Charlie Whyman
Most B2B marketing teams are busy and unfocused. Pipelines stall because campaigns chase activity rather than customer insight, and commercial leaders cannot connect marketing spend to revenue with any confidence. The pressure now is to run marketing as a disciplined commercial system, not a creative function bolted onto sales.
Charlie Whyman is a B2B commercial leader and creator of the OTTER Framework who helps organisations turn customer curiosity into structured marketing decisions and revenue.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Charlie Whyman
- A working B2B marketing operating model. The OTTER Framework gives commercial teams a five-step planning structure that ties objectives to tools, training, expectations and review, used inside her consultancy and her current managing director role.
- Operator credibility, not consultant theory. She runs a specialised aviation services business as managing director of TGIS Aviation, so her commercial advice lands as something already being applied at the top of a P&L.
- A point of view on customer curiosity as a commercial discipline. Her podcast, The Curiosity Key, and her speaker work argue that better questioning of customers is the input that most B2B marketing teams skip and most commercial strategies depend on.
- A direct route into the experience of women leading in male-dominated commercial sectors. She has built her career across automotive, mining, shipping and aviation, and speaks credibly to organisations trying to move that conversation past slogans.
Biography highlights
- Managing Director, TGIS Aviation Ltd, appointed 2024
- Founder, Curious B2B Marketing, 2017
- Creator of the OTTER Framework, a five-step B2B marketing planning system
- Host, The Curiosity Key podcast
- Founder, Palmavera, an award-winning Sardinian olive oil business, 2006
- Keynote speaker, BHBIA Annual Conference 2025
Biography
Most B2B marketing functions are full of activity and short of insight. Campaigns get built before customer questions get asked. That gap is what Whyman has spent the last decade attacking, first through her consultancy Curious B2B Marketing and now through the OTTER Framework, a five-step planning structure that forces objectives, tools, training, expectations and review into one commercial conversation.
She is unusual in pairing that practitioner work with an operating role. In 2024 she was appointed Managing Director of TGIS Aviation, a UK firm specialising in airworthiness management for aircraft and engine owners. The appointment came from inside the client base, after she ran the growth strategy as a consultant. It puts her on the board of a niche commercial business while she continues to teach and speak.
Her career sits across sectors most marketers avoid: automotive, mining, shipping and aviation. She founded an award-winning Sardinian olive oil business in 2006, weathered redundancy twice, and built Curious B2B Marketing in 2017. She hosts The Curiosity Key podcast, where the recurring argument is that intentional curiosity about customers is the cheapest, most under-used commercial input available to B2B leaders.
For organisations, the value is direct. She is a serving managing director with a structured method, a clear position on what marketing is for, and the lived experience of a woman leading in industries that do not naturally make space for her. She talks to commercial teams as one of them, and to leadership audiences as someone who has just come from the P&L.
Key speaking topics
- B2B marketing strategy and operating systems
- Customer curiosity as a commercial discipline
- Sales and marketing alignment for commercial leaders
- Courage and action in career and commercial decisions
- Women leading in male-dominated industries
- Growth strategy in specialist B2B firms
Ideal for
- CMOs, marketing directors and B2B commercial leaders
- CEOs and managing directors of specialist or technical SMEs
- Sales and marketing leadership teams under pressure to prove pipeline impact
- Industry conferences in engineering, manufacturing, life sciences and aviation
Audience outcomes
- A clear test for whether a current marketing plan is built on customer insight or assumption
- The OTTER Framework as a working structure for B2B marketing planning
- A sharper position on how curiosity, questioning and customer research feed commercial strategy
- Practical language for talking about courage and action when career or commercial decisions stall
- A perspective on visibility and influence for women operating in male-dominated commercial environments
Talks
A keynote on why action, not confidence, is the precondition for commercial and career progress.
Key takeaways:
- How fear shows up inside commercial decisions and stalls leaders and teams
- A reframing of courage as the disciplined first step rather than the absence of doubt
- A practical method for moving forward through uncertainty in business contexts
A talk on using structured customer curiosity as the engine of B2B marketing performance.
Key takeaways:
- A five-step process for grounding marketing decisions in customer insight
- Where most B2B teams skip the curiosity step and what it costs them in pipeline
- How to convert customer questioning into focused, commercial campaigns
A talk for professionals who are the minority voice in their commercial environment.
Key takeaways:
- How to position difference as a commercial asset rather than a barrier
- Building advocacy networks inside organisations that were not designed around you
- Practical patterns for speaking up in technical, male-dominated rooms