Mike Richards argues that technical skills get treasurers in the room, but internal and external networking converts that into influence and promotion. He points to Keith Gorb at Bristol-Myers Squibb, whose connections across tax, control, and investor relations made a large transaction smooth. Richards promotes upcoming networking events in Dublin, Amsterdam, Las Vegas, and Texas.
Chapters
So on last week's newsletter, I talked about why some treasurers progress quicker than others. Let me summarize it. Your technical skills as a treasury professional, they're not in question, but they are what earn you a seat at the table. So I was speaking at the JP Morgan event in Paris last year, and I said to the treasurers around the table, I said, you guys are amazing. Oh, thanks very much. I was like, yeah, you liquidity management, funding, risk mitigation systems, cash flow, running teams. Absolutely brilliant. But no one knows what I mean. You as treasury professionals are really good technically, but interpersonally and reaching out to different people internally to tell people what you do, it's like leaf in the forest. If no one is there and they know what you're telling them, you're shouting and there's no— in an empty room, in an echo chamber, if you like. No one can actually hear it. I said, what you need to do as treasurers to really prove yourselves, to actually engage, is go and engage with the business. Have a coffee. I've done this on previous newsletters where I ask you guys to go and best way to do it, have a coffee with the head of FP&A. When was the last time you sat down with the head of tax? When was the last time you sat down with some of the sales guys? That's what it is. It's about recognition and doing your job and partnering with the business, if you like. So those put together, you're already brilliant at your jobs. I know this, but it's about getting out there and getting known because that is what will then lead to recognition, influence, promotion. Recognition, influence, promotion. There you go. Because This partnering with the business, it can't be underestimated. You want to get them to know you. And when they are, when the sales team is going to negotiate a new contract, what would be better? Them to come to you in the office and say, we've negotiated this contract, can you lay away the risk please? Thanks very much. Or for them to pick up the phone, go, hey, we're thinking about doing this. What do you think? Oh, actually you should base it on these bond markets, or we could help you with this, or we could refinancing this way and we'd make a lot more money as a company. As a team, we make more money in the bonus. Yeah, they'll listen to you then, won't they? Yeah. And this happened again last week at our event in New York. One of the panelists, Keith Gorb, Bristol Myers Squibb, brilliant guy. So big shout out to Keith. Thank you very much. I think you did my panel, Bob Kane and Tapali Chawla from Moody's. Bob came from Neptune. You're going to see that very soon. But everyone came. A lot of people were commenting that they'd— a few people had already heard the podcast I did with Keith a while ago. I'll put that in the Notes below this, and he is a great, an excellent relationship builder because he works at it. Recently they had a big transaction and one of the reasons it worked so smoothly was because Keith had already established those relationships with all the different parts of the business, with tax, financial control, investor relations. He knew who to bring in. The conversation wasn't Hello, I'm Keith from Treasury. Nice to meet you. It was like, oh, Keith, yeah, what can we do for you? Or how can we help you? I've experienced that myself earlier in my career. I actually talked to someone the other day and I said, oh, I used to work with you. He was like, really? I said, yeah, back at a recruitment company I used to work for. I said, I'm Mike Richards, this is what I did. And he said, Mike, to be honest, I don't remember. And I was like, oh, okay, thanks very much. Great. And then I started to talk a bit. I said, yeah, I do treasury. He said, you're Mike Treasury? Yes, I'm Mike Treasury. That's what I do. He went, he didn't know my surname ever. He'd said, I remembered who to call. I remembered if we had a treasury role, we would call Mike Treasury because I was helpful enough. I had these great relationships. Maybe you could remember my full name. That is what it is. So the lesson here is if you want to get that recognition, and eventual promotion. You need to be technically strong, of course, but earn your seat at the table. Make sure you influence internally as someone that can then represent the business externally as well, because your networks matter. As I said at our event the other day, what everyone there was building their external networks, but they were also building internal networks as well. And that's what counts as well. And that's also why we run all of our events, because you guys like to network. The better networked you are, the more recognition you're going to get. And who knows, maybe a promotion, everything else. So I'll put links to the other events coming up. We've got Dublin coming up, Amsterdam. That's after doing Vegas. And where else am I? Texas as well. Someone the other day said, oh, how can we go to all these? You do, I said, we do the recruitment, Katie and I, which is fantastic. And we get these. But we're here to serve you. You're part of our ecosystem, and that's why I do these videos. I'm here to help you treasury professionals by giving you this advice. We're scaling it up, and I really appreciate all the support. But if you want to build your network, come along to one of our events, but make sure internally you're building those relationships internally and externally. Thanks very much. And until next week, thanks very much.
