Much is being written today about aligning Marketing and Sales, a divide which is being exacerbated by social media tools, lead nurturing and new Marketing metrics.

Over the years I have had the privilege of working with some outstanding Sales people and Sales management.  They all have many things in common, but one trait that sticks out is skepticism.  Whether this is inbred or arises out of constant rejection is unclear, but if you scratch the surface of a good salesman you will find a skeptic.

This skepticism comes to the fore in discussions where Marketing trumpets its social media successes: increasing hits on the web site, a new CRM system that allows them to track inquires and downloads, Email open and click-thru rates, etc.  Since many of the charts start at a low level and increase over time, Marketing is looking good, and why shouldn’t Sales be impressed?

The Sales skepticism about the Marketing results can best expressed by the phrase uttered by Rod Tidwell in the movie Jerry McGuire, “Show me the money.”   Sales people aren’t interested in hits, click-thrus, downloads or other Marketing metrics.  What they want are solid qualified leads.  An added plus would be the customer’s potential pain points, as well as multiple contacts within the customer.

If the Sales force has to weed through patches of leads to find one that is worthwhile, then they feel that the work that Marketing is doing is not meaningful.  Sales people are generally paid on a commission, which to them means that time equals money.  The more time that Sales has to spend prospecting, the less time they have to sell and close.

David Merriman Scott recently released a white paper through Hubspot entitled 11 Examples of Online Marketing Success. Each example is indeed a Marketing success, but my skeptical Sales friends would say “show me the money.”  Only one of the examples deals with lead generation, and it relates to how John Deere gave away a tractor.  It does not report on how many of the people who registered to win the tractor were qualified leads for a sale.

I understand that part of Marketing’s role is to build and sustain a brand.  And I also understand that Product Managers are responsible for delivering the right product, at the right time and through the right channels.

But a key part of Marketing is delivering qualified leads.  In 2011 I think it is important that Marketing people don’t get caught up in digital metrics and overlook this important role.  When Marketing delivers qualified leads the conversation about a divide between Marketing and Sales disappears and the skepticism of Sales regarding Marketing goes down, however it never really goes away.

How well are you delivering qualified leads to your Sales forces?  How does this compare to how often are you telling Sales and management what a great job Marketing is doing on building the brand, recording hits, and downloads?

Are you focusing on the right thing?

RHM  1/13/2011

The following post is about how a vendor made three (3) major mistakes in today’s Marketing world.

Background, I recently ordered a cell phone from Verizon Wireless (actually the sales representative made a very compelling sales pitch for this particular phone (Pantech ) Upon delivery, I inserted the battery, charged the battery and called the 800 number to activate the phone.  In less than twenty four hours, the phone “froze”. I could not do anything with it.  It appeared that the battery was dead, so I called Verizon and they stated that there were no records of this particular problem, but they would send me a new phone.  I received a new phone, without a battery, tried the new phone with the old battery and no luck.  I called Verizon and got the same story, “never heard of this problem before, etc.”  I explained that I thought it was the battery, and asked them to send me a phone AND a battery.   They agreed and said that they would send a new phone and battery, but you guessed it, new phone and NO battery.   

Well I did some of my own investigation on the web and sure enough, I found numerous postings about the identical problem and the same responses.   So I called Verizon again, and they still denied any problem with the phone, but since this was a trend (trend?) they would break the rules this one time and send me a new phone and battery.  I did some additional investigation and called the technical hot line within Verizon and actually spoke to a hardware engineer and first thing he says is, “Oh yea, there is a problem between the battery and the phone.”  He agreed to send me a new phone (not refurbished) and a battery.  I got a new phone AND a new battery and thus far it is working for more than forty-eight hours. 

So what are the critical mistakes?

1-      Product introduction- The launch of this product was definitely not best in class.   Obviously there were no test groups involved , manufacturing and quality assurance were not in the loop, there definitely was not a pre-launch review before making the product public.  There was no escalation process set up to properly handle any customer complaints and the overall communication process was missing, since no-one other than a few engineers and actual customers knew about the existing problems.  The key point is that marketing MUST communicate to all functional groups and these groups must be involved from day one, have “voting rights” on whether to launch or not.  Product introduction is a company activity that is typically led by Marketing, but in any case this activity is not a stove pipe operation but an integrated campaign. 

