Consalia’s Head of Marketing Eddie Guevarra once again joins Phil on this week’s episode of The Sales Transformation Podcast, but this time he’s the one being interviewed!
That’s because Eddie has recently completed his Master’s in Sales Transformation – unusual for a marketer!
Together they discuss how Eddie took inspiration from his love of CrossFit, as well as Phil’s own Sales Mindsets, to examine the values that exceptional marketing leaders need to possess.
Highlights include:
- [01:17] – There’s no textbook that can tell you how to be the kind of marketing leader you want to be
- [08:08] – CrossFit and leadership: more related than you might think
- [25:53] – Sometimes getting insights from interviews requires reading between the lines
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Connect with Eddie Guevarra on LinkedIn
Join the discussion in our Sales Transformation Forum group.
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Full episode transcript:
Please note that transcription is done by AI and may contain errors.
Phil: Okay. I just, um, want to welcome Eddie, uh, Guevarra to the Sales Transformation podcast, the, the master series, and just, uh, for the benefit of those listening, um, this particular.
Podcast and the master series is for those students who've actually completed their Master's project. So I'm very, very keen to have Eddie here to kind of share his story with us. So welcome Eddie.
Eddie: Thank you, Phil. It's, it's strange to be on the other end.
Phil: Yep. The last time you were interviewing me, I think this time.
Yes. The tables have turned.
Eddie: They have, they have, uh, now I'm actually a, a guest on, on a mastercast episode, which is, uh. Fun.
Phil: Yeah, it is. No, it's great fun. I've been looking forward to this, uh, for a while. So, um, and I first of all want to congratulate you for completing, uh, this journey. Thank you. And, uh, massive achievement and gonna look forward to the graduation.
Yes, yes. Uh, which is in a week's time. A
Eddie: week's time. Yeah, I know. Party
Phil: time.
Eddie: Definitely.
Phil: Anyway, um, I just want to kind of refer to, um, the first opening part of your. Your dissertation in which you said there's no chapter in a textbook that tells you how to become the kind of marketing leader you wish you had.
Eddie: Yeah.
Phil: And I just, which is a great, uh, it's a great way to start actually. Yeah. So, uh, you know, where did that come from? You know, what prompted that particular opening? Opening?
Eddie: Um, so I think throughout this whole master's journey, it's been like, like a journey in itself. and. there's been a lot of reflection that's gone on in the past two years, and I think being on a masters that is all around developing your own sort of leadership and, how to be the kind of leader you want to be, you start reflecting back on the leaders that you have worked for.
and the more and more thought about it, the more and more thought actually. Have there been any leaders who, or marketing leaders that I've worked for who. I thought, yeah, I want to be in their position in 10, 15 years time. not purely because of like their job role, but more so how they treated people, how they ran the function and whatnot.
and that line around, yeah, you can't really find, a textbook that will tell you how to be become a leader. It really resonates with me 'cause I thought actually. It's true, leadership is developed through experiences. and, yeah, that was the foundation of what started off this, kind of project.
The fact that I didn't really. Feel I had a, leader who I aspired to be within the marketing function, which is, quite, it's, yeah, it's quite a controversial statement, I'm sure.
Phil: Well, it is controversial, but actually, you know, I, I know on the master's programs we do ask that question, you know, various points about, you know, how many, uh, how many managers have you.
Uh, sort of been inspired by, and I know that one of our other alumni had conducted a LinkedIn survey
Eddie: mm-hmm.
Phil: Um, where he'd reached out and invited sales leaders within his network to give comments about how many people have you worked for that have really inspired you. Mm-hmm. And the numbers are very small.
I mean, it is like you can count 'em on one hand, and I think you got a really large sample size, so. Um, so really interesting to see you again, sort of make reference to that. Mm-hmm. And like, I guess it's a, it's, it's a great, you know, it's, it, it, it's a very good question, you know, when you start to define your own leadership mm-hmm.
You know, what sort of leader do you want to be? It's, yeah. Um, it's, uh. You know, it's, it's, it's perhaps an inevitable question 'cause you're gonna look for who, who would you want to benchmark against? Yeah. And so on. Anyway, um, so I just want to go back to, you know, the, the initial conversations we had because
Eddie: Yeah.
