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October 18, 2009
In our previous post, Jon Miller did a great job discussing the science side of Marketing Operations. His blog also include a link to another insightful blog post from Andy Hasselwander of MarketBridge on the subject. There’s no denying that the science or left-brained side of MO is very sexy to data-driven executives running technology and other types of companies. But there’s a lot more to MO than numbers, bits and bytes.
Fundamentally, MO is both a COO and change management process within the marketing department. Technology, process and metrics are vitally important. But so is raising the stature and influence of marketing to a more strategic role, aligning with stakeholders both in and outside marketing, and winning buy-in for marketing initiatives (which should be funded in support of enterprise straegic objectives).
Just like there are a only handful of CEOs that can effectively balance technological depth with vision, business savvy and leadership, there are very few technologists who can successfully lead an MO function. If you find one, more power to you. But let’s not forget that there are plenty of effective MO pros who can lead technologists that aren’t technologist themselves. They might come with deep experience in one or a combination of the following disciplines: lead management, sales enablement, channel marketing, change management, knowledge management, organization development, customer experience management, strategic planning, research, project management, process design, campaign management, measurement, analytics, product management, and, of course, corporate marketing. This list is certainly not exhaustive.
The sexy stuff like technology specification, dashboard development and metrics definition is certainly not easy. Infrastructure never is. But the real challenge is building an ecosystem of support so you deploy the right technology for the organization, make better decisions that are backed by stakeholder buy-in and resources, and continously learn as a team from your experience so the MO of marketing in your organization is constantly adapting to capitalize on the opportunities in the market (while never losing the unique and genuine essence of that which makes your enterprise different.)
Gary
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I’m in amazing company. Some of the other thought leaders Linda has interviewed for her podcast series include: Gary
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by Adrian Carol Ott
CMOs of global companies are confronted with unparalleled challenges and opportunities. These include:
- Marketing Accountability: It is no secret that CEOs are demanding greater ROI on their marketing investments. Consequently many CMOs are driving initiatives to make the marketing function more accountable and measurable.
- Globalization: Serving global markets necessitates that marketing coordinate campaigns across continents to leverage cost and synchronize messaging, however campaigns must also meet local needs and norms.
- Complex Consumer Expectations: Consumers have become increasingly vigilant about SPAM, junk mail and privacy concerns. Regulatory compliance with each country and state is a mandate.
- Mergers and Acquisition (M&A) Integration: Frequent M&A places constant demands to rapidly integrate messaging, web, and collateral of newly acquired companies into the corporate brand. Inadequate marketing budgets frequently associated with acquisitions place additional stress on existing budget priorities.
- New Marketing Technology: The advent of new internet technology has enabled unprecedented interactive dialogs with customers. This presents a huge opportunity for forward-thinking companies to target and reach customers in personalized ways. However, new technologies must be implemented and integrated across the world with regional marketing teams that execute campaigns locally.
- Stakeholder Agreement: Coordination with regional marketing groups, product business units and sales constitutes a major task. Processes are needed to prioritize and support new product introductions and demand generation within marketing budget constraints. Terms, such as “What constitutes a qualified lead?” need to be standardized worldwide. If not addressed, roll-up, visibility and accountability into an actionable. CMO and campaign dashboards becomes nearly impossible.
Marketing Operations Emerges As A Discipline
Faced by these demands many CMOs have commissioned a Marketing Operations organization to tackle these challenges. Originally designated to create metrics and dashboards for accountability, leading companies are increasingly treating marketing operations as a key foundation to the marketing function.1
Marketing Operations is the only function, (other than the busy CMO), that manages marketing from an end-to-end perspective. Marketing functions such as PR, product marketing and regional marketing only see a portion of the big picture.
“Marketing Operations ensures marketing is run as a business,” states a VP of Marketing Operations at a major Silicon Valleyfirm, “We strive to enable the marketing organization to be streamlined in day-to-day processes so they have time to think, focus on the customer and to innovate.”2
The 5Ts of Marketing Operations
What constitutes Marketing Operations? Based on our work with clients, and in our research, we have found that Marketing Operations is an emerging dimension to the marketing mix. Enabled by new processes and technology, it goes beyond the 4Ps (i.e. Product, Price, Place, Promotion), and 3Cs (i.e. Customers, Competitors, Corporation3), to fully round out the marketing mix. The 5Ts of Marketing Operations are:
- T otal Strategy
- T echniques & Processes
- T racking & Predictive Modeling
- T echnology
- T alent
By approaching Marketing Operations across these dimensions, CMOs have an integrated approach to enable marketing worldwide. Let’s describe the 5Ts in more detail:
Total Strategy: This area involves strategy development in the product portfolio. It is not uncommon for large companies to have seventy-five or more products in their portfolios some have hundreds. Managing investments and priorities across the portfolio is paramount.
