How can you have a tech career without being technical? 20 Great Answers with Robbie Upcroft, Cloud Business Manager at Tech Data ANZ

Robbie Upcroft (00:02): 

Toby, picture him, bright as a button, 11 years old, got a great group of friends that he’s been mates with since he was four or thereabouts in preschool, but he’s in a wheelchair. He uses a device, a modified computer with eye-tracking technology to actually drive his life. We grew up in a world where kids with disabilities went to special schools and they were not seen, they were not involved, they were not encouraged, et cetera, et cetera. Toby wants to be a paleontologist. I’ve got absolutely no doubt that he’s going to have a fulfilling career looking at dinosaurs. He’ll tell you more about dinosaurs than you’re ever wanted to know, and he can do that because technology has enabled him to do that. 

So 10 years ago, he probably still would’ve been at a special school, but now he’s in mainstream public school. He’s able to do his NAPLAN tests because the government has enabled kids with CP to do it a little bit differently. He’s going into mainstream high school. Yes, there are still accommodations that needed to be made, but he’s going to live a fulfilling life, and it’s technology that has enabled that. So what gets me out of bed every morning is being in and helping to build a world that enables more people to really live their full potential, just like Toby. 

 

Barrie Seppings (01:19): 

Welcome to Plugged In, Switched On, the podcast where we pull you into the conversations that matter in B2B tech marketing. I am your host, Barry Seppings. And the quote you just heard at the top of the show was from Robbie Upcroft. He’s the cloud business manager for Tech Data ANZ, a really interesting conversation with Robbie that I’m sure you’ll enjoy more from him in just a moment. 

Now, if you are new to the pod, just quickly I’m going to show you around, we do three things here at Plugged In, Switched On. The first, which we’re doing today, is we get some of the most interesting people in B2B tech marketing world to tell us how and why they do the things that they do. Secondly, we do some episodes that are deep dive into some of the core skills that marketers should have or are acquiring in B2B tech marketing. These are particularly useful if you are also thinking of evolving your skills or looking at a new aspect of the business to get into. We talk to some of the experts and discover what’s new, what’s old, and what’s worth saving. 

Finally, we also do some special episodes. We pull back the curtain on how these teams and these leaders operate on the daily, and we will reflect also on how we’re operating here at Splendid Group as a 100% fully remote agency to see if we can steal a few ideas from these leaders and their teams. You are more than welcome to listen and steal a few ideas themselves, but in this episode, it is the interview episode. And the game that we play with all of our guests is 20 questions where we ask every guest the same 20 questions. Invariably we get 20 very different answers. Let’s go. 

Robbie Upcroft, the cloud business manager of Tech Data ANZ, your first question on Plugged In, Switched On, as always, is the elevator pitch. Robbie, what are your company selling and why would anybody pay good money for it? 

 

Robbie Upcroft (03:15): 

Tech Data is a leading global distributor of high-growth technology. We represent the likes of Microsoft, AWS, IBM, Red Hat, a bunch of security and AI vendors, and really see ourselves as, I guess, the orchestrator between vendors and resellers and their end customers. And so we feel that we deliver a lot of value added services for our customers who are the resellers, the integrators, the MSPs in the world, and we like to think that we do it pretty well. 

 

Barrie Seppings (03:47): 

And how long have you been in this particular role? Has it evolved since you got there? 

 

Robbie Upcroft (03:51): 

It has evolved. I’ve now got probably twice the team that I had when I first came on board seven months ago. We do expect to continually grow as well as more technologies are released into the market, particularly around AI and security. And as you will know, IT is ever-changing. Change is the only constant, to use the cliche. And so I look forward to building an even bigger team over the coming months and years. 

 

Barrie Seppings (04:21): 

Question number 2 is your superhero origin story. Robbie, did you grow up dreaming of working in technology and being a manager? What did Robbie at school think he was going to go and do? 

 

Robbie Upcroft (04:34): 

Robbie at school thought he was going to be an ad man of all things. I absolutely loved and still do creative advertising. And so I actually went off to university following my best mate, who was still my best mate. She said, “I’m going to go to Charles Sturt University out in Bathurst and we’re going to do communications.” And I thought that sounds pretty good. I’m going to follow along. And basically went from there and into marketing, marketing into sales, sales into effectively general management, but really did fall into IT. I’m probably the least technical person at Tech Data, which is a title that I hold with a badge of honor because it allows me to think about technology from an everyman status. So I’m not someone who’s going to get excited by technology for technology’s sake. I’ll actually want to think about the applications and the so what and now what? I guess my superpower is just being able to look at things with not necessarily a critical eye, but certainly a, well, what does this actually mean kind of eye rather than being excited by the speeds and feeds. 

 

Barrie Seppings (05:40): 

If you had your time again but you couldn’t do anything in technology, couldn’t do marketing, couldn’t do sales. 

 

Robbie Upcroft (05:47): 

I’m thinking talk show host. I would be absolutely love to be on the red couch in Graham Norton’s role and just being able to talk to people all day long. It’s effectively what I now do anyway as a sales manager, general manager. I’m never happier than when I’m connecting people and getting them to come together to solve problems, whether it’s in personal life or business life. And being able be paid to talk, I think, would be wonderful. And particularly someone like Graham Norton who does so with a glass of chardonnay every night as well. I think the Brits do the talk show format very well, and so I think that would absolutely be my dream job. 

