AMP Marketing

If I only Knew Then, What I Know Now-A “Play Book” For a High Performing Team

Does this sound familiar?  When campaigns underperform or revenue numbers are missed, Marketing often takes the brunt of the accusations declaring "failure”.  Sometimes the finger pointing is valid, but many times there’s no validity behind the claims. But regardless of fact or fiction, the old adage stands, if people repeat a statement long enough and consistently enough, over time, it will be perceived as reality. (Have I touched a sensitive nerve yet?)   I think it’s also fair to say, no one wants to work 50, 60 or more hours a week and find themselves as the “default” excuse for a campaign that underperforms.  It’s de-motivating to say the least, and it certainly doesn’t solve the key question senior leadership is asking:  “What happened last month? And Why?”  Both are legitimate questions that deserve a reliable explanation.

 

When I was working my way through the ranks I didn’t have the benefit of a “play book” to help me structure a high performing team.  It was all trial and error…..and the errors were sometimes painful.  So in the spirit of “paying it forward” I’ve decided to share what I know today (recognizing I know much less than I did 10 years ago) the following is the first, in a series of articles which will focus on the value of operationalizing your marketing department and increase the overall performance of your team. 

Step I:  Define the Administrative Rules of the Game:

1.     Align your marketing org chart to support the corporate performance metrics.

·         Applying this approach decreases the risk of missing an objective, holds people accountable, and provides individual stakeholders a clear understanding that they are “actively” participating in the success (or failure) of the business.

·         I assign every person with some “piece” of the objectives.  A quantifiable metric which an individual can own and control the outcome.  The purpose of this step is fueled with one part strategy and one part individual development.

·         From a strategic perspective, applying a pyramidal approach can have a significant impact in meeting or even exceeding goals.  Each person or team’s quantified objective(s) should add up to the whole number traditionally held by the Marketing team leader.

·         From a development perspective there are actually 2 aspects to consider:

§ First, every Director, Manager and Assistant should “feel” they are a critical part of meeting/exceeding revenue objectives(and they are). Sales people feel this every day, but rarely does revenue ownership trickle through an entire marketing organization.   When you think about it from this perspective, it’s really not too surprising marketing and sales will sometimes find themselves at odds with one another.

§ Secondly, the only real way for our second and third generation leaders to understand the level of accountability held at the highest levels of the organization is to take on similar responsibilities in much smaller proportions.  The best way to really understand the pressure at the top is to live it.  I encourage anyone who moves forward with this recommendation to integrate mini  “operational review” meetings which take place on a monthly basis.  You should apply similar intensity as experienced in your company’s official operational reviews.  As a leader, be warned, these meetings will most likely be a little rough in the beginning,  but over time, and with your guidance you’ll come to love and appreciate the value of the data that’s presented.

·         Finally, team members will begin to self-regulate their priorities as it relates to revenue.  This doesn’t happen overnight but, once a single review cycle has processed through (managed by the assigned quantified revenue objectives), it’s quite amazing how the team gels together, and insignificant projects which once seemed important start falling off the map.

2.     The revenue and expense objectives assigned to the SVP/VP of Marketing must also be aligned with all other business units leaders including Product, Sales, Operations, IT  and Engineering

·         This is a hidden trap, and it’s not uncommon for an organization to believe “we’re doing this today”.  Take a closer look at the departmental and individual objectives, and you might find that some business units have juxtaposing objectives which inadvertently work against another business unit's objectives. 

·         An example of this might be, if geographic expansion is the agreed upon strategy for growth and engineering or operations have an objective to reduce last year’s expenses by 20% the 2 objectives end up as incongruous and the departments are at odds with one another vs. working synergistically.

3.     Further reduce the risk of missing an objective by designing comp plans for those Directors or Managers who have been assigned a revenue objective and weight their end of year bonuses with a meaningful scale for meeting and exceeding objectives.

·         Nothing adds more motivation, and increased quality to work production, than money.  No news there, but ironically, few organizations attach bonuses to individual revenue achievement.  I’m not sure why this is the case.  But regardless of the reason, it works, and it works well.

 

·         Quantified objectives eliminate the issue of expected bonus “entitlements” derived from working hard over the course of the year vs. making a visible impact on the company’s performance.  Either the individual succeeded in meeting the objective or they did not.    This should not be interpreted to mean you shouldn’t recognize the employee who has worked some irregularly long hours, or done a particularly great job on a special assignment, however that recognition should be more immediate (More on this topic in a near future article).

I am the first to acknowledge that these first 3 recommendations are much easier to state than to implement, but with reviews in progress or quickly approaching, I can’t think of a better time to take this bull by the horns.  In the end, the whole organization will benefit….it’s worth the healthy discussions you might encounter.

Next week I’ll post 3 more “Administrative Rules” that will increase the performance of your marketing team.

Have a thought you want to share?  We all win by hearing other’s opinions and comments….

How accountable are your Marketing & Sales Plans?

As your near the completion of 2009 budgets, you may want to use this time to pause a moment and ask a single question:   Are there any hidden risks in your marketing and sales plan that could prevent the organization from meeting or exceeding  2009 budget objectives?

