Based on my recent client projects. The last two projects I started began with exactly the same problem, stated at the first meeting: “Our sales have stopped growing / slowed down significantly. We need to fix marketing.” I love marketing, I know how it works. But what seems to be a marketing problem might be just a symptom. Like “I am bleeding, can you fix it?” It is possible, but if you are bleeding because your leg is broken, peroxide and a band aid won’t help.
As we moved further into diagnosis, the complaints started piling up. Salespeople had lost their confidence somehow — and marketing wasn’t helping (as if marketing is a lost and found bureau). Competitors were lowering prices and clients were leaving. The market seemed stable, but the average purchase value was quietly dropping. And so on, and so on.
In both my projects there were very similar symptoms, but different business solutions: one company had outgrown its own positioning as an excellent outsourcer and moved into more complex strategic projects. In the other case, the company was ready to sell more to existing clients — but couldn’t, because the processes designed for much smaller volumes had stretched to meet current sales but wouldn’t allow for greater volume. The old marketing doesn’t need to be fixed — it reflected the way companies still think about themselves.
If you are a young and ambitious company you can play dramedy and your plot is the wunderkind, who impresses everybody and shakes things up with energy and smartness. If you have experience, your clients recommend you to each other – your plot is the expert, who sees the missing parts and knows how to finish the puzzle. If you are big and dominating – your plot is the ruler, who organizes, creates an environment, helps others become part of it and so on. Your strategy must reflect your role and support your plot.
Your marketing is pretty helpless at the next development stage because “what brings us here won’t bring us there.”
If questions like: “Why are deals getting stuck?” “Why are clients buying cheaper?” “Why is it so hard to explain how we’re better than competitors?” are keeping you awake at night and looping in your head — congratulations, you have a role identity crisis. You’ve changed but are acting the old way. And now the story you’re telling the market must be different. You need to articulate who you are and what you stand for. The first step — you need to rethink your strategy. Because strategy without considering goals, hopes, internal values, what success means inside your company and what failure looks like — is not strategy. It’s a mental exercise on the topic of “how to stop a fire with a couple of buckets of water.” The new role requires a new story, and a new story needs a plot (strategy).
When you define: what your company actually is today, what its ambitions are, what it can and wants to do for clients, how it chooses to behave in the market and with customers — only then do you need a new marketing strategy and an effective plan.
