Top Guide Posts from Due North

"Let's Cut Marketing!"

Anyone who has been in marketing during uncertain times has heard this before “We’re falling short on our numbers, so we need to cut back on marketing.”

• Forget that the business plan was built on a certain marketing investment to drive leads.
• Forget that your competitors will fill the void you left with their own marketing messages.
• Forget that your customers’ top of mind awareness will be with your competitors.

I get it. During uncertain times businesses may be tempted to cut back on marketing expenses as a way to reduce costs and weather the storm. However, this can actually be a bad idea for a number of reasons:

Reduced visibility: Cutting back on marketing can lead to reduced visibility and awareness of your brand, which can cause your sales and revenue to decline even further. This can be especially damaging if your competitors continue to invest in marketing and gain market share while you are cutting back.

Missed opportunities: During uncertain times, there may be new opportunities to reach your target audience or market your products in innovative ways. By cutting back on marketing, you may miss out on these opportunities and be slow to adapt to changes in the market.

Longer recovery time: When the economy bounces back and consumers start spending again, businesses that have continued to invest in marketing will be better positioned to take advantage of the recovery and grow their sales faster. Businesses that have cut back on marketing may take longer to recover and may struggle to regain their market share.

Brand damage: Cutting back on marketing can also damage your brand by making it appear less stable or less committed to its customers. This can erode customer loyalty and make it harder to win back their trust in the future.

Overall, it's important for businesses to maintain a consistent marketing presence, even during uncertain times, in order to stay top of mind with their customers and remain competitive in the market.

Trouble finding top Marketing and Product Management Talent gnawing at you?

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"You Must Like Ice Fishing"

What does ice fishing have to do with talent acquisition? As a Marketing Recruiter based in Minnesota, I find this to be an apt analogy for many companies’ talent acquisition efforts.

Consider this: A marketing leader for a potential MedTech client stated that they were having trouble finding talent to fill critical roles. I asked if they had considered using a search firm. He said that they were sticking with job postings for now. Jokingly, I said “You must love ice fishing.” He looked puzzled and said “No, it’s boring, cold and you rarely catch anything. Why do you ask?” I told him that when you post a role on one or even multiple sites, it is like drilling a 12-inch hole to try and get at the fish in a lake that is many thousands of acres. And even if you catch a fish, more often than not it isn’t what you want. Talk to me about eelpout sometime!

Top talent is like a prize game fish. They are hard to find in the best of times. Easily spooked because everyone is trying to catch them. Finicky about what will attract them. And should you hook one, they are really good at using the sharp edges of their teeth or the hole in the ice to break the line.

Given the current economic uncertainty, top talent is “sheltering in role” not perusing job boards, or at least rarely applying. Top marketing talent in Medical Devices and other high-tech industries are being pursued for new opportunities internally and externally frequently. But they are not biting unless it is something really interesting and presented to them in the right way. Even then, keeping them on the hook requires a considerable amount of candidate care.

So do you want to want to be a leader that builds top teams or do you want to go ice fishing?

Interview Jiu Jitsu

Jiu Jitsu students learn to use their opponent’s energy to defeat them. Savvy candidates can use a similar technique during their interviews. I am not advocating throwing your interviewer to the ground. Learning Interview Jiu Jitsu can help candidates leverage the energy that the interviewer has around specific parts of the job.

Let’s say you are interviewing for a Chief Commercial Officer role. You are going to interview with multiple functions across the organization. Every interviewer during the interview process has at least one element of the role that they consider really important. For Human Resources, it may be is the candidate a good people manager. The CEO may want to know that you would be able to present solid commercial strategies to the board. The CFO may want to know that you fully understand EBITDA, and so on.

However, one never knows what each interviewer is most interested in knowing. So that is why one of the most important questions to ask of every interviewer is “What are some of the things that you would like me to accomplish in this role in the next 6 to 12 months?” After the interviewer has revealed what they personally feel is most important in the role, this is where Interview Jiu Jitsu comes in.

Let’s say the interviewer wants you as their new Chief Commercial Officer to create and execute a new Go To Market strategy that will enable the company to meet their revenue growth target of 10%. Interview Jiu Jitsu masters will respond by saying to the interviewer by saying “I have successfully done something very similar to that at ABC company. Would you like me to tell you about it?”

Of course, the interviewer is going to say yes. And then, you can wow them with a STAR response that illustrates your success. To the interviewer you will have distinguished yourself as someone who has the right skills, experience and has successfully addressed that interviewer’s #1 concern.

That, my friends is Interview Jiu Jitsu! Become a master at it!

PS. For any of you Martial Arts purists, Bruce Lee did incorporate Jiu Jitsu in his fighting style!

Chris Gustanski – Founder and Lead Talent Guide

Chris is a classically trained marketer with over a decade of executive search experience. He moved into recruiting because he was someone that was frequently recruited and was tired of recruiters hounding him to consider roles they didn’t understand, and he wasn’t interested in pursuing. He was determined to disrupt Marketing Executive Search to deliver a better result and experience for companies and the Marketing Mavens they need.?After over a decade seeing the dysfunction in executive search firms large and small, he formed Due North Executive Search in collaboration with his wife Amie.

To learn more about how Due North can help you build World Class Marketing and Product Management teams?click here?to schedule a meeting.