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  • The Battle Between Sales and Marketing Rages On . . .

    The Battle Between Sales and Marketing Rages On . . .

    There are many areas of ongoing controversy in the world – Alien v. Predator, King Kong v. Godzilla, Greece v. Turkey, Israel v. (Pick one) and Sales v. Marketing.

    I’m not going to come down on a side for most of the above, but the Sales v. Marketing one intrigues me, because the two combatants should be best friends. They share a common goal, they have separate methods and approaches, they both want more customers. They do compete for financial resources in some companies, so that may set off some minor turf scuffles, but I think each is misunderstood by the other, and it’s a case of walking a mile in the other guy’s shoes.

    Add to this the fact that management executives in many companies confuse the role of each in their organization, in fact use the terms interchangeably. This kind of thinking simply adds to the controversy, and pits one against the other.

    The functions are different, they have different ways of measuring success, have different individual goals on a small scale, and use resources differently. In some firms, the sales function is placed underneath a VP of Marketing, correctly or incorrectly depending upon the structure of the company, it’s size and the product or service being sold. My guess is that if that VP had to actually go out and sell to a lead list, they would not fare very well. That doesn’t make them an inappropriate manager for that function, but it does weaken the case for non-peer review. On the other hand, if the leading salesman were asked to assess the company’s current brand health, determine their most likely next move in entering a new niche vertical, or have to craft an outreach marketing strategy, they would likely come up with something that might have some value, but not the whole ball of wax.

    The reason is that they are different skill sets, not interchangeable and with different focus points. The salesman focuses on customers one at a time, creates and environment where they can use their powers of verbal or written persuasion to tell people what they want to hear about the product in a way that motivates them to make a purchase, big or small, right then and there.

    The marketer is in the mass communication business. They set up a virtual environment in the mind of a predetermined prospect type without ever having met them, make a case in a variety of ways for that product or service being the best choice among many, and motivate through written or spoken word (radio or TV) to create an impression that drives huge numbers of prospects to understand that product or service in a certain way, and helps them decide to make a purchase at some point.

    Success is determined for the sales person by dollars driven in, or clients gained, or products moved. Success for the marketer is about more product moved over time, a rise in brand awareness, the number of conference attendees at a tradeshow, and a host of other metrics determined by the goal of the exercise.

    But these two can each do their job better in the presence of the other! They should be buddies! But they’re often at odds within the organization. They each think the others’ job is less important, likely because they’ve not done the others’ work for any length of time. But by working together, they can each improve.

    Sales, you need to understand that the marketer’s mindset is more focused on hitting the most common denominator the most often, because it’s easy for prospects to ignore their messages – delete them, throw them out, hang up, you name it, it’s a one-way conversation. Marketing, you need to hold onto the understanding that if the prospect hangs up on or ignores pleas for a meeting, Sales takes it personally, because each one counts for a lot! They invest a lot of emotion and time into each approach, planning, investigating, researching, so they “know” the prospect much better – therefore when things to get accepted right away, it’s a bigger loss.

    A little understanding goes a long way. If Marketing took the challenges Sales faces to heart when creating one-sheets or promotions, they’d be simple, answer the most often asked questions, and be nearly weightless so the briefcase-carrying arm doesn’t drag on the ground at the end of the day. If Sales realized how much time it takes to say things in just the right way, how hard it is to determine what the most often asked questions are, and how long it takes to “just redo it”, they’d make their wishes known early and often, and get better tools to work with in return for their efforts.

    We can’t fix Greece v. Turkey, or even know whether it’s Godzilla or King Kong that wins the battle for Tokyo, we do know that when Sales and Marketing work together things go much more smoothly and there more money all around.

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  • Under-promise and Over-deliver – Good Customer Service is Tougher Than it Sounds

    Under-promise and Over-deliver – Good Customer Service is Tougher Than it Sounds

    Had a good customer service experience that I thought tied into my theme of customer service as marketing device. I’ve written several articles on the value of good customer service as a marketing tool, so when I run across an instance in real life that proves the theory, I like to recognize their efforts.

