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Demand-Geniuses is the podcast for revenue-focused B2B Marketers. We bring you the latest insights and expert tips, interviewing geniuses of the B2B Marketing world to bring you actionable advice that you can implement to accelerate growth and progress you career. The role of Marketing in B2B go-to-market strategy has changed drastically. It's more important to revenue generation than ever as buyer engagement becomes more digital. We equip you with the information you need to thrive in this new, revenue-critical role.
Tom Rudnai (00:22)
Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of Demand Geniuses podcast. I am joined today by, let's see if I can get this right, Prevalova. First of all, Ira, lovely to see you. How did I do?
Irina Prevalova (00:34)
You did well, likewise, lovely to see you, happy to be on the podcast. Hopefully, you know, it's gonna be a nice and exciting conversation ahead. Excited.
Tom Rudnai (00:41)
Fingers crossed, I'll my best. So I guess before we get into it, well, partly for me, because we've only met once, but mainly for our listeners, do you wanna just give us a little bit of an introduction into you, your background, what led you to this point?
Irina Prevalova (00:54)
Of I'm Ira. Currently I'm the Director of Integrated Marketing at Adverity. Adverity is an integrated data platform, so all things around data integration and data analytics is what we do. But when it comes to myself, I'm a marketer, I'm a manager, all things around lead generation, lead generation diversification, as well as actually figuring out how to make sure that marketing teams are performing, outperforming, growing, improving. That's all about me. I have a little bit of...
retail marketing background in the sense that I worked for a large retailer and then at some point I moved into marketing for a software development company and currently I'm with a SaaS company with Adverity. been here for three and a half years. Absolutely love the product and yeah, anything that has to do with marketing it, with go-to-market strategies, with campaigns, with smart marketing techniques, that's probably what I'm doing.
Tom Rudnai (01:46)
So retail marketing software company and now sats like what what are the big constants through that and what are the big differences?
Irina Prevalova (01:50)
Correct.
The biggest constant through that is that as much as you might wonder, my true belief is that marketing stays the same, no matter the industry, no matter the product. think it's smart people in the first place, smart decisions, second experimentation. And actually I do tend to benefit from the fact that my background is quite diverse. That means that I can borrow some techniques from, you know, working in retail and then moving into
software development and then actually talking about SaaS platform, which has a lot of technological and tech background is very helpful. It's helpful for my career. It's helpful for my knowledge. It's helpful for my expertise. And I never saw that as an issue. I saw that always more of a progression. And no matter where I work, it was still about me mastering those marketing knowledge, me getting more marketing experience, but also
Yeah, tapping much, much deeper as the years go into empowering the marketing teams, into figuring out what marketing efficiency means, how many marketers does a company need, what are they going to be busy with, how do you define the ownership? And in that case, again, going back to your original question, to me, it never mattered what type of a company I work for. What I value the most is that
the product is great, in that case you really get the satisfaction from working where you are, and that you are surrounded by smart, talented, motivated people, no matter whether they are within your department or in the company overall.
Tom Rudnai (03:24)
Yeah, I'm with you. Like product being great for anyone working in going to market. If the product isn't great, it actually is really depressing.
Irina Prevalova (03:30)
I never filtered out employers based on the product, but I think I was really, really lucky naturally to land with the companies that always offered great service or a great product. And in that case, yeah, you get that extra tick check that, yes, I have a great product to market.
Tom Rudnai (03:48)
an interesting point. So you've never filtered them out based on the product. Like why? Because to me, it would be a very reasonable question. Like I would love it if a marketer just said to me, like, I'm not joining your company. So I've seen a demo and know that I believe in it.
Irina Prevalova (04:01)
of course, you take a look at the product, right? Of course, as an employee, as somebody who is looking for a job, potentially you're checking.
employee reviews, you're checking product reviews, and of course you want to feel content and secure about what you're joining and what type of product you're gonna market. But to me, it has always been the case that I have been driven by a challenge. I have been always upfront with every single company that I've had communication with that as long as there is a clear challenge. And that can be a marketing challenge, that can be a people challenge, that can be...
expertise challenge, you name it, the company should tell me where the pain point is, but this is the actual driving force.
Tom Rudnai (04:37)
What you're describing is when you're trying to validate whether the product is good, it's not really about getting a demo and seeing it, because also you limit yourself then to the to martech basically, where you have a genuine perspective and can say what is a good product and what isn't. So what you do is you go and you look at the reviews and you say to the customers say that it's good, which is a much better approach. There's something you mentioned there, which is so you're kind of drawn to the challenges, right? So adverity in particular. And I always think this is an interesting question just to frame everything that we're going to talk about afterwards. What are the
unique challenges of marketing at Verity in terms of how that product is sold, how it's implemented, things like that that might impact how you approach the marketing.
