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The Shortlist Episode 12: Departments of One

Middle of Six



Having a dedicated marketing professional means your firm is thriving! But how you define and support this role is critical to finding (and keeping) a specialist who can successfully wear all the marketing hats. Drawing from firsthand experience as lone marketers, Wendy Simmons and Allison Tivnon dish on the benefits, challenges, and unique opportunities of marketing departments of one.


CPSM CEU Credits: 0.5 | Domain: 6


Podcast Transcript


Welcome to The Shortlist.


We are exploring all things AEC marketing to help your firm win The Shortlist.


I'm your host, Wendy Simmons, and each episode, I'll be joined by one of my team members from Middle of Six to answer your questions.


Today, we are chatting with Allison Tivnon.


Hey, Allison.


Hey there, Wendy.


Today, we're going to continue our conversation about marketing department staffing and focus on departments of one.


I have definitely been a department of one, and we've helped a lot of departments of one.


And so I think this is going to be a really great conversation to dig into.


What does that look like?


How do you decide when you need to add to that team?


Who do you pick and what kind of skill sets do you prioritize for those departments of one?


Allison, did you have anything in mind when you brought up this subject of departments of one?


What does that look like to you?


Well, the first thing I think of when I think of departments of one is a lot of pressure and responsibility falling onto one person's shoulders.


They have to be everything to everyone at all times, constantly thinking ahead and making sure that they don't stumble along the way.


It can be isolating.


It can also open up opportunities for building very strong relationships with firm leadership if they feel like they're equipped with the confidence and the tools to do that.


I also think of someone who has to lean probably even more into using the perks of the memberships of belonging to SNPS chapters around the country and is constantly trying to learn new tricks to keep adding more value into the role that they play.


Why would a firm have a marketing department of one?


Well, I can see it primarily being that it's a small firm still with growing revenue, but still fairly lean and they know that they need marketing, but they just don't have the resources to have more than one.


Other firms are a little short-sighted and they just don't make the investments in marketing that they should.


But I think more often than not, it's a smaller company that just has a smaller workload of needs for a marketing staffer.


When all of that responsibility is on one person in that department of one, how would they ensure that they're meeting the staff's needs and keeping the larger picture in mind when, of course, there's the day-to-day requests and grind that they're also working through?


So in the last couple of years, I had the opportunity to serve as the chair for the business Development Roundtable for SNPS Oregon, which was a really intimate small group of about, I think, 13 or so.


We get together and peel the lid off of all these questions about how do we grow our firms?


How do we reconcile the amount of time that needs to be spent on proposals while also keeping our eyes forward and focused on what's coming next?


There were two people on that roundtable that were marketing departments of one, and both of them were on smaller teams.


Both of them were on teams that were doing well and were growing.


They were feeling really maxed out.


They were also feeling like they had so much potential to do so much more at their firms, but they simply couldn't make the time pass the day to day of deadlines.


I think that being a marketing department of one, you have a direct path to your leadership to have these conversations in a way that maybe doesn't really occur in a larger firm.


I think that you can create more of a partnership with the leaders in the firm to say, we need to start really getting intentional about our marketing resources and make the case to them and show them why maybe you need to grow or you need to start thinking of ways to offload some proposal work so that you can do the really hard work of keeping your eyes centered on strategy, thinking about a marketing plan, a business strategy, thinking about your branding, your social media presence, and other ways that you can't fully utilize because you're so busy doing proposals that are just sitting there languishing and are keeping your firm from growing and earning a greater stake of the market.


Yep, absolutely.


Wendy, I would love to get your perspective on this as well.


And I could be totally wrong on this.


So for those listeners who are loan marketers in their firms, if I'm off base, please let us know.


But from my experience, the folks that I've met that are the sole marketer within their firm got the job kind of towards the beginning of their career.


It was an opportunity that they saw.


They had, say, two or three years under their belt, working somewhere else and weren't happy there, went to the job boards, saw an opportunity, saw that it was the lone role, took it and are still kind of learning themselves.