    I drive a gas guzzling, over-huge SUV – since I don’t commute regularly, my annual mileage is about 8,000 a year, about 1/3 of the national average. Unfortunately it has the same maintenance needs as if I drove it 20k a year – except for the frequency of things like tires, brakes, and other wearable parts, that still wear out on schedule just my elongated version.

    In 2006, on vehicles that size, now on virtually all of them, the manufacturer installed special valve stems that have the ability to measure the tire pressure on each tire, and a sender to tell you what the pressure is on a continual basis. As you might expect, these little marvels of modern technology are a bit costly, especially compared to the $.49 cent stems they replace. At $125 a whack and you need 5 of them with a full-size spare, that adds a bit to the bottom line when you buy it, and a lot to your tire bill when you replace them. They are also rather fragile, and if you put anything on them to cover them up, it must be made of plastic – metal covers apparently react with the metal in the stem and corrode them away in rapid fashion, causing them to leak and need replacement. I found this out the hard way and had to replace all four at a cost of nearly $600, something I’ll not repeat for quite a while with any luck.

    Thanks to these sensors, I noticed that one of the tires was losing air consistently, so since I just had the stems replaced, I took it back to where the work was done, thinking one of them might have been defective. I walk in the door to a Mr. Tire location near my house, tell them my saga, and they promise to take a look at it, but that there were a couple of people ahead of me – indeed for mid-week in late August, the waiting room was remarkably full, and some folks looked like they’d dug in for the long haul.

    I waited only 45 minutes before I saw the car come around the front and a ticket with my keys and lug lock land on the front desk. I didn’t even finish watching the day’s episode of “The View” before they were writing me up – they had rebuilt the pesky little sensor valve, replacing a seal and the core, and remounting the valve, replaced the tire and buttoned it all up. They had under promised the waiting time by being vague, and had over-delivered by not just replacing the expensive part but by saving me lots of money by rebuilding the existing one.

    What do my tires have to do with marketing? I’m now an evangelist, an auxiliary marketer for Mr. Tire – I’ll recommend them to friends, I’ll tell people about my experience (blog about it), use it as a landmark when giving directions, etc. Think what would happen to your business if all of your customers behaved this way about your product or service. The growth rate would be incalculable, your popularity unchallenged, your brand ubiquitous, your pockets forever full.

    If you’re a marketer, get out from behind your desk right now, take a stroll down to the customer service department and say a hearty “Thank You” to the folks that REALLY provide your reputation for you to customers. They are the real heroes, who do the job every day and don’t get to have the creative fun that you do. They deserve a tip of your cap!

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  • Sometimes the Question is More Important Than the Answer . . .

    Sometimes the Question is More Important Than the Answer . . .

    There are times in a marketer’s career when asking the right question spurs the next great idea that turns into a campaign that turns the corner on profitability and launches a whole new direction for the company or the product.

    Having the curiosity and the courage to ask that question – although to you it might seem obvious, so obvious in fact that you’re sure someone else must have thought of it, analyzed the result and discarded it as unworkable – is what good marketers do. How many times have you been in a meeting and another employee asks a seemingly innocent question, and suddenly the room is on fire with ideas, and more importantly, positive feelings and agreement to trying the idea immediately. Have you kicked yourself for not asking the same thing? Why didn’t you – because you thought it was too obvious. It was obvious to you, because that’s the way you were trained to think – but most of the other people in the room were not trained that way, and that’s what makes you special!

    Think it through quickly, end to end, and go ahead and bring up the obvious – you’ll be surprised at the reaction you’ll get. Curiosity and courage linked together will get you a long way in marketing. A famous marketer I know is fond of saying that there are no bad ideas, just those that don’t work under the current circumstances. His approach is to try almost anything that appears viable, and if 6 out of 10 of them fly, he’s a winner! Indeed the margin on a good idea is pretty high, so it doesn’t take much for a good idea to bring in far more than all the bad ones waste. Remember the old campaign,”Try it, you’ll like it”? Not a bad mantra in these tough times. Businesses are desperate for good paying customers, and ideas that will attract them are in short supply.

    Step up, state your idea, and let the chips fall – you’ll likely be applauded and the chips fall your way – if not, at least you put something viable forward, and if it doesn’t work now, circumstances will forever change and it might work at some other time.

