THINKing

Aligning Metrics

Years ago, I worked with a Fortune 500 company on an integrated marketing communications program. It was integrated everywhere except with sales. And therein lies the rub. Our marketing metrics were highly successful, but our sales metrics weren’t. Let me explain.

We were telling consumers to call the company for a free in-home survey because we discovered that if the company’s representative got into the home for the free audit, they sold - on average - five additional products or services. The program was wildly successful. The media relations part of the program targeted at local newspapers was an incredible success. The morning the story appeared in The Charlotte Observer, we almost broke the company’s telephone system we had so many calls requesting the free survey.

The company’s field representatives balked at doing the surveys because they were being incentivized for selling one certain product. The agency and the company marketing folks did not know this before the program was launched. We had even done a presentation to company managers - sales included - but no one thought to mention this small detail.

Here’s the funny part: each free survey resulted in a nearly 70 percent success rate for selling this product. Didn’t matter to the field reps. If the lead wasn’t for that product, they didn’t want to go on the call. Period.

Did the brand take a beating because of this? Oh, yeah. Did the company change its approach. Not on your life.

This is so typical of large corporations. The right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing.

Lesson learned: a well conceived marketing program can fail if everyone is not heading in the same direction.