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We can't afford a full time Marketing Director

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 15:43:59 GMT

A familiar cry from many owner managers who recognise the importance of marketing but have to allocate resources elsewhere, and try to fill the breach themselves.

Well help is at hand. Corve Consultancy Limited has launched three new Marketing Support Packages to assist Owner Managers, at Board Level, with issues around Business Strategy, Strategic Marketing and Marketing Communications – including Sales.

The packages offer the intervention of a highly qualified and experienced Chartered Marketer from as little as two hours a month, up to twenty four hours a month if required.

1. Starter: - For two hours every month, we will sit with you and discuss all the pressing issues you face about business strategy, marketing and sales. We are there to be your soundboard and to provide practical, structured advice and support. Included in this will be an on-going review of your marketing and sales materials to help you get the maximum response from your target customers.

2. Advanced: - Added to the Starter Level of Support are a copywriting service to aid your development of new and effective materials; on site coaching of your marketing staff; Board Level support for the development of your Business Strategies and a quarterly Strategic Business Review . This work is spread across eight hours every month – some of the time on site and some off site.

3. Premium: - Added to the Advanced Level of support is involvement in your tactical marketing communications. This means overseeing your campaigns; managing your supply chain of marketing sub-contractors; undertaking a monthly review of tactical marketing and reporting on your Return On Marketing Investment. This work will occupy twenty four hours every month and again will comprise both onsite and offsite activities.

To take up one of these packages – or for more details telephone Jeremy Bassett on 1061 439 6358 or 07958 563134

Fail to plan and you plan to fail - I hate that expression!

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 14:12:28 GMT

It gets trotted out in all sorts of situations as a kind of mantra designed to make us believe that a plan, any plan, will bring success while the absence of planning guarantees failure (and probably plague and pestilence as well!)

So having Strategic Marketing Planning as one of my strong suits – why don’t I buy into it? Well the reason is that while we are creatures that plan by instinct – (when to do the shopping, where to go on holiday, what to cook for dinner – and how) when the challenges get tougher we are not always equipped with the skills to develop complex plans – and we seldom see them through with robust implementation.

A few weeks ago I sat with a group of friends in a seminar and we were split up and challenged to build the tallest freestanding structure that we could, using only dry spaghetti and marshmallows. We had tremendous fun and it bonded us together as a team, but our planning was farcical – almost non-existent. We did put together something that just about stayed upright while it was being judged, but compared to the other ‘teams’ we were poor by comparison!

Fortunately in the real world of business all of us are diligent planners with our clients building our structures on the solid foundations of experience in business strategy and strategic marketing. But moreover, all of us agreed that we are implementers not just theorists and more than able to translate the plans that we construct with our clients into workable programmes of activity, measured against key objectives and milestones, all of which dovetail into the top line corporate business objectives which will deliver the financial performance demanded by the business owners.

‘Fail to plan and you plan to fail’ – well okay, but maybe ‘plan diligently for the future and implement from today’ is a better mantra for success.

So what do you know about plastic injection moulding?

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 14:08:04 GMT

When I meet new businesses for the first time and we are sounding each other out to establish if we should work together, I’m often surprised how important it can be that I have a working knowledge of the sector in which they operate. Hence the question.

As it happens, I’m in the fortunate position of having spent 25 plus years in corporate finance and have had to investigate and understand businesses in almost every sector, to appraise their suitability for a loan (and more importantly for a repayment!). Since starting Corve Consultancy Limited, I have advised over 100 businesses across a dozen or so industrial and commercial sectors and actually, yes I do know a bit about plastic injection moulding!

But I never consider this to be too important. I’m not called into businesses to discuss technical production details but to work on business strategy; strategic marketing and marketing communications. These are fundamental issues to any businesses – but seldom have any great variance between businesses. In fact when I’m delivering seminars on these subjects, I often use my pal Matt, the Prestbury window cleaner, to exemplify how what appear to be quite complex issues apply to every business – large or small.

I’m sure there is great comfort for Owner Managers to know that their chosen business to business marketing consultant does in fact have a good working knowledge of their sector, but in the long term it will be my ability to work with them on product offerings, market selection, competitive positioning and communications that will win the day, not my intimate knowledge of the Negri Boss Canbio range!

Accustomed as I am to public speaking!

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:32:44 GMT

In 2011, I was asked to deliver more seminars and speeches than ever before. I think this reflects the appetite of owner managed businesses to listen to experts in these difficult economic times, rather than just ploughing the same old furrow in splendid isolation.

So what did I talk about? Almost universally, my agenda included a section on headline business strategy / strategic marketing; a section on planning; a section on business to business marketing; a section on planning marketing communications and a section about the real role of sales.

I spent nearly 30 years in international and domestic corporate finance, but no-one wanted me to talk about finance. This is not because I can’t, but because we are all realising that business finance is merely a symptom not a cause. Opportunities to raise business finance are still plentiful if you know where to look and have the right connections, as we do at Corve Consultancy Limited. But often, additional borrowing is not required for growth, but is to cover inadequacies and inefficiencies within the core business, which are accentuated as trading conditions deteriorate.