 

Barrie Sepping (06:25): 

All right, question 3, I do this for free. What part of your job do you just naturally enjoy and spend your time? You gravitate towards it and probably spend more time than even you’re supposed to do. 

 

Robbie Upcroft (06:37): 

So again, engaging people. A distributor is very much an orchestrator. We sit, if you think about the Venn diagram, between the vendor and the reseller and the channel distributor, absolutely sits in the intersect or the overlapping part there. And so I’m never happier than when I’m connecting people, whether it’s two partners together who are looking for a relationship to be able to solve a tricky problem for a customer, or vendors who are looking to engage with new partners, or partners who are looking to go deeper with their customers. That’s very much a big part of my role, if not indeed the biggest part. And it really is the essence of what we do as an organization as well. So that’s where I get the most joy. It’s where I spend the bulk of my time, and then making sure I surround myself with people who can assist me with the other very important parts of my job as well. 

 

Barrie Seppings (07:31): 

And who do you reckon has got the worst job in B2B tech marketing or the job that you would least like to have to do? 

 

Robbie Upcroft (07:39): 

Contentious, but there’s no worst job. There’s only worst attitudes. I take that very much from my mother who would find joy in every little job that she has to do or that she had to do. God bless her cotton socks. So there’s no bad jobs. It’s just a bad attitude. So no matter what you’re doing, it’s important in some way, shape, or form, or important to someone. And so finding joy and satisfaction in doing those jobs is absolutely important. It’s certainly how I’ve tried to live my life. And I’ve had lots of different jobs as I’m sure we’ve all are. And not every job is perfect every day, but it’s still a job that needs to be done and it pays the bills and you find the satisfaction in it. 

 

Barrie Seppings (08:20): 

Question 4, Control+Alt+Delete. What’s the one career move or moment you wish you could go back and undo? Can you recall was there a moment in your career where it became very clear to you that you’d just learned a very valuable lesson? 

 

Robbie Upcroft (08:34): 

About 10 years ago, I won’t go into the company or the details in too much detail, but I was fired out of the blue. And an old mentor has told me that if you haven’t been fired at least once in your career, then you’re not probably pushing hard enough. And I was fired for pushing too hard. It was a turnaround situation. We had to off-board a lot of the team and then rebuild from scratch, and so effectively change management 101. And the agenda and the timeline and the speed of change that I was pushing was just too hard. And so the big lesson that I learned in that situation was all about change management and really bringing people along for the journey, to again use the cliche, addressing the what’s in it for me, over-communicating. And that really has influenced the way that I approach change management now. 

So I’m definitely a lot more aware of the impact my words and actions or sometimes my silences as a matter of fact have on people. And so without that experience, as hard as it was at the time, I don’t think I would be the manager that I am now. And so again, there’s no bad experiences, only experiences that you either learn from or don’t. And that was probably the one moment in my career, a good 10 years ago, that I have learned from most. 

 

Barrie Seppings (10:01): 

And was it a little bit confronting at the time to discover that maybe you’d been perceived that way as being too pushing? 

 

Robbie Upcroft (10:08): 

Yeah, absolutely. I was very much in that situation as a Noah rather than a learner. And then again, that made me flip how I think about my perception and what the impact that I’m having on people downstream. And so being able to just address that or to think about that now more clearly has absolutely helped me become a better manager. And again, I wouldn’t be in the position that I am now if I didn’t have that experience under my belt. 

I think it’s important that people in leadership are transparent and honest about the situations that they’ve had in their life. I was having a chat to someone the other night who said he’s been fired three times in his career, and for each time it’s again for just pushing that little bit harder. And he would not change anything. He would not change the approach. He would not change the situation because in each of those situations, he felt at the time it was absolutely the right thing to do. But he just pushed it that little bit harder. 

And so I think it’s important that people understand that business is not always smooth sailing, particularly for those getting into management for the first time, or if you end up managing managers as I was at that situation, knowing that your words, your actions, your silences, your approach, et cetera, is going to have that  potential downstream impact, and the perspective that people have on you is not what you think is the situation. And so it’s definitely important that leaders acknowledge that and openly talk about it. 

 

Barrie Seppings (11:41): 

Question 5, shout out. Who have you learned the most from in your career, even if it was perhaps what not to do, as somebody in particular that stands out for you? 

 

Robbie Upcroft (11:52): 

I’ve a number of leaders, mentors, managers, even informal mentors, that have really taught me the value of diversity, not just in makeup of gender or background, but diversity in styles of thinking. I’m a very much a big picture thinker. I naturally gravitate to the what if scenarios and wouldn’t it be great if we could do X, Y, and Z. But I’m not as strong on the detail and the process and the step-by-step guide as to how we’re going to get there. And so I absolutely surround myself now with people who are good at the detail and who challenge the big picture ideas that I come up with and would argue the contrary view around, “Hey, it’s great that you’re thinking we’re going to grow five times in three years, but how are we actually going to get there?” 