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  • Internet Not The Only Media – Yet

    Internet Not The Only Media – Yet

    In a recent study of college freshmen, it was revealed that the skills we once assumed to be vital for business success – research using books and journals, proper grammar when writing letters, crafting informational documents or publishing and the like – are now obsolete, and that over 90% of college freshmen don’t possess them. They also noted that e-mail communication is already deemed “too slow” by today’s college freshmen, who have no concept of television with less than 250 channels, having been born in 1992, long after the cable expansion and the introduction of satellite TV.

    These same freshmen have never possessed a record album, or conceivably a pre-recorded music CD, having come into their teens after the original MP3 file format was introduced. Fax machines are obsolete antiques, land-line phones passe, and with them phone etiquette similarly out the window. Pay phones are a mystery, a story told around campfires . . . you get the picture. Technology, especially in the communication world, has accelerated at a remarkable rate, leaving behind what seemed to be perfectly viable formats and forms of communication.

    These same college freshmen, who don’t know from cassettes, will be entering the workforce in four short years, and a small percentage of them potentially taking on tomorrow’s marketing challenges. By that time, full media integration that has been trumpeted as the be all and end all of communication technology may be in place on a national or global scale, and there will essentially be one, web-driven media, all played wirelessly through whatever monitoring device happens to be handy, be it a plasma TV, the screen in the car, or the front of the refrigerator. Everything will have an IP address, from the phone to the washing machine. Everyone will have to be a web producer, a video producer, or designer, and every speech or form of communication will be measured in megabytes or terabytes, not in pages or words.

    Grammar is already slipping at an alarming rate, with proper forms of English dropping off the cultural map like electronic flies, to be replaced by slang, initials, acronyms and emoticons – we’re slowly sliding back to early Egyptian hieroglyphs. How do you diagram the phrase “LOL :)!” ?

    The ads of the future will only have to be produced for electronic consumption, and will be a mix of images and scrolling, hopping, swinging and fading text, compressed down to the smallest file size possible and distributed through 3 big outlets. Print will be an anachronism, copywriting a dead art, direct mail reserved for senior citizen newsletters and billing inserts in large print, with ads flashing on big, wall sized screens in all the retirement homes, which will automatically change to match the information emanating from a chip in their forearm as the seniors walk by, ala Minority Report. Well, maybe not that last one in four years, but you get the idea.

    With only one medium to consider, media buying will consolidate into a government function controlled by the FCC, and time will be bid on in auction style on E-Bay. Marketers will no longer have to consider paper stock weight, envelope size, postal rate case, number of sheets on a billboard, magazine doubletruck gutters, facing page competitors, color fidelity, dot gain, screen density, and a host of other routine, mundane production detail-oriented skills required by the marketers of yesteryear. Freed from those details, will the ads be more persuasive, more effective, more targeted, more efficient? They will certainly be trackable, which is an advantage, but my guess is that how that tracking can be used will have to be heavily regulated to prevent rampant abuse.

    I’m not much of a futurist, but I am a student of history, and you can easily compare the current communications integrity status to that of the latter stages of the Roman empire – I’m breaking out my fiddle as we speak . . .

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  • Networking Events Can Produce Results, But Common Interest Cements Relationships

    Networking Events Can Produce Results, But Common Interest Cements Relationships

    We’ve all been there . . .

    You go to an event, be it a conference, a seminar session or annual meeting, and you meet different business people, discover some common ground outside the theme of the event, and you keep in touch for a while after the event, but unless you work at it and nurture it, that relationship fades into the background, not serving either party. Occasionally, you run into someone that really has a lot in common with you, has some business reason to stay in touch and that relationship grows and flowers and produces solid business gains for both sides and lasts years. What made the difference?

    I have a theory, and statistics gained in our work promoting events will back this assertion up to a certain degree: “The more closely aligned the business goals of the parties are, the less likely they are to form a longer-term relationship.” On the surface that may seem counter-intuitive, but keep reading.

