sponsibility to first, before hiring employees, clearly develop the company’s values, vision, mission,
positioning, target markets and customers. Once this is complete, the
company has a backdrop from which
to efficiently interview potential employees at all levels.
• Rewarding employees, suppliers and
distributors in a meaningful but generous manner. Your company will attract the best-in-class, motivated
people and they will tend to be very
loyal and significant contributors to
an overall team pro-active effort.
• Each employee is a value. Treat each
as though they are the only employee. Constantly train them; empower them with as much authority
as they can handle.
• Suppliers must be incentivized to perform as a team participant. One successful tactic is to choose two
suppliers for each core item and develop a true partnership with both.
These suppliers become part of the
firm’s design or development team allowing for a total value consideration and not just price, quality and
on-time delivery.
• Distributors, properly managed, are
additional sources of market infor-
mation. They can provide another
facet of intelligence for problem solv-
ing issues in product/service design,
delivery and field support
portions of its budget on what I call
“prayer flag” promotion, hoping they will
be remembered even when nothing new is
being said. I’m not suggesting these efforts
should be entirely abandoned, but there
should be an annual zero-based budgeting
exercise to determine the ROI on such an
image sustaining tactic.
Failing to understand
“branding,” and how to
develop and use it successfully
in combination with all
offering components
When don’t you have a brand or when is
it weak, your branding is a problem if:
Lacking market plans and
planning process efficiencies
You know you have a problem when:
• Your coveted target market (through
a customer satisfaction/competitive
analysis study) indicates your com-
pany is significantly below your com-
petition.
• The correct componentry and logic
is missing from your market plan design.
• Planning does not consider contingencies.
• The plan cannot be easily tested
against “what if” alternatives.
Branding is a pan-company responsibility
headed up by marketing. Branding provides
a customer mind-set of expectations. A firm
meets an equilibrium status with its core
market segments and individual customers
when each targeted customer’s expectations
are fulfilled. The higher the satisfaction level,
the higher the brand equity.
Most of our industry spends significant
The resolution to the correct compo-
nents and logic can be quickly resolved by
going to Google and inserting the words:
Elements of a Marketing Plan. This out-
line is universal and will handle most
company needs. However, each company
has their own idiosyncrasies, which may
alter the order or descriptions.
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