Phil: Um, yeah, we had that conversation with Eddie about you doing the masters and could, could you just, uh, sort of reflect back on those early, early days and
Eddie: uh Yep. Certainly. I think it was around two or three years ago and. I dunno how it came into conversation, but I think, we were talking about the future and perhaps one day, oh, Eddie might join the, the master's one day.
And I thought, oh, you must be joking, right? It's Master's in leading sales transformation. Me a master. I can't do that. And then, that the dust settled there and then it came up again, with myself and Will our head of sales, at the pub actually. and maybe that was the plan to have a few drinks before asking me again.
but yeah, I think, when we talked about a little bit more and, essentially I was sold on the vision of what it could look like. I thought it was a no-brainer to be honest. the chance to really develop who I wanted to become as a leader.
Phil: Yeah. No, I was really excited that you, uh, decided to join it.
It is not a deci, uh, to join the masters. It's, it is never a decision that is to be taken lightly because yeah, there is a lot of hard work and you need a lot of good family support Yeah. As well. And so, I know you spoke a lot with Angie and, uh, you know, she, she was an essential part of this, this journey for you, but, um.
That aside, I think that, you know, the, the lines between sales and marketing arguably are sort of becoming more, more, more blurred. Mm-hmm. And, and so the idea to have a head of marketing doing the leading sales transformation podcast, I think. Now, I was excited that you were taking part in it because of course, marketing plays such an essential role in, in our go to market.
Mm-hmm. And, and so on. So it was great. Yeah. Okay. So let's, um, let's speed up a bit and, you know, one of the questions that you're asked to consider when you come to your final project, which is what we're going to talk about, is, you know, what was your, what was your concern?
Eddie: Yeah. Um. I think it's, I, I touched upon it, at the beginning of the podcast in the fact that, I think in one of my chapters, I actually start by saying those lines.
I, I've never had a, leader who I've aspired to be. and I think from that perspective, it really sparked off this kind of notion of, what kind of leader do I want to be? I felt like there was, this kind of gap that I wanted to fill in. Where I was currently back then to where I wanted to be.
now even. so that sparked off the initial kind of, concern because I think through my life, I've, observed great leadership, but I think I take that from a lot of, observations around sports, football, CrossFit, which I'm sure will come onto a bit later. and I've seen examples of what.
Good leadership can look like. and I felt that part was missing in, my life, particularly from a professional and from a marketing perspective. And essentially I just wanted to close that gap. I wanted to fill that gap with, the, knowledge, the skills, the experience that would help me lead in a way that I thought was the correct way of being a marketing leader.
Essentially.
Phil: Yeah.
Eddie: Yeah.
Phil: So you've, you've, I, I know you've, you've mentioned CrossFit and I, I found it quite interesting to kind of delve into your, um, you know, obviously I've read, read through your project, uh, and you make many links between CrossFit as well as your professional practice. Um. You know, what was it that made you feel that you could draw into your project lessons that you've had from CrossFit and somehow interweave them into this final project?
Eddie: Yeah, I think it's interesting because I. When I first thought about integrating CrossFit into my master's project, the first thing I thought of was, how the hell am I gonna do that? That's so outlandish in a way. but I think, there's something to be said there about, how important hobbies can be in one's life, because there's a reason why I probably transition from.
Playing football majority of my life to something so new, so, different. and I think a lot of that came down to what CrossFit represented from a values perspective and how it draws on a lot of comradery. And, a lot of the values that I feel, align with mine, which I found out in the first module of the Masters.
so that in itself was interesting because. CrossFit obviously played a well, still does play a very important part of my life, and I think a lot of that is down to what it represents. So having that integrated into such a personal project, like this final year project, was a no-brainer. At the end of the day, I started off thinking, how am I going to do this?
This doesn't make sense, but I guess upon more critical reflection around how it could potentially be intertwined, you start seeing the links as to. Why it's so important and how it could potentially be that foundation of a leadership style that I aspire to. to have myself.
Phil: Well, I'm sure we'll explore more, you know, the links a bit later on.
But, um, but this is helpful in just giving some context to the listeners about where you draw the inspiration from. So, mm-hmm. What was the, what was the title of your project?
Eddie: Yeah. Oh, I sort of tucked my final year project away and I haven't even, uh, looked at it. So essentially it was around, how can I leverage CrossFit principles to develop a values driven leadership approach that improves how we market to key accounts.
and like I said, it was around. Using CrossFit and its methodology as a foundation for how I wanted to be as a leader, but more importantly, how that then affects the way that we do marketing here at Consalia. How can we improve on it, and do it in a way that really resonates with, our key accounts.
