Four Ways You Are Marketing Backwards Is everyone on the same page? No? Here’s how to fix it.

Imagine attending a the symphony where none of the musicians had the score. The conductor taps his music stand and the musicians nervously look around, not knowing whether they are playing Pachelbel’s “Canon in D” or Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture.” Disaster is imminent, correct? Before you react to the unprofessionalism of any orchestra that would be caught in such a ridiculous situation, take a look at your own Marketing Department. Is every member of your “orchestra” playing from the same sheet of music? Let’s look at some common ways this seemingly “amateur” disconnect can happen to anyone and how to fix it.

True Story
In a weekly staff meeting, the CMO took the stage and began by confidently asking the audience if anyone could recite our key value proposition. Nobody (including myself) could. I recited – verbatim – the last generation of value proposition. As a key director in the organization, how could I not know our key value proposition? It had never been communicated outside the creative department – even to leadership within other key components of the Marketing organization! Sad, but true.

Being able to both understand and communicate your organization’s Marketing objectives, strategy and key components, such as value proposition and key differentiators is prerequisite to being able to successfully execute. Let’s look at some common issues – and fixes.

Your strategy is too complex

I see this mistake far too many times. If your demand generation strategy is complex, it very likely means you are not on the right track. While complex plans with numerous dependencies work great in Hollywood action movies, they seldom work out so well in reality. In most cases, those complicated dependencies wind up looking more like roadblocks when it comes to execution.

Can you explain your demand gen strategy in sixty seconds to a complete stranger? If not, it is probably too complex, and likely you can’t explain it well enough to everyone in your organization so they can execute against it. And if they don’t understand it, how will they know whether or not their tactical plans are actually designed to meet strategic goals? Or, worse, whether or not they have met any goals after the fact? Here are some simple tests for over-complex strategies:

1.     Would your parents understand your strategy after a five-minute conversation? In General Eisenhower’s order of the day to 2.3 million troops on D-Day, his strategy was simple. “We will accept nothing less than full Victory.” Any questions? If your strategy leaves room for questions, keep working.

2.     Does your team understand what to do? Do they understand what their specific tactical tasks are? Which leaders will be delivering specific tactical orders? If communication channels are unclear or your team will be getting (potentially conflicting) orders from different sources, you still have some clarifying work to do.

3.     Will your team know when it has accomplished its objective? Are your goals quantifiable in a way that is easy to understand? Do all of your team members know the metrics for which they are responsible? If your measures of success are ambiguous, your team’s performance will also be ambiguous.

You have assumed communication

Communication is only accomplished when the message has been both received and understood. Often, send an email memo or delivering a PowerPoint presentation at a staff meeting assumes communication has happened. These are both forms of monologue and not dialogue. Good communication requires a dialogue. Make sure dialogue happens. Here are some good tests to make sure you have communicated your strategy.

1.     Make sure strategy is understood at every level of leadership first. If your managers don’t understand it, you can be guaranteed your front line team won’t understand it either. Meet with managers individually to ensure true dialogue happens.

2.     Ask specific questions. Ending a discussion with “Do you have any questions?” does not count. Start with these three questions to get a baseline on whether or not your communication has been both received and understood:

a.     In your own words, can you repeat back the strategy/objective?

b.     At a high level, what are you going to do to execute against this strategy?

c.     How will you know you have accomplished your goals?

d.     Can you successfully communicate this strategy to your team?

3.     Let you managers communicate to their teams. Be in the room to demonstrate your support, but let the managers actually deliver the message. This lets the team know from whom they should expect to receive further communication about goals, strategy and tactical execution.

Have the difficult conversations up front

If there is going to be any resistance or difficulty, that conversation needs to happen prior to execution. It is much easier to make any necessary considerations for these types of obstacles before diving into execution. Often, line managers or team members have insight into tactical execution issues not visible to leaders and, if these are real obstacles to success, you absolutely need to have these conversations up front! In general, these obstacles only fall into one of two categories:

1.     Situations you can control

2.     Situations you cannot control.

Of those you cannot control, you can make necessary accommodations in metrics or operational process - if you know about them. Finding out after-the-fact makes for unpleasant results. Of those you can control, doing something about them up front will vastly improve your chances of operational success.

Change the conversation.

The common thread here is having conversations. Lots of conversations. Not memos and not presentations, but conversations. Great communication up front is critical to successful execution by insuring everyone is on the same page. When you tap on your music stand, the entire orchestra will be lined up on the first measure of the “1812 Overture” and your team will make beautiful music!

Notes:

Reduce complexity. The greater the complexity, the greater the chance your team will not properly understand your goals and strategy

Don’t assume you have communicated. Assure your message has been both received and understood by asking four direct questions.

Have the difficult conversations up front.

So, Marketing has a plan and everyone on the team now knows exactly what it is and how to communicate it to others both inside and outside the organization. Your plan’s success is now measured by closed business attributed to Marketing campaigns. However, to measure your success, Sales needs to properly disposition (meaning disposition in a timely fashion) Leads and Opportunities in your CRM system. Chances are good they are not. Why not? Let’s look at some good arguments you can use to get Sales on board in: Four Ways you are Marketing Backwards, Part 4.