According to Philip Kotler, there are two types of CEOs — those who know they don’t understand marketing, and those who do not know they don’t understand marketing. They specialize in operational expertise, engineering, technical skills, and often sales. For a time we saw a few rising stars making their way up from marketing and customer support – these days you find fewer of them, especially in mature industries and in companies that need a new injection of growth. And many companies do.
That is too bad, because for an organization to grow beyond incremental gains – which in fact can be decreasing profitability, if you look close enough – once it gets to a certain stage of growth, you really need someone who understands marketing. To grow profitably, you need to make serious business decisions on the product/service line, service delivery, mix side of things. I favor the 90/10/90 rule — dedicate 90% of your efforts for the 10% of activities that will yeild 90% of the profit. It’s an outside-in approach.
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