Irina Prevalova (05:16)
Right. There are so many talks these days about marketing teams being data driven or the need for them to be data driven, to be smart, to be proactive. And I think that the VR AD has a very unique challenge, right? Because we are being data driven as a department. We're doing our best to be...
using the latest insights to be using instant data information that is being provided to us by, so many marketing channels that we're utilizing throughout our campaign. But at the same time, that's the exact use case that we're also trying to market. At Verity is the data analytics platform, is the platform that enables that marketing intelligence for marketing and data teams.
I think it's a nice challenge to have because without being data driven yourself, without truly believing in the values that the platform is selling, you will not be able to market it. So that's probably the most interesting and prominent one for us, both on the product marketing and on the growth side.
Tom Rudnai (06:19)
what to you does growth marketing mean? Because I always hear like I'm a growth marketer, I'm a demand gen marketer. And sometimes you get another skin and those two people do the exact same thing. Like, what is it for you?
Irina Prevalova (06:29)
I think it's actually the combination of these two concepts in the first place. How do you capture the demand of those 5 % that are already ready to purchase? Or maybe they're 10%. You know, I'm not going to tell you the exact numbers. It's just, you know, what the market is used to say. How do you capture that demand and start converting them and putting them into pipeline? But on the other hand, how do you also fuel the pipeline long term? In that case, growth marketing for us means
campaign management and campaigns will be divided based on two goals, right? They will be direct demand generation campaigns. In that case, maybe we'll talk more about search. Maybe we'll talk about more of that immediate impact. And there will be brand awareness campaigns which will be wider, which will be larger, where our thought leadership will be utilized more, where visual elements will probably be more prominent as opposed to immediate demand generation. So...
For me, it's a combination of balancing between those two goals, figuring out how to allocate the budget, know, where is it wise to spend money long-term as opposed to where it's wise to spend money right now to fuel the pipeline. Of course, you know, it includes a lot of experimentation, right? So growth marketing and the variety is busy with, you know, things like CRO, right? We're always trying to optimize the conversion rate optimization. We're running multiple tests to figure out how...
to make our pipeline as healthy as possible, how to increase those conversion rates from visitors to demos, from demos to potential deals, and then of course, from actual potential deals to the closed one deals. So in that case, I'm not sure if that's a classical notion of growth marketing, but this is how I would define it at VRAD.
Tom Rudnai (08:12)
I don't know if there even is a classical definition because it's different absolutely everywhere I always think of it as like tomorrow a little bit demand Jen is marketing to the 95 growth is converting the five right You sit over towards the sharp pointy end a little bit and that's why it's super experimental because you're you're working out how to optimize those conversion rates is always how I think of it How do you approach the experiments because this is interesting because it's something we're going through a bit of demand genius How do you approach?
experiments given what you said about the payback period that you struggle with. So one of our advisors is always telling me, you need short, sharp experiments that are a day long. And I'm like, I can't measure anything meaningful in a day. What's your take on that?
Irina Prevalova (08:53)
They are short and sharp, not in the sense of their duration for us, but in the sense of thinking and strategy comes first. I am not gonna approve and we are not gonna review and experiment with a team unless we understand why we're doing that. Are we doing it to maximize the output of the highest performing assets so that it performs even better, so that the landing page that has already been generating leads maybe jumps twice?
Tom Rudnai (08:58)
Yeah.
Irina Prevalova (09:20)
in terms of lead generation or are we focusing right now on optimizing something that has poor performance so that we figure out what's the actual potential? In that case, we limit the number of experiments to a certain number. We want to make sure that we're not running 10 experiments at the same time or 100 experience at the same time. We have to understand that there is a resource constraint, but there is also, you know,
a general market recommendation for how many tests you should be running at once for a specific volume of the website visits. And they will be limited in time, but in that case, you know, it's likely that the CRO team will define what's the healthy time period where we can accumulate the needed data. Sometimes there can be a challenge where enough data cannot be accumulated. And in that case, you know, we're trying to...
come up with a hypothesis or say potentially maybe that's the result that we're expecting, but let's see if a smaller chunk of volume will give us any of that indication or not. Sometimes you face a situation where you want to run an experiment and it's just not possible because data is not showing you anything or because there is low data that does not allow you to make any summaries or any conclusions. So it's still, I would call it a,
highly measurable intuitive process, in a sense that you still use your intuition and your strategic thinking to say, is what I expect, but now let's test it out.
Tom Rudnai (10:45)
So what you're describing is you have to be quite ruthless in how you prioritise all the different experiments, partly because of resource constraints, but also because you have to be very careful and deliberate with what overlaps you create between different experiments when one can start to bleed into the other and kind of obscure the results.
is there a deliberate process that you go through to weigh it and decide if and when you're gonna run it or?
