Managing Marketing: The Challenges Facing Procurement In Marketing

Hannah_Gough

Hannah Gough is an MCIPS qualified Sourcing and Supplier Relationship Management Marketing specialist who discusses many of the challenges and considerations for a procurement professional working in marketing, sharing some of the hard earned lessons she has discovered along the way working in banking, booze and retail.

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Transcription:

Darren:

Welcome to Managing Marketing. And today I’m in Sydney but I’ve got a visitor from the Old Country, a proper lady apparently, called Hannah Gough who is an MCIPS qualified Sourcing and Supplier Relationship Management Marketing specialist. Welcome, Hannah.

Hannah:

Thank you very much for having me.

Darren:

What brings you to the Antipodes?

Hannah:

A mixture of things; family, as well as business, as well as obviously to meet you, Darren, to do the podcast.

Darren:

Well, that’s very nice but I believe you’re jumping on a plane and managing to get some holiday as well.

Hannah:

Yeah, at the very end. I have been working very hard.

Darren:

Before you go back to putting the nose to the grindstone as they say.

Hannah:

Absolutely.

Darren:

I’ve never met a Procurement person who, during secondary school or high school, went ‘When I grow up, I want to work in Procurement.’ So how did you end up in Procurement?

Hannah:

I actually started on the shop floor at Marks and Spencer and moved from there into a gig (I like to call them gigs) at Debenhams buying the mannequins and the store fitouts so that’s where it started for me. It wasn’t something I set out to do—not 100%. I actually wanted to be a buyer of fruit and chase the sun. Have I ended up where I wanted to be? No, but Marketing is absolutely my passion now that I’ve fallen into it. So, all good..

Darren:

So you would say you fell into Marketing? Because I certainly fell into Advertising. I was a research scientist when I became a copywriter. What were you at Debenhams?

Hannah:

I was at Debenhams doing the store fitouts and buying the creative fixtures and fittings. So, for example, if we had a concession, Ted Baker was one, we would help them create the store fittings to entice the customers over to shop in that small concession.

So that’s where my exposure to Creative and Marketing started and from then I was 100% hooked. I’ve gone to a couple of jobs in-between but I’ve always found myself coming back to Marketing because that, for me, is where the passion is. It’s almost a no-brainer. It’s natural for me. I don’t feel I have to try very hard at it.

Of course, I do try very hard, but it comes naturally to me. I find it quite passionate.

Darren:

So, you have a natural passion for Marketing and Creativity.

Hannah:

But I do not consider myself a Marketeer. I have to make that super clear every time I go into a new gig with people. That is not my expertise. I’m very aware that a lot of people who do Marketing Procurement sometimes give the impression they could do Marketing. I absolutely don’t think I could do Marketing whatsoever. They’re the experts and I’m there to assist them.

Darren:

So, you have a passion and an appreciation for Marketing but you’re not trying to enthuse yourself into that role. I do occasionally meet people who work both sides of the fence; they’ll be Marketeers and they’ll be Procurement people and they’ll go back and forwards across those two.

Hannah:

Which is incredible. I’d love to be able to do that. That’s not something that would come naturally for me. My personality is better suited to Procurement and a slight process as opposed to being more creative. I guess I’ve got the beauty of commercial and creativity but I think every decent Marketing Procurement person should have that in today’s environments that we’re working within.

Darren:

You must be aware of all of the criticism that come down on Procurement, especially from agencies and even some Marketeers but especially from Agencies. And that, largely, if you summed it all up, it’s just about getting the lowest possible price.

Hannah:

I fundamentally disagree. I like to think that anyone I’ve ever worked with would disagree with that statement. Of course, there are examples of people who don’t buy correctly. But I don’t think anyone that I’ve worked with would say that.

For me, it’s not ever about just price. In the evaluations that I do when we’re pitching and doing scorecards, which everybody in the pitch has the ability to give feedback on, I always ask for 3 positives and 3 negatives that we can then feedback to an agency. And I think that’s what puts those doing it correctly head and shoulders above anyone else.