In this recession, while the traditional lenders have been concentrating as much on their own balance sheets as their clients; good established companies have had to recognise that the financial sector either won’t help or is too slow to help and they have had to take action themselves.

Undertaking detailed strategic analysis or even using simple tools like Corve Consultancy’s ‘Benchmark Your Business’ model have allowed owner managers to identify how to save financial wastage, how to get more with less, how to optimise effectiveness and efficiency in the business strategy.

This has been the saving of many businesses over recent months as they have looked afresh at their real purpose and objectives and, with external help, reinforced the core of their business to withstand the recessionary pressures and start to take advantage of the opportunities that can arise when other, competitive businesses, are weaker.

Getting my Business Strategy right

Thu, 12 May 2011 09:47:15 GMT

On the face of it, getting your Business Strategy right appears quite straightforward. There only two major decisions at the outset, the first of which is ‘do I serve carefully selected niche markets, or do I have the resources to attempt genuine mass market coverage?’

I work mostly in the UK owner managed sector where the vast majority of businesses – even at the upper end of the SME spectrum, choose a niche market strategic focus rather than trying to sustain a competitive position as a mass market player. A quick look at the organisational resources available usually confirms this is a sensible strategic choice. Few of us have the wherewithal to sit alongside real global mass market giants like Ford, Wal-Mart, Microsoft and so on.

The second major Business Strategy decision is slightly less straightforward, but usually ends up with the vast majority in one camp rather than the other. This decision is about the basis on which we are going to compete. Will we compete on price or will we compete on differentiation?

Again resources are often at the heart of this decision. Does the organisation have sufficient strength to sustain a hard fought cost leadership campaign to try and secure competitive advantage – it can be long hard war of attrition!

Often the conclusion is no, and so the default position is “we may not be the cheapest (indeed we don’t want to be) but look at our value proposition and everything that you will receive as a customer of ours, as opposed to being a customer of anyone else in the market place!”

So there it is, my Business Strategy – simple really!

“I will serve carefully selected niche markets on the basis of a highly differentiated value based proposition that each of these markets will identify with and aspire to”

It’s hard to imagine that such a simple statement can be so complex to convert into a workable strategic plan to sustain business growth in future years!

If you want assistance in converting your headline Business Strategy into reality, then call Corve Consultancy for an informal chat.

Business Strategy and Business Growth

Tue, 26 Oct 2010 10:10:50 GMT

I'm curious about who takes ownership for business strategy and the related business growth in most companies, particularly SMEs. Experience tells me that it's not normally the marketing department - they seem to be pigeon holed into concentrating on promotional and communications issues. This is important, but often poorly focused as a consequence of unclear strategic direction.

Core business strategy issues about products, markets, positioning, competition and so on, have long been a core element of the professional qualifications awarded by the Chartered Institute of Marketing and it is good to see Strategic Marketing appearing as a stand alone discipline in a number of respected MBA courses.

But what puzzles me is this. How does a business nominate its strategist in the absence of exposure to this training and insight? Is there another professional body that accredits in these areas or are we, as I suspect, burdoning business owners with these challenges and expecting them to get by using their experience?

I plan but it never seems to happen

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 11:35:09 GMT

Three words – implementation, implementation, implementation!

A few weeks ago, away on one of my Senior Marketer weekends with the Levitt Group, I heard a presentation from Dr Brian Smith entitled “Why we don't, and how we can, implement our strategic marketing plans” – full of insight into the reasons why, so often, implementation never seems to happen!

It was a follow on from Brian’s 2005 book “Making Marketing Happen – How Great Companies Make Strategic Planning Work”. I strongly recommend it (http://books.elsevier.com). For those serious about planning business strategy, there is no greater frustration than seeing the things grind to a halt for reasons, which once explained, can be so easily overcome.

Implementation is at the heart of my work. A long time ago, in the days of big corporate world, we seemed to lurch from one planning cycle to the next, with no real direction as to why we were pointing the way we were, no input from the market and little thought about implementation – unless the sales figures, which was what it was really about, started to drift.

How interesting that in those times I never met anyone with a single qualification in marketing or any real formal training – just glorified salesmen, pretending they were marketers! Fortunately times have changed a little.

I work really hard but I don't make enough money

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 11:34:13 GMT

One of the most enjoyable pieces of work I do at the moment is with a top flight creative agency in Manchester. Owned and managed by two of life’s good guys, they have wrought massive change to their company over the last twelve months as they have absorbed new techniques in business strategy and seen real business growth as a result of the changes they have made.

When I met them, the first thing that was obvious was that corporately, the tail was wagging the dog! The direction of the business effort was wrong, both internally and externally with staff and management priorities juxtaposed in a way that was driving the directors into the ground whilst absolving the staff of real responsibility.