Unfortunately, the most creative strategic planning provides no assurance that revenue objectives will be achieved.  However, we can pro-actively assess the degree of risk by asking a few simple questions:

1. Is there a method to clearly identify your lowest performing marketing initiatives vs. your highest performing initiatives?
2. Are human resources and expenses allocated on the products & marketing initiatives that have the greatest revenue impact? 
3. When revenue numbers start falling short of projections, is there a reliable method in place to quickly identify, quantify and “course correct” which initiative performed unfavorably to the original plan with the most cost effective means available to close the gap?
4. During monthly operating review meetings do your marketing and sales teams have the necessary information to provide a mathematically clear reconciliation and variance explanation at the end of each month to identify the favorable or unfavorable revenue drivers?
5. If expense budgets needed to be reduced, is there information readily available to eliminate only those initiatives that have the least amount of revenue impact?

If you have not answered yes to any or all of the above questions your revenue objectives are most likely at risk.  From a marketing and sales perspective, the commonly used question “Are we working smarter?” is really about having the best understanding of “how” we are going to reach our performance goals before a single marketing/advertising dollar is spent.  This information becomes critical knowledge in the event we need to quickly find a method to save an underperforming sales and marketing plan.

So what’s the most efficient solution?  The stripped down answer:  Change the way your marketing and sales departments operate.  However, this article isn’t going to preach the virtues of an expensive software application(s) or complex targeting and segmentation strategy.  What I will focus on is a shift in your operational processes.  A method which will support a quantified reconciliation of any and all changes from the plan vs. the outcome.  It may seem daunting but let’s take a closer look at what really needs to occur:

First, assign upfront accountability: 

1)      Make everyone a stakeholder: Align all business unit objectives by product, sales, marketing, operations and engineering.  This is a hidden trap and it’s not uncommon for an organization to believe “we’re doing this today”, but take a closer look at the departmental and individual objectives and you might find that some business units have juxtaposing objectives which inadvertently work against another business units objectives.  An example of this might be, if geographic expansion is the agreed upon strategy for growth and engineering or operations have an objective to reduce last year’s expenses by 20% the 2 objectives end up as incongruous and the departments are at odds with one another vs. working synergistically.

2)      Adopt minimum ROI standards:  What’s the minimum revenue that needs to be generated for every dollar spent?  Standardizing this expectation upfront will eliminate those initiatives that require resources and expenses that don’t significantly contribute to revenue.  It also provides guidance to our management teams to help them develop the highest impact plan vs. a plan that has many great ideas.

3)      Separate marketing tactics into 3 buckets by product and revenue expectations:  1) Last year’s initiatives which will be repeated in the new year.  By essence of this decision these tactics have become a part of “Business as Usual”.  They’re perceived to be necessary to achieve the prior year’s revenue results. 2) All quarterly or monthly recurring initiatives have become operational and a standardized method of how some Customers are engaged into a sale or loyalty effort.  Most organizations have tactics that have been operationalized but they tend to go unnoticed so there’s no accountability to the expense or manpower used to support the ongoing maintenance.  As a result, these tactics tend to hit a black hole and loose visibility to performance measurements and the ROI that all other tactics must adhere to and 3) Any new initiative assigned to generating incremental or new growth revenue must be incorporated.  All tactics must then be assigned an estimated financial impact and these assumptions should be circulated and validated through the sales channels.

This 3^rd assignment of accountability is one of the most critical steps a marketing department can take to Tephlon coat a marketing plan and sustain an entire year of new and unforeseen variables that challenge the original planning assumptions.  In a challenging year, it ensures that last year’s revenue results are achieved and adds a level of risk control to make sure underperforming tactics are eliminated.  This step also increases corporate wide awareness regarding which initiatives are driving the revenue and which expense dollars are working the hardest towards the overall objective. 

Finally, to add a check and balance to the plans and it’s intended results, tactics and estimated revenue impacts need to be organized to mathematically and clearly demonstrate how each tactic rolls into the primary product revenue objective on a month over month basis.  More importantly, this approach allows management to reconcile the primary revenue changes from last year to this year ensuring the stated goal(s) can be reasonably be achieved or identify areas that appear to be a challenging stretch.

Establishing upfront accountability is the first step in integrating a disciplined financial based marketing approach.  It does not require expensive software applications but it does require a marketing department to operate with stricter guidance; working smarter rather than working harder.  The organizational and departmental payoff is significant; ultimately increasing the strategic value of your marketing teams and reducing some of the hidden risks in your marketing plans.  In the next article I’ll review back-end accountabilities that will “save” a plan from those unforeseen variables that were not in our original planning assumptions.

Why Can't Marketing and Sales Get Along?

The Power of Joining Forces

If you’re a marketing or sales leader in an organization faced with revenue and expense challenges that re-define the word “stretch” then you might find this blog a valuable use of your time.  However, if you haven’t been faced with one or more of the following situations, save your time and move to one of your other high priorities: 

1)    Marketing and sales teams tend to operate out of individual vacuums which frequently creates operational confusion and chaos

2)    Marketing budgets have been cut but the revenue objectives have increased

3)    When revenue numbers start falling short of projections, subjective decision making is applied to determine how to close the gap. 

