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Careers & workplace advice from Hays

Perhaps you had been working hard towards a promotion before the crisis hit, only for those plans to be put on hold, leaving you feeling deflated. Or maybe, you’re concerned your learning and development is stalling as you deal with the ‘here and now’ implications the pandemic has for your role and the wider organisation. Or you simply feel stuck in a job that you don’t like, resigned to the fact that now isn’t a good time to search for a new one.
Feeling stuck in your job can be extremely frustrating, particularly in a difficult labour market like the one we’re experiencing now. The good news, however, is that there are some proactive things you can do to help you feel as if you’re moving your career in the right direction, instead of standing still.

Nine actions to take if you feel stuck in your job

1. Find your self-confidence again: Working remotely, or at least in a hybrid way, can leave you devoid of all those positive reinforcements and small ‘confidence boosts’ that you would ordinarily experience throughout the day – often without realising – when working in a buzzing office. This may have left you doubting your skills, denting away at your ‘work mojo’ in the process. Perhaps imposter syndrome has started to creep in, knocking your self-confidence even further.

If this sounds familiar, stop and take a moment to reflect; something you probably haven’t had a chance to do much of if you’ve been working non-stop throughout the pandemic so far. Take some time to reflect on all that you have accomplished in your career so far and realise that your success is down to you – no one else. Write down your accomplishments and what you’re proud of, and refer back to them when you need a confidence boost. It might simply be that your growing lack of self-confidence and constant negative self-talk is what’s really holding you back from giving your career forward momentum and adding to your feelings of being ‘stuck’.

If you show the classic signs of ‘imposter syndrome’ – such as crediting your career successes to mere luck or ‘being in the right place at the right time’, instead of your own capabilities, skills and hard work – be sure to remind yourself that you aren’t alone in suffering from this, especially right now. Learn how to accept compliments from others on your work performance and achievements, and take the time to celebrate your successes.

2. Create your own career strategy: While you might share this with your boss, often the greatest value of putting together your own personal career strategy for the next one, two or even five or 10 years, might be in how strongly it motivates you to drive your career forward and pull yourself out of the work rut you’re experiencing.

Detailing what you want to learn and where you want to get to can give you a greater sense of ownership of your own development – ultimately putting the power in your hands – especially at a time when the world is so full of uncertainty, with many feeling a lack of control.

After all, this is your development, and you’re the only one that can really drive it. If you’re feeling stuck because you’re not clear in your mind as to where you want to go or which routes are an option for you right now, creating this personal development strategy will help you crystallise your thoughts. Then, once you do have a plan, stick to it and break it down into manageable steps.

Brendan O’Donovan, Group Data Marketing Director at Hays, has outlined the key features that your career strategy ought to have, including:

Your ultimate goal: This can obviously vary from person to person, but can include: reaching a certain level of seniority, to work for a specific company, to earn a certain salary, to have a specific impact on society at large, to attain public recognition or to achieve a healthy work-life balance.
Clear insight into the context: Ask yourself questions on your internal and external context including:
- Internal:
  - What skills and capabilities do I have?
  - What are my strengths and weaknesses?
  - What types of work have most energised me over the last year?
  - How have I grown and developed professionally over the last five years?
  - What professional network do I have (mentors, colleagues, contacts)?
- External:
  - What are the typical intermediate career steps to get to my goal?
  - Who are the people whose career I’d want to model my own on?
  - What are my strengths and weaknesses compared to people I compete with for promotion or a new job?
  - How are technology trends changing the types of opportunity available to me?
  - How are my potential employers performing in their market?
Your route to success:
- An action or attribute which everyone who has succeeded at your goal has in common (and which sets them apart from everyone who has tried and failed at the goal).
- Something that nobody you’re in competition with is doing, but which would be highly valued by an employer of choice.
- A new area of employment which is emerging or growing, which you could get established in before anyone else.
Plans and actions:
- What skills do you need to develop? Can you develop them at work, or do you need to learn outside?
- What is your ideal next career step? Is there scope for promotion at your current employer right now, or do you need to look elsewhere? Is it realistic to achieve it over the next year? If not, how can you begin to take on those responsibilities early and volunteer yourself for stretch assignments?
- Imagine yourself at the end of next year, talking an interviewer through an example of something you’ve done over the past year that makes you perfect for your ideal next job. What is that project or performance, how can you ensure you’re involved and able to make that example a reality? What are the barriers you’ll need to overcome?

3. Proactively upskill: There are many ways you can proactively add to your skills in your own time, which in turn, will help drive your professional development and keep your career progression on track. Committing to adopting a growth mindset and your own lifelong learning, including staying up-to-date with trends and developments in your industry, will help you feel that you’re moving forward productively in your career, even if COVID-19 unfortunately means you may not be promoted as quickly as you’d like.

As much of the world goes through continued lockdown and reopening cycles to help limit the spread of the virus over the coming months, you have a lot of options for upskilling even if you aren’t in the office all of the time at the moment. Those could include – as Hays Australia Director Jane McNeill has suggested – learning a new language or two, training or mentoring someone else, keeping an eye out for relevant webinars and podcasts, and accessing any training or development resources your employer offers. The key thing is to keep your upskilling going even in these strange times, instead of leaving it on pause, which will only add to your feelings of being stuck in your job.

If you’re interested in upskilling, I’d recommend that you take a look at My Learning, our free online training portal.

4. Regain your passion for your profession: The challenges, disruption and stress brought by the pandemic may have left you feeling as if you’ve lost your ‘work mojo’, the fire in your belly, the passion you have for what you do, leaving you feeling deflated and stuck. Now is the time to regain that passion. Take some time to reflect and think about what it is that you love about your job. But not only that, also ask yourself what your own personal purpose is.

One great way to summon up some of the old passion is to remind yourself why you took on your current job in the first place. Also, as I said earlier, give yourself a pat on the back for all of the progress you have made in your role so far. Make sure you break out of your usual daily routine from time to time – perhaps shaking things up by volunteering for different tasks, which I’ll touch on in a bit more detail later in this blog. Learning a new skill or reading about new trends in your industry will also help you regain the passion for what you do.

