Lyres, lying and other phony marketing techniques...

Over the Thanksgiving break, I revisited Jeff Thull's The Prime Solution and was reminded what a brilliantly useful book it is for those of us aspiring to improve industrial marketing and selling.

When you read a book like this, you are reminded of just how unsatisfactory are the many shallow business marketing how-to articles, seminars, videos and blogs being published nowadays. Such efforts are like so many Lyre Birds strutting about the social media rainforest, skillfully mimicking the most fundamental precepts, yet offering no real depth as to the how-to.

One of the dead-on observations in Thull's book is an analysis of how today's false "consultative selling" approach is only a mid-step along three eras of evolution. In Era One (the 1950's), the sales approach was one of skilled persuasion, the objective being to overcome any customer "objections" to the sale. In Era Two (late 20th century, where most industrial sales forces still reside), the sales quest was to present oneself as a problem solver. This sounds right-minded, but look closer. The approach is still based on the seller's perspective, made worse by the assumption that the customer's complex problem is accurately defined by the customer, and moreover, that the right "solution" can be chosen from among the many product iterations now added to the salesperson's line card.

If you want to know how the Era Three marketing and sales approach is profoundly more evolved, you must study the book. It is too simplistic to say, what your company needs is enlightened organizational leadership, the wisdom to market and sell not just products but to turn your company into a source for business advantage. It's fundamentally a question of perspective (the customer's, not yours), but you still need to know the how-to details and you won't find the answer in a blog.

At some point, we all have to go back to how-to school, especially the leaders of American industrial manufacturing companies, leaders who are challenged to market and sell complex, highly engineered solutions. Without a depth of how-to in the areas of marketing, sales and organizational change, companies will continue to underachieve.

We all seem to agree that there is a shortage of skilled labor in this country. We next need to agree that there is a shortage of skilled marketing and sales leadership in this country. So long as companies fail to cultivate and give voice to their genuine value, they are like Lyre Birds calling attention to themselves based on deception.

Deception is a technique that works well enough if you are a Lyre Bird, but not if you are a modern marketing and sales organization still relying on vocal techniques to simulate real problem solving.

www.centrifuge-now.com
jb

R U 2 BZ 2 Communicate?

You may have noticed how stupid our smart phones are making us.

Almost daily now, business emails are short, cryptic, text exchanges. This is a clear trend that should set off alarms within today's B2B environment. The trend seems especially pervasive within the industrial manufacturing sector, where our branding and marketing firm's services are focused.

Industrial manufacturing leaders are trying to conduct business via their smart phones, always on the go. They are not reading the full messages you emailed to them, let alone your detailed attachments. They text back to you using vague language. You envision them on their smart phones, hastily tapping away while at red lights in their cars, or they are in meetings. Wherever they are, they are too busy to communicate with you.

No problem, sign of the times: They will communicate back, when they are less busy.

But they do not get back to you. Or when they do, their replies are vague and short-circuited. So you call them, leave a message. You forward your prior email to remind them. You resend the attachment, and their texted or emailed reply conveys they have still not read your communication, because they are too busy.

In this recessionary business environment, industrial manufacturing managers are hampered by thinned out staffs, they are worn weary by insanely long days, and their communications are throttled by haste. Days and weeks fly by before business decisions are thoughtfully made, before initiatives are thoughtfully undertaken. Worse, initiatives occur without proper information sharing and collaboration, without the essential underpinnings to planning, organizing, directing, leading and controlling.

How can an organization communicate to the marketplace, when it cannot communicate within itself? Being too busy to communicate is a peculiar business condition, often exacerbated by the misuse of smart phones and email. But the larger problem is demanding of CEO attention. Poor communication is especially unwarranted when a company's mounting cash reserves could be tapped to restore needed staff and a return to the business of business communication.

jb
www.centrifuge-now.com

Failing to communicate means failing to manage...

The success of an industrial manufacturer is not based solely on the dynamic of supply and demand, but on the more fundamental dynamic of communication between those who sell solutions and those who need them. Nothing gets sold until it gets communicated, and yet we are reminded every day just how inefficient is this business of business communication in the digital age.

