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Marketing And Business Success
By: Willard Michlin
Marketing, as we all recognize, is a key, vital area of any business. Its
function is to ensure that your products or services are in the public eye,
sought after and then purchased. Proper marketing can “make a company” and if
done improperly can, “break a company”.
Your organization, with its staff of one or ten thousand people, may be doing a
great job of marketing but still be failing in other key areas. Marketing is
vital, yet it is only one of twenty-one key areas of every business!
A business needs to manage all of its twenty-one departments, not just marketing
or sales. For example, if you bring in a lot of business, yet aren’t prepared to
deliver, the business will still fail. Or if you bring in lots of business and
produce lots of products and then have weak quality control, your business will
fail eventually. The Lincoln Continental and Cadillac were neck and neck in
sales in the 1950’s. Ford Motor Company rushed to be the first of the two
companies to come out with power windows. The new model was released in such a
rush, that they had not gotten the bugs out of the power windows. Every owner
had trouble. The dealers were recalling every one of the cars as a result. Many
long time Ford customers never bought a Lincoln or a Ford again. Only, 40 years
later are people buying Lincolns in large numbers again. Cadillac throughout the
60’s became the American Luxury Sedan with no competition domestically for over
a decade.
When you understand all the components of you business, then you can be analyze
it in much the same way that a doctor does when he gives you a full body
examination. Whether you are a one-man show or have a very large staff, your
company still has these 21 key areas within its seven major divisions. Each of
these key areas needs to be functioning well.
There are a series of steps one goes through to do a business check up. Among
the first things normally done in analyzing a business is to establish what the
ideal business picture is for your business. Next, you need to determine what
your short and long term goals are for the business. Then in depths study of
your business (all 21 departments) is done, as it now exist. This study would
then be compared to the ideal business picture. In doing this, one can pinpoint
the exact key areas that need to be addressed immediately to make the actual
scene look more like your ideal scene. These areas are typically the one’s that
are ‘driving you crazy’ and stressing you out.
Once these areas are pinpointed, an Action Program can then be worked out and
executed. An Action Program has steps that address and handle the trouble areas
found. Your existing staff may do these program steps or you may elect to bring
in specialists to assist in their implementation. The goal is to be in greater
control over all the key areas of your business. An Action Program generated in
this way and effectively executed, immediately starts relieving stress in a
business.
By this time, I guess you might be asking the question: So what are these seven
divisions and 21 departments? Here is a brief overview of what’s involved in a
business and the areas that would need to be fully analyzed in creating an
effective Action Plan for your business. Each of the seven main divisions of a
business further breaks down into 3 departments, to give you a total of 21
departments in a business.
1) The Establishment Division: This division deals with personnel,
communications and business ethics. Regarding personnel, we are talking about
hiring, handling and basically managing personnel so that there are enough of
them to do the work of the company and to ensure that they are properly
allocated. Communications deals with handling the mail in and out, internal
dispatches and making sure that the company keeps communicating with its
customers, vendors etc and that letters from customers are not stuck in desk
draws and remain unanswered.
Business ethics deals with ensuring that customers are fairly dealt with and
that personnel are actually being productive on their jobs and not being a drain
on the company while a few carry the entire load. Sort of like a friendly
traffic cop that just makes sure that the personnel are actually doing things
that are supposed to be done. The whole concept of this division is one of
building the basics. Get the staff in, make sure they are trained on the basics
of their job and are on their jobs, ensures that communication is taking place
and that the personnel is doing what they are supposed to be doing.
2) The Sales and Marketing Division: This division deals with
promotion/marketing, publications and repeat business. Promotion and marketing
pieces are designed and disseminated from this area. Brochures, information
packets, catalogues, newsletters and anything to get your existing clients to
give you repeat business is here. Books and literature, which support your
services or products, are sold here. Contacting repeat customers and making
further sales is also found here. Most companies have a “gold mine” within their
existing customer lists. You can typically get business from an existing client
at one-fifth the cost of developing a new client. Continued contact with your
existing customer base is done in this division.
3) The Finance Division: This division handles income, disbursements and
financial records. The financial matters, records, assets and materiel of the
company are its main functions. It is responsible for making sure that less
money is spent than came in. It is this division’s responsibility to remain
solvent and never (and we mean never) spend more than it makes. This division
budget‘s all expenditures, including major purchases of real estate, so the
company runs on internal finance. Part of budgeting is doing income planning.
Budgeting also includes a required contribution to your untouchable cash
reserves, which is only used as a last resort and preferably never.
Reserve accounts are funded to set aside money for payment-in-full purchases.
Budgeting, properly done, ensures that a business is able to pay for everything
it needs, with few exceptions. This division naturally handles payroll and
banking and keep exact track of all financial and accounting records. The main
objective of this area is to track and record every penny; from the instant it
enters the company to the moment it leaves.
4) The Production Division: This division develops the services or products you
sell. The delivery of services, scheduling, preparing and delivery is done in
this area. This is where manufacturing plans, schedules and produces their
products. This Division is all about creating and delivering the products and /
or services that you are selling to your customers.
5) The Quality Control Division: This division sees that every product or
service leaving the organization is of high quality. Customers are listened to
here. Their praise, as well as their complaints are noted and paid attention to.
Whenever complaints are found, they are addressed to create 100% customer
satisfaction. The business area(s) involved with customer complaints are
addressed and corrected quickly so integrity of services and products are
maintained 100%. Most companies do not have adequate quality control. In every
major failed company in history, failure was from a lack of Quality Control!
How is it that during the later part of the twentieth century a relatively small
country, Japan (with no real natural resources) was able to take major portions
of business away from the biggest automobile manufacturers in the world? Answer:
The big guys were not listening to their customers and they had a terrible
reputation for quality control. Have you ever heard the expression, ‘Fix Or
Repair Daily’? Look over the first letter of each word, F O R D! There are
countless examples of ‘used to be’ businesses all around us. Ford is still
around, but poor quality control almost buried them.
6) The Public Division: This area delivers introductory services and products to
the broad public. Information nights, mixers, and introductory lectures about
some aspect of your business can all be done here. Introductory newsletters or a
web site is formed around this division’s products and services. The entire
objective of this division and its departments is to attract new people to your
services or products. It’s all about getting out there and letting prospective
people know about your services and products. This includes finding new
distribution channels for the companies’ products and /or services. The basic
idea is that this division brings them in and sells them initial products and
services and then the Sales and Marketing division keeps them buying more and
more products and / or services, into the future.
7) The Executive Division: This is the top management division. This division
coordinates and supervises the activities of the company. It makes sure the
company runs well, produces its products profitably and delivers its products
and services to individuals and the community in abundant high quality. This is
where long term planning strategy gets done for existing and new ideas. The
company’s legal requirement are addressed and kept up to date and in place. The
executives are ensuring good public relations are kept in as an integral part of
staying in tune with the community. Additionally, senior executives meet
regularly to address the financial solvency, income planning and productivity of
the company. This division also ensures that it is kept well versed on the
business market the company is operating in, generating policies for the company
and its personnel to operate on and generally run the company in a coordinated
manner.
Here’s a challenge for you. I bet that you cannot find a single aspect of any
business that does not easily fit into one of these 7 major divisions as
described above. If you find one, call me – I’d like to talk to you!
About the Author:
Willard Michlin is a Business Broker, California Real Estate Broker, Accountant,
Well known Public speaker and Administrative/Business Consultant. He can be
contacted at his Ventura, California office by calling 805-529-9854 or by e-mail
at kismetrei@earthlink.net. See other articles by Willard Michlin at
http://www.kismetbusinessbrokers.com |