Irina Prevalova (11:08)
Yes, but I would not say that there is, you know, like a process outlined in Google Docs. We would probably treat it more as a business as usual type of collaboration. Of course, there will be a group meeting, right, of the people involved to say what are the current CRO priorities for the next quarter. We usually talk in quarters and then we divide those, you know, into months, for example. Of course, we also have the annual planning, but when it comes to tactical...
steps would probably be thinking in quarters. Here are the top, we'll say five landing pages that we want to optimize at the moment. What are the hypothesis that we want to check? In that case, the team comes up with suggestions. They list them based on priorities. I am reviewing them. The CRO manager reviews them. We come to an agreement and we launch those. And in that case, it comes to weekly check-ins throughout, you know, the regular weekly calls.
How are we doing? Have we gathered data? Do we feel like some tests might already be, might already have potential to be paused or do we continue? So in that case, I think it's a very smooth workflow that we have, but yes, it requires a lot of check-ins and this is, I think, and I truly believe is the nature of CRO.
Tom Rudnai (12:21)
it sounds like some pretty consistent criteria that you weigh it again, even if it isn't all written down in a clear process, there is consistency to it. I like what you said about this, when we run these experiments, I have this concept of tripwires, so when we decide it, I have potentially a tripwire which exists halfway through, which is like...
I'm going to revisit this and make sure that I'm still, this is still a good use of resources. We've not A, already answered it or B, it's just we're getting nothing back from it and let's not waste more money on a failed experiment just to get to something that you can look at and say this isn't working.
Irina Prevalova (12:54)
That's right.
Tom Rudnai (12:54)
I want to come back to something that you said at the beginning as well, which is you described yourself in two ways. You said you're a marketer and a manager. And I guess what I thought was going to be really interesting was to focus a bit on the manager part, actually, because every podcast that we do is about the marketer. I guess the first place to start is like, what in your view makes a high performing marketing team? Like, how would you define that?
Irina Prevalova (13:14)
Of course, talent comes first, right? You cannot create a high-performing team without a talent. By talent, I mean people who have the motivation, people who are promising within their skill set, within their thinking of how they approach the career path, people who are open to deliver. As long as you have that, I think you as a manager face a challenge of...
growing those people. And this is where the element of, you know, a high performing team comes in to play for me. It is about alignment. It is about ownership. It is about having shared values. This, in my opinion, is already the responsibility of the manager. The responsibility of people who are being hired for the marketing team or any other team is to come and start working on things that they have been
Asked to work right to address the challenges that have been put in front of them to focus on the priorities that have been given by the manager There is no way a team can be become highly performing unless they have a clear leader who is leading them to that and the leader has to have the vision and The leader has to build that alignment within the team. What are we working towards? How are we going to achieve those things? Who is owning what?
who is being consulted as opposed to who is actually leading the work for a specific project or a specific task or a specific activity, campaign, you name it. And yes, do people share the same values? By values, you can mean professional stuff like KPIs, OKRs, but you can also think about forming a team of likely-minded people because so many times in my experience that helps as well. That helps people stay motivated, understand each other's goals.
and yes, personal and professional values together. So as long as you have the talent and you know how to define the second part that I have just mentioned, a healthy challenge is for you to develop that talent. From then on, know, it's highly likely that it will become high performing if you know how to do your management job.
Tom Rudnai (15:18)
Yeah, if you take talented people and you get them pulling in the same direction, then I think that seems like a pretty solid definition of a high performing team. I wanna come back to each of those points though. let's do the second one first. like alignment, and you mentioned it, setting KPI is like, how do you go about doing that within a team? Because one thing that strikes me these days is every discipline within marketing is getting so much more interwoven. And so being able to isolate, Tom, you're responsible for this.
It's really hard now, a lot of it has to be looked at in the whole, but obviously you want to build some level of individual accountability. How do you approach that with your team?
Irina Prevalova (15:56)
This must be, this might be an unpopular opinion and unpopular. When you are saying, Tom, this, these are the KPIs that you were working on actually go back, take a step back and ask Tom, Tom, what do you want to do? That does not mean that all of a sudden, you know, all of the things within the marketing department will change, but sometimes it might reveal.
Tom Rudnai (15:59)
They're the best ones. They make for great social clips.
Irina Prevalova (16:23)
the true motivation of an employee. And it might actually be the case that the motivation does not lie within the KPIs that you've just defined as a manager. Ask people to work on their goals and see where that will lead you to. This is not about taking the workload off you and letting you do other stuff while people are writing the goals while you as a manager are actually supposed to write them. No, it's not about that. It's about
Trying to get to the bottom of people's true motivation in their career. What is their interest? What drives them professionally? What do they feel naturally challenged by and where do they see themselves in a month, in six months, in a year, or maybe in five years? In many cases, it will really be a very revealing experience that will help you tremendously as a manager to...
