Meet... the head of sales and marketing

Hello. Um, who are you, and what do you do?
Hi! I'm Shayne Hubbard, and I'm the Head of Sales and Marketing at Concept Smoke Screen.

OK. Great. So what's your, like, background and that sort of thing?
My background is in sales and marketing, working predominantly in publishing and exhibitions, and then in software sales prior to joining Concept Smoke Screen.

How did I end up at Concept Smoke Screen? With three of the longest interviews of my life - my third interview was almost four hours long!

That process culminated with me being asked to build a Lego model depicting what I anticipated my first 9 months in the job would look like! You can see it in the picture below. To attempt to explain what's going on there, we have, from left to right:

• A question mark, because I would ask many questions
• The letter 'L', representing the fact that I would do lots of listening and educate myself about the industry
• A brick wall to stand for any obstacles which might present challenges to Concept in delivering our objectives (the idea being that I'd discover these through asking questions and listening!)
• A ladder, representing the subsequent knowledge I would have gained to understand what would be needed to overcome those obstacles
• A jigsaw, which stood for putting all those pieces together to deliver our objectives
• And The Car, which was the delivery of those objectives. In the interview, I wheeled the car across the boardroom table!

I still have that very model in my office today. And then Covid hit and acted as a slight curveball to the plan...

What is it that you actually get up to all day, anyway?
My average day is spent idolising our current MD (I tell him this regularly). The challenge being that I have put him on such a high pedestal, that it's difficult to see him!

On a more serious note, my job involves managing, overseeing and rolling my sleeves up and getting hands on with the many activities that relate to our commercial and marketing activities.

So how would a typical day look? I'd probably get involved with some or all of:

• Meeting with members of the sales team to plan the day/week ahead.
• Meeting with our creative agency to plan our marketing and social media activity.
• Client meetings (recently via Zoom/Teams but seriously looking forward to meeting clients in person once again!)
• Catching up with our European, Latin American and South African representatives and distributors.
• A weekly senior managers meeting.
• Proofing of marketing and social media posts.
• Then there's all the boring stuff: forecasting, budgeting, reporting and assorted other bits of paperwork.
• Pepsi Max/Coffee/Red Bull may make an appearance at some stage on any given day!
• Always the potential for myself, Matt and Carl to meet for an end of day beerio in the village pub!

Righto. Where do you live and what are your interests and hobbies and that?
I live in the village where our head office is based. Our MD lives in the same village - we first met in the village pub. On that day he was sat on a barstool (not a pedestal) so I was actually able to look him in the eyes and have a conversation.

I've been married for 28 years and with my wife for 32 years. Outside of work, my passions (which are fortunately shared by my wife) are world travel, mountaineering, trekking, and exploring. I've been fortunate to travel to many countries of interest and have met so many fascinating people in doing so, learnt about so many different cultures and have shared so many wonderful experiences with what were at the time strangers, and subsequently became friends. It is fascinating to meet people the world over, that have so little, but are so very happy. I have also summited many of the highest mountains in the major mountain ranges of Europe, and further afield.

Closer to home, my other big passion is darts, both playing in a local team and watching! I also enjoy music, both listening and playing - I am trying to learn to play the guitar. Additionally, I enjoy playing chess, reading and of course, socialising with friends and family.

Fascinating stuff. Let's finish with some vital information. Right now, what is your favourite:

• Band/musical act: Elvis Presley
• Film: Top Gun
• TV show: I can narrow it down to two! Minder/Auf Wiedersehen, Pet. (I watch the box sets endlessly.
• Book: Touching the Void. A book by Joe Simpson, recounting his and Simon Yates's near fatal descent after climbing the 6,344-metre peak Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes
• Food: BBQ, from BB King's restaurant in Memphis Tennessee. Given that I can't eat there daily, then good ole sausage and mash (Lincolnshire sausages being a must of course)
• Drink: Budweiser
• Colour: Red
• Emotion: Happy