Charles: Welcome to the Passle CMO Series podcast. Today we're thrilled to have Leor Franks, Chief Business Development and Marketing Officer at Kingsley Napley. With nearly 25 years of experience at top firms like Deloitte, EY, and FTI Consulting, Leor is a true leader in professional services marketing and many of you may have come across him at the PM Forum or speaking at events like the Lawyer event. In this episode, Leor shares his journey from tactical marketing roles to becoming a strategic board-level marketer. We'll discuss how his responsibilities evolved, his approach to organizational-wide business planning, and the significance of the lessons he's learned. Leor will also provide valuable insights for marketing leaders looking to step up to board roles, highlighting the challenges and rewards of this transition.

Charlie: The CMO Series podcast is brought to you by Passle. Passle makes thought leadership simple, scalable, and effective, so professional services firms can stay front of mind with their clients and prospects when it matters most. Find out more and request a demo at passle.net. Now back to the podcast.

Charles: Welcome to the podcast, Leor. 

Leor: Hi, Charlie. Thanks for having me. You've set me up quite nicely there, so I'll do my best to address some of the points you've raised.

Charles: Well, we've come across each other a few times. I remember sitting, well, when I first started my role at Passle, sitting in one of your seminars on the favorability journey. And that sort of gave me a good introduction to brand building and how to use that process to get in there with your clients. So yeah, it's great to finally get you on the CMO Series podcast to talk about your journey and what you're up to. So I think to kick things off, you've had this illustrious career in marketing and business development, including pivotal roles at some of the big four consultancies. Can you share some of the highlights of your career journey and what led to your current role at Kingsley Napley?

Leor: Yeah, sure. Very happy to. Earlier in my career, I worked in fee-earning as a consultant in the accounting industry. And while that isn't in many ways directly relevant to the day-to-day of being a marketeer, it did give me an understanding of what I'm selling on a day-to-day basis. I really got to understand the client service mentality, how we engage with clients, and ultimately the product that's being delivered. That wasn't a long stint in my career. It was about three and a half years in total, but it gave me a lot of context for the subsequent 20-odd years. So I think that definitely was a highlight. The other highlight for me, probably 15 years ago now, I went to work for one of our clients as assistant to the CEO. It was a big FTSE 100 company. I was there to make his life easier, producing his communications, his presentations, analyzing all the papers brought to him. It really gave me a fantastic insight into the client's mindset, understanding how the C-suite operates, how they appoint advisors, what they're looking for in professional service firms. For me, the combination of having been a fee earner, having worked on the client side, really gives me a view of what we're doing, how we should present it. I've tried to bring those insights into my various director and CMO roles. I've been in those roles now for about 16 years. So having that background, having that insight, I think has given me a lot of useful ammunition that I've been able to use over my career. 

Charles: So in terms of your role now at Kingsley Napley, when we spoke, it appears that you are doing a bit more than a traditional marketing role. Can you talk a bit more about that?

Leor: Yes. So I joined KN, as we call ourselves, Kingsley Napley, three and a half, four years ago. From day one, I was asked to take on knowledge and information as a function in addition to comms, marketing, and BD. I was quite comfortable with that because I'd managed knowledge and research in a couple of my previous roles. So that was the first point of breadth. But one of the things that really attracted me to Kingsley Napley, beyond the culture and the great firm that it is, was the fact that they were looking to recruit someone to be on the board. They wanted a marketeer on the board. That was quite refreshing because a lot of the firms I've worked for, no matter how large and sophisticated, did not have marketeers on the board. So that was quite a transformation for me. And really, that's about using your technical expertise, using your knowledge, using your judgement, not just on the subject matter of your day-to-day vocation. So being across risk, governance, people, finance, strategy, it's really far broader than doing a pure marketing and BD job. You have to be comfortable and confident to do that. I remember after my first board meeting, three and a half years ago, the senior partner pulled me aside and said, "Well done, good contribution, but you were quite quiet in that meeting." I said, "Well, Stephen, I'm learning and listening, and I don't want to say too much until I know the firm." And he said, "Well, look, Leor, I really want you to have the confidence to voice your thoughts and views outside of BD and marketing. You're here not just to lead BD and marketing, you're here to help shape the firm and advise us using your perspective." And that really gave me the confidence to get involved in all of the topics we discuss.The downside of that is I have to read a huge amount and think about topics that perhaps most marketers wouldn't have engaged in, but it gives me a far better grounding to do my job and to help support the growth of the firm.

