Imagine if you were the most efficient manufacturer of seven-fingered gloves. You offer the best selection, the best service, and the best prices for seven-fingered gloves–but if there isn’t a big enough market for what you sell, you won’t get very far.
I love that quote. It comes from Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos and is part of a longer and very interesting post on Huffington Post.
Why do I love this quote? Because many will read that quote and wonder “Who the hell would make a 7-fingered glove?” – then they will get up and go to a meeting later in the day in order to discuss why their own company’s version of a seven-fingered glove is not hitting projected sales goals.
The blame will fall on marketing – specifically promotions that fail to deliver the quantity and quality of leads necessary to achieve sales goals. (Very aggressive sales goals that were based on ‘what do we want the company to earn’ rather than ‘what percentage of seven-gloved projected sales are we likely to capture?’)
Now, the blame should fall on “marketing” but only in those organizations that allow marketing to be involved (drive) product, price, place (distribution) and promotion. Because in those organizations, marketing decided that there was strong enough demand for seven-fingered gloves that the organization’s goals could be achieved.
But for too many organizations, marketing is assigned the ‘joyful, rewarding’ (sarcasm) job of trying to attract large numbers of qualified leads for products and services that don’t have large numbers of people that need the products and services.
How does your organization identify opportunities in the market and use that insight to develop the right products and services at the right price? How does your organization use that knowledge to execute a unique distribution strategy that brings your products and services to more qualified buyers?
Because when you do these things correctly, promotion becomes a lot easier and qualified buyers turn to you for their needs because more reasons than just promotion.
