>> you need to look at the differences between commodity markets
>> and specialty markets.
>
>Great, Michael. I immediately printed it out and stored it in my
>"Michaels Marketing Lessons" folder..... really.
good heavens..
"business-type ravings" would probably be a better title. with deepest
respect to the marketers on this list (who represent some of the best of
their breed), i'm an operations and implementation kinda guy.. i tend to
view marketers as my natural enemies.
it's a resource allocation thing. marketers are experts at, among other
things, converting productivity into revenue. operations people are
(hopefully) experts at converting resources into increased productivity.
both jobs are necessary, but the way most businesses are structured, the
marketers don't see any direct payoff in increased productivity.. only from
the productivity they actually convert into revenue.
that leads to a state of conflict, because both sides need resources to do
their thing. the marketers want to spend time, labor, and money pushing
the existing productivity into the market, while the operations people want
to spend the same time, labor, and money buying new machines and training
the staff to use them efficently. an operations person will trim output
back by 20% for six months if it buys a 200% increase in productivity at
the end of that time and call it a no-brainer. a marketer will increase
output 20% for six months, even if production capacity drops to 50% at the
end of that time, and depending on the state of their market projections,
they'd call *that* a no-brainer.
neither side in inherently right. if you lose the first six months of
sales, there may be no point in doubling your production. by the same
token, the 20% additional revenue gained in the first six months may not
cover the cost of rebuilding your production processes to the point that
you can stay in the market. to make a business healthy, both sides have
to compare notes and find the solution that work out best for the company
as a whole.
now, i admit that i'm biased, but i've run across a lot more operations
people who realize "we have to sell this stuff eventually" than marketers
who realize "we have to make stuff before we can sell it". it's not that
operations people are inherently smarter, it's just that "getting the stuff
out the door" is part of any sane operational plan. OTOH, i've seen 'way
too many marketing plans that begin by saying, in effect, "the product
appears, as if by magic, on this date ..."
mike
** who's trying to migrate 160+ domains (250,000+ undocumented files) to a
new network, with a team of four fledgling geeks at his disposal, and is
just a tad grumpy these days. **
mike stone <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 'net geek..
been there, done that, have network, will travel.