And so the best people that I’ve worked with, the folks that have really inspired me, are those that have taught me to actively seek out and embrace those who think differently to myself. And this comes through in the hiring that I do, the type of people that I look for different roles. I naturally gravitate to people with big picture ideas and positivity and extraversion, et cetera, the same as myself. But quite often what I need is someone who is going to be a lot more detailed, a lot more process-oriented. And that has absolutely been something that has been taught by a lot of the mentors that I’ve had throughout my career. 

 

Barrie Seppings (13:27): 

Anyone in particular you wanted to name and give a shout-out to? 

 

Robbie Upcroft (13:30): 

Mostly women. Some of the best managers that I’ve had have been women, and they’ve come up through some very difficult times in their career and have been able to embrace that diversity angle and just thinking differently about how they approach things. And I absolutely appreciate and admire their strength and their success. 

 

Barrie Seppings (13:53): 

Do you think the tech industry has gotten better or easier for women? It’s not traditionally been an area where they’ve been overrepresented. 

 

Robbie Upcroft (13:59): 

Yeah, I think it’s been much better. And there’s companies like Microsoft who I spent too as a duty at Microsoft, an 11-year stint, then away for 10 years and then back for a couple of years, finishing up last year. Microsoft would probably be 45, if not 50%, women across most roles. And not just in so-called traditional roles, but absolute deep technical finance roles, really good strategy and solutions architects, et cetera. But that has been a very deliberate move by them over the last 20 years. Not just to think about things like quotas and stuff like that on a leadership team, but actually from grassroots development of women in tech right down to primary school level and helping girls understand that a career in STEM is absolutely valid. 

And again, it’s a cliche. I feel like I’m doing a lot of cliches in this podcast, but you can’t be what you can’t see. And so Microsoft, I think, absolutely leads the market in demonstrating to young girls, teenage girls, college-educated girls that a career in IT is absolutely valid and something that you can pursue. And so that means that they’ve got a much bigger pool of talent to be able to draw upon. 

The second thing I’ll say that has really supported women in IT is the flexible working arrangements, so being able to balance your life and the school pickups and stuff like that. And as much as we all expect that men and women do the same around the house, it’s obvious that women often do more. And so being able to have a flexible environment has really helped women return to the workforce, whether that’s working 3, 4, 5 days a week or what have you. 

 

Barrie Seppings (15:49): 

Question 6, the only constant is marketing cliches. The rate of change I want to talk about in particular here is it’s accelerated and celebrated in tech, any marketing. But humans actually hate change. If we’re honest, we’re resistant. How do you personally with such a long career in technology keep motivated or keep finding the will to come back and lean into change? Just when you think, “Oh, I have a handle on it,” it keeps going again. How do you stay excited by that? How do you not be fatigued? 

 

Robbie Upcroft (16:20): 

Maybe I’m not Kim and then Barry because I absolutely love change. I started my career in marketing and then did an MBA to pivot to sales, and then took on stretch goals to pivot to general management, and then went back to individual contributor from a channel management point of view, and now back into cloud business leadership. So I’ve effectively changed jobs every two to three years and have deliberately done so as a way to keep it fresh and to keep it exciting. I know that there are some people who would be quite happy to have the same job, the same career effectively for 15 to 20 years, but I’m a very firm believer in a portfolio career. 

My wife is the same. She’s had three or four very, very distinct different careers and has kept it fresh and exciting. And so I love change. I love meeting new people. I love getting involved in different conversations, different ideas. You are always looking to build upon what you’ve done and the successes that you’ve banked to be able to help you pursue that next opportunity. But I would be a very different person if I was in the same job 30 years ago than I would be now. 

 

Barrie Seppings (17:39): 

Question 7, here is to your health. You’re in a pretty demanding job. You’re in a senior job. You’ve got a lot of people looking to you and wanting your time. You’re ambitious by your own definition. You lean into change. This is a lot of stress. How do you or what’s your routine for maintaining a little bit of mental wellness and physical wellness? 

 

Robbie Upcroft (17:59): 

Mental wellness is don’t take it too seriously. This is an important industry. We do great things for hundreds of thousands of people across the globe, but it is not life or death for the most part. It is not rocket science. It’s not health science. And as much as we support all of those industries, what we do day to day is not worth the mental stress that some people put themselves through. I’m a very firm believer in that. 

And from a physical point of view, I am a very, very enthusiastic, but it has to be said, bad runner. I’ve recently embraced trail running. I did a 50-kilometer run-up in the Blue Mountains a couple of weeks ago that took me the better part of 10 hours. I finished in the bottom 10% out of the many thousands of people who did it, but as my lovely wife reminds me, I did it. I got to the start line. I’m over 50 now. So I got to the start line and I completed it as much as it took nearly 10 hours. And so I think that just being able to set a big hairy goal like that and complete it is fantastic, not only for physical health, of course, particularly at our age, but also for mental health to be able to say, “Hey, I did that and all the training that I had to do to get into it and getting up in the early hours of the morning,” et cetera, et cetera. 

So again, I’m a firm believer in that good physical health. You don’t have to be the best. You don’t have to be the fastest. You just have to start. So getting to the start line, really it helps with your mental  health because you’re able to tell yourself, “Hey, no matter what else is going on, I got to spend 10 hours out in the beautiful Australian bushed up in the Blue Mountains.” And had a wonderful time and met some wonderful people, including ladies who are well into their seventies and eighties doing this 50-kilometer trek as well. And so you just know you’ve got a lifetime of fun games ahead of you if you can pick up a hobby like running. 

