Marketing Madness : Steps to recover

Recovery in a world gone mad

For the last 40 years, B2B marketing professionals have created program rules intended to cause results. From steps-to-the-sale programs, to dealer-loader initiatives, to programs aimed at directing the behavior of the parts counter guy, to frequency programs: the list is seemingly endless. "Incentives" have brought a kind of destructive madness to marketing. Rather than creating a holistic solution, these programs - in the language of systems - have "shifted-the-burden", become "fixes-that-fail", and highlighted why our channel partners should be thought of as "the commons" in the "tragedy of the commons" archetype. it is time to create sustainability in our marketing programs. that will require a kind of recovery for marketers.

“Recovery programs”, in the form of the multitude of 12-step programs that have proliferated since Bill W. and Dr. Bob, made profound contributions to living and the wisdom literature of the 20th century, is a radical paradigm shift in attitude and in living. Its two primary drivers — powerlessness and acceptance — are characteristic thoughts counterintuitive to the marketing imagination.

The reality of marketing today is that we must acknowledge our need for recovery. Over the past decade we have watched the power shift 180-degrees into the hands of our customers. We must all realize and embrace our powerlessness, and understand that accepting this brings greater power. In marketing, as in life, we need to become focused outside of ourselves and allow that others —our customers — hold the power and the key.

The power in the marketplace is held by our customers. No one can doubt this in the twitter-age of social media. Many of us erroneously believe that we own this power. Many of our dealers believe they own it. The truth, however, is that the customers have redefined value and the ways they want to buy our products, and, as such, hold the power over us. Moreover, through the power of social media, our customers now “hold sway” over our reputations and the success of our customer experience management initiatives. To not accept this power and to ignore what our customers tell us is to guarantee that we will be out of business in the near future.

One of the most powerful and pervasive movements of the 20th century has been the movement to heal the individual. Wherever we turn we are confronted with healing the inner child, dysfunction, codependency, etc. In the business arena, we’re being told to listen to our customers, to empower our employees and to develop a sense of community in the workplace, and this whole process is a journey.

Suppose we were to take the wisdom of self-knowledge, responsibility, acceptance, doing things one day at a time, easy does it, etc. and apply them to our marketing lives. Where would these musings take us? Perhaps it will lead to a paradigm of healing to make up for the marketing damage we have done. Let’s call it “12 Steps for Marketing Recovery.”

The Twelve Steps for Marketing Recovery

Step 1. We admitted that we were powerless over people, places, things, and situations, and that our sales and marketing lives were unmanageable.

Step 2. We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore our focus and us to sanity.

Step 3. We made a decision to turn our wills and our lives over to the care of a power greater than ourselves: to our customers.

Step 4. We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of our sales and marketing selves.

Step 5. We admitted to our customers, and to ourselves, the exact nature of our wrongs.

Step 6. We were entirely ready to remove all our defects of sales, marketing, and customer experience.

Step 7. We humbly asked our customers to guide us as we remove our shortcomings.

Step 8. We made a list of all those we had harmed and became willing to make amends with them all.

Step 9. We made direct changes to our treatment of customers and to our processes wherever possible.

Step 10. We continued to take an inventory of our sales and marketing practices and when we were wrong we promptly admitted it.

Step 11. We sought through a quest for continuous process improvement and purging of our database to improve our conscious contact with our customers, seeking only to assimilate, to cultivate, and to retain them.

Step 12. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to others and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Twelve-step programs hold many points of enlightenment for us as business people since their principles define behavior, communications and ethics in a world driven by openness, honesty, willingness and responsibility. The opposite behavior in

the language of “recovery” is codependency.

In agribusiness, codependency takes the form of entitlement programs, programs which rob our businesses of integrity, strength and self-reliance. Entitlements and the incumbent expectations of payments from manufacturer to their channel partners ultimately serve to destroy the marketplace and the covenants/relationships between manufacturer, dealer and grower. Entitlements hurt business because they cause loss. Loss of credibility, loss of price stability, loss of support, and loss of profit for all.

Reversing the codependency of entitlements is just one way the 12 Steps for Marketing Recovery can offer a road to marketing recovery. The solution requires detachment and tough love, but the end result is healthier, more profitable business relationships.