This article is reprinted from the November/December issue of PM Magazine Magazine – PM Forum. PM Forum Annual Conference Report 2024 – The rise and power of AI and automation
More than 100 senior marketing and business development professionals joined the PM Forum for its annual conference. Kim Tasso joined them.
What do you call 100 marketers revving up with anticipatory excitement? The energy of familiar and new faces – several from the previous day’s regional directors meeting – was electric. We chatted with those who shape-shifted between legal, accountancy and property sectors. And those who’d been inhouse and then agency (and some back again).
Chaired with aplomb
A somewhat sombre economic scene-setting by chair Leor Franks (Kingsley Napley) before he switched gears to check in with the audience using reassuringly low-tech voting devices. Throughout the day his astonishingly instant “three takeaways” synthesised the fast flow of ideas.
Future-gazing
And we were off with the first of two fantastic female keynote speakers. Like all great marketers, Eleanor Winton started by urging us to look out and forward. Brainteaser: What might exist or disappear in the future?
Charts showing the world uncertainty index and gross fees of professional services sectors made us pause. She smoothly replaced VUCA with BANI and offered a new matrix of supply and demand side disruption. Then innovation lessons from toilet paper, whiskey and champagne. Judging from the subsequent social media posts, we all took the need to be curious to heart. What is curiosity and why is it important in business relationships? (Video)
Account-based marketing (ABM)
I’ve known Bev Burgess, who coined the term ‘account based marketing’ (ABM) back in 2001 with Accenture’s for more years than we care to remember. We talked moisturisers over coffee and she mentioned she’d bought her daughter to help with the tech.
Her softly-spoken tour de force started with Pareto and the peril of the long tail (“It all ends in tiers!”) and noted that three quarters of firms (but few in the room) are beyond pilot stage. She subtly switched into AI-powered ABM – providing the ability to tell clients what’s going on in their organisation. Stories such as immersive metaverse briefings on cyber-risks hit home.
Are we cautious, curious or confident with AI? Her insights into the seven risks of ABM programmes compounded by seven features of professional services firms gave us all a little chill. As did the first mention of AI ethics of the day. Her inspirational sign-off quotes elevated us to go beyond profit to purpose, people and society. If you’ve never read one of her books (you missed out!) she has a new one on B2B coming soon.
A practitioner’s guide to Account-Based Marketing (ABM)
Executive Engagement Strategies by Bev Burgess
Sponsors in the spotlight
Like others, during the breaks I chatted to the sponsors, including Vuture, PM Forum’s go-to marketing automation choice. Brightspace, who led a break-out on internal communications, shared its Spotlight benchmarking tool for an index (using five pillars) on the value a business delivers to its stakeholders.
MeridianAI leads the way in AI-powered client listening and – sneak peek – will be super-charging PM Forum’s content with the same tech shortly.
Panels of experts, newbies and clients
The morning panel of wise CMO glitterati contrasted with the fresh perspectives of the NextGen marketers in the afternoon and warnings from clients at the end of the day.
CMOs from Bidwells, Reed Smith, Mercia Group and Grant Thornton. What a line up. They galloped sure-footedly through markets, technology, stakeholders and people. Key takeaways: focus on client value (quality, responsiveness, transparency) and consider “the maturity curve of products” to ensure innovation is on the agenda with clients validating products.
Soundbites included CRM is about behaviour change, the science behind sales and marketing, data drives personalisation (enabling you to become “the Queen of No”) and “BD isn’t dying – it just has funky new titles”. Stakeholder management and commercial skills are on the future agenda along with dexterity to learn and change fast. By the way, does anyone else have Time Bandit partners?
The Future Leaders panel – chaired by business psychologist Sarah Roberts – featured impressive young guns from Grant Thornton and Skadden (a former lawyer). They nonchalantly take AI and automation in their day-to-day stride. But they have high expectations for fast access to the wall of online information, constant L&D and self-development support in soft skills and topics beyond their roles. Balance, flexibility, engagement and fairness are their touchstones. They “fake it till you make it” to overcome any imposter syndrome and buck the “move every two years” trend.
Walking on the client side, a moist chocolate brownie introduced Joanna Hunter, Chief Food Lover of artisan bakery Piglets Pantry. Her white-knuckle journey growing a £10m food business – requesting leases from her lawyers in 48 hours and website builds in three days – lingers in memory. Would you trust an AI contract? “Yes, if I trusted the lawyer presenting it”
Paul Roberts of MyCustomerLens shared two perspectives as a client and as expert in client listening. He transitioned to new advisers as his business grew – to people who could “look around corners”, “pull the stops out” and “understand the problems I’m trying to solve”. He felt that l. Insights included using word of mouth in the local community and warnings not to invite clients to start-up events then mail them the same as institutions.
Breakouts
I was sorry to have missed the dynamic duo of Ben Lee from Bidwells and Alastair Banks from Optix – supported by IT veteran Janet Day (formerly BCLP) – an AI dream team.
Some recent posts featuring Ben and Alastair:
Lessons from digital marketing webinars (June 2023)
Marketing and BD case studies in legal, accountancy, consultancy
Key Insights from the AI in Marketing training by Optix at PM Forum
create a digital marketing strategy in a professional services firm
We all want to get our hands on Bidwells’ prompt library. Several mentioned Heather Murray’s (AI for Non-Techies) insights on creating genuinely useful AI copy, and there was a buzz around Zapier.
I risked the lifts to join Grant Thornton’s Head of Client Insights to attend “Rock your CX – innovating client listening”, with online interviewing and AI through their new platform enabling them to be more human. Their client voice portal is connected to its CRM, which is connected to Qualtrics. PAs do the nudging and GTLive the reporting. They’ve become a mini-agency with multiple ad-hoc projects. We resolved to steal their “Valentine’s Day” internal campaign. They’re launching a CX forum.
Meanwhile, with PM Forum colleagues Richard Chaplin and Keith Hardie, I facilitated a coaching session covering Gestalt and Socratic questioning. Related posts:
What is Socratic questioning? (Questioning skills)
Book Review: The Coaching Manual by Julie Starr – Kim Tasso
Business Development Coaching Insights – Kim Tasso
The Fertile Void – Gestalt coaching at work by John Leary-Joyce
Did some of us experience FOMO missing the CMO stream? Senior delegates found “Making a valued Board contribution” (thank you Neville Eisenberg https://www.linkedin.com/in/neville-eisenberg-47b2586/ et al) useful in contemplating their next career move.
Key themes
Palpable relief as we acknowledged that AI has been around a while and is here to stay but is just a tool. AI does the crunch work. Data is the new currency. Client listening keeps clients front of mind. Our humanness will protect us – if we remain curious.
Richard Chaplin closed with news that PM Forum now has over 4,000 members in 30 countries with new centres in Dubai, Toronto, Cardiff and Cambridge with India and Spain on the horizon. There was advance notice of a Job Board (It’s now arrived: Job Board – PM Forum) and new online communities launching soon.
With a final defiant nod to automation, I clutched my PM Forum branded notebook. But I’ll need a new one before next year’s conference (25th September 2025).
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