The Illusion of Communication

Earlier today, I read a post on Seth Godin’s blog about Follow Through. He asks:

Why do you need to follow through so much on a tennis or golf swing? After all, the ball is long gone.

Why do you have to honor a money back guarantee with a former customer who is never going to buy from you again (and it’s six years later)?

Mr. Godin suggests that follow through prevents you from sliding down a slippery slope.

If you know that the last two inches of your follow through don’t matter, then you’ll start slowing down at three inches, or even four, and suddenly it does matter. If you draw the line on money back guarantees you’ll keep sliding backwards, bit by bit, until it does matter.

I continued to think about this as I was driving out to a sandwich shop for lunch. There was something in what he was saying that felt right, even familiar, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. On the radio, I heard an interview with a football player, talking about how this year was going to be much more successful than last year. Why? Because they changed their focus. They used to focus on how to do things, but that didn’t result in a winning season. They were going to go back to the way they used to do things, years ago, when they were a perennial winner, when they focused on how they got things done and didn’t worry so much about what they were doing.

Something started to click for me. Of course! You have to look at the bigger picture. Motives matter; the culture in which things are accomplished matter. If you can only win with team work, it doesn’t matter if you are individually doing all the right things. In fact, if you are doing certain things wrong but with the right motive (e.g., motivated to work as a team and not for your own personal glory), you might have a better chance to succeed.

This theme continued for me during my lunch. I am listening to Creating Customer Evangelists, by Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba (coincidently — or perhaps not — Seth Godin did the Foreward for the audiobook). The second part of the book profiles several customer-centric companies and how they create customer evangelists. While I was eating my Nada Chicken Parmesan, I listened to the section on one of these companies, the Dallas Mavericks of the NBA.

The NBA has been having attendance decline for several years on end, yet the Mavericks, owned by Mark Cuban, a flamboyant, energetic billionaire, have been increasing their ticket sales ever since Cuban took the team over in 2000. The root cause of the NBA attendance problem, according to Cuban, is the corporate culture of the NBA. Cuban is quoted in the book as saying:

You have to set the culture because that’s how people make decisions. If you don’t know what your culture is and what your rewarded for and what’s respected and expected then you’ll make mistakes when you let people make judgments. Then, you get all sorts of autocratic environments that don’t succeed.

In other words, you have to set things up properly, and then you have to follow through. If you are going to have a customer-centric culture, you have to honor a money back guarantee with a former customer who is never going to buy from you again (and it’s six years later).

One of the things I’ve been educating my clients about is writing business plans. Many of the initial drafts that are brought to me detail why they are in business and how they plan on making a profit. This makes sense. But I always turn this around and ask them: why should your customers care? They don’t really care that you’re making a profit. But they do have an interest in your success if you are going to help them succeed. Thus, write the business plan from the perspective of your customer.

I don’t know a single person who can just flip a switch and change their behavior from self-centered to customer-centered. It has to be part of the culture. It has to be in every thought before you meet the customer. And it has to be in your follow through.

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What’s wrong with your marketing? First off, you might not be using it properly. This problem is pervasive and undermines many a marketing program. The problem is that not many people know what marketing is. And how can you use your marketing if you don’t know what it is supposed to do?

What is Marketing?

If you were to ask the average person to define marketing, you will likely hear that marketing is advertising. It is, after all, the most common form of marketing we encounter.

You may also hear that marketing is sales and that it is the responsibility of marketing to acquire and retain customers. Acquiring new customers is full of accolades and glory. It’s elephant hunting. It’s big reward and high risk.

Retaining customers usually is somewhere down the priority list. Why? Because marketing to new customers is sexy. It’s the thrill of the chase: Land the big game; out smart the competition. You don’t get famous on Madison Avenue for retaining customers. But your name might be recited as part of the company lore if you land the big new client.

You might also hear someone describe marketing as something that only works for the large, deep-pocketed companies. Sure, marketing is expensive, but that’s because advertising is expensive. In fact, we expect marketing to cost big bucks. Many studies show that advertising only works when it is used consistently and repeatedly.

With such budgets come expectations. Its a vicious cycle. Marketing must produce results now, and spending money is a tangible result of doing something. Marketing is largely defined by the size of its budget. After all, you have to get noticed, and how can you get noticed and bring in the new big elephants if you don’t have a budget? Today’s economy is rich with choices. How does any product or service stand out from its competition? A Google search for “real estate agent in Austin, TX” returns 4,799 results. Can you say “competition?”

The Basics of Marketing

The modern-day view of marketing was defined in the 1960s by E. Jerome McCarthy. He reduced marketing to four major activities: Product, Price, Promotion, and Placement. These four elements are often referred to as the marketing mix, and is still widely taught in college classrooms.

This concept is representative of how most people think of marketing. But marketing is much more that the Four Ps. Marketing is much more than advertising. Marketing is — as Obi-Wan Kenobi might say — all round us. And there is a dark side and a good side.

What Marketing Can Be

Marketing can be glamorous, but the successful companies know that it requires a lot of hard work, and big thinking. While many believe that acquiring and retaining customers is one of the responsibilities of marketing, the most successful companies share this responsibility among all departments. Acquiring and retaining customers is a vision and a culture that permeates everything the company does and starts from the top of the organization. But it does not come from one specific group.

Marketing is usually expensive, but it doesn’t have to be. It costs about 5 times less to get an existing customer to come back for more than it is to get new customers. Yet, acquiring new customers is like hunting big game. It’s exciting and people recognize your success, if for no other reason than it is obvious you succeeded. Retaining customers is like gathering nuts and berries or keeping a garden. No one really knows you are doing it until they sit at the table, ready to eat. It’s hard work but ultimately produces consistent, healthy results.

The modern-day view of marketing was defined in the 1960s by E. Jerome McCarthy. He reduced marketing to four major activities: Product, Price, Promotion, and Placement. These four elements are often referred to as the marketing mix, and is still widely taught in college classrooms.

Marketing is usually based on the Four Ps, a concept born before the advent of ecommerce and online collaboration. But it doesn’t have to be the entire strategy. Marketing is about reputation, processes, operations, image, quality, and all the intangibles that people know exist but have difficulty articulating.

In large companies, marketing is usually about getting the bigger budget so you can run more advertisements and generate more leads. But getting customers to solve problems isn’t high on the priority list of many marketing departments. What if we switched those priorities?

Many business environments these days punish risk and make the marketing department the scapegoat for stupid decisions. Marketing today is based on 1960s principals. What’s taught in a college marketing class? It’s the four Ps: Product, Place, Price, and Promotion.

But what about word of mouth? What about customer-centric programs? What about making sure your customers are well taken care of? Some believe that the reason a business exists is for profit. The successful companies know that they are in business for the customers. If they treat their customers right, they will be rewarded with profit.

And if you use your marketing wisely, you may be able to create a culture that treats your customers with the attention they deserve. And you will be rewarded for that.

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