Rachael Smith, Head of Growth at Evelyn Partners and former EasyJet leader, shares how behavioural science, branding, and sales–marketing alignment can drive transformation in both aviation and wealth management. She explores lessons learned from nudge theory on flights, the power of client insight, and why a vertical approach is reshaping the industry. Rachael also discusses the urgent need to build a wealth management model that truly serves women as they become the fastest-growing segment of wealth holders.

Welcome back to the Growth Workshop Podcast for a continued discussion with Rachael Smith. Let's just pick up on that.

So interested about your background and still teasing this out. So assumption would be made that Easyjet and Evelyn partners, aviation and wealth management are completely polar opposites?

Well, you'd say that I think there's, again, the benefits of moving industries is that you can see the differences. Of course, there are, like, absolutely loads of differences that you can start to work out the commonalities. And I'm really reflective that Easyjet and even partners have a you know, brand is really important. EasyJet is obviously a much more recognizable brand, and that's my job. Brand, and that's my job is to build the Eveland partners brand. Brand is important. But what's really important about both those brands is that at EasyJet, your cabin crew are your touch point with the client. EasyJet has a kind of a brand promise, which is to give the warmers welcome in the sky, and that relies on your people, your you know, your cabin crew, being really positive, being set up for work, understanding that they're an expression of the brand when they're on board and giving that seamless passenger experience. And they would hate this. But in

many ways, our practitioners, our relationship managers, are an expression of our brand. They're an expression of our business. I think, as we've started doing lots of research on on our on our brand and with our clients, our clients tell us that our practitioners are the most optimistic, forward thinking, progressive, positive people. And in a way, our brand then needs to reflect that. It needs to reflect the people on you know, who are dealing with our clients. And again, I kind of see at EasyJet, our crew were both an audience that we needed to engage a stakeholder audience, but they were also a channel, a channel through which we can give clients an experience. And I think that's really the same in math management, our highly qualified, highly talented relationship managers are both an audience that we need to engage with, but are also a channel through which we can engage with our clients.

So there's some differences and similarities, but there's got to be something that we can tangibly attach to. I'm thinking at EasyJet, there must have been a growth agenda. As a growth leader and expert, could you describe an example of what you did at EasyJet to hit a certain growth agenda, whether it was Was there a scenario that you identified, and what solution did you apply to that, and what was the outcome?

Okay, so I'll give you an example, Jonny, because I know you and I have a shared passion for behavioral science, which I think again, regardless of what business you're in, start, if you're in a growth role, understand behavioral theory, understand the nudge theory, and start working out quickly how you're gonna Yeah, you can subtly apply behavioral economics into pretty much everything you do, how you design your website, where you what color you put a button, you know, start reordering your menu. But when I was at EasyJet, my job was to drive revenue per passenger. So once someone's bought a ticket, that's kind of one thing. But you know that whole business model is, how do you drive ancillary revenue? How can we extract more value from the from the customer, whilst also giving them, you know, enhanced value as well. So I think at the time, I was running the in flight retail business, and we were looking at ways of driving revenue per

passenger on board. So you'd think, you're a captive market. You've got them, you know, sat on a flight. You know, how much revenue per head Can we can we drive? And the airlines are pretty good at this already. But again, in a business like EasyJet, it's not like what we're doing now, even partners, actually, where there's, like, quite significant gains, a really mature like business like that, you're looking for the marginal gain. You're looking for these small, like incremental might be a couple of pence, you know. You're looking for these really small things that, with a P and L that size, they make, you know, they make a big bottom line difference, but you're looking for some, you know, significant ways that you can drive that. And so what we do, we're, you know, really into nudge theory. So how can we start to nudge people when they're on board to buy more?

I think we're all thinking, what is this nudge theory? And is this happening to us?

So we started looking at which row, like, which of the seats of influence on the plane, that if they buy something, do they do they influence the people around you. And after hundreds and hundreds of flights and very manual recordings, you know, everyone thinks like there's all this, like science and wizardry and like data about like there is data behind it, but it's also people Sat Sat on a flight. Like counting, we worked out that the middle seat in the sixth row was the most influential seat on the plane. And if that person bought a coffee, and a coffee is important, because a coffee smells delicious, row six. Next, middle seat is the most influential seat. If that person buys a coffee, they are likely to influence the people around them, presumably because they can smell it, and that will influence others to buy a coffee. So then, how do we drive that? Just give that person a free coffee and see what happens, you know, and that that was before

the pandemic, you know, that was years ago. That was before the pandemic. So things were shifted now and behavior changing constantly. But I think that idea of like, yeah, how can you influence people?

And that's the hypothesis again, because you referenced that before about how you lead with a hypothesis. So the hypothesis was, you know, within that captive audience, how can we grow incremental revenue per head by X percentage?

