In Part 2, Charlotte Smith shares how her business, Trilogy International, cultivates a customer-focused culture through strategic hiring, hands-on client collaboration, and aligning leadership with long-term goals. Charlotte talks about the importance of clear market boundaries, leveraging data-driven insights, and maintaining focus on core strengths to foster trust and deliver consistent results. Charlotte’s experiences highlight the pitfalls of short-term thinking and the power of intentional leadership to achieve sustainable growth while building a cohesive, client-aligned team.

Welcome back. We're here to continue our

conversation. We are thrilled to have Charlotte Smith on the

Growth Workshop Podcast, an experienced people manager

specializing in talent strategies and currently working

with Trilogy International. I think quite often the clients

that we work with, some of the stuff that we just observe as

well in the market is you've got this. Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah. I

know I need to do. This is my this my token. And then we kind

of walk off. We go, right? That feels like a real challenge for

those leaders in that space where the business is saying,

let's go in this direction. This is great. We're gonna have a

client centric approach to to the way that we win work, the

way that we serve our clients. Great. By the time it lands on

the desk of a junior person who's had their feet under the

desk for less than five years. How does that translate?

Well, the how piece again, if we talk about

scaling something back, right? So what you just discussed is,

you know, all businesses pain points, we want to go from A to

B and move ourselves forward. How? Which we've touched on some

of the methods and the data driven behaviors and ensuring

that the training is really strong behind that, even one

step before that, with your How is well, what's the profile of

the person that we need to hire to ensure that we can actually

deliver that? No one does that. No one sits there and blueprints

that this is okay. This is the type of experience, competence

and key traits that we are therefore going to interview to

ensure that we can deliver this strategy. It's it doesn't

connect even right back before that, if I said to half of the

leadership teams within the square mile of bank where my

trilogy offices are based, have you and your sales leader sat

down and mapped the target profile of the person that you

want to hire into your team formally, again, minimal to

None, right? So that's an easy thing that you could apply to

your leadership team to go, Okay, we know what we want to

do. We know phase one of how we want to achieve that. Okay, how

and who are we going to hire to deliver that? And what are our

non negotiables around that? Because, again, within any sales

professional, there is high turnover, right? Is that the

fault of the person that got offered the job, or is that the

fault of the business that didn't take the time to ensure

that they were hiring the right people for the job?

I massively advocate what you're saying. You

know, one of the things that we train and teach is that whenever

recruitment, which is recruiting individuals into your

organization, and I know we're talking about recruitment,

probably supporting other businesses, but is it about 5x

6x the cost of a miss hire at the moment? And most

organizations, when they make a miss hire, they always go, wow,

they weren't good enough anyway. And then they point a finger at

them, but we always say, Well, how many fingers are pointing

back at you? And there's always the three that are pointing back

at you, which is important to actually understand. It's

probably the way that you've hired and Ill practice and

focus. And that comes on to, like, the next question, really.

And we're talking about the importance of leadership to

drive that sent, you know, custom centric approach. But

when we think about that, and then wrapping around a cultural

element towards it, you alluding to some of those practices and

principles. I love the fact that you talk about the why, the

what, the when, and you know, you were challenging a bit

there, Matt about the how, and you've come up with some great

frameworks. But from your experience, how do you sort of

build the culture of a customer centric approach through the

leadership? Remember, that's the lens that we want to talk about.

But how do you build that culture in an organization from

your role?

Yeah, so I really encourage a lot of

involvement at all client touch stages, so to ensure that the

next generation of biller leader that's coming through the ranks

actually is really owning that and going through that process

with the leadership team, I also think the key component there is

you're you're giving the leader, the said leader, the opportunity

to see where their current consultant is from a skills

perspective, to ensure that they're delivering the right

type of communication and value proposition and question deck

and coming away with the right outcomes from those meetings. I

know that sounds very, very simple, but that is custom

centric, because we're just ensuring that every time we

touch a customer, we're doing it to the best of our ability. But

the reason why I put a people spin on that is we're ensuring

that we're showing and we're leading rather than telling so I

think that's really, really key. So that's a very simple thing.