 

Barrie Seppings (19:54): 

And have you always run or has that come to you more recently? 

 

Robbie Upcroft (19:57): 

I’ve always run, just never very well, and I was probably the least competitive person that I know because I don’t care where I come. I honestly have no sense of achievement if I win, or I’ve never won. Let’s face it. So I only compete against myself, A, to get to the start line, B, to finish, and then C, if I’m lucky enough on the day and the winds are blowing right, then I might beat the previous time that I did. But if not, I still got to spend some time outdoors, which is great. 

 

Barrie Seppings (20:27): 

Question 8, unique snowflakes. Back in the marketing world, every kind of market or demographic or territory or industry or a little tribe likes to think that they are unique. And maybe they are, but they’re all kind of the same. But in your experience, who have you come across that were definitely a little bit different and had to be marketed to a little bit differently? 

 

Robbie Upcroft (20:50): 

I would say the folks that work in charities and not-for-profit for me are the absolute superstars in this situation. And not only are they different, but they’re the ones who I look upon as the superstars throughout marketing because quite often they’ve taken a salary hit to pursue a vocation knowing that they’re not going to get paid as much in corporate potentially, but are doing God’s own work to further the lives of a lot of the people that they support. And this is absolutely very close to my heart. 

My son Toby, he is 11 years old. He has cerebral palsy. He’s a very bright, very bright little boy in mainstream school going into high school next year, mainstreams as well. But he’s in a wheelchair. Likely he will struggle to walk and to feed himself, et cetera, et cetera. And so we are very close with the Cerebral, Palsy Alliance and I will do a great shout out for those guys. And so a lot of the work that they do in generating awareness of programs and driving funding and supporting policy change at the government, et cetera, et cetera, is done by the folks who drive the marketing of that organization. And I know quite a few of them and I know that they could probably earn a lot more in the corporate world, but they do it because they’ve either got a connection to kids with CP or because they see a real need to be able to drive that conversation out there. 

And so I’ve always got a soft spot in my heart for those who set aside potential corporate dollars to drive what they feel is the change they want to see in the world. 

 

Barrie Seppings (22:29): 

Question 9, green with envy. And I love the fact that you said you thought you were going to be an ad guy and you started there with your training. What is the campaign or event or idea or launch or even ad that you really wish that you’d done? 

 

Robbie Upcroft (22:45): 

I’ll go back to my Microsoft days. For those listening to this who are old enough to remember the global financial crisis back in 2008, 2009, hit IT earnings or spendings like an absolute sledgehammer. And I was with Microsoft at that time and one of my colleagues came up with the idea of the glass is half full rather than half empty, and within literally a week had turned around a national campaign that focused attention on this concept of positivity in thinking. So the glass is half full rather than half empty. And we were able to effectively market our way out of what could have been a very, very debilitating downturn for Microsoft. And yet we actually gained share in Australia throughout the global financial crisis because we’re able to help people understand that tech is an enabler rather than a cost center. 

Other competitors were losing budget, customers pushing out projects, putting services on hold, et cetera, because they saw tech as a cost center rather than a profit center. And that campaign, which I think won a whole bunch of awards as well, absolutely got the conversation going to a more positive bent. And I do think that that helped Microsoft really start to position itself more as that enabler rather than just as a driver of cost. 

 

Barrie Seppings (24:11): 

Sounds like the product you were really selling there was optimism. 

 

Robbie Upcroft (24:14): 

Yeah, effectively. And that was really what a few years after this campaign, of course that Satya Nadella came on board, but it really helped drive that shift in Microsoft to a more positive, optimistic partnering company rather than some of the antagonism that we saw from Microsoft throughout the 2000s. 

 

Barrie Sepping (24:34): 

Question 10, that really gets my goat. Robbie, what’s the one thing in this industry, tech and marketing combined, that’s gone on for too long and in your view needs fixing? 

 

Robbie Upcroft (24:46): 

I don’t know if it needs fixing more than acknowledgement, but the short-term goals that a lot of companies have. So the need to be able to demonstrate return and investment from campaigns or initiatives on a quarterly basis, I think, is a challenge. Most of the great campaigns are done 12, 18, 24 months because you’ll need to effectively change behavior from a whole bunch of people up and down the value chain. And quite often, vendors or channel partners or whoever will look at things on a quarterly basis and saying, “Oh look, we spent $50,000 but we didn’t change behavior within three months. We’re going to pull the funds.” It’s like, “Come on, guys, it takes a while to get these things up and running and really landed well.” 

 

And so one of the things that I’m actively working on within our team is trying to have annual or even a three-year goal. So one of the first things I did coming into the team was stuck a big hairy goal up on the wall that said we’re going to be X million within three years. And no one had really thought about that far ahead. We’d always looked at, “Oh, have we achieved our quarterly numbers? Have we hit our quarterly goals?” And I’m not discounting the need to have the fiscal responsibility from a quarterly basis. It’s how profits and P&L is reported back to the street, and Tech Data ultimately part of the TD SYNNEX organization is global. We need to respect that. But I would like to see a little bit of a longer term focus, particularly when it comes to more strategic initiatives in campaigns, et cetera. 

