The Fork In The Road

Creative or Analytical? - It’s the Wrong Question

I’ve been waiting a few weeks to figure out how I can politely address what may seem like a pet peeve. I’ve finally decided to not be so sensitive and accept that some people will see themselves in the blog post and will need to accept they are less than experts when it comes to marketing.

Wow. What a buildup for what seems to be a simple question: Are you creative or analytical?  As I’ve moved into senior global marketing roles, I’ve been asked this repeatedly. Usually by CEOs who I assume are intelligent in aspects of business.  I’ve always been polite, in part because it’s usually been in the middle of a job interview when this question is asked.  Now it’s time for me to share what’s behind my very polite smile: What an incredibly stupid question!

Yes, there are people in the marketing discipline who lean heavily toward creativity or analytics. However, do you really want to hire one of these people to head your marketing efforts?

Marketing executives, especially in high growth companies, must have a penchant and passion for both.  Only working through a “playbook” of marketing tactics neglects great opportunities to engage prospects.  For companies with a technology without widespread awareness or adoption, working through a series of marketing tactics because you think that’s how marketing is done, may ensure your solution is never seen by the most qualified prospects or that it’ll take a lot more money to get on their radar.

At the same time, I hate, hate , HATE, “gee whiz marketing.” These are super-cool marketing efforts done solely for the purpose of looking super-cool.  Marketing must be done for a purpose.  Sometimes this is lead gen, sometimes it’s awareness, sometimes it’s positioning for a liquidity event.  One of my earliest professional memories was promoting the Clay Court Championship in Pittsburgh, PA.  Our budget was just above USD$ZERO for an event spanning several days and a client willing to try something for the sake of drawing attention to it.  What I came up with was a celebrity charity tournament to be held on the first day of the event.  In Pittsburgh, “celebrities” were mostly media personalities, or in other words, TV  news anchors.  As planned, the celebrities that were invited to participate came with camera crews to show how the stations were supporting the community.  Each then ran it on the evening news.  The result was a measureable increase in attendance both from the previous day and also in comparison to previous years. 

Marketing must be a mix of creative new ideas and previous efforts with a proven track record. Both need forecasted results and ROI, and just as important, thorough measurement during and afterward. The measurement also needs to be the right measurement. For example, measuring lead generation on incoming leads is only a portion of what should be happening.  Ultimately, lead generation should be graded on how many leads reach the opportunity stage and the percentage of projected revenue in those opportunities.  It is also a mistake to assume public relations’ and analyst relations’ efforts cannot be measured.  There is always a way to measure. It takes someone who is creative and analytical to develop a metrics that fits the discipline and the company.

So, I ask again: Would you really want to hire someone who doesn’t have a passion for creative marketing to discover new ways to reach prospects, develop solutions and position your brand AND the analytics to continue to improve your (M)ROI?

 

Employees Are In The Driver Seat Now

It seems everyone I know professionally is currently recruiting for a position or trying to help a friend who is recruiting. In the Bay Area, you can’t throw a stick without hitting at least eight openings. On the 101 corridor, we are also back to the flush times of billboards advertising that companies are hiring.

In short, the tech employee is king again, though not everyone realizes it yet.

Companies looking to hire today must balance finding the best candidate because they may not be able to find additional candidates later and not take too long to decide or their preferred candidate will be already hired somewhere else.

Even if a company isn’t looking to expand operations, they are still affected by the upswing in hiring. An unsatisfied employee is a short-term employee. This doesn’t even necessarily mean they’re unhappy, just not happy enough. Instead of asking “why would my employee leave?” they need to ask “what incentive have I given my employee to stay?” These could be two different answers. Beyond pay and potential equity, there is the position itself. Because what’s important to employees varies and frankly some people are too dense to notice, here is a quick list of possible factors driving your employee retention or employee churn:

Pay – do you know what the market rate currently is?

Stock options/equity –Do your employees have skin in the game? Most tech companies have at least some type of stock option program, but there are a few founders that don’t understand the value.

Respect – no one should ever be disrespected. Period. If you or your company doesn’t respect its employees, the exodus is already in the works.

Career Path Positive – if you hire a person to do what they’ve done over and over again before and there’s no growth potential, look for a person who wants a job, not a career path. This doesn’t mean they’re a bad employee. They could be very good at this particular role and very happy in it.