By that I mean my job is to give insight to both sides, both the people who are doing the pitch but also agencies who come and work with us. I’ve always done calls afterwards, which may sound really straightforward but the amount of times I hear “This is the first pitch we’ve ever done where you’re calling us and giving us feedback”.

Why wouldn’t I do that? Of course, it’s a conversation as opposed to “Sorry, you didn’t get the work. I’m dropping you an email”… (or not writing to them at all) but I do a phone call with them and I also ask for feedback on the process that we’ve done. And I’ve learnt a lot in just the past 6 months from doing that. “You did this and it wasn’t appreciated” or “You suggested you were going to pay us for the pitching”. Which again is something that’s different and new, but that’s based on feedback.

We got it wrong as well by asking to pay for the pitch and asking for ownership of the ideas they were pitching. I now find that wasn’t appropriate. Who are we to say “Here’s X amount of money and that idea is ours”? It’s that type of thing.

Darren:

I absolutely agree with you. We say to clients, “If you want to own the ideas you have to pay a commercially fair rate for the idea.” To say, “Here’s a token, a peppercorn payment, and by the way we own everything you’ve done” actually devalues the very process that you’re procuring. The process is to create value out of creating ideas.

Hannah:

Absolutely, and that was never my intention. The intention was I’m going to do the right thing because the amount of feedback I’ve heard is that it costs an agency a lot of money to pitch, then of course I’m going to make sure that as a brand that I’m working for, we’re seen as different, more respectful. But did I get it right on that occasion? No, I didn’t.

Darren:

But you live and learn.

Hannah:

Of course.

Darren:

I’ll take you back a step. Providing feedback. It is absolutely the mandatory thing you should do if you run any sort of tender process. You’d agree.

Hannah:

I’d absolutely agree.

Darren:

And yet it’s one of the biggest areas of failure and it’s not just Procurement failure; it’s also Marketing failure. When we’ve run pitches, the Marketeers are very happy and they’ve appointed Agency B, let’s go off and have our fun with Agency B.

And I’ll go “But before you do, we’ve got A and C who have missed out and we need to set up a meeting and sit down and give them a thorough debrief on what they did right and what they did wrong and how they could improve for the future.”

And I would say the vast majority of Marketeers are not interested. They couldn’t think of doing anything worse. If I said to them, “Here’s a pair of pliers, could you pull your front teeth out?” They’d go, “Is that an option instead of doing the feedback?”.

Hannah:

It’s uncomfortable—don’t get me wrong. But with everything, the more you practice something the more it becomes 2nd nature. And it’s important for the Marketeers to also take responsibility for “We’ve” made this decision. We have collectively decided that this is the reason you are not getting the work. And yeah, I’m going to stand by it and I’m going to be on this phone call with Hannah when I phone up the agency.”

The amount of people who behave very ungraciously and I mean that from the agency side when we try to give them feedback—that speaks volumes. But also I’ve had such nice emails from people when we’ve let them down and I’ve said, “I’d really appreciate some feedback.”

There was one guy (I can’t remember his name) in the most recent pitch we did who wrote War & Peace about “I think you could have done this better” but it wasn’t criticism; it was constructive. “That brief was an absolute delight, thank you so much for allowing us to work on it.” I’ll obviously remember that agency (she says not remembering his name—I know who the agency was).

That’s not to say that I’m biased to that agency, it’s just the behaviour of the person and how they dealt with us and vice versa. Those are the people I would want any business to do business with because people like people, at the end of the day.

Darren:

We’ve had the same; a bad response from an agency. In fact, we had one recently, where a company was running a tender. They’d started the tender, they’d actually engaged with agencies but then realised it wasn’t going anywhere. They called us and we came in.

The reason it wasn’t going anywhere was there wasn’t a clear vision of what success would look like so they’d gone into the process and quickly got themselves log jammed because they had all these conflicting opinions about which direction they should be going.

