Haven’t I Seen This Movie Before?

A few weeks ago I had lunch with a friend and former colleague who’s also in marketing. Like me, my friend has worked in large companies, worked in small companies, done freelance work. Like me, my friend has done pretty much everything on the product management through product marketing through marcom continuum. Like me, my friend has been an individual contributor, managed small groups, managed large groups, run the whole show (sometimes as the lone wolf, working on a shoe string budget).

So it’s not surprising that our conversation turned to, well, marketing.

At one point, my friend started to talk about some of the struggles he’s having working with the sales team. (Unlike me, my friend is in a full time position, running marketing for a small company.)

After outlining a few of the issues he’s having - sales guys who want to sell any place other than the target market; sales guys who continue to sell a product that’s being EOL’d - and complain because there are no new features; sales guys who could really and truly be successful if only they had_________________ Fill in the Blanks: a white paper for "C-level" executives, a better demo, a Gartner Magic Quadrant with them in the Leader box….

We looked at each other and started to laugh.

Broken record. Groundhog Day. Endless loop.

Haven’t we both seen this movie before?

Haven’t we both had at least bit actor roles in it?

The truth is that problems will not vary all that much from place to place, and they will take on a numbing quality once you’ve seen them recurring as often as those of us with a few miles on the marketing odometer have.

Absent a strategy that has been bought into at the highest levels in the organization - and that is enforced throughout the organization - you will get sales guys selling the wrong products in the wrong places. You will get marketing people marketing the wrong products in the wrong place. And you will get developers building the wrong products for the wrong place.

So many problems wouldn’t exist if only a company had a clear focus, and stuck to it for more than the length of the off-site where management threw it up on flip-charts and declared it "done".

Sure, there would be other problems - even a supremely focused company can have difficulties penetrating their market. You may  be ahead of the curve. You may be underfunded. You may have bad luck. And, let’s face it, life is easier if you’re in the right box in the Gartner MQ.

But I’ve seen this movie often enough that I can mouth the dialog along with the stars. (And it sure ain’t as interesting as "We’ll always have Paris.")

When I look at the companies I’m working with now, I can honestly say that I regularly heave a big sigh of relief. Most of them are smaller companies, but they’re all focused. They all know what they do, and what value that brings to their customers. They know who those customers are, and why those customers need them.

It’s still difficult to cut through the clutter and get the story heard, but at least we know what that story is.

This wasn’t always the case when I was working full time when so much of our hard work went for naught because we didn’t really know who we were and what we were doing.

As I said, the companies I work with now are largely and blessedly free of identity confusion. Maybe companies in general are just growing -and smartening -up. Or maybe I’m just getting better at picking places that won’t drive me crazy!

---

Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically each day to your feed reader. If you don't have a feed reader, you can always have these articles delivered to your email inbox every day. Click here to sign up.

The Opinionated Marketers | Powered by WordPress | ElegantBlue is a custom theme by Nathan Rice