Marketing that Delivers Value to Customers and Shareholders
With 98% waste in the marketing budget and 87% in the sales budget, can we continue to treat our marketing and sales activities as an expense item buried in SG&A on our balance sheet? How much more money is your CEO prepared to burn on such inefficiency? Is there any wonder why marketing budgets are the first to be slashed when a company is having difficult times? Clearly, we need to manage our investments in marketing and sales more efficiently.
The mandate issued to CEO’s from one Board of Directors to the next is the same: Increase value for customers and shareholders. For companies that have already downsized several times, the only path left for value creation is to grow revenue. As a consultant to many Fortune 1000 companies and as an observer of the business economy, it is clear that many CEOs fail to optimize their revenue-generating potential. But not for lack of opportunity. In fact, quite the opposite is true. There are so many opportunistic directions that focus is lost. It is a curse of too many options. Yogi Berra was only half right when he coached “if you find a fork in the road, take it.”
The fork to take and take as quickly as possible is the fork that leads to Customers. Aim your systems to focus on a single, consistent image of who each Customer is and whether or not that Customer fits the profile for greatest profitable revenue. If so, then do everything possible to make that Customer successful. Then, and only then, that Customer will reward you with something supremely valuable – his or her loyalty.
I am looking for some examples for a "customer experience statement" (service vision, brand value) out of the B2B world.
Posted by: Dirk von Holt | October 14, 2009 at 05:36 PM