In Part 1, Charlotte Smith draws from her 2 decades of experience, and talks about how you can mobilise your leadership team, aligning KPIs with customer-centric goals, and fostering a culture of expertise and value. Charlotte’s practical frameworks demonstrate how leadership can effectively scale customer-centric initiatives, turning individual contributions into sustainable business growth.

Hello and welcome to the Growth Workshop Podcast with

your host, Matt Best, and of course, Jonny Adams.

Hello.

It's so fantastic to be doing one of these in person,

Jonny. I'm just so grateful to all of our listeners to by

supporting our podcast enable us to to come and do one of these.

But more importantly, we are thrilled to have Charlotte Smith

join us today on the Growth Workshop Podcast so Charlotte,

thank you so much for joining us.

Thrilled to be here. I do feel like I'm being

interviewed by CIPD. I have paid my tax bill, I assure you, but

sure, yeah, I have. But delighted. Thank you so much for

inviting me.

Oh, brilliant. Well, look, we're thrilled to have

you. And as someone who's an experienced people manager,

specializing in talent strategies and currently working

with Trilogy International. We're just really excited to get

into the conversation with you today on really how to drive

business growth through your client centric leadership, and I

think that's going to be a super interesting area for us to open

up the discussion on. So yeah, again, thank you so much for for

taking the time today. I know you know Jonny from from past.

So maybe Jonny over to you, where did you guys meet?

And so we've got a great friendship through friends

of a friend. So not only that, Charlotte, obviously, you've

been a client of SBR as well in the past. So some of our friends

from home, we've got mutual friends, which is how we know

each other. But also Charlotte from being a client. We also

know each other through that as well. I'm really curious,

though, just to sort of kick things off, understand a little

bit more about your history, your experience within work,

what have you been doing over the last number of years? I'm

not going to name those years, just because that would be fair,

but give a little bit of background about you.

Yeah, it sure does. I mean, I don't mind naming the

years, right? But I got into the recruitment sector way back

when. So 2005 There we go. Has given it away. Two decades is a

ridiculous thing to say. So I started my career as a junior

recruitment consultant. I joined the typical s3 bubble. That was

the Vogue of the recruitment industry back then. I wouldn't

change it for the world. I mean, there were some incredible

stories, there was some incredible hardships and ways of

working, but it was a rugged way to be dragged into this

industry, but it absolutely gave me all of the competencies and

the beliefs that I think have stood the test of time.

Throughout that process, I have gone full cycle from Bill, a

bill a team leader. I did a good stint post 2008 crash, working

more on a talent acquisition role, working on kind of

resource and strategic resourcing strategies for big

energy and utilities back then, and around about the time, I

decided that I wanted to be a mum. That was something that I

was committed to. Was the time that I thought, okay, it is time

to hand hang those bullying gloves up, and that's a personal

choice. That's not to say that that has to be done because you

want to be a mum for any aspirational young ladies

listening to this and want to go down that path, but it was

something that I've always felt passionate about. I remember

going to the Carnaby Street training facilities that SRE had

back then, and working with the trainers and the coaches. And I

remember right from daydar that that was something that I want

to do. I really wanted to help and to coach others. I think

right back from my sporting kind of I was, grew up like going to

all the athletics clubs, netball clubs, getting involved with

coaching other teams. I think I've always had that kind of

coach in me, and I knew that's what I wanted to do, that felt

like the timing was there for me to do that.

I'm curious, what type of coach were you, you

know, an autocratic coach, or were you a bit more relaxed? How

did you sort of go about that?

Well, I was a child. I was a teenager. So, you

know, this is many, many moons ago, but I like to win the

hearts and minds of people, and I like to, I think I like to

feel like I would never ask somebody to do something I

wouldn't be prepared to do myself as well. And I like to be

able to coach from experience. But of course, have had to go

through the journey of understanding how to be a

professional coach in order to ensure that people can bring the

best out of themselves, as you guys understand and know very

well. You know, back in the day, SBR as a business was was one of

those defining moments in training that actually really

helped me understand how to turn that funnel around and get your

sales professionals to understand the lens that they're

looking down, and therefore to be more successful. So wrapping

that up, recruiter, yes, I am, and I'm proud of it. Started

nearly two decades ago, did about eight to nine years

billing team leading, and then have ever since been in a people

manager, L and D, kind of operational directorship

capacity. And I love it.