2-      Quality Control- Did anyone test this particular product?  Were there beta sites? Was there a QA review? Did customer support know about these issues?  How could any company release a product with such a defect?

3-      Monitoring the social media networks- Given that the selling model has changed and the customer is now in control, it is critical to at least monitor what is being said about your company and your products and services. There were so many people posting complaints about this product and on numerous sites, how could Verizon not be aware of the situation or they were aware and chose not to respond.

 If you would like to know more about best in class product/service introduction contact us for more details.

RHL 01/11/2011

Many of the discussions that Dick, Tom and I have with clients and potential clients center on the lead generation processes and the conversion of  leads to sales.  Most companies have a combination of “older” programs (trade shows, direct mail, advertising, etc.) and  “new” programs (email, blogging, webinars, SEO, etc.) that generate leads.  Whether old or new the recurring question is some form of “how do I do a better job of converting a lead to a sale?”

Under the “older” programs, all leads are turned over to sales, or “qualified” leads that went through some screening process, are turned over to sales.  Once in the salesperson’s hands, it was up to him or her to follow up, understand the potential customer’s pain points and close the sale.

The emergence of the “new” programs and the rise of Customer Relations Management tools and programs add complexity to this process.  Now leads are followed and nurtured until a certain criteria is met, i.e., 3 visits to the web site, 4 downloads of white papers, 2 or more people from the same company looking at pricing, etc.  Then the lead is turned over to sales, who files reports on his contacts, both with the lead and other people in the company, ranking the probability of a sale.  The highest probability are recorded, ranked and followed, with additional resources, i.e., sales management, executive management, being called in at the appropriate time to close the sale.

The CRM tool makers will tell you that their following and nurturing process is more successful than the older process.  Yet we see many companies who employ the older process who are doing well.

Stepping back and looking at the conversion process from a high level, several aspects are clear:

• Today’s buyer has much more information about the vendor, his products and competitors than he has had in the past.
• While price is always important, other elements have significant influence in the buying decision, i.e. pre and post sale service, reference accounts, specific features that match the buyer’s needs, etc.  Conveying these differences to the buyer is difficult.
• Most B2B buying decisions are made by multiple people or a committee.  Frequently a lead that is generated is by a heavy influencer, not a decision maker.
• Reaching all members of the decision making team through digital marketing is problematic.
• Finer customer segmentation is required today to achieve continuing growth.

Our 2011 recommendations for lead conversions mix the old and new processes.

1. Make sure that your web site is current and that you are close to the top via SEO.
2. Understand that the buying cycle will be shorter, and therefore transfer leads to the sales force as soon as it appears to be qualified.
3. Make sure the sales force is trained and/or that there are sufficient SE resources to augment the selling process.
4. Use multiple channels to reach your customers.
5. Use contact information developed by the sales forces to expand the digital process, but don’t depend upon it to impact the sale.
6. Obtain sales and customer feedback via social media.
7. Focus on all high probability sales that fall within a 90 day window.

In short, use the new tools to improve processes that are already in place.

What are your experiences?  Do you think that digital marketing and in-house telesales can take the place of field sales people?

RHM   1/7/2011

I am beginning to sense a trend, most likely caused by the economy, to position the Marketing function in a sales support role…nothing more.

I feel those companies that are doing this are making a terrible mistake and will do irreparable harm to their organizations.

If Marketing’s role is limited to lead generation and supporting the sales force, then the important work of acting as a hub is lost.  Once lost, it will take the right person a long time to re-establish the culture necessary to be successful.

The classic Product Manager (Not a Product Marketing Manager, whose view is generally 0-12 months) acts as the hub of the wheel.  He/she has the vision of the product today and tomorrow and communicates this via the product roadmap.  More importantly he/she conveys this unwavering vision to the other functions:

To Finance:  The PM defines the selling price, discounts and margin generated by the product.  He also provides unit forecasts for the next 12 and 24 months.

To Marketing: The PM provides relevant content, direction, and approval of promotional literature/collateral.  If he/she is not the spokesperson on the product for the company he trains that person.

To Sales: The PM provides competitive knowledge, trains the sales force on significant differentiation and assists in closing large deals…when the customer wants to see someone other than a salesperson.

To Development: The PM is defines the product to Development through Market Requirements Documents and by approving Functional Specifications.  He/she is always there for the necessary trade-offs between feature inclusion and time of delivery.

To Management: The PM is the “go-to” person when something good or bad happens; able to provide an interpretation of what it means and its impact.

