How do you retain good talent, especially when Demand Generation roles are in such high demand across the industry?

Creating an environment where we have trust, pysocholigical safety, and fun is key, but it's trust that allows team members to have autonomy and agency. Celebrating wins toegther, celebrating mistakes (fail forward!), and removing roadblocks are foundational to building healthy teams.  

Something I try to encourage is that each team member is the owner of their business line, audience, program, etc. As a business owner, they know what they are accountable to, and what is required to meet their goals. Retaining top talent means giving team members sapce to strategize, navitgae, execute, and pull their leadership in when required. But it's also really important that our talent is challenged, constantly growing year over year, and that as leaders, we have a solid understanding of their career asipirations, and we constantly surface opportunities for growth. It's really important that my teams know I have confidence in them, and I have their back.

In order to retain good talent, I believe you have to care for the person as a whole. They need to know you care about their wellbeing. The leader of the team needs to cultivate an environment where this is naturally developed over the course of micro moments and time. I recommend focusing on the following areas:

• Build trust with the individual, not just in their role. It’s important that an individual knows you don’t just care about the output of their work. This could take the form of career development and discussions on how the individual would like to grow and develop past their daily responsibilities. Growth looks different for everyone.
• Clear is kind as Brené Brown says. I’m such a fan of Brené Brown’s work. Clarity in a role and expectations within the role, team, and company is critical. Oftentimes when you think you are being clear, there is still plenty of room for clarity.
• Communication is key. Similar to what I noted above, you should foster an environment where communication is supported. This especially applies to having healthy debates and disagreements.

Retaining top talent is about giving someone a safe space to grow, having ownership, and continuously empowering them to communicate their perspective.

In my experience there are 3 keys to both developing and retaining top talent:

Prioritize and maintain alignment with sales: nobody wants to be doing work that isn't appreciated or that isn't aligned with the organizational priorities and objectives.

Create a framework but keep it flexible: it's so important in any DG function to create scale, but it's also important to not stifle individual thought processes or creativity. Lead/guide, but don't force down a certain path

Prioritize, prioritize, prioritize, but leave room for testing and creativity: the best DG marketers are scientists and artists. And when you have good talent, sales loves them, and wants more of them! This means you have to prioritize the work that comes their way (see key #1), while also making sure you aren't over-utilizing them so they are unable to create both the mental space but also the physical space to test new things!

Bonus #4 - be direct, respectful, and kind :-)

In my opinion, this one is simple: you retain good demand generation talent by giving people autonomy to act on behalf of the business, make good decisions quickly, and consistently offer them opportunities to learn, be creative and use their curiosity to run experiments.

There is also the added need to treat people like adults, allowing them to make their own schedules and letting them work from wherever they want.

It's fantastic that in these times of efficient, sustainable growth, demand generation marketers are highly sought after! Ultimately I think it comes down to what the business needs aligned to the top talent's expectations of where they want to grow.

Gratitude and reward can come in multiple forms: Applause, Access, Appreciation (persona, private thank you notes/emails), and Awards. As managers during these times, it's difficult to have the latter of promotion, raises, and spot bonuses, so how do you understand your talent well enough to know of the former types of gratitude, does one hold significant weight with them?

I also believe in transparency and ultimately maintaining a strong trusted relationship with my talent vs. keeping them on the team. I always let my team know what is in my control vs what is out of my control. I also offer that if for any reason they see their dream job outside of my direct team, I'm there to support them and coach them towards obtaining it. I've had members leave and return under my management years later and I've done the same in my career.