- What constitutes effective strategy development for each product?
- What are the key elements needed in each plan to win in the market-place and to roll this out worldwide?
- Where do we “double-down” our investment? How do we gain market-share with our resources? Where do we reduce investment?
- Does the organization reflect how our business should optimally interact with customers? Are there new ways we can improve our dialog and reach?
- Chief of staff for the CMO: Based on our work with clients and research, the head of marketing operations in a number of companies takes on this role – driving the organizational agenda, identifying “white spaces”, and ensuring measurement results are discussed at review meetings.
Techniques & Processes: How should information flow most effectively across the marketing organization worldwide? How do we make decisions? What are our governance processes? What is our roadmap for marketing processes next year? in 3 years?
- Fiscal planning processes and reviews.
- How should budgets be allocated?
- How should we optimally interact with our customers? What are the touch points?
- How should information flow within marketing and with other stakeholders such as sales and business units?
- Standards and criteria for evaluating new initiatives and campaigns.
- What are product launch categories (e.g. Criteria for “A”, “B”, or “C” launches)
- Can we apply six-sigma to our processes?
Tracking and Predictive Modeling: How do we make marketing more accountable? How do we measure campaigns and ensure better predictability of outcomes?
- How are we doing today? Metrics and dashboards
- Forecasting – What are leading indicators of the future? How can we better target and predict? e.g. data mining customer databases.
Technology: How do we implement technology across the globe to enable effective customer dialog, demand generation and measurement? What are the business requirements for IT? How does technology support the marketing and sales process roadmap for the next 3 years? How do we integrate with sales technology?
- Internet/Web/e-commerce
- Consolidating/Rationalizing Customer Databases
- Online Customer Forums
- Marketing Resource Management Software
- Analytics/Decision making software
- Marketing Research Databases etc.
Talent: How do we ensure our marketing personnel are trained and able to work with new marketing technologies and processes? How can we enable them to make the right decisions based on analytics and campaign scorecards?
- What are the roles and responsibilities of each talent community?
- How do these communities interact? Where are the hand-offs?
- Training strategy with a marketing skills curriculum across the marketing function
- Ensuring balancing between the art and science of marketing
The 5Ts Transform the Future of Marketing
Although foundational the 5Ts have a deep and significant impact on customer relationships. For example, by implementing integrated technology for demand generation and customer database access, regional marketing personnel can now build innovative campaigns on top of a marketing operations infrastructure. By tracking the success of a campaign, companies will realize better customer targeting and ROI; they learn from prior successes and failures.
Although it can be a multi-year process for large organizations to implement all of the 5Ts,a holistic, integrated approach to Marketing Operations gains CMOs greater accountability and ROI for their organizations worldwide. It enables them to “run marketing as a business.”
The 5Ts add a critical foundation to the marketing funtion enabling Marketing Operations to support CMOs in tackling contemporary challenges and opportunities. It is dramatically transforming the marketng function and is changing how marketing will be conducted in the future.
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Today I'm pleased that Joshua Horwitz, founder and president of Boulder Logic, is sharing his vast experience with us on the implications of undervaluing your customer reference program. I continue to be disappointed (but not surprised) by companies that claim to highly value customer loyalty, yet fail to invest in the processes, tools and staff to optimize their customer reference efforts. I've talked to hundreds of marketers and sales people that have experienced the same challenge I have when I led outbound marketing at ShoreTel: No one owned the customer reference challenge! Joshua's company provides a great technology solution that – when combined with good process, guidance and execution –can transform a few good customer references into a pipeline of willing evangelists, ready to enthusiastically support both your sales and marketing objectives. Gary
When a Customer Reference Causes the Deal to Fall Apart
by Joshua Horwitz, Boulder Logic
Bringing operational discipline to your customer references is not only a Marketing Operations best practice, it’s a proven way to increase your value and contribution to your company’s success. Still we occasionally encounter executives that believe customer reference management takes care of itself. If sales people are able to search down a customer to speak with a prospect when needed, where is the big problem?
