Episode 12, Part 1 - Driving Business Growth Through Customer-Centric Leadership, with Charlotte Smith

taking the time today. I know you know Jonny from from past. So maybe Jonny over to you, where did you guys meet?

what have you been doing over the last number of years? I'm not going to name those years, just because that would be fair, but give a little bit of background about you.

change it for the world. I mean, there were some incredible stories, there was some incredible hardships and ways of working, but it was a rugged way to be dragged into this industry, but it absolutely gave me all of the competencies and the beliefs that I think have stood the test of time. Throughout that process, I have gone full cycle from Bill, a

bill a team leader. I did a good stint post 2008 crash, working more on a talent acquisition role, working on kind of resource and strategic resourcing strategies for big energy and utilities back then, and around about the time, I decided that I wanted to be a mum. That was something that I was committed to. Was the time that I thought, okay, it is time to hand hang those bullying gloves up, and that's a personal

choice. That's not to say that that has to be done because you want to be a mum for any aspirational young ladies listening to this and want to go down that path, but it was something that I've always felt passionate about. I remember going to the Carnaby Street training facilities that SRE had back then, and working with the trainers and the coaches. And I remember right from daydar that that was something that I want

to do. I really wanted to help and to coach others. I think right back from my sporting kind of I was, grew up like going to all the athletics clubs, netball clubs, getting involved with coaching other teams. I think I've always had that kind of coach in me, and I knew that's what I wanted to do, that felt like the timing was there for me to do that.

able to coach from experience. But of course, have had to go through the journey of understanding how to be a professional coach in order to ensure that people can bring the best out of themselves, as you guys understand and know very well. You know, back in the day, SBR as a business was was one of those defining moments in training that actually really helped me understand how to turn that funnel around and get your sales professionals to understand the lens that they're

looking down, and therefore to be more successful. So wrapping that up, recruiter, yes, I am, and I'm proud of it. Started nearly two decades ago, did about eight to nine years billing team leading, and then have ever since been in a people manager, L and D, kind of operational directorship capacity. And I love it.

bit more about the macro conditions that are ongoing. So if there's anyone that knows, you've probably seen the ebbs and the flows of what growth is like within business and obviously your your personal side as well, in terms of today's conversation, as we spoke about. And we're really going to dig deep on leadership and what that means to create a customer centric sort of business, and how you've helped

that moving forward. But before that, what really curious to understand is that for you as an individual, and you spoke about your family there, which was amazing. You spoke about your career, which was really interesting. But when we think about growth, there's normally in most people's lives, and I think back to when people are children, or when they're going through their career, there's like a sort of a growth spurt as

such. You know that moment where when we were growing, when we were younger, and we were moving up and getting bigger, but actually in our career, what was that moment that you can think about, or that milestone where you had a growth spurt and you that really sort of got you thinking?

takes a hot minute. But I felt at that moment, if I was to be leaving that house in the morning, dropping my child off at nursery and leaving him all day had to mean something, and I had to really ensure that I again, I wanted to lead by the front, by example. I've got a little boy, and I wanted him to

think that his mum was a rock star. So for me, that's where, you know, just things started to click for me in a new role as well, because I was really trying to pioneer what learning and development was back then, and this was 11 years ago, so it is so much more commonly discussed nowadays, but back then, you had to fight for budget. You had to justify your cost base, right? And that was also quite hard, because you go from I can justify my cross base. I can give you teams with

million pound P and L's. I can personally produce business with my own effort. So then, to really try and work in an L and D capacity with what was back then, quite an old school way of thinking to go, I'm really going to make this work. And I'm not just going to make this work. I'm going to pass I'm going to pioneer this and become one of the most successful L and D professionals in recruitment. And the last 10 years have been

exceptional. There's been some hard parts. I mean, COVID, that was challenging, and that actually I had to go through redundancy at that phase after being with the business for 11 years. That was excruciating at the time, looking back on that, that was actually wonderful, because that's caused me to gain further experiences with some wonderful businesses and enabled

me to keep pushing my career forward. But absolutely, motherhood was a defining moment for me, and I look back at every career aspects that I've achieved, thought and even just felt in myself, it has been since coming back from having my son.