To R & D: The PM provides direction via the product roadmap and information regarding competitive capabilities and features.

To PR/AR/IR: The PM provides relevant content, information, and messaging.

To Customer Service: The PM provides support both on a pre and post sale basis.

The key point is that there is a hub which communicates a consistent message to the different functions causing them to be aligned in a common goal. If this hub is removed, the wheel stops turning.  Development may end up making what Sales wants…unfiltered.  Sales doesn’t have a credible backstop from HQ.  Finance extrapolates from past numbers, etc. etc.

Those companies that view Marketing’s role as that of an inside Advertising agency or limited to lead generation activities may see a short term boost in sales due to the increased application of resources.  However, as the product cycle turns, the lack of focus and a common presentation of the next product(s) will cause the organization to scramble and fall behind.

A well constructed Marketing function includes the lead generation/sales support activities as well as the Product Management role.  Does your company have a “hub” who clearly communicates the vision of his/her products, or are you trapped in an organization that feels that Marketing exists to support sales?  If the latter, leave now.

RHM 12/16/2010

As most of you know back in the 60’s four (some still use just three) Marketing P’s were suggested.  I would propose that we might consider modifying some of the four P’s and actually adding one more.   But first let’s review the original four P’s.

Product:   the “thing” manufactured by a company and sold to the buyer.  Note: service and software are now products and secondly, differentiation and value propositions (not the only criteria) are required to keep your specific product or service selling.  Suggested modification here is to incorporate for B2B solutions not just products, because buyers are looking for solutions that address their “pain points” or applications and this requires a combination of products and services.

Price:   the amount proposed for the product or service, not necessarily the actual sold price.   I would suggest that value might be a better criterion here than price but that is for another discussion.

Place:  where the buyer can actually purchase the product or service.  Historically this was a store or a distribution channel but mainly someplace that one went to pick up or the process by which the product was delivered.   With the introduction of the Internet, today buyers do not even have to leave their home to buy almost anything!

Promotion:  the methods used by marketing to promote their product or services.  Like anything else there are numerous methods to pick from in promoting a product, the real challenge is defining the appropriate mix.  And again with the introduction of the Internet, there are more possible selections and thus more considerations.

Wikipedia suggests that there are three (3) additional P’s to consider.  People - those who consume the product, and thus the topics like market segmentation and data gathering should be added to the marketing activities.  Process- the flow of activities by marketing, or as I like to think about it,  the overall campaign and how to make it a completely integrated process in order to obtain maximum impact. Physical evidence- part of the marketing strategy that addresses some form of customer satisfaction.

I would suggest adding the fifth category called Public and here is why.   First of all, Bob and I have stated that the selling process has changed, the buyer is now in control and the potential buyer is doing research long before the selected vendor even knows about it.   Again the Internet and now social media are providing massive amounts of information (granted not all of it is factually correct) about companies and their product and services.   Therefore Marketing must, as a minimum, monitor what is being said about their company and its products and services.  Even though the comments may not be from potential buyers, they will have an impact on the image and opinions of others, thus companies need to be aware of the public and their perceptions (perceptions are real) and integrate this into their overall marketing activities.

Are you adequately monitoring everything that is being said about your company and your products and services?

RHL 12/14/10

Dick and others are recommending that CMOs look to reorganizing the Marketing function in 2011 in order to be more responsive to the demands being placed on Marketing.

Sketched below is a first draft of a 2011 Marketing organization for a B2B company with revenues north of $150M.  It assumes a separate, but equal, sales organization.  For smaller companies the same functions are required, but it is understood that they may find it difficult to fill each of the discrete functions.  Each of these functions reports directly to the Chief Marketing Officer.  (CMO)

View is 12 to 18 Months out. Works with Development to deliver the differentiated application solution at the right time and right price. Responsible for training, sales support and product road-map. Shares competitive analysis work with Marketing Programs.

Responsible for pre and post customer support. Acquires information by listening to the customer and is responsible for providing a positive customer experience.  Provides input to Solution Manager, Sales and Marketing Programs.

View is 0 to 12 months.  Responsible for lead generation, tracking and nurturing. Delivers leads via Web Site (SEO, web tools, etc.) as well as events, programs, collateral. Listens to the customer, provides research and analytical information regarding social media, industry and programs. Responsible for the Brand. Trains the rest of the organization on the use of social media. Shares competitive analysis work with Solution Managers.

