One of the best kept secrets in corporate America is that each organizational function from engineering to finance has a key role to play in the success of a company’s marketing and selling efforts. Yes, everybody's in marketing. It's so secret, very few people even know about it. Especially the people who head each of those functions. At least, they don't act like they do.
While “marketing” may always suffer the indignities that come with the territory of not having a consensus definition and being burdened by the connotations of hype, the fact remains that everybody on the management team must contribute if a company's going to be good at it. How and why? It’s this simple: The CEO must, in no uncertain terms, communicate that everybody succeeds or fails based on how well they conceive, develop, sell, deliver and support irresistible products. Marketing (and R&D) must know exactly which product benefits are considered most valuable to customers. The chief financial officer must devote enough time (at least 20%) to the product’s pricing strategy to ensure that the price is right. Operations must banish complexity throughout the organization, especially production and delivery. And the I.T. group must transform information into customer value by seeing to it that the right data gets to the right managers at the right time. Class dismissed. Pop quiz anytime.
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