 

Barrie Seppings (26:21): 

Question 11, truth serum. What’s the one question you’d ask your ad agency if you knew they had to tell you the truth? 

 

Robbie Upcroft (26:29): 

I think we’ve got a very, very, and I’ll shout out to the Splendid guys here, they say no more than they say yes, which I absolutely love. They tell us the truth even when it’s painful to hear. And so I think the modern agency, and Splendid’s a great example of this, I think you guys do a good job of being truthful and telling us, “No, we’re not going to be able to deliver X project on that time or in that timeframe or for that budget.” And so yeah, I wouldn’t know what else I would want to ask to get the truth because I feel that we are getting the truth now, if I can be so prosaic. 

 

Barrie Seppings (27:06): 

Yeah, absolutely. And what do you feel that you are doing as a procurer of those services to indicate that that honesty and transparency is welcome? Because I’ve got to say that’s a scary position for agencies to say no. I’ve been in agencies with a culture is like say yes regardless and we’ll figure it out later. 

 

Robbie Upcroft (27:23): 

No, I think it’s us being truthful as well. So from the first moment, we had good conversations about what success looks like ultimately, and not just quarter to quarter. We were very open about the position that we find ourselves in and how impactful the initiative can potentially be for us. And then from that, I guess vulnerability built a shared sense of purpose. And so I really feel good about the position that we’re in and what we’re looking to achieve together. There’s going to be bumps, that’s part of life and that’s what we look forward to, but they are just that bumps rather than roadblocks. 

 

Barrie Seppings (28:00): 

Question 12, better together. How do you make the call when it comes to collaborating? And what I mean specifically by that is we’re encouraged to collaborate all of the time now with everybody, but sometimes you just got to get stuff done. How do you recognize that moment where you’ve either got to grab control of the plane and do it yourself or know that you are perhaps hurting more than helping and say you go do that by yourself? 

 

Robbie Upcroft (28:25): 

I’ve got two main philosophies, and not to get really deep, but this is how basically I run my workday. And they are always in competition with each other and so finding the balance is absolutely key. Number one is GSD, which stands for get shit done. And so I actively encourage the team members to don’t worry about building a plan to 100% or even 80%. Get the plan 50% of the way there and then just start to execute. Just get shit done, get it out there, publish, get it up and running, build an MVP if you like so that people can actually start to see what it looks like rather than having an 80% plan that you are crossing the T’s and dotting the I’s but it’s never seen the light of day. 

And so that GSD is then balanced with letting people fail. Failure is so much a part of life. And I want to, I know it sounds awful, but I want to see people fail to an extent because that’s where you learn from that. And so you don’t really learn if someone is going to continue to do it for you. And so being able  to own that failure and feel what it’s like and understand how you can do something differently is so important, particularly for those early in their career who are often afraid of failing. They don’t want to be seen as a failure in the eyes of their manager or their peers. And so they will potentially hesitate for taking on a project or will want someone to do it for them, et cetera, et cetera. 

And so I very much like putting people in situations or offering the opportunity for people to get into situations where they can potentially fail. And I’m nearly always pleasantly surprised about how well they do and they learn from that themselves. But as I said, the balance then is get shit done. And so balancing that kind of failure with the need to obviously drive a result. 

 

Barrie Seppings (30:21): 

And what are you saying to people, particularly young people, that is making them feel comfortable or confident that they can perhaps take that risk and that failure is not the end of their career or at least their job in your team? 

 

Robbie Upcroft (30:33): 

So it’s the giving them the comfort level and the space to fail. And if you fail within the right way, then I think it’s important. So you can often say, for example, there’s no bad decisions, there’s only wrong decisions. And you can learn from a wrong decision much easier than you can learn from all the right decisions that you’ve made. And so you might make 95 right decisions and five wrong decisions. It’s those five wrong ones that you’re going to learn from. And so you’re not going to know that until you’ve actually tried something and it’s gone pear shaped, and how you recover from that is absolutely important. And so I will always give not just people early in the career, but anyone that works with me, the opportunity to fail as much as they can succeed. 

 

Barrie Seppings (31:19): 

Question 13, change your mind. What’s a long held belief about marketing that you no longer hold? And what caused you to change your mind about that? 

 

Robbie Upcroft (31:30): 

So as I mentioned earlier, I started my career in marketing. I did a Bachelor of Communications, very much expected a long career, whether it was going to be in public relations or pure marketing or potentially even moving into organizational communications, et cetera, et cetera. And I did that for the better part of 10 years or so. And then had the big epiphany as you do as you head into your thirties to say, “You know what? I need to get out of marketing because I’m never going to climb the corporate ladder.” And so I spent a lot of time, effort, money, heartache and tears doing my MBA, which was fantastic. I really enjoyed that, made some lifelong friends and then pivoted into sales and then onwards and upwards into general management. 

And so the belief that I had back then was that marketers couldn’t make it into the C-suite or to a CEO or general manager role from a marketing background. And I think that cannot be further from the truth in today’s world. Some of the best general managers that I’ve seen and CEOs now come from a marketing background because it really is the essence of what we do as organizations now. And so me now responsible for end-to-end P&L, sales, marketing, finance, operations, you name it, I lean upon my marketing background and my marketing skills and training as much as I do any other discipline, if not more, as a way to try and help my part of the organization get ahead. And if I didn’t have that marketing background, I think I would absolutely be at a loss or certainly behind from what I need to do. 