    What drives business relationships is gain – profit, cash flow, commerce. Each side has to have a clearly defined role and those roles need to be complimentary, not unidirectional, for the relationship to be productive. Gains are made and money moved when something is sold or bought. Seven times out of ten, what drives that relationship is the desire to sell to the other guy! Two salesmen can get together and banter and share a beverage, but chances are that relationship will develop a competitive or adversarial nature. But if one is a salesman and the other is a mid-level executive in another role, something can be sold there, business moves, transactions done, and the relationship works for both.

    Two top executives can get together and share common issues, maybe even work on the same committee to solve an industry problem, and if there’s no chance of them being in a competitive situation, and with nothing personal underlying it – tough conditions to fill – that relationship might come in handy from time to time, but it probably will not be terribly productive. No chance to sell to the other one! No chance to beat the other one, either.

    Networking meetings in general have been overused and relationships forced upon business people for a long time, and they still serve a useful function, especially for those new to an area or industry. But without the quantity of time required to care for and nurture those relationships, and a good business reason to do so, in today’s superficial and time-starved environment, most are short-lived and unproductive. The way to get the most out of networking meetings is to introduce yourself to a few key people, or better yet, have someone else introduce you to a few key individuals, and take the time to investigate them further, see if they are worth pursuing, and take the lead in keeping them fresh and alive.

    If you meet ten people and stay in touch with just one really solid business individual and keep that relationship growing, you can consider that meeting a success. At that build ratio, you’ll need to attend a significant number of meetings to start a functioning network from scratch. But if you put in the time, make the investment in your own business future, you’ll find it pays off in spades over the years.

    The best technique that we’ve seen success with is to let such relationships develop naturally through outside interests other than business. That fellow soccer coach, that neighborhood association committee member, that dinner companion of a college friend, that last-minute fill-in in your golfing foursome, that guy who has season tickets right next to yours at the stadium or the theater – that’s how relationships get started, and have no surface business purpose, but after getting deeper into them, you find common business ground if you’re open to discovering it. It’s old-school, but it works! It’s less contrived, less forced, more comfortable for everyone, and you don’t have to go out of your way, or wear a name tag for them to be productive!

    Next time you’re at a networking function where the specific reason for attending is to meet other people to do business, think back to other similar situations and count the number of people you regularly do business with, and ask yourself how many of them you met at such an event. The answer will likely be Zero! Now examine those same people you regularly do good business with, and ask how you met them initially. The answer is usually that you were introduced by someone you both knew from somewhere else.

    Try this at your next social outing or sporting event: try and steer the conversation you’re having so that it includes no clue about what your job is or what business or industry you’re in. You’ll be amazed how difficult it is, and how intriguing it makes you to others. But think of the information you’ve gathered.

    Now you know more about them as people, and can make a more informed decision about whether to pursue that relationship further, and find some common business ground. My guess is that the resulting business relationship will be stronger and last longer than the one derived from the forced, contrived situation at the hotel.

    Write to me with your networking stories, we’ll compare notes . . .

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  • Converting Prospects to Members (or Customers)

    Converting Prospects to Members (or Customers)

    One of the biggest challenges non-profits and other small to mid-size businesses face is converting leads to sales, or for non-profits, a common challenge is to convert prospects to members. There are many different ways to approach this issue but they usually have a few things in common.

    If you have a good list of well-qualified prospects, compiled recently, with a high-deliverability quotient, and fresh information, you’re already halfway there. If not, but wish to start compiling one, there are several good ways to do that, including referrals from current members, industry indexes and directories, publication lists, and prospecting campaigns at tradeshows.

    If you have e-mail addresses, this might be the least expensive place to start. If not, you’re left with mail or phone campaigns to reach out to prospective members. If you have a really solid profile of your members, based on research, and can categorize them accurately into industry segments, title profiles and other segmentation to make your communications more specific. One factor to consider when making your selection is based on that profile, how do your current members like to be communicated with? Are they tech savvy, do they stay at their desks all day and have constant access to e-mail or social media? Do they only read e-mail at home? Do they get their mail at the office or did they give you a home address? The method deserves almost as much consideration as the message, in these highly overloaded, busy times. It’s to easy to delete, discard or filter out messages delivered in inconvenient ways.

