WEALTH May 30, 2026 0 Comments

Why CPM UK & Ireland CEO Lorraine Butler’s Radical Take on Authenticity Could Revolutionize Your Business Strategy Overnight

Ever wonder how a CEO balances the art of people management with the chaos of constant travel and family life? Lorraine Butler, the powerhouse leading CPM UK & Ireland, spills the beans on just that — juggling client visits, nurturing a sprawling family farm, and steering a 40-year-old sales and customer experience agency into the future. From being the eldest of eight girls in Laois to shaking up a traditionally male-dominated industry, Butler’s journey is anything but ordinary. With a computer science twist and a knack for breaking down hierarchies — she’s not your typical CEO. Curious how she turns challenges into triumphs, and what legacy she’s determined to leave? Let’s dive into the mind and methods of a leader who’s as much about people as she is about profits.

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CPM UK & Ireland CEO Lorraine Butler talks to Sarah Freeman about her management style at the sales and customer experience agency, how she copes with time away from her family and the legacy she would like to leave at the firm

Over coffee in the Dylan Hotel in Dublin’s Ballsbridge, Lorraine Butler radiates energy and a deep interest in people.

The vivacious businesswoman will take a flight to the UK later today for client visits, which make up the majority of her time as CEO of CPM UK & Ireland.

She tells me about the early challenges of her time at CPM, the considerable differences between leadership in the UK and Ireland and the life she has built on the family farm.

“I just tend to immerse myself in a company and I’m pretty loyal. I love working,” Butler says, referencing the 10 years-plus she has spent with sales outsourcing and customer experience agency CPM.

She knows first-hand that good working environments make for longevity of service. In 2022, she took on the role of CEO of UK & Ireland. Before joining CPM, she was with eir for 14 years.

The eldest of eight girls, Laois native Butler originally planned to be a teacher and embarked on an arts degree in University College Dublin, where she spent two years.

“I hated it. I was lonely and I felt I needed a smaller classroom environment. I took the year out and thought, ‘what do I want to do?’ I have a logical brain, I love seeing how things connect and network. So computer science was where I threw my hat in the ring. And I absolutely loved it.”

After living in Dublin for 20 years, Butler and her husband ultimately decided to build a house on her family homestead.

“We’ve all moved back home [to Laois] and a few of us have built homes on the farm. The furthest sister is seven kilometres away. She married another farmer who had his own farm.”

Butler and her husband have a five-year-old son who, in turn, has 17 cousins. It’s exactly the life she wanted for him.

“It’s fabulous. Mammy and Daddy are young, they’re both 71 and they live 200 yards from us,” she says.

Being surrounded by family makes it marginally easier to spend time away.

“I love being in Dublin and London, but then you drive through the countryside [and] the peace and tranquility is just …”

CPM International has 28 offices worldwide and Butler is in charge of those in the UK and Ireland. “The two offices in Ireland and two in the UK make up half the value of the group. It’s the biggest part of the business.”

“The business” is a sales outsourcing and customer experience agency. Essentially, CPM provides sales teams for brands.

“People might ask why companies wouldn’t want to have their own team directly. Well, our clients are brilliant at, say, brewing beer or consumer electronics or telco. We’re brilliant at hiring, developing and nurturing great salespeople.

“I spend most of my time on the road,” she says, noting that while 300 staff are office-based in the UK and 50 in Ireland, the rest of the 3,500 people are on the road, in client offices.

“It means I can understand the culture and dynamic of their business. I then work with my teams to say what style of person and team is going to fit this brand.”

CPM International has many competitors. In Ireland alone, there are over 90 agencies doing similar work. Butler believes there is enough business for everyone.

“I genuinely believe that, and I’d like to think we’ve got good relationships with our competitors, because we’re all here to do the same thing.”

CPM’s USP is the heft of heritage they boast.

“We’re the oldest and longest at what we’ve been doing. We were the first agency in Ireland, set up to serve Mars 40 years ago.”

Now, as part of the Omnicom group, they have scale and expertise behind them. “That also brings assurances with technology. We’re always evolving the latest tech to bring to our salespeople,” Butler says.

So how did the computer science graduate find herself leading CPM UK & Ireland?

Butler spent 14 years with eir, leading the enterprise and government market division and ultimately the only woman on its leadership team.

“Very similar to what I’m doing now, leading relationships with the biggest companies in Ireland, but it was always men. I was facing off against very few women,” she says.

When the opportunity arose to run a company with CPM, she saw the potential of what she could do.

“I had to give myself a kick and say, ‘come on Lorraine, just take a shot here’ and it was the best decision I ever made. As much as I loved eir, I can run [CPM] end to end, and I have made a good impact.”

Starting off as the company’s first female managing director 10 years ago was not easy, however.

“For the first six months, genuinely, a lot of customers refused to return my calls. It’s 100 per cent true. I thought, ‘how am I going to overcome this?’ So I sought out the women’s network in retail. There wasn’t one, so we set up one.

“I reached out to a couple of people who I knew were instrumental, good, influential people in retail, and we did some research. [It] showed that less than 6 per cent of women were in [a] boardroom position. Extraordinary statistics, hopefully totally different now.

“We asked if they would be willing to share their experiences with other groups of women. On the back of that, I then started having business relationships with those women. They were the decision-makers for my customers, so they started to return my calls.”

It wasn’t all so straightforward.

“One day, I asked one of our [male] customers, ‘why haven’t you returned any of my calls?’ He answered, ‘Sure why would I, you haven’t a clue what you’re doing and you’re a woman.’”

Butler responded, “Well, I am a woman and I can’t do anything about that, but I certainly know what I’m doing. And I said, ‘I mightn’t know your industry, but I’m never going to get to know what it is unless you give me a chance’.”

Some shouting followed, Butler says, but ultimately he appreciated that style of directness and they just sat down and started to work through the issues.

Other aspects of the business surprised her too, namely the myriad differences between the UK and Ireland, including the issue of talent attraction and retention.

“In Ireland, we’re at full employment more or less. People are moving roles much more frequently than they’ve ever done before. So you have to back all the investment in training and development of that talent, and that takes time,” she says.

“In the UK, there’s an influx of graduates looking for work, and we’re getting some really good talent because we’ve got loads of work for them.

“Holistically, the UK employment market is more challenged. The cost of living [there] is far tougher than Ireland. We’ve got great momentum in Ireland, despite everything we’re seeing recently with fuel challenges.”

Her modus operandi comes across differently in the UK too. Asked how her teams might describe her, Butler says colleagues in Ireland would call her an Energizer Bunny, not hierarchical and focused on people to the core.

Lorraine Butler Chief Executive Officer, UK & Ireland, CPM. Picture Jason Clarke

“Genuinely, people are the most important thing in any company. In the UK they would think I’m not hierarchical enough, that I’m ‘too into people’.

“My style when I went in [was] I wanted to go directly to talk to people, not to go through the chain of command. Ithink there’s too many links in that chain, and that’s also prevalent across lots of UK companies. Accountability can be spread very thin in a hierarchical organisation.”

As for the future, Butler says she has high hopes for continued growth. “We’re 40 years in Ireland and we’ve grown five-fold since I started. I’d like to leave a legacy of resilience and progress, where people really trust CPM and they know that we’ll do what we say we’re going to do. If you don’t have underlying trust, it’s all short-lived.”