When I joined a telecom equipment manufacturer as the division director of marketing, one of the things I did was to focus on changing the way the company thought about marketing. Previously, marketing had been relegated to its traditional role: Researching the market, setting product pricing, developing sales material, and promoting the company in various ways.
Peter Drucker, the legendary management consultant, believed that marketing has to encompass the entire business, including selling. And most importantly of all, is always seen from the customer's point of view.
And so we turned the entire marketing group into a sales-centric team. We did everything in our power to understand the needs and wants of our customers, and we also targeted our customers' customers as well. In addition, everyone in the marketing organization went into the field to help our sales people on a regular basis.
A key feature was the Services Creation Program. It was designed to be easy for our telephone company customers to implement, and it evolved around helping our customers create new services for their customers — services that required our products.
Some of the elements of the Services Creation Program included:
- Built a password-protected extranet website dedicated to this customer segment with a ton of materials for their marketing people to access and customize;
- Put together an applications and services guide that took an extensive look at applications and value-added services that would drive increased revenues, customer loyalty, and profitability;
- Developed a series of customer presentations, marketing material, post card mailers, and advertising pieces that could be easily customized by our customers;
- Provided both on-site and online training for our customers' sales and marketing staffs;
- Designed a seminar to help them reach their target audiences and assisted them in marketing and managing the event.
The telecom company's marketing staff continued to perform traditional kinds of sales support tools such as brochures and presentations as well as lead generation programs. But when we moved beyond the conventional wisdom and got the marketing staff involved in focusing on the customer's needs and made them an active part of the sales process, wonderful things happened. Over three years, we boosted sales from $400,000 to more than $84 million — by making our marketing sell.
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Ron Stein is the founder and President of FastPath Marketing (www.marketing-strategies-guide.com). He has more than 20 years experience in sales, marketing, and business development, working positions ranging from salesman to vice president of sales and marketing to CEO of startups with industry leaders such as Motorola, VideoServer, Paradyne, and SercoNet. Ron is a member of the advisory team at the Tampa Bay Innovation Center, a nationally recognized entrepreneurial and startup accelerator for the state of Florida. He can be reached at 727-398-1855 or Ron@FastPathMarketing.com