Meet the Masters - Sakina Najmi, Tractable

SAKINA NAJMI

‘Influencing is not just about getting your own way, it is about working together and building relationships to achieve the outcomes that the business needs’. James Burrows spoke with Sakina Najmi, Vice President Marketing at Tractable. Sakina shares her favourite leadership quotes, her advice on prioritising D&I and her career highlights to date.

In your opinion, what are the top three attributes of a great marketing leader?

There are so many, but if I were to pick only three, they would be: Influencing, grit and humility.

Influencing is not just about getting your own way, it is about working together and building relationships to achieve the outcomes that the business needs. It is important to make sure that marketing works closely with sales, account management, and all members of the leadership team to create a rock-solid marketing strategy that leads to the growth of the business. For this to happen, marketing leaders must be able to listen and work with others. They must be able to work closely with the entire leadership team to understand their objectives and challenges, as well as be able to speak to the customers and industry leaders regularly, and then build a marketing strategy around this. 

In terms of grit, it is a combination of persistence, passion and resilience. I believe that the leaders who have grit are those that can possess a growth mindset. Grit pushes you to achieve new goals, try new things and explore horizons, but also enables you to set an example for the team and the people you work with. 

The last attribute is humility. Thomas Merton said that ‘Pride makes us artificial, and humility makes us real’. If leaders can be humble and vulnerable, the team feels that they resonate more with you. Humility makes you more of a servant leader; I always tell my team that I don’t have all the answers and that I often learn from them too.

What killer questions do you ask to separate a great marketing leader from a good one?

When I am at the position of deciding if I want to hire somebody, my go to question is always ‘Where do you want to be in five years’ time?’. This is key for me as I believe that everybody should be thinking about this; I like people who are ambitious and have things planned out.

My follow up question is ‘How will you get there?’ which enables me to see their personality, how they view things. It also allows me to understand what I can do to help them reach their goals. 

In your opinion, why does diversity matter? Do you have an example from your career where you’ve seen tangible business impact from increasing diversity - maybe within your team or across the broader business?

Diversity has always been at the top of my agenda. I believe that diverse teams bring different perspectives which inspires creativity and drives innovation. At Criteo, I had a team of individuals who spoke all the major languages in the world. This saved us a lot of money on localisation and enabled us to create targeted marketing campaigns, resulting in higher revenue drive in all the regions. This also created a healthy culture of challenging others, bringing together different ideas and perspectives, and helped foster productivity and growth. 

What advice do you have for your peers and other executives on prioritising D&I within their teams?

Prioritising D&I is a must. ‘Spray and Pray’ campaigns don’t work anymore in my opinion, so we need to be able to have a diverse team to ensure that we have a variety of different perspectives. One thing to watch out for is that diversity is not just a percentage number. You need to hire for talent. Although Tractable has a target percentage aim for women in leadership, I hire for talent. What people bring to the table is more important than meeting a percentage goal. 

What have been the most important leadership lessons you have learnt over the two years? Will this change your leadership style?

I have always focused on my team and my people, if they are successful then so is the marketing function. I obsess about my people, over revenue, and all the other factors. Although my leadership style hasn’t changed much, I am working harder to understand peoples’ body language over Zoom, to check in with my team more often, and connect with my employees. I am still a servant leader, but I am more aware of the need to connect regularly with my team.

How do you create a high-performance culture? Any examples you have put in place that have been really effective? 

All my teams’ bonuses are set on team targets. For example: every member of the team, whether it’s the designer or copywriter, have pipeline and revenue goals as overarching goals as well as their own functional goals. This encourages everyone to work together towards shared business goals and at the same time outlines that everybody must deliver their own remit. I always tell my team that if somebody doesn’t achieve what they set out to achieve, and you could have done something to help them, it is your failure too. Everyone is invested, encouraging a team culture. 

What is your career highlight to date?

I would say that my career highlight must be that I have two unicorns under my belt. Obviously, this was not all me, but I feel like marketing plays a very important part on the success of a business. I feel like I have helped companies get to the point where they are in a good place when I leave. 

Another highlight are the teams that I have built. At Criteo I had a 100% retention rate. When I left the company, I promoted people to take on new jobs and trained somebody to take on my job.

Are there any books or podcasts that have influenced your career or leadership style that you would recommend?

My business and personal life has been transformed by Mindvalley- they have a platform of programmes, videos and podcasts on a range of different topics from meditation to leadership lessons. 

For marketing specifically, I would say that I have read so many different books which I feel have contributed towards my growth. One book I would recommend for leadership is The 12 Powers of a Marketing Leader: How to Succeed by Building Customer and Company Value by Thomas Barta. After reading his book, he was my mentor for a year which was fantastic.