It's just always be there for those touch points, no matter

how small, there is something that you can pick out on that.

And I'm really blessed with a fantastic team at trilogy.

They're so hands on with their customers, so they're very

involved, and as a result, are able to scale customers on a

global setting, win whole programs of work, etc. I think

in the recruitment sector, that's been another really

fantastic change of mindset, which I've learned by being part

of the leadership team at trilogy, which is we really

adopt. To our statement of work models. And the reason that has

that kind of leader, customer centric approach is because

we're not just going in and saying, Can we help you with a

couple of program managers? We're going, let's own it

together. Let's deliver this whole program together and

actually, really go on that journey. We'll take some of the

reporting away for you. So we've actually made the decision to

hire some pMOS into our business whose skill set is completely

aligned to that and that. That is an exact example of being

customer centric in our approach. There is something to

gain from both parties, of course, but if you're dealing

with the typical CTO, or if you're dealing with the typical

director of change or digital transformation director, do they

want to deal with multiple contingent agents, or do they

want to actually invest in a mid weight so we're not a

consultancy, we're not going to win your 30 million pound

projects because, quite frankly, you don't have them either. You

just want to deliver a couple of key things we can partner on

that there'll be more touch, there'll be more respect and

responsibility in mutual spades. And as such, we win as a

business, and we drive those numbers up by winning the whole

project, and the customer is much happier as a result of it.

With the point of view of you describing how

trilogy is set up, I really think those are some phenomenal

points. You know, the fact that you're working together with the

client to create that customer set. And Matt, we've heard that

from other guests in the past, which is phenomenal. Just a

brief response and summary on this point, when it hasn't

worked, what does it look like? But I want to know, what does

the feeling feel like when there's a lack of leadership

that's really binding around that customer center? I would

imagine, in your illustrious career, you might have seen when

it hasn't worked that well. What? But what's the feeling

like in an organization when it doesn't work so well?

Well firstly, it hasn't worked because the

leadership have driven a quick result rather than a meaningful

long term result. So they've pushed a number, they've pushed

a meeting, they've pushed a deal, they've pushed the rates

up too much in the deal, and they haven't thought about the

long term client relationship that they can have by that so

that haste, that speed, that impatience, and therefore

naivety has lost customers and results that then creates that

blame culture, finger pointing everyone correct. It's like that

spider man meme that you see where they're all pointing and

blaming each other. And then what happens is leadership

panic. Then what happens is they start looking at KPIs. Then what

happens is they start looking at working from home versus coming

into the office, blaming the hiring, blaming the people,

person, because I train them so if they're not all a grade

consultants...

It's Charlotte's fault!

Absolutely always my fault, same at home.

So the reality is it create. I think that the biggest thing

that I can see is where people then try and island off their

own strategies. So I remember the biggest red flags that I've

had with, you know, just interviewing other businesses,

is we do it our way. We don't do it the same as them or we. It's

different for us. Come on now you know you're not, you're not

driving each other forward, and then that actually doesn't mean

if you're protecting or what you perceive to be the right way

over another team in your business. You're not a succinct

business, and I very much doubt you have a customer centric

leadership team as a result of that.

It's that tying together, knitting together, the

everybody's rowing the boat in the same direction, right? And

no one's kind of fighting. And it's, it's so great to hear that

example, Charlotte, thank you for sharing, and I know our

audience will really appreciate that, and think maybe see some

of that in their own organizations. Something you

said just previously, and I think that was particularly

interesting, or that sort of jumps out for me, is how you've

you what you're doing with your business, and how you're

neighboring your business, is to take that KPI data focus and

actually carry it into those client partnerships as well. You

talk about having a PMO, and actually, let's get wrapped

around the same metrics. So let's align your metrics with

our goals, so that everything is click. I mean, that's got to be

the North Star of client centricity, right?

Yeah, 100% and don't get me wrong, it doesn't

mean that it's an easy journey. And so if I think back over the

last 12 months, because I've only been part of the leadership

team with trilogy for 12 months, and it's been fantastic, and

this business is absolutely home for me, the stage one is because

you are talking data. People just get triggered. Data means

KPIs. KPIs means KPI. Management, leadership. Go, God,

this bloody bird has joined our business, and she's making us

look at all these data points we're losing what we were we

weren't establishing....