You have no doubt experienced the frustration of emailing a question to someone, only to receive a skillfully cryptic, partial answer in a return reply. People with management titles seem trained at this, as though back in college they were forced to take a 100 level defense management course, possibly called THE ART of EMAIL JIU-JITSU, the central objective of which was to maintain a passive-aggressive but seemingly sincere non-dialogue when engaging business associates and customers, in the hope that they will all go away.

In the old days of industrial business marketing, before there were virtual conference calls followed by a few rounds of email jiu-jitsu, smart administrative assistants sat in a non-virtual "meeting room" taking analog "shorthand" notes that forced you and your fellow managers to collaboratively and most of all coherently plan, organize, direct, lead and control the business. Then the next day you looked in your very real in-basket for something called the "Meeting Minutes" and by noon everybody new what had been decided upon the day prior; everybody knew exactly who was to do what, and by when, and if you didn't do what you agreed to do, well you couldn't hide behind an email. You couldn't duck, dodge or jiu-jitsu your way out of managing your end of the business; and it wasn't long before the bad managers around you – those who failed to communicate in the real business world – were promoted out of the organization.

Nothing gets sold until it gets communicated, and failing to communicate leads to the slow death of any industrial manufacturing company. One by one, your potentially effective business managers will catch themselves staring at their laptops and smart phones, mystified by the partial answers to their emails, searching their virtual in-boxes for the meeting minutes that never come, and either they will demand a better way, or they will simply leave your sinking ship.

jb
www.centrifuge-now.com

"Everybody flies in their dreams..."

Sean Tucker, one of the Living Legends of Flight, made the comment on a radio talk show just before flying in the Chicago Air and Water Show this weekend.

Before we go any further here, Mr. Tucker was not one of the stunt pilots or aerial entertainers who died over the weekend doing what they love to do. As of this writing, he is on his way to yet another aerial show in Pittsburgh, where he will once again vertically descend his plane at over 100 mph -- tail first.

Mr. Tucker has been flying air shows world-wide since the mid-70’s. He flies the most high-performance aerobatic aircraft in the world, the Challenger II biplane -- with over 400 horsepower, the plane weighs just over 1200 pounds and reacts to a super-sensitive control stick at 300 mph. And if you're thinking Tucker is just another daredevil going through life simply to entertain himself and others, he is also an innovator and educator. Tucker created the Tutima Academy of Aviation Safety, a world-class flight training institution dedicated to flight safety -- a subject he has studied up-close and personal.

When you think about it, Mr. Tucker's enterprise has all the foundational elements written about in such how-to business books as Good to Great: Start with a passion for something, a pursuit you can be the best at, and through which you can make a profit. From there on, it's a question of staying in touch (grounded) with what your audience (customers) need and want.

Many industrial manufacturing leaders share the same disciplined and inventive spirit. In spite of this recession, it will be those who have no fear of flying, who will emerge from the clouds just fine.

jb
www.centrifuge-now.com

Talk about uncertainty, industrial manufacturers also need leadership...

You've probably heard that the daily economy briefings have "disappeared from Obama's White House schedule." Dig deeper and the truth is that Obama continues to be reminded often enough about the country's economic status. It's just that he and congress cannot agree on steps to solve it. Judging by their indecision, what our nation's managers have agreed upon is to postpone their decision-making responsibilities in hopes of shoring up sides next November, when perhaps a single-party consensus can somehow then move the nation forward.

Talk about uncertainty, what scares industrial manufacturing most is that this country's managers who were elected to make wise and collaborative economic decisions, simply will not; and worse, that this absence of management problem has somehow become systemic.

We have all observed that if the country's finances were managed like a household or solvent industrial manufacturing company, we'd all be better off. The comparison seems obvious. Neither a household, nor a company, nor a government can live beyond its means, and yet our government continues to do just that. Could it be that our government cannot be run like a business or a household, because it is neither? This of course is the deeper implication of "tea party" reform, that we have a systemic change issue to address in Washington DC. Talk about uncertainty, who really wants a third party system, when what is needed are better managers?

