Rate of Change

When I read the previous QOD...quote of the day...from ol' Jack Welch of GE, I wonder how many people apply this to their own marketing and messaging efforts.

Most firms only look at the rate of change internally (I think about molasses here - slow!) and never really gauge the effects of external forces except from a short-term perspective. Better marketing and messaging will help in the short-term but longer term, the 'right' message comes out and becomes part of your market's community voice and raises and reinforces your brand.

So when companies only look inward, they think 3 'wrong' things about marketing and messaging:

- that they can do it ourselves

- that marketing and sales are the same thing and

- that if they do marketing that they only have to do certain pieces of it.

OK - maybe some firms are able to do it better than using external resources but the vast majority of the small to medium sized companies and even the big ones put out 'suffering' and suffocating marketing efforts and thereby suffer from the lack of results - muddled messages, brand abandonment, cluttered websites, same ol' boring PowerPoint pitches, etc. Sometimes, external talent can help you focus on getting that message honed and fine tuned that you might normally be missing by your internal focus.

Next, marketing and sales are not the same. Marketing is product, pricing, placement and promotion. Sales is moving product or services to generate revenue. That doesn't sound like the same thing to me nor should it to you. Remember one thing - 'market' the vision and 'sell' the product (that is from the wisest person I know and it's not me).

Also, you have to have a marketing plan with tangible goals and objectives so you have something to monitor and measure. It is difficult to measure ROI on your marketing efforts if you don't have a plan and you are trying a shotgun or a Chinese menu approach to marketing. An external expert or your internal staff can help you build a plan that has the measurements in it so you can track the results. Remember - plan the work and work the plan.

Finally, GE is renown for their quality efforts - Six Sigma and all that stuff - and it applies throughout GE. So, do you think the GE execs and marketing people are over there 'winging it' on their marketing and messaging efforts? Nah - they're planning their work and working their plan. And, so should you or as Jack says, 'the end might be in sight.'