Building a tight marketing team is no small task. Doing that with virtual marketers across the US makes it much more challenging. Welcome to The Marketing Accelerator Podcast…featuring three insights in about three minutes. I'm Drew Dinkelacker. And, today I'm speaking with Liz Krause. She's the VP of Marketing at Converged Technology Professionals. That's a business communications provider. Liz, your team of five is, well, 100% remote. And yet you've described them to me as being tight. What's your core principle for building a marketing team that works well together?

Liz Krause: Yes. So, I think a lot of things go into this and to having a tight team. You can have processes and you can have structure in your business. And that definitely helps. But you can have that and not have a tight team. And that's something that I really try to work on with my team of five people. And it really, in my opinion, starts from the top down. Really setting the example and having empathy, which is a big buzz word that's been talked about a lot ever since the pandemic. And it is important. I was raised with… I was raised where I was taught you treat other people like you'd want to be treated. And it's a core biblical principle that is so applicable in our personal lives and our professional lives to do unto others as you'd have them do unto you. And I think when leading a team, that's very critical.

Drew: Oh, that's a classic from the book of Matthew 7:12. But how do you do that virtually?

Liz: That's a tough one. There's definitely some challenges there. But I do think that a big part of that is really setting the culture and setting the environment for new people that come on with onboarding. During those first… For us, it's three months. During those first three months are really, really important to set the stage for that. You know, making a welcoming environment for people to let them know that, hey, when you have questions, we're not going to look down on you for asking them. This is a time to learn and understanding our culture. When someone comes on board, when you're in an office, they can walk down the hallway and people will say, hey, you're the new person, welcome aboard. But you don't get that remote. So how do you make somebody feel remote? And I think being very intentional and during your group meetings, making it fun and just treating people with respect and making them feel and know that they are a valuable part of the team.

Drew: So how do you apply the old adage when something goes wrong and now you as the leader must address the situation?

Liz: Yeah, those are challenging situations. But it does, it goes back to how would I how would I want to be treated if I was in that in that person's spot? And it's a, it's a tough one because you really have to make sure, for myself, I don't want to point the finger at the person when there's a problem. I want to point my finger at the problem, but work with the person to figure out how to solve that problem so that it doesn't happen again and to address it. And it's just a matter of saying, hey, I have a choice, I can pick up the phone and I can say, hey, give that person a hard time and this and that. Or I could say, no, I'm going to put myself in their shoes. How would I want to be treated? I want to be treated with respect. I want to work together to solve a problem.

Drew: I really like that thought. Point your finger at the problem, not the person. That's great insight.