Paul Mackender:

Hi, I’m Paul Mackender, the Chief Revenue Officer here at Agent3. As part of our Agents of Change series today, it’s fantastic to be with Mark Larwood. Mark… for those who don’t know him, he’s Head of Strategic Customer Marketing at O2. Hi Mark, and thanks again for joining us today.

Mark Larwood:

Hi, Paul. Delighted to be here.

Paul Mackender:

Before we go into any further, can you maybe explain a little bit more about your role and what comes into the Strategic Customer Marketing banner?

Mark Larwood:

Yeah, so I lead effectively our Key Accounts Marketing Program, which effectively covers ABM, whether that’s one-to-few or one-to-many. But very, very highly targeted marketing activity towards a particular predefined set of customers, but also in terms of some strategic acquisition targets as well. Obviously, we look after our advocacy programs, so that’s our Executive Engagement, our Advisory Board, Innovation Boards, anything which helps get close to customers, build reputation and relationships with those audiences.

Paul Mackender:

Fantastic. Great. To kick this off within a series of these interviews, to start the same question is… since the pandemic obviously, still… unfortunately the pandemic itself, what’s going to change for you in your working life? What have you really seen has been the impact of that?

Mark Larwood:

I think it’s become a real… I’ve heard others say this as well, but it’s that golden age for Executive Engagement and really well thought through content and strategies toward customers. I think O2… we’re quite ahead of the curve and I’m thankful for that, really. When it comes to our ABM, our Exec Engagement, we had some really solid programs in place which allowed us to respond to the pandemic initially quite well… respond authentically to our customers, look to help serve them in that short period when everybody was frantically trying to work out what was going on. But, I think it’s really given us at O2 an opportunity to engage much more closely, much more frequently with a number of our customers.

Clearly, it’s also changed our team dynamic in terms of many more people working remotely… and that’s been a challenge, but most importantly, I think it’s been that opportunity to engage with customers much more closely on a much more regular basis of sense. I guess it helps that our products and services have been suitable for that… have been an absolute pivotal to businesses in terms of helping with that remote working, that flexible working, and basically enabling people to still continue doing their jobs. But, also I think it’s the approach we’ve taken to some of those things as well. We have a very strong Advisory Board in place, which went from being a couple of meetings a year to being seven or eight meetings last year where we could really bring the opportunity… not just for us to hear from our customers and share our thinking, but for them to hear from each other and really learn from each other. If you think back 18 months, it’s easy to sit here in hindsight and see all the good and the bad and the indifferent that happened. About 18 months ago, this was all very real.

There were challenges. People weren’t sure how they were going to get people into work, how they’re going to test [inaudible 00:03:07], and even the things which weren’t related to technology that we deliver. There was conversations between various people around tables, which really allowed leaders of businesses to learn from each other. I think being a part of that and being almost a catalyst for some of those conversations is something that we’re really proud of over the course of the last year.

Paul Mackender:

Fantastic. Before we look forward then, just going back to… you said a few minutes ago, you had a number of things in place. Did you have foresight that other organizations didn’t, how come… [crosstalk 00:03:40]?

Mark Larwood:

I don’t think it was foresight, Paul, really. We had a strategy which was around ABM, advocacy… building those relationships with our customers more closely. We started that… well, we had our ABM programs, which was focusing on 10, 12 organizations, but we also had our Advisory Board, which was targeting specific individuals at specific organizations with a view to… hearing from them, what’s happening within their organizations and the wider industries… but, also us sharing and testing our strategy. That was what was behind that. It was about creating that peer to peer networking environment that we were facilitating, it just so happened that became a real strong opportunity for us. As I said previously, for the members of that group to come together virtually, of course, it’d gone from face to face twice a year to being virtual probably every couple of months last spring, summer, autumn because there was a real need all of a sudden, right, Paul?

Prior to that, the conversation would ebb and flow. It would be about whatever was on people’s minds, it probably wasn’t something which exercised everybody at the same time, in the same way. All of a sudden there was something there, which enabled us to engage with them and helped… I think it raised the star of O2 within their viewpoints, as well. I think that was the principle of one of those events. If I think from a more organizational perspective, as O2, as Telefonica, we’d embrace that virtual working that… “Work is something you do, not somewhere you go” approach several years before. So, we were able to adapt to that much more quickly. We also had the technology in place and we were our own greatest case study, right? It was what we were able then to show is how that would work for other organizations and that was helpful to them. A bit of serendipity, a bit of fore planning, which just came together really well for us and for our customers.

Paul Mackender:

Mark, one of the other questions I wanted to pick upon is our mutual friend, Bev Burgess… as you know is the author of the book Executive Engagement Strategies, which you’re quoted in. One of the things that Bev spoken about a lot is… in this period of change… that a lot of customers and prospects have looked to people like O2 to really guide them and provide counsel and give insights and opinion. It’d be good to… one, what do you think that is? Two, what’s the mix of the value, maybe, that the likes of your organization is delivering to your customers?