Phil: Well, that's great. So that will, that gives everyone an idea about, what was the fundamental question? I remember that, that the title for my, uh, my doctorate was. How can values help co-create a global sales model? You know, so long and complicated that I sort of shortened to it to sort of how do customers want to be sold to?
Yeah. At the end of the day. But essentially what, from an academic perspective, you end up with these quite. Quite lengthy titles. Um, yeah. But anyway, so how can I leverage CrossFit principles to develop a values driven leadership approach that improves how we market to key accounts? So we talked about CrossFit.
Eddie: Mm-hmm.
Phil: And then you talk about values driven leadership approach. Yeah. And then you've spoken about key accounts. So I think those, those. Three elements, uh, we know we'll, we'll kind of allude to. Mm-hmm. Uh, as we go through the, the questions, um, part of the final project, um, requires you to do research and reading and so on, so.
It'd be great to know. What sort of books did you, you know, what, what did your literature review, what books inspired you as you started to do your, you know, sort of reading?
Eddie: Yeah, so there was definitely a lot of reading that had to be done for the final year project, which is essentially why I've printed out all of the kind of references I've I came across.
but no, it varied from, books to different journals within the marketing. Area leadership journals, all of which I found to be super important to helping me answer the key sort of question. Yeah. and you alluded there to the, three sections, the CrossFit part, the values part and and how we improve.
Marketing to key accounts. I've taken the approach of what we learned in the first module around, the i we, and the greater we, looking at myself first and what literature around is available around that. looking at the we in terms of Consalia, how all of that kind of all literature relates to Consalia and maybe the sphere of the marketing department as well as the greater we part, which is.
The, wider marketing ecosystem. and a lot of it was quite interesting because I wanted to start understanding essentially, why was CrossFit so important to me in the first place? And there's this great book by, JC hers called, learning to Breathe With Fire, which is all around the fundamentals and the, backstory of how CrossFit became.
what it is today, it's quite a relatively new kind of sport, and fitness methodology. but actually when you dive into the backstory of how it all CR was created, you start listening to the kind of values that helped create what, it is today. So I found that like super interesting and a lot of it then Related back to, what kind of leader do I want to be? And there was a, great quote in there, which was, taken from Kipling's Law of the Jungle. it started off saying, for the strength of the pack is the wolf and the strength of the wolf is the pack And I found that so inspiring in a way, because essentially, yes, it told me that as a leader, you are responsible for those who are in your team, but also it's your responsibility as a leader.
To empower those in your team that make you as leader stronger. So I love that kind of cyclical, meaning behind it. that was the first kind of, book that I opened in terms of wanting to try and understand CrossFit and whether or not it would even be a foundation for, For leadership.
so that was quite interesting in itself. And then, CrossFit itself have, a wide range of blogs from the early days around again, the fundamentals. And I think what was quite interesting was this, this blog from Nicole Carroll, who's one of the, head leadership team in, the CrossFit organization, where she talked about, a particular formula of what CrossFit was.
So that was, methodology plus ethos, and then in brackets coach plus community. closed brackets equals CrossFit. And I thought this was quite interesting. this was the formula for what made CrossFit. So I thought, what's the formula for, marketing effectiveness? What's the formula for high performing marketing teams?
and the more and more I stared at the formula, the more and more I thought about, what if it could be something similar? Maybe marketing plus values in brackets the team, plus the leader equals marketing effectiveness or high performing marketing teams. and this kind of drove me in a way to find more literature that talked about marketing effectiveness, and the high performing, not just marketing teams, but high performing.
Athletes and how they translate, how that could potentially be translated over into a, leadership kind of role. so that in itself was quite interesting, diving into why this hobby was so important to me, but how it could also then potentially be the foundation of, this, the set of principles or these values that I wanted to have as, a marketing leader.
but I can't, Not refer to, obviously your book, Phil Selling Transformed. I think being in Consalia you're surrounded by values and the, talk of values so much that, that was definitely a, big inspiration. So thank you for that.
Phil: That's, uh. No, it's fine. It's nice to see how the, um, you know, how that original work is being sort of, uh, integrated into various projects of the master students and uh, yeah.
You know, obviously values underpin so much of how we act and how we behave, and so it's kind of,
Eddie: yeah,
Phil: a bit of a no brainer in some ways, but, um. Oh, interesting that you've also got some inspiration from that book.
