Creating a Thought Leadership Engine | Will Milano | 498

How do you bring thought leadership into your organization? Even if you're a senior leader with a C-level title, you need to get others to understand what thought leadership is, and then support the effort. You need to be able to prove that it'll make a difference. Today, I'm talking with Will Milano. He's the Chief Marketing Officer for Integrity Solutions. A firm that focuses on sales training for organizations. We'll talk about how he personally came to believe in thought leadership, how he advocated for change during his job interview, and how thought leadership impacts how Integrity Solutions goes to market. We'll also talk about the last mile problem. How do you get your best ideas to your clients and customers? I'm Bill Sherman, and you're listening to Leveraging Thought Leadership. Ready? Let's begin. Welcome to the show, Will.

Thanks, Bill. Really good to talk to you again.

So you and I have been talking about thought leadership, and you said something that caught my ear in one of our recent conversations. You said, I've been a long believer in thought leadership, and you're coming from a marketing point of view. So help us understand what that means. How did you come to learn about and believe in thought leadership?

Yeah, well, the first part of my career, about the first 7, 8 years that I was in marketing was actually in the high-tech sector. And it actually began there, figuring out that content was something that drove conversations. And it was something that drove your credibility and stickiness to your brand, brand affinity. And then I don't wanna say I got tired of being in high tech, but it just didn't really give me the, the, the drive and the, the career satisfaction that I was looking for. And I circumstantially got into professional services side of the world. So 20 years ago, almost exactly 20 years ago, I was hired with a, what I would call a mid-sized management consulting firm. They were sort of a mid-tier, mid-sized McKinsey or Bain sort of organization. And that was all about helping them understand that as consultants, as management consultants, they were bringing their thoughts to clients. And that's what clients were paying for. And it was absolutely the way that they had to go to market from a marketing strategy standpoint is making their points of view across the organization much more visible. And it had to also sort of peel back the layers of just the company name and logo and get beyond the, the co-founders of the organization and really start to elevate other senior consultants across the organization.

I think that's absolutely true in the world of consulting and professional services because often you're looking for super smart, super experienced people who have a unique perspective to be able to put them to work on projects for clients.

Right.

But I think there's a little bit of fear of, well, if we put them out too much and they say all of their super smart things, are we giving away the crown jewels?

Right. And I've seen that fear or hesitation many, many times across organizations that I've worked with. And If you're driving thought leadership strategy, it's something that you absolutely have to take into account and, and validate, but also let people know that, look, what we are selling, whatever it might be, especially on the professional services/consulting side of the world or, or in the corporate training space that I'm in now, give yourself some credit that what clients are buying is pretty robust. And putting thought leadership out there in however ways that you are packaging it is not just giving away everything that you have. It's giving at best sneak peeks and previews. But again, it's more about thought leadership is, I, as you and I have talked about before, it's about relationship building and it's about building trust and credibility and authenticity as a brand above anything.

As a brand and individuals within a brand, right? Yes. There is an opportunity for individual, like you said, senior consultant. They can advance their career, become more successful, and feel like they're growing by practicing thought leadership.

Yeah, and I think that organizations, again, professional services organizations, I've seen this time and time again in my career, that originally they will be closely tied to the thought leadership and point of view of the founder or the co-founders of the organization. And it really takes some time and effort to— I don't want to say decouple from those people, but to, to gain some space or separation from them as an organization, as those people maybe retire or step back in the prominence of their roles and bring forward what your clients want to see, which is what's the full breadth and depth of other people across the organization that I might come into encounters with or end up hiring to do consulting work or again, training in the space that I'm in now, that sort of thing. You've got to sort of help pull back that curtain and be willing to push multiple people forward. And again, you're, you're selling your, your humanity, your human capital, your, your points of view from individuals. So you've got to be willing to have them step forward and not just have thought leadership content be always by the founders or always just authored by the company, that sort of thing.

