Key thoughts from marketing and business development assistants (2016)

Here are the key thoughts from the delegates on a recent PM Forum training course on “Practical and professional skills for marketing and business development assistants” http://www.pmforum.co.uk/training/

Goals – Without goals, it is impossible to measure contribution, effectiveness and success. Goals are also important personally in terms of understanding where your career is going in the long term and what you need to achieve in the short term.

Focus – Assistants are sometimes faced with an overwhelming number of demands on their time with requests for help from sectors, departments and individual fee-earners in addition to the ongoing firm-wide projects, programmes and reporting requirements. Focus – driven by goals – helps you cut through the noise.

Confidence – We need to be confident in our own abilities (whether from qualifications, experience or preparation) before we can expect others to be confident in us. We can use psychology to help us convey confidence even when we don’t feel it. Perception is important – both of ourselves and how others see us.

Understanding – One of the principles of marketing is to ensure that we understand what our clients want and to anticipate their future needs. This is both for those clients who are external to the firm where we invest in research or client listening programmes or those internal partners and fee-earners seeking our support. Empathy is a key skill here. http://kimtasso.com/faq/emotional-intelligence-eq-important/

Strategy – Once we have analysed the current position and identified the challenges and set goals for what we want to achieve, we must develop a strategy to ensure that the goals are achieved most efficiently and effectively. Strategy is about making choices. http://kimtasso.com/marketing-planning-in-a-nutshell-selecting-a-strategy/

Planning – Planning is what happens when all the analysis and thinking on the current situation, challenges and goals has been completed and the strategy has been agreed. It is the process of thinking in advance what needs to be done and when and how much – in time and cash – it is going to cost.

Assertiveness – We need to speak up for ourselves. Whether this is in the form of gentle but firm challenge or articulating our needs or standing our ground. We need to avoid passive aggressive resistance.

Outputs – Regardless of how hard we work, ultimately we will be measured on the outputs and outcomes of our work rather than the inputs. http://kimtasso.com/productivity-inputs-vs-outputs/

It was a diverse group of young marketing professionals from a range of legal, accountancy and consultancy firms (sadly no one from the property industry) representing global and local firms. Interestingly, in the group of 16 there was only one with a professional qualification in marketing.