Whether in congress or in an industrial manufacturer's conference room, making decisions is not about achieving a total "consensus" in order to chip away at a problem and move the business forward. At some point there must be decision-making agreement. And isn't that the point?

Good management doesn't let uncertainty get in the way of business growth. Leaders look for the insights and strategies that make managerial decisions possible. You know – the kind of management that welcomes deeper daily market insights, really understands the needs of customers, and agrees on what to do about it.

jb
www.centrifuge-now.com

Hour town -- Washington's last-minute lesson in mis-management...

As any organizational change consultant will tell you, the first step to leadership is that the "core coalition" in power must feel a sense of urgency before it will act collectively in the best interests of the organization. Or a democracy.

Regardless your politics, the decision coming out of Washington tonight serves as a profound reminder of the risks involved when any organization seeks "consensus" when it should be seeking agreement as to how to how to move ahead.

Democrats and Republicans may never achieve consensus. But they can reach agreements, so long as they feel a sense of urgency.

Pursuing consensus is not the purpose of leadership. Consensus means everyone has looked at the facts and come to the same conclusion. People will not do this, because their brains don't work this way. Everyone's opinion is separately arrived at by separate beliefs and experiences, and moreover by mindsets that have been forged by years of unique experiences. Not to mention, people in Washington have especially differing capacities for full or diminished rational thought.

The distinction between consensus and agreement is critical. Whether you are the president of the United States or the president of an industrial manufacturing company, you cannot impose your will on people and expect to achieve the results you are after. Nor can you seek consensus, when it is your job to lead people toward agreements that will move the business forward by way of goals, objectives, activities and tactics.

It's the basic role of management, isn't it? Helping people make decisions. Planning, organizing, directing, leading and controlling an organization, or a country, progressively forward.

jb
www.centrifuge-now.com

Does your company economize on market insight?

Unvarnished market insight is vitally important to our industrial manufacturing clients. This was atypical during our previous ad agency days, before my partner and I launched Centrifuge. Back then, clients always seemed to value big advertising ideas over big customer insights. Back then, "outside" market research was a threatening concept, especially to VPs of Sales and Marketing.

In this more enlightened age, an aversion to market intelligence sounds counter intelligent, doesn't it? It seems almost disloyal that a VP of Marketing, who is accountable for his or her company's growth, could be adverse to gathering essential, new market insights. Yet some corporate cultures still suffer from this constraint, and here is one theory as to why:

Market research is by definition exploratory, it is an admission from the outset that a company doesn't have all the answers, and in many small to mid-size industrial-manufacturing cultures, that's a deadly admission.

In a growing enterprise, market knowledge is gathered and leveraged by many; but in a stunted enterprise, market knowledge is sheltered and governed by a few. Try this experiment at your next managers' meeting: Raise the question of market research. Innocently suggest the need for deeper segment insight during your next sales and marketing meeting. Watch the reaction among those who were hired to care about such things, the VP of Sales, the VP of Marketing, the product-marketing managers. In a healthy organization, the question will be openly and honestly considered. But in a closed organization, the discussion will be reactionary and soon default to the need for economizing. The discussion will turn from one of collective business opportunity to the question of individual job protection: Why should we pay someone from the outside to bring us more market knowledge? Don't we already know what we need to know? Why else did the company hire us sales and marketing people?

Nowadays, Centrifuge is privileged to work with industrial manufacturing leaders, VPs of sales and VPs of marketing who are confident in what they know and need to know, and who understand the value of deeper market insights. These are leaders who can and will change the fortunes of their organizations, because they will not economize on market insights.

jb
www.centrifuge-now.com

Some industrial manufacturers get "IT"...

In January we shared the results of an Information Week survey of IT professionals, which disclosed that less than 10% of them said they thought their companies were excellent at using IT to drive innovation or revenue. We observed at the time how top management's directive to the IT discipline has continued to be bottom line internal cost cutting, versus top line revenue growth -- a curious situation, given the fact that according to Global Spec, 74% of manufacturers are reporting that customer acquisition or lead generation is their primary goal.

