MARKETING SINS Signs and Solutions

Source: Ten deadly marketing sins Signs and solutions Author: Philip Kotler

Most handicapping deficiencies in most companies are:

oInsufficient market focus oInsufficient Customer orientation

y Insufficient market focus:

Your company has not gain insight into your market opportunities. y Insufficient Customer orientation: your company is not well organized to serve and deliver the wants and expectations of your customers.

First major handicap

Insufficient market focus

Insufficient market focus

y Following signs indicate that your marketers have not

sufficiently analyzed your market: Poor identification of market segments Insufficient prioritization of market segments No market segments managers

Sign no. 1 Poor identification of market segments

y It indicates that market is not sufficiently focused. y When it is asked from marketers or company that

who you are trying to sell? everyone is not acceptable answer. Because it is better to establish very strong and successful relationship with a portion of people in a market than to only marginally connect with everyone..

y Fortunately most companies do not answer

everyone but it does not indicate that they are correctly focused i.e. they might be selling to a large segment in which people of different age may have different priorities.

Solution
y You need: better market segmentation techniques. o Following key points can help better identifying the

segment: 1. Try to segment the members of market by different needs or sought benefits. 2. Try to find demographic descriptors that might correlate with these needs and benefits to make the search easier.

Sign no. 2 Insufficient prioritization of market segments

y In many cases, companies do rightly identify which

segment to target and prepare offerings for each chosen segment as well but then questions arise : ? Do companies have really measured the relative attractiveness of each segment? ? Do they have estimated the right ROI in different segments?

Solution
If company serves more than one segment then : y identify all the segments to be served as IBM does (example) y By focusing research on all the segments it is serving, company will be able to design more compelling offerings than unfocused competitors could present.

Sign no. 3 No market segments managers

y The third major sign of insufficient market focus is no

clear leaders or managers to manage the most important segments. y Most important segments should have managers who are empowered to ask for budgets that will produce company s estimated rate of return. y Those managers should also be rewarded accordingly.

Solution
y Specialized sales force should be developed for quite

different customer segments. y Try to hire sales persons who know well about the segment, customer s characteristics. e.g. you can hire ex-bankers to sell to banks.

Second major handicap

yInsufficient

Customer orientation

Insufficient Customer orientation

Following signs indicate that your company is not sufficiently organized to serve and satisfy customers. y It is job of marketing and sales to serve the customers. y No training programs to create a customer culture. y No incentives to treat the customers especially well.

Sign no. 1 Job of marketing and sales to serve the customers

y Companies feel convenient in organizing their

employees into departments designed to carry out specific responsibilities. y As different specialists will spend their time in respective departments, they will naturally assume that that another department-sales and marketingwill handle customers.

y This can create problems i.e. customers can get angry

due to
 poorly made product  late delivery  wrong invoice

Solution
 Develop a clear hierarchy of company values with

customers at the top. e.g. as J & J declares that customers come first, employees come second and this will give the investor the best result.  In short if companies employees and customers are not satisfied, it might close down.

Sign no. 2 No training programs to create a customer culture

In many companies, it is considered expensive to train people in other departments to think customers .

Solution
y Undertake activities that will produce a stronger

customer consciousness . y As companies follow strong culture, this needs to be changed.

Following activities can be performed:

y Develop a clear hierarchy of groups and values. y Show how each employee s behavior can affect

customers y Regularly feature findings on customer satisfaction. y sponsor a companywide training program in customer service and satisfaction. y Make sure that all the distributors and dealers also are customer obsessed.

Sign no. 3 No incentives to treat the customers especially well

y As employees know that they are measured by their

departments, they will just focus on it and behave accordingly. y They will not pay much attention to customers because of absence of clear measures for their actions.

Solution
y Make it easy for customers to reach the company

By phone, fax, mail, e-mail Set a high standard for answering quickly. The cost of this level of serving is small in comparison with the cost of losing customers.

SUMMARY
Two deficiencies are studied:
o Insufficient market focus o Insufficient Customer orientation

Insufficient market focus

Poor identification of market segments Insufficient prioritization of market segments No market segments managers

Insufficient Customer orientation

y It is job of marketing and sales to serve the customers. y No training programs to create a customer culture. y No incentives to treat the customers especially well.