Mark Larwood:

Paul, that’s a really interesting question. It’s a really interesting piece of research. Initially, I was quite surprised at how highly ranked technology providers their size, as you mentioned, and businesses like ours have been. But then, giving it a little bit more thought, I think it comes down to that practical approach that we take to some of the research. In our case, thinking about our future of work, our dynamic working research, we were really fixated on ensuring it was strong, it was cross sector, it’s primary research. The conclusions… it wasn’t just about compensating on what we saw. It was about making things quite actionable and giving people ideas to take into their own businesses… to be able to do something with that research, not a nice statistic which was kind of interesting, but not usable.

The other thing is in terms of what we’ve done with some of that research, it’s around the value that we bring outside of the content itself. What we do with that content is we’re bringing like-minded people together to have those discussions. I mentioned our Advisory Board earlier, we’ve also got our Innovation community, our Innovation Board. We’re bringing people together to actually unpick what that research tells us because we don’t know… [inaudible 00:07:36] in terms of why people were saying the things they were on our research. It’s really important to me that we bring together other experts, whether it’s customers, whether it’s prospects even, whether it’s other industry commentators and influencers to really unpick that content. Bringing together that cross-vertical, that cross-industry, that… engaging at different levels of an organization to really understand that content and that research has enabled us to deliver more value back to our customers… to tell them more about their own businesses, the context that sits with them and to learn that together and really help drive everybody’s businesses forward.

Paul Mackender:

It’s interesting because that really plays to a quote I remember years ago, which is “Leaders have a vision of the future and how to get there.” You’re the how to get to those practical pieces. One thing you said earlier as well is… yes, obviously O2 has a series of technologies and solutions advisory around actually technology itself… how to do this stuff, but also the bigger picture. We know a lot of people go through these transformation agendas… to what extent does… O2’s view on things like societal and environmental issues? Your own goals also come into this… when leaders of organizations are taking a step back and say, “Right, we now need to recast the way that we’re looking, not just at working, but how the business is run generally.”

Mark Larwood:

Again, that’s another really interesting question. Some of the areas where we’ve seen real engagement with our marketing, with our content, with our thinking has been around those more… I’ll say peripheral, but I don’t mean it in terms of not important, I mean kind of adjacent areas to our technology. Sustainability has been a huge one of the societal values that… our customers are looking at us because they’re seeing us as thought leaders in some of that space, we’ve got a net zero commitment by 2025. That’s ahead of a number of many, many organizations out there. They’re interested in the steps we’re taking to do that and the role that technology can play in that. What’s interesting about that is that doesn’t drive towards a lead, an opportunity, a discussion about us actually being able to sell those customers anything, and that’s okay.

It’s broadly about engaging with them more meaningfully, having a wide-ranging conversation than it is around driving leads and opportunities. If this program that I lead was purely about the revenue, it would fail, right? It’s much more about the wider aspects of building stronger relationships, better engagement, and actually together with our customers, building how we see the future is.

Paul Mackender:

Interesting. I know you talked about your research early on… how you involve your customers in that research to really listen. I suppose that’s another thing within all of this is making sure you’re listening to the real problems, not ones you may think they have. Maybe just pivoting a little bit, then. You’ve mentioned a number of things… Innovation Forums. I know you’ve now got some kind of… I suppose, a tiered model of engagement from webinars, downwards. Could you maybe just talk about that a little bit, what those different forms of engagement are? Is there some today?

Mark Larwood:

Yeah. I’m going to talk to the inverted pyramid rather than the funnel. The very top of that, our one-to-few activity is the Customer Advisory Board that I talked about. We started that probably two and a half years ago, now. It’s 12, 13, 14 individuals, depending on the meeting we have, and really senior people, as I said, it’s much more about that peer to peer engagement. We’ll have a topic, we’ll start the conversation for 10, 15 minutes on a particular area, and then we’ll see where the conversation goes. It’s really about encouraging that peer to peer, give-to-get value exchange between not just us and the customer on a bilateral way, but it’s about what the group can bring to each other. That was, as I’ve said, absolutely crucially important to us and to a number of our customers last year when the pandemic hit. The next tier down from there, we’ve got a number of things, really.