Well, and you make a point on the founders that I think at first for a founder can be flattering of the, oh, we want the person who wrote the book or gave the keynote, et cetera. And if you're a founder, you're happy to have people want you. But really for the ideas, to reach scale, you have to be able to trust those ideas to others and let them take it further than you. And so it is part of the letting go process. I sometimes think about thought leadership and ideas and insights more like, you know, raising a child in some way. At some point, the teenager gets the keys to the car and goes off, right?

It's a good analogy. Absolutely. Yes.

Go ahead.

I was going to say, I think that you've got to trust that you have hired and added really good, really smart people. They wouldn't be with the organization again, especially on the professional services side of the world otherwise. And you've got to have your firm's voice develop in a way that is not singular behind that just one person. There's a bit of a danger in that, I think, eventually.

Absolutely, because then if you want to step away from the organization, take a break, or you're just tired, then the organization stumbles on thought leadership. You haven't created a sustainable function.

Yeah, and developing a— you know, I've always said that the hardest part about developing a thought leadership engine is maintaining it once it's— once you've got it going. Uh, it can be hard to get off the ground and it really takes a lot of effort and strategy and commitment. But at the same time, once you do have it off the ground, then people expect to keep seeing it and you've got to keep feeding it and feeding it. And that can be really hard to do if you're reliant on just one or two people. You can't keep going back to that same well, because again, even if founders or CEOs are the primary people involved, they've got day jobs too. And yeah, you know, I think expanding that breadth and taking the pressure off 1 or 2 or even 3 people is in the best interest of the organization.

So let's turn a little bit to that concept of starting thought leadership as a sustainable function, and then we'll get into sustaining it, right? So One of the things that I know that you have explored and given thought to is how do you, once you're a believer in thought leadership, and in your current role, you're CMO, right? How do you get others to see this point of view and thought leadership as a business strategy and business function, rather than a nice to have? So let's, let's explore that piece.

Yeah, it was interesting when I was, I still remember when I was interviewing for my current role like 7 and a half years ago. And in one of the final interview discussions I had, one of the partners in the firm said, you know, we've never thought of ourselves as thought leaders because they saw me harping on this throughout the interview process. We never thought of ourselves as thought leaders. And I said very emphatically, you know, it's time that you do because it's what your customers want. And again, you and I have discussed this before, the idea that early on in the sales cycle, buyers and potential buyers care far more about what you have to say than what you have to sell. And you can't just be— and again, I say this as somebody that works for, you know, a sales training organization— you can't just sell and you can't push product. Initially, people are not interested in product. That's not what they're— they're not Googling your product names. They are Googling questions that they have. They're Googling, for example, they're typing in questions based on problems that they have or things that they just don't know that they want to learn more about. And you've got to create content that meets those, answers those questions, is issues and problems focused, is forward-thinking, looking ahead on the horizon of what's coming, and is not self-serving. You've got to trust that, you know what, if we're not talking about ourselves, it's okay because we're still developing a brand and brand affinity because people believe that every time they come into contact with us in whatever way, shape, or form that you're packaging and curating your content and your thought leadership, that part of what you're developing as a brand is space in the buyer's head that says, you know what, these guys really know what they're talking about. They're one of the 1, 2, 3 forefront leaders in Industry X, whatever that might be. And I always come away learning something new or having something thought-provoking for me to think about. And there's a lot of power in that.

So I agree. There's power when your customer, your client says, "These people make me smarter and better at what I do, right? Because they're in my world and my ecosystem." I want to go back to something you pointed out about the interview where you said you need to see yourselves as practicing thought leadership, right? So in that moment, obviously, they were evaluating you as a candidate for the role. But also, you challenged them to evaluate what the organization's voice would be. So my question is, what was their response, either in the meeting or after the job offer and you land? How do you— did you help encourage and affect that transformation? Because you just don't sort of stamp and go— pull out a stamp and say, hey, we're thought leadership practitioners now, right? You know, well, how did that journey happen?