When I hire or take over a department, I ask each employee what his/her career goal is. It doesn’t mean their position is going to change to only accommodate their desires, but I do try to incorporate some responsibilities that will help them achieve their overall goal. For example, in one department I inherited, the database marketing manager said she would like to eventually be in product marketing and wanted to create content. We added creating the customer newsletter to her responsibilities. Interestingly, the first person to comment on her newly-displayed writing skills was the vice president of product marketing.

Lifestyle Fit – Speaking from personal experience, I work a lot. A whole lot. I interact with Europe on a regular basis, and in previous roles have regularly interacted with Europe and Asia. I usually start reading email at 5:30am and a few times a week have conference calls at that time. I also work until I go to bed. I’m perfectly happy with this arrangement because, frankly, I have trouble shutting my brain off. However, if I ever worked for someone who said I had to work 15 hours a day, I would be very unhappy. Other people have scheduling priorities they must meet. It’s a tricky legal line to walk, but finding and keeping employees that fit your companies priorities will help retain employees who are critical to growing your business.

The Perks – in some ways, the message the perk sends is more important than the perk. I was at Mashery during a technical rollout. The guys in engineering worked until 2-3am. Two days later, the company brought in a masseuse and sent an email for everyone to sign up for chair massages. It was a very classy thing to do. I’m sure it didn’t cost much, but the message it sent was “we know you worked hard and we value it.”

Behind an economic stall, the biggest threat to the tech sector’s growth is a shortage of qualified employees. We are already seeing it in Silicon Valley. In the New York area, there are companies trying to convince potential employees to work for equity only with promises that they will be rich in the future. This will only last for so long. Employees may not always need to feel loved, but they won’t be with you long-term if they don’t feel respected. Giving them a reason to stay should be the cornerstone of your employment policy.

Six Guidelines for Company Viability

As friends and former colleagues play musical chairs with new positions, I’ve been asked repeatedly for my opinion about various companies. I have no working knowledge of many of these, so for the benefit of those who requested it (and those of you who haven’t) here are six core items for assessing a company’s likelihood of success:

1)      Executive Management Team

2)      What is the Market

3)      Sales Approach

4)      Marketing Approach

5)      Available Budget

6)      Oh yeah, and The Product

Executive Management Team

Although previous success may seem like an obvious indicator of future success, it is important to assess how realistic the executive management team is at this very moment. Just because they are in love with their idea doesn’t mean the rest of the world will be. Two questions to ask yourself:

Does the executive management team have a clear understanding of the marketplace and existing competition?

Does the executive management team plan to be aggressive enough to get-to-market and support significant market share growth?

What is the Market

Just as the executive team should continually assess if there is a market for their product or service, so should anyone thinking of joining a company. It is incredibly frustrating to land the job you love, only to find out after the fact there are only a few potential customers who love it.

Sales Approach

The sales approach needs to fit the product and marketplace. Remember, to achieve significant revenue you need to either have a low price tag and high volume of sales OR if you have a high enough price tag you can have less sales. A danger with the second version is that the company is too dependent on a handful of customers. If a deal is delayed or lost, it can be devastating to the company’s revenue targets.

Marketing Approach

Once you know what the sales approach is, ask yourself if the marketing approach supports this type of sale. A much-quoted IDC study states the 80/20 Rule: “up to 80% of the content marketing generates is not used by sales, even though a lot of it is specifically created for sales and channel enablement. “  If the sales and marketing teams aren’t aligned in common goals and what should be an effective lead-to-opportunity-to-closed sales approach, there is no way the company can be successful.

Available Budget

So you love the management team, there is definitely a market for the product or service, and sales and marketing seem to have their act together. Great. How much budget is allotted to the sales and marketing effort? Second, when does the operational budget run out?

I’m not suggesting forgoing a great opportunity if they don’t have tons of cash on hand today, but know what the situation is before you walk in the front door.

The Product

What the product’s capability is today may be very different than what you’ve read online. No matter what your role is, if at all possible, speak with someone technical at the company. I’ve found that in general, the technology guys are the most likely to tell you what is missing. Either way, it seems perfectly reasonable to request a tour of the product roadmap.

With investment and the job market both on an upswing, candidates have more options than any time in recent years. There are a lot of good companies now hiring. It’s the candidate’s job not to find a new position, but to find the one that is right for them.