6 best practices to help recession-proof your marketing & BD team in 2020

Reputable economic commentators are predicting an uncertain economic market in the US for the coming year. Whether this results in volatility, slow down or a recession, it will impact professional services marketing and BD team leaders.

Firms will either see the uncertain market as a time to double down on marketing efforts, and look to their marketing and BD teams to be providing client-advancing and value-adding strategic support and guidance to get ahead. Or, they will scrutinize their marketing and BD teams, seeing the uncertain market as a time to react and cut cost-related positions (despite their remit to increase business).

In either case, the marketing and BD team is susceptible as the pressure mounts ("stepping up or stepping out"). Managing, retaining, sustaining, growing and then elevating your team has never been of greater importance.

A small time investment up front will ensure you have done all that you can, regardless of where the economy goes in 2020. Take the time now to put into place these six best practices to help recession-proof your team:
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• Know which top performers are flight risks and directly address the cause. Identify your top performers and talk with them about their professional goals for 2020. Once these goals are identified, look at how their individual professional development goals are aligned with (and ideally, influence) your overarching strategies for the team. Interestingly, most marketers (and particularly senior marketers) leave their teams because their expertise is not fully leveraged and because they don’t get access to leadership. Top performing team members want to be impactful and challenged; help them rise up to that challenge, while at the same time you get the inside scoop on what will make them stay.

• Make a decision to train and engage, or budget for recruiting costs. Put simply, if you don’t invest in your team they won’t grow (impairing your team's potential) or they’ll look elsewhere to achieve their professional development goals in their career because they’ll see it’s not your priority. You have many priorities as a leader of people; decide whether you’re a ‘train and engage’ or ‘recruit to replace’ leader. 

• Get partner feedback on how they can utilize their BD team. Get your marketing and BD savvy partners to help you in your mission. Ask them what your team does well and then promote that feedback internally. Similarly, ask them where the team falls short, and develop a plan to help your team rise up to this challenge. It's hard to ask your team to step up their game (if that is the remit) if you have no feedback or measurables to begin with. This also has the added bonus of sharing with the partners (who should know what your team are doing) how you and your team are moving the needle.

• Involve your team in your long-term strategic goals. Your team needs to know where it's headed and how it's helping contribute to the firms’ greater business and strategic market decisions. Being involved in this bigger picture has the impact of empowering and engaging people in a common cause, which younger professionals in particular seek out. Many young professionals feel most inspired and desired to stay at a firm if they are part of the bigger solution.

• Empower your team to own projects and create innovative solutions. As a team leader, you’re busy; and I’m adding to your to-do list too. You must trust and delegate. This empowers the right people to lead your marketing initiatives so you can stay high level, strategic and proactive, and move them towards where they need to be in 2020. Empowerment (or a lack thereof) is a huge factor at the senior levels as to why those professionals look for new opportunities.  

• Do your compensation analysis and course correct early. The dreaded topic of compensation. Caveat: in my experience, most team leaders are not paying their team what they should be paid. Rarely do I run a search where, if I’m replacing a position where someone has left (as opposed to a new growth role), the salary range is the same as the person who just exited the role. Not only are salary ranges now more transparent and fluid, each month new laws impact different states and cities on traditional salary-induced hiring questions and decisions. These are my three top tried and tested best practices on compensation in this current market:
  1. Pay your top performers 15% more than they’re worth on paper (you know their real value better than the market). This keeps them satisfied on the subject of salary (which is a top priority for most), and it gives you protection from headhunters luring them away on salary alone.
  2. Be transparent about discretionary bonuses. Right now, most firms are on average bonusing their top performing professional services marketers between 7-12%. And most firms are trying to stay at the higher end of that range and bonus at least 10% of the annual salary. Write this into the welcome letter; candidates respond well to this level of transparency.
  3. Understand what your peer firms pay in each market. Then think about what the effect of that information will have if your team has this information first. If it matches up, you won’t have an issue. If it doesn’t, those who are seeking more will absolutely leave it to get it and they are high flight risks.

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Good marketing and BD team leaders will have one, maybe two, of these best practices in place. In this market, in this economy, and in this moment in time, consider increasing that count to all six points above to safeguard your biggest investment: your people.