Doug DavidoffOne of my favorite quotes ever is attributed variously to Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein and Rita Mae Brown. It goes: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” I think it’s a great statement and it makes a lot of sense. I’ve used it quite a bit myself in an effort to get change started in a variety of situations.
Recently, I’ve discovered there is an evil side to this statement. I’ve encountered people who advocate change simply for the sake of change. What’s worse is that they use the definition of insanity above as the rationale. It seems that when it comes to go-to-market efforts, the definition of insanity…can drive one insane.
Whenever a company or a practice develops a new go-to-market approach, a new message or launches a new offering, it takes time for the efforts to lead to results. In my experience, even under the best circumstances it typically takes 12 -18 months to see a new marketing effort bears fruit.
This hit home recently when I ran into a friend of mine who is in sales. Six months ago he was frustrated with a partnering initiative he had started nine months earlier. He complained that nothing seemed to take hold. But when I ran into him last week and asked how things were going, he was a different person. He told me, “That partnering initiative we started a year ago is really paying off. I mean, it took a lot of blood and sweat, but it’s really working now.”
These two observations (the definition of insanity and my friend’s experience) present an interesting paradox. In marketing, how do you deal with the seemingly contradictory situations where not changing is insane, yet staying the course has proven to yield the best results? Here’s my answer:
- It emphasizes the critical importance of strategic planning in general and go-to-market strategy in particular. When you set out on a mission, you must have a tremendous amount of confidence and passion for the effort. If you don’t, six months of what appears to be a lack of results may easily convince you it’s time to switch approaches. The problem is you’re resetting the clock and the results will move even farther out on your time-line. This is typically the underlying cause of a failed marketing effort. The company went to execution before developing a comprehensive strategy that would guide actions and decisions.
- If you’re going to do something, do it all the way, don’t go halfway. When my friend told me he was starting the partnering initiative I warned him not to do it if he was going to make a decision about its effectiveness in less than a year. Recently, a client of mind who owns a personal training studio decided to start hosting classes to increase awareness of the programs she offers. She understands that it may take months before the class yields meaningful results and that if they’re going to start them, they can’t stop them out of frustration.
- Develop benchmarks to chart progress. Determine ‘what causes sales’, identify qualitative and quantitative measurements for progress. Develop course correction mechanisms. Tweak before you change your path completely. This is the second major underlying cause of a failed marketing effort. Few companies develop mechanisms to take market feedback and make small modifications. Few companies determine the ‘cause of sales’ and fewer still develop progress measurements. They look at their efforts in a binary – it’s getting results/it’s not getting results – manner. And that, if you ask me, is insane.