Blog - www.smart-tactics.com

Hi, I am Martin Finn and this is my Blog, my personal space for sounding off, commenting on some things I see. I hope that there is something in here of interest to you.

Introduction
I have always been results orientated, and get a kick out of setting a target and blowing it away. I have found it an even greater kick to inspire others to do the same.

I started Smart-Tactics to allow me spend more time on a variety of exciting client projects. We consult to major companies on marketing and improving their business, and we have down done so since we started.

In recent years I have concentrated upon how to use internet technology to help sales and marketing become more successful, particularly for large value sales. I'm not talking about CRM, that done very well by others. I am talking about how to get sales/marketing/technical teams to collaborate better, prepare better, present better, react quicker to change and ultimately to win. See www.thepowerofinsight.com as an example.

Clarity and Economy

I was helping a major client the other day with a paper that was being produced for their Board.

It was an internal document created to request funding for a new market area that shows real promise. The problem was that it was written in such a way that it had no chance of gaining the executive support it needed.

What I saw is not untypical. It lacked punch, the language lacked clarity and, as ever, there was too much detail. Overall the document was too long and dull.

This is nothing new. As Board member myself of a large company I was regularly assailed with lengthy tomes that were not compelling or brief enough to gain my attention. Its a fact that better presented propositions will always do better than those that are presented badly (sometimes regardless of the merits of the proposals). Every salesperson knows this, but people forget that its important to sell your ideas inside your company too.

In this case the document had been created by a couple of vertical market experts, and its natural for an expert to want to show their expertise, especially if they think that their views are to be widely read. What is they (the expert) often misses is that you really want them to communicate with clarity and economy.

An interesting challenge that I have tried before is to ask your expert for a maximum of 10 words not a document. Just the 10 most important words.

These words could form a sentence; more often they are ten individual words and each word describes an essential concept, request or fact.

When you have agreed the 10 words. Ask for 1 sentence for each. You will end up with 10 sentences, and this is the core of your document.

More will need to be added, but only if it aids clarity and readability. Its often the case that you can end with 200-300 words saying more than 2,000 did before.

Add Comment (0)

Expertise or Execution?

Recently I was asked by one of our Global clients to advise on a few issues they were facing. These were seemingly unrelated issues, across a number of their Divisions, to do with launching new products, product branding, sales engagement, go to market strategy etc. In all of these areas they have problems, and I was asked why.

When I boiled it all down there was really only one issue - they failed to act or or failed to act decisively. And this failure results in a continuing inability to act adroitly, or to work in concert with authority and determination to deliver with impact.

They were happy with my analysis of the issue, but were surprised when I went on to explain the cause. To my eyes it was clear that they have a culture that cherishes expertise over execution. They have lots of senior people who are great and innovative thinkers but they don't have enough people to turn those thoughts into deeds, into products, into sales.

Worse still, as their Experts are so senior and well paid, they expect their Experts to Execute. This will never happen. Ask an expert if he has finished his work, and the answer will be no. He won't see the genius of what has been created, only its faults that need to be improved in the next version. Ask an Expert if he is ready to go to market, and the answer is no, because he is working on the next version. Ask an expert to help create the go to market messages and either he'll be too busy or he'll bore you with detail. Ask an Expert why his sales are low, and its always because the sales team lack enough skills to sell.

One thing that experts do well (I know I am generalising) is debate. They like a debate, its intellectually stimulating and shows them off in an area of strength. But debates can be endless. And endless debates have no place in business. For a frustrated marketing manager/product manager/sales manager, who needs to get their product on the shelves and selling, debates are just a tool to create output. There must be an end product.

Business history is littered with stories of great ideas that never got to market, or innovators crushed by more adroit imitators. I have no doubt that Innocenzo Manzetti was a genius of his day, but he didn't have genius enough to take the telephone from his labs and turn it into a product. Alexander Bell did (have the genius to take the telephone from the labs of Manzetti and turn it into a product), and he's famous for it.

What counts is not how great your ideas are, its how well you get what you've got to market. That's why, on balance, I have always valued Execution over Expertise

Add Comment (0)

Fiasco averted - Product Invented

While working on the editing of Speak & Spell I attended the quarterly planning meeting with all my European product marketing colleages and my boss Irfan Salim. During this meeting we got some bad news.

We had been avoiding a new product called Speak & Spell Compact. Sales of it in the States were very poor, trade reaction was poor and anyway we had a new English Speak & Spell to launch. The bad news was that sales in the US were so poor that we HAD to take some product to shift them - as I recall 25,000 units. I had hoped to get some support from my colleagues in Europe, after all the other European countries were selling Speak & Spell as an foreign languge speaking teaching aid. But I was still a new graduate, unable to wield as much persuasion as I could now, and they refused to shoulder any of this burden. It was a nightmare, but I found an answer.

Add Comment (0)

Speak & Spell

I hadn't planned that my first post should be about Speak & Spell, but last week I was in contact via LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com) with my first ever boss - Irfan Salim. Irfan was always marked for success and after setting up Lotus (Lotus1-2-3 remember?) in Europe, he has gone on to lead many successful companies and now does the same living in San Francisco.

But back in 1981 he was the Marketing Manager for Texas Instruments Consumer products division in Bedford, England and he hired me fresh from university to be marketing product manager for Education Products. My portfolio included a few handheld calculator type games, plus the much more expensive Speak & Spell and its stable mates. And this lead to me becoming recording producer and editor of the English Speak & Spell.

Add Comment (0)

[ Back ]

www.smart-tactics.com

Main Menu

Call us