by The 1975. Because I think it is curious, but also, it’s a song that I think reflects the challenging times we’re currently in. So, I thought I threw that one in.

Simon Hazeldine:

Wonderful. So, some thought-provoking choice there. Thank you very much. And Richard, over to you, a bit of a recap. What were their key points. There have been so many fantastic insights coming out. I’m glad that challenge rests with you.

Richard Lane:

Oh, yeah. Aine and Nick, unbelievable conversation. So, thank you. It’s been great having you both on The Insiders. I’ve been scribbling notes, but we haven’t got time to cover everything that I’m thinking about. But a couple of things. The never-ending relay race, love that. You can’t sell without marketing, and you can’t market without sales.

Richard Lane:

I think, actually, what’s really come across to me is, and we haven’t got time for this question, but maybe we can do another one, but is that culture, has that been created by you guys, or did it exist in the business? And that’s something that we come across a lot, is that where the connection doesn’t exist. But I think everything we’ve talked about today has demonstrated that connection.

I think the startup mentality that Nick talked about is a really helpful reminder that just because you work in an enterprise doesn’t mean that you can’t think like a startup and roll your sleeves up, and really, get to understand what’s happening around you. We’ve got the thematic approach to customer engagement. We’ve talked a lot about customer-centric-ness, easy to say, harder to deliver. I totally agree. I think Nick made the point – the customer isn’t always right, and I think once you can release yourself from this belief the customer is always right, and I think in sales, we get told no so often, that we start to think the customer is always right. As soon as you are released from that, you start asking better questions, and you start digging in and you’re curious. Your investigative issue-based conversations, we had a little conversation around coaching and confidence and meaningful conversations and that whole piece, we could go off on an L&D piece there.

And then, thought leaders are only thought leaders if they’re followed. But one thing I was reflecting as we were talking, is thought leaders exist throughout your business, and anyone’s business. And I think we struggle sometimes to recognize all of the value that’s locked up inside of all of our people. So, finding a way to unlock that, again, another question for another time, but how does Mercer do that would be interesting.

And I thought of a new game, which is the seven steps to Mercer. We were talking about seven steps to Kevin Bacon, a game that play quite often. But I think the new challenge for you guys is the seven steps to Mercer. That would be quite cool, wouldn’t it? So, that would be a nice way of linking up your organization and thinking about the customer-centric-ness of how to do business.

Aine Bryn:

I’ll patent that now.

Richard Lane:

Yes, do that.

Aine Bryn:

That’s ours.

Richard Lane:

Have that one for free. We thank you again. I’ve not really said much, because I’ve just been enthralled listening to the conversation. Really lovely to have you both with us. Thank you.

Simon Hazeldine:

That’s wonderful. That’s your Mercer Christmas party game sorted for you now. Blame Richard for that if it doesn’t go well. Thank you very much, Aine, Nick, for joining us on this episode of The Insiders by durhamlane. Thank you to my co-host, Richard, and thank you for listening in, folks.

And, please, subscribe to The Insiders podcast on your preferred podcasting site, and you’ll be notified of new episodes. And visit durhamlane.com to find out more about selling at a higher level. Thank you for listening in, folks, and good luck with all your sales and marketing.

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