"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