And if all else seems to fail, remind yourself that you’re far from the only person who’ll be struggling to regain their ‘work mojo’ right now. These are bizarre and difficult times, and a lot of people are more despondent about the situation than they’re necessarily letting on. But as Dr Maggi Evans has previously explained, simply being honest and kind to yourself, as well as taking small steps to adjust your energy flow, can greatly help you to feel better about your life and career.

5. Turn to others for inspiration: Explore what experts or those you look up to are doing in their careers and how they got there. Expand your network to include those you aspire to be like and learn all you can from them. This will give you the motivation, inspiration and knowledge to really drive your career forward.

A great way to do this is to find a career mentor. By ‘career mentor’, I’m referring to a confidential advisor who can help you to overcome the challenges that may currently be preventing you from achieving your longed-for professional goals – here are four key steps that will help you to find and nurture your own mentor-mentee relationship.

6. Optimise your personal brand: Opportunities for a promotion may or may not be available to you at the moment. Either way, it’s important that as part of your personal ownership of your career development, you take steps to optimise your personal brand and perfect your online presence. This will position you as an expert in your field, and the very act of doing so will give you back an element of control, making you feel less ‘stuck’.

The development of a strong personal brand online is a gradual and multi-layered process, encompassing first steps such as Googling your name to see what the rest of the world currently sees, and checking that your various social media profiles are consistent in how they represent you.

Catherine Gutsell, Global Head of Content and Social Media at Hays, has previously gone into greater detail about how you can clean up your act on such key social platforms as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

7. Have an open and transparent conversation with your boss: If you feel stuck in a job with no progression in sight, and you’re comfortable with the idea of having an open and honest conversation about it with your boss, then do so. Your manager’s role is to help you succeed, and they can only do that if they understand what your career goals are and what barriers or blockers you’re experiencing.

Where possible, it’s in the best interests of not only you, but also your employer, to have these open and transparent conversations about the future. It helps to avoid both of you sailing blindly into the future, perhaps with very different expectations of what that future is likely to look like.

To help ensure you can plot the right path forward for your career as a result of these conversations, be sure to ask yourself certain questions in advance. Those might include what you do and don’t enjoy about your current role, how you see your role progressing in the coming years, and what kind of work you would love to do in an ideal world. This information will help your manager understand your situation and agree on steps forward.

8. Stop ruminating on how stuck you feel: Your job and your professional development absolutely should be part of your focus. Of course, your career deserves careful consideration and should occupy your thoughts, to an extent. If, however, your frustrations are consuming your mind, then it’s time to find some more balance and focus on other aspects of your life. This will help you gain some perspective and ultimately take the most effective approach to alleviating those feelings of being stuck in your job with no way forward. So, pick back up on a once-loved hobby, spend time doing the things you enjoy and make sure you’re getting enough rest – instead of working unhealthily long hours in a desperate need to prove yourself or pull yourself out of your rut.

9. Look for a new job: If you’ve done all of the above and you feel your career progression goals won’t be met at your current organisation, or are continuing to feel increasingly ‘stuck’, it might be time to explore another role. Before you start your job search, talk to a recruiter and take time to reflect on exactly what you want from the next stage of your career. Also be sure to update and optimise your CV and LinkedIn profile, and tailor each application where possible.

Feeling like you’re stuck in your career is frustrating to say the least, even in non-pandemic conditions. In current times, when it can often feel as if so much of ‘normal’ life is effectively in suspension, it can be all the more agonising. By following the above tips, however, you can regain some control and take steps to ensure you’re still moving forward in your professional life, pulling you out of your career rut and back onto the right track.

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The COVID-19 pandemic has substantially impacted the B2B marketing industry. According to research, 78% of marketers believe that communicating value is an essential priority this year, making it absolutely crucial for leaders to innovate and come up with new approaches, in order to guide their businesses and employees through this difficult time and beyond.

So today, we’re joined by Stacey Danheiser and Dr. Simon Kelly, Principals of Shake Marketing Group, and co- authors of the book Value-ology and forthcoming book Stand Out Marketing. They’re here to share their expert advice on how B2B marketing leaders can support their teams and organisations to thrive in the new era of work.

1. To begin with, please could you introduce yourself to our listeners? Stacey, if we could begin with you, that would be great.

(01:25) I’m Stacey Danheiser, I’m the founder and CEO of Shake Marketing Group. We help organisations become more customer focused through customer research value proposition development and customer centric marketing strategies. Prior to Shake Marketing, I spent 14 years in corporate marketing, working for several Fortune 500 companies in both B2B and B2C.

2. And Simon, how about you? Could you let us know a little bit about your background and your current role?

(01:57) Yes, I’m (Dr Simon Kelly) the Principal of Shake Marketing, where I help primarily B2B organisations grow by helping them develop more powerful value propositions that help them stand out for their customers and ahead of their competitors. I’m also a lecturer in marketing sales at the University of York so, I call myself a pracademic. I’ve got about 35 years’ experience in working in the industry and with businesses. In the past I’ve led B2B marketing at BT, and I’ve worked in the US, running North American marketing for a telecoms company there.

3. Do you think that customer expectations and behaviours have changed fundamentally for good because of the pandemic, and how is this impacting marketing functions?

(02:47) Yes, that’s a great question. We started to contemplate this question around three or four weeks into the pandemic when we were getting bombarded with all this ‘new normal’. And we really wanted to understand more of what it really felt like for marketing and sales leaders in this COVID world and their thoughts about what the future might hold for B2B marketing and selling.

So, we went out to do some research. We did in-depth interviews with sales and marketing leaders, a survey, and we also talked to our clients and ex-colleagues and friends who are marketers and salespeople. To a large extent, our findings amplified the need to go back to marketing basics or marketing 101, because customers have become even more intolerant to irrelevant communications from companies. Everybody’s on Zoom calls or team calls the whole time, and it’s really amplified the need for companies to develop marketing communications, products and solutions that are relevant and differentiated, so that customers can easily see what’s going to help them. So, it means that marketers have got to deeply understand what it is that customers value and what they’re looking for.

