A new perspective on industrial leadership…

We meet often with industrial leadership teams to help them with their brand identity development as a first step toward more effective marketing. These are engineering, manufacturing and sales professionals who are inclined to modernize their branding and marketing, just as they have modernized their manufacturing operations. They want to identify and remove the “constraints” within these activities, so that they can become true centers of competence in the organization.

Now we’re talking. Bring it on.

However, when it comes to branding and marketing, the constraint for any industrial leadership team is one of perspective. All around the table, each leader will tell you that their products and services are the best. The CEO is also at the table and, suspecting otherwise, suggests the group should take an honest look at how well the organization is communicating, both internally and to customers.

All will nod at the wisdom of this.

And then someone will ask, but how much does a new website cost? And someone else will ask, how much time will brand identity development take away from our work? And sales may suggest, can’t we just quickly retool our old site and use the money for bonus incentives? 

And then in the worst of scenarios, a process quality control manager will assume the task of vendor managing the branding process so as to minimize its intrusion on the leadership team. And now we’re NOT talking.

Therein lies the overwhelming constraint to industrial branding and marketing – an internally focused perspective that impedes an open, honest, collective endeavor to bring forward the company’s more profitable brand identity. Until this constraint is alleviated, a company simply cannot achieve its greater potential in the marketplace.

The constraint of an internal perspective is pervasive among manufacturing companies that have done well enough by staying internally focused on production and selling what is on their product line cards. The internally focused viewpoint that “our people are the best and our products are the best” has worked well enough to get the company this far, so why change?

Why change? CEOs who expect more from their organizations know the answer to this question. An internally focused perspective keeps a good company from contemplating true innovation and genuine customer relationship development. And during leadership discussions around such change, an internally focused perspective does not find urgency in managing down the cost of a new website. Rather, the team joins in the effort to identify and communicate ways the company can solve customer problems and costs.

CEOs know they need this change. It starts from a different perspective.

jb

centrifuge-now.com

Was your company put on this earth for a reason?

The way we are raised matters. Whether the “we” in that sentence means you, your family or the company where you work, how we are raised matters.

I’ve not posted to this blog since my mother died of pancreatic cancer last fall. Just couldn’t get into it. But mom said something to me near the end and after a couple months of thinking about it, her words have prodded this returning note. 

Mom was 91 years old, had been a constant in my life and I somehow thought we had more time. So that weekend when every few hours she opened her eyes to share fewer and fewer words, she was much braver and caring than I knew at the time.

Words take on greater meaning when the person saying them is dying and trying to sum things up for you. But while her words were unfaltering and emphatic, they sounded too familiar to be all that profound. I don’t know what I was expecting when she opened her eyes near the end to gather the energy to say, “God put you on this earth for a reason, John.”

Now that some time has passed to think about it, they were the right words. Regardless one’s faith or philosophy, having a sense of purpose matters. Whether we move through life as individuals or collectively as families, communities or companies, in the end, having a sense of purpose matters. 

You might not think this has much relevance in the realm of industrial manufacturing, where the mantra of building a brand identity is so often without meaning or measure. But if it is your path in life to be a leader of such an organization, then it is important for you to know that the way your company is being raised does matter and there’s not as much time as you think, so start communicating. 

Your people need to know that they and their company are special, that collectively their company has the potential to be great and that it was put on this earth for a reason.

jb

centrifuge-now.com

Has your manufacturing company hit the plateau?

If your company is penny-wise and getting pounded in the marketplace, it may be because your enterprise has hit a plateau of complacency and indecision.

As privately held industrial manufacturing companies mature, they can reach such a plateau, a phase when management becomes contented, risk-adverse, and even deep-down weary of the hunt. For a privately held manufacturer, the plateau phase can make you ripe for acquisition, which can often be in your best interest, rather than see the company you built descend from complacency into failure -- or worse, into mediocrity.

But what happens to an industrial manufacturing company that is not privately held, that has no true owner who can look in the mirror and admit that the company’s leadership has grown contented and risk adverse? Whether publicly or privately held, if your industrial manufacturing company has hit a plateau of underachievement, it could be that this is what needs to happen:

Your company needs to recover its lost identity.

We believe industrial manufacturers are especially challenged to become better marketers, because they often start out with a creative, engineering-guided capacity to solve many problems, but sooner or later, they end up selling a limited line card of “solutions” that are not in sync with a changed marketplace. When the leaders of a company stop asking each other what business they are in, they tend to sell themselves short by selling what they’ve always sold. Branding and marketing are dynamic disciplines, so is engineering, and these disciplines go undeveloped when management insists that selling harder is the way forward. Selling harder, how? Selling to who?