Identify those areas of growth for each of the members. Yes, of course, the department works towards shared values, towards shared goals. there can be a department that has only one KPI, more demos or 200 demos per month is what the owner of the company set for that specific department to achieve. Nothing else. I don't care how you're doing, but it comes down to you as a manager to then break it down and figure out
How do I max out each of my team's members' motivation to help me achieve the ultimate goal? So that's my approach. It helps a lot with day-to-day operations. It helps tremendously with performance reviews because then you are as open as you can be. And the employees, especially those who don't feel intimidated to share more of what's going on in their heads or don't feel...
insecure because again, there are different types of people and you always need to find the right approach. But in that case, in majority of the cases actually does lead to people opening up and to me as a manager understanding so much clearer. Here is how I can help them grow.
Tom Rudnai (18:25)
Do you typically find that that process results in you having a metric that each member of the team is going to be judged against or does it often result in something a little bit more of like softer goal setting?
Irina Prevalova (18:38)
It actually comes down to having a very measurable and very clear system. so many times at Adverity, we usually work by smart goals, right? When we talk about setting the goals for people and they are really measurable. So people understand, you know, how I'm going to measure, how we are going to measure, whether they achieved certain goals or not. But they're still soft in a way that based on these true chats that are maybe less formal so many times that are maybe more
personal in a way, you are able to reveal a more natural way and a softer way of putting that goal together so that it sounds familiar, so that it sounds achievable, so that it sounds so relatable because I sat down together with my manager and I told them where I want to be. Later on, they helped me structure it so that I clearly understand what I work towards because
in a different scenario and that scenario is possible and sometimes it is successful. The manager sits down and they're writing the goals and then they're walking through those goals on a performance review or on a check-in call and an employee will say, yeah, everything is clear, but they were not involved in the process of writing the goals. And it might be the case that they're not relatable, but I'm reading it. I understand that it sounds very much legit, but I don't feel personally attached.
to the goals because they were given to me. Think about, again, think about an allegory here. You were given a birthday present. You went into the shop with the parents. You had a choice of hundreds of toys and you picked that specific doll dressed in a purple dress with unicorn hair because this is exactly what you wanted. There is less of an element of surprise here. You will not be
extremely surprised when the birthday present is revealed at your birthday party. But on the other hand, you will say, that's exactly what I want it as opposed to your aunt giving you a doll that is maybe wearing a blue dress and maybe has a different color of hair. And you'll say, I can play with that. It will serve my playhouse goals if you if you will. But it's not exactly the one that I wanted. So that's
Tom Rudnai (20:57)
Yeah.
Irina Prevalova (20:58)
I think that's where the difference is.
Tom Rudnai (21:01)
I liked what you said about they will relate to the goal and they will get attached to it like one thing that I always think is important if you're gonna set someone a goal they have to really feel a sense of ownership towards it and that's
Irina Prevalova (21:12)
yeah.
Tom Rudnai (21:12)
That comes from a couple of things. I always think of it more as like, you have to be able to clearly pinpoint that it's the outcome of their work, right? It can be really difficult when you give people fuzzy goals that they don't feel are really in their power to influence, or at least there's a lot of external factors, because it creates excuses if it doesn't get hit. It creates this sense of, let's wait and see if I hit my goal.
why the reason my goals I think are very good in a sales context is because it's such a direct ownership. Did you or did you not close a million quick this year? It's on you and yes, there were factors and you have to work in a team, but you feel a really strong sense of ownership. But what you've described is a much more collaborative and particularly where there is, where that's maybe a bit less natural and easy to pinpoint in marketing versus sales, a collaborative process to establish the goals.
helps create that attachment and that sense of ownership.
Irina Prevalova (22:06)
Yep, absolutely.
Tom Rudnai (22:07)
Nice, I love that. The other thing then that I wanted to come back to is the concept of talent that you had. said talent and alignment, right? And I think talent is very difficult to establish exactly what that is, right? how would you define talent and how do you go about identifying it, right? Because some people would view talent as equating with experience. I personally definitely wouldn't. Like, what is talent to you?
Irina Prevalova (22:29)
Luckily, I am good. Maybe that's going to sound a bit self-centered. Maybe I'm great at stakeholder management and at actually communicating with people and getting a very good feeling about people. I do that well when I'm already in the company. I can clearly understand how to approach a certain person, what language I'm going to use with them, how emotional or less emotional will be when I'm having conversations with a certain
person and I think it's almost the same approach that I'm using in recruitment. In that sense, it's more important for me to identify the spark in their eyes, the motivation, the capacity and their potential for growth. These are
Usually softer skills. These are usually things that are not visible on the CV. Hence, of course, I'm scanning CVs, but I'm focusing less on the facts and I'm focusing more on the person that I'm talking to over the call, over the intro call, or be that already the management interview. That helps me understand how open the person is, how constructive they can be.
