by Al Hahn

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With all the dynamics of our industry today, you had better be fast on your feet or you are destined to be roadkill. The services superhighway is cluttered with the flattened bodies of services executives and organizations that were too slow. A descriptive list follows in the box below.

YOU ARE ROADKILL IF:

• You Are Tactical, But Not Strategic
• You Can’t Calculate And Take Risks
• You Can’t Sell Internally
• You Can’t Market And Sell Services Aggressively
• You Can’t Drive New Business Development
• You Can’t Reinvent/Reengineer Your Services

But this describes many service execs who have risen from the ranks of service operations. These men and women have been conditioned by their vast experience to be risk-averse, tactical thinkers who are great tacticians, but poor strategists. They are process-oriented and strong on delivery, but poor service product designers and avoid selling. They also hate politics (there are a few exceptions) and prefer a low profile. If you fit this description, you are a prime candidate for roadkill as we begin to leave this contentious decade and enter the next century. Your companies, your service organizations, and your customers need more. They require forward thinking risk takers with good business skills and visionary leadership!

Where To Turn For Help

Well, I have not painted a very pretty picture so far, have I? Perhaps, in my effort to get my point across in a colorful manner, I am being too flippant and stereotyping service execs in a simplistic manner. Yet, there is a strong undercurrent of the all-too-true in my characterization. I personally know many service executives that exhibit most or all of these characteristics. Does this make them unsuitable for further duty? Is the situation hopeless? Absolutely not! In fact, I have some suggestions, but first we have to endure some honest self assessment. If this particular shoe fits, perhaps your services marketing organization can help. Why them? Because, they should possess some of the missing attributes. While they can not substitute for our leaders, they can add some capabilities that will round out our organizations and balance our skills better. Ideally, service marketing organizations should be able to contribute:

• Strategic Thinking
• Strategic Planning
• Competitive Positioning
• Internal Positioning/Selling
• A Strategic Element In Leadership

Something that I learned a long time ago regarding leadership is that leaders do not have to come up with all the good ideas personally. No. In fact many of the world’s

great leaders have used the ideas of others who lacked the ability to carry their ideas forward and put them into motion. So a typical service leader who finds themselves a little lacking on the strategic side can easily use their services marketing organizationÕs skills to augment their own. Marketing folks should be just chock full of this stuff.

By the way, let me clear up a common misunderstanding right now. Marketing and Sales are not the same thing. In a very broad sense, sales can be a part of the total marketing function, but not the other way around. They are not identical and those that are good at one activity are usually not right for the other. See the following table for some examples. This will help you avoid hiring sales people when you really want marketers, and vice-versa.

MARKETING VS SALES

Marketing                                          Sales

ANALYTIC                           EXPRESSIVE

STRATEGIC                             TACTICAL

LONG RANGE                    SHORT TERM

BUSINESS SKILLS        PEOPLE SKILLS

What Marketing Can Do For You

So a service marketing organization ought to be filled with people that have many of the attributes that our typical service executive needs to round out their portfolio of attributes. What can they do for our leader? Well, they can calculate business risks so those of us that are risk-averse can see our way clear to consider more alternative ideas. Marketers do this through research, both customer and competitive. They can make forecasts and plans and provide ongoing service product management on the business side, managing revenues and profits. They can also position and sell the services organization within the company. Neglecting this can be a damaging or fatal omission. Many service organizations today are being unreasonably restricted on headcount. Often this is because the rest of the company does not really understand service and its contributions to customer loyalty and repeat business, as well as its potential for service revenues and profits. Service marketing should craft the service organization’s message to other parts of the company and in many cases, deliver the message.

Of course, some of marketing’s duties are obvious; market and sell services. What may not be obvious is that this is getting harder. As we move our revenue base from maintenance and repair into more value-added professional services, they become even less tangible and more challenging to sell than before. Marketing challenges are increasing for the foreseeable future.

One thing I almost forgot, designing services. Too often, the operations people dream up new ways to package services based upon what is easy for them to provide. In fact, that probably won’t produce many innovative new services. Even asking customers what services they want is pretty limited. They cannot imagine the many new things you could do for them. Really good marketers interview customers and try to understand their businesses, processes, and problems. Then they interact with the service delivery people to work out new and better ways to solve customer problems. That is the way to foster innovation, and marketing should be driving it!

Business development is another leadership challenge that can be met by the service marketing organization. While this responsibility is not always placed there, or is sometimes missing altogether, it is well placed with the marketing group. They can apply the necessary research and planning to choose and launch new initiatives as well as calculate those risks to enhance the chances of success.

Can Marketing Save The Day For You?

So there you have it. A hopelessly parochial view of how service marketing organizations can balance out a service organization’s skill sets, transform it into a strategic, forward thinking entity, and generally save the day. For you marketers this is s call to arms. Reach out to your leader and lend him/her your strategic skills. For our leaders this is a way to be more strategic and more successful. For those of you addicted to processes, here it is:

1. Do an honest self-assessment, inventory your skills and your organization’s.

2. If you don’t have a strategic service marketing group, start hiring.

3. Work with your marketing group to get strategic help.

4. You still make the important decisions, but don’t second guess your marketers too much! They may take you out of your comfort zone. That’s probably good!

5. Take over the earth and live happily ever after!

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