For the past two days I've addressed a critical issue -- defining success -- for professional service marketers at new jobs or with new bosses. My comments are based on a post about a new book called Sink or Swim, which says (in so many words), "You have 12 weeks to get it right with your new boss."
Here's the 3rd of three pitfalls mentioned in the book, and my comments about it.
- They fail to confirm and define what success looks like with their managers or the board. The eagerness to quickly demonstrate competence and results overshadows the critical need to clearly define success metrics and expectations. Fail to define success, huh? Now this is a problem area! See below for my take on this pitfall.
Failing at the wrong goals: Talk about swimming against the tide! Many professional firm marketers still don't help their new bosses develop the appropriately strategic marketing goals for the firm. So no wonder the metrics and expectations are off! In the last 6 months I've been asked by numerous professional firms (including training and development, accounting, management consulting, real estate services, architecture, and law firms) to pass along their marketing descriptions for open senior marketing positions. I have been consistently disappointed at how tactically oriented these roles are, and how myopic they are -- still overly oriented toward communication to acquire clients. It's as if these firms assume they are marketing to the best targets and segments, with the best service offerings, when many are not. The marketer can't succeed, and knocks himself out trying. Instead, professional service firms should seek their marketers' help with Five Goals, which capture the true purview of a senior marketer, rather than the truncated set of responsibilities to which most have to agree.
Unrealistic expectations: Defining success has to incorporate the appropriate parameters to succeed, not just what the end result looks like ("grow our revenues!"). Many professional service practitioners ask, "How come we didn't get more people at that seminar," when in fact low attendance may have had nothing to do with the marketer's execution of tactics to invite attendees, and more to do with the lackluster content of the seminar. Unrealistic expectations also come in the form of timing. Using the seminar example above, let's say there were a good number of attendees, but they aren't ready to pull the trigger on hiring the firm for an engagement yet. Nevertheless, the practitioner will want to over-communicate to those attendees, hoping to stimulate them to hurry up toward a decision. Marketers know that over-communicating is held in little favor by decision makers, whose timetable is their own.
Unnecessary personalization: "You didn't increase our revenues." This is an egregious example of the pressure under which marketers work, with so little control of the "product" or the strategies that were adopted to market the firm. Marketers are partially at fault here, because they allow their firm's leaders to take an incomplete look at the marketplace, or let them plunge ahead with assumptions and strategies that worked for yesteryear. If the marketing strategies aren't working, there's something wrong with the assumptions or facts to begin with, or with the marketing strategies themselves (which are tied to appropriate goals!). Increasingly, PSFs rely on marketers for more and more implementation for goals that are unworkable, too vague, too broad or simply the wrong goals. When the results are disappointing, the marketer is viewed as less than personally effective.
The Sink or Swim point "confirm and define what success looks like" is a huge one for marketers. They need to get more buy-in for the proper goals:
- Goal 1: Defining and identifying the most strategically important prospects/clients
- Goal 2: Acquiring the most strategically important prospects/clients
- Goal 3: Retaining the most strategically important prospects/clients
- Goal 4: Increasing the firm’s amount of revenues with its most strategically important current clients
- Goal 5: Increasing the perceived value of the firm to all audiences (including suppliers and employees)
My take on the Sink or Swim key point? You don't have 12 weeks to get it right with your boss. Try to get it right before you start the job.
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