lights on as such. And whatever role you play, people centered learning and development, you're as crucial as anyone else to creating that but just as a bit of preamble and as a frame for today, before we get into some of the chunky topics, I'm really curious. And if you think about the topic today, we're thinking about driving business growth through customer centric leadership, and what those strategies are to creating that and we're really emphasizing the point around the leadership part

to customer centricity. So why do you think leadership is so important towards customer centricity? Could you describe a little bit?

people love a statement, don't they? They love throwing something out there to say, this is what we are going to do. Great, full stop the and what moment is the leadership team? And the reason that's an and what moment is because if you can't gear your leadership team to drive your people to achieve that, then what's the point? Don't go in that boardroom and blueprint that strategy in the first place, particularly within

recruitment services. And I know that's incredibly relatable to a lot of the other customers that will be listening to this show, but you can have the best ideas, but if you don't know how to mobilize that, you're going to come unstuck every single time. So from a leadership perspective, you have to have the right people around you to drive that strategy and achieve that from a customer point of view, yes, but that, again, will have a pin in it. How is that leadership team driving the

people, the foot soldiers, to deliver that strategy? Actually should take up the market share of your conversation. So if there is a two hour board meet to define your strategy for coming years and months, 10% of that time should be allocated to the goal. 90% of that time should be then used to discuss the how.

I'm with you, I'm not at home. So let's, let's make this work. Let's get stuff done. So it definitely does come from experience. But of course, I've had some fantastic mentors over the year that have helped us understand the how so much more well, you've got your how and your why versus your what, right? So it's definitely a mixture of both. I'm not

pioneering that as a strategy. I just really believe it, and I'm not scared to stick up for it if I think the leadership team that I'm working with are veering off course and not actually labeling and funneling away to what for us to actually produce that, and potentially, because I am in a people role, because I have to go back and get stuff done via people. So I need to know what

those layers are. So it's incredibly easy to navigate in control, but also prove ROI, which I have to do all the time. So if I can do that with step one equals Step Two equals step three equals before we're ding, ding. We did it, then I can do my job much more effectively.

contributors. When you think, if we need to, if we need to scale something and we need to get something out there, what if leaders aren't coaching and supporting that kind of initiative? What is their job? What are they doing?

that. And I think I have to work really hard as a people professional, because I get it like there are people that are exceptional billers, and quite frankly, they pay my wages too,

right? So I think a business needs that you have to learn how to harness that superpower that they have, and you have to get very good at spotting whether somebody can therefore lead from the front, as I said before, or they just need to just do and then you need to better equip the people, the people leaders around you, to be able to deliver a strategy which is usually phase two, phase Three, phase four, of a business that

wants to scale via head count. Then they usually want to do that because, of course, they want to see that bottom number grow. And so therefore you have to, you have to pay attention to both in equal measure. But again, you just, just call it out. Just call it for what it is. Don't force a round peg into a square hole. And work hard to ensure that everybody's considered level.

do. So actually, you get infinite. Well, not infinite, but you get significant scale by saying, we can say we've got this leadership team people, leaders, how to help them get the most out of their people, how to help them really help their individual contributors understand the importance of being client centric. For example, if that's what's being driven across the business. I think that's reflecting on this, this particular conference that I referenced, I think it was, it

was a light bulb for so many people around the room. And you just think that felt quite shocking to me, because I was just thinking, Well, surely that's fairly obvious.

did that happen? Because, you know, I've worked with some great leaders, and they're like, Oh, we probably need a you, because we've got a bit lucky and to get to that next level of growth, we need to mobilize our people and our leadership team in the right ways. And I'm like, nobody gets that Lucky you. There is a way. There is there is a list of ingredients here

that have been put together quite nicely. So for any of my leadership professionals, people, professionals that are listening to this pod like take the time to dissect the good before you go into any leadership team, looking for instant gaps that you can correct, because you don't need to come in like a like a mood Hoover and instantly go into

you're not doing this. You're not do that as you really focus on what has gone really, really well, how much of that will get you to the next goals around that customer centric strategy that you are looking to implement, and what's and then what's missing, because it doesn't always have to be hard work. It doesn't there is so much joy in what we do. So celebrate what was good. Actually construct the lucky and enable your leadership team to view that, and then they'll go,