During this time as well, I think we also witnessed the rise of Black Lives Matter and other movements. And marketeers that we spoke to really think that this has put a premium on authenticity, you must be able to walk the talk. For example, a Vice President of FinTech who we spoke to said, “You can’t just slap something on your website any longer and expect people to believe it, if you don’t live it.” And you may have seen this quite well-known case where a university Social Media Manager resigned his position, because he felt the university were putting images of their support for Black Lives Matter, which weren’t authentic. So, the days of greenwashing, claiming you’re green when you’re not, or claiming that you support a thing that you don’t are gone as far as the marketeers are concerned. So, it’s all about authenticity.

4. And what specific challenges do you think that B2B marketing leaders have faced over the last few months and how have they overcome these?

(05:20) Well, I think they’re still living through some of this, but the first thing that they’ve probably found out straight away is that different customers have got different fortunes. At one end of the extreme, you can talk about airline companies and you can contrast those with cloud communication, video communication companies, or even people that supply PPE whose fortunes really clearly were on the rise because of this misfortune.

The contrast is clearly mirrored on the supply side. So, if you’re a CMO for an airline company, the world looks very different to that of the CMO for a video communications company like Zoom. So, if you serve more than one different customer sector or segment, we think gone are the days of treating everybody the same, what’s sometimes called the ‘Spray and pray approach’.

And so again, we use this word amplifying, we think it’s amplified the need for better segmentation. So, I think this has really led to three main things that we’ve found marketers have focused on:

Firstly, refreshing the message to be COVID relevant. And in some cases, tailored to segments or sectors, depending on how their fortunes were shaping up.
I think focusing on being more relevant and authentic as we began to discuss.
And finally, a focus on customer value. As you rightly said in the introduction, 78% of survey respondents said this is a priority, which necessarily means understanding the customer deeply, and quite frankly doing more customer research to understand how the customer’s world and their attitudes and beliefs have been changed due to COVID.

5. Now Stacey, how do you think the crisis led B2B marketing leaders to re-evaluate and reconfigure their marketing strategies?

(07:30) Yes, well, we were really interested as Simon said, in figuring out how marketers were responding to this. And we found that there were three large buckets that marketers were focused on right from the beginning:

So, the first one as Simon alluded to was tone and messaging. So, 73% of the marketers that we talked to and surveyed said that they had updated their messaging to reflect new sentiments and customer themes. This is great, it basically forced B2B companies to think about the human side and individuals. Obviously, we were all going through this pandemic together and it made B2B brands a little more relatable during that time.

The second is the marketing and sales approach. So, the main driver of this was that we couldn’t meet in person. Sales suddenly weren’t in person meetings which forced marketing teams to be creative and drive customer engagement, conversations and more momentum on that side. We heard from marketers that suddenly, the sales team is calling them, responding to them and asking them for help in ways that they had never done before. Of course, on the marketing side, this largely meant that moving everything offline to online. So, we saw a huge spike in digital tactics, specifically marketing events that suddenly weren’t happening and then they all went to virtual webinars or online. So, the other piece to that was a lot of marketing websites were created landing pages, resource centres that addressed the COVID situation and just how the company was responding to that.

And then the third big area was around products and services. So, 40% of the B2B marketers that we surveyed said that they had developed a new pricing or packaging strategy. So, just taking an existing product and packaging it in a different way or being creative with customer service or financial terms. And only 33% said that they had launched a new product or repositioned an existing one. Largely the barrier was that the internal organisation got in the way, that the marketing team wanted to create something and respond to a customer demand or a customer need. But because of the complexities internally and having to work with so many different departments across the product organisation, it was difficult to get something launched. We saw this happen much quicker in B2C organisations with restaurants offering to-go food and beverages.

6. And do you think there’s been a shift from reactive firefighting at the start of the pandemic to more strategic long-term thinking within marketing teams?

(10:18) Yes, definitely, I think that’s been an exciting outcome. For a long-time marketing has been largely focused on tactics and execution. So, we’ve started to see the shift toward more strategic activities. At the beginning it was all about creating this messaging; “We’re here for you or we’re in it together”, but there’s still a lot of room for improvement. So, for example, only 22% of the marketers that we talked to said that they had done any real customer research. This really has led to what Simon already called the sea of sameness problem, where everyone is saying the same things about working from home, we’re in this together and we’re here for you.

So as a customer of B2B and B2C, this has led to a lot of fatigue with messaging and a lot of starting to ignore it and tune it out as it relates to messaging. And the same thing is happening on the tactical side. So digital fatigue is real, both customers and employees are really just tired of being on video calls all day which hasn’t really made anybody excited to sit through an eight-hour virtual event or concert. So, this all in all is forcing marketers to be more strategic, creative, and more in tune with ways to cut through the noise there.

7. How do you think marketing budgets have been affected since the start of the pandemic and how will this impact B2B marketing in the future?

(11:47) So this is a question we were really interested in when we talked to marketing leaders. No surprise, but about 74% said that there was a negative impact short term to their marketing budget. So, budgets were frozen, some of them were cut, some of them operated in an environment where they had to get approval for everything, but it’s not so bleak on the long-term outlook. 66% said that they believe there’s going to be a neutral or positive outlook in the long term, which is great. So, I think we’ll start to see the shift to more useful and higher quality content.

For example, one of the trends that we’ve seen in marketing over the past several years is around this soundbite marketer, where we all have extremely short attention spans. And so, marketing has been getting shorter and shorter, but what we’ve found during this time is that while that’s initially true to grab somebody’s attention, people want the option to dive deeper.

So, producing longer forms of content, for example, podcasts have spiked during this time and whitepapers where there’s more in-depth knowledge. People are looking to get educated and that’s something that we think will continue that will allow companies to stand out and demonstrate their expertise.