Amazing, well, and we have, we have many

recruitment clients, and I have to say, over the last couple of

months, if not, you know, 12 months, it's been a bit of a

challenge out there for recruiters and businesses in

recruitment and in one of those organizations. When things are

going really well. You know the markets on the up when things

are not going so well, you actually probably know a little

bit more about the macro conditions that are ongoing. So

if there's anyone that knows, you've probably seen the ebbs

and the flows of what growth is like within business and

obviously your your personal side as well, in terms of

today's conversation, as we spoke about. And we're really

going to dig deep on leadership and what that means to create a

customer centric sort of business, and how you've helped

that moving forward. But before that, what really curious to

understand is that for you as an individual, and you spoke about

your family there, which was amazing. You spoke about your

career, which was really interesting. But when we think

about growth, there's normally in most people's lives, and I

think back to when people are children, or when they're going

through their career, there's like a sort of a growth spurt as

such. You know that moment where when we were growing, when we

were younger, and we were moving up and getting bigger, but

actually in our career, what was that moment that you can think

about, or that milestone where you had a growth spurt and you

that really sort of got you thinking?

Yeah, it's so easy to answer that. It's the day that I

came back from maternity leave. I really feel like my career

transcended when I came back after being a mum. I was

superhuman. I created another person. I brought that person

into the world. I reared them healthily, you know? I brought

them through, and I felt incredibly confident. That's not

to dismiss all of the kind of maternal worries and anxieties

that you have coming back into quite a full on workspace. It

takes a hot minute. But I felt at that moment, if I was to be

leaving that house in the morning, dropping my child off

at nursery and leaving him all day had to mean something, and I

had to really ensure that I again, I wanted to lead by the

front, by example. I've got a little boy, and I wanted him to

think that his mum was a rock star. So for me, that's where,

you know, just things started to click for me in a new role as

well, because I was really trying to pioneer what learning

and development was back then, and this was 11 years ago, so it

is so much more commonly discussed nowadays, but back

then, you had to fight for budget. You had to justify your

cost base, right? And that was also quite hard, because you go

from I can justify my cross base. I can give you teams with

million pound P and L's. I can personally produce business with

my own effort. So then, to really try and work in an L and

D capacity with what was back then, quite an old school way of

thinking to go, I'm really going to make this work. And I'm not

just going to make this work. I'm going to pass I'm going to

pioneer this and become one of the most successful L and D

professionals in recruitment. And the last 10 years have been

exceptional. There's been some hard parts. I mean, COVID, that

was challenging, and that actually I had to go through

redundancy at that phase after being with the business for 11

years. That was excruciating at the time, looking back on that,

that was actually wonderful, because that's caused me to gain

further experiences with some wonderful businesses and enabled

me to keep pushing my career forward. But absolutely,

motherhood was a defining moment for me, and I look back at every

career aspects that I've achieved, thought and even just

felt in myself, it has been since coming back from having my

son.

Well, listening to that has probably given me a few

goosebumps. Just to sort of anchor around the conversation

today, over the last number of months, we've found a really hot

topic that's going on with all of the amazing guests that we've

had, all about customer centricity. And, you know, in

hard markets and difficult markets in business, having a

really good anchor around customer centricity can really

help you retain and grow key clients and continue to keep the

lights on as such. And whatever role you play, people centered

learning and development, you're as crucial as anyone else to

creating that but just as a bit of preamble and as a frame for

today, before we get into some of the chunky topics, I'm really

curious. And if you think about the topic today, we're thinking

about driving business growth through customer centric

leadership, and what those strategies are to creating that

and we're really emphasizing the point around the leadership part

to customer centricity. So why do you think leadership is so

important towards customer centricity? Could you describe a

little bit?

Yeah, I think it's key to take one step back on that.

So every business, regardless of your output profession, whether

it's selling stocks and shares, double glazing or recruitment

services, there will be a moment where a board will sit down and

go, This is what we have achieved. This is what we

haven't achieved, and this is what we would like to achieve.

So I think me and you have joked over the years, Johnny, like

people love a statement, don't they? They love throwing

something out there to say, this is what we are going to do.