Charles: Just to touch on what you mentioned there about how the role changed a little bit, what were the most significant changes in your day-to-day role that were different from what you were doing previously?

Leor: So in my previous roles, two roles directly before KN at FTI and Augusta, I sat on the executive committees. So I had a good view of a lot of the day-to-day operational issues and decision-making. I would have contributed to strategy. Certainly in one of those roles, I helped to put together part of the business plan. But the biggest change for me was being asked to take a lead on strategy and business planning for the firm, being the person at the forefront of designing that approach, working closely with the team, the managing partner, and other members of the c-suite, but having responsibility for that firm-wide process and approach, not just being the marketeer contributing the brand and comms section. That's really been the biggest change and the biggest learning to me.

Charles: In terms of your approach to this organizational-wide business planning, when we did the preparation for this call you likened it to planning a marketing campaign. Can you walk us through that process on how your marketing background maybe influenced your approach to this business strategy at the board level?

Leor: Yeah, certainly. So I think most marketers who have run campaigns will have developed a process for it. And that process probably has various phases around getting buy-in, collecting data, producing material, making sure everyone's happy, and then launching it. And when I was asked to run this process, I sat down and thought about how I was going to do it. I reflected on the processes I've been involved in in previous firms. I looked to what our own firm, KN, had done well and less well in the past. And I launched a six-phase approach. And somewhat whimsically, I'm going to call it the six Cs. And it's not the normal Cs of marketing. 

It's the following points: consult, construct, collect, combine, codify, and communicate. Six Cs. And if I talk briefly through what I mean by each of them, I suspect many marketers listening to this will think, hold on, that's exactly what I do on a campaign. And that's not a shock to me. So the first phase, consult, to me, is about making sure you understand what people want out of the business plan or a campaign if you're running a campaign. It's about talking to colleagues. For me, it was talking to the board, it was talking to partners, but we also sought input from all of the business services teams and a lot of more junior fee earners to understand what they wanted to see and how they wanted to contribute. And that, for me, was really important to making sure you have buy-in and also a holistic view of the organization. So that consulting phase comes first, whether you're doing a campaign or business planning. The second phase for me I call construct. And it was about putting together the business planning approach, the templates we were going to ask people to complete, the timetable. I actually built the original financial model. The CFO obviously took it and made it bigger and better and more connected. But it was about producing the framework in which we were going to do our work. Again, in a campaign, you do that. You think about what deliverables are, what the timetables are. You might storyboard or sketch them. So, very similar to the marketing mentality many of us would use on a day-to-day basis. For me, the third phase was collect, going out, getting input, getting data. And in this business planning process, it was a lot of discussions, workshops. I ran sessions with each of our practices and each of our business teams and everyone on the board. Lots of meetings, lots of data, lots of encouragement of people to fill in the templates and provide full and frank views. You do the same in a campaign. You'd go out and get information. You'd go and get data. You'd get material for whatever you were producing, whether thought leadership or otherwise. So, very familiar process for a marketer. 

The fourth phase, probably the hardest, I'm calling it combine. It's really the analysis bit, the hard core, looking at all of the data you have, all of the inputs, trying to draw conclusions, bringing things together, trying to understand the themes. And a lot of that is about numbers, but a lot of it is about the themes and the sentiments and the words that you're hearing from people, just like producing a thought leadership aspect of a campaign. I know some people would outsource that, but a lot of us would do that ourselves. So, distilling those information points into a clear and consistent message. And actually, I came up with a strapline, a key message: Delivering on Our Potential, which is the title of the business plan. Just like in a marketing campaign, you probably have a strapline somewhere. Fifth phase, I'm calling it codification, codifying, actually writing the actual plan. And I know a lot of people would subcontract that out to a consultant. As you might with thought leadership, you might ask a seasoned writer to do it. I actually wanted to do that myself. I was a journalist 25 years ago, so I like writing. But I produced the initial documents, a lot of effort into making sure that we had the right themes, the right sentiments to touch all of the different constituents we were seeking to represent. Had a tremendous amount of support and input from our managing partner and one board member in particular. But again, very similar to producing a thought piece or white paper for a campaign. And the final phase, communicate, is about launching the product, getting it out. And for me, this was starting with the board and then the equity partners and the full partnership business service leaders, and then an all-staff. And you know that was a combination of presentations, publishing a glossy, beautifully branded report, using all of our internal comms channels, just like a marketing campaign, with the exception that we didn't do the PR and the social media you would in a marketing campaign. 