Beyond the non-productive time spent searching or the burn-out of the few good ones, the problem with an undisciplined approach to satisfying reference requests is the high risk of inadequately matching the selling situation and the resulting financial implication.
In this post, we'll take a look at some of the ways your sales people may actually be lowering their chances of closing the deal when customer references aren't handled properly.
1. The prospect hears more negative than positive: The prospect starts asking questions and the details shared by the customer paint your company in a negative light. It may be timing or just not vetting the customer well. The customer may not even know what they've done. This happens more often than you'd think.
2. The prospect questions your company's ability to execute: Prospects evaluate your company's ability to satisfy their requests at every step. Because customer reference activities involve multiple relationships and stakeholders, there is a significant risk that an ad hoc process will expose an uncoordinated appearance that leaves questions in the prospect’s mind.
3. The prospect decides you don't have enough relevant experience: In the rush to find someone to satisfy the request, it is common for a sales person to share a customer reference whose experience doesn't match what the prospect is trying to achieve. While glowing praise from a customer sounds nice, if the reference doesn't match the prospect's requirements and vision, it won't help reinforce the experience you claim to have.
4. The prospect feels you don't understand their problem: Put the wrong customer in front of a prospect and they may think that your sales person hasn't really listened to what they've said or just doesn’t appreciate their specific situation. The hard work your sales person spent building the relationship may be lost.
5. The prospect begin to lean towards your competitor: Your prospect has also obtained references from your competition. If the customer they share is offered in a timelier manner and is able to speak more effectively, the opportunity may be impossible to salvage.
Sales people are used to doing whatever it takes to satisfy a prospect. While this may result in relatively few customer reference requests going completely unanswered, it ignores or hides the risks of having no tools or process in this area.
Few factors influence prospects as much as comments from their peers. Organizations that overlook this area are inviting unnecessary risk that an inadequate customer reference may actually cause deals to fall apart.
Check out Joshua's blog.
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The following post appeared on Boulder Logic’s Reference Success blog last week. Today we have a guest post from Gary Katz on his experience applying a formal Marketing Operations model to customer reference management. Enjoy… About five years ago, I walked into Shoreline Communications as the new director of communications and corporate marketing. After completing my first objective – helping to re-brand the enterprise phone company from Shoreline to ShoreTel – I realized I had a significant challenge ahead:
- ShoreTel had great customer loyalty, which needed to be leveraged as a significant competitive advantage in the market.
- Our marketing programs depended heavily on great customer references – webinars, seminars, case studies, media relations, analyst relations, speaking engagements.
- The company’s sales channel model provided neither the structure nor motivation for Sales to collect timely customer reference data. Once the deal was done, the heavily lifting was passed to a channel partner and Sales was on to something else.
- The same customer references were being burned out, used over-and-over again. Why? Because with more than 1200 customers and more than 150 channel partners at the time, no one wanted to assume responsibility for qualifying and managing these customer references.
- My success was directly related to being able to tap into this rich pool of customer references.
At that time, I didn’t know about Boulder Logic. I didn’t even know what Marketing Operations was. I just knew I wasn’t getting anywhere trying to qualify these references on an ad hoc basis.
So I worked with a consultant to design a customer reference process aimed at developing a robust and renewable pipeline of customer references – just like a sales pipeline.
Specifically:
- ShoreTel’s customer database was categorized, continuously updated and mined for strong reference candidates
- All references were qualified for use in marketing and sales efforts
- Qualified references were matched to appropriate marketing, public relations or sales opportunities
- Select customer references were converted into case studies or e-newsletter articles, or used in webinars, editorial calendar, article, analyst research or speaking engagement opportunities
- We began formally tracking all active references, including customer contact info, channel partner info, reference type, usage log and color-coded status information
Since that time, ShoreTel’s customer reference program has grown from about 20 qualified references to more than 1000. The program generates approximately 25 new case-study candidates every quarter. The public relations team has a ready supply of credible references to present to editors and analysts as publicity opportunities arise or are uncovered.
But most importantly, within months of rolling out the program, the major benefactor and requester shifted from Marketing to Sales. Today, ShoreTel Sales relies on this program to identify references that help it win strategic deals in new vertical markets and new geographic territories.
And who do you think helps them find the best matches for their requests? The same consultant I hired to implement the program one day a week back in 2004! Dick has out-survived four of my successors and his value (and workload) is greater than ever, even in a miserable economy.