I guess the hypothesis was when people... we know that people are influenced by other people's behavior. So shall we work out which seat on the plane is the most influential? Let's work out where, who are the influencers on a flight that are buying something that influence others.

And can you apply that to your current role, any of those sort of ideas or nudge theory, if not like, what are the top what's a hypothesis that you've got, if you could share one?

So one hypothesis at the moment is so we talk about how important is client data and understanding your clients and your audiences, really, really well. Well, we go to external sources, internal sources, data ware, our own data warehouse right to surface rich client data and insight, but in a business like wealth management, what if our richest insight isn't sat in a data warehouse? What if it's sat in the relationship managers head? What if it's sat with them. What if? Which is true? I think the people that know our clients the best are the people that work with them most closely. And our hypothesis is there is a way of extracting that data somehow, but we need to work out how.

Yeah, we had a guest on the podcast recently, actually Stuart from orbital X talking, and we talked a little bit about about the importance of sales and marketing in the same room. And I think you mentioned that before, already, Rachael, in terms of that commercial marketing alignment. And I think one of his one of the things he shared, was where the marketing function is doing something that the sales team don't see any value to the customers. It goes back to that point of it's in their heads. Of the people that spend the most time with our customers, that should be driving the strategy for where we think the next the next growth opportunity comes from.

Yeah, totally.

And without, like, putting a chip in someone's brain or putting some type of sort of contraption over someone's head to extract that information, or using the failed sort of tool over the last 10 years, which is called a CRM, to get people to type it in. Is it? Is it unconceivable to think that we could use some type of voice memo to capture what's going on?

Well, like, do we need to when so many of our meetings are done online now?

Interesting, so using conversation analytics....

Maybe, maybe.

It's a really interesting point that you make there, Matt, and as we've heard a lot of within the podcast around marketing, sales alignment, commercial alignment. I personally have worked within wealth management for the last six to seven years, and not just working at some organizations deeply, but knowing others, there is a disconnect between these commercial functions I typically find. And from your point, Rachael, you referenced at the start of this conversation that that's one of your sort of key focuses is around commercial alignment. So how do you go about aligning commercial functions, and what could be some of the benefits that you would sort of see if you were to align commercial functions?

Yeah, so I guess one of the big benefits that we've navigated at even partners is that we've literally brought our sales and marketing function together within my organization. So things like having those two teams, so the heads of those two teams in my leadership team, and then those two teams, marketing and sales work like in the same leadership team, in the same functional team really, really helps. I think I would say that even though, when you even if you structurally do that, like with any change and transformation program, the cultural and people change is actually the hardest bit to do, like we've done it structurally, but how do we then start to really embed, embed those relationships, embed those shared values. I think having aligned incentives really helps. And I think that is always a good place to start. How are we incentivizing these people in the same way to drive the same outcomes?

And just unpack that a little bit. So for context, you saying incentives? Is that remuneration, or is that like? And then both KPIs as part of that as well?

Both, right?

What is the KPI? The proxy KPI for aligning marketing, sales?

Yeah, I think, look sales, so start, starting on the kind of remuneration side sales agents are normally incentivized on individual performance. But actually, when you're trying to you. Scale and enable sales across an entire organization through the sales function that is almost counterintuitive, because it's driving very specific sales outcomes. It's getting one person to be very invested in a certain number of sales from happening, rather from getting that agent to be enabling and driving organizational level sales, which is fundamentally what marketing's KPIs are, right? Marketing is about enabling that on a much wider kind of business wide scale. So in aligning sales to those central incentives is, I think, quite key.

And I imagine there's in wealth management that there are just quite common KPIs. So we net new money might be one or new assets. You hear, you hear inflows, outflows. You hear just general revenue, I mean, and fees. Is that the type of KPIs you're sort...

Yeah, so I think so, aligning the incentives, and then secondly, aligning the metrics is one thing. So KPIs, so whether that's AUM, GnM, net new clients, net new flows, reducing outflows, even they're all really important factors, new leads into the top of the funnel, movement through different stages. They are all of the same KPIs that I would expect both sales and marketing to share. But almost a deeper than that is, does everyone have the same personal objectives? Do they have the same strategic, SMART objectives across sales and marketing, and are they totally aligned, and are they being mirrored? You know, the question gonna give you an example. So when we started mobilizing our business around very specific client verticals, part of that playbook was bringing not just sales and marketing together, but bringing the front office and our colleagues across the business all focused around the specific site client segments, so that each part of that value chain

was totally focused on the same things, and that started with, okay, what is our shared target? What are our shared goals? That's AUM and GnM. But there's also common alignment that every single person in that wider squad, in that wider team, has a personal objective of driving growth for that whole client segment, for that whole client vertical.

Okay, so just just, I'll play that back. So take, for example, that the commonly known entrepreneur vertical within wealth management. What we're saying is we've got different functions that might be marketing, the business development team and the client facing team, for example, the practitioners. And what we've got is a common objective that everyone needs to own self Gen and marketing Gen leads. And we're commonly against that that theme, is that right?