How do they react to stressful situations? How do they go around acquiring a new skill when maybe they don't possess it? How do they go around having direct and honest conversations with their manager? And ultimately, interviews with me never last less than an hour, but I'm also doing my best not to make them too tiring for a candidate.
Usually an hour, an hour and 10 minutes, maybe quarter of an hour is enough for me to get a very good sense of who I'm talking to. Of course, again, given the fact that the prior screening had been completed and recruitment have also done their job to send promising candidates my way, that they've verified other basic things that they are usually checking during the initial screening process.
Tom Rudnai (24:33)
there's a minimum bar of experience and skill, but then really beyond that, it's all.
Irina Prevalova (24:38)
Correct,
because we are evaluating different things. It does not mean that somebody is doing their recruitment stage better than the other. It means that we're looking at different things. Recruitment, HR, they will look into values. They will look into basic knowledge, as you mentioned. They will verify certain backgrounds as opposed to me where I'm saying, give me the trustworthy candidate I can build on top of that if we have the match, if we have the chemistry, and if we are aligned.
in terms of our expectations at the very start.
Tom Rudnai (25:09)
completely agree and what you said about the spark in their eye I think is actually a really important thing and I wish there was a way to kind bottle that and quantify it. That often is what, is it someone that turns up to a call, has a spark in their eye, really excited to do something or is it someone who's like, just, everything's a bit down. And what's your approach to, one of my experiences is that often the most talented people exhibit quite strong personality traits, right, whether it's that they are new and virgin in some way
Irina Prevalova (25:16)
I wish.
Tom Rudnai (25:38)
and that obviously has pros and cons and it's something you need to harness. How do you approach that and what I guess what is your tolerance level for someone who maybe has traits that go along with their talent that could sometimes in the wrong situation make them also a bit disruptive or difficult to manage? Is there a place for that in your team?
Irina Prevalova (25:57)
My tolerance level is extremely high. And again, that comes from the fact that yes, I do. actually do enjoy management, communication, stakeholder management, problematic conversations, unusual situations, know, issues with communications at work. do enjoy resolving that. And in that case, again, I see that as one of my strengths. to answer your question, there is always a limit and there must be a limit. You can possess different traits.
of character, can be very emotionally bright, let's call it that way, you can be loud, you can be different compared to other employees, it all comes from our different levels of emotional intelligence, from you know who we are as personalities, but I would never tolerate a rudeness, I would never tolerate somebody crossing you know the limits of...
I'd generalize and I would call it diplomacy, maybe because, my original education is in international economic relations. So I highly, highly rely on diplomatic techniques in that regard. And as long as you stay professional, as long as you don't hurt anybody's feelings, as long as you are not abusive, accusive, you know, all of those things that create more stress within the work environment rather than help.
If there are more people that are getting distressed because of your behavior or because of your performance combined with certain traits of character, this is where the problem can occur and this is where an honest conversation should happen with an employee.
Tom Rudnai (27:30)
Yeah, I like that. It's like the basic trove. We have a phrase in the UK which is that you call someone, you call someone, oh, they're a good egg. And I think that's a pretty good test, right? Just the, you can let yourself down sometimes. The other thing is that you can make my life more difficult as a manager. Are you having that same negative impact on everyone else in the team? When that starts to happen, that's more of a problem. But I always think...
Irina Prevalova (27:48)
Yeah.
Tom Rudnai (27:52)
for us it's like a really clear value that I want us always to hire for the existence of strengths and the strength of those strengths, not for the absence of weaknesses. And I think it's something that as a bluntly lazy managers often hire for absence of weaknesses, because it's easy, there's nothing to point out if a hire goes wrong and say, well, that was obvious. They flew off the handle and they showed that in the interview.
and they're just gonna give you an easier life. But actually it's really strong strengths that will push a company and push a team forward.
Irina Prevalova (28:19)
That's a good way to put it.
Tom Rudnai (28:21)
I assume there were instances, I don't want to into any specifics, where someone then fails to live up to the values that you, the expectations that you've set.
What are some tips that you would have for identifying that as early as possible and then how you react to avoid it getting to the point where we have to take actions that we don't ever want to take?