Eddie: Yeah. Yeah. It's, it is like what you say though, it's the whole, values drive, behavior, aspect and, I.
I think, yeah, that's why it was so important for me to, figure it out because I think when you're reading or you're trying to find literature, and this was one of the things I highlighted in my, project, the fact that when you try and find literature on how to become a good marketing leader or what that looks like, a lot of it is based around skills and competencies.
I think the closest thing I found to something around that was a book by. Barter and bar, wise, the 12 powers of a marketing leader. It's quite a well known book within the marketing Yeah. environment. but like I said, it, highlighted that, that frustration that I couldn't find anything that was based on values, within marketing leadership because they, focused on like core skills and competencies, which, was useful, but again, it.
It didn't address the gap of, if values drive the behavior well, what are the values? and I, started looking into obviously this, notion of, marketing effectiveness or high performing marketing. And it took me down a rabbit hole of marketing journals around those two topics. And, two really stood out to me, which kind of made me.
It validated the, research question and my core topic even more there was a journal by Boyd Chandy and Cunha who essentially, ran a study that proved that marketing essentially, increases, a firm's value, when, they go to sell, et cetera. and.
Obviously I'm, severely, underplaying how important this, journal was. But when I then went on to find more literature, I found a, another journal by Hansons and Powells, who actually highlighted, probably an insecurity that most marketing leaders that I've certainly spoken to, have talked about in the fact that, many marketing leaders often struggle to link their performance to financial outcomes.
It's that whole kind of, we know what we're doing, we know it's having an effect, but we can't prove it. But those two things were quite important to me because if Boyd and Chandy and Cunha are saying that marketing's so influential to, increasing the firm's value, but we are currently struggling to, connect it to financial outcomes like Hanson's and Powell says, then what can we do from a values perspective?
That would help drive or close that gap so that both of them would interconnect even better. so that was, a quite a fundamental, finding in, the research project took me quite a lot of journals to get to that point, but it was one that really resonated with me the most. 'cause I think, and I'm sure we'll talk about, My, my kind of research process and talking to senior leaders, but it's essentially something that was highlighted across the board. Across the board, yeah. Yeah.
Phil: It's interesting. I'll ne uh, never forget, uh, interviewing, uh, the MD of Sony, Sony, um, film, uh, Sony Films. Mm-hmm. Uh, some, someone that, uh, was, was based in the UK but worked over in New York.
Uh, sorry. He, he came from the uk but lived in New York and he was, we were talking about marketing and sales and, and Yeah. He made the comment, yeah, we know marketing is important. We spend vast sums of money on marketing.
Eddie: Mm-hmm.
Phil: The problem with marketing is we never know. Which bit of the budget actually produces the results.
And whereas with sales, we know exactly who produces results because you can attribute, uh, you know, performance to individuals often.
Eddie: Mm-hmm.
Phil: Um, so yeah, there's, uh, this is a, i I can understand why there's, there's sort of anxiety. I think we all know it's terribly important and, you know, building brand awareness.
Mm. And you've certainly helped transform, uh, Consalia's, uh, sort of brand awareness in the marketplace since you came and joined the team. Um, so, okay. That's great. Love those references to the, to the books and also to CrossFit.
Eddie: Yeah.
Phil: So tell us a bit about, you know, you did the research and then you started to embark on an approach to your own research.
Um, uh, so could you just talk us through what you did? And, uh, why you chose the particular methods that you decided to use.
Eddie: Yeah. Um, so essentially, we, spoke about the, long academic titles of projects. so I really wanted to distill it into something that was easy to remember, which is essentially what are the core values required of a, marketing leader, or of a high performing marketing leader.
so when I thought about this question, I thought. how, where do I go for that? the literature isn't showing me what I need to do, need to know. Perhaps I need to go to people who are living it, who are actually doing it day in, day out. but because this was a, a master's in, my own developing my own professional practice, I wanted to use a research method that would really.