And so again, I would encourage marketers to stay at it. Don’t feel that you’d need to then change careers or change directions or whatever the case is to be a legitimate voice in the organization. Marketing is so central to what we are doing, not just in the IT industry, but effectively every industry. And it’s only going to get more intense with things like AI really coming to the floor over the last couple of months and years, and marketers are going to be even more essential to the organization. 

 

Barrie Seppings (33:43): 

I do recall, I feel like going back 10 years, there was a lot of discussion in marketing about marketers having to fight for a seat at the table in that management role. That’s still the case or do you think it’s more broadly recognized that their contribution is there? 

 

Robbie Upcroft (33:58): 

There’s still some of that, absolutely. Those general managers and CEOs who’ve come up through the finance world potentially see marketing as a cost center rather than a profit center. But I think that is changing, particularly when you start to think about the modern buyer’s journey, the ability of marketing now to deliberately and directly track the impact of campaigns and customer touch into the balance sheet or into the P&L. I think marketing has done a better job over the last 10 years as well,  effectively fighting for the right to be at their executive table, which is exactly where they belong. 

 

Barrie Seppings (34:35): 

Question 14, put your money where your mouth is. In terms of effectiveness and ROI, we’re talking about that quarter to quarter pressure and you’ll think of more long term, which tactics or approaches have you been seeing more success from? And what are you pulling back on that traditionally you would’ve spent more money on previously? 

 

Robbie Upcroft (34:53): 

It’s interesting because I’m going to contradict the point that I just made earlier, which is marketers do a fantastic job of being able to, almost to the nth degree, track and predict the buyer’s journey based upon all the different signals and algorithms, et cetera, et cetera. And again, Microsoft does this better than anyone with their digital sales engine, but I think it’s done at the expense of face-to-face connection. And so I’m a very big believer in that business is a contact sport. You need to be in front of your customers, literally breathing the same air, sharing a cup of coffee or whatever, or maybe not sharing the coffee but chatting over a coffee, if I can put it like that. And I think some industries, IT potentially no exception, has pulled back from some of that because it’s difficult to track the ROI. How do you track the ROI on sponsoring a thousand person conference when the only thing that you can really look at is how many MQLs did I generate or did I get new business from that? 

All very important measures and that’s ultimately what the ROI is going to be judged upon, but there’s really no substitute for being in front of those people and being present and being involved in some of those conversations. And it might not be that benefit of being at that conference presents itself for a couple of months. Back to the quarterly conversation, we certainly find that with some of the events that we’ve been at. So I am a very strong advocate for being more present for face-to-face activities, even if they’re harder to judge the ROI on because it feels, as people, it feels like what we should be doing more of rather than less of. 

 

Barrie Seppings (36:43): 

Yeah. And is there a sense that there’s an advantage here to zig one when others zag if everyone else is abandoning? 

 

Robbie Upcroft (36:49): 

Yeah, I would absolutely say that. There are some vendors who have really pulled back from big face-to-face conferences because of the challenge around determining the ROI, and that vacuum, if you like, has been filled by others who are now making hay. And it’s again, it contradicts the point that I made earlier about needing to prove that ROI for marketing to have a seat at the table. And I guess that’s where marketing really does now bleed so much more effectively into sales and the other running of the business. 

 

Barrie Seppings (37:22): 

Question 15, overhyped and underrated. Two-part question here, which buzzword is getting far too much airplay in our industry at the moment? 

 

Robbie Upcroft (37:35): 

At the risk of being contentious, again, I think search engine optimization is an area that is ripe for change. And I’m no expert in SEO by any way, shape, or form, but I think about my own experience as a consumer and those, my family and friends, we actively know that search engine results are being manipulated. Maybe that’s the wrong word. Maybe managed by organizations to present their offerings up to the top. And we’re no different in trying to get the best results. And so I will actively seek out the peer group reviews versus any search that I put into Google or Bing or whatever the case is. 

And so I think the marketers that are able to figure out that angle, and not just the Amazon reviews or the Trip Advisors or whatever, but generating that kind of word of mouth buzz is absolutely key because we’re all smart enough now to know that the results on page one of a Google Search aren’t there by chance. And so once you understand that, then that changes the way that you view them. 

Barrie Seppings (38:47): 

And what’s the underrated or old-fashioned idea or tactic that you think is ripe for a comeback? 

 

Robbie Upcroft (38:53): 

Again, more face-to-face. So we’re three years, is it three years post-pandemic or they’re about two and a half, three years? And so definitely looking forward to getting out and about more. I encourage all of my team to spend more time out of the office than they do in. Yes, you still want to track it. Yes, you still want to see the results and stuff like that, but there’s no substitute, none whatsoever, of sitting in front of potential customers and just having that general conversation and seeing where it flows. You’re not going to get that over the phone. You’re not going to get that over a Teams call. But actually, being in the room present together absolutely has to come on more. And marketers have a big role in that by generating those opportunities, whether it’s in driving meetings or conferences or what have you. 

 

Barrie Seppings (39:43): 

Question 16 is the supermodel question. $10,000 was allegedly the sum that Linda Evangelista, one of the original supermodels, said she would not get out of bed for less than that amount. Robbie, what’s it take to get you out of bed in the morning? And by that what’s your motivation? You’ve been doing this for a lot of years. You seem really enthused by your job. Why do you keep doing it? 