And then the other piece is more on the tactical side, that marketers have told us that they’ve seen their organisations finally see value in some of the programs that they had been trying to get approval on for years. So for example, marketing automation, social media, or doing a social selling program, all of a sudden the rest of the organisation is finally seeing the value in that, and is now approving those budgets to do those programs that will start to continue.

8. And Simon, do you think the perception of the marketing department has changed internally within organisations because of the pandemic, particularly from senior business leaders.

(13:49) Well, yes, if you can claim there to have been any upside for COVID, it’s the fact that it’s elevated the role of marketing in B2B organisations. And I think Stacey mentioned that 62% of our survey respondents said that their role is now perceived to be more important. We’ve always felt that marketing is about much more than just marketing communications or increasingly as it’s been seen, digital communications, but it really surprised us in some of our interviews, the organisations that were still saying, we’re now seeing much more than just events because we can’t have face to face events anymore.

Real-life blue-chip companies where the B2B marketeers were still feeling that they were the events guys. So now’s the time to elevate yourselves if you’re a marketing leader, if you’re a CMO or if you are leading a team of both, with collateral and events to become more than that feigned colouring in department, which B2B marketing teams are sometimes known to be. So go beyond tactical execution, as Stacey said to a much more strategic place, because after all it’s the CMO and the marketing teams that are supposed to drive the decisions around which customers you serve, in which marketplaces with which products and services and with what competitive advantage.

So, that’s the strategic place they need to get to. And many marketeers have said, yes, we’re getting much more engagement from our senior leadership team and much more attention to what it is we do beyond the basic tactical things. So, good news from that respect.

Click here to pre-order their new book, Stand-out Marketing

9. Stacey, do you think that the role of the B2B marketing leader has changed because of the pandemic?

(15:45) I don’t think it’s necessarily changed. If we would fundamentally look at what the role of a B2B marketer is, it’s identifying which customers should be served, helping to clarify which offers and products should be served up to them and then how to communicate and deliver that value. Marketing has historically had to fight for a seat at the table and so, as Simon just mentioned, all of a sudden, it’s now being elevated, and the perceptions internally have changed.

So, this is all really good news for the B2B marketing leader. COVID has amplified the need for marketing to have a pulse on the customer, the changing needs of the customer and what they value. And what we found working with clients over the years is the number one way to get a seat at that table is to have an understanding of customers based on first-hand knowledge. Not on calling through data or looking at websites statistics, or hearing about it from the sales team, but really having authentic conversations with customers and trying to understand what their world is and what’s happening, so that they can ultimately connect better and create programs and content that will resonate with that customer.

So, the biggest thing that’s obviously changed with the role is just managing and engaging both employees and customers that aren’t in the same room and connecting with customers in a whole new way. So, we’ll continue to see that evolve. But I think fundamentally as Simon alluded to, it’s back to the basics for the B2B marketing leader, and it really does start with that deep customer understanding.

10. Simon, have any brands really stood out for you in terms of their B2B marketing strategy and their ability to cut through the noise?

(17:33) As Stacey said earlier, I think we’re all very familiar with lots of great B2C instances now from gin distillers that flipped to produce hand sanitiser, clothing companies that have moved towards face mask production. And there’s this funky service I’ve seen where there’s a pen which you can touch to your wall and use it for colour matching services to deal with a spike in demand for home decorating. So, some of the things we’ve seen there have been very innovative and responded to big changes in the market.

But we’ve seen some things in B2B, which does show that there’s not always a direct correlation between size and agility. For example, we know that IBM quickly developed six key offers out of their massive portfolio that would stand out as being most relevant in the COVID world. And this included helping turn up services for some organisations who, believe it or not, have never worked remotely before this thing kicked in.

Organisations like Palo Alto Networks who by their own admission, because they provide cloud services, were very fortunate because people are talking on a video and wanted to do it on a big scale. So, people needed their services even more, but they quickly set up a resource centre to help customers easily interact with Palo Alto and find out how they could help them move into this new environment. And I also like the US company that we spoke to who their prime business was tracking people into big events with QR codes. So they know who’s in an event, who’s moving around and they changed the offer and quickly developed a solution for a Boston construction company to help them keep track of employees who are coming in and out of the construction site to keep it COVID safe. So, some good examples from different sectors in B2B we’ve seen.

11. Now we’d like to end this podcast with a question that we ask all our guests, what do you think are the three qualities that make a good leader and crucially, do you think these qualities have changed as a result of the pandemic?

(19:58) Well, I don’t think the qualities have changed. I think I’d say some of it has been amplified and I think some have needed to shape to fit the COVID context. For example, and this sounds trite in some ways, but leaders should lead the company, not just manage it. So, in the context of COVID, this certainly to me includes having a vision for how things going forward could change, how these changes could then be used to the advantage of the company or could affect the customer or your own organisation. And then going beyond that, providing direction on which opportunities your organisation needs to exploit and where to change focus, like in some of the examples that we’ve heard already. I think if you’re a marketing and sales leader, then the responsibility to be the voice of the customer has been heightened because certainly on the sales side at the beginning, there were less face-to-face interactions.

So, now it’s up to sales and marketing leaders to bring the voice of the customer back inside the organisation and make sure that the organisation is not just too internally focused or obsessed with their internal world. And we’ve had some companies that we spoke to lately who have been very honest and admitted that they feel they’ve turned a little back inwardly and have been a bit internally focused.

Finally, authenticity. The thing we talked about authenticity earlier applies to leaders and to organisations. You’ve got to have empathy with a customer, as a whole person in this current climate and for the teams that are working in your organisations. So, this has been brought to the fore, so this authenticity looks like to me having empathy about how COVID has affected the customer’s business, and offering real help, not just buzzwords on your website.

So, if you’ve got a customer sector that’s struggling, then you might want to relieve the payment terms or do something flexible on that side. And then you need to take account of how customers employees have had to live their lives during COVID. We spoke to one organisation that gave us really great insight to the fact that in upstate New York, where quite a few of the people were working from home, in a high rise apartment block in this very small room were having lots of discussions on video.