Now comes this revelation, again from Information Week, based on a new survey of nearly 10,000 IT professionals: Asked to rank the top seven most important attributes of their jobs, only 22% said "my work is important to the company's success." The report went on to observe that most IT people nowadays feel beaten down by cost cutting and left out of company strategy.

We've worked with some very creative IT professionals who understand what business they are in. IT should not be in the business of perpetually tinkering behind firewalls. IT should be integral to the marketing process, vital to making an enterprise and its people more relevant and engaged in the marketplace.

jb
www.centrifuge-now.com

Industrial manufacturing leaders need to ask WHY...

Leaders of industrial manufacturing companies are up against it now. In the next few months, they will begin to make the hiring decisions they have been holding off on, and they will be challenged to align anew the people in their organizations around a shared mission and purpose.

You can bet that only a few of these companies will make the transition easily.

Industrial manufacturers that need to break new ground with an expanded management group and new hires on board will find that the first barrier is not out in the marketplace; it will be internal, in the form of dissonant beliefs regarding the right way forward. The problem will be to lead organizational alignment, and in this endeavor top management is challenged to understand a basic tenet of neuroscience itself.

Neuroscience, the scientific study of the nervous system, has discovered how regions of the human brain become activated as we go about editing our daily realities. In his book How We Decide, author Jonah Lehrer reported how even scientists must learn to overcome their preconceived beliefs before they can succeed in their missions. The research proved that beliefs are preserved in a region of the brain called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. The first step to solving a problem (in our case the need for internal alignment on purpose and value definition), we must recognize that the biological design of the human brain causes it to disregard divergent, contrary information as though it were never encountered. Here is a quote from the book:

“The lesson is that not all data is created equal in our mind’s eye: When it comes to interpreting our experiments, we see what we want to see and disregard the rest. Belief, in other words, is a kind of blindness.”

Despite the brain’s tendency to screen out new facts, thus preserving established beliefs, scientists nevertheless persist in making breakthrough discoveries. They are able to do this because they keep asking a simple question: Why? By examining failures, resisting conformity, and often by seeking a collaborative, outside-in level of objectivity, they do not allow false beliefs to deter them in their missions to become breakthrough winners in the scientific marketplace.

If you want to align organizational behavior, you need to introduce external realities – namely, the voice of customer, the ultimate authority, the only one who can tell you WHY. Which leads to the question: Who in your organization, if not the CEO, is asking why customers behave the way they do? Could it be because their beliefs, too, have yet to be changed in favor of your brand?

jb
www.centrifuge-now.com

For more on this subject, please see my firm's whitepaper series: "Overcoming Entropy" at this URL: http://gourl.gr/ibg

The connection between VPs and MVPs...

VPs of small and mid-size industrial manufacturing companies have long used sports metaphors to exhort their people to hustle and show team effort. Unfortunately, not many have known how to lead that effort. If they did, then such disciplines as funnel marketing and such tools as CRM would have been effectively in place years ago.

The failures of industrial marketing are often the failures of management, but nowadays we talk a lot about the need for leadership if American industrial manufacturing is to continue to compete, grow and dominate. This is why leadership profiling has become a major function of outside executive search firms and of inside HR departments.

Many years ago, Management textbooks taught that the functions of management were planning, organizing, directing, leading, and controlling; and of these, the role of leadership was indispensable. The role of leadership was stressed in the teachings of Peter Drucker, widely known as the father of modern management. During an interview with Bill Moyers in the late 80's, Moyers suggested that management and leadership were two different traits, that even American presidential administrations were often good at leadership, but bad at management. To this, Drucker replied: "No, they are bad at administration, because leadership is a part of management."

Many American industrial manufacturing companies are composed of coaches and players who have a good chance of winning, because they want to win. But in order to win, everyone needs to know what game they are playing and why. The answer has little to do with pushing a product line card, but with building a collective purpose and a process for getting there. If marketing and sales are not sharing the ball, there is no team; and it's probably because there is no shared purpose or process for winning.

