Summary: I was relocated to the USA by VERO Electronics (becoming a US citizen in 2002)to manage the marketing function in addition to applications engineering and product marketing responsibilities. In 1998 APW acquired VERO and I relocated to join Schroff (a Pentair brand as strategic marketing manager. In 1999, we rolled out a new business- Pentair Electronic Packaging - comprising of Schroff and two other acquisitions (Electronic Enclosures and Web Tool and Die). I left Pentair to take on an exciting opportunity with Calgreg Electronics as VP sales/marketing which came to an end due to the 9/11 business downturn. The Pentair team sought me out and re-hired me as Business development Director- Marketing Director plus other functions (Inside sales, Application Engineering, Distribution and tech Support)

I have been challenged throughout my career to manage the marketing function as...

• a sole contributor utilizing traditional outside marketing agencies (The Simon Group);
• the marketing director of a traditional marketing department with a compliment of marketing manager, trade show coordinator, admin staff and a driver for a mobile trade show vehicle which toured the country.
• as a sole contributor who outsourced marketing services (eliminating all direct staff) by creating a 'virtual marketing agency: recognizing that full-service marketing agencies are not strong across all disciplines I worked with Ideagraphics to manage a PR agent and search-engine optimization specialist. Recognizing that search engine optimization would be key to future success is was imperative to find a way to get an expert on my team, within budget.

The primary goal of the marketing manager/director is to ensure that the alignment of the company's business goals is totally in sync. with the target markets and if not, develop and execute the strategic marketing plan to achieve/exceed the within those markets. In some years, I had to challenge the manufacturing operation to be able to meet the needs of the markets and in other years I had to adjust the target markets ( or market sub-segments) to fit with the capabilities within the operation. Always, a balancing act.

Occasionally, customers get lost in the noise and it is imperative to understand that when we discuss markets what we are actually discussing is collections of customers!

I view marketing pretty simplistically, it is the execution within a corporation whose key players often have conflicting goals/needs that can be challenging. While I could aimlessly babble on about the 4Ps that make up the marketing mix, what I have learned in the real world is that there a 5 key elements to growing a business successfully.

1. Accurate forecasting of lost business and programs which are going end-of-life

Yep, the first step in growing business is to accept customer 'churn' and fully understand how much of the business that you currently enjoy that will go the way of the Dodo in the next forecasting period. As a marketing leader we must fully understand business version and not only learn from it but we must plan for it

So, we start with a negative sales value..

2) Price management

What will the impact be on the top-line of any price increase/decrease?

3) New product sales by market segment

The marketing department will work hand-in-hand with the product marketing team to ensure the the new products will meet the over-the-horizon needs of each market and will generate incremental revenue. The imperative is that we understand and adapt to the needs of each market segment and sub-segment by identifying segments with growth potential and segments which are dogs.

4) New programs with existing customers, by market segment

How much more business will we get from existing customers? Here the marketing manager must work very closely with sales to ensure the validity of these numbers.

5) New programs with new customers, by market segment.

In any forecasting model is often difficult to forecast for the unknown but for a marketing manager that is co-joined at the hip with the sales team this becomes a much easier task.....know your customers

So, when add up all 5 elements of the forecasting model above and add it to the sales for the prior period does it all add up to the sales forecast? If not, and most time it doesn't there is a gap and it is this gap that must be filled so the marketing program must be developed to support all 5 elements and the gap.

It all sounds very nice but where is the accountability? While with Pentair, the company embraced Lean Manufacturing and developed their own equivalent to the best-in-class Danaher Business system and through this methodology the company introduced Strategic Deployment a management system of Plan-Do-Check-Act.

For this to be successful, metrics were developed for all aspect of the marketing program and these metrics were design such that if successful the business goals would be met and/or exceeded. These were not annual metrics these were monthly metrics and if and of the monthly metrics were not met action plans were needed to get the program back on track.

There must be a return-on-investment on all marketing dollars, there must!