Loss of identity causes a manufacturer to abandon its greater potential in the marketplace, as decisions continue to be made based on an aged understanding of purpose and aged definitions of customer. The underlying emotional driver is fear, not an informed understanding of the company’s key sources of value, not a knowledge of related unmet market needs, and not an excitement for pursuing the greater business potential of the company.

Without a vibrant brand identity to guide organizational change, there can be no market-relevant value definition or market-relevant marketing. There is only the act of apparent management, the making of penny-wise decisions while getting pounded in the marketplace.

jb

www.newmill.com

Industrial leaders must next win the recovery race…

It turns out that surviving the recession was just the first step. Now small to mid-size manufacturers face the challenge of properly scaling up operations so as not to fail during this, the business-critical recovery and renewal phase.

The danger now is that manufacturers will lose control of quality in critical areas of value delivery, they will alienate key customers and lose the recovery race even as the finish line comes into sight. Scaled up operational excellence is demanded at every discipline, from engineering and production, to service and delivery; and scaled up operational excellence must extend to the disciplines of branding, marketing and sales. 

We are talking really, about the people side of industrial manufacturing, the need for brand-believing, highly dedicated employees. We're talking about human resource management and a new level of operational excellence that has been significantly undeveloped before the recession. So what impact will under-developed human capital have now for manufacturers needing to ramp up?

According to a 2013 survey “America’s Workforce: a revealing account of what employees really think about today’s workplace”, 40% said they don’t get the company’s vision or have never seen it. And only 43% said they feel accountable for the company’s revenue, profit, or growth.

The results of the 2012 “American Psychology Association Workforce Retention Survey” revealed that only 56% feel connected to the organization, and only 51% feel their job gives them the opportunity to make a difference. Here are some further statistics characteristic of companies that have “HR” departments, but clearly are lacking in human resource development:

•    55% “not engaged” – do their jobs but are not highly engaged.

•    16% “actively disengaged” – actually work against the best interests of company.

•    29% “highly engaged” – put in extra time, think about their jobs during off-hours, are energized, and generate the most per-employee profit.

When we think about it, the role of HR is as vital to the success of an organization as are engineering, production, sales, marketing and branding. Because it’s all about people striving, believing and being fulfilled by their support for one clearly defined vision, mission and valued brand.

jb

www.centrifuge-now.com

If sales hates marketing, why not the reverse?

Google the following four words: Why sales hates marketing.

What you will find are pages of reasons, a litany of lament. You will find dozens of the top 5 reasons, even more of the top 10 reasons, you will find countless reasons why marketing is not merely disliked but hated by the sales profession.

Now google the following four words: Why marketing hates sales.

What you will find is…not so much. Here and there you will encounter a few rants, but mostly you will find a continuation of the previous essays on why sales-hates-marketing.

What’s going on here? Could it be that marketing does not hate sales? After all these years of alleged conflict and across-the-hall resentment, has such intense “hatred” not been mutual?

No it is not mutual. Marketing generally does not “hate” sales and the reason is simple: Especially in the world of small to mid-size industrial manufacturing, people employed to provide marketing services simply can’t afford to “hate” anyone. They are already under-appreciated and undervalued by the leadership in their organizations and are in no position to wage war with anyone, including the sales staff. So then, what are marketing people doing that is so offensive to the sales people down the hall?

The answer, unfortunately, is that in many small to mid-size manufacturing companies especially, marketing people are simply not allowed to do much marketing.

Marketing has become a misnomer in these companies. What passes for branding and marketing is the reluctant funding of marketing communications, aka “marcom” – rightly regarded as a create-and-update cost center that oversees the manufacturing of web content, catalogs, line cards, brochures and PowerPoint presentations that are all produced from the product sales perspective directed by the VP of Sales and Marketing.

The VP of Sales and Marketing.

In many small to mid-size manufacturing firms, the title VP of Sales and Marketing would seem to point to a very conflicted individual. This has in our experience not been the case. He or she may distrust marketing, but invariably loves sales. The marketing side is barely a distraction. Odds are, the VP of Sales and Marketing came up through the sales ranks and was given the title so as to achieve in a single stroke a genuine measure of employee recognition, followed by an equal measure of payroll cost conservation, followed by a bolted-on measure of insurance that in the event “marketing” were to ever become relevant to the company, well there you go.

Which is how so many small to mid-size industrial manufacturers go -- not as companies uplifted by branding and marketing discipline, but held down by product worship and sales forces deprived of the means to achieve their companies' greater sales potential.