So, we sat down with them. We told all the agencies “We’re reviewing the process—we’ll get back to you but it’s going to possibly be a re-brief”. We sat down with all of the stakeholders internally and we worked out a very clear vision of what success would look like at the end of this process.

And then we went back and we had to tell some of the agencies (they had this ridiculously long list of agencies they’d engaged with very early on) “Look, it’s a new brief and you are no longer relevant to this new brief, this new direction. So thank you for participating but we won’t be going any further.”

There was one guy who phoned me directly and said, “No one’s spoken to me” and yet when I checked with the team, 2 people had had very long conversations and a meeting with him but in his mind he’d just been dumped. He said, “It was worse than being dumped by text”.

Hannah:

Wow!

Darren:

So, almost delusional. You do have to deal with that but that’s part of being professional and it’s also part of being respectful of the process and of the people you invite to participate isn’t it?

Hannah:

Absolutely, I agree. Probably in his defence, he’s a very passionate person.

Darren:

I think he was delusional because everything that could have been done had been done but he just felt that somehow he’d been left to cut and dry.

Hannah:

You will sleep well knowing that you did your job properly and that’s all you can ask for; do the best that you can and surround yourself with the people that are going to assist you to do that.

Darren:

But have there been any of the roles or gigs that you’ve done where there has been incredible pressure simply to reduce the price?

Hannah:

Yes, and that’s why I’m not at those companies anymore. You work this out in your career; what do I get out of bed for in the morning? What is going to make me happy? No one goes to work to do a bad job but when the focus is money saving only and that’s not what sits comfortably with you, then you have to just appreciate that that’s not a gig for you.

There are so many people who do what I do, Marketing Procurement, and there will be so many people who do get out of bed to save money and that’s what drives them. And if I’m in a role that they can’t have because I’m in that role and I’m not happy in it, then it absolutely doesn’t make sense.

So work out quite quickly what part of Marketing Procurement you are good at and then stick with that. So, money?, cost? No, it’s part of the job but it’s not what I’m there for.

Darren:

So your personal reward, would it be fair to say, is based on improving the performance and value of relationships and processes and contracts rather than simply saving a few bucks?

Hannah:

Absolutely. Nothing makes me happier than looking at a contract that’s not fit for purpose and then helping make it fit for purpose. By that I mean so that anyone can pick up that contract and understand this is what the agency or whoever is meant to be doing for us, and then let’s keep having those relationships and conversations to check that we’re all on track. It’s as simple as that.

I know I’m making it very simplistic but that’s what it should be. It’s not rocket science. It’s speaking to people, communicating, you don’t need to keep having loads of meetings and minutes to those meetings but if you can say when it comes to having to pitch a new piece of business, “We’re going to give it to our current Creative Agency because they do an excellent job” and if anyone were to question me on it, “Here are the examples of their Service Levels and how they’ve been performing against them.”

I know, hand on heart, they’re doing an excellent job. Not only because everyone says they are but here is the evidence. It’s bad on both sides when you get to a situation like you do with Audi at the moment, where everyone is a bit shocked that they’re tendering. How has that happened?

Darren:

After so many years.

Hannah:

Things change.

Darren:

But they haven’t changed for 28 years. Why are they changing now? Why is Procurement driving it? Why didn’t the Marketeers make that decision?

Hannah:

I just think that’s bad press. I read that and I was quite annoyed to see Procurement being held up as “Big, bad Procurement comes in again after X amount of years!…”…who knows what goes on behind closed doors.

Darren:

Except I’ve read reports that say it is a Procurement initiative.

Hannah:

And it might be. It might be procurement know things that the Marketeers also know e.g. yes, maybe price has become an issue or maybe someone new has come in and they haven’t an awareness of the processes that Audi are going through with the agency and it’s more complicated than it should be.

Darren:

So, you would subscribe a go to market every three years?

