Remembering What Marketing is All About

I hope, for most us, that we’ve known what marketing has really been about all these years.  I’ve thrown this Drucker quote around enough and still, I have found too many marketers (a general term, I know) in big corporations who are bent on the creative, promotional side, cutting off their real efforts at the launch of a campaign, like building a ship and simply pushing it out to sea, leaving it to the mercy of the wind and waves.  Marketing isn’t about design, creative, advertising, etc. Marketing IS the business, and the business must generate revenue.

“Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two–and only two–basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs. Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business.” – Peter Drucker

It seems that small business marketers often get it better than big business marketers.  Let’s take the typical online marketer, for instance.  In the big corporation, the online marketer is optimizing pages, tagging code and doing site research.  They are tracking visitors and clicks and collecting all sorts of information.  The small business online marketer is tracking sales.  That’s the difference.  We’ve let marketing grow to be such a creative outlet, that creative activity has become the end, and its grown and grown, spiraling away from accountability and away from tracking what matters most: sales.

Technology is changing that.  Between marketing analytics programs like Omniture and Unica, we can now entertain ourselves with all sorts of metrics, etc. And with marketing automation systems like Silverpop B2B Engage, Marketo and Eloqua, we can track activities into the funnel.  We can now, more easily than ever, measure the results of a marketing activity from launch, all the way into the funnel and win/loss.

The chasm is closing between sales and marketing.  Technology is moving us marketers closer and closer back to direct accountability for revenue generation.  The only thing holding us back is ourselves, as “marketers”. I think we ought to change the term. I think we ought to call ourselves “Revenue Generators”.

I had a good talk with a friend about some of their marketing practices at their high-end management consulting firm.  I noticed that their site, approach and positioning had changed several times over the last year, and each time it became less clear and less open.  He told me that they had let their original marketing director go last year, and that’s why it changed. When I asked why they let him go, his answer was a simple, and striking, tell-tale of the landscape that we marketers venture today:

“He didn’t tie himself to sales, so the Principals couldn’t see how all the great things he was doing was impacting the business.”

And that, is that.

What does the CEO do, anyway?!

Sometimes we elevate our posts above the necessity for work. CEOs in small companies need not try and emulate their peers, but focus on rolling up the sleeves as opposed to piling up the reports.

What do CEOs do?  Honestly.  What do they do?  I see so many companies that are not big enough for a whole host of chief executives, VPs, Directors, etc., yet they have a “Chief” of all those executives, and I wonder as I watch them throughout the week, “What the heck is that CEO spending his/her time on?”  Ready to grow,  they often go hire a VP, Sales and a VP, Marketing and a VP, IT / CIO, VP / CFO and a COO and all those guys end up being 1/5th – /10th of the business, and if all the members of this team are taking care of the work, then what in the world is the CEO doing?  What they ought to be doing is working, but what they end up doing is sticking their nose in everyone’s business, making decisions that aren’t theirs to make and messing up the work.

Look CEOs, when you have layers of management stacked on top of a workforce, then the CEO has a full time job doing things like meeting with his reports, giving them the air-cover they need for their stewardships, checking alignment with vision and strategy and continuing to build the Sr. team.  But when you are in the 80 – 95% of the other companies out there, your job is to get business in the door, and too many of you are simply not doing it. Yes, I know you need to massage the board, manage key stakeholder relationships, etc., but what is happening is you have guys like CMOs that you keep kicking out every 18 months because frankly, you don’t know what the heck you are doing and you have abdicated your job over to them.

I know a CEO of a tech company that has vision, passion and knows how to close deals and build relationships in a multitude of channels.  So, what does he do?  He hires a VP of sales.  Now, when they have weekly sales meetings, the CEO is in there, asking all the questions, driving the meeting and essentially, being the VP of Sales.  What does the VP of Sales do?  Tells him to, “Let me do what you hired me to do and stay out of it”.  Good move VP, Sales, I’d tell him that to.  So the CEO now spends half his energy biting his tongue and the other half… elsewhere, out of the office – I don’t know what he’s doing.

Finally, after sales declined and management overhead went up, it came time to say, “Listen, you are the CEO, that means that you are in charge of sales, and quite frankly, you are the guy who should be leading sales.  This company isn’t big enough to have all this extra weight.  You should be selling and leading this organization with vision and passion.  Let a sales director do your training, etc.  But you go and close deals.  If you don’t want to lead sales, then get a territory and work under him for cryin’ out loud.”  And of course, nothing happened.  Layoffs came and went.  And came and went.  And came and went.

And just recently, they let go of their VP, Sales and now the CEO is leading it and selling it. Now I know what the CEO does every day; He doesn’t just worry about revenue, he helps bring it in the door.

Same with Marketing. I know another CEO that just let go of his VP, Marketing, and while I could go into all the reasons why, the truth is that the CEO ought to be the VP, Marketing and he did himself and the old VP a disservice by layering someone where they didn’t belong.  Now they are probably going to go after a new VP, Marketing, but what this CEO doesn’t know yet is that what he really wants are a couple of marketing directors reporting to him and giving him all the information that he wants.  But of course, this CEO came from a $500 million company, and now he’s running a $27 million company with only a couple of million in profits.  This isn’t the big corporation anymore – this is time to get off your rear end, out of meetings and start rolling up your sleeves and doing the work.

