In order to achieve higher corporate value, we must achieve changes in marketing and sales! And marketing change is a unique challenge to leadership.
First, performance targets such as revenue growth can be achieved in many ways: improving customer service, developing new products, raising prices, and more. In addition, given the many variables that competition and customers have, the results of change often take a long time to appear. Under such conditions, it is very difficult to keep the center of gravity from shifting, especially when various opportunities arise. Moreover, as the various elements of branding, key customers, pricing, and service management are intertwined, efforts to guide business transformation are even more complex.
And most corporate executives have not expected to change direction, maintain leadership, and convey confidence in change, so they need to invest more time and energy in dealing with the above issues. In the process of change, management will encounter temptations, such as involvement in other attractive customer groups, but if it is abandoned halfway, it will damage the focus of the company's change efforts. This requires the top management of the company to be full of enthusiasm, to maintain the focus of change without shifting, in order to achieve a more successful, and beyond many competitors.
A company's ambitious goals not only maintain the focus of change, but also unite the different parts of an organization. Therefore, companies need to develop ambitious plans. To make such a plan, the usual way out is to rely on product developers, brand managers, market researchers, sales personnel, etc. to cross the organizational boundaries and business units, and closely unite. With the concerted efforts of the company, the company can find growth opportunities while incorporating greater consistency in its marketing practices, such as branding and key account management, and the ability to embed innovative technologies across regions and businesses.
Second, there must be new ways of working. Only leadership and ambitious goals, if you can't change the way people work, that is, the tools used, the definition of roles, and the measure of work, then the transformation that lasts for several years will not succeed. Such changes are especially difficult for marketing and sales organizations. In particular, as the environment diversifies, the number and complexity of opportunities that marketing organizations need to assess increases, and the types of analytical tools available are also very broad, making it difficult for professionals to select core tools and frameworks for improving decision making. Businesses often have to redefine roles in order to get employees out of traditional functional frameworks to facilitate integration between customer insight, competitor intelligence, and various interdependent activities. Later, the development of indicators to track progress is also quite tricky, because commonly used marketing indicators (profit, market share growth and cost of sales) are sometimes contradictory, and often require different business units to adopt different priorities. Companies can be more fact-based when making decisions about product mix, promotion, marketing spend, and service methods. The trade-offs made by the company are more transparent and easier to compare across different customers, brands, and regions. However, even with the right tools in place, marketing companies must often make major adjustments to the definition of certain roles to ensure that key professionals are able to focus on the right priorities. The work to be done when using new indicators and performance management tools to consolidate new methods is not to be underestimated.
Of course, improved tools, processes, role definitions, and performance management are important components of a business operations system. The business operations system is actually a blueprint that builds consistent and second-to-none sales and sales for two or three functional areas that are more closely related to corporate strategic priorities, such as pricing, branding, market segments, channels or key account management. Marketing plan. Such an operating system is extremely valuable for the initiation and institutionalization of change.
Again, focus on capacity building. Marketing and sales work is complex and emphasizes concepts, so companies are required to help their grassroots professionals develop a range of implicit skills, such as the ability to make trade-offs and solve problems, rather than simply passing on hard knowledge. However, many companies have experienced from personal experience that formal training is almost useless to develop such skills. A more effective approach is to rely on the basics and part-time support, with the aim of establishing new ways of working.
The gangs mentioned here do not only refer to the development of training based on actual missions, but rather to doing secondary school activities by engaging in activities that are vital to the business. Since the better way is to learn from the middle school, then if you do it, you need someone to guide you. Many marketing organizations require a team of specialized, expert-level change agents to develop the skills of the organization's employees and help them use the new system. These experts can be called leaders, and the way these experts introduce new capabilities to adapt to new systems and processes is called micro-transformation, which often occurs first in specific business units, geographies, or subdivisions. In the market. Although cultivating a group of leaders requires a lot of resources, not doing so often leads to unsatisfactory results. The company must provide training and guidance to the sales staff, and the sales staff will win the trust, making it a true change believer and ideal mentor.
Second, we must base our minds on changing our thinking and behavior. No company can underestimate the potential damage caused by some deep-rooted understanding. Managers who initiate any change program must oppose this way of thinking and the corresponding behavior. To this end, managers should diagnose deep cultural barriers and combine hard interventions (such as change incentives) with soft interventions (such as role models). However, it is not easy to change the deep-seated ideas, especially those responsible for sales and marketing, who often have not experienced any major change plans compared to the operations managers. Marketing managers may not think that in order to identify potential reverse thinking and reverse these ideas, it is necessary to invest a lot of energy in developing a supportive system that empowers employees to believe in management's determination. It can be said that in order to change the way of thinking, enterprises need to take a lot of consolidation measures. Because these ideas directly conflict with the goal of building a relationship of mutual trust, changing this way of thinking has become the central link in the company's transformation efforts. Over time, once the salesperson's way of thinking has really changed, even though the industry is relatively mature and the competition is fierce, it will certainly achieve the goal of profit and revenue growth.
Later, the transformation needs to be designed. Faced with the complexity and randomness inherent in marketing and sales, many companies have adopted an “a la carte†approach to change. Instead of adopting the planned rigor and pace of Six Sigma or Lean Operational Reform, they are free to choose their business units or regions from a wide range of ideas and tools to achieve their overall performance goals. In fact, this is a big mistake. The transformation of marketing and sales requires that the change process be the same as the plan and normative of the operational change plan. In fact, marketing instability is greater, so managers must invest extraordinary time and effort to design this transformation. The transformation plan must promote everything that should be consistent across the company, while giving the space managers the space they need. Not only that, but compared to the operational change plan, senior management should review the overall progress of the marketing transformation plan and make trade-offs more frequently and in more detail. In the end, it laid a solid foundation for a successful transformation.