Irina Prevalova (28:43)
Again, probably an unpopular opinion here. I love when things go wrong on the management side. That means that I have work to do. And that means that I face another challenge that I have to overcome. Don't get me wrong. Of course, no manager will like when somebody's underperforming, right? It means that we have an issue. It means that the goals are at stake or the overall performance or maybe the department's impression, like the impression of the department might be
be
ruined or hurt and in that case, of course, that's not what you want. But on the other hand, when somebody is underperforming, I see that as an opportunity to figure out how I could help them change the situation. Of course, things first, identify is there a way to help and is there a reason to help? That means...
having a very, again, honest and personal conversation with an employee, what is happening. Sometimes different things might be revealed there. They might be going through something personal.
which you will never have any idea of unless you ask and unless they tell, unless they have the courage or the strength to tell I'm going through something personal. In that case, you know, the conversation might take you into asking them to take time off or supporting them and maybe decreasing their workload or maybe just, you know, sending a...
more challenging tasks their way because sometimes people can distract themselves. That comes through, again, very open conversation with employee. There is no way you can figure it out. Other times, maybe they will say, I'm done here. I'm not motivated. I'm burned out. I've had too much. In that case, again, second stage, stage number two happens. Is there a way?
that we could help you overcome the burnout because you're valuable or because, you know, I see the potential, or I would want you to honestly tell me if that means that we are starting the process of parting ways and I'm going to support you in the best way possible. Again, it comes down from that. It depends on the size of the problem, right? It's not that you can have that type of conversation with everybody. I think when sometimes people are really not where they should be.
professionally. And that conversation can also be a very relieving, revealing moment for you to figure out that maybe I need to, I need to shift the focus of their career. I've had a great example where somebody was underperforming for quite a substantial period of time. And it turned out that throughout multiple performance review calls, we were able to identify that that was not the job that they were doing was not motivating them.
I was actually draining them. In that case, a shift in their priorities, in their workload has helped us raise their motivation. And within three years time, they jumped from a specialist to a director position. Of course, it didn't happen overnight. It means that a lot of support was given. A lot of my time, a lot of the team's time was put into helping this employee.
Tom Rudnai (31:27)
Mm-hmm.
Irina Prevalova (31:41)
But it comes down from the, it comes from the very first step that you and I discussed about the talent. If you see that that person was hired for a reason and you remember that there was a spark in their eyes and they wanted to achieve something, maybe in a year, two years time, three years time, you come and you face the issue with them, go back in time and figure out where it went wrong, why it went wrong, and is there still a way?
to make it work. It's almost like a relationship in your personal life. Is there ways that we can help each other? Is there ways that we can improve? If yes, let's start from scratch or let's start from where we are right now and start building a new approach. If not, well, then let's either potentially go through a performance review and see if that helps or otherwise face the fact that maybe this partnership is not working out anymore.
Tom Rudnai (32:35)
If the spark's gone, the spark's gone, right? That applies to both. What are some of the first, because I think one of the challenges that often happens with this is that all sounds great in practice, like you take that very patient approach to solving problems. But I think in a lot of organization, performance problems aren't identified until it's almost too late, right? Because you wait for it to show up in the KPIs. And then it's like, okay, you're having personal problems, but this is six months of bad performance now. It's really hard for me as a manager to help and to defend you.
Irina Prevalova (32:38)
Correct. ⁓
Tom Rudnai (33:03)
of people above me, like the earlier, I think most people would aspire to operate like you've just described, but it relies on being able to identify it really early where it's one month bad performance and we have time to fix this before other people start noticing. What are some of the first signs that you might see that an employee may be losing their spark or that something is starting to not be right?
Irina Prevalova (33:24)
I have been working in various environments, meaning that I've worked in office environment. I've worked in hybrid environment, but I've also worked, five full years, fully remotely. And in that case, I've had experience managing all sorts of teams, seeing them physically, but also not having seen them at all. And usually it takes me two to three weeks to spot that something is not going right.
It might be about the engagement. Are they showing up? they on time? Are they engaged in a conversation? It might be about the deliverable. Has the deliverable actually come through? Is there a report or is there a task delivered? Has it been delivered to the best quality that I was expecting? And I think a combination of a couple of those events showing you signs of something, something that you need to take care of, you know, like warning you that maybe
maybe they've become disengaged a bit and maybe they've also started delivering less and maybe they have started calling in sick a little bit more, that probably is already a good reason to start looking deeper as opposed to if you face one of those elements throughout the day-to-day operations, that just might be worth a short check-in. Or you're saying, is everything all right?
that usually serves as a signal to an employee, my manager noticed. So I have to either chat with them or maybe I have to deliver and get back on track or a combination of those events means, yeah, more serious conversation where you're saying I have noticed and it is already becoming concerning. And in that case, what is super important is that the manager is very open, upfront and direct with an employee. No assumptions, no vague phrases.
You have to really state that there is a problem. There is no way to resolve a problem unless it has been identified and said out loud.