So, empathy and authenticity, walking the talk as well is really what it’s all about by not just communicating things, but showing through your behaviours. That’s important in this environment and they’re the three for me in truly leading the company, the voice of the customer and authenticity or empathy wrapped into one.

12. Stacey, finally, the same question to you, what do you think are the three qualities that make a good leader? And do you think these qualities have changed since the beginning of the pandemic?

(23:10) First of all, I don’t think the qualities have really changed. I think to Simon’s point, these have all just been amplified. They’ve maybe been in the background as a need for a long time. And now it’s finally coming to the front that this is really needed to help lead in this new era.

But I would say first and foremost is courage. This is something, especially in the marketing function, that the marketing teams need to have the courage to be bold, creative, and do something different. We’ve seen this sea of sameness problem happening in a lot of different industries. We’ve seen it now with COVID and really it’s a result of the fact that marketing teams are not feeling courageous, that they can do something different and that they’re willing to take a stand and try something or suggest something that might be out of the norm for that industry or for that company.

The second I would say is clarity. So again, it’s marketing’s job really to set the vision for the organisation and to help set the stage for strategy. And this includes prioritisation that not all customer segments are created equal. So, it’s really marketing’s job to help get the company focused on a set of customer targets. And, we joke that the Seth Godin quote, “Everyone is not your customer” but we see this over and over in organisations where they are actually operating that everyone is their customer. They’re so nervous to exclude somebody or to declare that they only work with certain industries or certain types of companies. And this really needs to be addressed from a marketing standpoint because when the content, programs or conversations are happening and they’re not really addressed to a specific person, then it doesn’t feel authentic, it doesn’t feel like the marketing team or the sales team really understand the customer. And so, this goes back to just having real clarity on who that customer profile is, the ideal customer and prioritising that.

And then third, I would say context. This is again the marketing function understanding the business. This is something that marketing can have a stronger seat at the table by understanding on the one hand the customer, but also the connection to the business and how they can help create strategies that will take somebody from that 50,000 foot level, all the way down to connecting at the customer level and making it relevant to their world. And so, this is marketing spending more time, understanding the financials, and what the business is trying to achieve. We’ve had conversations with marketers, asking what the profitability is of certain customer segments or what the revenue stats are for certain products. And the marketing team just doesn’t know the answer to that. And so, I would say context there and just understanding the businesses is critical. So, my three are courage, clarity, and context.

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The COVID-19 pandemic has had a dramatic impact on the B2B marketing industry. According to research, 69% of B2B marketing functions have changed their marketing approach by returning to basics such as communication, value add, relevancy and empathy.

So today, we’re joined by Stacey Danheiser and Dr. Simon Kelly, Principals of Shake Marketing Group, and co- authors of the book Value-ology and forthcoming book Stand Out Marketing. They’re here to share their expert advice on how B2B marketing roles have been impacted by the pandemic and how they may evolve in the new era of work.

1. To begin with, please could you introduce yourself to our listeners? Stacey, we’ll begin with you.

(01:10) Yes, absolutely. Well, firstly, thanks so much for having us on the show today. I’m Stacey Danheiser, the Founder and CEO of Shake Marketing Group located in South Florida in the US. We help B2B organisations become more customer centric and focused through customer research, value proposition development, and customer centric marketing strategies. Prior to founding Shake Marketing, I spent fourteen years leading a variety of corporate marketing functions for several Fortune 500 companies in both B2B and B2C.

2. And Simon, how about you? Could you give us an introduction and let us know a little bit about your background and your current role?

(01:51) Yes sure, thanks for having me. I’m also a Principal of Shake Marketing, where I help primarily B2B organisations grow, by helping them develop powerful value propositions to help them stand out in their marketplaces for their customers and ahead of their competitors. I’m based here in the UK, and I’m a lecturer in marketing and sales at the University of York. In the past, I’ve led B2B marketing at BT, and I’ve worked in the US running North American marketing at Level 3 Communications, which is where Stacey and I met.

3. And do you think customer expectations and behaviours have changed fundamentally for good because of the pandemic, and how is this impacting the role of the B2B marketeer and the work that they do?

(02:46) Well, that’s a great question, and it’s a question we started contemplating just a few weeks into the pandemic when we were hearing all about this ‘new normal’. So, it triggered us to want to do some research, to find out more about what marketing, sales leaders and practitioners lives were like, to understand the changes in customer expectations that we were witnessing and how they saw the future.

To a large extent, I think our findings amplified the need to go back to marketing basics. Customers have become even more intolerant because they’re on the screens all the time to irrelevant communications from companies, which has amplified the need for companies to develop communications, products and solutions that are relevant and differentiated, as you mentioned in the introduction. And so, this means that marketers need to deeply understand what customers value, both from an emotional and rational perspective.

During this time, we also witnessed the rise of Black Lives Matter and other movements, which many marketing leaders we’ve worked with and spoken to believe has put a premium on authenticity, meaning you’ve got to walk the talk. For example, a VP of a FinTech marketing company we spoke to said, “Gone are the days where you can just slap something on a website without living it any longer.” There was a particularly well documented case about a social media marketing manager for a university in the UK who left his job, because he believed they were portraying their support for Black Lives Matter, which had no substantial basis.

4. Stacey, how has the crisis led marketeers to re-evaluate and reconfigure their marketing strategies?

(04:44) Well in our conversations with marketers and just working with clients, we’ve found that there are three big areas that marketers have shifted.

The first is around tone and messaging, 73% of the marketers that we surveyed said that they had updated their messaging to reflect new sentiments and customer themes. It’s really forced B2B companies to recognise, not only how organisations are reacting during this time, but also the individuals within those organisations and how they’re feeling. So, for example, work suddenly merged with home life for many of us, which means trying to find a balance between being on video calls for work and then helping kids in the background with their online schooling.

