print the department’s work schedule for the next three weeks. Then you grab your pad and coffee cup and assemble the marketing staff in the conference room. You tell them about your recent conversation with the CEO, pass out your list of questions, and ask, “What else do we need to know?” After a quick “greenlight” session, the consensus is that it will require: • some primary research — telephone interviews with city and county folks, owners, and construction firms; and • a lot of secondary research — business journal “top 25” lists, business sections of local newspapers, city and county websites, the U.S. Depart- ment of Commerce website and publications, almanacs, atlases, and other compilations of data on regional growth, etc. Once you have figured out the questions and how long the research will take, and compare that with your current workload, you may have to decide about outsourcing the market research, a very common practice. Once the research is complete, you’ll need a day or two to review, analyze, and prepare recommendations and supporting information for the CEO. “Too far-fetched even to be hypothetical,” you think? Absolutely not! In fact, it happens all the time: People throughout the firm make strate- gic marketing decisions without involving the marketing staff or even knowing, much less asking, the questions that need to be asked.
You need more? How many firms do you know that operate without a business plan based on real research and hard numbers (or without any plan at all)? How many firms make strategic decisions about long-term survival based on “gut feelings” rather than real data based on research and actual experience? As marketing professionals, one of our critical skill sets is market research. But all too often, firm leaders view us simply as “the folks who do proposals,” or as graphic designers. So they make strategic decisions about the future without even involving marketing leaders. Well, the world changes — and as markets change, marketing also changes. And marketing professionals change, too. Today’s market- ing is also about data collection and management, synthesis, and use. We don’t just list the facts anymore; we recognize that big purchasing decisions always have an emotional component, so we use data and personal experience to write compelling narratives. Opening a new branch office has equal possibilities for great success and unmitigated disaster. It can be a bold step, but only when properly and fully thought out. If any assumptions are allowed into the decision equation, you must make sure those assumptions are correct, and not just wishful thinking. As author David Weber observed in his 2013 novel, Like AMighty Army, “…while audacity was the handmaiden of success, overconfidence was the handmaiden of disaster.”
RECORDS
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Alexander Zuendt, P.E. Zuendt Engineering Record holder since 2011
National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying® P.O. Box 1686, Clemson, S.C. 29633 864.654.6824
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august 2018
csengineermag.com
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