Please, fight the urge!

This message is for any senior management members reading my blog. When things have been tough, and you feel like you need to get involved in the day-to-day operations and details of every deal, please don't.

The reason you are in a senior leadership position is because you are expected to guide the ship. You are supposed to set the course, and rely on the team that you put around you to execute on that. One of the most difficult things for sales and marketing teams is when you want to be involved more than ever before. Micromanaging does not work.

The whole thing is counterintuitive actually. When in a good time, you leave the salespeople to do what they need to do. But when things get tough (read: the economy collapses), you suddenly step in and ride to the rescue. But since you haven't been around, you now need to be updated. This basically takes salespeople who are already stretched thin and working incredibly hard out of the field, further limiting their time in front of customers. Every minute they are talking to you, they are not talking to a customer.

Instead of trying to get in on each and every deal, make yourself available when needed, but work to empower your employees. Let them reach out to customers in new ways. Develop tools to help them win more. Set a strategy and direction, and communicate this to the team.

Remember, you put a team of doers around you. These doers are relying on you to be a thinker, and let's be honest, that's what got you to where you are in the first place. I'm not saying sit around and just think about things. But spend your time working on big picture, enabler top projects, not deal to deal minutiae. It just makes things more difficult for all.

Getting Together

Marketing doesn't just take place when you are trying to sell
something to a customers. It happens all the time in a company. You
have to market your ideas to colleagues to get things done. You have
to market yourself to be seen as someone worth listening to. And as
the management team you have to market your strategy to your
employees. To help with this management often engages in the event
known as the "sales meeting".

The sales meeting offers the opportunity to rally the troops, provide
inspiration and guidance, and set the stage for the upcoming future.
Too often though the sales meeting misses on these goals. Why?
Because too often the ideas and thoughts are too grandiose and not
down to the level of the average employee. The ideas and strategies
are not believable because many employees can't relate or are sitting
in the audience feeling cynical that what you say and what you do are
two different things.

If you want to make it believable, make it real. Show how the strategy
has been implemented or how it will affect the average employee.
Understand the needs of this customer and how to satisfy the needs.

A sales meeting takes your sales and marketing teams out of the field
and away from customers. Whatever is covered in this time needs to be
worthwhile and believable. If you are leading the meeting, remember
these needs of your customers.

And to wrap this up, this quote could not have just popped up at a
more timely moment..."treat your employees like customers". It was the
secret to Herb Kelleher's success at Southwest.

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Is Your Marketing "Stop Tivo" good?

One of the greatest things about Tivo is the ability to skip through commercials, to avoid being exposed to advertisements that I don't seek out. The ability to watch only what I want when I want has become so ingrained that about half the time I'm watching a live show, I still pick up the remote and try to fast forward through the ads only to be disappointed, and I bet there are other TiVo users who have done the same thing.

However, I have to admit that right now there are two companies that have me so hooked that I will actually stop the Tivo to watch the commercials; Nike and Apple. Anytime there is a new Mac/PC ad, I stop and watch. And lately, I've gotten caught up in the Kobe/LeBron puppets. The Kobe shoe catching fire made me actually laugh out loud.

Tonight as I was watching TV and fast forwarding through the commercials, I started thinking about how this idea could spread beyond just television advertising and into the broader scope of marketing. It's basically about getting your customers to stop and take notice of what you are doing, to stand out above the crowd (Seth Godin refers to this as the Purple Cow).

This idea definitely ties into my previous post about go big or go home. It is the measuring stick of how good your marketing message is. And the nice thing about the "Stop Tivo" good ideal is that it can be adapted for your audience. For me, Apple's Mac/PC ads are "Stop Tivo Good", but this definitely doesn't apply to everyone. Additionally, it is relevant whether you are talking about B2C or B2B, whether you run large advertising campaigns or not.

When developing campaigns, programs, or the like, ask yourself, "If this was on TV would my target audience stop Tivo to take notice?"

Go Big or Go Home

I've been thinking about how to write this post, and the right phrasing is escaping me, so hopefully the idea comes out and it is not too muddled.

Basically, conservative marketing is no way to advance your position. You can't grow, and you can't change the game if you aren't willing to throw something out there. If you are Microsoft and you want Bing to be huge it has to be bold and different from what Google is doing.

As marketers, we have to realize that our customers are bombarded on a daily basis with messages and camapaigns and the like. They (and you as well) have become very good at filtering these messages. It takes something way outside the norm to get them to notice.

Maybe an example is a better way to look at this. Let's say that you manufacture widgets. And in your widget industry/market, it is standard for all of your customers to offer a 1 year warranty on these widgets. After that, customers can buy a service agreement or have someone else take care of their widget, but for the first year, they are covered. Now, if you were to decide that you would offer a two-year warranty, but only on Widget A and only for a few special customers, does this change the game? Maybe for the lucky few, but is the industry going to now turn to you for your Widgets? And what if you aren't the market leader in widgets? Is this enough to pull people to your side?

Now, what if you decide that every widget now gets this two year warranty? You tell everyone, if you buy my widget, you get this additional warranty! Does that change the game? Or what if suddenly your Widget is upgradeable to a Whatsit?

My point is, what is the point in developing a program if you aren't going to be bold about it, to do something that is going to get noticed and change the game? How can you expect to continue to grow and evolve if you aren't willing to step out and take chances?

As a marketer I try and ask myself if what I'm doing is going to help my company grow, if it is going to change the game, open new markets, help us be successful. If the answer is no, then why am I doing it?