|
Decades of Marketing Lessons in 5
Minutes
I've sold tangibles and intangibles --
mainframes, business services, software, training programs, and
big-ticket financial services. Along the way, I've beat quota,
trained sales forces, managed sales teams, researched new markets,
built e-commerce web sites, championed products, led campaigns,
formed joint ventures, written marketing plans, created brochures,
given speeches, and authored articles. But there's always more to
learn.
The best
lessons so far:
From Ted Levitt's The Marketing
Imagination...
The purpose
of a business is to create and keep a customer. To do that, you have
to do those things that will make people want to do business with
you.
Customers
buy hopeful expectations, not actual things. The ability to satisfy
those expectations is more effectively communicated by the packaging
than by simple generic description of what's in the
package.
The form of
a product is a variable, not a given. Products are planned and
developed to serve markets.
From Regis McKenna's Marketing is
Everything...
The real
goal of marketing is to own the market.
The line
between products and services is fast eroding. What once appeared to
be a rigid polarity now has become a hybrid. Marketers who
appreciate the importance of the product-service hybrid focus on
building loyal customer relationships.
Today
diversity costs no more than uniformity.
From Gordon Bell's High Tech
Ventures:...
Marketing is
the collective mouthpiece for the firm and the guidance system for
the sales organization. Marketing's job is to make selling
easy.
The head of
marketing needs to be an artist and an inventor. Part wizard, part
technologist, part street fighter, and part strategist. Powerful
imagination but is able to balance a checkbook. Charter is to invent
a product in the minds of buyers. An idea-driven artisan who feeds
on creative opportunity.
From Spencer Johnson and Larry Wilson's
The One Minute Salesperson...
It comes
down to caring about your customers. My purpose: I help people get
the feelings they want -- soon.
People don't
buy our services, products, or ideas. They buy how they imagine
using them will make them feel.
People hate
to be sold but they love to buy.
Jay's two cents...
Never
underestimate the market. In 1900, Mercedes determined that world
demand for cars would peak out at one million because that would
exhaust the supply of chauffeurs; by 1920 there were 8 million Fords
on the road. In the mid-1940's, IBM Chairman Thomas J. Watson said,
"I think there is a world market for about five computers."
Always,
always, always look at things from the customer's point of
view.
Products are
not real. Perception is reality.
Give
prospects what they want. Executives are always on the prowl
for:
- competitiveness/competitive
advantage
- profit improvement
& shareholder value
- service
quality/being close to the customer
- leadership (not
management)
- productivity
improvement & Yankee ingenuity
- excellence &
winning
- participation,
empowerment, & gain sharing
- management of
accelerating change
- "I want it
NOW."
Sage Advice
"When a fellow says, 'It ain't
the money, but the principle of the thing, it's the money."
Elbert Hubbard
"Example is
not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing."
Albert Schweitzer
"To his dog,
every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs."
Aldous Huxley
"Imagination
is more important than knowledge." Albert
Einstein
"Never
follow the crowd." Bernard Baruch
| 