Part of what attracted me to the organization was that through— to the credit of the founder of Integrity Solutions, Ron Willingham, the firm had a really strong foundation of thought leadership that he had developed over the years. Now, he had stepped away from direct involvement with the organization probably about 10 years previously. So it was getting, you know, further and further away from him. But there was such a litany of content that he had written through books and different things that there was a lot to leverage if the firm would allow you to sort of bring it up into a more contemporary voice. And again, leverage what others in the organization had learned from him and evolved his original sort of core thinking to be from, you know, the 1980s, 1990s, etc., into where the organization was. And this is 2015, 2016, that sort of thing. But there in early days, there was some trepidation of even just things like, again, the idea of bylining things by other people and not just by Integrity Solutions, that sort of thing. And I was very adamant that we had to, again, as I said earlier, bring to the forefront others in the organization that have really, really strong, very sharp things to say, and let it be in their name and in their voice while at the same time you are collectively developing the firm's voice. You know, that's part of thought leadership is having a consistent voice that people recognize, and it may not be conscious, maybe subconscious, but at the same time you're sort of developing that consistency.

So I think one of the things that bylining— and I want to stay here for a moment on this because it's an essential point. And this is something that in the '80s and '90s was not a concern, but is increasingly becoming a concern— is if we can't attach a thought leadership artifact to an individual within the organization, and it's just the organization, then I have no way of cross-checking to look for a video from that person, to read other things they've created. Because the question I think that's going to happen more and more in people's minds is, is this created by a unique, authentic human with experience, or is this a product of generative AI? Right? Where, you know, but if I can watch someone on video speaking and I go, yeah, that's their voice and they are the author of this piece, all of a sudden those human signals come to the forefront.

Yeah, if you can get your, you know, your thought leaders on video and on webinars and on podcasts. Exactly. You know, again, you're trying to bring the humanity forward. There's nothing more human today from a thought leadership standpoint than podcasts, right? Right. But whether it's, it's those things or blog content or an external article you've written or a speaking role, attaching a person or, or multiple people's names to a single piece, it, I think it adds weight and validity to it in ways that just by the company, it, it can be met, especially today when, when everybody has a degree of doubt about the accuracy and truthfulness of what they find online. And that's one of the challenges that thought leadership has today. But adding that helps to remove that skepticism of, oh, is this just written by some PR firm that they've outsourced to and it's not really by their people, you know, that sort of thing.

If you're enjoying this episode of Leveraging Thought Leadership, please make sure to subscribe. If you'd like to help spread the word about our podcast, please leave a 5-star review at ratethispodcast.com/LTL and share it with your friends. We're available on Apple Podcasts and on all major listening apps, as well as thoughtleadershipleverage.com/podcast. Let's talk about than the deployment of thought leadership. So you get that buy-in, and you get a little bit of momentum going. One of the things that you and I have talked about, and your world is in sales, and I want to ask you this question.

Mm-hmm.

How does sales intersect with thought leadership from your perspective? Because I see a huge intersection, but I want to hear your thoughts.

Yeah. Again, I, I think from a buying standpoint today, people want to evaluate you based on what you can teach them and help them think about and help them uncover. Your job in the sales process is to help people uncover new possibilities. It is not to just try to push something, but it's about, it's largely about listening and helping people uncover for themselves maybe going beyond what they think their problem is and helping through a wide variety of dialogues to uncover maybe what sort of underlying issues are. Is what they've brought to the forefront really the problem, or is it the symptom of a problem that they have? And so creating then a thought leadership strategy that aligns content with each of those problems, issues, symptoms, stages of the buying cycle. And that's a big thing that thought leadership, I think, needs to do, which is creating content that aligns with various phases of the buying cycle. What you would provide to somebody early on when you've just met them is different from somebody that is in the evaluation stage, you know, much later on, or longtime customer, that sort of thing.

Absolutely. The rapport becomes different, the types of questions, the degree of trust, all of those things really resonate on what you share and how you share. What would you say to a salesperson who's open to the idea of thought leadership, but it's like, hey, I've got a target and a quota that I need to meet, and I'm working on trying to close today's deals. Why should I be spending time talking about thought leadership?

