Develop These Skills to Become A Marketing Leader

 In my experience, most true leaders in the Marketing profession are made, not born.

By dissecting their performance, we find they typically share a common set of skills.

Honestly assess your own competence in these areas, work on the “holes in your game,” and you can rise to the forefront as they did.

Ability to see the big picture. We all seek to become experts in our own field or in multiple fields. But 

the ability to make decisions based on what works best for the end customer in context of the entire process is important – and much more rare. This relates directly to our methodology of identifying and quantifying business objectives versus marketing objectives.

Ability to gather data. For those who consider themselves “statistically challenged,” don’t worry.  The skills needed for a successful Six Sigma-driven Marketing By Objectives approach are the ability to prioritize the recording of facts, explain them and separate them from guesswork, not to be a statistical magician.

Ability to question or break through your old assumptions.  At one time, everybody “knew” the Earth was flat.  At one time, everybody “knew” the 4-minute mile was sacrosanct.  At one time, everybody “knew” hard-sell ads were the thing.  You get what I mean.  Hanging on too tightly to conventional wisdom can halt progress altogether. 

Ability to work collaboratively.  Sharing ideas, not just giving advice, leads to better team-building. Valuing opinions leads to the development of solutions that benefit the greater good – usually starting with customers.     

Ability to thrive on change.  Change will happen whether we like it or not.  Of course, change for no good reason can be bad.  But change that helps get things done right is seldom condemned.  The trick is to make change work for you.