The Great Industrial Marketing Treasure Hunt
Posted by Katherine Canipelli on Thu, Feb 19, 2009 @ 10:01 AM
The more we champion new tools that make marketing and business development more efficient and effective, the more resistance we encounter.
Is this human nature at work or humans not working to get strategic alignment?
In the last month, senior B2B managers in my network have related their challenges in convincing C-level execs that it's time for a change in marketing and sales process.
Lest you think this is just an "early adopter" social media marketing issue, it's not.
- A basic CRM implementation that still isn't catching fire a year after launch because the five sales guys won't share info and the CEO won't press the issue.
- A well conceived CRM set up that manages the pipeline just fine (for Sales Management) but which Marketing can't rely on for direct marketing or lead nurturing programs due to a huge bad data problem. Sales points at Marketing for support; Marketing points back for better input; collaboration is at a stand still.
- A company with a Web-centric integrated marketing strategy whose CEO concedes that prospects do, in fact, use the Internet as the first step to finding solutions, but won't acknowledge the qualified leads now originating from that channel (despite documentation).
- An industrial services marketing team whose proposed web-oriented marketing plan (email, SEM, inbound marketing) was dismissed by the new CEO as unnecessary--because his former company didn't do such things.
Finding the buried treasure isn't as simple as reading the map.
What's the root cause here? In operations-focused, sales-driven industrial companies, the comfort level with Marketing and Strategy is often low to nil. And we Marketers can be our own worst enemies if we fail to lay the ground work to secure top exec buy-in before introducing new methods and job-changing process improvements. This is "show me the money" kind of spade work.
Last month, the B2B Social Marketing group on LinkedIn engaged in a lively discussion of these issues (Join the group and search for the discussion thread: "Why do you think social media is a hard sell for B2B?") and Chris Brogan provocatively prodded for comments (and got dozens) about: "The B2B vs. B2C Thing"
What are your stories of treasure sought, fought for, and won or lost?
I invite you to add your comments and tales from experience. In 2009 marketingFOLIO will address these issues on a regular basis and blog about case studies that exude success.