Great, full stop the and what moment is the leadership team?

And the reason that's an and what moment is because if you

can't gear your leadership team to drive your people to achieve

that, then what's the point? Don't go in that boardroom and

blueprint that strategy in the first place, particularly within

recruitment services. And I know that's incredibly relatable to a

lot of the other customers that will be listening to this show,

but you can have the best ideas, but if you don't know how to

mobilize that, you're going to come unstuck every single time.

So from a leadership perspective, you have to have

the right people around you to drive that strategy and achieve

that from a customer point of view, yes, but that, again, will

have a pin in it. How is that leadership team driving the

people, the foot soldiers, to deliver that strategy? Actually

should take up the market share of your conversation. So if

there is a two hour board meet to define your strategy for

coming years and months, 10% of that time should be allocated to

the goal. 90% of that time should be then used to discuss

the how.

And that weight that you've just given there. 10

to 90, has that come from experience? Is that something

that you believe in, like you've just given a nice little idea or

concept? 1090 where's that come from? Has that come from

experience?

Definitely comes from experience. I don't know whether

it was my upbringing. I don't know whether it's because I've

been in recruitment since a very young age that I just can listen

to people kind of come up with these good concepts and ideas

and then just wishy washy their way to execution. I'm like,

we're not gonna get this done. I'm also, think back to my

defining moment. Don't waste my time if I'm going to spend a day

with you and we're going to drive this business forward. If

I'm with you, I'm not at home. So let's, let's make this work.

Let's get stuff done. So it definitely does come from

experience. But of course, I've had some fantastic mentors over

the year that have helped us understand the how so much more

well, you've got your how and your why versus your what,

right? So it's definitely a mixture of both. I'm not

pioneering that as a strategy. I just really believe it, and I'm

not scared to stick up for it if I think the leadership team that

I'm working with are veering off course and not actually labeling

and funneling away to what for us to actually produce that, and

potentially, because I am in a people role, because I have to

go back and get stuff done via people. So I need to know what

those layers are. So it's incredibly easy to navigate in

control, but also prove ROI, which I have to do all the time.

So if I can do that with step one equals Step Two equals step

three equals before we're ding, ding. We did it, then I can do

my job much more effectively.

It's so fascinating. You talk about the people

element and you talk about having the leadership team on

the journey. I think it's really important to remember why

leadership is there. I was at a conference recently talking

about, like levers in sales enablement and how you can

really scale enabling a team, and it's sort of this. It's

strange to think that the first point of call would be the

focusing on individual practitioners or individual

contributors. When you think, if we need to, if we need to scale

something and we need to get something out there, what if

leaders aren't coaching and supporting that kind of

initiative? What is their job? What are they doing?

Yeah, and I get it. Phase one is contributors for

businesses, particularly in the recruitment world. Think how

many kind of startups there are out there and people that have

billed well and then wanted to go and do it themselves, right?

If you look at phase one of that, you do need to get those

contributors, because they will pay the bills. You can't ignore

that. And I think I have to work really hard as a people

professional, because I get it like there are people that are

exceptional billers, and quite frankly, they pay my wages too,

right? So I think a business needs that you have to learn how

to harness that superpower that they have, and you have to get

very good at spotting whether somebody can therefore lead from

the front, as I said before, or they just need to just do and

then you need to better equip the people, the people leaders

around you, to be able to deliver a strategy which is

usually phase two, phase Three, phase four, of a business that

wants to scale via head count. Then they usually want to do

that because, of course, they want to see that bottom number

grow. And so therefore you have to, you have to pay attention to

both in equal measure. But again, you just, just call it

out. Just call it for what it is. Don't force a round peg into

a square hole. And work hard to ensure that everybody's

considered level.

Yeah. And I guess that's what I was, what I was

trying to sort of say there was around that kind of leverage

point, right? And so, yeah, absolutely right. It's enabling

those people, but just seeing the leadership team is your

ability to scale that right, as well being one person or even a

small team trying to get. Around all of those individual

contributors and harness that is a really challenging thing to

do. So actually, you get infinite. Well, not infinite,

but you get significant scale by saying, we can say we've got

this leadership team people, leaders, how to help them get

the most out of their people, how to help them really help

their individual contributors understand the importance of

being client centric. For example, if that's what's being

driven across the business. I think that's reflecting on this,

this particular conference that I referenced, I think it was, it

was a light bulb for so many people around the room. And you

just think that felt quite shocking to me, because I was

just thinking, Well, surely that's fairly obvious.