    Once you’ve decided on the best medium, now you have to craft a message that resonates with this group or groups. Your research profile will be of great use here, as it tells you what they are likely to be concerned about, what issues hit home for them, what keeps them up at night. Once you’ve discovered that key issue, now you can formulate a message to deliver that shows how their membership will take care of that pesky problem, solve that challenge, meet that need and make joining a solid investment. Solve a problem, and you’ll get them to join up just for that – show them the unique value of your organization in solving that problem, they’ll stay members for years.

    Now you just have to mate the message with the right medium at the right time and deliver it cleanly, accurately and in timely fashion. But before you hit that “send” button or pull the trigger on the mail drop, make sure your customer response, receipt, fulfillment and registration infrastructure is in place, and ready to accept the new influx of calls/e-mails/hits/members – there’s nothing more frustrating than receiving inquiries or orders and not being able to activate them or monetize them – it’s a woeful tale of opportunity lost. It’s not overly optimistic to expect good response to your offer after taking the time to craft it so thoroughly and specifically. The better your homework and more thorough your preparation, the more likely you are to generate significant response and you have to have the structure in place to accept them.

    Find your best list, do your homework, know your prospect, find out what they need, show how your organization can solve their problems and make life easier, get them the message in a form they’re receptive to, and make sure you can accommodate all the requests quickly and efficiently. If you can pull those elements together, your chances of success soar, and so will your organization!

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  • Five Things About Branding We Can Learn from Geek Squad

    Five Things About Branding We Can Learn from Geek Squad

    I’m always in search of particularly effective branding efforts, just to enjoy a job well-done. Knowing how hard it is to carry out brand development on a daily basis, and how important the initial thinking is in springboarding the brand forward, I’m always looking for those that put in the effort up front and got it right.

    This week’s winner is Geek Squad, the computer service firm that operates out of Best Buy stores. These guys thought about EVERYTHING, and live the brand every day. I’ve had the opportunity to try these guys out several times in the last year, and they are nothing if not consistent.

    Each technician is called an “Officer”, and they always come in full uniform, including a badge and ID card, and arrive in a branded car, usually a white Volkswagon Beetle with black fenders and the logo on the doors – further reinforcing the quasi-police image. Their delivery is rather police-like, definitely gentle, but no-nonsense, they are extremely respectful of the customer’s home and work-space, touching as little as possible, asking few questions that are not directly related to the job at hand, and get right to work. They solve the problem or make a recommendation to repair at more extensive facilities or replace the machine, they come armed with a full bevy of software diagnostic tools, all branded, and get the job done, transact payment, and disappear to the next jobsite.

    There was so little variation in my three experiences it was spooky, like I said, these guys are consistent. Given the labor pool from which the company draws for this position and the human factors that have to be accommodated in any national company, I’m still astounded how well they carry the brand. I know when I see those little cars on the road, that they’re on their way to help some other poor computer-illiterate victim of Microsoft, and the feeling associated with the brand is always extremely positive.

    They set out with a good idea, they went full tilt toward fleshing it out, and they train the employees to clearly live and transmit the brand effectively with EVERY interaction. That’s why they’re this week’s EFFECTIVE BRANDING AWARD winner. Write to me about effective brands you’ve seen, and I’ll share them . . .

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  • Does More Pay Equal More Value?

    Does More Pay Equal More Value?

    There has been a lot of talk recently regarding and considering CEO compensation, especially in the financial sector, where the numbers compared to the average person’s income are literally astronomical. In my mind, it comes down to contribution.

    Some companies are so well-constructed, that you could put almost anyone in the corner office and they would continue to run things profitably. Some are so inherently dysfunctional, that the most brilliant leader would founder in the effort to right them and run them logically and practically. But the average firm can benefit from strong leadership to set the tone, strategic direction, and operational efficiency that leads to success.

    Typically this is a seasoned individual, with a good education, a strong network of colleagues and contacts, and enough political awareness to work his way into the job. There are some, especially in the tech sector, that don’t seem to fit this mold, but the vast majority of brick and mortar, bread and butter companies have an executive vet at the helm, one who is compensated handsomely for their work. But what do they really contribute on a daily basis?

