Marketing must come first !!

The true mission of all business
Most companies have a marketing division, a product
development division, and a customer service division. Most
companies think of these as three separate and distinct
functions.

Very often the product development people never talk to the
marketing people and the marketing people never talk to the
product development people. Meanwhile, the customer service
people have almost non stature in the company and are
thought of mainly as clerks.

There are also administrative people who do things like
accounting and make sure the elevators work and that
everyone has a computer and a desk.

The administrative people often have little idea of what
the company even does, much less any sense of the marketing
strategy.

What catastrophic mistakes these are.
Marketing should never be a “division” or a
“Department” within a company. Instead, the entire company
Should be about Marketing.

Everyone in the company should be involved in
Marketing. A receptionist is not a low-wage worker; he or
She is one of your vital marketers.

Your receptionist and those who answer the phones are the
voice of your company to your customers and clients. Your
accounting people are not bean counters, but should be
integrally involved in making your marketing more efficient
and productive. Everyone in every company should understand
that their paychecks come from one and only one source:
customers.

Without customers, without sales, there are no paychecks.
Everyone in every company should be thinking all the time
about how to create happy experiences for customers.
Everyone in the company should be first and foremost a
marketer.

The chairman of the company should think of almost nothing
else but marketing. The product development people should
think of marketing first when they develop their products.
What good is it to develop a great product or provide a
great service that no one wants?

All products must be developed with the market for the
product at the forefront. “Do our prospects and customers
want this thing we’re making?” is the question the product
development people must always ask.

Meanwhile, the finance people, the accountants, and the
lawyers should not ask, “How can we make our lives easier?”
Instead they should ask, “How can we make it easier for
people to do business with us? Do we really need to require
our customers to fill out all these forms when they buy? Do
we really need to require our customers to sign long
agreements that no one reads? Do we really need these awful
disclaimers in tiny print on our order forms?”

The janitor is not a janitor. A janitor is a key marketing
person whose job is to make sure the place looks neat and
clean—like a company people will want to do business with.
No matter what business you are in, your company should be
a marketing company first—because marketing by definition
means “creating happy customers and clients.”