Every time an organization substitutes marcom for branding and marketing, it substitutes sales support with sales appeasement. So the next time you hear someone repeat the old song about how sales people hate marketing, you will know the truth. What sales people hate is branding and marketing done wrong. And they will rightly continue to hate it, so long as top management continues to encourage it.

jb

www.centrifuge-now.com

Develop your brand identity and your sales will follow…

Centrifuge just completed a qualitative research study among specifying design engineers and once again we were reminded of a bedrock truth regarding branding and selling in the industrial sector. Brand image and customer preference go hand-in-hand. When an organization’s leadership works hard to develop and manage the company’s brand identity, sales will follow, and there are two reasons for this:

1. Developing a clear brand identity fosters a clear brand image.

The brand identity of your company is entirely yours to manage. It is your definition of the greater competitive value only your company can deliver. Define this value poorly however, and your company’s brand image becomes devalued. Your brand goes forth by way of a line card, website and sales presentations that may as well be interchangeable with those of your competitors, because from a specifier’s point of view, they are interchangeable.

2. Branding and selling are inseparable disciplines.

Specifying design engineers will not recognize your greater value until you stop selling from your line card and start uncovering the problems (costs) they are experiencing, costs which your core competencies can solve. But if your organization is not guided by this deeper understanding of value definition (value definition being the central function of a highly developed brand identity), then your people will not understand the difference, and your marketplace will never be exposed to your greater value delivery potential.

The reason for this disconnect is one of perspective – yours and not your customer’s. If a specifying engineer can solve a design problem by looking at your line card, they will very likely find the same “solution” from one of your competitors and probably for less cost. But when your company takes the perspective of the customer, you start with a truly consultative understanding of the problems and related costs being experienced by the customer, costs very often yet to be recognized by the customer and his or her organization.

Brand identity development facilitates this greater understanding of value definition and value delivery. But in the absence of this development, all of your marketing communications and sales efforts will continue to sell your company short.

jb

www.centrifuge-now.com

Manufacturers and educators are learning a painful lesson.

This week I participated in a “strategic planning retreat” held by a community college in the Chicago area. Regional business leaders, state and federal professionals were gathered to discuss a monumental problem, which I would describe as the relevance of our educational system to industrial manufacturers and to American enterprise at large.

As those of us gathered for the retreat soon learned, college readiness scores and completion rates are at all time lows. We are living in an age when skilled manufacturing jobs and better jobs in general are going unfilled by the tens of thousands. A generation ago, nearly 75% of employed Americans secured good jobs by having a high school diploma or less. But as of 2007, 59% of employed Americans needed more education than this and the number is projected to reach 65% by 2018. *

Traditionally, community colleges in our country have served as bridges, either to four-year colleges or to skilled employment directly. But today these institutions now find themselves under-performing. And why? Because America’s entire education system is under-performing. As the consortium’s organizers began to outline, the problem of gross educational underachievement can be attacked from several angles, including the legislation of seemingly basic expectations such as are mandated by the new “common core curriculum” requirement, which brings reading and writing back into the educational process.

Mandating literacy is a start, but there’s another approach that can help connect the dots a lot faster, and that’s looking at the problem from an understanding of marketing, branding, and organizational change.

Were we to begin at the beginning, effective marketing (value creation) would compel the education system to think-forward its product (better educated students) at every level, but the system fails on this fundamental first step. During the consortium, we learned that secondary education is focused on adapting to the product (failing students) coming out of elementary education; that post-secondary education is focused on the product (increasingly failing students) coming out of secondary education; and so employers are being asked to take in and train people who are not equipped in the most fundamental of ways: The majority of today’s applicants can’t communicate, collaborate or problem-solve; and they can’t learn on the job, because they did not learn in school the things that are essential to further learning on the job.

The startling revelation here is that America’s education system is lousy at marketing. If you are a manufacturer trying to grow in the real world without ongoing, market-based value creation (as many, smaller, second generation industrial manufacturers are still learning), you will sooner or later become irrelevant to the marketplace and go out of business. This however, has not been the course of a system propped up by tax dollars and a culture of dis-ownership.

Having failed at marketing, the American educational system has consequently failed at branding (value definition). When you look at most any community college or 4-year college admissions brochure from the perspective of an employer, what you see is not value definition, not a path to employability, but a line card of courses leading to course certification and ultimately a degree. Hence, what the system values and measures is not the ability of the student graduate to become highly employable, but the student graduate’s ability to achieve passing scores to get a degree.

Which leads us to the process of organizational change, change that can only come about when educational leaders recognize the roles marketing and branding must play to bring about specific changes at every level, changes that must focus on making each level relevant to the next.

The challenge looms large, both for the American education system and for the industrial manufacturing sectors the education system is supposed to support. We are talking about the need for seismic new changes that will be painfully challenging to institutions that are accustomed to doing what they have always done, because for them effective marketing, branding and organizational change all require a reverse new way of thinking: Forward-thinking.

* Carnevale, A. P., Smith, N., & Strohl, J. (2010). Help wanted: Projections of jobs and education requirements.  Washington, DC: Georgetown University, Center on Education and the Workforce.

jb

www.centrifuge-now.com