Hannah:

No, I wouldn’t.

Darren:

But otherwise you could end up waiting 28 years.

Hannah:

No.

Darren:

Then when do you go to market, Hannah?

Hannah:

You go to market, if I’m really honest, when the relationship has broken down and there is nothing that either side can do to make it better. That sounds pretty severe but you shouldn’t be going to market if someone is doing a good job and you’re happy with them. It’s like dating.

Darren:

If it’s not broke don’t fix it.

Hannah:

Continually evolve that relationship. The only way to have an excellent relationship with someone is by communicating. And you’ll have time on your side. Do I think BBH know that business inside out? Of course, they do and so you’d hope through the process being run fairly, they will come out on top. And then all the haters can get back in their boxes.

Darren:

Okay but I’ll give you a counterview, which we’ve seen happen a lot. I’ve been involved in a pitch where the Marketeers are very happy with the Incumbent. It’s a good relationship but the feeling is that we need to go to market just to see what else is out there.

Here’s the worst scenario for the Incumbent. They know so much about the business. They also have quite a long history over the years of what the Marketing team has liked, not liked. If they go back and play the “We’re the comfortable old shoe that has treated you well and delivered everything you need”, they’re going to be knocked off by someone who comes in that’s new and flashy, because Marketeers by their very nature are attracted to the new.

They want something new. They’re very happy with their old agency. It’s the great conundrum of the Incumbent; “How do I re-invent myself enough that I can compete with the new offering?”

The other thing is a lot of those new agencies who don’t understand what it’s really like working with that company, will make all sorts of claims and proposals that may never actually work. Whereas the Incumbent can’t say that because then the Marketeers will say “Well why haven’t you done that in the past?” It is the worst position.

Hannah:

True. It is a tricky one but I like to think that with the correct guidance, as long as you have the right people in the room making those decisions, and I’m not talking just Marketing and Procurement, I also mean Legal.

Have Legal there from the very beginning, which not many people appreciate. There should be someone who is from there in the room. Legal don’t just keep us out of jail, they bring the common sense to the table. And also, they’re there to give a guide—“We’ve sent out our contract template to everybody, not to mock up and take time on, but if there are any howlers come back and let us know.”

The legal person will also be able to guide the Marketeers and everyone else in that room, to say “These guys do or do not know what they’re doing because I’ve been given an indication based on what they sent back about the contract. They’re being difficult to negotiate with or difficult on these elements. Do we really want to go into business with people like this?”

There are those types of scenarios that get the guidance from the people that should be in the room. And going back to the Audi thing, I still don’t think it’s Procurement leading. It takes a number of people to make that decision. Yet everyone is shocked in the market that this is happening.

I also think, BBH, as long as they remain gracious through this, that’s excellent PR for them. If they get through this and win this, they’re absolutely laughing.

Darren:

One of the earliest pitches that I ran was for an English company in Australia that had had the same agency for over 30 years from the time they’d arrived in Australia to running this pitch.

They went with a new agency as part of the pitch and the Incumbent ran a full-page ad in the Australian Financial Review, the business newspaper that said, “Over the last 43 years this company has had so many CEOs, CMOS, launched so many brands with so many campaigns but only had one agency. We are now available to all of their competitors. But we wish them all the best for the future”.

I really loved that because it had class but it also had an attitude of “Guys, we’ve been doing the best we can for you for so long. We understand you want to move on but you have to understand as well that we now have the option of moving on as well.”

Hannah:

Yeah.

Darren:

It’s part of the deal. They lost in that decision. This company lost 43 years of corporate knowledge in this market.

Hannah:

And also, sometimes as a brand, you’re a nightmare. You are 100% the nightmare and the Incumbent, sometimes by refusing to pitch again, it means you really were a nightmare.

Darren:

You may say that but I couldn’t possibly comment in this case.