Totally, and that we're all contributing towards that vertical success.

The wealth management market is really interesting space, just in general, the consolidation that's going on and the fact that you know the amount of assets that are going to be in the marketplace over the next five years is going to carry on growing. There's a whole ton of changes intergenerational wealth transfer and getting to grips with all of those sort of big, bold topics that's been spoken about. But the thing that what I believe that you're doing differently, and what you're leading is this vertical approach, but others in the US that we work with within the European function. Talk about that, but don't do it as well. But why would a business move to a vertical approach, whether that's in wealth management or in different organizations? What's the benefit of doing a vertical approach?

Yeah, so I think whether it's this category or outside of it, a vertical approach works if it's being driven by your clients, because fundamentally, a vertical led approach is about segmenting your client base and then providing tailored services to meet those needs. Now I wouldn't wholesale approach that if I was a very specific product, if I was a very specific service, or I already had a very narrow ideal client. So EasyJet actually probably shouldn't have a vertical approach. They should have different distribution channels, different market segments that they go after. But fundamentally, it's a brand for everyone. It's an accessible in that way. Yeah, I don't think a vertical approach works for every single business. I think it works when your audience insight has shown you and told you that taking a more segmented, tailored approach is the right thing to do, and I think within our business, you know, we have a very clear understanding of the

wealth thresholds and the type of personalities and the macro segments that our ideal clients operate within. But it's really the deep insight that we've done with that segment that's shown us those specific audiences within that macro segment require very specific they have very different needs. They're very different personas. An entrepreneur has a very different wealth, structure, life style, ecosystem of influences around them. Need states as they approach a business exit to someone that is going through a divorce. Yes, and for us to homogeneously Mark go to market to someone that's going through a divorce and someone that's just sold a business and someone that's a trustee that's running a charity, is kind of crazy. And I think there's a role for hyper segment, like segmentation across every business, but whether you're rolling out a vertical strategy is the right thing to do, I think is probably very nuanced.

There's an interesting evolution that's happening in wealth management. We talk about the fact that females are going to have more wealth than ever before moving forward. And I know from conversations where Matt and I have spoken to you, purpose is a big thing for you and your higher purpose, if we think about the industry as a whole. I was talking to a top 10 wealth management firm leader the other day. She's one of 12 female leaders in that organization. The rest are obviously male, but the transfer of wealth is going to be going to females. So that is a challenge in itself the industry has to grapple with. But you're in this senior role, head of growth, you're the one who can steer the shit to where the direction is about to go. Is that part of the reason why you're at Evelyn partners?

So I said earlier, I never thought that I would end up with wealth management. It's actually quite funny to my family that I work in financial services, just bad at maths.

Okay, yeah, the irony.

Thank you for AI, finally, so yeah, it's very funny to my family that I work in wealth management, but what I have found at Evelyn partners is this profound sense of purpose, as I have uncovered and understood the massive inequalities within our industry that exist between women and men. So you're right, 60% of wealth in the UK is now in female hands. That's happening for a number of reasons. So one, women live longer than men, so naturally are kind of inheriting that. Secondly, because, like family wealth, or intergenerational wealth, again, for the first time in history, is being distributed fairly between sons and daughters. So you're starting to see a more equal transfer of assets to children through through more equal gender split. But women, for the first time in history, are also accruing more of their own wealth. We've got more women in the C suite than ever before. Still not enough. Of course, female founders, entrepreneurs who are running

their own businesses and selling successful businesses, scaling them successfully again, still not enough, but more than ever before, and all of these macro factors are creating wealthier women, which is incredible. But wealth management as a category is an old category. It's been around for a really long time. You know, our business is 180 years old. There are, you know, older wealth managers businesses out there, institutionally, this category has been designed for men. So as we think about client verticals and designing inclusive design, we need to think really seriously about how we design a pathway for women in something that, yeah, I'd say, is institutionally designed for men. Where I get really excited about the work that we're doing is that whilst we're a the third largest wealth manager in the UK, our brand is relatively new. We've been the result of a number of mergers and acquisitions over the years, and we launched our brand a few years ago, but we haven't

really invested in it since. So as I think about my task as a marketer is to reintroduce the even partners brand into the UK, and to grow it amongst our target audience, we have a unique opportunity to build a brand for women, and I'm hugely passionate about that, largely because of the inequality that I've talked about. And I'll bring that to life, because if you think about so women are 50% 50% of them say that they are unconfident making investment decisions, and only 20% of women seek financial advice, and even fewer with nowhere to turn to for financial advice. So we've got an industry that's not designed for them and an inherent cultural mindset that's preventing them from seeking advice, but more of them have got wealth than ever before, and that's what we're trying to solve for.

Yeah. That's a fantastic place for us to end today's conversation to everyone listening join us for part three as we continue this conversation.