Articles
Getting the CEO to get marketing
by John Graham“What does it take to do good marketing?” This is the question
a speaker asked the 50 seminar participants from financial services companies.
No sooner had the question been asked when a woman said, “Keep the
CEO out of it.” Along with laughter, heads were nodding all over the
room.
“How can I get my CEO into a marketing mode?” Many a company president
would be surprised to learn that I’ve been asked this question more than
any other over the years. It comes from entry-level employees to sophisticated
sales executives, from engineers to frustrated marketing directors.
The question is always serious and the voice more often than not conveys signs
of desperation and discouragement. “The president can’t see how we’re
slipping,” says a frustrated sales manager.
“He thinks the problems are only ‘temporary.’ He sees
us like we were 30 years ago. But nobody knows us today. How can I get
him to understand what’s going on?”
Then there’s the thoughtful and well-educated marketing person who reports
that her job is “churning out proposals.” This is her boss’s “uninformed
view of marketing.”
Perhaps the most common form of idiocy is a CEO’s benighted belief that
the role of marketing is to make sales. Instead of looking at the sales force
to see if it is following up on the leads generated by marketing and actually
closing sales, marketing gets the blame. Far fetched? Check it out by asking
any marketing manager.
It’s not surprising that CEOs focus on sales. That’s what gave them
their starts and that’s where they were successful, so that’s what
they see as the solution to the problem. “Make more calls” is their
mantra and magic solution to everything.
“I just can’t understand how this guy can be so blind,”
said a confused young marketer at a manufacturing company. “He’s
on top of so many things but marketing is certainly not one of them.”
Those CEOs who are blind when it comes to marketing tend to view themselves as
entrepreneurs and everyone knows that an entrepreneur is an
“expert on everything,” including marketing.
Marketing can be all but irrelevant to a CEO other than providing “glitzy”
sales materials and puffed-up press releases filled with unsubstantiated
claims and finessed figures. And under the guise of marketing, there
are the countless vendor-funded “events” specifically designed
to showcase the CEO as the head duck in a not too large pond.
All that’s not marketing; it’s bullshit, a technical term brilliantly
articulated by Princeton professor Harry Frankfurt in his ground-breaking book, On
Bullshit, and ably articulated by another academic, Laura Penny in Your
Call is Important to Us.
Ignorance is never bliss and in the case of marketing it only leads to unsatisfactory
results. As the art of attracting and holding customers, marketing is too
important to be thwarted and dismissed by ignorance, misunderstanding and misinformation.
Aside from not having a clue how to move recalcitrant CEOs to see the light and
embrace marketing, there are a couple of questions that may be worth discussing:
1.Where does growth come from? For many companies, it comes
from acquisitions, increased prices and just plain luck. Being able to
say,
“We’re the 3rd largest widget works in the world” floats
some boats even though the achievement may be built on something other
than growth in actual sales. In the insurance industry, for example,
luck plays a key role. Every insurance executive lives for what is called “a
hard market”––the increase in insurance rates by insurance
companies or the regulators. Higher rates mean higher commissions, which
translate into higher revenues, all without raising a finger. Every industry
has such gimmicks for pseudo growth.
Getting new customers can be more of an exercise in customer replacement, rather
than an activity of growing the customer base.
2. Why should anyone want to do business with us? A real estate
broker showing an attractive condo regaled prospective buyers during
an open house with the virtues of the property. Realizing that none of
the visitors expressed an interest, an observer recognized that the salesperson
made little or no attempt to discover what the prospective buyers were
looking for in a home. Without understanding customer dreams and expectations,
how can the salesperson make a sale?
Just because we want to make a sale doesn’t mean someone wants to buy.
The only reason why anyone chooses to do business with a company is necessarily
based on that company’s ability to meet customer needs. It’s not
an accident that Apple’s incredible success has come at the moment when
it has been rated as “the most innovative company.” Apple is about
marketing––understanding what the customer wants––not
about technology.
So, where does this leave us with attempting to help CEOs recognize the role
marketing can play in growing the business? Here are a few thoughts for consideration:
1. Admit to marketing ignorance. No one is expected be an expert on everything;
we all have our blind spots. And believe it or not, that goes for CEOs, particularly
when it comes to marketing.
Marketing is not about personal preferences (“I don’t like green.”)
or individual likes and dislikes (“Nobody reads mail today.”). But
it’s sometimes shocking to hear a company president display what in other
circles would be called ignorance.
There’s nothing wrong with asking questions and there’s everything
right about relying on those with specialized knowledge and experience for recommendations.
One can certainly hope that the CEO finally sees the light and acknowledges that
marketing isn’t about the company, but about its customers. It’s
a difficult concept but one worth fighting for.
2. Become brand conscious. As difficult as it is to grasp, marketing is
about value to the customer. This is not the ever-popular and ever-irrelevant
“value added” idea, but something far more important and
rare. We call it “value-inherent” and it’s what sets
one company apart from everyone else in the same business.
3. Stop chasing the competition. While they appear strong, CEOs are often
vulnerable, particularly when it comes to following the competition. They jump
around from one sure-to-fail initiative to the next aping competitors. The truth
is that competitors are doing the same thing! Just because they are advertising
in a particular publication doesn’t mean it’s effective.
4. Figure out what’s going on. Far too much money and
time is wasted on fooling around with the CEO’s “great ideas.”
Chances are these almost-other worldly insights are “borrowed”
from a competitor or another company, but they instantly become the “property”
of the CEO. The tragedy is that the entire organization must stop in
its tracks and make the useless and unproductive nonsense happen.
On the other hand, it’s often difficult or impossible for CEOs to grasp
the value of research. They are so committed to “going with their gut” that
facts are unnecessary, even irrelevant. If you know everything, then research
is borderline ridiculous. Right? It’s far too easy to be exuberant, excited
and totally committed to the brilliance of our own untested ideas.
Here’s the point. Today’s General Motors is the poster company for
enterprises where those in charge don’t have a clue about marketing. The
Big GM blinds them. The ideas of their executives are often far different from
those in the heads of their customers.
More than 40 years ago, marketing guru Theodore Leavitt of the Harvard Business
School labeled this CEO disease as “marketing myopia.”
Unfortunately, his insight continues to stand the test of time.
John R. Graham is president of Graham Communications, a marketing services and sales consulting firm. He is the author of The New Magnet Marketing and Break the Rules Selling, writes for a variety of business publications, and speaks on business, marketing and sales issues. Contact him at 40 Oval Road, Quincy, MA 02170; 617-328-0069; jgraham@grahamcomm.com.