Strategies & Analysis
competitors and their strategic impact on your business if their plans
are successful.
• Core competitors must be correctly
identified by specific segments plus
an unbiased transparent assessment
of each must be made and, on a
planned frequency.
The obvious tactics to use in a
Competitive assessment are to:
• Establish a “captain-of-compe-
tition” responsible for collecting
and dissemination of competitive
intelligence.
• Contract with a industry-knowledge-able “outside” consultant to perform,
NOT just a competitive analysis, but
because they go hand-in-hand and
therefore, helps lower costs, a combination of a Competitive Analysis
and a Customer Satisfaction Survey.
• Constantly monitor key competitors
new technologies.
• Finally, but not always obvious, is
an analysis of the key competitors
“SYSTEMS” offerings and their
abilities to “value sell.”
“Backroom”, stakeholder
relationships are not
managed well
Stakeholders are those persons who have
“skin-in-the-game” such as employees,
suppliers, distributors and investors. The
indications that stakeholders are NOT
fully on board and committed are: universally unhappy employees; lack of attracting the best suppliers and/or distributors
and investors feel they are out of the communications loop and unhappy.
Some of the resolutions to the stakehold-
ers’ contribution to the firms’ success are:
•Management has a significant re-
sponsibility to first, before hir-
ing 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 poten-
tial employees at all levels
• Rewarding employees, suppliers, and
distributors in a meaningful but gen-
erous 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 . . . not just price, quality and
on-time delivery.
• Distributors, properly managed, are
additional sources of market information. They can provide another
facet of intelligence for problem-solving issues in product/service design; delivery; and field support
Failure to understand
“branding,” 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? Well your branding is a prob-
lem if:
• Your coveted target market (through
a customer satisfaction/competi-
tive analysis study) indicates your
company is significantly below your
competition.
• Your brand image is not distinctive.
• You allocate same amounts of monies in your budget to same marketing
programs every year.
• ROI evaluation impact on your pro-mo programs is limited.
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 portion 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.
For example, analyzing the overall issues the company faces one might find the
quality of technical service is an element
that, if resolved, would save or add significant revenue.
In this case, one may want to reduce
the “prayer flag” budget and increase the
Tech. Service budget aimed at improving
its quality.
In most cases today, most marketers
must supply a financial estimate of their
brand promotional efforts and an overall
estimate of the ROI. However, we see a
massive movement towards a circular consideration where the Marketing Manager
is held responsible for a much broader set
of product ROI’s than ever before.
Lacks market plans
and planning process
efficiencies
You know you have a problem when:
• The correct componentry and logic is
missing from your market plan design.
•Planning does not consider
contingencies.
• Cannot easily test the plan against
“what if” alternatives.
The resolution to the correct components and logic can be quickly resolved
by going to GOOGLE and inserting the
words . . . . Elements of a Marketing Plan.
This outline is universal and will handle
most company needs. However, each company has their own idiosyncrasies, which
may alter the order or descriptions.
One of the many management tactics
would be to ask Marketing to estimate what
they could do (in revenue) with a 20 percent
budgetary increase? Once that is done, ask
them to submit a budget with a 20 percent
reduction? After some considerable use of
this budgetary approach, management will
have a clear idea which Marketers can accurately forecast results. CW