The second is this marketing and sales approach. So, since sales has not been able to meet face-to-face with customers, this really put a premium on marketing to help drive customer engagement and conversations. At the beginning, this really just meant moving everything from face-to-face, offline events and tactics into a digital format with a much bigger focus on social media for example, and there’s basically a need to continue that creativity. How will marketing and sales evolve? How do you build the relationships in a virtual environment for example? So, all of that will continue to evolve.

And then the third area is around new products and services. So, 40% of the marketers that we talked to said that they had developed a new pricing or packaging strategy. Some of it was just being creative with financial terms and being more lenient, potentially spacing out payments over several months versus requiring upfront deposits, as well as packaging different features of their product set and creating either a new product, or just pulling things in and highlighting features that may have been underrepresented or not as important before the pandemic.

On the other side, 33% of the folks we talked to said that they had launched a new product or repositioned an existing one. So, we saw this happen a little bit more quickly in B2C organisations. Specifically, in the US, restaurants started offering their famous cocktails in a to-go container in an effort to bring in some revenue, but also give customers access to their beloved margaritas while they sat at home.

5. Taking all these changes into consideration, do you think that the basics of marketing will still hold true in the new era of work or will they need to be revised to ensure that businesses are able to thrive?

(07:25) Yes, as Simon mentioned, we think the pandemic has just amplified the need for marketing basics. We typically work with clients that have skipped part of building the foundations, in a seven-step framework, let’s say step seven is execution, a lot of marketers start with step seven. This means they don’t do any customer research before developing products or launching new marketing campaigns. They don’t test messaging, they treat every customer segment the same, instead of understanding what makes them different.

So, really this is amplified during this time. Building a solid foundation and having a marketing platform that is solid within that company is going to be even more critical and customers will rely more heavily on relevant content, communications and interactions as Simon mentioned. Especially in B2B, they’ve been tolerant for a long-time receiving stuff that’s irrelevant. This just means that marketing’s job is going to be growing even bigger and more important. So, you can’t just produce one piece of content that is expected to talk to five different departments and five different types of decision makers. You really must understand the nuances of each of these audiences and then create content that is relevant to help each buyer get educated and move forward in that journey.

6. Do you think that there’s been a shift from the reactive firefighting which we saw at the beginning of the pandemic to a more strategic, long-term thinking within marketing teams?

(09:06) Yes, we’ve seen marketing start to be more strategic and proactive. At the beginning, it was very reactive, pushing out we’re here for you messaging or getting everything moved online, but there’s still room for improvement. For example, only 22% of the marketers that we talked to said that they had done any real customer research, and this led to a sea of the same problems, where everyone was saying the same things about working from home, we’re in this together or we’re here for you. And when you first received a couple of these emails from companies, that might’ve been a nice gesture or sentiment, but when you got the twelfth or the fifteenth email, you just started deleting it, and this is leading customers to tune out and putting a premium on relevant communications.

7. And how will customer value change and impact the tactics that marketers use?

(09:59) B2B customers have long been frustrated with vendors and salespeople not listening to them or understanding their needs. So, now is the time to dig deeper and understand what’s changed in the customer’s world and how your company can deliver value.

On the tactical side, the first is really recognising that digital fatigue is real. So, customers and employees are just tired of being on video calls all day. It really hasn’t made anyone excited to sit through another eight-hour virtual event or concert, and yet I keep getting invited to two-day events that feature forty plus speakers. And on the one hand, that’s great because it’s now a global audience, you have access to people or events that you might not have previously had access to. But on the other hand, a two day back-to-back eight-hour event is just unrealistic in today’s business climate.

So, this is going to force marketers to become more creative, to cut through the noise to keep somebody engaged on a webinar. How do you make things more interactive and fun? Marketing specifically has been specialised and siloed over the last several years that the tactics don’t always seem integrated or cohesive. So, remember, the customer is interacting with your brand in a variety of formats from the web, to virtual events, to sales presentations and customer service calls. And all of this really needs to feel seamless and like it’s coming from the same company.

8. Simon, do you have any examples of brands who have done this effectively?

(11:27) Yes, so from my perspective, we’re all very familiar with some of the type of examples that Stacey talked about in the B2C world in our private lives. From gin distillers that flipped to producing hand sanitisers, clothing companies making face masks, and there’s a real funky paint colour matching service that you can get by touching a pen against any particular wall and matching it to a colour, which was part of the growth of home improvements during lockdown.

And some of the things we’ve seen in B2B are quite interesting, although they’re not always a direct correlation in size and agility. For example, IBM quickly developed six key offers that stood out for their customers in this time as the most relevant for the COVID world, and now including turning up services for the first time for organisations that have never worked remotely before. Palo Alto Networks is an American cloud company, and they quickly developed a resource centre to help customers to move into working in post-COVID environments to help with flexible working.

In terms of development of a brand-new offer. I also like an example that we found in the US that a company called Chappell who are a software company that track movements in big marketing events, using QR codes, et cetera. Well, they quickly developed a solution for a Boston construction company to help them track who was coming in and out of the key construction sites. It’s called Health Screener and that showed a great deal of agility. I think the warning here is for every company we saw moving with agility to respond to new needs, we found a frustrated marketeer working in a company where they knew customers wanted new solutions, but the company just couldn’t get out of each other’s way to get the new solution over the line, because it was just too cumbersome.

9. What do you think have been the key challenges for B2B marketeers’ as we transitioned through this pandemic?

(13:43) As we’ve hinted at, the challenges faced by B2B marketeers would have been very different depending on which sector they were in or which segments they serve. So, they would have found that the customers had got dramatically different fortunes at different ends of the extremes.

We can contrast, for example, the airline industry, which obviously came to a very rapid shutdown with organisations that provide technology like cloud services or video communications technology. And this contrast obviously mirrored on the supply side. Now, unfortunately, some people were furloughed, including people we know. For example, a marketeer that we know worked in an agency whose core business was serving UK pubs, a friend who actually looked after the trade side for a paint company, which just shows you that, you can’t take everything as being in one lump because while there was a boom in home decorating, obviously all the sort of building sites and the trade side of the companies work just came to a grinding halt.