Responsible for the voice of the company. Delivers new, relevant content that is distributed by Marketing programs. Spokesperson for the company. Viewed as Industry Guru; Expert. Assists in sales support.

PR function executed in social media.   (Note: Marketing organization has dotted line relationship with Investor Relations.)

Have I missed anything?  Does your Marketing organization cover these functions?  Will they in 2011?  In your company, if Marketing is not responsible for all contacts with a potential or existing customer, who is?

RHM    12/9/2010

Well, I guess the current political environment has done one positive thing for consumers and industrial buyers.  The joke about how do you know when a politician is lying….  when his/her mouth is moving, can now be said about Marketers. A webinar I attended and a recent survey stated that 70 -75% of buyers don’t believe any of the marketing messages or claims presented by vendors!  How has this come about?  Two simple reasons, the potential buyer is now better educated, and now has the ability to access information about topics, companies, and product or services that they never had before.

As I have stated previously, the seller-buyer model has changed.  Before, companies pretty much “controlled” what was being disseminated, guarded what was distributed, with little additional information available to the potential buyer (unless you knew someone in the company that you were researching). Today the model is basically upside down. Buyers (both consumers and business) are in control and not only have access to the Internet, but social media now provides viral information about companies, issues, products and services and very importantly, how they are being treated by these companies (customer satisfaction).

So if your company is being viewed as less then positive or is moving into the category of not being believed, what do you do?

A number of social marketing leaders suggest, “Make information to your customers and potential customers relevant.” Others say listen to what is being said about your company and respond positively not defensively. Others say focus on the way your products or services address the customer’s issues and others would say, reorganize your entire marketing organization to mirror today’s environment.

Let’s look at these ideas in some more detail:

1-      Relevancy:    I agree, buyers don’t want to receive information that has nothing to do with what they care about.   But this is good old marketing 101- customer segmentation.  So if you are not focusing on your targeted audience, you will definitely be perceived as non-relevant and hence not being believed.

2-      Respond to customer’s statements:  Isn’t it amazing how many companies do not seem to care what is being said about what the customers are saying!   I would suggest two action items; one, as a minimum start monitoring the social media circuits and respond positively to your audience and second, understand that your audience is not just the end user, but your channels (your own sales force, resellers, distributors, etc).  All have relevant information about what is working and what is not working…listen to them all.

3-      Address customer’s real issues:  Again marketing 101, but too many times I see companies introducing a product or service just because it sounds neat, but does not address a market need.

4-      Reorganize marketing:  Seems sort of a strong statement, but I would definitely look at your marketing organization and analyze it to see if you are paralleling your functions with those of today’s customer’s habits and methods.

Well that is what some of the “experts” are recommending.  While I agree with the concepts, I would state that they are basic marketing best practices, so if you are not doing these in some form or another, you will end up in the “not being believed” group.

My suggestions are not new and to be honest just makes good common sense; make the customer HAPPY or in today’s terminology – customer satisfaction!

Go back to the old expression that the customer is always right. If he is dissatisfied with the product or service, make it right; don’t put them through a million hoops just to wear him out.  If they have issues, assume they have issues and address them.  If your product or service does not perform the way you stated it would or if there is a bug in the software or a quality issue, admit it and tell the customer they are right and that you will fix it versus giving them a million reasons why their issue is not applicable.

You will be amazed how honesty overcomes most short falls.  Now, I know some are saying that this approach can be costly.  My response is it more costly than losing customers or worse, losing your good will?? 

The choice is yours. Be part of the group that is not believable or stand out in the crowd as a company who knows about their customer and actually partners them in their business.

RHL 12/07/10 

This is the seventh in a series of articles for the CMO on planning for 2011.

Talking heads and prognosticators will soon fill the air waves with summaries of 2010 and forecasts for 2011.  That we start a new decade and are still in the midst of a recession will add to the babble.

One area of focus will be social media/social networking/Web 2.0/digital marketing, etc.  Some will declare that “tipping points” have occurred and that significant changes will take place.  Others will decry the hype and say that much of what is going on is a fad.

What is true is that no-one can predict the future.  We can, however, learn from the past.  It is true that the automobile basically wiped out the buggy whip business.  It is also true that neither Television nor Radio replaced Movies as a form of entertainment.  What happened is that each form of media grew in its own way and to serve its own segment.