I don't see this being an avenue that a lot of folks that have been doing this for more years in their career, that have worked their way up to a marketing manager, a director, seeing this as being a very obvious career path for them, because they know what it's like to work with a team and they know the advantages that come with that.


So I think that you will probably find that there's a large majority of departments of one that are staffed by people that have really had to learn on the job, maybe even fall victim even more to imposter syndrome, and feel like they are making it up as they go along.


What do you think about that, Wendy?


I agree.


That's typically what we see, that they're sort of early to mid-career professionals who take that role because they see an opportunity to grow a lot, really gain experience.


If you've been part of a larger firm and you were, maybe this isn't the right term to say, but you know, like pigeonholed into, this is what you do every day, and there's not a chance for a lot of variety or to show your skills or grow skills in the area.


I've seen where marketers will take that position as a department of one.


They may be excited by the challenge to assess a company's situation, make improvements based on what they know and can bring to that job, but then also have the opportunity to learn from everyone in that organization, and really take a giant step forward as a marketer.


It's a hard position, and I think it takes a special type of marketer to want that.


You know, Allison, do you have a list in your mind of what skills might be important if you are considering taking a position where you are a single marketer in a firm?


I think you need to have a lot of confidence, and you need to be at least extroverted enough to hold your own in a room full of strangers.


because on occasion, you are going to go out and market on behalf of your firm.


Even if it's just at S&PS events, you have to be able to articulate what your firm does because you are one of the only people who is doing that.


And you want to be able to have enough confidence when you do go out to say a great S&PS event where you learn a new skill that's maybe something that technical staffers need to be doing.


You have to go back and be able to deliver that message and train them into being better business developers themselves.


So a lot of it is about attitude.


You can't just be fulfillment staff.


And I think a lot of folks that end up in those roles as loan marketers end up really feeling invisible in their firms.


They're just doing the work and that's it.


And they don't stay because they want to be part of a team.


You do have a team and they are marketers.


They just don't know it.


And you're going to have to have the confidence to be able to shape your technical staff to help you help them.


If you can do that, you can ride that wave to where that company grows just big enough to maybe you start to be able to bring people on with you.


I was a marketer of one in my career and a feeling that I recall very vividly was feeling like I was on an island.


And what I mean by that was I felt like I was the only person in the room that was looking at things from where I was.


I was on an island by myself looking over at the situation, and I just didn't always feel like there were people with me to say, yes, we agree.


And so the reason why I bring this up is I think it goes to your point of confidence.


I wasn't wrong in my opinions, but I needed the input of the whole team and you need enough confidence to share that, share the data, say, hey, now, listen, we've done this this way these times.


Here's the feedback we received.


Here's what the strategy is behind what you're suggesting, so that you're opening their eyes just to see another perspective.


And I'm not going to lie, just depending on the dynamics and the culture of your firm, you may feel alone, but that's okay.


That's an important voice in the room and don't hide that.


Don't put it away.


They need the marketer to be there and bring that opinion to the group.


Yeah, it's very easy to feel dismissed.


And again, to that point about being invisible, like you're in a room, everyone else is talking, they're talking over you, especially in proposal kickoff meetings.


That's a huge pet peeve of mine.


People should be turned in looking at the proposal coordinator for direction in that meeting.


That is ground zero for how you are going to submit a winning proposal.


You want the person who is most closely tied to it to be driving that process.


And when you're a loan marketer, if the IQ within your firm is not great around what marketing truly is, you can end up kind of be drowned out by folks just talking over each other and talking in circles around business development, how to improve their standing, how to win.


So you have to figure out a way to use your voice.


And that can be really hard, especially if you're at the beginning of your career or even trending into the mid part.


because if you have been dismissed or shut down, it makes it much harder to speak up after that.


And in an earlier podcast, we had talked about mentorship.


I think this is also a place you really have to lean into your network.


You have to ask for help and guidance and advice.


And you got to have some allies in your corner who are going to be able to talk you through the tough days, especially around raises or when it really does come time.


We have got to hire again.


Those are tricky conversations to have at any time.


