Circa65

I can name that tune in… 60 days!

Remember the old game show where contestants would play a game of “chicken” – daring each other to correctly identify a tune in the fewest number of notes? Well, a version of that same game is played out in businesses everyday as lack of timely commitment by management causes marketing people to agree to insanely short (and ultimately unproductive) time frames to create,  and launch (and generate ROI for) VAR marketing programs and events. See if the following scenario sounds familiar.

In early January, Company X proposes to launch a campaign consisting of live events to drive demand generation with new prospects sometime in March. The marketing person responsible estimates it will take 45 to 60 days to secure locations, dates, plan the events, request marketing development funds and execute.   The owner of Company X isn't’t sure about the investment and wants a budget for the program which is dutifully prepared by talking to event venues, caterers, thinking about program content (and the associated cost of things, such as speaker fees) and the like. As this part of the process is complete, the owner puts his foot on the brake by insisting on meetings with each stakeholder to make sure everyone is bought into this program, particularly the VAR sales team. Now one might wonder why this did not take place prior to deciding this program was a good idea in the first place – but this is a necessary step nevertheless. Anyway, by the time the data is gathered and the meetings take place, we are now in late February – clearly too late for a Q1 event. But then in the first week of March, Company X’s top vendor tells the VP of Sales they have an additional $10k in market development funds they can provide – so long as the money is spent prior to the end of the current quarter. The owner summons the marketing person and announces the good news. Funding is “approved” but the event has to take place later that same month! The poor marketing person works tirelessly to pull it off and then in the aftermath is pelted with criticism for the poorly attended event.

 Why do we let this game of chicken take place? Even with "someone else’s money", the event needs to be done the right way. If doing it right takes 60 days, it takes 60 days - and all of your procrastinating won’t change that!