So, while the B2C business grew, the B2B business was shut down almost overnight. So, if you serve more than one different customer, sector or segment, gone are the days of treating them all the same, and this amplifies the need for better segmentation and treating customers differently. As Stacey said earlier, we found that three main things came through, that companies started refreshing the messages, companies now need to focus more on being relevant and authentic to customers which could involve developing new offers, and finally, to focus more on customers value. I think that for individual marketeers, they probably need to be a lot more flexible about the roles that they would consider taking on and maybe move to create more skillsets.

10. What do you think will be the main obstacles for marketeers over the next year or so, as we continue to navigate through the current crisis?

(15:57) I think depending where they’re at, again you could contrast, but one of them could be budget. We met one person who said their company was going back to zero based budgets, which as you probably know, is a situation where you have to bid for every single pound or dollar that you’re looking to get to help take marketing initiatives forward, which is just a reflection that some organisations could be struggling. The other obstacle we think we’ll face is often what happens to marketeers, is they just get driven to try to deliver lots and lots of activity. You know, there’s activity illusion whereby the more you do the more you must be being productive. And they’ve had a lot of demands placed on them because as Stacey said, it’s harder for the salespeople to meet face-to-face with the customers, so they’re looking for more and more tactics to be developed. So, trying to step away from that and becoming more strategic is going to be the challenge.

11. Stacey, which skills do you think will be most important to ensure a successful career in B2B marketing in the future?

(17:09) Well, this is a great question, and one that is near and dear to our hearts as we’ve spent the last year researching and writing a book called Stand Out Marketing, which is due out in December about this very topic. So, we cover in this book five key competencies that marketers should seek to develop to get ahead and help their companies stand out.

They represent an acronym for value as that’s really the primary role of the marketer’s job, to create and communicate value for customers:

So, the first one is visionary. Having your pulse on the broader business environment to develop new products, insights, and ways of doing business.
The second one is activator. This is a bit broader than just the standard execution where marketing typically lives. This involves getting buy-in to initiatives and being the force that activates the team to help drive growth.
The third one is learner. Everything is changing all the time, so learning is an ongoing process. Whether that’s learning a new skill, like how to do Google Ads, learning about your competition or the changing world of your customers. This is really a mindset and something that we feel strongly that marketers need to continue to grow.
The fourth one is usefulness which is really about being relevant, practical, and differentiated in the programs, communications and products that are being launched and obviously you can’t really be useful unless you have your pulse again on the customer. So, that kind of ties back to being constantly in tune.
And then the last is evaluator. This is what’s working and what’s not, what insights can be found. There’s a plethora of data out there. A lot of technology and companies that are talking about big data and intent data, but really the skillset here is about how you evaluate that data and what you’re going to do with it. How do you interpret it? And then how do you take action against it?

Great, thanks Stacey. So, it’s obvious that marketeers need to look at their skill sets just to make sure that they’re covering as many bases as possible.

Click here to pre-order their new book, Stand-out Marketing

12. How can marketers go about effectively upskilling to learn or demonstrate some of these key traits that you just mentioned?

(19:24) Yes, well, for one, listening to podcasts like this are helpful to continue to upskill and learn new things. We’re going to have a deeper dive podcast with Hays to go into the competencies and give you guys some action items around each of those, but for now we really urge marketers to do some self-reflection and understand where they may have gaps. There’s always room for improvement and many marketers just don’t always want to admit that.

So, we have conversations with marketing professionals all the time and on the surface, they’ll say, yes, we’re doing all of this, everything looks great and everything is working well but if you peel back the onion, one layer down, there’s a lot of depth missing there. So, I think, part one is just really being self-aware and doing some reflection as to what is most important to them. Where do they really want to see their career go? And then developing a framework and a plan to get there.

13. And Simon, do you think certain marketing roles will become more important in this new era of work?

(20:28) Well, I think point number one here is, as we’ve probably already drawn out is the good news. If there can be any good news in this day and age, it’s the overall role of marketing seems to have been elevated in B2B as a result of the pandemic. Well, we’ve always found that marketing is more than just marketing communications or increasingly digital marketing communications. And what really surprised us in our interviews was the kind of organisations who were saying, “What we’re seeing now is much more than just events because we can’t have face-to-face events anymore. I mean, it’s just rarely some of the big blue chips that were saying that to us.

So, now’s the time for marketing departments to elevate themselves above just collateral and events and to become more than just the colouring in any department. So, go beyond tactical execution to a more strategic place where marketing drives what customers you serve, in what marketplaces, with what products and services and crucially with what competitive advantage.

So, while in the short-term companies like Hays, saw a big uptake in demand for digital skills as more marketing moved online, also seeing jobs like project management, becoming more to the fore as some of the leaders we actually spoke to held the view that maybe there’s going to be a need for more generalists, as projects come together quickly to deliver specific new propositions or campaigns. We’d also say that if you’re in an execution role, just elevate yourself and don’t just execute. For example, if you’re the social media marketing manager, think about the overall strategy you’re trying to deliver against. Think about what’s relevant and specific to your customer because if you don’t, you could be in trouble.

14. I’m just moving on to the last question now, which is something that we ask all our guests. If you had one piece of advice to help our listeners navigate their careers through the pandemic and beyond, what would that be?

(22:39) Well, I think keep your eyes and ears open to how things are developing. Make time for yourself to develop new skills and competencies in tune with these trends. Step out of your comfort zone and ask for assignments that will test you.

In B2B marketing, it seems to be more and more the case, especially in bigger companies that if you’re going to start in a very narrow silo role, like say digital communications, but you’ve got an aspiration to become a Vice President or a CMO, you’ve got to be able to demonstrate strategic understanding.