So look, just to quickly summarize this, I saw it as six steps. Consult, getting input from people. Construct, putting the process together. Collect, finding and acquiring the data. Combine, looking for the themes, trying to understand the essence of the plan. Fifthly, codify, write the actual document. And sixth, communicate, get it out to market. Many people listening to this will be saying, hold on, that's roughly what I do for a marketing campaign and unashamedly I'd say yes, because effectively that's what it is, just internally focused rather than externally focused in this case. I don't know if that makes any sense at all. 

Charles: Yeah, that's brilliant and I guess that's something that an experienced marketer would be quite confident in doing, so it's just applying those same skills that you do in a marketing campaign to this newer role. And that leads quite nicely onto what I wanted to ask in my next question. It was, obviously, you've got all these transferable skills that have helped you and set you up well. But I wanted to dig into maybe what some of the challenging aspects of stepping up to that board role. Maybe if you can give us some examples of what the role entails and perhaps what it doesn't. This is more for those marketing leaders that are considering a similar sort of move. 

Leor: Yeah, a really, really great question. I would say two particular challenges from my perspective, and people with different backgrounds might have different challenges. So I'll just reflect on my own sense of it. The first challenge is breadth. And I touched on it earlier. It's about not just participating in discussions and leading on business development marketing comms topics. It's about getting involved in every aspect of the business from strategy to finance to to people, to governance, to risk. And that requires a lot of reading, a lot of learning, a lot of listening, and being conscious of the fact that you are not an expert in the topics that you are participating in. Whereas, of course, in your day job as a CMO, as a marketing leader, you will be the expert in that particular field. So you have to be comfortable with discomfort. You have to be comfortable stretching outside of your technical training and recognizing your limits, but you also have to have the confidence to offer a point of view. I think I touched on that earlier. My senior partner said earlier on that I needed to do that and I was comfortable to do that. So that breadth is key. 

The second thing to me is about being essentially the ultimate decision maker with no one above you to sense check you. And I mean, obviously, I report to the managing partner who gives me a lot of input and guidance and I put key decisions around the board, but there are times when any board member would be out there with authority to make a decision on behalf of the firm. And an example of that for me was last year, we were looking at joining a number of international best friend networks. We were approached by several organizations and it was me out there on my own negotiating, having those discussions with the other side, trying to understand what the value proposition was, what the costs were, what the risks were, what the reputational impacts were. And then coming back to the board and offering my advice and, you know, obviously being rigorously challenged on that, but ultimately people saying, you know, we defer to you, Leor, or you're the guy who owns this space. So we'll take your advice and go with it. And that's a fundamental change for me because in my previous roles, I'd been on ex-cos, but there was a board above us somewhere who would make that final decision. Stepping up to the board, you've got to be willing to put your neck on the line and actually make that decision subject obviously to the ratification of others so it's the combination of breadth and being the person where the buck stops that I think is really different to being on a board as opposed to being on an exco.

Charles: And we're now at the point in the podcast where we like to jump into the quickfire round and ask you a few questions, Leor to find out a bit more about you. The first one on my list is what are you listening to or reading right now?

Leor: Good question, Charles. I'm an avid listener of the Radio 4 podcast, When It Hits the Fan, which is a couple of PR gurus talking about latest issues in the press, how they would have handled it. Very practical, really informative, really timely. Love it. Recommend it to anyone who deals with reputation management.

Charles: When It Hits the Fan. I'll have to check that one out. 

Leor: It's great. Really good. The two people are Simon Lewis, who used to be the Queens and then number 10 comms director and also worked at FDI where I was a good few years and David Yelland who was the former editor of The Sun so you know really top-end people with really good insights into the market.

Charles: What was your first job? 

Leor: My first job was working as a week-end assistant at my local John Lewis on the electrical department. I was the guy demonstrating vacuum cleaners if you've ever seen someone do that. Quite a bizarre job all about customer service and trying to show the benefits of products, which I think really gave me my start in marketing and BD those many years ago.