But when you're the only one that's advocating for you, it can be even harder.


So to have someone who's just really got your back and is rooting you on and giving you a good sound advice is probably even more important than in a typical scenario where you've got a whole team around you at all times.


I've coached several marketers in my role to take leadership opportunities in their firm.


This is typically when they are that single marketer or maybe there's a marketing NBD, so it feels like they have a team, but they really are very, very responsible for marketing alone.


And so those leadership opportunities that they can do is as simple as in the proposal kickoff meeting, coming prepared with the strategy document outlined.


Maybe you've got a storyboard that you're presenting, sit at the head of the table, pull up the information on the screen, lead that meeting.


Everyone files in, don't necessarily wait for the project executive to say, okay, well, what are we doing here?


What's going on?


They've got a million things on their mind.


If you have a voice in that meeting, say, great, we've got everyone here together.


I know everyone's busy.


Here's what we want to accomplish on this X, Y, Z, and then we're going to set those dates and move from there.


You are just taking that position of authority and earning respect.


Yeah.


Everyone being so busy.


How nice is it for them to say, no, marketing's got this.


This is awesome.


Yes.


They can have confidence and they appreciate what you're doing.


And so I think that's a tip I would give, well, to any marketer, but certainly if you're a department of one, be a leader.


Absolutely.


You just hit on something.


It's the old cliche, physician heal thyself.


Like the doctor who's telling his patients how to eat right, who goes out and smokes cigarettes and eats fatty foods.


It's like as marketers, we are so good at building up others and we know the value of the window dressing and how you walk into a room and presentation, but we have to use it ourselves and we have to, we have to dress the part, we have to be the part.


So if we want to be seen as the expert in the room, we have to act like the expert in the room.


I mean, you're the one who's probably putting on people's calendar.


You're the one who's either setting the teams meeting or getting the conference room ready.


You're the one who's going to be able to show up early and pick your own seat first.


That is absolutely awesome advice.


Accountability is really, really hard when it's just you.


And I think to that point about feeling like an island, that should never, ever be the case.


You should always have a thought partner.


Even if their title does not have marketing in it, you have an owner of the firm.


You have folks that are financially involved with this enterprise.


They are your partners.


They are your marketing partners, whether they know it or not.


And you can have them to help give you accountability.


But I think along the way, you got to have some wins.


And I'm not talking about proposals.


I'm talking about you being able to actually put...


It's like, put a fork in it.


It's done.


I got this done.


You have to have those wins.


Whether it's internal systems or building a database or creating a set of branding documents, you have to have a checklist.


You have to have a plan in place so that you can make iterative progress towards getting it done.


And then at the end of it, you have to celebrate that.


And you have to have someone to celebrate it with.


because to do that all by yourself, it does not give you enough confetti and clapping and cheering for all of the hard work that you've had to do to make it happen.


Yeah, absolutely.


If you don't make a team and a community within your firm, the likelihood of burning out sooner or just needing to make a change in your career is higher.


So if you'd like to preserve that and actually kind of grow with a firm, think about strategies within that group to grow a team.


And okay, I'm going to go really like rocket it to the moon with this one.


All right, bring it.


I have seen this play out where that department of one, the loan marketer, makes the case to become a partner in the firm, to actually have a financial stake in the firm, and then they end up growing it with them.


I know one big, very big multi-state, it's hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue.


That is exactly what happened.


It started with four people back in the 80s, and one of them was their marketing coordinator, who ended up becoming their partner, their thought partner, and then their financial partner.


So if you're really rocking it, you love the work, you love the team, and more importantly, you love the leaders in the firm.


You can develop that into something that is going to become way more than you ever dreamed possible, that exceeds every expectation.


That is a total moonshot right there, but it is a possibility and it has played out before.


Okay, here's this week's listener question.


Our firm has resources for one full-time marketer.


Should we hire a generalist who wears many hats or focus on a specialist?


And can you describe these models and the pros and cons of both?


Good question there, that's a lot.


Yes, it is, it is.