Hannah:

Sometimes I know we are a nightmare brand. I’ve had examples where I’ve gone back to people and said, “I think the allowances and hours you’ve put in to run this account are too low only because I know the brand and that it will take twice as long as a ‘normal brand’ and we’re not as sophisticated or commercial as you might need us to be.

And you’re going to have to teach us along the way, so you might want to relook at those hours you’ve put in.” For someone in Marketing Procurement to say that, that’s pretty rare.

Darren:

But also incredibly responsible.

Hannah:

You don’t want to mislead someone and make a decision to move to another agency if that’s the outcome and then, in 6 months’ time, it’s not working. That’s just failure on everyone’s part. If you know you’re a difficult brand or slower to respond to stuff, then that absolutely should be part of that brief “We’re not like everybody else because of X, Y, Z, therefore you’re going to have to treat us differently.”

Darren:

Now, you’ve mentioned Legal and you’ve mentioned contracts. My experience has been that contracts often get signed at the end of a pitch or tender process and then everyone seems to forget about them. What do you think is the real value of a great contract?

Hannah:

The guy who taught me Supply Relationship Management said that the second you sign a contract and put it in a drawer you lose 75% of that value. It’s like driving a car off a courtyard when it’s brand new.

Darren:

Where’s the value in the contract? A lot of Marketeers and agencies see it as something that has to be done. My personal belief is that it’s an important living document for the relationship. First of all, it defines roles and expectations for both parties. It also should spell out what to do should things start going wrong.

And it also mitigates risks for both parties, around a whole lot of complex issues like intellectual property, commercial liabilities, and things like that.

Hannah:

I think it’s like anything. Once you start the relationship, of course, you need to keep going back to that contract and I mean that to remind yourself what the strategy was, the brief you signed up for. But I don’t think anyone is under the illusion- it’s an evolving document.

It will not be updated, as it should be along the way—99% of the time it won’t be. Everyone should have an understanding of this is how the relationship is going to evolve and this is where we’re starting to change the business.

One of the banks I worked at, they were so focused on 40 stages of getting that contract up onto a system, updating it, having the meetings, documenting everything. Do I think we spent enough time on the actual relationship itself? No.

Darren:

But it was beautifully documented.

Hannah:

Absolutely. In conjunction with Contract Management, there were some very good-looking contracts and amendments to them.

Darren:

We got one a couple of weeks ago. It’s been in place for 6 years and has 28 amendments. Okay, but most of the problems here seem to be solved if we just refer to the amendments and the agency actually said “But we don’t know which amendment we’re supposed to be looking at because there are so many of them.”

Hannah:

It gets complicated and also if you’re not having the common sense conversations with people, irrelevant of the fact that you’ve got a contract with 26, 28 addendums to it, you have an aged debt to this company (I’ve seen howlers) of £8.6 million!! How has it got to that situation where you owe a company that amount of money but your contract is the Rolls Royce of what it should be? It’s complicated.

Darren:

It is complicated.

Hannah:

Having just finished with a company where, ‘Were they aware of what the Suppliers were being asked to do?’ -100%. ‘Are the relationships where they should be?’ -100%. ‘Were the contracts 100% updated and if you picked it up without knowing the relationship, you’d be able to tell what they were meant to be doing as a service?’—maybe not.

But the relationship is more important and ‘Can everyone within that relationship tell you this is what the contract should look like, and this is what we’re expecting from them?’ Yes! So, it’s both sides of it, isn’t it?

Everyone wants to have a very attractive contract that says exactly what you’re doing but then life gets in the way and you need to be respectful of that.

Darren:

Or even just to get it out once a year and say, “Let’s have a conversation about where we’re at and make sure this actually reflects that. And then we can make those changes”. Although I did have a CMO who was new to the job, hated the Incumbent agency and said, “I want to fire them; there’s no contract”.

I said, “We are only paying them monthly, we should give them at least three months’ notice”. “No, no, go and fire them”. I said, “You’re not coming with me?” “No.” So I turned up and first of all apologised because I didn’t think I should be doing it as a consultant and secondly, I said, “I don’t believe there is a contract in place”.