Complement that in itself. I ended up using, an autoethnographic kind of approach and putting my, putting myself at the heart of the entire research, process. Because essentially what I wanted to do was hear from the senior leaders about what values they thought were quite important for high performing marketing leaders.
and then. Really take a introspective look at myself to see if there was any alignment, where was it? And then if there was any gaps, how could I address them? so that was quite interesting in itself, but I think it developed along the way as well because obviously the second part to the project title was, how can we improve how we market to key accounts?
so I actually ended up using. a mixed method of both auto ethnographic and ethnographic, approaches to study how our customers want it to be marketed to. So again, taking a lot of influence from, your book. so that in itself was, quite foundational to how I would approach my own research, project.
and essentially what I did was. I started reaching out to, senior marketing leaders from, a variety of different industries, and different company sizes and even, business models. I, wasn't just stuck on asking B2B marketing leaders. I think I thought it was quite important to get the perspectives of B2C marketing leaders as well, purely from the fact that, whilst they are two kind of different ways of operating and marketing, a lot of the foundational.
And fundamental parts are still remain. Yeah. so yeah, I I got, I reached out to a variety of different leaders. I ended up interviewing 43 senior marketing leaders, which was a great experience in itself. asking them about, I guess what values from their perspective, they thought were super important for someone that is in a high performing marketing leadership position.
and it was very interesting because what I wanted to do was really dive into, The stories behind why they thought it was important. and a lot of it was because I think personally, I myself learn a lot through storytelling. and I found literature that also supports that notion. So that was quite validating to know that I was on onto something there.
but it was really interesting to see like how the stories that they articulated whilst they said it was one value. That they thought was important. The story itself, when you really listen to, the words that they're saying and how they're saying it, it often highlighted, like a secret or a hidden value, which was often more, arguably more important than the one that they initially stated.
So that in itself was quite eye-opening to me. Um,
Phil: could you give an example of that? Can you, can you think of a, uh, an example where. Because I, you know, I think it's very interesting that you made that comment and I, I, I had the same, so I'm gonna give you some time to think about it whilst I, whilst I, uh, just show I remember the, you know, when we look at the sales mindsets, you, you had, you know, you had three of them that were pretty.
Uh, well expressed, I would say from, from the interviews, but the, uh, which were the, you know, authenticity, client centricity and proactive creativity, but the tactful audacity, yeah. One wasn't expressly stated in any of the interviews, but it, you know, one could disseminate it from, um, some of the stories that were shared.
Mm-hmm. And some of the stories that. Which add not just by the customers, but also by salespeople. Mm-hmm. Uh, sort of producing some great results. And it, I think it's, what's not said is sometimes as revealing as what is said
Eddie: Yeah.
Phil: In terms of actually sort of starting to get you thinking about, you know, different frameworks.
Mm-hmm. So over to
Eddie: you. Yeah. Um, thanks for the curveball question there, Phil. Um, but no, I think, uh, so. And this wasn't just one, example, but, one of the values that kept coming up, was this notion of being empathetic. being empathetic towards the team members, people that they worked with, colleagues, et cetera.
and often they tell me stories of why that was so important. but when you started listening to the whys and, I mean there was one example where. They were talking about why em, empathy was so important, but when they were describing the, the situation that they experienced, a lot of what, a lot of what I started to hear was important to them was actually this notion of being, or having integrity in challenging situations.
So it wasn't explicitly said by them, but when I started listening back to the, The interviews themselves, reading through the transcripts, even watching it back on video through body language, you started to see how it's, maybe riled up is not the right word, but how, there was a lot more energy in how they were describing this notion of actually wanting someone to act with integrity in the situation.
Which was interesting because I started focusing on this and I, I had totally forgotten about the initial value that they said. But, that's why I think it, it was so important, like you say, to, really listen. And I think I took a lot of that notion, obviously from, you as well, but, from the coaching module that we do in module three, where, we learn about active listening, and the whole observation thing around how you approach coachees because like you say, what, what's often not said is the, most important thing.
And that's what I started to try and find because. Essentially, I thought I had a very simplistic view of how I would analyze data in terms of, okay, participant A and B and C have stated four or five values. let me, take, account on the frequency, on how, many times they've been, how many times they've been, mentioned.
But then when I started. Doing this approach and really listening, I thought, wow, actually there's a lot more values here. so one, one person would say three or four values that were so important to them, but after I ran the analysis again, there was actually seven or eight. So it almost doubled in actually what, what they said, which presented another kind of challenge in terms of.
how am I gonna distill all of these values into a core set that I, want to operate from, which I'm sure will come onto again. But that, that in itself was quite interesting. And, it didn't come to me overnight. It was, a long process, a long journey to think about, how, am I going to.
