Rebranding naturally has to involve change and this can sometimes be hard to drive forward within a business. But Paul Stoddart, CMO at Epicor, said that many exceptional results in his career have only happened as a result of change. He explains how to navigate the challenges on a rebranding journey.
When I started at Epicor around a year ago, the organisation had been going through some serious transformation. Our CEO, Steve Murphy, had joined the five-generation old company just a few years earlier, and he had big ambitions with changes that were starting to pick up speed.
We had a great foundation in that our customers loved our technology products, we were doing well as a business and we had an unrelenting focus on the customer. But shaping up an established brand and implementing change for growth is tricky.
Steve was driving modernisation across every aspect of our business. Our solution set, our sales approach and end-user customer experience. We were set to seriously shake up the ERP market with a revitalised Epicor.
My task was to make sure the market knew it.
It was this challenge that brought me to Epicor: the opportunity to create a high-performing marketing organisation for a 50-year-old company transforming into a next-generation business.
It’s not an easy task and, as a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), you might need to be disruptive, throw out convention and be assertive to drive change – all in a way that takes the organisation to its desired place vs where it is coming from and what it’s fairly comfortable with, even if it’s not directionally correct.
So, if you’re on a similar journey, here are the key things I’ve learnt from my 20 years of experience in reinvigorating B2B brands.
Make an impact in year one
When you start a new role, you need an unrelenting sense of what the business needs to achieve.
Most people bring in a new CMO because they want to see change, so it’s important for your team to get the right successes under their belt in year one. Don’t try to do everything at once, as those smaller wins build confidence and can have a big impact.
I think about it as a chess board. A serious player constantly assesses the state of play and considers the impact of every decision while looking three steps ahead. Because in just a few moves everything can look very different.
When taking on a new role, I break it into three acts. The first act is taking time to understand the new organisation and how it worked, the market and, most importantly, the customer. Then it’s about validating and analysing what you know to create informed, actionable insights and a recommended path forward. It’s about fostering joined-up thinking and coming together as a united team, with common goals and integrated, collaborative working.
From this comes your vision, act two – the platform to roll out incremental, meaningful improvements that will create a positive effect across the organisation. It’s about leaning into the new changes of your team’s evolutionary marketing journey and collaborating unconditionally to deliver upon the plans for the business and marketing team. During this process, different paths will arise for your journey to act three, which is about being a ‘learner’ and not a ‘knower.’ This might be an IPO, acquisition or new members of the senior leadership team, where you’ll build upon the foundations that you’ve created and look for where to go next to take the business forward.
Above all, maintain your focus and have confidence in yourself. Your drive may mean you have to change some things and break some norms, but if change is needed then commit to delivering it.
Embrace ambiguity and change
Most people hate big change. I get it. Taking an organisation through change or transformation is hard. That’s why too many businesses get cold feet and dial back on their plans.
Personally, I love the ambiguity that change brings and I do believe it brings opportunities, but change is where we see growth in ourselves and our company.
It’s a human instinct to be risk averse. I’ve seen so many exceptional results in my career that have only happened as a result of change, which is why I’m willing to be the person to drive change in order to make it better for the entire organisation.
Admittedly, this may take some nerve, but I embrace the sleepless nights as an opportunity to grow. Tackle things head-on and move with the ebb and flow as you go. Don’t be afraid to the challenged, and hold your ground when people push back on what you know is right and you have the right data and insights, to show the right decisions for your business.
Think about the customer… all the time
It’s my view that marketing is as close to the customer and prospect as you can get because your agenda is all about understanding them and building relationships with them.
For CMOs, this means updating the B2B playbook. People aren’t businesses, they are individuals who have a job, and they each have an individual buyer state.
Historically in its simplest form, B2B marketing is all about the vendor and its products. B2i is the new playbook for marketers, where everything is focused on the customer and prospect and ensuring you are delivering to their needs. Every brand should be connecting at a personal level with audiences to create affinity with many of the business stakeholders and their daily challenges.
Ask yourself, who is the audience you want to spend to time with? Where do they go? Who do they meet with and speak to? What do they care about? What keeps them up at night?
Know your customer as an individual, then convert this intelligence into messages that take them on a journey of understanding. Use simple, jargon-free language and talk to them about their personal requirements, not what you think your product can do for them. After the year we’ve been though, it’s not surprising that we are craving kindness and meaningful support from our brands. Building trust and being kind is speaking in a way that everyone understands.
Don’t go it alone
I’ve talked about having an unrelentless focus and how it can be difficult to push against a reluctance to change within an organisation.
As a marketer, you don’t own the end-to-end experience of your brand, but you can take ownership of building and driving the feeling, experience and story of the brand.
For me, brand = feeling + experience. Everything your organisation does should then emulate that and be felt throughout every process and initiative.
Think of Fortnum and Mason and how amazing the in-store experience feels (if you’ve been lucky enough to go in for a browse). You never want the brand’s online shopping and delivery process to fall short of giving you that same feeling.
Everyone in the business needs to understand that they constitute the end goal to achieving this. There is so much value in the sum of parts, so nurture internal collaboration and engrain in the business that sense that no one can do it without anyone else. The feeling and experience of a brand starts from the inside out.
Leadership is about everybody else
As a CMO, my role is of course about marketing, it’s about creating an unrivalled sense of belonging for our brand that everyone wakes up in the morning wanting to be part of, whether they are the CEO, an intern, a prospect or a customer.
I strive to raise the bar, am willing to be different and challenge convention. Yet in my career I’ve realised that being a good leader isn’t about what you do, it’s about what you do with, and for everyone else.