So let’s get with it, people! Odds are, your customer reference effort is suboptimal. Bringing operational discipline to your customer references is not only a Marketing Operations best practice, it’s a proven way to increase your value and contribution to your company’s success. Today, you have great tools like Boulder Logic to make the customer reference process even more effective.
Think about it. What other marketing program can simultaneously influence your company’s customer lifetime value, ensure that valuable Voice of the Customer insight is collected and utilized in marketing, potentially transform your customers’ technologists into industry rock stars, and help Marketing become Sales’ best friend by increasing the velocity of the sales pipeline?
With a heightened emphasis on Marketing optimization and ROI, today you can’t afford to miss this golden opportunity. Highlight any portion you want:
BusinessWeek columnist, Marshall Goldsmith, is author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller “Succession: Are You Ready?” and the New York Times and WSJ bestseller, “What You Got Here Won’t Get You There.” He also pens a column for BusinessWeek called Marshall & Friends. This week, Goldsmith wrote about “Marketing in the Age of Turbulence,” in which he interviewed well-known marketing guru and author Philip Kotler. Goldsmith did a great job setting up the interview and Kotler delivered great wisdom, but a real opportunity was missed. Neither gave credit to the emerging discipline of Marketing Operations as a way to navigate through the waves of change. That inspired me to post of comment on the BW site. I hope MO wins a few more evangelists as a result. But it woudl have been so much more powerful if the likes of Goldsmith and Kotler would have used their pulpit to give MO some love.
Here’s the comment I posted: Adding some left-brain people to the marketing department addresses just part of the problem. What about short CMO tenure? And what about a lack of operational focus? Interesting that early on in his article Marshall casually uses the term “marketing operations” to describe marketing departments, yet fails to mention the emerging discipline of Marketing Operations (MO), a key enabler to delivering the strategic and accountable marketing he envisions. We need CMOs and CEOs with the vision to invest in dedicated MO functions that effectively operate as the CMO’s Chief of Staff. Especially in complex organizations, MO is integral to bridging strategy to execution, and aligning marketing with the C-suite and other stakeholders throughout the enterprise (such as sales, finance, IT, customer experience). Most organizations are missing the opportunity to change the MO of marketing by fully embracing MO. This is a shame because MO done right can hugely impact an enterprise’s business intelligence, sales enablement, pipeline velocity, scalability, brand governance, customer experience, ability to demonstrate marketing ROI, and agility to navigate the winds of change.
Come on Marshall and Philip, start treating Marketing Operations as a beloved brother or sister of marketing, not an ugly stepsister or neglected orphan, locked in the parlor doing the chores no one else wants to touch. If you play your cards right, your Cinderella-in-waiting could evolve into your CMO’s indispensable Chief of Staff.
Gary
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Is your organization effectively leveraging your customer loyalty in your sales and marketing efforts? If yours is like most organizations, your customer reference process is less than optimal. While this is a big challenge, it’s also a huge opportunity. Solve the reference problem and you will not only dramatically increase your company’s sales and marketing results, but boost your career in the process. Do you need to bring greater discipline and control to your customer reference process? Do you want to protect your best customers from suffering reference burn-out so you can get the most out of these invaluable assets? Are you ready to run your reference process like you do (or should) your sales pipeline? If your reference process could use an overhaul, please join Joshua Horwitz, founder of Boulder Logic, and me this Tuesday, May 12 at 12 p.m. PST for a free webinar to learn about the opportunities and challenges of bringing Marketing Operations approach to customer reference activity in your organization. Among the areas Josh and I will address:
- The economic relevance of customer reference management
- How to apply an operational approach to references
- Consideratiottps://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/868352752ns before introducing new customer reference practices
“Good customer references are known to influence sales, however an ad hoc approach to providing those references is less productive and jeopardizes existing relationships,” says Horwitz. “Executives that attend this event will learn how applying operational controls and metrics to customer reference management can lower costs, protect existing customers and drive new sales.” Register now for the free “A Marketing Operations Approach to Customer References” webinar.
Gary
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Marketing Operations Partners distributed a news release via PR Web yesterday about our “Journey to Marketing Operations Maturity” benchmarking study. You can learn more by clicking on the following link:
Journey to Marketing Operations Maturity Benchmarking Study Now Available from Marketing Operations Partners; First Publicly-Available Benchmark on Marketing Operations Best Practices Details Scope, Key Drivers, Success Factors & Obstacles
Gary
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