Make it digestible, how am I gonna make it actionable? Because at the end of the day, this is what's going to be used to help develop my professional practice. It's gotta be, it's gotta be something that I can use day in, day out. I can't operate from 130 values, which was quite interesting.
Yeah.
Phil: So how did you, um, how did you go about the process of rationalizing the values into, you know, we, we quite often, or I quite often use the analogy of operating system. You know, sort of having a, the core, um mm-hmm. The core. The core, if you like, the value system, and then you have the different, uh, applications of that.
Yeah. You know, that go, go round or sit on top of the app, you know, the operating system. So you did large number of interviews. You, you found, you know, quite a number of words. How did you. Sort of make sense of it. And what, what, I guess it's what were the, you know, the, the, the key ones that made most impact for you?
Eddie: Yeah. Uh, it was very, very interesting. I think, I think we're very lucky now to live in a world where AI exists. so that was definitely, a big help in, running the thema thematic analysis process on, The transcripts, to firstly highlight the hidden values, but also start distilling them into, its own kind of current themes.
and I think a lot of how I approached this was also taken from, my, my hobby around CrossFit because the CrossFit methodology, has essentially, if you think about a Venn diagram, it's got CrossFit at this at, it's got three kind of. Key areas. So you've got strength, you've got skill, you've got gymnastics.
And then, those combined make CrossFit. So it's quite an outward looking model, but I thought, okay, if this is essentially gonna be something that is going to be helping my own professional practice, I need something that's more inward in a way. and so I really had this thing in my head around having, three kind of core values with.
almost like an anchoring value at the heart. So instead of having more of an outward looking model, I wanted something that was more inward. and so using AI helped me a lot to, bring the themes together. And obviously it, didn't just happen overnight. No matter how fast and quick AI was, it would spit out an answer which.
I would further interrogate to, really see if it was true to what was being said. but I think what was really interesting to me, and I dunno if it was the influence from the literature review when it first came out with, a set of four values that, that, I wanted to achieve. I wasn't entirely happy with it.
There was something missing within it. I think for example, one of them. highlight empathy as like the core value. And I thought that was important, but I also thought that empathy could be stretched upon different kind of values. there was a lot of rigorous kind of back and forth in terms of, in wanting to ensure that the model that I created also aligned with who I was as a person.
So going back to the core values that I identified first. essentially what I then came out with, if I get my notes out, was this, framework which I like to call the IIOE framework. so at its heart you've got integrity. So it's the anchoring value that essentially, all the other values operate from and around it.
You've got impact driving measurable outcomes. Originality, the creative differentiation within the market space, and empowerment, building capability in others as well. So impact, originality and empowerment. All drawing from a central value of integrity. So acting, from an integral point of view when thinking about, how to empower your, team members or, acting from integrity when thinking about.
Impactful campaigns that can help drive business outcomes. so that in itself was quite important to me to distill it into a recognizable, model in, in the fact that it would mirror what I know to be true within CrossFit. But again, something that was actionable for me to have as a. Kind of operating, like you say, an operating system on a day to day.
So putting that into practice obviously is quite challenging at first. you start thinking about, actually if I do this, am I creating impact? If I, If I'm having a one-to-one with a team member, am I being as empowering as I can be? a lot of that was quite fundamental to how I thought about the actual outcome of, the, framework itself.
but I think, that was great. I had an operating principle to, to, go off, but the second half of the question was obviously. Or how do we improve how we market the key accounts? And I spoke about the ethnographic survey that I sent out to, to our key customers. And again, very simplistic thought I had was to, analyze the data in terms of frequency and, but actually what I didn't realize was, and I should have realized at the start, was that I had a lot of, open-ended questions that.
People could write free text in. So I thought, if I've done this thematic analysis on, the transcripts from my interviews, why don't I look at perhaps running some sort of sentiment analysis on these, these open-ended questions. What if I could figure out what the values, customers wanted to see when being marketed to, again, a lot of from what, you hear in selling transformed.
and I thought that was quite. That was that, to be honest, it was probably one of the more challenging parts of the final year project because in the end, I've, from a value perspective, the survey highlighted that our customers wanted value, they wanted personalization, they wanted innovation, and they wanted it to operate from a, an area of authenticity.
And that was great as well. So I've got the, the core values of how I wanted to operate. And I now know how, what kind of marketing preferences, our customers want from a value perspective. But I think the most challenging thing for me, which I pondered around for about three or four weeks even, was, how do they connect with each other?