Last summer, Derek Rose of the Chicago Bulls was still a college age kid making his way in the big league, practicing all day at the gym and trying to stay focused on his game. When asked by a reporter why he wasn't paying much attention to all the fuss about LeBron James and where the ego-driven James Gang would end up playing. Showing the kind of managerial wisdom and leadership that would make most any industrial manufacturing company a success, Rose answered: "Let's figure out who we are first. Let's control the things we can control."

And then, in an act that showed too, the importance of character, Rose sent a text message to LeBron James so as not to be unfriendly or unclear:

"I just want to win."

jb
www.centrifuge-now.com

Industrial manufacturing leaders: disenthrall yourselves...

The success of any industrial manufacturing company depends not on the quality of its manufacturing, its products or its sales efforts, but on whether there is a market that justifies the company's existence. If this seems an obvious reality, then why is it that so many small to mid size manufacturing organizations are unable to shed themselves of perennially deficient "marcom" practices?

When a CEO's core coalition is dominated by VPs who have little marketing experience, it should not be a surprise when the company defaults to predictable marcom expenditures, or that such expenditures continue to drive wedges between "marketing" and the rest of the organization, most especially the sales force.

In these uncertain times, it is up to the CEO to break the barriers that are keeping the company from achieving its greater potential in the marketplace. It is up to the CEO to expose false beliefs regarding customers and marketplace; to replace "how we do things here" with how we should do things here; and to raise everyone's expectations for a disciplined marketing process that replaces deficient "marcom" tactics.

In his 1862 presidential message to congress, at a time when the survival of our young country was uncertain, Abraham Lincoln presented such a leadership message:

"We can succeed only by concert. It is not 'can any of us imagine better?' but, 'can we all do better?' The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise -- with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country."

Survival and growth in a changed marketplace are the challenges facing every industrial manufacturing CEO. If a disciplined marketing process is not central to your company's survival and growth, then now is the time to disenthrall your organization of its deficient marcom practices.

jb
www.centrifuge-now.com

"It is what it is" -- the gap between industrial marketing and sales...

You may have grown weary of the simple-minded expression, "It is what it is." The expression seems especially egregious when talking about the gap that continues to divide industrial marketing and sales.

The reason this gap "is what it is" is because of the underachievement that exists in the disciplines of industrial branding and marketing, a lack of process that is still tolerated by otherwise thoughtful managers who are looking for ways to improve operations.

The problem many industrial leaders do not know how to confront is that their perennial "marcom" approach continues to fund a predictable set of dubious tactics, rather than a process for successful marketing and sales alignment.

When the marketing communication process is done right, marketing makes it easier for sales people to do what they do best -- consult, build customer relationships, and sell. Were this process happening, sales people would eagerly collaborate with marketing people about such concepts as vision, mission, brand identity, internal value definition and external value recognition. At last, these concepts would prove relevant to them.

When industrial marketing communications are done right, the business gathers momentum and top management can look back on the gap between marketing and sales for what it WAS -- a situation caused by the absence of a disciplined branding and marketing process.

jb
www.centrifuge-now.com

General Marcom faces overthrow by B2B mfg. leaders....

After decades of general expenditures for generally ineffective tactics based on generally whimsical ideas, Marketing Communications -- aka "Marcom" -- is in danger of being deposed by industrial manufacturing leaders.

Industrial manufacturing leaders say General Marcom's central failure has been the absence of branding and marketing from the "marcom" equation.

"Without a disciplined branding and marketing approach," says any business leader who hopes to grow his or her company, "General Marcom perennially defaults to a set of predictable, but en vogue, communication templates. This year, General Marcom will insist that we search-optimize our website for example, and that we do more in social media. General Marcom will say that we must do these things because everyone else is doing these things. This means that for another year, we will once again overlook the pre-requisite need to establish brand identity by way of internal value definition. And so we will continue to push our product line card, rather than use branding and marketing to engage in customer problems that will build value recognition."

