Companies that are genuinely market driven are compulsive about customer satisfaction, and demonstrate long-term, approaches that concentrate on managing the customer experience, customer retention, and customer lifetime value. Engaging customers in dialogues enables a clear understanding of their wants and needs, and presumes if customers are delighted, not only will additional revenues come, but growth will escalate and increased profits will ensue.

1. A Change Would Do You Good
Way too many companies maintain an antiquated mentality and are still driven by sales,
instead of changing their focus to one that is driven by marketing. It’s baffling to me
why sales driven companies remain as such, and maintain their short-term approach,
when they could be systematically transitioning their organization’s culture into one that
embraces the concept of being market driven.
Why should a company be “market driven?” Market driven companies surpass their
rivals by developing superior levels of ability across the areas of research, pricing,
product development, distribution channels, promotion, and market management.
How do you know if your company is driven by marketing or sales?
Hint: If the title of the most popular song in the corporate hymnal is “Churn ‘em and
burn ‘em,” it’s a safe bet that your company is driven by sales.
Another sure sign that a company is sales driven is their sales team can’t stop talking
about their latest product or service offerings long enough to listen and learn about
customer’s needs. Sales personnel are constantly in touch with existing and prospective
customers, and these dialogues could be excellent sources of determining customer
needs.
Companies that are driven by sales focus primarily on acquiring customers, grabbing
market share, achieving immediate revenues, and controlling costs. They concentrate
heavily on increasing short-term ROI which isn’t necessarily bad, since consumers
always have needs that must be satisfied, and those needs create opportunities for
peddlers. However, over the long haul, organizations that are driven by sales grapple
with differentiating themselves from their competitors in any other way except with
pricing, which turns into their key marketing tactic. While companies that operate their
businesses as such may reduce short-term risk, this method does nothing in the way of
developing products lines that carry on. And that makes long-term success an uphill
battle.
In contrast, companies that are genuinely market driven demonstrate an outlook that’s
more long-term, and their approach concentrates on concepts like total customer
satisfaction, managing the customer experience, customer retention, and customer
lifetime value. Engaging customers at a level that enables a clear understanding of their
needs presumes that if customers are delighted, not only will the revenues come, but
profits will escalate and growth will ensue.
Market-driven companies are externally focused and gaze outside the company for the
input required to develop solid strategies and make tactical decisions. Being market
driven means developing a thorough understanding of market dynamics and consumer

2. needs. This external focus makes opportunities more readily identifiable so the company
can capitalize on them.
By staying connected to their customers and cultivating those important relationships,
market driven companies are typically better equipped than their sales driven rivals at
anticipating market changes. Maintaining close links to customers – and therefore to the
market, the insight gained by companies that are market driven provides competitive
advantages that greatly improve their ability to offer real value to customers.
Developing an organization that’s marketing driven isn’t brain surgery, but it requires a
great deal of commitment across the entire organization in order to be successful.
Organizations that want to evolve must consciously make this a priority and dedicate
enough attention so that it becomes the strategic objective of their company. But
company executives frequently miscalculate what is actually required to put such a
dramatic change of business strategy into action. Companies get tripped up while
attempting to implement market driven strategies because their organizations are poorly
suited for such an undertaking.
And sweeping change isn’t going to happen overnight. It’s completely unrealistic to
expect an internally focused organization to suddenly have close ties to the market. It
would be like taking the string section from an orchestra and expecting them to suddenly
play the brass horn instruments just because they are skillful musicians. It simply isn’t
going to happen without reconditioning. Rethinking the whole organization and
developing new competencies takes time. Executives talk about their companies
becoming marketing driven, but having the wherewithal to effectively make such a
comprehensive transformation throughout the organization is an altogether different
story.
Successfully implementing and carrying out this strategy pivots on whether this mindset
becomes a central part of a company’s composition through and through — including the
long-term allocation of sufficient capital and human resources, including an exceptional
Chief Marketing Officer.
The senior-most marketers must be thought-leaders, since more so than any other
member of the executive team, the strategies they set quite literally mold the company’s
identity, drive business performance, and champion the customer’s needs. Managers that
operate at this level, shoulder great responsibility and need considerable latitude, as their
obligation to deliver is paramount.
With this realization, it’s apparent that along with CEOs, marketing chiefs exert
considerable influence in determining the direction of their corporation as one of the most
vital decision makers in the organization.
These challenges require the qualities of outstanding leaders and the support of CEOs
who willingly embrace their marketing chiefs as strategic allies, and recognize that the
wide-ranging issues which focus directly on customer satisfaction are the components

3. most vital to ensuring the company’s success. Chief executives who don’t openly
champion the endeavors of their senior marketer’s customer-centric efforts, do so at their
organization’s peril.
Copyright © Stephen Monaco 2009. All rights reserved.
http://www.linkedin.com/in/stephenmonaco