Traction - Have You Hit A Pothole on Your Growth Journey? And how does a marketing executive contribute to an organization's growth?

On a recent road trip with my son from Salt Lake City to the suburbs of Chicago, we hit a pothole on I-80 in Wyoming. We saw the hubcap fly spectacularly in the air while it disintegrated into pieces onto the highway.

We exited at a rest stop a few miles ahead and saw the wheel was bent. Being modern pioneers, we used our smart devices to search for a replacement wheel. With each call, we were flexing our creative problem-solving muscles to figure out how we were going to make our trip home the following day. We called car dealers, auto parts stores, tire centers, and junk yards while searching Amazon and eBay motors. As we made calls, I thought about the EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System) and how it related to many of the business owners and managers we spoke with.

Each organization makes decisions about how they will deliver their service or product and target whom they will deliver their service or product to. During our trip, I reacquainted myself with Gino Wickman’s book: Traction Get a Grip on Your Business Expanded Edition – as his EOS came up in several recent conversations with executives and private company owners who swear by the system for their organizations.

Chapter 3, The Vision Component: Marketing Strategy is one of eight key questions an executive team must address (see the V/TO tool) to provide clarity across an organization and it is a great foundation for intentionally identifying the value marketers offer at the executive level. Here are the four main elements:

1. Target Market (who needs your product or service and why?).
2. Three Uniques (positioning to differentiate from your competitors).
3. Proven Process (operations/process/governance decisions for delivering on your Three Uniques).
4. Guarantee (confidence in your Three Uniques and Proven Process to build and maintain customer relationships – a foundation of trust).

Each of these four elements require strong partnerships (championship-level teamwork) across the executive team to accelerate profitable growth. When your marketing executive is deeply connected with the rest of your executive team in this way, it informs the most effective and efficient way to go-to-market (marketing brand and performance activities) including:

• What is done in-house versus through partners – marketing team structure, skills, and capacity.
• Optimizing processes to increase profitable business from existing customers, acquire new customers, and to sunset customers.
• Developing and refining key metrics (inclusive of short- and long-term objectives and key results) for understanding the value of your marketing investment.
• Quickly address and adapt to changing market conditions along with due diligence and market strategy for developing new products, service expansions, or M&A opportunities.

As a consumer who had a specific time-related need here are a few of the EOS Marketing Strategy thoughts I had specific to independent junk yards:

• Who is their Target Market? Perhaps I’m not in their target market. Are they interested in growing if persons-in-need can become a profitable and sustainable opportunity?
• Beyond location, how are these Junk Yards differentiating (Three Uniques)? No muddy trips for customers? An over-the-phone or website confirmation they have the part in stock (these can inform their Guarantee)? Part retrieval?
• What are their Processes? How can new processes or value chain partnerships expand their opportunities and create greater efficiency/productivity? Are they using a Yard Management System?
• Could they develop a Guarantee around confirming they have parts before a customer commits to making a trip to their yard?

Executives are responsible for leading their organizations and Chapter 3, The Vision Component, subheading is: Do They See What You Are Saying?. There are over 50,000 books on the topic of leadership and management available on Amazon – and this doesn’t include conferences, white papers, or associations. The EOS is one of many ways an executive team can build their championship-level teamwork plan and then communicate it with intentionality. The people I work with at the CMO Syndicate understand each organization is different and their leaders are facing challenges unique to them when we are engaged as an executive partner. As a team of former Chief Marketing Officers across multiple industries, we’ve each contributed to our respective organization’s Marketing Strategies (similar to what Gino Wickman offered in his book) in partnership with our executive peers.

After a racoon jumped out of a car toward my son while searching for a salvageable VW for a wheel at the third junk yard, we pounded the dent out of the wheel. The junk yard’s team helped us test the tire’s integrity and seal before rebalancing it so we could complete our trip. We made it home, safely, the following day as planned even though the journey was completely different from our original plan. You might say we regained our TRACTION!

Have you hit a pothole in your company’s growth journey? Reach out to connect for a conversation as your next step to pound the dent out - or replace your wheel so you have TRACTION to reach your destination.

Ask 10 CEOs, CFOs, or COOs to define what marketing is and each person will give you a different answer. The EOS is one system offering a clear definition for executive-level marketing contributions. Regardless of how a company employs operating constructs, theories, or systems – a chief marketing officer is a key executive partner who contributes to each company’s opportunity for success and growth. The CMO Syndicate’s “Brain Trust” enables us to share what has worked and how each company is unique.

Seeking additional insights about your company’s marketing? Download our whitepaper: Don't Believe These 7 Marketing Myths: The CEO'S Guide to Transformational Growth.

About The CMO Syndicate

The CMO Syndicate is a diverse group of world-class Chief Marketing Officers who rapidly solve growth and profit problems for CEOs, VCs, CMOs, and PE firms. As global CMOs from the world’s top companies, The CMO Syndicate is not a traditional marketing consulting agency, and we are not typical marketing or growth consultants. We are growth experts and operators who actually do the work on a part-time or project basis as outsourced fractional and interim CMOs.