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In today’s fast-paced corporate world, only a few people have the insight, creativity, and drive to make a lasting impact. Keith Titus is one such luminary whose journey through the realms of business planning, marketing, and customer relationship management has made a significant mark. His journey is not just a story of professional achievements but a testament to determination, innovation, and a profound commitment to excellence. Currently, he serves as the president and CEO at MarketStar.
A Journey Defined By Growth
Keith’s journey at MarketStar started with two different but incredible experiences with the company. First as an employee early in his career and later as a customer at two firms. While working as an employee, MarketStar was a career accelerator for Keith. He found personal and professional growth as a young professional, gaining and developing his marketing and sales skills. Later in his career, he had the opportunity to work with MarketStar as a customer. This gave him firsthand insight into the value MarketStar and its employees create for their customers. Their ability to strategically drive revenue growth and customer engagement at scale through the combined strength of their talented and skilled people is unmatched.
“When I was looking for my next career opportunity, the chance to join MarketStar was presented to me, and I jumped at the chance to join a firm with an incredible legacy of working with top brands globally to drive real revenue growth and customer value,” shares Mr. Keith.
Tackling Challenges
Over the years, Keith has seen conflict between sales and marketing teams due to differences in their perceptions of value creation. He believes the most effective revenue engines are where sales and marketing are integrated, with shared systems, aligned rewards, and blended organizational structure. This integration helps to remove the competition for resources and recognition.
Additionally, AI is impacting marketing by enhancing the personalization of content for the customer, improving the efficiency of marketers’ activities. However, he feels there are challenges in maintaining meaningful human connection in the buying journey, addressing data privacy concerns, and managing the high implementation and support costs for AI systems.
Keith believes marketers will soon need to develop thoughtful policies to guide data privacy and first-party data usage. They will also need to engage with legislative and governmental policies related to data privacy to ensure a balanced approach. Additionally, there will be a need for research to inform future policymaking regarding the value of data sharing between buyers and sellers and its impact on the value creation of the buying journey.
Keith’s Leadership Style And Evolution Over The Years
Keith describes his leadership style as “always learning.” He often jokingly cites Winston Churchill’s quote, “I am always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.”
Keith’s leadership style has evolved over a career of making decisions (good and bad), learning from those decisions, and being thoughtful enough to implement those learnings.
“In business we don’t have a hypocritic oath to guide the professions like physicians have, so early in my career I took the time to document and define my guiding leadership brand,” shares Keith. These seven personal brand values are integrity, high standards, personability, empowerment, hands-on, analytical, and decisive. He then summarized his description of each value, the specific behavior people could expect from him related to each value, and how he would expect management to align around those values.
The Key Characteristics Of Leaders In The Contemporary World
Keith believes leaders should be evaluated based on their ability to “make people and organizations better because of their presence and have that last long into their absence. “Next, an enterprise executive should be capable of delivering organizational outcomes and working on behalf of the whole organization, rather than only focusing on their business unit or team.
Early in his career, Keith read an article called “How Managers Become, which discusses the transition from a manager to an enterprise leader. The author of that article defines “seven seismic shifts.” The seven seismic shifts that take place when leaders make the transition from leading one function to leading an enterprise. The shift includes Specialist to Generalist, Analyst to Integrator, Tactician to Strategist, Specialist to Generalist, Analyst to Integrator, Tactician to Strategist, Problem-solver to Agenda-setter, Bricklayer to Architect, Warrior to Diplomat, and Supporting Cast to Lead Role. Keith believes it is one of the most effective guides to thinking about enterprise leadership qualities.
The Primary Strategies Behind The Remarkable Growth
Notably, the MarketStar team focuses on three key strategies:
1) Creating a purpose and values-driven organization, starting with a clear company purpose to “create growth” to support the vision of building a better version of themselves, their clients, and their communities.
This includes defining and living by six key values to guide their decision-making and day-to-day behaviors.
2) Investing in and enabling world-class talent and collaborating with the teams to deliver excellent outcomes for clients.
3) Deploying a product offering of revenue growth marketing and sales services that could be delivered across the entire customer journey stages of awareness, consideration, purchase, and post-purchase, with a global reach.
Nurturing An Innovative And Inspiring Culture
Innovation and adaptation are ingrained in MarketStar’s DNA, as Keith reflects on the company’s 35 years of adapting to changing business and industry trends. Today, MarketStar’s culture is formally aligned with its purpose of creating growth and supported by its values, one of which is creativity that impacts. This value emphasizes the importance of creating a safe environment for taking smart risks, collaborating to solve problems, and delivering positive impact. Their collective creativity is focused on building better solutions and generating growth for both customers and team members.
MarketStar actively leverages AI to enhance sales team performance and lead-to-renewal revenue outcomes, as demonstrated by the acquisition of Nytro.ai, which brings AI-based SaaS platforms to life, enhancing B2B revenue generation teams.
At The Forefront Of The Latest Trends
AI plays a crucial role in improving and enhancing the personalization of content for the customer, improving the efficiency of marketers’ activities and marketing spend, and guiding predictive actions or next best steps. Moving forward, marketers will need to have a command of and thoughtful policies to guide data privacy. There is probably some enhanced research to guide future policymaking on the value of data sharing between buyers and sellers and the impact of sharing data on the value creation on the buying journey.
Keith and his team are working on two additional actions :
1) Implementing a Customer Advisory Board focused on identifying trends impacting sales and marketing in the next 3-5 years and collaborating with the CAB to ideate and develop solutions and services to address those trends.
2) Integrating AI into the day-to-day work activities to facilitate team growth.
The Upcoming Opportunities To Capitalize On
MarketStars’ comprehensive view of the sales ecosystem across various sectors and verticals globally has been crucial in developing revenue-driving strategies for clients. This insight has allowed the team to intentionally focus on global B2B sales strategies, from top-of-funnel demand generation through full-cycle enterprise selling, leveraging tools and technology to enhance revenue generation for organizations of all sizes. As markets and ecosystems continue to evolve, they are uniquely positioned to capture revenue, thanks to their history of adaptation and transformation, extensive global footprint, and a leadership team with decades of sales innovation and revenue generation expertise.
The Impact Of Mentors On Keith’s Professional Growth
Keith believes that when reflecting on careers, many individuals can be identified who have influenced professional growth, with a few having an extraordinary impact. For him, there was one person who taught him two critical principles: to be a simplifier rather than a complicator and to lead in the absence of leadership to create value.
Words Of Wisdom
When advising aspiring professionals, Keith emphasizes the importance of hard work and mastery of one’s craft. He encourages individuals to focus on creating economic value and to commit to being lifelong learners, as marketing is a constantly evolving field.
