My friend Nettie Hartsock sent me a book that I expressed interest in, Value Acceleration: the Secrets to Building an Unbeatable Competitive Advantage, by Mitchell Gooze and Ralph Mroz. In addition to her PR blog, Nettie writes a business book review blog, Must Read Business Books, and her author interview piqued my interest. This is a great book — I found it to be a solid, practical guide to the often misunderstood and sometimes mysterious process of marketing. Notice I used the word process when referring to marketing — the lack of which “is at the root of most of the ongoing problems commonly seen in ‘marketing’,” according to Gooze and Mroz. The development of and adherence to a marketing/sales process is the crux of the book. (Because marketing and sales are so integral to each other and the process, the authors use the phrase marketing/sales rather than discussing each function separately.)

It just makes sense to me.

Why not a process for marketing, too?
Successful companies have been operating with sound manufacturing and financial processes for decades, and it’s difficult to imagine how they might have conducted business without them. More recently, processes have been adopted for product development as well, which have greatly organized functions and eliminated many product failures for companies that use them. Gooze and Mroz contend that adding a properly constructed marketing/sales process can build a sustaining competitive advantage, especially in today’s business climate which requires the ability to change quickly in response to an unstable or fluctuating market. Yet very few well-defined marketing processes exist in the corporate world.

Why is that?

Common misconceptions
The authors contend that marketing suffers from two common misconceptions:

1. the confusion of marketing with promotion — advertising, branding, public relations, sales support, etc. — which is but one area of marketing, and

2. the misconception that marketing is an art rather than a science, that it is dependent solely on the insight of gifted people for its success, and that it’s not something that can be organized and structured.

Problems caused by lack of process
The problems caused by the lack of a unified marketing process include those in the following list. I find this list to be spot-on, and I’ve recognized these elements time and time again with clients.

1. marketing seems to change with every new regime
2. there is a new definition of marketing every time the company gets in trouble
3. there is no consistency over time or across products
4. each new product introduction requires management to spend countless hours figuring out what the marketing will be this time
5. the ability to justify resources doesn’t exist
6. marketing is hardly a smoothly running ship
7. there are fatal delays in decision making
8. marketing is organized in a seemingly random fashion
9. there are no objective criteria for measuring the effectiveness of marketing

What’s the fix?

The scope and responsibility for marketing
One of the first thing that’s necessary is to recognize the totality of marketing, the front end of opportunity identification, positioning, etc., to the back end of promotion and sales support, as well as the understanding that marketing is a central dimension of the entire business. According to Peter Drucker, widely regarded as the father of modern business management, “[Marketing] is the whole business seen from the point of view of its final result, that is, from the customer’s point of view. Concern and responsibility for marketing must, therefore, permeate all areas of the enterprise.” This indicates involvement in marketing at the very top levels of the organization.

Is it possible to “manufacture” customers?
Next it’s important to consider marketing/sales as a process, which Gooze and Mroz aptly define as the Customer Manufacturing System. They describe it this way: “What if you considered marketing/sales as a manufacturing process and considered the output of this manufacturing process to be loyal, profitable customers?” The authors contend that you can.

There are four main elements to the system

1. Environmental influences. The market intelligence you gather, through customer and competitive research, acts like a map for your strategic decisions and competitive campaign. Most companies gather some of this data now, but few do so in a comprehensive and rigorous manner.

2. Value specification. Many people call this value proposition, or USP, unique selling proposition. The authors describe it as the process of understanding and agreeing upon who buys and what they are buying, or what they want to buy, that they can’t buy from others. A compelling value proposition is something that isn’t already being said in the marketplace, something no company but yours can say. “Quality” and “great customer service,” used by many companies, are not value propositions that will work in the competitive marketplace today.

3. Solution development. This is the set of marketing activities focused on actually creating the complete solution you bring to the market. Here, marketing works closely with product development, and solutions are based on the market and customer intelligence gathered and the decisions made in the value specification stage.

4. Customer development. This is the stage where strategy is set for sales, promotion, channels, and every other aspect of the company that touches the prospect or customer. A critical aspect of this step is aligning your selling process with the customer’s buying process, which is explained fully in the book.

Obviously, there’s a lot of meat in this book.
I’ve given you the basics, and it’s worth your careful study to get the details, as well as the steps to follow after considering the above, such as the bottlenecks you’ll encounter, eliminating wasted efforts and applying lean thinking, and continuous improvement.

Imagine the short- and long-range implications of setting a marketing/sales process in place in your company and benefitting from a sustainable competitive advantage that will work with you as the market changes. Go to the authors’ website for more information and to order the book. Also read Nettie’s interview with the authors.

[tags]marketing process, value acceleration, Mitchell Gooze, Ralph Mroz, Nettie Hartsock, Peter Drucker, value proposition, USP, competitive advantage, Must Read Business Books, marketing problems[/tags]

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