But I think we can tackle it, because we've certainly had this conversation a lot with our clients.


I think the secret sauce here is to look at it from both perspectives.


You're looking at it from the people that own the firm and trying to get into their heads and figure out, well, what is it you're really trying to accomplish and how do you want to grow?


And then you have to think about it from the people that are applying for the position and what is going to make them want to stay.


So generalists are great.


And my personal opinion is that when you're first starting out, you have room for one FTE, you do need a generalist.


You need someone who knows how to use the full suite of editing softwares and Adobe Creative Suite and can make a PowerPoint, can edit.


And you also need someone who's got an appetite to learn more and is really, really enthusiastic about doing so.


But I think you also have to be realistic and that you are going to have to have some, basically some contingency funds in place to bring on specialists.


So maybe you know you need to build out your social media platform.


You can't expect a generalist to come in and have all the answers, but you certainly can bring in a contract to help you for three months to figure out what that looks like, or to rebuild a website, or to completely blow up your templates or your branding and start over again.


It can't be one or the other, is what I'm saying.


I don't know.


What do you think, Wendy?


I like that approach.


It's somewhere sort of in the middle.


From my experience, a lot of markers are naturally generalist at the start of their career, or tend to be that kind of in the middle of their career too.


There's nothing wrong with that.


In fact, I think it's fantastic, and that's where eventually they become unicorns, but we'll get to that in a minute.


because we wear those hats a lot early in our career, and then learn what we love to do and focus on that more, and eventually potentially become a specialist, but not necessarily.


I think you're gonna find kind of the broader base of candidates in that generalist area.


They're gonna have strengths in a couple areas, interest in a few others, and probably not gonna check the box on some things that are outside of those parameters.


So you brought up a really interesting point on this, and as it relates to the technical staff, now that you have someone coming in with the title marketer, they think, oh my gosh, thank you so much for taking all this work off of my plate that I've been doing, that I don't feel like I'm really good at, and I really don't wanna do anymore.


The thought process kinda ends right there.


They've been up to midnight and working on weekends, pulling proposals together and executing on the work.


They now have someone internal that's gonna help them with that.


That is an amazing feeling for a technical staffer, and they're very grateful for it.


But what can kinda get lost in that mix is the fact that their work in marketing is nowhere near done.


It just shifts now to business development.


Now they actually have time to develop business, to go out, talk to clients, to start really positioning themselves for work.


But if they've never been trained in it, they're not gonna know how to do it.


So yeah, you might be coming into your firm probably a little bit more as a generalist, or as I used to call it your stem cell.


When you first start out in marketing, you don't really know quite what you're gonna be yet.


You know, you're a little past that point, I would guess, by the time you get into a position like this.


But you have to know that a part of your job coming into a firm as that type of role, a marketing department of one, is that you're gonna have to train the technical staff in how to be business developers.


That can't be something that's overlooked.


And it takes time and intention to do that right.


So as you're going through the interview process and meeting these different candidates and really understanding their skill sets, you might get lucky and find someone that we consider a unicorn, which means that they are a generalist, but they are so good that they officially qualify as specialists in their areas.


Something that we typically see is that they are a talented writer and storyteller, communicator, and then they can do the graphic design and visual elements that blend everything together.


If your firm is really doing a lot of proposals, that is so valuable to have those skills in one person.


But we should dig into this topic of unicorns a bit more.


They're very coveted, and they're very, very hard to find.


They are really hard to find, and I think it's a little bit of nature and nurture that results in one.


Someone that can get in and just kick a proposal's butt and keep it on track, put all the pieces together, get really good writing in there, really make it shine.


It's so good in InDesign, it lays it out.


That in itself is a skill set that is highly desired.


But if you can also add on to that, someone who is effervescent and enthusiastic and articulate, who can go out to industry events and just jump into the fray and knows their company inside and out, can speak the language of the industry and also the language of their firm and make that make sense to everyone around them.


And what I mean by that is like, oh my gosh, I get why your firm, ABC, matters in this industry.


That in itself is such a desired skill set.


