Brian Crockett of Accenture has the enviable ability to turn insights into CRM solutions that keep businesses ahead of the competitive curve.
In his role as an Associate Partner in Accenture's Customer Relationship Management Global Service Line, Brian leads Accenture's CRM Strategy and Roadmap market offering, which uses an ROI-based approach to help clients identify and prioritize CRM opportunities.
His expertise includes customer strategy, customer segmentation, and CRM-related business transformation. He has been a guest speaker at industry conferences on the topics of CRM strategy, on-line shopping and loyalty programs. His client management experience includes engagements in the retail, food, communications, travel & transportation, automotive, and media/entertainment industries.
Brian has founded two companies (both of which are still going concerns), and has worked with companies ranging in size from under 10 people to over 70,000.
Recently I talked to Brian about his philosophy when it comes to building and mentoring world-class teams of CRM professionals.
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My colleagues at Accenture tend to be highly motivated self-starters -- fairly "type A." The challenge, most often, is not desire but direction. With that in mind, my primary focus is to ensure that the team understands the common objectives -- and their specific roles related to those objectives -- and then to support them in their jobs.
But I avoid micro-management wherever possible. I believe in frequent and informal coaching to drive continual improvement -- not after the fact. For example, I worked with a very qualified, very competent, but young -- as in less-experienced -- person recently who became too caught up in the details. So, I chatted with him about why he was struggling with a particular assignment. I actually sat down and worked with him and gave him some specific tips regarding how to summarize his material as opposed to getting caught up in the details.
Another, less attractive approach might have been to let him do what he was going to do and then either give the work to somebody else or severely ding him for getting caught in the details. So, respect for the individual, a willingness to invest time in the individual, and creating the kind of culture where people can engage in rigorous debate -- those are the things that create an environment where someone says, "this is where I want to be because I can develop professionally and grow as a consultant and a business person."
Perhaps surprisingly, raw intelligence is not a key predictor of success here. Brains are cheap -- as the expression goes here at Accenture. For me, attitude is probably the best success predictor. The desire to do what it takes to get the job done and then some.
Passion, the desire to become an expert in a given field, is also very important. And third, Daniel Goldman's concept of "emotional intelligence" definitely applies as well. Those are competencies like self-confidence and self-control, integrity, communication, persuasion skills and flexibility. That is, the ability to roll with the punches and come up smiling. So three things are success predictors: attitude, passion, and emotional intelligence.
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Brains are cheap -- as the expression goes here at Accenture. For me, attitude is probably the best success predictor.
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You have to get past the resume and the canned responses to really understand how a prospective team member has dealt with specific situations. I generally hire people with CRM skills. So I ask them about the books they read, the conferences they go to, the topics they think are current in CRM in the industry. If they can get into that dialogue and discussion, then I know they've got the passion for the topic. And if they can't, then they've got to be pretty strong in other areas because that's a major strike against them.
One of the differentiators in terms of team-building is whether or not our people truly care about their junior colleagues. How much do they care about where someone who has worked for them is going to be in three to five years? If they truly care about that, then they'll invest the extra time that it takes to give them the direction, the skills, the supporting resources and the emotional support to help them improve.
When I take two hours to help someone figure out how to translate his or her ideas into a presentation -- those are two hours that I have to make up at the end of the day. So, instead of knocking off at six or seven o'clock, I may knock off two hours later. That's the sort of commitment that, frankly, is a bit of a challenge sometimes. You've got to be emotionally committed to providing that kind of support for the people who work for you.
I've always liked the notion of the Nordstrom organization chart, if you will. It's an inverted pyramid, where the CEO is at the very tip of the pyramid -- which means at the very bottom of the chart. His job is to support the people who work for him, who in turn support the people who work for them. Ultimately, everyone supports the people on the sales floor because they're the ones in direct contact with the customers. You can take that notion and apply it to a consulting environment as well. In many regards, we're only as strong as our most junior people. 
Dennis Troyanos is the founder of The Troyanos Group, an executive search and consulting firm specializing in recruiting senior-level relationship-marketing professionals. Dennis has led many highly- acclaimed management workshops for the DMA and National Center for Database Marketing. He has facilitated CEO roundtables and written numerous articles on the subject of interviewing, hiring and retaining top performers. Dennis can be reached at dennis@troyanosgroup.com or 914-997-1907.
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