And I love this agency Managing Director who said, “Funny you should say that” and pulled out a contract. It was like 15 years old. It had been drafted by the agency. There was no termination date, so it was for perpetuity and there it was, ‘90 days’ notice’ in the contract.

Now that was a prime example of the downfall for the Marketeer of not even getting the most basic commercial arrangement right.

Hannah:

But going back to Legal and Procurement, they should be guiding that person to say, reputationally you’re not going to be doing us any favours. But also it’s ‘Back to Basics.’ Find the contract. If you don’t think you’ve got the contract, casually ask for it before you’ve told anyone what you’re doing.

I’m the queen of like, “Hi, I’ve just noticed that there might be an addendum to this contract; can you send me over everything you’ve got and I’ll take the time to go through it all?”. Which is pretty much me saying, “I don’t have that contract”. And 99% of the time, someone will have it because it would be so foolish not to have it.

There are times when you don’t have it but again it’s all about representing the brand, doing the right thing. It gets talked about in the industry. If you fire someone with no grace, it will get talked about. Reputationally, you’re not going to do yourself any favours. It’s just a ‘no-go’. People like to deal with people and so, if you behave in what I consider to be an ungracious manner and not professional, that will haunt you. Or it should haunt you.

Darren:

Hannah, we spoke about savings and you were very clear that that’s not what drives you. Have you ever been in a situation where you’ve been incentivised to deliver savings?

Hannah:

No.

Darren:

Or have you heard about it?

Hannah:

I have heard about it. One of the first companies I worked for —it seems a 3rd party was brought in to help the company realise savings. And they were incentivised.

And of course, anyone who is incentivised like that and doesn’t have to have a long-term relationship, will go in, see where the opportunities are, advise on them, and then leave with their percentage.

Darren:

Their 10 or 20%.

Hannah:

It seems mad. I’ve heard about that happening but it’s usually consultants.

Darren:

I get asked that all the time, as a consultant—will I work on a percentage of savings? And the most recent; the regional Head of Procurement was actually suggesting it and said, “Rather than charging us a fee (which is what we do), will you work for a percentage of savings?”

I turned to the CMO and said, “Would you be happy for me to be engaged on the basis that the more I save out of your agency fees, the more I get paid?” And they went “No, of course not”. I turned back to the CPO and I said, “When you convince them it’s okay, come and talk to me”.

Hannah:

It just seems mad. It drives the wrong behaviour. It’s the same with agencies and PRIPs and all the rest of it. If it drives the wrong behaviour, why on earth would you want to sign up for it? Because there are not always going to be the good eggs, like you and me, Darren.

There are going to be those who are driven by the money. I’m not saying I’m running a charity…

Darren:

No, you want to be paid for the services you provide.

Hannah:

But also integrity is 100% important in what I do. If anyone questions my integrity, I will have to blow them out of the water because that’s the reason I get employed by all these different companies.

If someone is paying me based on a percentage of a saving, and I know that I can absolutely annihilate that relationship and strip it of all the goods but have the money in my pocket—no, just no. Because it drives the wrong behaviour and not everyone is always going to be as conscious of doing the right thing, if it drives the wrong behaviour.

I have heard examples of it. When I joined the team I’ve just been in, the internal team were bonused, (slightly different) on savings, and again I don’t know that that drives the right behaviour.

Darren:

We’ve had that situation where the Marketeers selected one agency, but ended up with the Incumbent because the internal team did the negotiations and were bonused on the savings.

You’ve had quite diverse types of companies—I could summarise it; banking, booze, and retail.

Hannah:

I love that by the way!

Darren:

They are quite different categories even though you’ve worked in Marketing Procurement, I imagine each one has its own challenges and its own sets of circumstances, even brands within each of those categories.

Hannah:

Totally. Let’s start with the booze. I had to learn very fast on that one.

