CMI's first expert was Liz Jackson, the star of Channel 4's Undercover Millionaire series, and boss of Great Guns Marketing, one of the UK's leading telemarketing companies.
Liz’s achievements have been recognised by her winning the 2003 T Mobile ‘Women Mean Business Award’ and the 2004 regional Customer Focus Award in the National Business Award series; an award referred to by Gordon Brown as the Business Oscars. Liz is most recently the regional winner of the Entrepreneur of the Year award in the Chamber Awards 2005.
Liz Jackson Answers
Simon Dolph: How do you ensure that you are up to date with all the latest developments in your industry and management and leadership? Do you ever network with other CEOs and how does this benefit you?
Liz Jackson: I keep up to date with industry developments certainly by networking with my peers. I obviously have the huge privilege of being a Companion of the CMI and find it incredibly valuable to attend the Companions Dining Club events, where I get the opportunity to rub shoulders with those individuals who are definitely older and wiser than me. Also I find that it is not enough just to keep up to date with developments but that to be ahead of the game we need to be driving innovation and my experience is that the most creative and best ideas come from great relationships with our team and our clients. By nurturing great relationships you encourage two way conversations, which free people up to feel secure enough to make suggestions and bring ideas forward.
Jo Bowles: I would be interested to know which person (or people) you most admire in the business world and why?
Liz Jackson: I admire a huge amount of people in the business world and actually they seem to change on a monthly basis. As I often have the privilege of hearing from or meeting up with new people on regular occasions I am often bumping into amazingly talented people. Flavour of the month at the moment though is Des Benjamin, who is a fellow Companion at the CMI and is the CEO of Simply Health. I have met up with Des a number of times now and not only is he incredibly bright and passionate about his business and his people, but I genuinely believe he operates with the utmost integrity and has an interest in helping those of us that are less experienced improve our skills.
Peter Hughes: If there was one thing that you could change about your past career what would it be and why?
Liz Jackson: To be honest I don’t think I would change anything. I had a brilliant first job with a company called BCMS Corporate; they recruited me as an office junior on a YTS and I worked my way up the ladder over the 8 years I was employed by them. My boss was an amazing entrepreneur and incredibly inspiring and encouraging to work for. I have obviously made a good number of mistakes at Great Guns and have experienced a reasonable amount of failure but all of these experiences have helped me to build my own skills and character and that of my business so I wouldn’t change a thing.
Mike Petrook: What is the one skill you look for in your managers? If they haven't got 'it', how do you develop their capability?
Liz Jackson: I think they have to love people, love being around people, love seeing people achieve their potential and know how to address issues with people whilst not de-motivating them. If managers don’t have a love of people as a basic starting point and are only interested in their own performance then they shouldn’t be a manager. This goes against the old trend of promoting the highest achiever to the management position.
Naomi Scannell: What do you think will be the key issues facing managers and leaders in 2010?
Liz Jackson: I think the key issues that managers will face in 2010 will be keeping productivity high and keeping costs down whilst ensuring that performance levels and quality are as high as they possibly can be. I think service levels will have to improve dramatically as we come out of the recession because people have once more realized the value of money so they will be more cautious about spending it and will have higher expectation in quality of results. Also competitors that have made it through the recession will have pulled their fingers out and sharpened up their act so this presents a definite challenge to industry but one I personally enjoy and welcome.
John Cummings: I looked at your 'My week' article on your website. I noted that you make particular mention of mentoring your managers. While I am sure this of tremendous value to your mentees, I wondered if there were any developmental 'nuggets' you have taken away from the process that have helped you continue to grow as a leader?
Liz Jackson: I find mentoring the most challenging part of my job; it stretches me constantly. My team is incredibly bright and is keen to push the envelope and innovate in our business. This is obviously quite challenging for me, it means that I’m often out of my comfort zone and sometimes I’ll push to keep up with them. I love this about working at Great Guns though!
John Milburn: I watched you on secret millionaire and it seems that the experience was very rewarding for you. What did you learn about yourself that you've been able to apply and help you in your work?
Liz Jackson:: I don’t think I learnt anything new about myself but I was hugely inspired by many of the people I met on Secret Millionaire. I guess being involved in Tideway reminded me of how physical activity and trying to sail a boat alongside people with all levels of abilities was a wonderful picture of teamwork. The bloke in the wheelchair could see so he shouted out directions, the blind bird could steer so she turned the steering wheel, the guys with arms but no legs pulled in the ropes, everyone concentrated on their ability and used it to move things forward. It made me consider that we need to make sure that our teams are full of people with different strengths and weaknesses but that we utilize them for the things they can do and not the things they can’t.
Wayne Ellis: I dare say most peoples experience of call centres recently is with those in India where so many are now outsourced. It's probably fair to say you can't compete with these on price so how do you go about carving a niche in the marketplace against such competition?
Liz Jackson: Indian call centers aren’t competition in my market. Anyone serious about building relationship with senior directors in businesses wouldn’t be stupid enough to consider an Indian call centre as a supplier. Having gone down the route of opening regional telemarketing centers because the Scottish like being sold to by the Scots, understanding the very real need for telemarketers to be briefed face to face by clients and seeing the obvious link between great relationship with clients and success there’s no way you could off shore this activity.
Peter Hughes: In an industry that has the reputation for high staff turnover how do you keep your staff motivated, loyal and customer focused?
Liz Jackson: We do a number of things including having fresh fruit delivered to the office, changing our incentives around and keeping them fun and exciting, we pay much higher than market average salaries and have a great talent development programme. To add to all of this our average age of a telemarketer at Great Guns is 37, of course we’re not ageist in any way we just want the best person for the job, but it does seem that this helps with retention as most of our people seem to have decided what they want to be when they grow up, which is a fantastic, outgoing, tenacious, incredibly successful telemarketer.
Mike Davies: Everywhere you read these days it seems that marketing budgets have been amongst the first to go in the recession. As a marketing company, how have you coped?
Liz Jackson: I think it’s true that people did stop spending at the beginning of the recession but we found that our existing clients who already have a good understanding of the real return on investment that can be achieved from telemarketing actually doubled their spend through the recession. Also we made the brave decision to spend like the clappers on sales and marketing through the recession and to not have a poverty attitude about spending our business and so we went through an exciting rebrand as well. This has really paid off and the last two months have been our best selling months ever. We listened to those that had gone through a recession before and took their advice and it certainly rung true.
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