 

Robbie Upcroft (40:08): 

I’d come back to Toby. So Toby, picture him, bright as a button, 11 years old, got a great group of friends that he’s been mates with since he was four or thereabouts in preschool. But he’s in a wheelchair. He uses a device, a modified computer with eye-tracking technology to actually drive his life. So I’m very much in this business to build a better world for Toby and all the other kids like him. And so the fact that he uses technology to be effective, to do all his homework and to communicate and to watch his favorite YouTube shows and stuff like that is absolutely mind-boggling. 

Again, you’re probably the same age as me, Barry, from the look of you maybe a little bit younger. We grew up in a world where kids with disabilities went to special schools and they were not seen, they were not involved, they were not encouraged, et cetera, et cetera. Toby wants to be a paleontologist. I’ve got absolutely no doubt that he’s going to have a fulfilling career looking at dinosaurs. He’ll tell you more about dinosaurs than you’re ever wanted to know, and he can do that because technology has enabled him to do that. So 10 years ago, he probably still would’ve been at a special school, but now he’s in mainstream public school, he’s able to do his NAPLAN tests because the government has enabled kids with CP to do it a little bit differently. He’s going into mainstream high school. Yes, there are still accommodations that needed to be made, but he’s going to live a fulfilling life and it’s technology that has enabled that. 

So what gets me out of bed every morning is being in and helping to build a world that enables more people to really live their full potential, just like Toby. 

 

Barrie Seppings (41:56): 

Question 17, this ain’t happening, man. What’s the most unexpected or unusual situation you’ve found yourself in, thanks to work? 

Robbie Upcroft (42:05): 

Cows, lots and lots of cows in India. It’s an absolute cliche, but if anyone who hasn’t worked in India before, I encourage you to look at the opportunity when it comes. You know you’re in India when you’re having a meeting with a potential partner. And I was in Bangalore at the time and there were basically cows just wandering around the campus and into out of some of the offices. And the Indians  were very, very, very respectful and it was nothing new for them. For me, I was absolutely gobsmacked and I knew, of course, a sacred animal under the Hindu religion, but to actually see it play out like that, it was like, “Okay, we’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto,” which was wonderful. I spent a lot of time in India across a lot of different organizations, which was great. A lot of time for India and for Indians, and what they do over there is just absolutely fascinating as a culture, and again, can encourage anyone who has the opportunity to go and spend some time there. 

 

Barrie Seppings (43:02): 

Question 18, home alone. Robbie, what was the pandemic and in particular the lockdown experience like for you and how has that changed the way that you work? 

 

Robbie Upcroft (43:17): 

Let me just acknowledge that it was a very difficult time for a lot of people. Not only the loss of loved ones and livelihood, which I absolutely appreciate. And a lot of people struggled with the lockdown and time away. But for us in our little family unit, it was a time of closeness. So certainly had a slow-down from a work point of view, still delivered what it is that we needed to deliver, but was able to play a lot of games and have a lot of lunches as a little family that we wouldn’t have been able to do if I’m constantly at work. And so I look back on the pandemic not only as a very intense and very sad time for the world for a lot of reasons, but it gave us the chance to really think differently about the way that we could work together. 

And I think the downstream impact of that, which is still being felt now, is the ability really to be able to work remotely and from anywhere. So I’ve got 19 people in my team, my marketing manager’s up in Brisbane, my sales manager’s in Geelong, one of my sellers is on the Sunny Coast, the other one’s in Melbourne. I’m interviewing people from the Hunter Valley down to South Australia for different roles,  and there is absolutely no issue with them working from where they want to live. We get together once a quarter or so for the face-to-face connection as I mentioned before, but they’re just as productive or we’re just as productive as a team with people working everywhere. And I think the pandemic, dare I say, gifted us that idea that remote working is truly possible as long as you’ve got the right technology, of course. 

 

Barrie Seppings (44:55): 

Do you feel like you’ve got less work to do to explain up the chain why you’ve got a remote team as well? 

 

Robbie Upcroft (45:02): 

Yeah, absolutely less. There’s a lot more acceptance by a lot of companies, not all companies, by a lot of companies that remote work is valid. We do encourage folks to come into the office once or twice a week if they can just for that connectivity. We run monthly town halls where you put on your beer and cake and you get everyone excited. But for the most part, we are a largely remote organization and it works well. People can pick up the kids or go to soccer practice or do whatever’s they need to do to live a life. Again cliche, we judge on outputs, not inputs. And as long as people are delivering what they need to deliver, need to deliver, I’m happy for them to go and see little Timmy at soccer practice in the afternoon, that’s fine. 

 

Barrie Seppings (45:49): 

Yeah, that’s fantastic. All right, question 19. We’re in the home stretch. Question 19. 

 

Barrie Seppings (45:56): 

All of me. Now, lots of businesses like to say this cliche, we’ve done a lot of cliches as you say in this interview already, but they say you can bring your whole self to work. Is that true for you as an individual? How different is Robbie at work to when you’re at home, when you’re a little bit more off the leash? 

