 Hello and welcome to today's qualifications webinar, Calling All Marketing Leaders of the Future. My name is Elliot and I will be facilitating today's webinar. Before we get started, I'd like to go over a few items so you know how to participate. The presentation will last approximately 30 minutes. You'll be able to send text questions to today's presenter by typing your questions into the chat box of the control panel. You may send in your questions at any time during the presentation and we'll collect and address as many as we can during the Q&A session at the end. Unfortunately, we don't send slides of the presentation, however, the webinar will be available to watch on-demand via our content hub exchange in the next couple of working days. I would now like to hand over to Sarah Brook, who will be today's presenter. Sarah, over to you. Great, thanks very much indeed, Elliot. I'd just like to echo Elliot's welcome, so thank you for joining this webinar. We will be covering our Marketing Leadership Program, otherwise known as MLP. I hope you do have lots of questions for me and we will answer these at the end of my 30-minute session. Just to confirm, the objective for this session is to provide you with a headline overview of the Marketing Leadership Program and help you to determine if it's right for you. I'll also share with you a few pieces of feedback from our existing delegates on their experiences. This program is designed for senior marketing leaders who have a desire to influence, set and drive the strategy within their business. Many of the delegates are working in organizations where marketing may currently be performing more of an operational communication role and those delegates join this program to help them become change agents within their business and drive business strategy. And many have and are succeeding at driving that strategic change with the help of this program. For you to gain the maximum benefit from this program, you need to have a foundation level of understanding, a strategic marketing and planning. This means that you need to have completed the CIM Level 6 Strategic Planning Module ideally or be involved in strategic planning in your role. So, you need to be familiar with how to apply models such as TOWs and SOFs and Porterfly Forces, for example. Having this knowledge will help you to gain the maximum benefit from this program. The most important requirement, though, is your desire to be part of setting the marketing strategy which drives the business strategy in your organization. That motivation will help you to succeed over this 18-month program. This slide details how the CIM Academy will help you to become a leader of change within your organization and drive the marketing and business strategy. We will help you to develop the technical competence to identify any external or internal challenges that are facing your organization. Analyze and assess those challenges and determine appropriate objectives and strategies for your organization. These technical competence will be delivered through a combination of face-to-face workshop delivery time, your own personal study, and completion of the module assignment. Every delegate is also provided with two hours of personal coaching per module. The focus of this coaching is on you as an individual and your behavioral competencies. So, for example, if you would like to improve your influencing and negotiating skills to ensure that you can persuade the board of directors to support your proposed marketing plan, or you want to persuade one of the board to provide you with the resources required to deliver your plan, your one-to-one coach can help you to develop those behavioral skills. The coaching, together with the academic technical content combined, will provide you with the confidence you need to stand up and say what you think needs to be done. What direction does the business need to take in the current climate to succeed? As a marketing leader of the future, you will also need the courage to lead and do the right thing, even if the right thing may not always be culturally acceptable for your organization. This program will help you to develop the level of courage and the skills that you will require as a marketing leader of the future to drive business strategy and overcome any obstacles as they arise. The Marketing Leadership Program is made up of three modules, two of which are mandatory and one of which is elective. Contemporary Challenges is mandatory. This module develops the skills required to analyze emerging and changing market challenges and dynamics and then to develop a suitable strategic response. Leading Change is the second mandatory module and this is for those delegates who want to build the case for change and lead and manage that change within their organization. You can then choose between the following two modules. The Managing Business Growth elective helps you gain the skills required for the identification of the potential opportunities for organizational growth in line with your strategic priorities. Alternatively, you could choose the Consultancy module which will enable delegates to develop their consultancy skills. And remember throughout all of the modules you will receive personal one-to-one coaching. The following slide provides you with a nose view of a typical structure for those delegates who select the Managing Business Growth elective module. All of the program is delivered via a blended online and face-to-face learning approach which provides delegates with enhanced learning flexibility over the 18-month program duration. And all of the technical content is shared with the aid of practical business case studies rather than purely academic content. In this way, you can understand and see how the models work in practice and how you can apply them in your organization. So let's look at this slide in more detail. The MLP program will commence with a three-day workshop which provides a foundation level of knowledge in strategic challenges and concepts as you can see at the bottom of the slide. This is a great session and gives you the opportunity to meet all of the MLP course directors over the three workshop days in addition to bonding with your delegate peers. You will find that the MLP delegates are from a wide range of industry sectors and business types. And one of the main benefits in addition to the technical skills you will develop is the benefits of working with this cross-section of senior marketing leaders and gaining an understanding of their organization, the challenges they are facing and how the marketing models operate and are applied within their organization. So the strategic challenges and concepts module provides you with an overview of the key concepts outlined on the slide, value creation, how to create competitive advantage, organizational readiness and agility, strategy and strategic decisions and so on. We also provide you with an introduction to the Contemporary Challenges module at the end of this workshop so you will have a head start into this module. All of our delegates find this head start very useful as most of them are returned to study after a break of a number of years. Following this introductory three-day workshop, your first assessed module is Contemporary Challenges. This module, as is the case for all of the modules, is based on your organization. You will learn how to complete an extensive external and internal audit into your organization and its environment. Included within this analysis, you will learn how to consider the level of environmental turbulence present in your market and complete scenario planning and the level of potential future scenarios. You will then learn how to develop business strategies based on this insight and select the most appropriate strategy. In addition to the face-to-face workshop, a number of online learning resources are available to you, as well as one-to-one feedback and support from the course director. This is the case with all of the three modules. You then move on to the leading change module, which is made up of a three-day workshop plus access to online learning resources and tutor support. This