Externally, there is now a real focus on strategic rather than tactical engagement with clients and the results are impressive. Seamlessly they have transformed these two areas and the financial performance reflects the efforts of their change management activity.

I need new products

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 11:32:49 GMT

It’s an old cliché, but if we stand still in business, we tend to go backwards! So the pressure is always on to be renewing, refreshing or developing new products or services for our target markets. This is where I think many businesses really struggle and part of the reason is that they may not have consulted with their customer base as often as is necessary when times were better.

Our customers often know more about us than we know ourselves – and why shouldn’t they? They are the ones that road test our products day in and day out and can often give us the best insights into how we might introduce version two, or bring in a new product or service to cover off another area of their business as it evolves to serve their customers.

My experience of primary market research with the existing customer base of Corve Consultancy’s clients is very positive. It adds value and even though sometimes it can be an excuse for some to let off steam, understanding what we do badly as well as what we do well, is critical for the development of robust business strategy.

Drawing together appropriate focus groups to help us when we are building new offerings is also an underused activity. I think focus groups got a bad press in the early days of New Labour and the mention of them tends to make lips curl a little. But in the new product / service development process, informed feedback is crucial.

I need better cashflow

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 13:10:18 GMT

I’ve long understood that in the short term, profit or less are far less relevant than cash. Over time, we can address loss making situations or make profitable trading even more so. But if we just don’t have the cash to pay the electricity bill, then we really are in trouble.

Being extremely old (according to my family!) I’ve worked through at least four recessions, but this latest one has been so different. I worked in banking and finance in the days when humans were trained to underwrite and we learnt what was good lending practice and what wasn’t.

No surprise that in those days we got back most of what we lent to business and to consumers and apart from the odd ripple in the secondary banking market, the sector was undoubted. Nowadays with very inexperienced lenders relying on computer based credit scoring is it any wonder the Banks got into the dire positions they did and now are relying largely on the public sector downsizing to bail out our economy.

Still, so long as they promise to serve us in under five minutes in the branch, or continue to make us feel good with their cheesy radio station adverts, I’m sure we’ll all forgive them soon........NOT!!

And that’s what made this recession different. (Paraphrasing) - in recessions gone by, businesses and individuals went to the cellar, pulled out a little more security, gave it to the banks and maintained or increased their borrowing, often to paper over the cracks in their Business Strategy that the recession was uncovering.

Didn’t happen that way this time – the banks said no and, ironically, refused to lend us back our money that had bailed them out!

So more and more businesses took the sensible decision to confront their shortcomings and work with external advisers to strip out the old inefficiencies and develop better business strategy aligned working practices. Guess what happened, as wastage and inefficiency reduced, cashflow improved.

Don’t you love self help!

I need more customers

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 13:02:29 GMT

Do we - or are we missing the point again. Be honest, the statement has much more integrity as I need more profits! As opposed to not wanting more sales volumes, I actually do want more customers – because I love the adrenaline rush of a new assignment, the challenge of a new set of business issues to be resolved and the opportunity to work with another set of business colleagues – hope that doesn’t make me sound too sad!

For my clients, identifying the right customer target groups and building irrefutable competitive positions for them in those customers’ minds is a terrific challenge. I think we all realise that the days of developing products or services and going out to find a market to buy them has long gone. Nowadays, this model represents the changing way that businesses think (and why they get better results!!) – as the approach has shifted towards customer orientation.

I need new markets

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 13:00:06 GMT

Identifying and entering new markets is key to business growth and something that should always be on the strategic agenda of your company. I love the challenge of market development – the analysis of all the market segment options, addressing the barriers to entry, creating the competitive proposition and sneaking up behind the competition to mug them in their own backyard!!

It was the legend Igor Ansoff that gave us the four strategy model for business growth – market penetration / market development / product development / diversification. Watch this space to see how, over time, his model has been entirely misrepresented and reconfigured to suit the arguments of others! There’s a very interesting piece of work going on by my Levitt Group colleague Laurie Young that will expose a series of misrepresented strategic marketing models when he publishes his next book – can’t wait!

I need more sales volume

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 12:56:41 GMT

There are few businesses which don’t utter this cry from time to time, but I think we have to be careful exactly what we wish for!

I don’t really want more sales, in fact if truth were known, I want less sales. What I really want is more profit and this is much more significant.

So what happens when businesses talk to me about increasing sales volume as part of Business Growth? The first thing we do is look at all the activity that presently generates income. It can be an eye opener to see just how much activity and effort goes into promoting sales of goods or services that deliver the lowest margins!

“It’s an easier sale” my client cries “we’ll make it up in volume”. No you won’t – if analysis of business strategy over the years has taught us one thing it is this: -

Volume helps absorb your fixed costs, but low margin is low margin. It dilutes your entire financial picture, it infuriates your finance director, your accountant and your bank, and it generally fails.

Using strategic marketing tools, it is entirely possible to refocus activity on profitable sales as opposed to volume sales and deliver strong bottom line performance as opposed to flashy top line performance.