Over the decades marketing has changed. The tools we use have changed. The delivery mechanism for our messages has changed. Our audience has changed. Fonts, colours, design trends change so often that it can be hard to keep up.

In this environment where there is so much change how do we go about building marketing teams that are future proof?

How do we go about ensuring that we back the right horses when recruiting to ensure that we can continue to deliver the results from our marketing activity that will continue to drive our business forward?

It may please you to know that the solution to this problem may not be as complicated as you think.

Why? Forget about change since the Mad Men era. The truth is that over the centuries marketing hasn’t changed. For hundreds, if not thousands of years people have bought products that they feel a connection with. What remains true today is that the main function of your marketing efforts is to make people believe in what you are selling.

Read my previous post; Make people love what you’re selling

In order to make other people believe in what you are selling you have to believe in it yourself. This is supported by the fact that in my experience working with small and medium sized businesses the company founder often remains the best performing sales person. This is because they are driven by the passion and belief that saw them start the company in the first place.

We’ve all experienced it. We’ve all heard people talking about their product or service with such passion and belief that we’ve immediately bought into the idea. We want what they’re selling.

So when you’re adding a new person to your marketing team make sure that you take the time to find out whether they can bring this passion to their efforts. All the qualifications, experience and training in the world will not trump passion – the most important skill a marketeer can have.

But how do you go about assessing this during a recruitment process?

This is a question I’ve struggled with myself. During our recruitment efforts we tend to put the focus on ourselves.

What do they know about our company? – a pointless question which just involves a recital of all the information on the ‘About Us’ page of your website.

How would they go about selling product X in country Y? A tick box exercise in whether they’ve done this sort of stuff before.

The answer is to stop focusing on you and start focusing on them.

They don’t have a passion for your products or services. They can’t. They don’t know enough about them.

They will be passionate about something though.

Maybe it’s the sports club that they are a member of.

Maybe it’s the charity work that they do.

Maybe it’s the hobby that consumes their every free moment. Their garden, their record collection, their love of old lawnmowers.

So instead of asking them to deliver a presentation on how they would improve YOUR website, improve YOUR branding, identify YOUR unique selling points just change the focus.

Ask them to tell you about something that they are passionate about. What it is. Why it is important to them. How it makes them feel.

This will give you a real insight into how passionate they are likely to get about your product.

All the tools that we need to master as marketeers will change. The need for us to have a real passion for what we’re selling is a constant. So focus your efforts here and you’ll not only enjoy much more fulfilling and informative interviews but you’ll build a formidable marketing team.

It’s all about passion – because that’s what all great marketers have in common.

And truth – but that’s for another time.

If you’d like some help building your marketing team then get in touch.