Tom Rudnai (35:19)
Yeah, well that was actually what I was just thinking would be a really good question to finish on because I think a lot of podcasts will like tell people, yeah, and you just talk to them, it's all about communication, that conversation is in reality hard to have. It's sometimes a little bit awkward or a bit embarrassing. Like, talk to me about, okay, so like.
almost let's almost walk through it right like you've identified this problem some and it may be is a small thing you've noticed it for long enough that it's starting to become a trend and you want to talk to them like how do you go about that how do you set that call up and how do you kind of approach it in a way that doesn't cuts through the awkwardness a bit and doesn't blow it up into a bigger problem than it needs to be as well
Irina Prevalova (35:54)
It's different for everybody. We have so many different management styles and every manager will have, depending on the size of the team, they will have different employees within the team and they will have so many personalities to talk to. But don't delay those conversations, just have it. Be prepared. Of course you have to have the facts. Of course you have to understand that the scenario and the whole flow of the conversation might be different.
The person might open up, cool, great, then you know what to talk to. But the person might also be closed and they might say no, everything is fine. Silence. What do you do next? Come prepared. Examples, worries. Share your personal examples if they are relatable and if you think that they might fit into the conversation. Take it from the manager perspective. Look.
Cool, if that's okay, if there's nothing for me to worry about, then that's the best outcome that I could have hoped for. We can move on, but please make sure that this is really so. I want to see the deliverables delivered. I want to see you perform to your best and signal, give me signs if something is still not right. I, as a manager, am here to support you. I'm here to provide you all the guidance, the coaching, the mentoring, you name it.
but I need to know what to provide that mentoring and coaching for. And I cannot name it for you, you name it. So come prepared, but do understand that professionalism combined with yes, this personable and relatable approach are the things that can take you far, far, far and to a very good spot in your management career, hopefully.
Tom Rudnai (37:38)
I think
For a lot of people, it requires space and that's where if you can, like, don't come to that conversation in a rush, don't ask how they are once. If they say they're fine, fine, sit with them for a little while, just chat and it'll come out in time because they probably want to tell you that they're not okay.
Irina Prevalova (37:53)
It never comes from you having one conversation with one employee. It comes with experience, right? And your experience is gonna be different from mine and somebody else's management experience is gonna be drastically different from what I've had. But I've made mistakes in the past, right? A great example here is I've let somebody go back in the days and when I verbalized during our...
you know, actual call to let them go. When I verbalized the reasons why I'm letting them go, the reasons were poor performance, not, you know, working up to a standard, being late with deliverables, that came as a true surprise to them. And this is where I figured out I did not do my job to the best way possible as a manager to warn them.
to openly tell them that there is a problem, to openly communicate, this is where I want you to be. And that was a great turning point in my career where I figured out you must be open, you must be professionally sincere, if that makes sense. You must reveal those things that can make a difference for an employee, but you also have to deliver the...
sense of a problem that you might be potentially facing. Otherwise, we are all different, we communicate differently, and we have a different perception of what a problem is.
Tom Rudnai (39:15)
Yeah, I think this is really interesting. actually, I want to get into some quick fires now, but I guess to sum up for me, what comes through as the most actionable tip for anyone listening to this that runs through the kind of identifying talent, setting good goals, getting the team aligned and how you start to deal with it when it goes wrong is what you said about first interview, like an hour, an hour and 10 minutes minimum. Take the time upfront when they're to be at their most engaged and they're most likely to open up to you and talk to you.
Irina Prevalova (39:19)
Thank
Tom Rudnai (39:43)
rather than when there's a problem, get to know them, establish a relationship that goes a little bit beyond professional problems and you really feel that you've got under their skin, you know what makes them tick. if you do a good job of that, actually everything else that you've described becomes pretty easy, If you do a bad job of that, all of these things become so, so difficult because you don't know them. ⁓
Irina Prevalova (40:02)
That is absolutely
right.
Tom Rudnai (40:04)
Cool, let's get into some quick thoughts. This has been a really interesting episode. I love when it goes a little bit different to like the normal, which channel's working for you at the moment. But now I'm gonna completely change the tone and go back to those kinds of questions. So come on, let's go as cliche as we can first up. What is an AI use case that you love or a tool that you love?
Irina Prevalova (40:15)
Let's do it.
I love a very, very simple AI use case. AI helps me immensely with writing up the task descriptions for the team. What used, it's nothing new, it's nothing groundbreaking. It's just a huge time saver for me. I'm putting a lot of time and effort into coming up with a very detailed task description, especially when an initiative or a campaign is extremely important for the business and for myself. But that used to take me probably
a day or at least half a day to compile all of that together and pinpoint very specific things, while now it's still taking me a lot of time. But at least I let AI do the heavy lifting and then I polish it and add my personal tone of voice and make sure that AI did not mess anything up.