Yeah, people love the the numbers, right? The pounds,

the Euros, the dollars, very rarely, and particularly in my

industry, there are definitely other sectors that are way

better than this, but very rarely do they actually do the

dissection of, how did we get there, right? How did that? How

did that happen? Because, you know, I've worked with some

great leaders, and they're like, Oh, we probably need a you,

because we've got a bit lucky and to get to that next level of

growth, we need to mobilize our people and our leadership team

in the right ways. And I'm like, nobody gets that Lucky you.

There is a way. There is there is a list of ingredients here

that have been put together quite nicely. So for any of my

leadership professionals, people, professionals that are

listening to this pod like take the time to dissect the good

before you go into any leadership team, looking for

instant gaps that you can correct, because you don't need

to come in like a like a mood Hoover and instantly go into

you're not doing this. You're not do that as you really focus

on what has gone really, really well, how much of that will get

you to the next goals around that customer centric strategy

that you are looking to implement, and what's and then

what's missing, because it doesn't always have to be hard

work. It doesn't there is so much joy in what we do. So

celebrate what was good. Actually construct the lucky and

enable your leadership team to view that, and then they'll go,

Okay, now we understand our step one, step two, step three. We

didn't realize we were doing that every single time, because

we were just coming in and doing as is, as all good billing

professionals do, they just don't think it's unconscious. So

our job is to then unravel that, create a formula and replicate

that, and then then you've got a scalable business.

And you talk about the formula, and a couple of

times in there Charlotte, you've mentioned the data points and

return of investment. All these things require real focus on

KPIs and really understanding the metrics that sit behind

this. And I know from previous conversations we've had that's

really sort of sits at the heart of this. But how do you balance

that with the people side of things? How have you been

successfully able to say, actually, how do we maintain a

client centric or customer centric approach, but still kind

of focus on on the KPIs. And I guess, just to clarify what I

mean there, we know that that you can do it twice, but it is a

bit of a juggling act. If you're an individual contributor or a

leader and you're like, we're laser focused in on these

metrics, how do you remember that you still would a client to

serve at the other end?

Yeah. So first of all, you again, you have to look for

the method that achieved the positive results in the first

place. So data is key to that, because otherwise you've got no

proof of concept. Now, typically with sales people, you are often

working with, you know, good old prism chart, right? You're

often, often working with either highly analytical or highly

dominant professionals that either need to race to the

finish line or they need to scrutinize how you got to the

finish line in the first place. So a lot of my job is proving,

look, see this is how we did it. So data is really key with that.

And the use of technology and decent CRMs that are able to

give you analytical tools to be able to do that has been

absolutely key. Whenever I've considered an employment

opportunity, I have never entertained a company that has

got a rubbish CRM and a rubbish way of looking at the analytics,

because I just don't know where I could start with that I can't

create a blueprint for us to be able to drive the right

behaviors. And the reason I want to drive the right behaviors is

because I am driven by a customer centric approach

always, because without our customers and without happy

customers, we won't produce the sales. Without happy customers,

they don't pay their bills. So there's, there's front office

and back office issues aligned to ensuring that your customer

centric approach is really on point. So from a KPI

perspective, you prove the method, you go and hunt out what

really works, and then you have to, then take it back one step

before that and go, Okay, well, now we know what works. We can't

just diagnose. We can't just say, do. X amount of this, X

amount of that, you have to really train the methodology

behind that. So there is almost method and mindset that really

needs to come into any type of people slash leadership strategy

to achieve a truly client centric approach. So the example

being within my world, right? We're looking for successful

conversations, or I call them nice nos. So nice nos with

potential customers, and the reason they're a nice no is

because we have been customer centric. We've rung somebody or

rang somebody with a truly on point value proposition. We're

not wasting their time. We're not ringing to just introduce

ourselves. We have rang because we are subject matter experts in

what we do. We think there's an element of some decent timing

involved, so they probably do need to know about us at that

point, or may need to know about us at some point in the close

future. And as a result, we're aligned, and we can start that

kind of cadence in order to be able to try and win that person

over and win the business, right? Joy, that's that's what

we're looking for as recruitment professionals. And I'm sure that

funnel is relatable to other sales funnels as well, right? So

the target is, therefore, how many BD calls are you doing?