The unknown about social media is that we don’t know how it will evolve. Will the Internet/Google TV/You Tube take the place of older media?  Will tablet devices take the place of newspapers?  Will newspapers follow buggy whips? Probably not.  What is more likely to happen is that a junction will be reached and new branches will appear.  Learning from history:

• Thomas Edison based one of his early companies and efforts on providing DC power to densely populated areas.  He didn’t see the need to electrify rural areas because of the cost to reach only a few people.  The introduction of AC power created the greatest growth in electrification, pushed DC power in a different direction, and created numerous branches for electrical transmission and related electrical products.
• Henry Ford said that the buyer can have “any color as long as it is black,” and almost went bankrupt.  GM/Chevrolet provided color and gained significant market share.  Ford fought back, recovered and prospered. And as an interesting turn, Ford is the only domestic car company that did not have to be recently bailed out by the Government.
• In 1977, Ken Olsen the head of Digital Equipment Corp. said, “There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home.”  While that strategic direction didn’t help save Digital Equipment, the PC business today is alive and well…and moving toward hand-held devices instead of in the home.

The bottom line is that people forecasting the future, or making declarative statements are usually wrong.  It takes a significant change and usually a long time before a product or concept is rendered obsolete, regardless of how hard VCs look for “disruptive technology.”  More frequently, new branches appear, grow and multiply.

How should the CMO react in the face of the 2011 forecasts?  Our advice has been fairly blunt:

• Recognize that you will probably have to reorganize/restructure for the “new” marketing.
• Continue doing what works.  (If you don’t know what works, set up a measuring process.)
• Join the digital age. Set aside a good portion of your resources to experiment.  Generally you will need more time (people) than money.
• Cultivate your installed base of customers in two ways:
  • Listen to what they say about your product and services, and make appropriate changes
  • Provide them with new products and services…it is the most inexpensive sale you can make
• To grow, seek adjacent markets with current products and services but move carefully.
• Recognize that there are increasing demographic divisions occurring, both in your staff and in your buyers:
  • The Millennials  act differently than the Baby Boomers.  Embrace the differences and use it to your advantage.
  • The rich (both people and companies) are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.  Unless you can sell a lot to the poor people/companies, concentrate on selling to the rich.

As the CMO have you prepared your Management for 2011?  How will you react when  the best known talking heads suggests that all the world is going Web 2.0, and your management wants to know why you aren’t following lock-step?

RHM 12/2/2010

This is a second in a series regarding social media tools.  As I stated earlier, the first step in selecting which social media tools to use is critical and will have a big impact on the success of your marketing programs and revenue generation.

Step one is to understand how social media will support your company’s complete Marketing strategy and goals. Since there is a large selection of social media to pick from that range from SEO to aggregation to management, it is important to understand your Marketing strategy and goals and how social media will support your plans.  Hand in hand with the strategy and goals is the establishment of key metrics that allow you to track progress toward your goals.  The tools you choose have to be able to provide you with the information related to the metrics so you know where you stand.

Assuming you have done step number one, here are nine key considerations in selecting which social media tool(s) are best fitted for your company.

1-What type of platform is the social media tool:   Is the tool strictly a SEO tool or is an aggregator of various medias, searches and keywords, or is a management type tool.

Some tools only perform searches and/or searches for only one type of media, so be careful not to limit yourself in gathering important information for your marketing organization.

 2 – What type of media does the tool support?   If your company uses various media to convey information to its potential and current customers then you need to know what is being said about your company and its products and services. Therefore does the tool need to support video like You Tube, or photos like Flickr, or social media like Twitter, Facebook and overall news coverage or any combination of these?

3- Are alerts, analysis and reporting a requirement for you to perform your digital marketing?  Do you just wanted to be notified about events/comments about your company or do you need reporting summaries/dashboards with various degrees of analytics that will help you turn data into information?

4- Keywords:   How many and how sophisticated are the keyword profile capabilities of the social media tool?   To really make your searches meaningful, you need the capability to focus on areas such as target market segments or very specific topics to get relevant data.  Therefore it is critical that you have the scale and flexibility to construct various accurate keyword searches.

5- Searches:  Not only is the SEO critical to “finding” the relevant data but how efficient are the searches, is there a limit to the number of searches (some tools have a price with a search limitation or ranges of prices per ranges of searches).  If you want to collect data on a number of different topics then understand the search capabilities and how many retrievals the tool will support.