Okay, now we understand our step one, step two, step three. We didn't realize we were doing that every single time, because we were just coming in and doing as is, as all good billing professionals do, they just don't think it's unconscious. So our job is to then unravel that, create a formula and replicate that, and then then you've got a scalable business.

that with the people side of things? How have you been successfully able to say, actually, how do we maintain a client centric or customer centric approach, but still kind of focus on on the KPIs. And I guess, just to clarify what I mean there, we know that that you can do it twice, but it is a

bit of a juggling act. If you're an individual contributor or a leader and you're like, we're laser focused in on these metrics, how do you remember that you still would a client to serve at the other end?

finish line in the first place. So a lot of my job is proving, look, see this is how we did it. So data is really key with that. And the use of technology and decent CRMs that are able to give you analytical tools to be able to do that has been

absolutely key. Whenever I've considered an employment opportunity, I have never entertained a company that has got a rubbish CRM and a rubbish way of looking at the analytics, because I just don't know where I could start with that I can't create a blueprint for us to be able to drive the right behaviors. And the reason I want to drive the right behaviors is because I am driven by a customer centric approach always, because without our customers and without happy

customers, we won't produce the sales. Without happy customers, they don't pay their bills. So there's, there's front office and back office issues aligned to ensuring that your customer centric approach is really on point. So from a KPI perspective, you prove the method, you go and hunt out what really works, and then you have to, then take it back one step before that and go, Okay, well, now we know what works. We can't

just diagnose. We can't just say, do. X amount of this, X amount of that, you have to really train the methodology behind that. So there is almost method and mindset that really needs to come into any type of people slash leadership strategy to achieve a truly client centric approach. So the example being within my world, right? We're looking for successful conversations, or I call them nice nos. So nice nos with potential customers, and the reason they're a nice no is

because we have been customer centric. We've rung somebody or rang somebody with a truly on point value proposition. We're not wasting their time. We're not ringing to just introduce ourselves. We have rang because we are subject matter experts in what we do. We think there's an element of some decent timing involved, so they probably do need to know about us at that point, or may need to know about us at some point in the close

future. And as a result, we're aligned, and we can start that kind of cadence in order to be able to try and win that person over and win the business, right? Joy, that's that's what we're looking for as recruitment professionals. And I'm sure that funnel is relatable to other sales funnels as well, right? So the target is, therefore, how many BD calls are you doing?

Right? You can put that on a dashboard, you can produce reports around that you can put a number out there, which is, you know, the same as an ingredients list, 250 grams of self raising flour versus 25 BB calls in a week should be able to produce you a decent ratio, etc, etc. So then the step back before that is the training. It's the why, it's the how it's, you know, taking the time to nurture and teach somebody what a decent value proposition is. The step back before that for my

business in particular is, we call it market segmentation. So it's, don't be a generalist. You know, if you truly want to make your customers happy, you will provide them something that is hard to find, from their talent acquisition teams, from just posting their own adverts. So you have to truly own your market. You can't cop out of being a subject matter expert. That's training, that's leadership. So again, I can't as

the people professional. I can't sit with my banking team and go right, where's the next kind of big change in transformations within the banking world. I have to work very closely with our Associate Directors to understand that, and we have to leverage each other's skills. They have to tell me in which direction to point their people, because they understand the commercial gain from that.

marketplace. I just challenged and asked a question. It resonates a little bit of what you're saying. I said, if you're selling HR software to your HR persona, which is essentially your buying center, you know, how many of you have picked up the latest HR magazine? How many of you picked up the latest HR newsletter? How many of you have rang around your network and called up a HR professional and understood exactly what they do for a day to day job. And we work with over 100 of their

sales development representatives, zero. So does that resonate with you, wherever you've been, without naming names, but how would you you know, Coach or train on that particular piece? I think it's aligning a little bit to what you're saying.

much do you truly know about that? Isn't there something that's missing in the market that we don't do...

the fundamentals. And as a training professional, as a business coach and as an operational director, it's right back at the grassroots if I don't have the right seeds to plant in the first place. I am not going to get the harvest that I want. So it cannot be ignored, it cannot be understated, and you have to work really, really hard at getting that right in the first place.