Speaking out about the rising dissatisfaction over non-strategic communications that are often the result of weak insights to a customer segment, General Marcom had this to say:

"I don't get it."

jb
www.centrifuge-now.com

If it ain't broke, can we improve it?

Industrial manufacturing leaders know how to innovate, industrial manufacturing managers know how to maintain it. This is because leaders move through life with their heads up eyeing the horizon. Managers move through the day with their heads down, focused on near-term tactics and getting things done.

Industrial manufacturing organizations that are governed by a managerial mindset may be well-oiled machines, but they may also not evolve well. This is because would-be leaders do not fit a maintenance culture. Even in private, mid-sized companies, second-generation owners who are challenged to lead, are facing a "this is how we do things here" mindset. They are being asked: If it ain't broke, why are we trying to fix it?

Here is why we all should fix it.

Few of our industrial manufacturing companies have reached their full potential in the marketplace. We can be much better. The marketplace has changed and so must we. The reason our numbers are down is not just because of this recession. The question is, for lack of vision, are we going to come out of this downturn as operationally pared down to survive but substantially impaired to grow?

Here is how we should fix it.

Our well-oiled, operationally pared-down, but underachieving industrial manufacturing companies can be improved. We simply need to expect more of ourselves, to become greater where it matters: greater at understanding the business we are in, so we can see our greater market potential: greater at understanding our customer segments, so we can solve their business problems; greater at understanding these segments' buying cycles, so we know how to cultivate long-term relationships based on the way they make decisions; greater at understanding how our marketing dollars should be spent, so we can at last evolve our sales effort beyond simply pushing a product line card; and greater at changing our business culture from one that is satisfied with going through the motions, to one that is measurably moving forward.

The nuclear power plants in Japan and in this country have been well managed and well oiled for decades. Strange, that in most every other kaizen-driven Japanese manufacturing company in the world, management defers to leadership and leadership insists on innovation by way of making improvements to products and processes.

If it ain't broke, whether in the nuclear industry or industrial manufacturing, there are clear reasons why leadership is needed to bring improvement.

jb
www.centrifuge-now.com

Industrial marketing leaders are literally changing minds...

Neuroscience is contributing real breakthroughs that help explain human behavior and organizational change. In the private industrial manufacturing mid-market, where many second-generation owners are now taking the reigns of leadership, one of their foremost challenges is bringing about behavioral change. This change is inherent in the marketing and branding process, which is all about internal value definition and external (customer) value recognition. Fortunately, as today's younger business leaders are discovering, changing a person's mind is no longer a figurative expression.

Changing minds nowadays means just that.

Internal value definition often starts with the question: "What business are we in?" But before a leader can ask this question of his or her core coalition, that leader should expect it will be neurologically painful for some people to contemplate, as the answers will threaten current beliefs that are entrenched in the basal ganglias of many. The basal ganglia is that portion of the brain that makes us feel good when we behave in keeping with certain rituals. Such a seemingly innocent question will also trigger the amygdala, that part of the brain that acts on our instincts, which drives our habits and fears of change, and is known as the "fight or flight" function of our brains.

In other words, ask people to seriously contemplate any action that implies change, and fight or flight are the very reactions a leader should expect. Is there a better way to bring change, to really put marketing and branding to work for a company? Here again, neuroscience provides the answer, with ample research showing how one's use of the prefrontal cortex can not only help a business leader change his or her own thinking, but the thinking of the core coalition and the entire organization.

The prefrontal cortex is that area or the brain that is used (or not) to observe and evaluate our own behaviors. It is that part of the brain that actually thinks, that brings into assessment the facts of a situation, including such B2B leadership initiatives as whether to invest in a new production line or a new marketing opportunity.

For example, when the prefrontal cortex is put to work on the mission-critical question of internal value definition versus external (market segment) value recognition, it will very soon seek to establish two reference points essential to decision making: 1) an objective understanding of the company's full sources of value as articulated to the marketplace (brand identity), and 2) an objective understanding of a customer segment's perceptions of this value (brand image) in regard to unmet and often undiscovered needs, i.e. voice of customer.