4)    We wait for key learning’s gathered from testing to improve our sales performance

5)    We find ourselves in a constant three way struggle between sales, product marketing and market communication when trying to determine who is accountable for poor campaign performance

So what’s the most efficient solution?  The stripped down answer:  Change the way your marketing and sales department operate.  However, I’m not going to preach the virtues of an expensive software application(s) or a complex targeting and segmentation strategy.  What I’m going to focus on is a shift in many of the planning processes and daily management processes which will empower your teams to develop an annual plan set-up for success vs. failure, as well as tools to “course correct” unexpected variables that inevitably present themselves throughout the year.

 

1)    Make everyone a stakeholder: Align all of your business unit objectives by product, sales, marketing, operations and engineering.  This is a hidden trap and it’s not uncommon for an organization to believe “we’re doing this today”, but take a closer look at the departmental and individual objectives and you might find that some business units have juxtaposing objectives which inadvertently work against another business unit’s objectives.  An example of this might be, if channel expansion is the agreed upon strategy for growth but operations has an objective to reduce last year’s expenses by 20% the 2 objectives end up as incongruous and the departments are at odds with one another vs. working synergistically.

2)    Collaboratively establish a sales and marketing plan which stretches past achievements but doesn’t set the sales channel up for failure:  This is about setting metrics and sales expectations during the planning process.  Sales, if you’re feeling like you’re the tail end of a kite that’s already taken off, I encourage you to assert yourself and establish critical metrics in the earliest stages of the process.  Address critical questions such as: What are the minimum closing ratio and the minimum sale per call that must be achieved by product to meet the monthly sales goal?  Does the plan focus on the products which generate the highest sales volume or greatest revenue per sale?  Challenge the assumptions of the plan by breaking sales goals down to the individual sales rep:  by product, per day, per rep.  Is the stretch realistic?  Does the plan drive enough calls into the centers to support the goals? Does your sales management team have a plan of all the campaigns scheduled for the year to support the surge in call volumes?  Can the product goal(s) be achieved? Before the plan is approved or the campaign goes out the door "communicate, communicate, communicate" with your marketing partners to help them understand your challenges.  Collaboratively arrive at a plan which will prioritize the product sales focus, support the sales channels with additional training, monthly/weekly incentives or comp plans and establish a unified front to the organization.  

3)    Establish a process to distribute Daily Scorecards.   Many companies operate without having any specificity around the performance of the various marketing and sales tactics used to achieve the revenue objectives.  The reasons are numerous but usually roll up into a single reason; the company doesn’t have the software/billing system/analytics to provide this level of information in an accurate manor.  Hence, this serves as decision making support justifying the continued practice of managing essentially blindfolded.  An alternative to “doing nothing” is to focus on capturing the data that is relevant to the 20% of the products that usually generates 80% of the revenue.  This reduces the task to something that seems more reasonable.  Most databases are query-able today however; it may be a step which requires manual support or some other creative solution.  This may not be quite as sexy or as accurate as an automated CRM program but it’s better than operating without any information.   A good friend of mine shared a personal motto of hers “What gets measured, can be fixed”.  I agree with her whole heartedly!

4)    Establish a Rapid Response Team.  This team should consist of at least one team member from each business unit that will feel the impact of a campaign or marketing initiative that is underperforming against previously assigned financial results.  This team should be charged with developing “gap” closing plans before a “gap” emerges, eliminating the normal chaos that can disrupt an entire organization. I encourage all companies to proactively have a “bag of tricks” pre-identified and ready for deployment to cost effectively mitigate unexpected results.  In essence, you’re developing a back-up game plan which reduces stress throughout the organization.

5)    Develop a reactionary process/operational plan before an emerging revenue gap occurs.  The Rapid Response Team needs to make recommendations that will “course correct” an underperforming initiative as close to “real time” as possible and identify an implementation plan that can be supported by the departments in which they represent.  At minimum, this step will eliminate any surprises by your front-lines sales force and speed the implementation process up by as much as 30 to 60 days….. critical time to help close a revenue gap and reduce the pressures that inevitably move downstream to the sales channels.  I’m guessing many of you could share multiple horror stories of what happens when a “great idea” is pushed out the front door without the proper prep time.

These five low cost/no cost steps can make all the difference in the world to ensuring that the marketing and sales plan which was laid out the previous year will produce the intended results in the current year.  These steps will also validate or invalidate assumptions used to develop estimated impacts of any given initiative.  With time, the teams benefit by becoming smarter through invaluable key learning’s which are applied to support future planning assumptions.

Have some “low cost/no cost” ideas of your own?  Have a horror story you want to share when teams aren’t aligned?  Share the wealth so we can all operate a little smarter tomorrow.

Prefer to talk one and one, call me at 570-574-6089.

Christine Feeley