    Some lead by example, and therefore contribute as a role model and exemplar just by arriving and communicating within the headquarters office or division facility. Some lead through growth strategy implementation, working with M&A attorneys, brokers, bankers and business owners to grow the company through strategic acquisition of other firms, either to help shore up weaknesses within the firm’s core competences or expand into new affiliated or related markets. Some lead through mentoring, employee relations and succession grooming within the ranks, training and educating younger executives to move through the company with the goal of one day paying back that investment by leading the firm to greater profitability.

    Those may seem like intangible approaches or qualities, but they contribute in numerous ways to the success of the company. In the case of some of the more high-profile financial firms, I’m not entirely sure the millions and in some cases billions that the CEO receives in compensation is proportionate to their contributions to the firm. In some cases, reported ad nauseum in the media, the same executives responsible for driving the profitability out of the firm are the ones now reaping even greater rewards, while the stock holders and general public flounder trying to make ends meet.

    There has been a theory advanced that the CEO shouldn’t receive more than ten times what the lowest paid worker receives. For manufacturing companies that outsource production work to third-world countries, that compensation could be very low indeed. While the mechanics of the theory need some fine tuning, the sentiment is borne out of an innate sense of fairness, an internal gauge of “rightness” and correctness that we all possess when assessing such things. If you still go to the same office I do every day, do basically the same work, maybe among a more wealthy group of people, do you really deserve 100 times more than I do in compensation for it? – not likely.

    Someone ought to do a correlative study cross-referencing the national journalists list of the top 100 best companies to work for, against the top 100 highest compensated CEOs, and see if there is a correlation between compensation and how the workers rank the company. My guess is the correlation would be rather low, and here’s why. Companies that are “Great” to work for usually provide a wide range of outstanding personal benefits, ranging from free child care to extra days off, to paid education, to personal loans, to flexible hours or work-at-home options to help better balance personal- and work-lives of the employees. Those benefits sometimes have expenses attached to them. Places where the CEO is extremely highly compensated are driven by profitability and sales volume, rather than work-life balance for the rank and file – different motivators, different cultures, different definitions of the word “Company”.

    Let us know what your definition of the word “Company” is from a cultural standpoint and whether yours is a “great” place to work, and how much your CEO is compensated, and we can compile the results and see if our theory holds water. Can’t wait to hear from you . . .

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  • Your Name – Self-Branding At It’s Finest

    Your Name – Self-Branding At It’s Finest

    Your own name plays a huge part of your personal brand, but how many of us really get to determine that element and as an adult actually go through with it? Apparently, if you’re in a gang in Baltimore and likely elsewhere, you get that chance, and sometimes it can backfire!

    According to a recent article in the Baltimore Sun, gangbangers all have nicknames, ones that are so ubiquitous, that they are actually used in court filings! Unfortunately, the thought given to what that nickname is might be a bit lacking and can come back to haunt them when they get into the “System”.

    Imagine being the defense lawyer trying to convince a jury of your client’s innocence on a murder or assault charge when the young man sitting at your side has “Murder” tattooed on his neck for all to see, or is questioned by the prosecution and addressed by his nickname,”Bloody Dog” multiple times into the court record and read back repeatedly. Good luck with that . . .

    In their world, picking a scary sounding nickname gives you a certain amount of street credibility, and often tells something about you, just as any brand should. Unfortunately, that brand is designed for a very specific audience, and has a negative impact on those outside that audience. We’ll call these two-way brands, like a two-way mirror. One side reflects the owner’s identity, the other side is seen right through to the person underneath.

    Some commercial brands are two-ways as well, and this is usually a result of faulty or lack of consumer research when crafting the original identity. Brands that reflect too much of an “inside” perspective are built for insiders and those “outside” the circle just don’t “Get it”. Not a very good way to attract new customers, or even to spark curiosity – once you investigate the odd name that doesn’t resonate, discover it has nothing to do with anything you’re interested in, you ignore it, discount it, or avoid it altogether.