If Company X fails to reach its greater potential in the coming years, neuroscience is telling us why. It will be because the leaders at Company X failed to use their prefrontal cortexes, giving in to the more primitive regions of their brains.

jb
www.centrifuge-now.com

Let's not SPECulate on American industrial innovation...

A recent Frost and Sullivan study unabashedly promotes Global Spec, having concluded that industrial "end users" nowadays no longer prefer to use keyword searches or visit industrial manufacturing websites. That behavior is so 2005.

According to F&S, if you are an industrial engineer looking for the right component for your next machine design, all you need to do now is visit Global Spec. There, you will find all kinds of online information to study, making your specification of the right component, from the right manufacturer, a piece of cake.

Is this the state of design engineering in America? Do we no longer have the time to truly collaborate, to establish trust-driven, up-close-and-personal what-if discussions between manufacturers and their technology suppliers? Maybe we don't need to, if all we are searching for is a commodity component to fit our commodity specification. But what if you need a new idea from a true technology partner, someone who can help you innovate and grow?

America's industrial leaders know that the innovation process cannot be abdicated to virtual conversations, held within virtual chat rooms, held within virtual trade show booths, held within an online industrial directory.

At some point, the buying-selling relationship becomes personal to become real. Until this happens, the online buying and selling process is a quest for line card "product solutions" based on SPECulation.

jb
www.centrifuge-now.com

Right Brain vs. Left Brain and other wrong-headed myths...

Recent neurological research debunks the long-held belief that the human brain functions according to left and right hemispheres. This is great news for those of us who can't remember which half is creative and which half is analytical. It's not so great news for management and training consultants who have built their careers referencing charts and diagrams of the hemispheric human brain, much the way the earliest explorers charted the regions of a flattened world complete with dragons at the periphery.

Neuroscience makes understanding human behavior, including purchasing decisions and the buying cycles of organizations, all the more constructive and myth busting. Take for example, the growing notion that complex industrial buying decisions can be entirely guided nowadays online. This is the implication Global Spec makes in their reference to a recent a Frost and Sullivan study about the buying habits of engineers. The study conveys how online content aggregators, such as Global Spec, can guide a buyer at every step of the buying cycle, leading a prospect and an organization to select both product and supplier; the only exception being (according to the study), that for industrial products, "procurement" is made face-to-face at the end of the buying process, ostensibly to confirm that there is a trusted human at the end of this otherwise virtual transaction.

This new charting of the engineering mind sure sounds simple. It's not much more evolved than prevailing notions of the hemispheric brain or the long-ago representations of a flattened earth, except to make the logical observation that highly cultivated online content, supporting a prospect's buying cycle, is important. It certainly is. But ultimately, your relationships with your best customers are built face-to-face, not just email-to-email.

You can spend tens of thousands of dollars building a website, and the content for an online aggregator site, but the human side of business relationship development teaches that if you don't build your company's brand identity with a human touch along the way, it's a wrong-headed approach.

jb
www.centrifuge-now.com

America's next industrial revolution...

America's 21st century industrial manufacturing revolution will not be born out of new technology, balanced trade, or less government intrusion alone. It will come from new leaders having new wisdom regarding the interdependent disciplines of branding, marketing and organizational change.

Looking back on 20th century industrial manufacturing, technology was a big driver, but it's been the many generations of MBA managers that have driven our businesses. These managers have helped organize, direct and control a range of organizational activities including engineering, manufacturing, and sales – all guided by the go-to-market principles known as the 4P's (product, price, place, promotion).

Looking ahead, America's industrial base will not be built by managers alone, but by industrial leaders who will pick up where generations of managers have left off. Here is how they will lead the 21st century American industrial revolution:

1. The successful industrial manufacturer will build an internal brand identity.
2. Brand identity development will forge internal alignment on value definition.
3. Alignment on value definition will enable strategic, efficient, full value delivery.
4. Full value delivery to the marketplace will bring full external value recognition.
5. Value definition and value recognition will build a winning industrial manufacturer.

And a winning industrial manufacturing base will make for a stronger America.

jb
www.centrifuge-now.com

Is your industrial marketing effort so 2010?