Tom Rudnai (41:11)
get rid of the M dash, the double dash, the straight away AI giveaway, delete those, then no one will ever know. Cool, next question. like, if I was to approve tomorrow your plan A budget request, and the way I always think of it is it's like the one that your CEO would never be so stupid as to actually approve, what would you do?
Irina Prevalova (41:15)
First things first.
I would hire a good number of independent PR agents and I would let them do a lot of personal PR for the company's employees. ⁓ Of course you work with, well, not everybody, but so many companies or we at Adverity work a lot with thought leadership, right? With PR where we try to make sure that we create proper ton of voice that we're using people who have the expertise or the authority or the seniority to talk about specific
Tom Rudnai (41:42)
Mmm.
Irina Prevalova (42:00)
topics, but realistically, expertise lies across so many levels of seniority and across so many departments. And today people are making their purchasing decisions, not just based on Google search. They want to trust people. They want to read reviews. They want to understand the impact of a specific solution that they're purchasing, as well as hear real stories or,
Come to that conclusion naturally. And my true belief is that the power of social influence, the power of thought leadership, the power of personal PR and promoting yourself as a brand, as an expert in a specific field, is what can be potentially very impactful for many brands.
Tom Rudnai (42:42)
love that, I hear people talk all the time about wanting to activate more thought leaders within the business and get people posting. Well, like, good idea, let's invest in them as well and help them with that, help give them a bit of a boost, because I think the hardest thing about it is always you write a post, you get two likes, you feel like shit. Yeah, cool, and then for you personally, what has been, what skill or trait would you say has been the biggest needle mover in your career?
Irina Prevalova (42:58)
Just keep going.
I'll be repeating myself as the stakeholder management and communication skills. You can learn the rest. If you have the spark, you have the motivation, if you have the talent, you can acquire a lot of other skills throughout your career. But things like communication, things like flexibility, things like understanding where to use your humor as opposed to where to stay silent, which conversation deserves you to be active.
and which conversation deserves you to be a quiet listener is a great skill. I'm not sure if that can be trained and that can be acquired throughout your career or maybe with potential courses. I cannot say that's something that came to me naturally and I do believe that that's one of the strongest traits that I have for my career growth and management skills.
Tom Rudnai (43:52)
As someone who for whom that's a less natural skill I'll say it can be trained but it can't be perfected right like I will always naturally I will fill any silence with a bad joke I've got better at it, but it's still my natural inclination ⁓ And then the flip side for you like what's the biggest fuck-up that you've ever made in your career?
Irina Prevalova (44:04)
you
Luckily, I was cautious enough, or I'm generally a very structured person and I like planning things out and, you know, know things in advance. I've never had any major issues, but I would go back to the example that I've shared. I do still feel the pain of, you know, letting somebody go without having had explained to them prior that the performance was poor, because realistically, I might have...
Maybe I have missed a great talent there, but I've made a decision without having a conversation with an employee first.
Tom Rudnai (44:43)
It's tough those ones, right? Because the stakes are high, It's people and it's always tough, but everyone has to learn as a manager as well, right? And you're make mistakes. And then last question before I let you go is any recommendations that you'd have for the listeners, whether it's a book or a thought leader or a podcast.
Irina Prevalova (44:59)
Yes, but it will be nothing to do with marketing or business. I will share a podcast that I do believe is or has been transformative for me personally in terms of my motivation, work-life balance, daily habits, and it is the Feel Better, Leave More podcast by Dr. Chatterjee. Love it, listen to it. If you feel it's too much, take a break, but...
Tom Rudnai (45:19)
I've listened to that loads.
Irina Prevalova (45:26)
It's been already more than a year, maybe a year and half for me to keep on listening to that one. And I truly highly recommend it if somebody has not come across this one yet.
Tom Rudnai (45:37)
Yeah, the cynical Brit in me sometimes struggles with it because it's not good for a sarcastic mind. But if you can go at it with an open mind, it's really good and really kind of just really rewarding. Awesome, love that. And then very last question, anything you'd like to plug more personally that you're doing or that Adverity are doing that people should check out?
Irina Prevalova (45:43)
Okay.
Just go check out at Verity again. As I mentioned, we are catering to enterprise marketing and data teams. It's all about data analytics. It's all about moving from data to intelligence and making sure that you are making smart decisions with data, with reliable data, with quality data, with data that can be actioned on. Go check out at verity.com. Happy to have you there.
Tom Rudnai (46:21)
Awesome, sounds super relevant for the audience, so hopefully we get some traffic from that one. Look, thank you, this has been awesome. I love it when we have an episode which is just a bit different than this has been, thank you for putting up with my questions for the last 50 minutes.
Irina Prevalova (46:33)
Likewise, thank you so much for having me. Bye.
Tom Rudnai (46:35)
Cheers, bye bye.