Happy New Year everyone, hope you all enjoyed the holiday and that you’re back rested and relaxed for an exciting 2010. I sure am and can’t wait to dig back into the Marketing Guy blog—so let’s get going! I had a chance to participate in some team training right off the bat this week, and while it had its typical “corporate training” moments, it really did serve to help focus a number of topics I deal with in my position, and raised an important issue that our group agreed is a huge one as it relates to successful marketing, and one that I think you’d all benefit from as well—and that is ensuring you have an “intersection” of understanding about your marketing goals and objectives before you embark on a marketing activity or campaign this year. Now you may take the word “intersection” as one of those trite marketing-speak phrases that comes out of these types of sessions, but hear me out. By “intersection,” I’m not talking about a recitation of your 2010 marketing plan to the sales group with them nodding or doing email while you’re in front of a PPT presentation, but actually taking the time to ensure you and the sales teams (for instance) have a strong commonality and understanding of what your marketing plan is intended to do and achieve—no computers, no long presentations, but a conversation about where your head is at, where your priorities and resources are positioned, and what your goals and objectives are for this year. You may say right off the bat that the goal this year is to increase revenue, and your marketing plan may reflect this stance. But what if your sales team thinks it’s not? . What if their focus is share? What if their focus is on current customer retention? Are you sure you’re in alignment with your sales counterparts on what they’re expecting from you this year? Or do you just “think” you are based on your own expectations? Well now’s the perfect time to have these conversations. Whether you’re heading into a sales-kick-off season or planning of for the 2nd half of the current fiscal year (as we here are doing at Microsoft), it’s super important to ensure that you have this conversation, you listen to what the sales teams are telling you they need, and in turn, that they understand what you’re prepared to produce, and then you come to an agreement of our goals and objectives and metrics—an “intersection” you might say. The outcome of this conversation—the intersection—is incredibly important. Are your expectations aligned? Do they want lots of leads while you’re planning awareness events? Are they wanting to mine your customer based for cross-selling and upselling while you’re out there building pipeline? Way different marketing activities; way different sales motions; way different budget uses; way too much wasted time and money if you’re not on the same page. So as you get started this year, take some time with your constituents, with your team, with your peers, with your internal customers, and have these conversations. Listening and finding the common intersection may take some time now, but I guarantee that it will save you time down the road and make your marketing plan that much more effective this year. Happy New Year everyone and good luck out there!
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