So, as I said earlier, apply that kind of thinking to your role as of today, give yourself time to learn and don’t use all your time executing. Also working in companies of different sizes can also broaden your competencies because contrasting with working in a big company, if you’re the marketing guy in an SME, you might be it. So, you got a full spectrum of the roles you’ve got to develop and deliver against.

15. Finally, the same question to you too Stacey. If you had one piece of advice to help listeners navigate their careers throughout the crisis and beyond what would that be?

(23:53) Yes, well, I will end with a story. So, one of the companies that I worked for had a lot of ‘Type A’ personalities. When we would develop a marketing campaign, everyone would want to share their opinion on the messaging, look and feel. Product management, inside sales, field sales, brand marketing, everyone would sit around the table and basically argue about what was most important to the customer. This was very frustrating and unproductive as everyone had a different perspective.

So, one time my team decided to bring in a third-party resource that specialised in customer research for our industry. And after they shared their key findings related to customer sentiments and motivations and goals, do you know what happened? Everyone stopped talking. They were all wrong. And it was a very important lesson for me that when you have real unbiased customer feedback, nobody can argue with it, after all you are not your customer.

So, my advice is really to earn yourself a seat at the table by presenting real customer input. You know, the data is good as we’ve talked about, but you need to have conversations with real customers to make it even better, and to be able to deliver growth constantly, reiterate on your marketing programs and be successful.

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If you’ve experienced redundancy, it’s easy to be concerned about how it will affect your future opportunities. However, you shouldn’t be afraid to communicate it clearly on your CV and in interviews.

Remember, you’re not the only person who’s been made redundant, and there are several reasons for it that don’t reflect poorly on you as an employee.

As you start your job search, it’s time to decide how best to explain your redundancy on your CV and in interviews and own the narrative. Here are some ways to acknowledge your redundancy as you search for a new role.

Your career can bounce back from redundancy

If you’ve recently been made redundant, you may feel as though you’re facing an uncertain future. Once the initial shock subsides and your thoughts turn to the job search.

However disheartened you may feel, know that you can make a difference to another employer. Many people have been through redundancy and you shouldn’t feel ashamed of your current situation.

How soon after redundancy can you start a new job?

Once your employer makes you redundant, the terms and conditions of your contract and redundancy package will determine when you can start a new job. If there are no restrictive clauses, you can start a new job once your redundancy notice period ends.

Explaining your redundancy to a new employer on your CV

Does being made redundant look bad on a CV? No. Companies make such decisions on commercial grounds. Redundancy is never a personal reflection of you, your skills or your value. When addressing your redundancy on your CV, make sure you follow our guide:

1. Include the start and end dates of your previous employment

Be honest and succinct about your redundancy on your CV. Include the start and finishing dates for your last period of employment. Showing how long you worked for your employer will help you appear open about the situation.

2. Clearly address your reasons for leaving

In one or two lines, explain how your employment ended. Discuss this in the context of broader organisational or economic changes. Then you can use the rest of the space to talk about your skills and experience.

3. Highlight any key achievements from your last role

Try not to dwell on your redundancy on your CV. Your main focus should be on any recent achievements or projects that you are proud of. Learn how to enhance your CV with quantifiable evidence of your skills, competencies and results.

4. List any activities you’ve been involved in since being made redundant

Talk about how you have been spending your time since being made redundant. Mention any upskilling in the professional summary section of your CV. You can also add any voluntary work to the work experience section.

How to explain your redundancy in an interview

If you feel nervous about the interviewer asking for more details, prepare and practise your answers in advance. You can also try taking into account the below strategies:

1. Take the opportunity to explain the circumstances of your redundancy

If the interviewer asks you to expand on the circumstances of your redundancy, be ready to elaborate. Specifically, mention whether there were multiple redundancies in your department. You may also want to discuss how you responded to the risk of redundancy, to demonstrate your proactive attitude.

2. Reference your successes from your previous role

Your accomplishments are no less valid simply because of your redundancy. Talk about the achievements that best demonstrate your suitability for the job.

3. Talk positively about your previous employer

Don’t blame or speak negatively about your previous employer. Any discussion should be in the context of your learning and achievements during your tenure. Explain how you are refocusing on your new career goals and exciting next steps.

4. Explain why this particular role is a good fit for you

Don’t give the impression that you are looking for a short term solution for returning to work. Make it clear that you are interested in this specific opportunity. Describe why this is the logical next step for you and why you’re the right choice for the job.

Turn your life after redundancy into a rewarding new chapter in your career

Employers are going to understand your situation. Addressing your redundancy clearly and in a positive manner won’t damage your chances of securing a new role. In fact, many employers appreciate an immediately available candidate who doesn’t have to work a full notice period.

Keep focusing on the positives in your life and career. Try to apply a growth mindset to your situation. You will learn a lot from this experience, even if you can’t see it right now. Good luck!

What to do next

Once you’ve finished the first draft of your CV, it’s time to review. Discover how to replace overused clichés here, or return to our full series on writing a CV.

Meanwhile, if you’re preparing for an interview, learn how to explain any gaps in your CV.

Having transitioned from the chaos we faced in the early days of the pandemic – establishing a ‘new normal’ of remote working, changes in working arrangements, and fighting to keep businesses afloat – leaders in many organisations are looking at how they can be prepared for an uncertain future. Continue reading How business leaders can rethink their talent management for the new era of work →

It’s safe to say that the COVID-19 crisis has thrown talent planning in the air. With increased uncertainty, it is tempting for organisations to focus all efforts on the immediate talent challenges – how to manage remote working and how to create as much job security as possible. Continue reading The four key themes of talent management – and how they’ve been affected by the pandemic →

The COVID-19 pandemic has upended our working world, impacting labour markets and the expectations professionals have around work – therefore, in order to attract the best talent, the style and tone of your organisation’s job adverts may need to change.
For example, to reach relevant job seekers and rank well on search engines, job adverts must include keywords – such as key industry terms, salary details and location
It’s also important to avoid common job advert mistakes like unclear job titles, or filling the advert with buzzwords and vague wording.

Continue reading How to write the best possible job advert →