We're losing our culture, we're losing our

culture!

That's so 2012, by the way, we've changed. We're

not in that....

I know, right? We're not that business. We're

not that business. So I spoke about the hearts and minds like

it took, it does take a minute, and these are the most open

minded professionals that I've worked with in a long time,

right? They're really open to it. They really wanted it. But

then when you ask somebody to change, they're like, oh, no,

that's not for us. It did take a minute. So you do have to start

in the trenches a little bit, but you have to really commit

and own it with any change methodology, right? You've kind

of got those, those combative months where it's like, can't

see it. Can't see it. Can't see it. What we really work together

with as a leadership team, though, and we're a smaller

business, right? So it is a bit easier for us to do. We're sort

of between 6070, heads based across kind of three different

locations. We're European, we're UK, we're us, so they're the

kind of cultural aspects with that to deal with as well. But

we really, really shouted about the small stuff, because we

we've got some people in our business that achieve incredible

stuff, like I've never worked with a business that has got so

many million pound dollar, Euro a year. Bill is right, and I

think that's testament to the method. So when I dissected what

was the trilogy, way it was customer centric. It was we work

incredibly hard. We don't treat people as a client, and we don't

treat people as a candidate. We work incredibly hard to network

with key figureheads in our market, so we stay in our lane.

We're contract recruiters, the exception of the US, right with

contract recruiters. We don't touch perm, so we have

boundaries, and we won't go out of that. You know, we have

customers that we work with that spend millions of pounds a year

in Perm hiring. It could be so easy to go we'll do that. No, we

are the contract recruiters. That's what people come to us

for. And as a result, we we, we deliver what we say we can

deliver. And I think if you're sat here as a leader, putting

together your strategy, and you think diversifying your offering

with your current leadership team, because of course, you can

hire in a great person that can help you branch off. But if

you're trying to diversify your offering and your value to your

customers, and you have no weight behind that, that's a not

customer centric decision. That's greedy, you will fail.

Your customers won't enjoy that, and you'll lose what you were

good at in the first place, right? So I've really enjoyed

that, but I've had to demonstrate that. So yes, all of

these incredible people that have been here since you were

running it out of a shoe box, and I fully appreciate we now

have a CRM and I'm showing you data and dashboards, and I'm

sending around league charts, and you hate it, but now we're

at a point where we're like, well, we've built the base level

funnel. We've got everybody really aligned to their markets.

We've worked on the basics, and we've really pushed that, and I

used key people in our business to help me support those

messages. I found my business champions to help me with that.

I took extra time to dissect the rationale, the reasoning and the

why, so they knew where I was coming from. I then got them to

do a bit of training with me to add weight. So I wasn't just

this person that joined the business. And they were like,

Who's this Dizzy bird with the red lip telling us to do more

pulls because it's gonna achieve this. And then now we're at the

end of funnel stuff. You know, we're really, we're really

driving at the moment, you know, how many people were meeting,

how many times it takes for you to meet somebody for you to then

gain business, and then how we can work on ensuring that the

level of business that we're bringing in is accurate to our

wheelhouse, and do our talent pools match that, so we can

deliver that with great speed to hire. Mic, drop.

Drop the mic. And I think just for the audience

today, some absolute gold dust in there. And I know, obviously

we've been talking in the context of a recruitment

business, but there's so much business, but there's so much of

this that is relevant, as you said, way beyond recruitment

businesses and just having that eyes on all of those really,

really important things, and not trying to boil the ocean. I

think one of the things you said right towards the end there was

about taking time, right? So taking time to win a deal, but

also taking time to invoke change within the business is

clearly something you've done to great success, and is starting

to and taking those difficult personalities on the journey

with you along the way as well. So on behalf of Johnny and I,

Charlotte, thank you so much for joining us today. We've

thoroughly enjoyed it. Fantastic insight, and to our listeners,

I'm sure going to get a huge amount from this conversation.

So thank you.

No worries. Thank you very much for having

Thank you, Charlotte.

me.

Cut!

Well done.

That's brilliant.