Honesty really is the best policy, whether in branding or in government or most any other social endeavor. In the B2B marketplace, a company must not make promises that its organization is not prepared to keep, and this is what brand identity development is all about. There really is a process to this. Business leadership starts with an understanding of the company’s greater value potential, an understanding that guides organizational alignment and strategic marketing in the context of a given market segment’s related unmet needs. This is rather straightforward stuff.
If only political leadership worked this way.
As a small business owner, I can attest that government has not been kind to business. The state of Illinois has been especially adversarial. So I have been quite persuaded by the republican refrain that the democratic agenda is the growth of government by way of a tax-and-spend mindset. But notice now, how the republicans are hitting the airwaves, announcing a new “Pledge to America”. In their every rehearsed statement, whichever newfound republican “leader” is being introduced, you hear this united explanation for their total, foot-dragging, in absentia throughout the beginning, middle and final closeout to this recession: It turns out the reason republicans have been so divided, divisive and irrelevant when their country needed them is because all this time…
“We were listening to the American people.”
Honesty is the best policy in business leadership, because the intelligence of B2B customers is understood and respected. Not so in politics, where would-be “leaders” are incapable of overestimating the intelligence of voters.
jb
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
An old warning about changing the rules…
If you are a small to mid-size US manufacturer, government “stimulus” money is a foreign concept: Foreign, as in not relevant; foreign, perhaps even as not American; but more properly, foreign as in mucking up the laws of free market enterprise.
The argument in favor of a government stimulus is that just like in FDR days, stimulus money builds roads and bridges, putting people to work. But as economists are now disclosing about the “New Deal” days, for every $10 million dollars spent on work programs, $10 million in tax money investments were diverted away from jobs elsewhere as a free market would naturally decide. Using tax dollars to fund more bridge workers got those folks jobs, but other jobs were either displaced or destroyed.
My firm helps marketers market, build brand identity, communicate, sell and grow market share. On this playing field, you build internal value definition and external value recognition, or you lose. The rules are clear. But that’s not the game we are being allowed to play, when the government messes with the rules.
Here’s a timely quote from the Illinois Manufacturer’s Association regarding the government's massive borrowing and spending in general, and its unpredictable messing with the rules of a free enterprise in particular:
“The principal obstacle to business revival, with accompanying increase in unemployment, is the almost universal attitude of uncertainty and apprehension on the part of business executives regarding the future policies of the federal government on issues directly affecting the welfare of private enterprise.”
The above verbatim warning was sent by the IMA to FDR in the early 1930’s.
The depression lasted 11 years.
jb
The argument in favor of a government stimulus is that just like in FDR days, stimulus money builds roads and bridges, putting people to work. But as economists are now disclosing about the “New Deal” days, for every $10 million dollars spent on work programs, $10 million in tax money investments were diverted away from jobs elsewhere as a free market would naturally decide. Using tax dollars to fund more bridge workers got those folks jobs, but other jobs were either displaced or destroyed.
My firm helps marketers market, build brand identity, communicate, sell and grow market share. On this playing field, you build internal value definition and external value recognition, or you lose. The rules are clear. But that’s not the game we are being allowed to play, when the government messes with the rules.
Here’s a timely quote from the Illinois Manufacturer’s Association regarding the government's massive borrowing and spending in general, and its unpredictable messing with the rules of a free enterprise in particular:
“The principal obstacle to business revival, with accompanying increase in unemployment, is the almost universal attitude of uncertainty and apprehension on the part of business executives regarding the future policies of the federal government on issues directly affecting the welfare of private enterprise.”
The above verbatim warning was sent by the IMA to FDR in the early 1930’s.
The depression lasted 11 years.
jb
Sunday, September 5, 2010
It’s third-and-long for many B2B companies.
The football season has returned and along with it, the inspirational goal line speeches used by B2B sales managers to get their teams back in the game, back on the field of play and off to a better, winning season. As the decades-old cheer goes: The team was in a huddle, the coach was at the head, they had a conversation and this is what they said:
“We’re going to fight, score more, and generally play harder this year. Our goal is to increase sales, and to do this we are going to increase lead generation and new customer acquisition.”
Score more sales -- that's the finding of a recent Global Spec survey of manufacturing companies. The report, called “8 Trends in Industrial Marketing,” offered this finding: Generating leads to get new customers is the #1 goal of manufacturing companies this year. The survey observed some related trends, including the ongoing shift in marketing dollars away from print media to web sites, email campaigns, and other internet services such as, ahem, Global Spec.
But let’s not get distracted by the motivations behind so many surveys published on the internet these days. Buying more online promotional space is logical, equally as logical as another “trend” reported by many metrics providers, which is that what business leaders really need is more data, before they can make any decisions of consequence.
First and ten, do it again. At some point, it’s not about the numbers. Just like in the world of market research, quantitative survey scores are a distraction, when what you need to measure is not efficiency, but effectiveness. You can measure the game in dollars, percentage points or yards, but the dynamics for business growth are still the same: Winning companies, just like winning football teams, build winning “programs.” They do so 1) by recruiting players to execute your company’s vision, mission and distinctive value propositions, 2) by communicating and incenting teamwork to cultivate market segment recognition of this value, and 3) by empowering and enforcing a winning culture.
It’s a game of value definition and value recognition; and sooner or later, a winning business leader stops focusing on the first-and-ten hash marks and starts seeing the forces at work across the larger field of play.
From a top-down perspective, the relationship between branding, marketing and sales are readily observable. The dynamic is there to see. All a leader has to do is climb up into the coach’s box to get an informed, holistic, top-down perspective on it all.
jb
“We’re going to fight, score more, and generally play harder this year. Our goal is to increase sales, and to do this we are going to increase lead generation and new customer acquisition.”
Score more sales -- that's the finding of a recent Global Spec survey of manufacturing companies. The report, called “8 Trends in Industrial Marketing,” offered this finding: Generating leads to get new customers is the #1 goal of manufacturing companies this year. The survey observed some related trends, including the ongoing shift in marketing dollars away from print media to web sites, email campaigns, and other internet services such as, ahem, Global Spec.
But let’s not get distracted by the motivations behind so many surveys published on the internet these days. Buying more online promotional space is logical, equally as logical as another “trend” reported by many metrics providers, which is that what business leaders really need is more data, before they can make any decisions of consequence.
First and ten, do it again. At some point, it’s not about the numbers. Just like in the world of market research, quantitative survey scores are a distraction, when what you need to measure is not efficiency, but effectiveness. You can measure the game in dollars, percentage points or yards, but the dynamics for business growth are still the same: Winning companies, just like winning football teams, build winning “programs.” They do so 1) by recruiting players to execute your company’s vision, mission and distinctive value propositions, 2) by communicating and incenting teamwork to cultivate market segment recognition of this value, and 3) by empowering and enforcing a winning culture.
It’s a game of value definition and value recognition; and sooner or later, a winning business leader stops focusing on the first-and-ten hash marks and starts seeing the forces at work across the larger field of play.
From a top-down perspective, the relationship between branding, marketing and sales are readily observable. The dynamic is there to see. All a leader has to do is climb up into the coach’s box to get an informed, holistic, top-down perspective on it all.
jb
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
