Full Potential Marketing

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All of us want to achieve our full potential, for both ourselves and the organizations we work for. Yet many of us don’t reach even a fraction of what we can achieve from a marketing standpoint. So what is “full potential marketing” and how do you make it part of our organizational DNA? Having been an aggressive practitioner of B2B marketing and sales for over two decades, I think I can add some perspective.

I define full potential marketing as “combining all of the available resources (people, programs, budget, technology, content and processes) in such a manner as to achieve the best possible results in terms of awareness, lead generation, and revenue attainment.” We all have limits on the quantity and quality of our resources, and this is why company has a different potential than your company. It’s like golf – unless you are someone like Phil Mickelson, the idea is not to beat Tiger Woods’ score, rather it is to score the best you can given your talents, experience and the circumstances at hand.

I’ve competed against some very large companies in my career, including the likes of IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and Salesforce.com. I was always amused when a sales manager said something like, “How come IBM is doing this and we can’t”? or “How come Oracle is ahead of us in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant?”. The fact that our competitors had budgets 10-20 times larger did not seem to dawn on these individuals. Nor did the fact that we were doing far better relative to the size of our resources. Remember, the point is to achieve your full potential, not the other company’s.

So how do you step out from the crowd and be a full potential marketer? Here are a few suggestions:

  1. Have a clearly defined set of objectives that require siginficant effort to achieve – otherwise known as stretch goals.
  2. Step out of your comfort zone. Winners are not complacent and they are willing to do whatever it takes to get the job done.
  3. Continue upgrading your team members until you are working with people who are talented and have a strong desire to win.
  4. Learn from experts and follow their advice. One place to start is the book How to Create an Unstoppable Marketing Machine (authored by yours truly). You can get a copy at Amazon.com: $15.56 or Barnes & Noble: $17.05
  5. Stop settling for less than your best. For most of us (including me) it is our own actions and self-imposed limitations that prevent us from success, not the marketplace, competitors, and so forth. This is a tough lesson to embrace, but if you do, it can change your personal and business life for the better.

When I was VP of Marketing at Optika several years ago, our CEO Mark Ruport, gave his executive team a small paperweight with the inscription “What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail.” Asking yourself this question is a good place to start in your quest to achieve your own brand of full potential marketing.

Chris Ryan

Republished with author's permission from original post.

Christopher Ryan
Christopher Ryan is CEO of Fusion Marketing Partners, a B2B marketing consulting firm and interim/fractional CMO. He blogs at Great B2B Marketing and you can follow him at Google+. Chris has 25 years of marketing, technology, and senior management experience. As a marketing executive and services provider, Chris has created and executed numerous programs that build market awareness, drive lead generation and increase revenue.

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