Yeah, and, and that's always from my perspective, having been in marketing a long time and also working in the sales training space and understanding salespeople. The, the yin and yang of sales and marketing has always been that sales has largely a focus on this week, this month, maybe this quarter, while marketing is largely focused on where are we going 6, 12, 18 months from now. Both of those perspectives are correct, but each side can have a bit of a hard time sort of relating to the other. Right. And so, you know, some of the things I talk to salespeople about or consultants about is, you know, when it comes to marketing and thought leadership, slow and steady wins the race. That it's consistency that matters and it's quality over quantity. If you can create high-quality content and commit to whatever degree of consistency that you can do, and if you're blogging, doing podcasts, writing articles, whatever the case may be. If that's once a week, once a month, whatever you can commit to, sticking to it matters because you've gotta be in it for the long game. You can't, when it comes to creating and curating thought leadership, think you can sort of jump into it for a little while and then I'm gonna be busy and I'm not gonna really pay attention to it for 6 months and I'll jump back in later. If you do that and you hit the pause button for 6 months, whatever it might be, you can't think that you're gonna pick up where you left off. You're not. And that's just sort of one, I think one of the core tenets of, of brand building, especially in the B2B space, is that consistency matters. And, you know, a little bit can go a long way. You know, you talk to salespeople about, they can get overwhelmed with things like visibility and, and, and creating and sharing content on LinkedIn. For example. And I think from my perspective, part of the problem is they think it's a much more daunting task than it is. And I try to break it down for people and try to alleviate those concerns by saying, look, if you commit to something like involvement on LinkedIn and sharing thought leadership, which, you know, as you and I have talked about, that can— sharing thought leadership on LinkedIn can be adding an insightful comment to somebody else's post, right?

Right.

If you can commit to doing that 15 to 20 minutes a week, but you're really consistent about that 15 to 20 minutes a week, you're gonna be way ahead of most of your competition. Cuz most people are either not visible or not committing to that consistency. And part of the consistency, frankly, especially on social media, is that the algorithms pick up on that, right? They reward people and organizations that are more consistent in how they share content and how they stirred up the ecosystem.

The algorithm is looking for people that can continue a conversation rather than just do the thumbs up and nice post.

Yes, right, exactly. Are you adding something of, of substance to the dialogue to keep the dialogue going, keep others involved, that sort of thing?

Yeah, and I think the rules that we learn as humans in conversation and interaction of having something that a value to say rather than just keeping the conversation going becomes essential. So it's worthwhile in those cases to pause a moment and stop and think and say, hey, what's in this post that I can add to the conversation rather than repeat, right? Because I think that comes to the essence of thought leadership, right?

Right. And one of the things that I talk a lot about with thought leadership creation And I think this applies to both the people you're trying to get it in front of as well as the people that you're trying to work with to create it, is to meet people where they are. And from a content creator standpoint, that means understand what they are comfortable with, what time commitment that they can commit to, and what sort of, to what degree do they need handholding to help develop that point of view. And, you know, for certain people that want to create and disseminate thought leadership, they might be more comfortable in front of a microphone, in front of a live audience, on a webinar, on a podcast, but they really have trouble sort of putting their thoughts into writing. Or the opposite can be true. And, you know, a lot of what we do is we help people that have trepidation of starting from a blank sheet of paper sort of thing, getting their thoughts down. And just creating it based on a dialogue. And I've got a great writer on my team that, you know, we work with thought leaders that again, they've got great ideas in their head, but they have a hard time as many people do sort of like getting it on paper and getting it organized. So don't force them to do that because if you just say, hey, when you've got your thoughts down and you've got 1,200 words for me, let me know. Well, guess what? They're never gonna give it to you. Because they don't have the time.

But if you say, hey, can I book a half-hour call with you and we'll record it and we'll just talk about the topic.

Boom. Yeah.

Not only do you have that 1,200-word article, you might have a 2,000-word piece out of it.

Right. And you, and you make it as painless as possible. And then that sort of leads to the flip side, which is, again, you know, from a recipient standpoint, meeting them where they are is then packaging that content in all the ways that people prefer to digest content. And you and I and, and everybody who might be listening to this all have different preferences. Some people love podcasts. Other people have never listened to a podcast in their life. Some people will dive into an 8 or 10-page white paper, and for other people, they would much rather do almost just about anything else. Some people have certain publications that they read. Others are on Twitter and LinkedIn and Instagram consistently, and others are not. So you've gotta take those ideas and then be able to package them in all the different ways and get them into all those different channels so that you can meet the audience where they are.