6- Blogs:   Blogs are another critical media form and if this is important to you, find out now many blogs are covered by the tool that you are considering.  Do you input the blogs or are they in a directory or is there a list that the tool covers?

7- Support:  What happens when you have a question or you need training or you encounter a software problem?   To what level and breath does the tool vendor provide support after the initial trial period?   I cannot over stress the importance in selecting a vendor that will be around after the initial purchase or after selecting one of the “free” tools.

8- Ease of Use:  Is there a user friendly GUI, are there graphs for summarizations, are there predefined reports to select from, does the analytics require lengthy setups before getting started, are there additional tools to help you in your different activities?  Is there a HELP tab?

9- Price: If you select a tool that is free, first understand what might be its limitations and then are there some later costs to either stay with the product or to get new features. If you are selecting a tool that has a price, is it per use, per account, per month, or per activities, basically how is the pricing structured and does it fit within your strategy? Alternatively, if you choose a SaaS vendor, contract up front monthly fees and the accessibility of historical data if you choose to bring this function in house.

As you can see there are a number of considerations (there are additional ones but for getting started these are the key criteria) when selecting a social media tool(s); so the question should not be “am I going to use one or more of these tools.” but “which set of tools best meets our company’s strategy and have I selected the ones that will provide meaningful information (not just data) to help optimize my marketing activities?”

 What metrics are important to you and where do you stand today in implementing your tools?

RHL 11/30/10

This is the sixth is a series about how the CMO should plan for 2011.

Austerity –noun, plural -ties.

1. austere quality; severity of manner, life, etc.; sternness.

2. Usually, austerities. ascetic practices: austerities of monastery life.

3. strict economy.

(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/austerity)

A day doesn’t go by without a news report of austerity measures being imposed; cutbacks in social programs in Greece, raising the retirement age in France, cutting services in Ireland, etc.  Some have interpreted the recent U.S. election results as a mandate to decrease spending and embrace a more austere economic environment.

How does this impact the CMO in planning for 2011?

1. Position and Messaging.  When times are “tough” images of solidarity, trust and longevity resonate.  Messages that convey these images, whether visual or in words will appeal in both the B2B and B2C markets.  Integral to the messaging is simplicity, i.e., a clear direct explanation of the value proposition.  For example, “saves money” has a stronger impact than “a meaningful buyer experience with long term economic benefits.”
2. Choices. Some studies have shown that too many choices confuse buyers.  On the other hand, product line extensions allow for different segments to be served.  A strategy of offering the traditional Good, Better, Best can resolve this issue.  Sunsetting the Basic and Ultra offerings lessens customer choices and may reduce overall costs.
3. Quality. When buyers, both B2B and B2C, have fewer dollars to spend they will increasingly look toward optimization, whether it is longevity, multiple usage or increased service. Products that are perceived as quality products will gain market share.
4. Image. If everyone perceives that they are living in a strict economy, lavish and over-the-top displays will ruin any messaging or positioning.  News reports or coverage about employees (CEOs or others) enjoying the high-life will impact buying decisions.  Reports about counting paperclips and pencils will show that the company is working along with everyone else.  It also reinforces the trust image.
5. Over deliver. I buy wine through the Internet.  The shipments come 3-4 times a year.  The most recent box (12 bottles) arrived the other day.  In unpacking it I found that 6 wine gift bags had been enclosed, at no charge.  While this was not an altruistic move by the vendor, as the more wine I give away the more I might buy, it showed that they recognize the season, the potential that I wouldn’t have a gift bag and acted to fill that need.  They over-delivered. In austere times vendors who over deliver build customer loyalty and more sales.
6. Acknowledge Risk Avoidance.  In austere times buyers will work to minimize risk.  This is not to say that they will always take the easy decision, i.e., we will go with IBM/Google/Apple because no one ever gets fired for buying IBM/Google/Apple, rather they will look to vendors to insure them from any risk in the decision process.

Studies done on companies that lasted through the Great Depression show that those that spent on Marketing were more successful than those who cut back on Marketing expenses.  Key to the recommendations above is continued expansive Marketing expenditures in order to maintain and grow mind share.

As CMO are you planning for an austere 2011?  Does your positioning, messaging and image reflect the changing environment?  Are you over delivering on your products and services?

RHM  11/18/2010