One of the major food magazines carried the story of a relatively new business that was producing corporate cakes. What is a corporate cake? It is a cake that is designed with the company’s logo, slogan or other visual on top of the cake. The two women who founded the company were truly passionate about pastries and decided to turn their hobby into a business.
To market the cakes, the woman baked mini-versions and delivered the pastries to executive secretaries in their hometown. They soon found the task of baking, managing the business, and marketing daunting. A marketing consultant suggested that they hire a special person to concentrate on marketing their cakes. The new hire took her time in learning the industry, understanding the whole area of corporate gifts, branding, and how the pastries were used. After several months, the women grew impatient, wondering when the orders would start coming in.
How much of a learning curve should there be for the new marketing person? Some experts attach numbers like 3 months, but others are not so sure. One marketing magazine several years ago suggested that new employees use more of their own time than company time to learn the business. In fact, said one marketer, much of the learning should be done even before they spend a day at the desk.
It is important for people involved in marketing to understand every aspect of the business. I have found that the more the marketer knows, the better job they are likely to do in promoting the products and services they are hired to market. It is equally important that the marketer believe in the product. I recall one marketer who told me bluntly: “Our product is not as good as our competitor’s but it is in the ballpark.” Assuming that what the marketer said was absolutely true, it might have been better if he said:"Our products compare favorably with our competitors.” This slight bit of vagueness is the difference between a credible presentation and actually knowing the product.
In most cases, the marketer needs to understand some nuance that makes the product worthy of being marketed. If the product is not as good as its brand name competitor, how does it compare in price? Perhaps there is a service angle that can help the product stand out.
In my book, learning the business, means just that: Understanding the intricacies of the business, the quality of the product and service, and very importantly, having a firm grasp of the sales environment. For our pastry marketer, the environmental question is how likely are corporations to buy a pastry as either a gift or showpiece in a conference room? Are the cakes priced competitively with other gift ideas? Although the cakes may look great in a conference room, will they be affected by the spots that light up the room or do they need constant refrigeration?
Learning the business also means having a good grasp of historical concepts and I don’t just mean the history of the company. Who were the early customers of the clients? Why did they buy the product? If they are no longer customers, why not? Who else is in the category of the buyers that can be marketed to?
I have no idea whether the two women devoted the time to properly train the employee. I have seen too many cases where proper training is never offered, not out of a malicious intent, but because the higher ups were so busy. I even chided a “boss” who told a new hire to “just watch me.” That approach doesn’t work since the employee may be watching, but not understanding.
Let’s assume that our bakers took the new hire along on sales calls. Let us also assume that they met with the marketing person frequently. Is that enough? No, not at all. The employee has to assimilate that information and perhaps even carve out creative approaches to market the product. This particular hire went on to focus on large trade shows, with fairly good results.
It is also important for a company to establish realistic goals for their new hires. If the company was had $100,000 in sales, it is unrealistic to ask the new hire to bring in $500,000 in the first six months. If others in the industry are growing at a rate of 10%, the new hire will not have an easy time even taking sales to 20%. The most successful approaches build incremental increases, allowing the new hire to achieve modest successes before moving on to the next level.
Learning the business, as the common saying is, means learning all that is necessary to know to be a successful marketer. The marketer does not need to know the internal politics. That they can pick up just by observing and hopefully putting it into perspective with their responsibility of marketing the company’s products or services intact. It is the business that relates to the product or service that a new marketing person must learn.
Out of the Box is a collection of strategic marketing articles that Lubicom has published on various topics, trends and ideas in the marketing world. The articles have been published in the Hamodia weekly newspaper circulated on three continents to a readership of well over 100,000.
The name, "Out of the Box" is a term used frequently in business nowadays to describe creative thinking that is not the norm. It is meant to help a business pull away from the pack or separate oneself from the competition. It is to some extent fraught with risk, simply because it is not the run of the mill thinking, but it is at the same time the key to reaching the next opportunity.