So if you have a marketing department of one, and you can land on someone who is really good at executing on the day to day, who can also then turn around and go out and sell your company just by virtue of the fact that they love working there, and they love being in the thick of things, you have found a winning combination.


Allison, do you think it's worth holding out on your hiring process to land a unicorn?


No, I mean, there's a reason why we use that term, because they don't exist in real life.


Yes, they do exist out there, but they're very, very rare.


And back to the nature versus nurture, I do think some of it is just who they are as individuals, that they can handle really heavy workloads and stress with a plum and grace, and they're extroverted and articulate and can think on their feet.


Part of that is just who you are as a person.


But I think also you can tease that out and coax that out of someone simply by supporting them and giving them opportunities to shine.


So I think that a lot of us had the potential of becoming unicorns if only we were, it's like we're all seeds and we're planted in soil.


If we're planted in the right soil, we will grow stronger and bigger, you know?


If you're planted in rocky, awful soil and not watered enough, you're gonna be this little puny little thing.


And I think our firms need to really get clear on the fact that they are growing their talent.


They know that for the technical staff.


They have to really embrace that for their marketing staff as well.


So that was me spinning off on what I think about it, but I'd love to hear what you think about it, Wendy.


Well, I agree with you.


I would not hold out for that.


In fact, most of the time when a client has reached out to us and sort of tiptoed around this topic about wanting to find that unicorn or they had one in the past and they really have struggled in replacing that person.


I have never recommended that they start their search in that way.


I think it's too limiting actually.


And if you think big picture, you're really, gosh, we've got a lot of metaphors here.


You're really putting your eggs in one basket on this unicorn, right?


If you've lost a unicorn, you know how hard it is to replace that skill set.


It really should be two people or 1.5 FTEs.


So I wouldn't really want to start out in that way looking for that person.


It's fantastic if you find them or it develops over time, or you have a firm culture that you decide you want to let someone grow a talent in photography or videography so that they can become even better in an area and add to your marketing.


But if you start off looking for that, what's going to happen is that you will ultimately need to add to it anyways, and now you're kind of a little bit off balance.


So that would be my recommendation in that area, and it is what we typically recommend as clients are looking to add to their team.


You make a really good point.


This is a big job.


It's actually, it's more like two people in one job.


You have to pay them for that.


That is a lot of talent and skill and tenacity and commitment that you're asking for in one individual.


If you want to get top-notch talent to come in to do the work, pay them well.


Amen to that.


Yeah, Allison, I think we're in agreement on this, that you're likely to hire a generalist.


If you're a department of one, that's a great way to go.


And that probably not holding out for the unicorn, but count yourself lucky and compensate that team member if you do find a unicorn as your marketing leader.


And then be planning for how you're going to grow your team, because I think that's the next logical step.


So with all of that, good conversation.


I hope those out there, firm leaders or other people who have influence over setting up the marketing departments got some good perspective and take away from that.


Allison, thank you so much for joining us for this conversation.


It's been another good one, and I hope you just have a great day.


You too, Wendy.


Thanks so much.


The Shortlist is presented by Middle of Six and hosted by me, Wendy Simmons, principal marketing strategist.


Kyle Davis is our producer with Graphic Design and Digital Marketing by Allison Rose.


If you have a question or topic you'd like us to discuss, send an email or voice memo to theshortlistatmiddleofsix.com.


If you missed anything or want more info, check out our podcast page at middleofsix.com/theshortlist.


And follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram at Middle of Six.


Thanks so much for listening.


We hope you'll tell your friends and colleagues about this show, and be sure to subscribe so you don't miss any of our upcoming episodes.


Until next time, keep on hustling.


Bye.


Bye, everybody.


The Shortlist is a podcast that explores all things AEC marketing. Hosted by Middle of Six Principal, Wendy Simmons, each episode features members of the MOS team, where we take a deep dive on a wide range of topics related to AEC marketing including: proposal development, strategy, team building, business development, branding, digital marketing, and more. You can listen to our full archive of episodes here.

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