 

Robbie Upcroft (46:17): 

Yeah, well, it wasn’t true. I always had a home face and a work face, but didn’t really think about that again until Toby was born. And so having a child with special needs really makes you rethink about what’s important in the world. And again, one of the mentors who I mentioned earlier helped me understand that if people don’t accept you for who you are, then they aren’t your people. And so it really was an epiphany moment for me when we got the diagnosis for Toby, when he had cerebral palsy when he was about one and a half, two years old. It’s like, “Stop pretending this is life. Don’t put on a work face and a home face. Just be who you need to be.” And it was around about the same time that I got fired. 

So Toby was one, I think, when I got fired, one and a half maybe, and around about the same time that he had the diagnosis for cerebral palsy. And thinking back, the person that I was then was a very different person at work than the person that I was at home. And you can see now how I would’ve been coming into that environment and pushing hard for change potentially because I was going through so much change myself, but it wasn’t necessarily being true to myself. And so my last 10 years since then, coordinating with Toby, who is now 11, absolutely shows that the person that I am now at work is the same as I am at home. There is absolutely no filter in regards. And if people don’t like that, then I can’t change their opinion. I can only be who I am. 

 

Barrie Seppings (47:54): 

Yeah. That’s wonderful. And then thinking about Tech Data, where you are now as a culture in that company, do you feel like that’s the sort of company that actively encourages people to be a bit more authentic in the workplace even though it is a remote place? 

 

Robbie Upcroft (48:10): 

For the most part, yes. So we still are sensitive to our position within the market. We sit in the intersection between vendors and resellers. We’re an international listed company, so we have to make sure that we’re doing the right thing by people up and down the chain. But for the most part, we absolutely embrace DEI, absolutely embrace flexible remote working. We have a lot of, not just policies, but the culture of the company embedded embraces diversity in both hiring and thinking, et cetera, et cetera. So as like any company, we’ve got a lot more work that we can and still are leaning into doing, but I feel that we are well positioned in that journey. 

 

Barrie Seppings (48:53): 

Question 20, your secret weapon. 

 

Robbie Upcroft (48:57): 

I’m going to be cheeky and I’m going to say I have two, neither of which I’m yet fully aware of how I can weaponize them, if I can put it like that. 

So the first one, which I’m absolutely particularly proud of, and I think it’s more a superpower than a secret weapon, if I think about it realistically now, it’s I’m the guy that can figure out the exact piece of Tupperware for the leftovers. Some people, they have it overflowing or they waste a lot of Tupperware space or they can’t find  the Tupperware lid. I’m the guy who has it under control when it comes to putting the right leftovers into the right Tupperwares just so it’s absolutely perfect fit. 

And the second one is, I am a parking god. I will find a park on the street at no matter what time of day or night, no matter what time of year, whether it’s in the middle of Chatswood on Christmas Eve, on Victoria Avenue, I will find a park. And so that I think is my superpower. I’m not quite sure how it’s going to save the world, but it certainly saves a lot of time. And I have lost count of the amount of time my friends and family have just been gobsmacked by the ability to just drive up and just as someone’s pulling out, pulling to the perfect car spot time and time and time again. It’s absolutely freaky, Barry. I think there is someone watching over me because it happens all the time. 

 

Barrie Seppings (50:20): 

And that was 20 questions, the interview game we play with all of our guests here on the Plugged In, Switched On podcast. Those were 20 great answers from Robbie Upcroft. He’s the cloud business manager for Tech Data ANZ. But before I let Robbie go, I did ask him about his all-time feel-good movie. 

 

Robbie Upcroft (50:42): 

My feel-good one, which I’d like to watch with Toby and we sing along is Sing, which is just such a beautiful, beautiful movie. So it’s the one with the little koala who has a theater and he runs a singing competition. Animated movie, and it’s got Matthew McConaughey and Reese Witherspoon  and Scarlett Johansson and a bunch of others. And it’s just absolutely fantastic. Such an uplifting movie that I’ll put that on probably once a month or so. We’ll sit down and enjoy and watch that. 

 

Barrie Seppings (51:10): 

Now before we unplug from this episode, just a quick update from the Splendid Group. And we are of course the pure play B2B tech marketing agency where I work as the executive creative director and where we produce the Plugged-In, Switched-On podcast. We’ve recently been growing. We’ve added to our teams in both Australia and Southeast Asia, and we are also looking for more people in our EMEA team. If you are based in that area or in that time zone, particularly in project management, account service and strategy, we would love to have a conversation. So if the source of people and work and ideas that you’ve been hearing on the podcast appeal to you in a career sense and you’d like to get out of an agency where perhaps you don’t have the flexibility, but we’d still like to work on some of the biggest brands and campaigns in the world, please get in touch. Just point your browser to splendidgroup.com and you’ll get to meet some of the people, see some of the work. Look forward to the conversation. 

I have been and remain Barry Seppings, and I was talking with Robbie Upcroft, the cloud business manager for Tech Data ANZ in what has been a 20 questions episode of Plugged In, Switched On. It is of course the podcast about the conversations that matter in B2B tech marketing. Hit subscribe in the pod dashboard of your choice and we will appear in your ears automatically next month. Thank you very much for listening. Plugged In and Switched On is produced by the Splendid Group. Thanks to our executive producers Ruth Holt and Anna Isabelle Canta, and also our MD and founder, Tim Sands.