We’ve got our ABM Program, which drives specifically to organizations on a one-to-one basis and also on a one-to-few basis, which is a number of other programs around the area, really. We’ve also got our Customer Innovation Community, that is something we kicked off earlier this year. Really, that’s about taking the learnings from them and some of the research we’ve done, taking that to a bigger group and really building things together, kicking the tires on some of that thinking… some of the technology challenges that we have as a collective or individually and coming up with ideas, ways that can be sorted and addressed. It’s certainly not something that we’re looking for the next 12 months, we’re looking further out. We’re thinking about innovations, which is some of the actionable now, but some of that two, three years down the line, whether that’s through 5G, IOT, and those sorts of things. But, obviously right now, there’s a strong focus on what’s the future of work and actually how do organizations enable their employees, their customers, or their suppliers or their entire supply chain ecosystem, really, to excel.

Paul Mackender:

I think two of the things that you’ve not touched upon that I know when we coached recently you mentioned as well is… I think for your Innovation Community… I think I’m right in saying you have about 95% acceptance rate, which for anything… it was a number of something akin to that. Also, if I remember rightly, you’re not going to fixate on only having one format that works… we must do a round table, we must do a webinar, it must be a Zoom, plenary sessions, Q&A smaller groups. In your mind, is that the way to think about it? Just think about the flexibility again, what works for your audience at the appropriate time, I suppose.

Mark Larwood:

Yeah, I think so. I think you have to take an agile, small A approach to that, right? You’d have to see what’s working, what’s not working, and be prepared to improve things. We added in the innovation and community because we felt the Advisory Board was great, but it was only allowing us to reach a very small audience, whether that’s in terms of the number of customers, but also the number of individuals. That’s when we brought the Innovation Community… that’s much more about trying to take a broader and deeper approach within our Key Account Customer base.

Paul Mackender:

Okay. I suppose, if I was an ABM Marketeer or somebody in a similar role to yours looking at orchestrating a structured Executive Engagement Program, what kind of advice or three or four pillars… would you say you’ve got to be thinking about these things to almost set themselves up for success… from your perspective, at least?

Mark Larwood:

I’d say certainly it isn’t a one size fits all. There’s no blueprint for this. I think it’s really important to segment the audience for different ABM perspective. Which of these do I really need to look at on a one-to-one basis? Which are the big, high opportunity customers where any relatively significant amount of marketing can drive a much greater outcome? Which of these areas can I look at? Which of these customer groups can I look at on our one-to-few or one-to-many basis, right? It’s really important to segment along those lines, really. That gives you that tiered approach, as well. So, clearly have different strategies, different technologies, different approaches to various areas. I mean, the fundamental ingredient in any decent ABM program for me is insight, right? Listen to your customers, build rapport, understand what their real challenges are, try to walk a day in their shoes and respond to that. The one size fits all really doesn’t work at that sort of level.

Paul Mackender:

As for the other thing as well, Mark, is I’ve always been really interested in the way that O2… you’ve approached the interlock between Sales and Marketing leadership. I assume their continued sponsorship and support structure around your programs has been key to this?

Mark Larwood:

Yeah, absolutely. I think that interlock between sales and marketing, and this has been a critical part of our program. Frankly, any ADM program that doesn’t have that close alignment with sales is probably doomed to failure, if not to do very well. Certainly for us, that understanding with the Sales Team, moving in the same direction in terms of objectives and using the Sales Team is a great resource of insight… the closest to the customer has been really, really critical. I think why the sponsorship has been important, as well. We’ve invested significant amounts of money in our ABM Program over the years. Improving the value of that isn’t always simple. It isn’t just about revenue, right?

It is about those relationships, the reputation, the three R’s that we all talk about, and getting to that point can be quite challenging. It’s a bit of a mind shift change for some organizations, which are very much fixated on the short term. If you can see beyond that and think about how anyone can build over the medium and long term and get that buy-in on that basis, test and learn, build something, be agile, see what works, and take that fluid approach to it, then you’ve got a real recipe for success, but there isn’t one size fits all as I’ve said, it’s about being flexible.

Paul Mackender:

To wrap all this up, if there was one or two things that you would say… a lasting impact from the pandemic and the way that now ABM programs and Executive Engagement Programs are running, what would you say they were, Mark?

Mark Larwood:

For me, one of the things which is coming out of the pandemic, which may seem quite cheesy, but it’s all… I think one of the things that’s come out of the pandemic and the way we reacted to that, for me, it’s been this authenticity. It feels like we are listening to our customers more. We’re responding to that, we’re responding in an authentic and real way, that person to person, that real understanding of the individual has been important. It’s probably always been important. I think we just recognize it more and we’re taking our audience as our starting point, rather than products and services and technology. Fundamentally, people remember businesses and individuals that support them, help them, whether there’s that gain or not. That comes down to the relationship reputation piece, rather than revenue. It’s really important that we all play the long game, not just the short game.

Paul Mackender:

Fantastic. Well, it’s been a really interesting conversation, so thanks again for your time. Enjoy the rest of the summer.

Mark Larwood:

Thanks, Paul. Appreciate it.

Paul Mackender:

Okay, thanks.