So did you take my advice and text your 2012 marketing plan to your boss? Well, maybe next year. Maybe next year, instead of wasting our time fiddling about with PowerPoint, we will do something much more valuable for our Corporate Overlords, like coming up with meaningful responses to changing conditions. In ketchup circles they call it anticipation.
Consultants like to call it “agility” or “adaptability” or “Steve Jobs”. I think it’s the cure for the Brontë-esque cases of Assumption that plague marketers everywhere. The primary symptom of Assumption is, of course, a slide someplace near the beginning of that pathetic bunch of pages that passes for your 2012 plan, loaded with helpful, arse-covering points like these:
- Economy will grow at 3%
- COGS will remain constant
- Competition will fail to innovate
- Sales will discover hidden trove of Pixie Dust and drive 30% conversion
- Billing systems will become adequate
- Tech support will become less surly
- Customers will continue to take our abuse without complaint
- There will be no currency crises
- Nobody new will enter the market and leave us in the dust
I hope for your sake all these things come true, but we both know they won’t. Maybe the one about the pixie dust, but let’s be honest: you don’t have the slightest idea what is going to happen next year. What’s worse, you don’t have the slightest idea what to do about any of it either.
It’s time my friends to break out the Giant Post-it Notes and start doing some scenario plans. Hockey coaches have been doing it for years so how hard can it be? I like to start with a simple status quo bracket. So if CAGR is around 10% what will you do differently if next year it starts hitting 15% (other than buy nicer tchokchkes; that’s a given)? Do you roll more products, chase new markets, replace the Customer Abuse voice recognition software? What about if CAGR is 5%?
What ‘s the plan if your competitor acquires some hot new company or launches a better product than yours? What if they drop their pants on price? What if they have a dreadful year? What’s the plan to kick them when they’re down? You know you want to.
What about customers? You probably assume a modest growth in their number and a comfy upsell/cross sell number. What if, heaven forfend, sales gets the finger out and steals a bunch of accounts from your struggling competitor? What if your customers start begging you to take more of their money? (hey, it happens all the time in casinos). On the other hand, you’ll need a plan if your customers disappear like HR people at budget time.
Isn’t this fun? If you’re terribly ambitious, you can take a step further out in each direction and start entertaining extinction-level events in counterpoint to world domination.
My favourite speaking coach will tell you that great presenters aren’t born, they’re prepared. I think the same is true of great marketing plans.
BizMarketer is written by Elizabeth Williams
I help organizations build their brands through great conversations with employees and customers
Drop me a line at ewilliams(at)candlerchase.com
Follow me @bizmkter
Great blog and thanks for the ‘shout out’. As always, you rock.