That's great. You've got these two things, but so what? And I think that's a question that was always repeated to me throughout the whole master's, journey. But that in itself was quite enlightening in the fact that I would stare at a piece of paper for about periods of time that I, let's just say, a lot, a long periods of time, trying to figure out where they interlinked with each other.
because I saw where it could link, but it wasn't exactly obvious to me. But then when I, started really, I had a, I think I had a breakthrough, when was it towards the, towards the end of March this year, where I really sat down and had it on a whiteboard, even up, on this, wall over here, and really started to try and map over.
the obvious one for me was that integrity maps over to, authentic marketing. I then looked at, if customers want value, we've gotta operate from a, position of creating impact in order to create that value. from a personalization point of view, as a leader, we need to be thinking about originality, how we can stand out from, those in the market.
But then that translates into how we. personalize our marketing for our customers. It's got to be really true to them and not be so generic that they just throw away the email, anything like that. And then from a empowerment point of view, how can I, as a leader, empower my team and my colleagues to then think around how we can be innovative with our go-to market strategies?
How can we, essentially. Show our customers that we can be, we are the most innovative kind of, training provider, education provider within the market. And that itself in itself, when I, finally unlocked it, and it sounds so obvious now, but in, in the moment, it's such a struggle and I don't, that might be because of everything else that's going on at work.
And then you're trying to think about this as well as, raising a young family. It seems so obvious now, but in the, moment it was probably the hardest point of the, the, project itself.
Phil: Well, the way you've described it, it does seem incredibly obvious. Yeah, I know. But, um, 'cause it's interesting when you use the word integrity.
I, I remember debating a lot with a team here about, uh, integrity was a word that often came, came up. And we then decided to hone in on authenticity. Mm-hmm. Because of the origin of the world word with sort of grounded in originality mm-hmm. And integrity and so on. But I think it's just, uh, I, you know, just really interesting to hear you, the sort of share, you know, share, share your.
You know, your conclusions and how they emerged over over time. Yeah. Um, and I actually, I, as you were talking and I was thinking also about the CrossFit connection.
Eddie: Yeah.
Phil: Is CrossFit an an Olympic sport?
Eddie: It's not. No. No. But it does have elements of Olympic weightlifting in it, for example, in the strength and modality.
Yeah.
Phil: Yeah. How many rings are there in the Olympic, uh, logo?
Eddie: I want to say five.
Phil: I don't know, maybe George, we're looking at George here. George, can you tell us quickly, George, whilst we're, we're live?
George: Uh, yeah. Five.
Phil: Okay. There are five rings of the Olympics, but yeah, I've just seen these interconnecting there, Venn diagrams and I, I'm thinking of the sport connection and it's not quite taking me to where my thoughts were going, but, um, yeah, it's quite interesting 'cause you, you've then got the.
Um, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.
Eddie: Mm-hmm.
Phil: Yeah. So, yeah. Uh, I didn't know whether, as you were reflecting on these, um, now I'm seeing them circles and chains.
Eddie: Yeah.
Phil: Uh, whether you would say any one of them kind of stood out for you as being absolutely. Kind of the rockstar or, or do they all.
Connect with each other and you, you can't have one. It's gotta be a combination of all of them for it to be, yeah.
Eddie: Yeah. It's, so it's, it is, it's similar to what I touched upon earlier in the fact that, you can operate from an area of wanting to drive impact, but it's gotta come from the central value of integrity.
Integrity, yeah. And doing it the right way. Yeah. which is interesting. Obviously, when you. in your conversations, you landed on authenticity. I think through some of the conversations and interviews I was having, a lot of why integrity was so fundamental. and the reason why I chose that as the, core operating value from which all the others, derived from was from some of the stories that were, spoken about and how, let's say perhaps there was.
A lack of integrity in certain situations within marketing and leadership decisions or scenarios. which I think, was definitely highlighted in a lot of the, talks I had and interviews I had. but yeah, to answer your question, integrity was the core in which as a person, and I think, which it aligned really with myself as well, wanting to essentially do the right thing.
Yeah. having that as, yes, we can operate from a, an area of originality and empowerment, but if it's not, if it's not driven from being Integra Integr Integral and doing the right thing, then you're not. personally for me, in my own leadership journey, yeah. I'm not doing the right thing. Yeah. As a marketing leader.
