A while back we looked at the difference between the C-Suite, which likes to golf and the P-Cube, which feels lucky to get a new recycle bin. We talked about the unfortunate tendency of marketers to focus on the C-people and ignore the procurement people who are actually more helpful in getting you the business and getting you paid. Now we’ll look at the bit in between – Functional Groups, also known as the F-Word.
Functional Groups (this is a noun, not an adjective) are the folks hired by the C-Suite to turn the stuff purchased by the P-Cube into value for the shareholders. In most cases this is more complicated than simply reselling stolen toner cartridges and office supplies on eBay, and a good deal less transparent.
If marketing to the C-Suite involves a lot of relationship stuff, and marketing to the P-Cube means actually paying attention to detail and pricing, then how the heck do we talk to the F-Word? Why, with F-Bombs, of course.
Channel your inner Gordon Ramsay
Not the Gordon who screams “piss off” at a startled crème caramel; the one who has a week to turnaround a fetid little bistro in Blackpool. This Gordon is about a more holistic result. Hell’s Kitchen Gordon is focused on the capricious torture of line cooks, but in Kitchen Nightmares, he has to work within the constraints of starry-eyed owners, sociopathic kitchen help, teary wait staff and a joint of beef that’s been mutating in the back of the cooler since Margaret Thatcher announced the Poll Tax.
Like Gordon, F-Words need to get stuff done: on time, on budget, first-time right and all that. Often under the relentless scrutiny of a motivational poster suggesting if they just row harder things will get better. To do that they have developed some coping strategies that would make our foul-mouthed Mr. Ramsay rather proud.
Get dirty but don’t stay dirty
The first thing Gordon does is throw on an apron and start watching the hapless Nightmare people try to get a service out the door. F-Words do the office version of this: they watch, mostly in horror, as things go off the rails, deadlines slip past, rubbish is produced and their teams arrive at the end of the week content merely to have survived and barely dreaming of what it might look like to actually succeed. When F-Words go looking for a product or service to fix their nightmare, they’re often trying to solve a number of problems at once, such as people, process, expectations, roles and responsibilities, strategic misalignments and other really fun things.
F-Words, then, can claim to have a detailed understanding of needs, but don’t always clearly articulate (or even quite grasp) priorities, since there are usually a bunch. Some F-Words keep their aprons on, either out of necessity or morbid fascination, and can, in their own ways, be part of the problem or at least so close to it they aren’t necessarily seeing it properly.
F-Bomb: As a marketer, you need to ensure your messaging acknowledges the realities in the kitchen so that F-Words take you seriously, and you need to ensure that you offer a realistic view on the bit of the problem you are trying to solve. If your software solution automates what is now a hideous manual thing, make sure the F-Word can appreciate its impact on process, while understanding that software doesn’t fix people, strategy or bad motivational art. If your product, in fact, can solve all of these things then you should make sure the F-Word understands that too, since the more of their plate they can scrape on to yours, the better.
This means communicating heavily on the benefits and using case studies and reference accounts to illustrate real results, particularly if there is risk that the expectations of your product are likely to be a little unrealistic on the part of the desperate F-Word.
In Part Two we’ll look at how simplicity, bikers and a six-month check up can help the F-Word.
Related Posts
Marketing to the F-Word Part II
BizMarketer is written by Elizabeth Williams
I help companies have better conversations
Drop me a line at ewilliams@candlerchase.com
Or follow me @bizmkter
Eva Ivanov says
Hey Bizmarker .. are you freelancing for the G&M Biz Section yet? Should b.
Great info – keep it coming.
E