Darren:

What? How to drink?

Hannah:

No, I’m an expert in that. Things like, ‘You are not allowed to advertise to anyone who looks under the age of 25’. ‘You’re not allowed to advertise in certain countries’. ‘You have to be aware of dark advertising’. You cannot advertise booze in lots of markets.

Darren:

Learning how you comply and mitigate the risks associated.

Hannah:

Absolutely.

Darren:

This is one of the things that always cracks me up—the way people think we’ll push the responsibility onto the agency for making sure we’re compliant. The thing is if I’m going to be suing someone, why would I sue the agency, which is a relatively small entity when their client is usually massively big?

If I’m going to sue for damages or a fine, I’m not going to go after their agency who did the wrong thing. So much of this is just risk mitigation, isn’t it?

Hannah:

It is, but I guess it’s just common sense, but it’s stuff you have to learn along the way and learn incredibly fast. With banking, I actually went into banking buying Consultancy for the Market Regulation Programme, just after FATCA and LIBOR had happened. Did I know anything about this? No.

Darren:

You learnt quickly.

Hannah:

Thank God for Google. Google is the best, I swear to God! They interviewed me four times and they said “We’re just not sure you have a background in this. We like your style but we’re just not sure that you would be appropriate”. And I agreed with them. It was the hardest learning curve, to move industry and the elements that I was buying, so from Marketing, fixtures and fittings, over into Consultancy but I had something to prove and I like to think I proved it.

Again, Regulatory Requirements, all the complexity that comes with that, understanding that when you buy Consultancy, for example, yes, your full-time employee costs will drop but they didn’t have the money to spend on full-time staff so the 3rd party costs suddenly sky rocketed.

Darren:

Striking the balance.

Hannah:

Having to have conversations with other people in the business who were buying these commodities and saying, “How are you doing with your savings? Brilliant? Because no one is buying from X,whereas we’re now all buying from Y, because that’s allowed on the P&L.” It’s nuts.

Darren:

Unlike a lot of long-term Procurement and Supply people, when you go to their LinkedIn profile, they’ll have one company, multiple roles but one company for 20 or 30 years, you’ve actually got quite diverse experience across that and that’s because you’ve positioned yourself as an Interim Marketing and Relationship Manager.

So you’re actually now available for people, companies looking for a Marketing, Procurement Sourcing expert to come and work.

Hannah:

I am, so thank you for the plug, Darren.

Darren:

I don’t know why I’m doing it because, in a way, you’re a bloody competitor.

Hannah:

Yeah, but over in the U.K.

Darren:

We have operations there, but it’s okay.

Hannah:

I am available, so thank you for the plug, but for me, interim is a blessing. It means I can go into a company. I don’t have to pretend I’m going to be there for a long time. I don’t have to get bogged down with politics. I can just get in, understand what’s going on, hopefully….

Darren:

Drive improvement, performance.

Hannah:

Yeah. It’s like you can get into a company and within the first 90 days, you can see all of the opportunity because you’re an outsider looking in. After that you start becoming part of the furniture and getting a little bit more comfortable and, yes, you can do better things once you’ve established yourself, but for me the joy is getting in and fixing things really fast.

Then boomeranging is the absolute bliss, where you go into a company, do the work for them, move on and then you boomerang back and do more work. I’m having conversations at the moment with companies I’ve worked with previously, who want me to come in and do a cover role or look at something that’s come up and I’m more than happy to do that because it’s exciting, you don’t get bored.

Darren:

People would find you on LinkedIn, Hannah Gough.

Hannah:

That’s right

Darren:

I imagine that comment, before, that they liked your style but I can absolutely guarantee there is substance under the style. We’ve run out of time, unfortunately, but I’ve got one final question. What’s been the worst place you’ve ever worked?

Ideal for marketers, advertisers, media and commercial communications professionals, Managing Marketing is a podcast hosted by Darren Woolley. Find all the episodes here