module will help you to understand how you can become a marketing leader of change within your organization. Within this example, the elective module is Managing Business Growth. This is delivered via a two-day workshop and access to online learning resources and tutor support and feedback. The focus of this module is how to develop and implement strategies which will help your organization grow. In addition to this technical learning, you will be provided with one-to-one personal development support to enhance the development areas you have identified. So I'd now like to introduce the team and this is the team you'll be working with throughout your MLP journey. First of all, this is me, Sarah Brooke. My background is the B2B Marketing Professional, and I'm now a lecturer. I lectured a number of universities across a wide range of business topics, including marketing, management and leadership, organizational design, strategic thinking and people management. And I do that utilizing my extensive business experience, which I can use to demonstrate how theoretical content is applied in the business world. In total, I have 30 years business-to-business experience in marketing, ten of which were at direct level. Debbie Clues is the course director for Contemporary Challenges, and Debbie is an experienced marketing trainer. She currently runs her own training business and works with the university lecturer, delivering leading-edge marketing thinking based on the principles of investigating ideas, inspiring change and improving performance. Her particular area of expertise is strategic marketing. We then have Cass, who's the course director for leading change, and Cass was an international marketing director in a high-quality end of the steel and wire industry for 12 years before moving into academia. She was the key contact in the second seven crossing project for the seven cable wire that holds the bridge together. Now, she is a senior lecturer at university. And then we have Louisa. Louisa is the course director for managing business growth, and she has extensive business experience and is now the managing consultant with a strategic marketing consultant to business, working across a wide range of business sectors. So as you can see, when you join the MLP program, you'll be working with a team of experienced senior marketers with a wealth of knowledge in practical application and academic best practice. But obviously, it's very easy for me to say that we're a fantastic team and run a brilliant program. So I'd now like to share with you a few pieces of feedback from the current MLP delegates. Going to work more engaged and empowered to change things, improve day-to-day functionality of marketing. One of the key benefits of this program is that you will be exposed to new and contemporary models and techniques, in addition to the more established technical model. In addition, you'll be able to gain an understanding of how marketing operates within your fellow delegates' organizations and take ideas from both your technical learning and shared knowledge from your peers back into your organization and make an immediate impact, which I'm sure will be a motivating experience for you. Came at a very good time for me, helped me to have the level of conversation that supported me through a promotion. A large proportion of our delegates have gained promotions through the MLP program because of the technical and personal skills that they gain. Useful insight gained from across a range of disciplines and business types because of the variety of delegates. As I've previously said, we have a fantastic broad range of delegates on the program and the benefits of the knowledge that you'll gain from the conversations that you will have with your fellow delegates is immeasurable. More well-rounded understanding of business strategy. If you feel that you're becoming bogged down in day-to-day implementation and want to take a more strategic and leading role in setting and driving the marketing and business strategy in your organization, the marketing leadership program is genuinely a good fit for you. So now, let's look at the small print. All of the three assignments are set in your organization and therefore should be useful to your organization. And they are assessed by assignment rather than by exam. The course duration is 18 months. However, if life changes and that these things often do change, you can complete a module and then take a break and rejoin at a time to suit yourself. In terms of our pass rate, in the July 2019 assessment of all three modules, 100% of our delegates passed, which is a fantastic success for them all. The cost of the entire program is 8,185, including that which covers all of the modules, your assessment fee and two-year membership of the CIM. So now, you have an understanding of who the program is designed for, the team that will be working with you, the topic areas that are covered, the views that existing MLP delegates have and the fact that we have achieved 100% pass rate. Before we cover up any questions you may have, I would like to close with some final words from an existing MLP delegate. One of the key focus areas of the course is to support marketing leaders to ensure their roles is delivering strategic value to their company. Ultimately leading their business to become more market-orientated. Since starting this program, I have already been able to take a number of the learnings back to my company and got on the board's agenda to influence change. I would highly recommend it to any marketing leader who is looking to transform their function and is looking for some guidance, best practice and support to do just that. Thank you for your attention. I'm now happy to answer any questions. Thank you, Sarah. As Sarah just said, we're now going to answer some questions that you've submitted. Of course, as a reminder, you can still submit your questions via the chat box in the attendee control panel. So please don't be afraid to put anything in there if you do have any other questions. But we'll start with our first question. Sarah, what should someone do if they're unsure if the program is right for them? Okay, so this does happen from time to time. And the best thing to do is to contact the CIM Academy and they will then ask me to give you a call and we basically have a chat through your requirements and decide whether or not MLP is the right thing for you to do. I'll potentially one of the other courses that the CIM Academy offer. Fantastic. And how much time would the qualification take? Okay, so we would say that typically, depending on your level of knowledge, your existing level of knowledge that you have as a foundation, you will be looking at committing about 10 hours a week to each of the modules. And each module lasts for about five months. Thank you, Sarah. As I say, if anyone else wants to put any other questions in the box, please feel free. This is a great opportunity if you do have any questions about Level 7 webinar. Just give everyone 30 seconds to see if anyone else wants to put a question in before we wrap things up. Okay, we've just had a question come through. So thank you, Anna, for submitting the question. And the question is, is the postgraduate diploma in professional marketing only open to foreign students, i.e., living abroad? So the program we've just been talking about is actually open to domestic students. Do we know any core start dates, Sarah? Yes, so we have two cohorts start a year. So the next cohort will be starting in February. And then the cohort after that will be commencing in July 2020. So you can join the program either in February 2020 or July 2020. Questions, please submit then. Time there. So thank you all for coming on today. Obviously, I'd like to say thank you to Sarah Britt for presenting this webinar. Once you do the webinar... Oh, thank you all. Yes, you will receive a survey on the presentation. And we would really appreciate it if you could provide any feedback. That would be fantastic. But on behalf of CIM, thank you for joining us today. And we hope you enjoy the rest of your day. Thanks very much. Bye-bye. Thank you. Bye-bye.