Dr. Kantor over at HarvardPublishing.org calls for everyone to be in marketing during a recession. I agree completely, but for those who know how I rant my next question is obvious: Why only ‘in a recession’?
Driving the marketing discipline through your organization creates entanglements with customers deep down in the soul. It affects creativity in ways that are profound. Just think what would happen if your customer and prospects became an intimate part of your org chart. Creative chaos or intimate understanding?
Ah well, since we are in a recession I guess it is a worthy call to arms. Let’s just try avoid departmentalizing marketing once the economy is on a roll again.
Fred,
What is needed is a sales and service focus throughout the entire organization.
Frankly, I have little empathy with the idea that the marketing effort should be restricted to one department, especially considering that the actions of all employees have an impact upon the ability of the firm to generate sales.
Consider some examples:
(a) The production department, for example, plays a pivotal role in terms of generating sales by producing good quality, reliable and safe products in a timely fashion on a consistent basis.
(b) So too does the IT department, which has a role not only by the provision of immediate support to the marketing department, but also by ensuring that the firms IT infrastructure and systems are compatible with those of clients, making the process of dealing with the organization considerably easier and less costly from a customer perspective.
(c) The Finance department also plays a role, particularly given the extent to which the effective management of financial functions such as billing and receipts can have an impact upon client relationships.
Indeed, it would be hard pressed to find any employee within any organization whose function did not in some way have an impact upon the ability of a firm to service the needs of clients in an effective manner and therefore assist the firm in terms of maximizing the volume of sales revenue which it generates.
Andrew’s last blog post..Gekko is back – but is greed really good?
Andrew, It sounds as if you and I are of one mind on this issue! I specially appreciate you bringing up the finance department as having a role in customer relations. Back in the dot-com bubble I was subcontracting work to a large internet consultancy who had outsourced their time record keeping and invoicing. They went out of business in part because the supplier completely messed up their billing – behind my months, lost hours, ghost hours made receiving an invoice from them a chore.
Fred,
Several years ago, I worked as an accountant within the Finance Department of a technology company whose main customers consisted of three large telecommunications providers.
Some of the invoices and other information which we provided to our corporate clients was quite involved in terms of ensuring the numbers were right. But we all knew in the back of our minds just how important it was to get things right, and how mistakes or problems within our area could result in a serious comprise of critical relationships – relationships upon which our company was so dependant.