-
"Just because you can market doesn't mean that you have automatically found
a real market."
-
"Just because you have identified a real market, doesn't mean that you can
market effectively to it."
 As
a concept – even as a function – marketing is so... well, so squishy.
Right? "VP of Marketing." Yeah, sure. What do those people
really do
all day? Good golfers, I suppose. OK, so that's not the story.
But what is? Everybody knows that marketing has something to do with
advertising. In fact, they are often lumped together ("marketing" is
erroneously substituted as a more highfallutin term for "advertising").
But the two are truly different functions. Marketing is the broad process of
getting your company positioned so that the messages and content
communicated by its advertising will then be (1) received positively and (2)
understood accurately and (3) accepted as valid. Those three steps are
related but they are each distinct. If this still sounds fuzzy,
re-read the paragraph and think about it before proceeding further.
Exhibit 2
Your
Promotional "cash flow"
To date this much actual
cash has been spent to develop our product $
Next year, we would like to
have $
from sales of this product.
Advertising.
In our industry,
Advertising Age reports that established companies in our
product/market area typically have an advertising budget that is
equal to % of their targeted sales.
Product introduction. If we are introducing a new product,
we believe (or we are advised) that we must spend
% more than this "steady state" ratio of advertising
for Year 1.
Company
positioning.
Especially if our company
has not already advertised other products extensively (i.e., if
our company is brand new), then we believe (we are
advised) that we must allocate
% on top of the above advertising budget in order to
establish the company's credibility and visibility in the
market. This, plus other activities plus certain parts
of our staff cost, define the company's Marketing
requirement.
Overall promotional program.
We are willing
and able to commit $
actual cash to next year's promotional program. This
will be used in stages as follows:
1st quarter
$
2nd quarter
$
3rd quarter
$
4th quarter
$
We will define target sales
revenue results by quarter. Here’s what we think should
happen:
1st quarter
$
2nd quarter
$
3rd quarter
$
4th quarter
$
“Cash-flow”
for the year's sales program, therefore, should look something
like this:
|
|
1st quarter |
2nd quarter |
3rd quarter |
4th quarter |
Year
|
|
Targeted Sales
Revenue |
$ |
$ |
$ |
$ |
$ |
|
Budgeted
Marketing Expense |
$ |
$ |
$ |
$ |
$ |
|
Budgeted
Advertising Expense |
$ |
$ |
$ |
$ |
$ |
|
Budgeted Selling
Expense |
$ |
$ |
$ |
$ |
$ |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Net Cash-Flow
Contribution |
$ |
$ |
$ |
$ |
$ |
Suggestion: No
later than 15 days prior to the end of each quarter, you should
make a specific decision as to how you will continue your
program in the subsequent quarter. In other words, if it’s
working, you may wish to accelerate your commitment of sales
resources. If your results for a given quarter are less
than what has been targeted, you may or may not wish to cut back
or terminate the effort in the subsequent quarter. You
could decide instead to increase your efforts.
But whatever you do will be
the result of a conscious decision related to an
explicit appreciation of the facts as they then exist.
You will not simply be drifting along and hoping for the best.
Although the process of
marketing may be diffuse and although the actual techniques of
marketing widely differ from one company to another, the objectives
of marketing remain remarkably constant. Trade shows,
authoring papers, and attending industry meetings, making speeches,
serving on committees, and community projects can all be part of a
marketing program. Making your entity visible in a positive
setting is the key concept behind marketing. Marketing is not
selling or advertising your specific product or service. Each
of those functions must be budgeted and pursued in its own terms.
Marketing is different. For example, by writing this paper I
am engaged in marketing the entity with which I am associated.
I am specifically not advertising the activities of the entity nor
am I selling you anything. Notice that the content of this
paper has nothing directly to do with what my particular
organization does as its business activity (i.e., investing
long-term equity capital in promising young ventures).
However, you, as the reader, end up able at least to form some
initial attitudes about my organization as a result of reading this
paper. The way I write and the way I handle ideas provide you
with a basis for forming certain expectations and attitudes about my
organization. Hopefully, these are positive.
Both the message content and the
methods of marketing are different than the message and methods used
in advertising. Both functions are critical to success.
But they are different. For more information about Marketing,
the Entrepreneurs' Forum of Greater Philadelphia offers a paper
called
The 4-1/2
Marketing Issues that Entrepreneurs Absolutely Must Get Right.
For more information, contact the
Forum.
|
Job Hunting 101:
A Model of the Selling
Process When the "Product" is You
In the National Business
Employment Weekly, the best single article I ever
read about finding a job began with a paragraph
containing 100 words. The first 99 were “no” and
the 100th word
was “yes.”
The article went on
to explain that this paragraph is a model of the
job-hunting process. It also struck me as a model of the
selling process and of pursuing lots of other novel
things worth
achieving.
The article’s author
observed that most job-hunters mistakenly develop a
“conservative” strategy that they believe to be more
“efficient” and respectful of their limited time, their
limited energies, and their finite resource. But
if their goal is to minimize the elapsed time required
in their search process, then, paradoxically, their
strategy turns out to be exactly the opposite
of what they should be doing.
After a handful of
enthusiastic initial
“try-everything/respond-to-every-opportunity” efforts,
most job-hunters say to themselves something like “Hey,
this is nuts. If I focus my resources on
qualifying opportunities more thoroughly before
I present myself at the door, I should be able to
increase the probability of
being successful
and really ending up with something that represents a
good ‘fit’ for my skills and interests and the way
others are likely to see me as an asset.” Flawless
logic; lousy outcome.
Job-hunting involves
a process that satisfies all the criteria of being a
complex system (multi-variant, fluid interaction, not
all factors being knowable; most factors being well
beyond the control of the “central” player, i.e., the
job-seeker). It is axiomatic that complex systems
function counter-intuitively.
Given this insight
(taken here on faith), it follows that one does not want
to attempt to focus on a specific type of situation or
attempt to pre-qualify any particular opportunity
(what-the-hell are you really going to be able to find
out beforehand, anyway?) or even (dare one admit it to
oneself?) try to avoid being rejected once again.
Because you cannot,
by definition, have any meaningful information about
just how long the search process will take (absolutely
the only thing you can possibly know with any certainty
is that when you have found the right “fit” the process
will be over), it follows that your only
sound strategy is to attempt to get rejected as
frequently and as rapidly as possible. Your
“success rate” at being rejected constitutes the only
bona fide measure of your making true progress in the
search process.
To grasp what this
means, start filling out the chart on page 6 (99 “No"s
followed by that lovely “Yes”). If you use this as
a log of your activities and as a guide to your
strategy, it will also serve, automatically, as an index
(and as a concrete indicator to you) of
your actual progress. Trust me. It changes
your whole outlook... makes you think straight... turns
you into a
creative
strategist again. And if you hit a rough spot
along the way, as Miles observed to Joel in Risky
Business, sometimes you just gotta take a break and
say “Screw it! Ya know?"
This "model" of the
job hunting process applies to "regular" selling as well
(see Exhibit 3) |
Page 1 <<< Page 2
>>> Page 3
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