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Business Rule #36:
Know Your Strategy
October 28, 2005
(PAGE 2 of 2)
They say God is in the details—and in business, the details are often the essence of how a marketing strategy is executed.
Capital Edge created a fun putting green for the kids that allowed other members of the team to sell to the parents without interruption or distraction from the little ones. Very savvy. They kept the focus where it belongs, on the sales. In result, they closed one customer after another.
The Excel team, on the other hand, really fell apart when it came to execution. James really blew it by staying in the batting cage to teach kids how to improve their game skills. That may be a fine thing to do for the children in your community, but this wasn’t the time to be coaching Little League. This was the time to sell. James could have helped do just that if he had just stepped out of the cage from time to time and led the parents to the merchandise and made recommendations on the equipment.
The batting cage was a huge mistake for an event inside a sporting goods shop. Not only did it take up too much room, better devoted to the display and sale of merchandise, but it distracted shoppers from the whole purpose of the event. The Excel event became all about teaching kids how to bat. Unfortunately, the team didn’t have enough team members devoted to just closing sales. By all accounts, Rebecca Jarvis did a great job of moving product—but she couldn’t very well carry her team alone.
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The results of the challenge were staggering: Capital Edge improved sales by 74%, and Excel actually made sales fall by 34%. It’s a complete disaster, when the team misunderstands their goal so utterly and performs so poorly that they actually end up getting the opposite result of the one they are charged with achieving. Losing by a margin of over 100% is just downright humiliating.
What can you say when you screw up so badly? There isn’t much. The only thing you can do is assure management that you now understand the goals and that you’re designing a plan to accomplish them.
Still there are some situations where you just don’t get a second chance. In business, as in all other areas of life, sometimes doing a piss poor job is enough to destroy your relationship and any possibility of future collaboration. For James, Jennifer, Josh Shaw, and Mark Lamkin, this challenge was one of those situations. Sorry gang, you’re all fired.
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In business, the details are often the essence of how a marketing campaign is executed.
