May MarketingMasters Luncheon Report

CDW’s Gambill: CMO 2.0 = Chief Collaboration Officer

By Don Talend
Write Results

What does it take, not only to survive, but to succeed as a chief marketing officer, the C-suite position with the highest turnover? Try combining the traits of Curious George and a chameleon, says CDW Corporation CMO Mark Gambill, the May BMA MarketingMasters Luncheon Seminar guest speaker.

The CMO’s biggest challenges are constantly testing the status quo and leveraging powerful new internal communications tools to ensure that the chief executive officer, the company and external audiences understand and buy into the organization’s messages, Gambill argues.

The CMO must be intensely curious and highly adaptable, said Gambill, who previously spent six years as vice president of global strategic marketing for Manpower, Inc. “You’ve got to be someone who investigates on a host of fronts. A lot of the old rules about how we’re supposed to do things do not apply.” The CMO must also be highly adaptable, he said, adding that a bad CMO is one who tries to take credit and gives presentations all the time in place of his or her people. “You’re only as good as the people around you,” he said. At CDW, a leading provider of technology solutions for business, government and education, “We try to get our people in front of the CEO, a place where they’re not comfortable, in order to get them outside of their comfort zone.”

Gambill has been pushed out of his own comfort zone recently, but he says that is a good thing. He recently led negotiations to have CDW named the official technology provider for the Professional Golfers’ Association of America. This initiative has forced Gambill to look at the role of CMO in a new way.

In today’s dynamic business and internal communications environment, which is characterized by the use of new social networking tools, failing to make these connections is a real pitfall, Gambill said. He cited a recent Spencer Stuart survey which revealed that out of all C-suite executives, CMOs have the shortest tenures at only 26 months. “I think one of the things that drives the lack of longevity for a CMO is job clarity,” he said, pointing out that while executives such as chief financial officers have more narrowly defined responsibilities, the CMO traditionally has a wide-ranging sphere of influence, including branding, communications, research, intelligence and corporate social responsibility. “The role of the CMO is not as cut and dried,” he said.

Contrasting his role with that of the ad executive Darrin, played by Dick York on the TV show “Bewitched,” Gambill said his role is not static and not characterized by merely entertaining clients at cocktail parties and coming up with catchy ad slogans. “In my world, I’m challenged on a lot of levels, he said. “I’m challenged to find insights that incite action. I’m trying to understand the power of social networking. I’m trying to understand how my team can interact in a matrix environment effectively. I have to understand how to use the right types of data to leverage for the future of our company’s sales objectives.”

The CMO’s role has evolved into that of a “chief collaboration officer,” he added. “If you think more like a CCO, you’re likely to make the right connections that will make you more successful in terms of how you do your job.” Of the three key collaborative groups, the organization—sales, marketing, IT, operations and purchasing, and other divisions—is the most important. Internal communications represent the biggest change in the CMO’s role, he argues.

“This is where your role as CCO will really be tested and more than likely where you will succeed or fail in a B2B environment,” Gambill said. “I have to have engagement and acceptance from finance, IT, sales, operations and coworker services. [Marketing] is an organization that touches everyone throughout the company. We are part of a matrix nation.”

In order to engage the entire company, the CMO should think of internal stakeholders as customers, Gambill argues. He says that when he arrived at CDW in 2006, the marketing department “didn’t engage—it just did.” To adapt, he said, he had to learn that some modes of communication are more effective with some groups of internal stakeholders. For example, “Think about people coming into the work force; they have grown up with technology and mobile devices,” Gambill said. Noting that LinkedIn.com has replaced the rolodex and email has replaced letters, Gambill said, “Consumer applications have now moved into the business application space, and we marketers have to understand it from an internal and external audience perspective. If you don’t figure out how to use this stuff and blend it in with other aspects, it won’t have the resonating effect you want it to have.”

“This is one of the most interesting times in the history of our work force because you have a significant Baby Boomer population in the work force. They’re vibrant, they’re over 60 and they want to work. Then you have this new generation that’s hard-wired to technology. Think about that in the context of customers as well as your internal employees: how are older employees using these tools?”

Gambill says that CDW spends a lot of time analyzing the effectiveness of communications, even internally. Noting that 80 percent of CDW’s staff is under 40 years old, about half of the staff works in sales, and of the sales force, about 40 percent were born after 1981, he shared an anecdote about the pros and cons of communication technology. Gambill said he recently spoke with an account manager who said he spends much of his day emailing and texting customers. Gambill argues that such an approach is both good and bad: while the use of such channels might resonate with some customers, he cited a recent McKinsey & Company study indicating that many workers entering the work force have not mastered the art of communication in terms of having to engage with someone in a substantive way.