Charles: That's fantastic. I can just picture you now with the latest Dyson, showing people how it works, all the functions.

Leor: We'll set that up for a separate time, Charles. I'll show you how they all work.

Charles: What's a small habit you have that you think might help others?

Leor: I'm the annoying person who picks up small things and tries to fix them and I do that in the office I do that in my personal life I do that in the local community I've ended up running a couple of community organizations if I see a problem I don't ignore it I don't walk past it I dive into it and find a solution and i find that effective but I know it can be it can be tiresome for some but I find that it's a really good way of building relationships and showing value to others and also fixing stuff that would otherwise irritate you. 

Charles: Yeah, I like that. And where is your favourite place to visit and why?

Leor: Earlier this year, we were on holiday in Chile, you know, traveling all around the country. And then we went off for a four-day jaunt to Easter Island, which I thought was fantastic. Beautiful scenery, wonderful history, really quiet and serene. So I definitely recommend that. Quite a schlep from the UK, about 20 hours of travel, but a beautiful place to go.

Charles: Yeah definitely one off the beaten track and in terms of if we could pick just one thing and I guess we like to wrap up a lot of our podcasts in this way we've offered one piece of advice what would be your one piece of advice for a marketing leader looking to advance to perhaps more of a board role.

Leor: I think it depends on your background and your training for me in the various membership organizations I'm in. One of the perceptions I have is that a lot of marketing leaders are not hugely comfortable with finance, with accounting, with numbers. And I think to be effective at the board level, you have to have a base level of knowledge in that finance accounting world, and you have to have some comfort. So I would probably say to a lot of marketeers, if you don't have that comfort with numbers and with finance and accounting, you probably need to find the time and make the effort to to learn and to grow in that space I I actually qualified in finance 20 something years ago so I have that in my background but actually when I joined, I went out and bought a book on partnership accounting which it's not the most riveting topic you can possibly imagine but I just wanted to make sure I knew what we were talking about in greater detail and it wasn't you know I remember being on holiday with the family reading this 150 page very dry weighty tone but I wanted to refresh my skills so for me the message is if you're not strong in that area you have to have to upskill and even if you have that background there's no harm in in sharpening your knowledge and awareness.

Charles: Wonderful, finally Leor, I know you're an accomplished speaker and an active member of various professional boards and associations so where  we'll be seeing you next.

Leor: Well, the penultimate week of September, I'm actually down for three speaking engagements. I won't bore you with them all, but on the Friday of that week is the Lawyers Marketing Leadership Summit, which is a really great event for CMOs and BD directors. I think that's the 27th of September. And I'm on a panel with several other CMOs talking about leadership and making the step up to the board. So very much aligned to this conversation today, Charlie. But the day before that, on Thursday, the 26th of September, is the annual PM Forum Conference, which is a tremendous gathering of 150 or so marketeers from across the professional services spectrum. I'm chairing the third year in succession. And the theme this year is about AI. It's titled Our Future Role Starts Today, looking really at what AI means for us as marketeers and for the firms we work for. So very much capturing the zeitgeist, looking at the issue that I know many people are wrestling with. So I hope to see many people there. Going to be a great day. Lots of amazing panelists with tremendous insights.  

Charles: Yeah, wonderful. And particularly for those guys in the UK, do check them out. It's very easy to find. You can just Google PM Forum or the Lawyer Marketing Leadership Summit, and you'll be able to find all the information there. Well, Leo, thanks for coming on today and telling us a bit more about your journey and your new role and how it's developed from that traditional marketing role. I think it's been a really interesting topic and as you mentioned it's one that's being covered in an upcoming conference and actually at our event in the summer back in June we had a panel of COOs talking about there was a number of them that were previously CMOs so it does seem to be a hot topic of the industry at the moment with not all marketing leaders want to transfer into that role but there are definitely some that are pushing for those roles on boards, but also ones that are actually found themselves in a situation where they haven't maybe got the title of that. But they're doing a lot of the roles of what a COO would be traditionally doing. So I think it's a really exciting topic and we look forward to seeing how this space develops. So thanks again for coming on and speaking to us, Leor.  

Leor: Great speaking to you, Charlie. Thanks very much. Have a good day.