The ‘Poisoned Assets’ for marketing managers

We all know the meaning of toxic active; but for marketing managers there is another type of more important assets, which I call “poisoned assets”, and which represent the people of the organization that harm the relationship with the client and therefore the positioning of the company in the market.

Organizations invest great efforts to achieve a differentiation and to be present in the mind of the consumer. When he goes to the companies he meets with “professionals” who are not very qualified or little oriented to obtain the full satisfaction of the individual. This type of people act as a poison in companies and without realizing it they paralyze and contract all commercial activity. Despite the existence of the antidote, if we ingest it too late, it can have irreversible consequences.

I recently purchased a new vehicle. I heard an ad in which they talked about the importance of the client for that dealer; He said something similar to: “You will feel at home.” The brand is a leader in its segment and the product is well valued by consumers. I enter the dealership and not only do I not feel at home, but after six months I am still waiting for the salesperson to contact me to clarify a doubt. They have lost a sale, others have already called me. But it can still be much worse, the acquaintances will ask me where I bought that car and my answer will be “in this place, because in that other one they did not take good care of me”. The poison can infect other people, without having ingested it directly.

In marketing there are three fundamental aspects. We act on two of them: the client and the product. Search for new markets (internationalization), segmentation, differentiation, personalization, loyalty, promotions, offers, special discounts, innovation … but we still do not give the required importance to the other determining factor in this area: the people in charge of joining supply and demand.

We think that a good product, with a consolidated brand image and with a competitive price, sells itself. Efforts are directed towards achieving this objective and at most, and only if it is subsidized, we allocate an average of six hours of training per year (0.03% of the employee’s time) to transmit to our main assets, the importance of offering a good service, good service and guide all commercial activity to achieve customer satisfaction.

In other companies, it is going much further. The asset is being poisoned and then the asset is taking charge of doing the same with clients (sometimes involuntarily). As “not sold” you have to go out and sell and we are witnessing how even management personnel are being asked to go out and look for customers. Of course, it does not matter the profile, training or skills of these people, because as they say “sell what you say sell, anyone does”, big mistake.

We fail in the most important, in our main asset, people. Please do not poison your companies, antidotes are becoming more expensive and harder to obtain.

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