Right? You can put that on a dashboard, you can produce

reports around that you can put a number out there, which is,

you know, the same as an ingredients list, 250 grams of

self raising flour versus 25 BB calls in a week should be able

to produce you a decent ratio, etc, etc. So then the step back

before that is the training. It's the why, it's the how it's,

you know, taking the time to nurture and teach somebody what

a decent value proposition is. The step back before that for my

business in particular is, we call it market segmentation. So

it's, don't be a generalist. You know, if you truly want to make

your customers happy, you will provide them something that is

hard to find, from their talent acquisition teams, from just

posting their own adverts. So you have to truly own your

market. You can't cop out of being a subject matter expert.

That's training, that's leadership. So again, I can't as

the people professional. I can't sit with my banking team and go

right, where's the next kind of big change in transformations

within the banking world. I have to work very closely with our

Associate Directors to understand that, and we have to

leverage each other's skills. They have to tell me in which

direction to point their people, because they understand the

commercial gain from that.

I'm really curious. I'm sorry to butt in on your

great explanation, because I'm loving this framework. It

reminds me about two years ago, we working with a unicorn, so,

you know, a hugely profitable and hyper growth organization.

We were working with a number of SDRs and AES. In this particular

they were selling human resource software. And when we were

talking to individuals to differentiate themselves, or

that business that differentiate themselves within the

marketplace. I just challenged and asked a question. It

resonates a little bit of what you're saying. I said, if you're

selling HR software to your HR persona, which is essentially

your buying center, you know, how many of you have picked up

the latest HR magazine? How many of you picked up the latest HR

newsletter? How many of you have rang around your network and

called up a HR professional and understood exactly what they do

for a day to day job. And we work with over 100 of their

sales development representatives, zero. So does

that resonate with you, wherever you've been, without naming

names, but how would you you know, Coach or train on that

particular piece? I think it's aligning a little bit to what

you're saying.

Yeah, I spoke about as a people professional,

I watch your feed, yeah.

when you first on board with a business, one of the first kind

of health checks I do is tell me about your market. You know,

where are the parameters to that market and what strategies or

what key things do you have in play to ensure that you are

becoming a brand within that market. What does your shop

window say as an example? Right? So LinkedIn, love it or hate it,

right? Love it it'll hate what you see on those feeds. You're

still looking.

Well, hopefully you like my feed.

I'm not a lurker. I am a liker and a commenter. You

know that.

You are, you are. It's when my old colleagues go really

enjoyed that was like, Where was the likes, what's that about?

Exactly, right? So, yeah, you have to kind of get that. What

do you do? Great. How are you becoming a kind of spearhead

subject matter expert in that and I work....

But Charlotte, but what would you do? Because,

because I think about a method actor, right? And you think

about those method actors that spend nine months of being that

person. And if you want to be an expert and you want to grow into

that role, and you're leading this customer centric approach

through the leadership function, surely businesses need to tell

Matt, get out there. You're selling into the. Financial

service industry. How many people have you spoken to? How

much do you truly know about that? Isn't there something

that's missing in the market that we don't do...

Oh 100% and it's terrible in my market, because

it's often a junior model where you hire 20 year olds that know

how to use Tiktok more than they do LinkedIn, but that's

therefore showing my age because I don't know how to use Tiktok,

and I know how to use LinkedIn, but it's really challenging, but

you can't it's a non negotiable. You absolutely cannot give up on

the fundamentals. And as a training professional, as a

business coach and as an operational director, it's right

back at the grassroots if I don't have the right seeds to

plant in the first place. I am not going to get the harvest

that I want. So it cannot be ignored, it cannot be

understated, and you have to work really, really hard at

getting that right in the first place.

That is a fantastic place for us to end the

conversation today. Charlotte, thank you so much to everyone

listening. Join us for part two as we continue this

conversation.