But let's stay there for a moment because I think there's also a risk for an omnichannel strategy. You can spread yourself thin and you can say, okay, we're gonna try and post on 5 different social media properties. We're going to do video. We're going to do white papering. I think I agree, finding the comfortable sort of positions for the creators and the consumers, but you also have to balance it, I think, proportionally to go, we've only got so many resources internally for people who can create, as well as budget and dollars to get that out effectively.

Yes, you have to. Absolutely. Depending on, on the, the team and the assets and budget and a lot of different things, you have to understand what your own limitations are. Right? Because again, it's always quality over quantity. And you— there is absolutely very, very real risk of spreading yourself thin. And the other thing that you have to make sure if you're driving a thought leadership strategy is the emphasis on the word strategy. You know, I talk a lot about how I've seen in just multiple organizations I've gone into that they have they've tried to sort of get marketing and thought leadership underway, but what they're really doing is, is what I would call random acts of marketing. And the job of somebody that is trying to create a comprehensive thought leadership strategy is to keep it just that. And strategy is about choices, about what we're going to do and what we're not going to do, and how much, again, that you have the bandwidth to do, and where you're going to disseminate it, and where you're going to place your bets.

And to who you're trying to reach and why and what do you want them to do? Yeah.

Right. And sometimes based on being strategic and deliberate, you might get questions, requests, et cetera, internally for like, you know what we really think would be great is we wanna do X. But the reality is, you know what, you can't do everything. And again, strategy's about choices and it absolutely applies when it comes to thought leadership.

And equally true from a marketing perspective, right? If you have a strategy, or for marketing or thought leadership, you can say, hey, that's a great idea for launching a podcast. This is the target audience that we're trying to reach. This is the message we're trying to get to them. Let's talk about how this fits into this strategy, right? And you can, when someone has an idea and says, so I'm thinking TikTok, or I'm thinking about a white paper, these random ideas that come in can be filtered and analyzed through that strategy screen. Otherwise, it's just another idea in the hopper. And it's like, yeah, let's do more activity, maybe more stuff will work.

Right. And that's where part of the strategy is, is being really clear on who your ideal customer or target profile— profiles who they are and where they are, you know, depending on the, the industry you're in, you know what your, your ideal customers might be on TikTok for a lot of industries, they're not. So you've gotta be really clear about who you're trying to get in front of and where those people do the due diligence to find out like one-to-one, just talking to people that are in those roles. What do they look at? What do they pay attention to? What do, what sources do they find credible?, you know, what events do they go to that maybe you want to try to get speaking engagements on, all those sorts of things.

Well, and even to build on that, your target audience may be on Twitter, they may be on TikTok, but they're not coming there when it— during sort of a work mindset or what you're trying to communicate. If they're just watching, you know, funny videos on TikTok, doesn't matter how much good content you've put out. Yes, they are there, but you're talking about the wrong thing at the wrong time to them, right?

Somebody might be using Facebook, you know, they might be on Facebook, but they're not doing it from a professional capacity.

It's to keep up with grandma, right?

Exactly. So yes, so you've got to be sort of conscious of that as well. And I, I think, you know, the other thing is that the other aspect of being strategic is being deliberate about the topics and themes that you're going to consistently write about, talk about, create thought leadership around. You can't— there's very real danger. Again, if you're not strategic, there's very real danger in skipping around. And what's the sort of hottest thing of the moment that we want to try to glom onto? And people have a hard time keeping up with you. They, you know, you can think that your brand in somebody's mind is some 300-word about us boilerplate statement or, you know, the sort of proverbial 90-second elevator pitch. Nobody has the mental space to remember that. They're gonna remember you for a specific thought, topic, feeling, and, and that's really it. So you've gotta be really sort of in tune with that and make sure that your content and, and thought leadership strategy is always keeping that in mind, I think.

