Professional services firms need to attract the best marketing and business development talent possible. And one way to do that is to celebrate the achievements of those teams.
In July, Gateley’s 30-strong marketing and business development team beat some of the largest and most successful businesses across the Midlands to win the coveted Excellence in Sales and Marketing award at the Great Birmingham Chambers of Commerce awards.
The award, says Vikki Whittemore, Group Marketing Director at Gateley, the listed professional and businesses services firm, recognises the great work from our team in delivering a full rebrand, updated digital infrastructure and a new intranet in just 16 weeks.
But it is more than that; it is a celebration of the invisible thread in professional services marketing that ties everything together.
“The three projects are all about how we tell the Gateley story in a clearer and better way and it made sense to tackle all three at once,” explains Vikki. “And having been given the green light in February 2019, we wanted to launch all three projects by our investor roadshow in July where we present our full-year results.
“Any one of these projects would have stood the team apart, but to get all three across the line required phenomenal project management skills, a humongous team effort, and a great external partner in Compound Partners. We believed it warranted recognition outside of the professional services bubble.”
Professional services marketers are a modest bunch, more comfortable writing awards for fee-earning colleagues. Our remit is to make our colleagues look great and celebrate what they do. We are more used to driving from the back seat and that needs to change, says Vikki.
“It’s important we celebrate what we do. We have long moved on from being the department that makes things look nice – we’re the invisible thread that ties everything together.
“We should all be tasked to think and act more like corporate marketing teams, with a focus on ROI and think on the way we present good news on what we deliver. It is, after all, a success for the business.
“Our reticence needs to stop. There is some great work being delivered across the sector, and we need to do more to encourage the best marketing talent into our sector. The more we celebrate what we do the better chance we have of attracting the best talent.”
And the Gateley team is a bed of talent.
“The award was proposed by our corporate communications team,” says Vikki. “A number of the team are from agency backgrounds with a culture of celebrating success. The whole team created the award submission as we wanted to capture what we all felt about the three projects and their impact. And that makes winning this award so much more valuable – it really is the entire team’s award.
“And the award itself was a lot of fun, held virtually. Whilst the networking elements were largely lost, it meant the focus was on the awards and the winners. And being live-streamed, the whole team could get involved, celebrating on WhatsApp whilst at home.
“It was the first and perhaps the only award I’ll ever attend in my slippers!”