    One that comes to mind is “Go Daddy”. They created that brand from an internal meeting of some kind and simply forced recognition through effective creative advertising on a huge scale. But if you just mentioned the name prior to that, it certainly doesn’t sound like a domain name registration company – there are no reliable attributes that the words “Go Daddy” together evoke. Certainly they don’t bring to mind orderliness, convenience, permanence, cooperation, creativity, or any of a number of other characteristics that by definition such a company would embody. Yet, it’s a fast-growing company with high financial performance and a good chunk of market share – not bad for an upstart with a quirky brand . . .

    Your personal brand reflects the characteristics you want the public to see, regardless of who that public is. Every adult has the opportunity to create their own brand, and can have their name legally changed with a simple hearing by a judge and some basic paperwork – as long as the reason has nothing to do with your need to evade the law or debt of any kind, have at it. Entertainers do it all the time – would you tune in to watch Larry Zeiger interview celebrities? But before retirement, Larry King pulled in the occasional viewer on a regular basis. Go figure.

    Some internal reflection is in order when choosing your personal brand. Give it some thought, understand that it has to be viewed by the world at large and have some meaning, then back up the moniker with the attributes you hold in highest regard, consistently. Now you’re talking branding . . .

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  • Does Your Latest Campaign Pass the “Sniff Test?”

    Does Your Latest Campaign Pass the “Sniff Test?”

    I’ve been working with business clients to assist them in their marketing efforts for nearly 3 decades, and in that time, there have been very few rules that I haven’t broken, bent or ignored altogether. There is one, however, that no matter what your industry or line of business, needs to be present somewhere in the mix – The Sniff Test.

    Human beings evolved over millions of years, surviving due to an over-sized brain and an ability to use that brain power to adapt his environment to suit his needs. One of those adaptations is a facet of the primitive, limbic portion of the brain that senses danger. Things like the hair on the back of your neck standing up, or a queasy feeling in your gut, or a general uneasiness in the back of your mind that tells you there’s someone in the house or that you’re being watched.

    That’s instinct, it’s your subconscious processing what you see and feel and hear and smell, and putting out a primitive nervous signal that there’s something your conscious brain is missing, because it’s too busy working on what’s coming . . .That instinct was developed to keep you alive.

    That same instinct is useful in business, when reviewing partners, business arrangements, marketing strategy, new product development, and other areas where it’s easy to get caught up in the hype and the hysteria, and execute strategies that do not have a strong foundation in logic and data. That is the instinct I call the “sniff test”, and it’s really a jaded, realistic way of looking at a worst-case scenario by stripping away all the “possibles” and “maybes” in the scenario planning, leaving just the facts.

    Say the marketing manager comes to you with a campaign idea that involves the buyer or customer to follow five or six steps in order to redeem an coupon in a product offer, and when you do the math on the offer, the numbers don’t really offer any advantage to the buyer after all the rebates, savings certificates and all the rest is computed.

    Take a step back, pretend your in the grocery store and have two products side by side, yours and your competitor’s. Now read the offer slowly and carefully, and add weight to your competitor’s product for every step you have to take, in order to get the savings the coupon represents. Now subtract weight for every ten cents’ worth of different in price you offer over your competitor’s product. If you product price doesn’t outweigh all the work needed to get it, the offer doesn’t pass the sniff test.

    Despite how it works on paper, in the real world, it just won’t smell good to the consumer. Even if it’s explicitly spelled out that the savings are significant, it will send up a flag for the consumer if it’s too hard to do – too many places for error to creep in, too much work, too many conditions, it will just feel like you’re trying to put one over on them, and they’ll pick the “safe” option – instinct at work.

    Unconsciously, you use the sniff test every day, to evaluate deals, employee performance, new hires, as a lie detector in presentations or meetings – anywhere you place a value judgement not strictly based in logic. If someone asked you after one of those decisions why you went the way you did, you couldn’t give them a solid, concrete, logical answer, you’ll likely think to yourself “it just doesn’t smell right” – you just implemented the sniff test, and whatever your were evaluating didn’t pass.

    Food for thought for the day – tell me your stories of instances where your business dealings didn’t pass the sniff test, and what was ultimately the real reason it was a good decision to pass on it. Enjoy!

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