A Wise man's Quote

A wise man once quoted:

"Without a stint in Sales don’t even think of taking up a marketing Position!"

For all of you who don’t understand the Wiseman’s quote, I have only one thing to say...
Read on!
Consider you start a Product Company; you will have a nice supply chain, defining how your company runs its day to day operations. At one end you will have acquisition of raw materials, and on the other end comes the process of selling, the last but not the least.

Everyone buys. But how many people sell? Very few. And some people even go to the extent of considering Selling as a derogatory Verb! Actually, there is some sense and reasoning behind this statement as well.

A company has a mission or in common terms, a motive. In the same way, every employee will have his own too (within the company).Unfortunately there always exists a conflict of motives, between the various employees.

Take for example, consumer banking. The motive of the sales executive is to maximize the number of accounts he opens for the bank. His incentives don’t depend on the quality of the clients (but, of course there are protocols restricting the liberty to a certain extent).On the other hand, an investment advisor in the same bank has his incentive structure based on the investment influx he brings into the bank and the profits he generates for the bank through his investments. The salesman tends to wash his hands off the issue,the moment he gets the account opened without caring for the investment advisor and for the welfare of the company!

This motive mismatch doesn’t just stay within the employees, but transfers into a Client-Company mismatch as well. The salesman with selfish motives gets the account opened even without understanding the consumer's need and position. Once the account is opened, the investment advisor realizes that the customer acquired, is not the right one for him to maximize his gains and ill treats the client. This ends up in a bad relationship between the bank and its client!This example is just to showcase a conflict of motive existing in a corporate structure. But more importantly, we need to look at what exactly does sales mean to marketing?

Sales is the primary reason why marketing came to existence! The term, marketing the product was coined for describing the process of selling the product in the market. But, slowly as a corporation grew more sophisticated, the process of selling became complicated!

Once marketing came into existence to understand the complexities of trade and sell intelligently, it also started impacting other important aspects of a fully developed corporate. Sales became a mundane process. Marketing started divulging into Brand valuation, Customer relationship management and various other critical elements of the company and these issues also got embedded into the mission of the marketing function.

But for a moment, just take away sales and imagine where marketing stands! It’s a dead duck!

How many ever functions that marketing will handle with various levels of importance, Sales is where marketing should never ever lose focus on. It is sales that is the bread winner for the company. As an analogy, we can exist without Air Conditioner, but can we exist without air?

It’s really important that the marketing guys understand how their sales arm is functioning, to the fullest possible detail and take decisions accordingly. They should most importantly avoid a Motive conflict as discussed above.

So all you marketing guys make sure you don’t dump the importance of understanding the seller's perspective. The proof of the pudding is in eating, how ever attractive or aromatic the pudding is... :-)

Can you spot the trend?

Marketing is damn dynamic! Don’t you think so? If not, think again!

For starters,Consider the evolution of marketing. It goes something like this, starting from Ford in the early 1900's :
Production Concept - Mass Production and Wide Distribution
Product Concept - Maximize product Features & more and more R&D
Consumer Concept - Identify Consumer needs & make your product work around them, and the most recent one…
Holistic marketing - Integration of Societal Marketing, Internal Marketing, Consumer Centricity and Marketing Communications!

Now, for everyone in the marketing domain at this point in time, holistic marketing will be a natural way of handling the Marketing Campaign and Building Brands! And 100 years back Production concept would have been the IN thing!But the question I’m trying to address is what the Marketing paradigm will be, two years down the line?

A Couple of quick thoughts. Without a doubt, the evolution of communication medium will have a strong bearing in the marketing Process. And another trend to be noted is that, most products are shifting from a Sellers market to a Buyers market, owing to Immense Competition in all walks of life!

Its quite palpable currently that their exists high levels of information Clutter and consumer loyalty is decreasing drastically as well. How one can affect the Decision making process of the consumer remains a key question at all levels of a Marketing Drive!Reaching a customer directly with your marketing campaign having a mix of creativity, Celebrity and other masala stuff to create a Top of the mind awareness might just not work out anymore! This is where i see the evolution of the next marketing Phenomenon - Credibility marketing!

The customer has realized, at the end of the day, what counts is the experience his product gives him and the needs that are being satisfied by the product. The Guys who communicate the REAL experience the consumer with his product, be it good or bad, through a reliable source (agreed, debatable) will be the ones who will be able to sell something! There is no time for creating Product Perceptions...guys, move on!

To put it simple and straight, cut all the crap about Creativity and your social conscience. Tell me what your product has, with real and credible Experience. In a nut shell, Marketing will become a Reality show packed in an Elevator pitch!

P.S: After writing down my thoughts, i googled Credibility Marketing. And looks like the shift has already begun :-)

Brand IIT - Whats wrong?

Its time that I give a take about Brand IIT! Ive seen, heard and read enough about brand IIT and its various avatars! Its really cool to corporatize an educational institution. But unfortunately, too much onus has been laid on the brand part without any significant thought about the product! From an insider perspective this is what I feel about the reckless debates doing rounds in the society about Brand IIT!

Since we have started using corporate jargon to describe IIT, let’s take a well known corporate - Mercedes for a comparison purpose. Every one of us admires merc as a brand and we look at it as premium stuff. The Brand got built as a result of world class products produced consistently over a period of time, with due respect to their marketing heads who complimented the products through their positioning strategy!

IITs in a similar fashion, produced amazing guys like Muthuraman (MD, Tata Steel), Rajat Gupta (ex CEO, Mckinsey), Raguram rajan (Chief Economist, IMF) and tons of such people with raw talent and hardworking capabilities in the 70s and 80s who quickly learnt the ropes of the corporate world and made it big. At the same time, these guys did a wonderful brand promotion campaign for their alma mater and the Brand IIT is flying Sky high!

Everything till now is very nice and rosy.But here starts all the trouble, and this is where the comparison of a corporate with an educational institution starts dying!

Merc, even after establishing its brand, still produces cars with cutting edge technology and the basic premium offerings it had from ages! It basically does not stop producing Steering wheels stating that it has been doing it for ages! What iam trying to convey is that, a past product does not have any effect on the working of the current or future product. Basically the Merc car does not react to the qualities of the predecessor. Every new car again begins with the construction of a hull, tightening of bolts, fixing of wheels and so on!

But the Products from our prestigious IITs are not inanimate four wheelers. They react to the brand being built around them. In a way, they realize what their real worth is in the global market, and the companies are willing to pay a premium for acquiring you.
But on the other hand, you forget, even now you have to start off from the nuts and screws to the tuning of the engine. Yes, it is all done in the previous products. but since there is so much of talk about the finish, the product development processes takes a beating and the finish nor the brand hardly matters.

At the end of the day, the product does realize its mistakes and gets its bearings right, but not before taking the driver for a rough drive.