Look, this is just my opinion, but I think it comes down to this:  If you find your company needs more revenues, really needs them, and you are sitting around analyzing reports and talking to the board and trying to figure out how you are going to do it – then you may be the wrong person for the job.  Now is the time to pitch-in and bring revenue in, not manage the people who do.  When you have enough revenues that you don’t need to be in an urgent and panic state of operations, then you back up and pull out your Mont Blanc and figure out which documents need to be signed and where you’ll put your washroom with the golden key.  Until then, win business or drive revenue.

A great business man that once took me to the bank and the wood shed at the same time, taught me a valuable lesson:  Your first priority every day is creating revenue today.  Your second priority is creating revenue for tomorrow.  Your third priority is positioning the business for revenue creation beyond today and tomorrow.  The last priority is to make sure the necessary but non-value added things you need to keep your doors open get done.  Anything after that is a hobby.

The Business of BANT

I am amazed at how many sales and marketing organizations that I come across that lack defined process, and in doing, lack the ability to manage and improve their own operations.  In the past 15 years, I have been in marketing and sales organizations throughout the world, both small and Global 2000 in scope, and it never fails to astonish me at how much they lack a simple, common set of criteria for prospect evaluation. Of those that do, few use a nomenclature that is enforced and consistently applied throughout the funnel and across the organization.

Enter BANT: an acronym that, I believe, was introduced to the world through IBM (please correct me if I am wrong).  While I have met a ton of sales professionals who know about BANT and give me the, “Yeah” head-nod and twist of the face that means, “I consider those things with my prospects, who doesn’t?”, very few cognitively use it and measure their activity with it  (That’s the thing about successful sales people – few know why they are successful or what they are doing that really drives success).

Whether you acutally use the acronym BANT or some other tool, the question is: do you have a set of clear criteria that is codified, articulated and implemented across your organization? Its not enough to rely on the “gut instinct” of your sales pros – challenge that instinct and ask them something along the lines of the following:

• Does the prospect / prospect organization have Budget, or will they have it in an acceptable timeframe for us to work with them?
• Are we working with the right Authority(ies) in the organization that can actually purchase the product?  How do you know?
• Does the prospect organization / individual have a matching Need with our product / solution?
• Is the prospect’s Timeframe to purchase an acceptable one for us to be spending our time with them?

Now, there are a couple of key considerations to point out when working the enterprise and/or complex sale.  The first is from a sales management point, that it is not enough to ask those questions.  In fact, you may not want to ask those questions at all, but get at them from a different angle, such as, “What kind of budget do they have at this time, and what are their spending plans for it? Is someone competing for that money?”  Asking questions such as these puts the team on the spot to really learn what the purchasing situation of the prospect is.  I have heard too many sales leaders (and I am even talking VPs of Global Sales) that glance over these, rather than using this as an opportunity for not only accurate forecasting, but mentoring, training and modeling sales skills to their organizations. My favorite question is “How do you know?”.  Simple, straight forward and cuts through the salesman two-step.

The second point of using BANT in a B2B role, is that you may need to be following multiple BANTS: one for each contact and one for each account, perhaps each opportunity if you are selling multiple products into large accounts.  You may have an individual that has 3/4 BANT in the system, or even full BANT, but because we know that it is never just one person making the purchasing decision in an organization, the account or opportunity may not be at full BANT yet.

The second, and equally important part of BANT is that it is not simply for sales, but for marketing as well.  We must let go of the days where marketing activity is merely creative outlet and flashy campaigns. Marketing exists for one reason and one reason only: to get sales.  And with the dramatic change in the purchasing process over the last 30 years, marketing in most organizations has become the sales team.

It’s marketing’s role to manage those inquiries and suspects and begin to score them based on their BANT position, creating messaging, communications, interaction and conversations that move prospects towards full BANT, and there is a way to do that, because not all BANT is equal.

If I have to choose, I’ll take no customer service

Not the kind of crowd a business needs on Saturday night.

This is Hollywood video in my neck of the woods, on a Saturday night, about 6 pm. This is the time that the place should be full of people, grabbing their evening’s entertainment.  I don’t know if the picture shows just how large and empty the parking lot is, but there is nobody there.  No, it’s not closed.  It’s just not wanted any more. It’s paying the price of a rapidly outdated business model and ineffective customer relationships (do you see the link between the two?). Most businesses probably won’t realize that the latter feeds their ills, but in reality, it does.

Lets play a little “If you give a mouse a muffin”, an exercise in systemic thinking.

If your business model is stagnating, it’s probably because you are not keeping up with and thinking ahead of stakeholder needs. If you’re not keeping up with stakeholder needs, it’s probably because you are not communicating well with them. If you are not communicating well with them, you probably have ineffective customer relationships. And, of course, if you have that, then you have a declining business model. And the cycle continues.

I’m sure that 10 out of 10 marriage counselors will tell you that communication is the underlying cause for relationship failures.  Communication is not merely message-sending.  We’ve all met too many managers that think that just because they ‘told’ you, you should know.  Look how many businesses do the same with their customers.  There are strict guidelines, policies and corporate departments that drive and enforce branding. But behind the look and feel is the experience that really makes the brand.  And customer service is the front-line infantry in the war for acquisition, retention and loyalty.

So, we took this picture on our way to the redbox at the grocery store.  My wife looked at the Hollywood Video and commented that we could probably get a video there for free, and I replied that there was no way that I was going to go there (You see, we had a bit of a customer service experience there in the past and I decided then and there that I would never give them another dollar).  In complete agreement, she said,

“If I have to choose between no customer service and lousy customer service, I’ll take no customer service.”

And I echoed the thought.  I mean really, with no customer service from a machine, at least my expectations are met.  I’d rather meet my expectations than be let down.