Are you building a marketing team? Welcome to The Marketing Accelerator Podcast, featuring three insights in about three minutes. I'm Drew Dinkelacker, and today I'm speaking with Lisa Wendland from Blue Wheel. That's an omni-channel marketing partner in digital commerce. And she's built not one, but two marketing departments from the ground up. Lisa, give me your do's and don'ts when building a marketing team or really any team.

Lisa Wendland: Yeah, you bet, Drew. I would say what's most important is probably that, number one, don't, which is don't overlook internal talent. There's definitely an opportunity to understand the superpowers of your team that is already existing. For example, I had a designer who was just absolutely fantastic when it came to coding, and really had an interest in technology and integrations and how those things worked, right? And so, within his role, we were able to start to integrate tasks as an informal introduction and how would that go for his role. And ultimately, we were able to transition him from a full-time design role into a full-time technical role, and really level up our solutions for clients.

Drew: Got it. That makes sense to look inside the organization first. Now, let's go outside the organization. What are you looking for?

Lisa: Yeah. Externally I think it's very easy to see list of skills on a resume and experience the numbers, but you don't necessarily get a good understanding of what their attitude is like for learning, right? And so, I definitely want to understand what their aptitude is to grow, right? It's fantastic that they've done all these things to get to this point, but if they come on board with the team, are they going to be adaptable to the way that the technology is evolving, right? And how the team might need to progress as far as providing new and creative ideas. So, definitely looking for someone that's teachable.

Drew: In my experience, fit has always been important when building a team. How do you go about discerning fit?

Lisa: Yeah. It's definitely a learned skill, I think. But really, if you've never thought about it this way, you can look at discerning their attitude towards day-to-day work. If there's a level of negativity in their answers, that's definitely a red flag. Now, I'm not saying that they said, "Oh, this project didn't work out well." It's the part on how they wrap that up. Did they learn something from the project that didn't work out well? So, that's really helpful. It goes back to that learning and adaptability, right? And then also if you have candidates that are struggling to answer questions, if a conversation feels really forced. Nerves is a part of the interview process. But if it's just like trying to get answers and you just feel like it's falling flat, there are instances where you have someone that just can't answer questions, and you want someone that's open to talking about their day-to-day work, and challenges and successes.

Drew: Building a high-functioning team is not easy. Lisa's nuggets will help you get started. The Marketing Accelerator Podcast is a production of MarketingAccelerator.com, where business leaders gain confidence in their marketing efforts, marketers turn into high-performing leaders. I'm Drew Dinkelacker.