I think that's exactly right, Will. So if you were to ask people what they remember about you, it's maybe a couple of words, a phrase if you're lucky. And what do you want that phrase to be? And how are you as an organization and thought leadership practitioners within the organization staying within the realm of that message? Because I think one of the biggest risks you can be is if someone perceives your organization as smart but scattered.

Yes, right. Yeah, you don't want to be smart but scattered. Doesn't— isn't going to achieve nearly the ROI that you, that you want. You want to occupy a specific space in somebody's mind.

Absolutely. So as we begin to wrap up, Will, I've got a question for you.

Okay.

I want you to think back back to whether it's the interview that you had or even going back further in your career, at some point you realized you were practicing thought leadership on the behalf of an organization.

Yeah.

What advice, based on what you know now, would you give your younger self? Because there are a lot of people out there today who are just coming into the world of thought leadership.

That's a, that's a really good question. I think if I think about, say, my initial foray into the professional services side of the world 20 years ago, I would say to sort of trust my gut a little bit more, and that what organizations want from somebody that's going to drive a thought leadership strategy is they want that guidance and tell us what we should be doing. Don't ask us what what you want, that sort of conviction. While of course, you know, being collaborative, and being thoughtful and being responsive, you know, part of thought leadership strategy is, is being nimble, you want to be proactive in what are the consistent messages you're getting out there. But the reality is that things are always— there are new things always emerging related to whatever industry that you might be in. And you've got to allow a certain amount of bandwidth or space for being able to react to that. But I think people appreciate somebody that comes in with specific thinking and a confidence about them of this is the direction we want to go and that you're working in their best interest. You know, I tell people all the time, my job when we're working with somebody that's, you know, that we're going to put on that sort of thought leadership pedestal, I'll say my job is to make you look good. And I try to assuage any, you know, sort of fears or anxieties that they have and say, look, I'm not going to let this fall on its face. You're going to come out looking really, really good. And, you know, our job is to boost the brand and credibility of the organization, but it's also about you as the individual because customers are largely buying you.

I love that in terms of when you're curating thought leadership and you're serving as the de facto head of thought leadership, the ability to say to the creators, don't worry, I've got your back. Yeah, I won't let you fall.

And I think again, going back to the, you know, thought leadership has to be strategic and the core of strategy means that you make choices. You've also got to not be afraid to say in response to requests that might come in to say sometimes that's going to— your response is going to be like, you know what, that's a great idea. Let's run with it. Sometimes it's gonna be, that's a great idea. We've got so much going on. Let's talk about that or schedule that for 3 to 6 months from now. And sometimes the response is just no. Yeah. And you've gotta be okay with that. Cuz if you're not, then you're not in control of your own destiny.

Well, and that's the road that leads you to being scattered. Yes. Is you get pulled with good ideas in too many different directions, and you lose the core strategy.

Yeah, and as somebody I worked with for a long time that I really respect, who would constantly say to me in sort of an advisory role, he would say, marketing cannot be a service bureau and do the job that the organization needs. If it— if you're just sort of a helper request desk, you're selling your capability and you're selling what the organization needs from you. Very, very short.

I think that's a great place to end the conversation. Will, thank you for joining us today on Leveraging Thought Leadership. It's been a delight. I know you and I will continue this conversation in many forms. If someone wants to reach you, how do they do so?

So, well, I'm on LinkedIn and happy to connect with people. And I also host our podcast, which is called Mental Selling. Which you can find on our website, our website which is IntegritySolutions.com, and the podcast is also on all the major podcast platforms. So that, that's an area of thought leadership that I've just gotten into myself in the last 18 months and grown to really enjoy. So it helps me connect with people like you who are leaders in their industry. And, and, um, so anyway, I would invite anybody that has interest in that to, to follow us there.

Thank you, Will.

Thanks.

If you're interested in organizational thought leadership, then I invite you to subscribe to the OrgTL newsletter. Each month we talk about the people who create, curate, and deploy thought leadership on behalf of their organizations. Go to the website orgtl.com and choose join our newsletter. I'll leave a link to the website as well as my LinkedIn profile in the show notes. Thanks for listening, and I look forward to hearing what you thought of the show.