Phil: Yeah. So how's this, uh, maybe it's too early to say, how is it? 'cause you're really just, uh, qualified and well done distinction. Brilliant. Thanks.
Eddie: Yeah.
Phil: Um, how does this, how is this now reflected in the kind of changes you're going to bring about here at Consalia?
Eddie: I it's core, it's, how I want to, operate as a marketing leader.
So I'm using that as a lens to look at every kind of activity that we do. Is it answering these kind of core values even to a point of like our KPIs and OKRs? Are we. Are we measuring the right things that are related to how we drive impact or how original we can be, or how empowering we can be?
so a lot, let's safe to say it, it's occupied a lot on my brain ever since I've come up with the framework. But I think through that, obviously the most important thing is then connecting it to the we part in, terms of like how it affects. How we market to key accounts. So driving, the value for our customers through the marketing that we provide through content, et cetera.
in terms of like personalization, driving on the client-centric mindset from the sales mindsets and really knowing how, knowing our customers well enough that we can personalize our. Comms to them that really stands out and really makes them take action. and even looking at stuff around innovation, we, I, it's safe to say we, we do a lot of innovative stuff here at Ali.
We created, a Level 6 B2B sales degree, for example. So how we. How we draw up those ideas and then communicate it to our customers in a way that they find innovative within their own sort of challenges and, and, day to day. So it's by no means. it's, it is a hard task in itself.
but I think I've taken the first step in terms of knowing what I need to do and where we need to be in terms of, marketing to our customers in a way that really resonates with them. So that's the first step. and how we go from there will be, quite interesting. But I think to address like the greater we side of things, again, this, masters was, A way to develop my own professional practice. I'm buttoned by no means saying that every marketing leader needs to operate from these kind of core values. Maybe they do. I don't know. maybe this whole story will resonate with other people that are listening. but I really want to get people to be aware that, the whole topic of values-based marketing leadership is something that.
When I jumped on the interviews with people, they would say, this is so interesting. No one's talking about this, but I see how important it can be. and that in itself was quite validating. there's two areas that obviously I want to try and continue in terms of doing what I know can drive value for Consalia, but also helping other people that perhaps were in my position when I started the journey.
Maybe they didn't have a marketing leader that they wanted to, aspire to be as well. But hopefully like this framework will give them some sort of guidance, which is, it's, definitely doing for myself as
Phil: well. So this is a question for all the listeners out there. Of course it's not Freddy, but, um, you know, what next Freddy, uh, do you think Geddy should, uh, consider writing a book?
As his next project. Um, so if any of you think that Eddie should take his dissertation and, um, make it accessible for the greater we in the form of a marketing book on leadership and marketing. Just let us know and we'll see how that will feed in to Eddie's thoughts as he moves into the next chapter.
Notwithstanding children, house moving and all the other things is going on his life.
Eddie: Um, yeah, I mean, a book might be a bit, I'm sure the other half will have something to say about that. Um, but I, I, I have started. Blogging about this. That's great. This kind of process. So you know that, that that's available for people to read and I'm sure we'll pull it in, show notes and stuff.
Maybe that's the first step. Phil, first step. Um, well actually what was quite, um, empowering for me was when I was speaking to some of these, uh, leaders, they were, they were suggesting, well, why don't you, um, why don't you take this audio and. Create a podcast around it. Yeah. So that is another avenue that, yeah.
Yeah. I mean, depending on time and priorities, I'm, I'm looking to explore because the fact that they said that they want to share that with the world as well was something that, um,
Phil: meant a
Eddie: lot. It showed that I was onto, onto something. Yeah.
Phil: Yeah. Brilliant. Okay. Well, Eddie, I think we are just about getting to the end of our interview process here.
I'm not quite sure. How long we've been going. It's about the right time, and I just want to congratulate you again. Well done. I saw. Y all of the hard work you put into it, you know, those Saturday mornings here, maybe Sundays as well, occasionally at the office. Yeah, yeah. Uh, and uh, also knowing that you couldn't have done it without the support of your family.
It's, uh, yeah, it'd be massive. Um, but anyway, congratulations and thank you. And thank you very much for taking part.
Eddie: No, thank you. And just to say thank you to you, Phil. 'cause you provided me with the opportunity to, to, to do this whole thing. So without you, none of this would've, would've been possible, so, okay.
Okay.
Phil: That's great. Thanks.