Studies have shown that the first step to organizational change is for everyone to feel a sense of urgency that compels a desire to change. But now that we've all completed this first step, we might ask the leaders of government and industry whether they are skipping the next step that would lead to positive change. That step would seem to include an evaluation of why an organization does the things it does, were it guided by a more clear understanding of the organization's overall reason for being.

Such insight would be useful to our government, were its leaders to find out why it sent stimulus checks totaling $22.3 million to more than 17,000 prison inmates and almost 72,000 dead people.

As to why any organization, whether our government or an industrial manufacturer, would continue to overlook such counterproductive behavior, you can bet it has to do with "how we do things here" and the time-honored practice of employee self-preservation in lieu of genuine public/customer commitment.

This is the same problem for many industrial manufacturing companies whose leaders are challenged to understand why marketing and "marcom" continue to be a cost center, and why sales and marketing continue to act like they are divorced but still living together.

And yet, the root cause of these industrial marketing misbehaviors should be understood by now. They're called the 4 Ps: product, price, place, and promotion. The 4P's have formed the framework for industrial marketing for decades, and here's why this practice has to stop: In order to grow, many American industrial manufacturers must realign themselves based on a deeper knowledge of company potential and customer need. This will not happen when "how we do things here" is based not on company cause or customer problems, but entirely on paying homage to the first P (product).

When the very culture of an organization is built around the company line card, it doesn't matter how "customer centric" the mission statement is hanging on the lobby wall.

jb
www.centrifuge-now.com

Deaths, taxes and other leadership challenges...

This week brought yet another forced awakening to our divisive politicians by way of the murders in Tucson. The tragedy was personified by the death of a nine year-old girl whose ironic ambition was to become a political leader, emphasis on leader, and whose donated organs have already saved the life of a child on the East Coast. Which prompts us to wonder: How many of our lifelong politicians are the equal of such selfless achievement?

Meanwhile, here in Illinois, a state that is parentally absent when it comes to caring for its industrial manufacturing base, our congress has passed the largest tax levy in the history of the state. Illinois now ranks around 35 in terms of its business-friendly environment, falling below states such as South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Alabama, Arizona and Tennessee.

But then, Illinois is at least $13 billion in debt; so if you were a politician awakening to the desperate mess you and your kind have created, you might also conclude that the only strategy left is to raise taxes and run for cover. Of course, this passes the buck to everyone else, adding to the financial burden of the industrial manufacturing companies in this state, whose leaders do not have such an option as raising taxes. You might raise your prices of course, but then higher prices, unsupported by higher value and demand, are not a viable option in the real world. That leaves you the options of value creation and smarter marketing, but these are the subjects of another blog.

This week, we were asked to think differently of such heretofore certainties as death and taxes, of childishly irresponsible politicians, and about the heart-breaking loss of a young girl who at age nine already demonstrated a greater maturity to lead.

Such deaths and taxes are not the certainties grownups can afford to accept.

jb
www.centrifuge-now.com

Let's get IT in the game...

Information Week surveyed 552 business technology professionals in November to learn how "IT" evaluated their contributions to the organization and the business. The group gave itself the following appraisal...

On a scale of one to five, with one being poor and five being excellent, IT professionals said they were rather good (3.7 score) at providing high quality internal systems and services and they were ok (3.4 score) at reducing the cost or maintaining the low cost of IT operations; but they were less than midling (2.7 score) when it came to creating new revenue streams for the company through external IT services.

At a time when the overwhelming organizational mission should be to act like a company and GROW the business, IT professionals went on to report that less than 10% of them are excellent at driving innovation or revenue. In other words, top management's end-of-year directive to IT continued to be bottom line internal cost cutting, not top line revenue growth. This seems a curious situation, given the fact that according to Global Spec, 74% of manufacturers are reporting that customer acquisition or lead generation is their primary goal.

If you believe that marketing is an organizational activity, the collective purpose of which is to create customers, then you can see the disconnect here. Marketing is not a bolted-on discipline. Neither is business technology.

jb
www.centrifuge-now.com