An effective engagement technique for internal stakeholders is what Gambill calls the “walk-through”: forcing yourself to get out of your office and understand what your staff is doing every day. “There’s a real risk with all this technology that’s out there,” he said. “It’s easy for me to sit in my office and rip off a bunch of emails and say ‘do this, do that,’ and it’s hard to interpret what I mean,” he said. “It’s easier to hit the delete button than to look someone in the eye or talk to them on the phone and say, ‘Here’s why I disagree with that.’ The worst thing you can do is go 100 percent technology. There are lots of really neat new modes of communication. You’ve got email, blogging, texting, videoconferencing. They all change how we do business, but what’s just as important is human interaction. So as a marketer, think about how you’re engaging with people who work with you and for you and what’s important to them.”

“I’m not going to be able to understand you and how you’re doing if the only time we talk is when you come into my office and do a presentation and you only know me as a title. One of the things that is very important to me is to walk around and sit with people. It freaks them out a little bit at first because they think they’re in trouble, but it’s a good way to get to know them and get them to understand that we’re all in this together.”

However, technology can improve communication, Gambill says. Noting that CDW has more than 500,000 customers, the development of the company’s Get It Web portal allows CDW to interface with its customers by such divisions as segment, category and product and to customize solutions for them.

“Hopefully, you’re doing some kind of customer profiling and segmentation where you understand the expectation as far as channel mix and how you’re going to communicate with them,” he said. “It’s important to understand that as you’re building plans and trying to leverage all the cool technologies that are out there.”

On the personal interaction side, not to be forgotten is another key collaborative entity: the CEO, Gambill said. Here again, it is important to adapt to the situation as a chameleon would, he added. “You have to really articulate and create an environment of how and where you fit in with that individual. No matter how traditional or untraditional he or she is, you’ve got to understand where you are with them. You can’t be afraid of them; some CEOs are a little intimidating. You can’t be a ‘yes person’; that’s the worst possible thing you can be because they’re never going to get the answers.”

“The worst thing that [CDW’s CEO] John Edwardson could say to me is, ‘That was a surprise; why didn’t you tell me?’ You can’t sugarcoat it because ultimately it’s going to come out. Part of my responsibility with John is I have to continuously level-set with him and show the hows and whys of what we’re doing and tie it back into the key strategic objectives of the company.”

Respecting the CEO’s time, or lack of it, is also important, Gambill argues. “CEOs have time for a snapshot and can’t get mired down in details,” he said. “It’s incumbent upon you to marry the strategic objectives of the organization and the tactical things you’re doing. Do it basically—Sales 101: features, advantages, benefits. Here’s what we’re doing, here’s what we think the return is, here’s why it’s important. You’re connecting the dots for the individual.”

Sales is the marketing organization’s biggest stakeholder and that relationship also must be handled properly, Gambill pointed out. “The world of a sales person is pretty basic: What’ll it mean to me, what’ll it mean to my job and what’ll it mean to my team?” he said. “The most important is, what’ll it mean to me? There’s nothing wrong with that; that’s why they’re in sales—it’s all about them getting to more dollars.”

“One of the worst things in a B2B company that you can do is sit back in your ivory tower and suggest that you know what’s best for them. That’s the quickest way to create alienation and walls between you and sales. We treat them like customers; we try to understand what their critical path needs are. The other thing you need to keep in mind is that we get enamored with the beauty of a creative piece.” He recalled that the sales force once said that a TV ad campaign that his organization had prepared would not send the right message, a contention backed up by focus groups, so the campaign was revised. “I think it’s important and OK to have a bit of healthy tension with sales because you shouldn’t agree with everything all the time,” Gambill said. “You just have to keep it respectful and professional.”

Shadowing those from other departments t hroughout the day at CDW is an effective way to gain understanding of what they need, Gambill says. For example, all new employees spend a day in the distribution center. As for understanding how sales representatives do their jobs, “Engage them in developing options,” he suggested. “Our data suggests we should do this or this. You’re on the front lines talking to customers: What do you think is the more effective option?”

Overall, Gambill says, avoid settling into what he calls the “eye of the hurricane” by hunkering down in the office, oblivious to challenges. “I can sit in my office and put on my iPod and have some nice music going and have my calls forwarded to my assistant,” he said. “You’ve got to understand the dynamics of your work force, your workplace and how you need to be engaged with it. One of the most effective things I do is take the time and say to a bunch of sales guys, ‘ I just want to get together and see what goes on in your world’—that goes so far. They learn about you; they’re more receptive to you.”