What is Interim Management?

From Wikipedia comes a great definition that concisely explains what interim management is about:

Interim management is the temporary provision of management resources and skills. Interim management can be seen as the short-term assignment of a proven heavyweight interim executive manager to manage a period of transition, crisis or change within an organization. In this situation, a permanent role may be unnecessary or impossible to find on short notice. Additionally, there may be nobody internally who is suitable for, or available to take up, the position in question.

The book Leadership on Demand, adds that interim management, while often utilized at the executive level, can also be successfully applied at the group-level position as well.

In essence, interim management is the utilization of an experienced manager to temporarily fill a gap in an organization.

The most common need for interim management occurs when an executive leaves a position for whatever reason, and the firm seeks an immediate replacement, while they search for an ideal permanent replacement.

However, an interim manager often does more than keep the seat warm. A good interim manager will add tremendous value to the organization by applying their experience and skill set to move the organization closer to achieving their goals.

Every large organization should have conversations with an interim management company like OneAccord (which specializes in marketing and sales interim management) or Tatum (which focuses on finance), so that they can tap the vast pool of experience and skills that OneAccord can provide when the need inevitably arises.

How To Get Marketing Closer to Revenue: Free Webinar

by Interim Marketing Executive, Chuck Besondy

If you are a B2B marketer reading this your job could be in jeopardy and you don’t even know it. If you are a CEO or CSO you’ll see why you tend to be frustrated by the marketing function at your company.

Try this. Make a list of all the tactics your demand generation campaigns include. For each of the tactics make a note of what the objective is.

In most companies a majority of the list includes tactics devoted to “building name awareness”, “getting our name out there”, “positioning the brand against the competition,” etc. Good enough, but what about the tactics that move buyers into and through the funnel?

If Marketing’s primary focus is on branding, it isn’t doing enough to partner with Sales in driving revenue.

How should a company view the role of Marketing in its revenue generation process? I suggest you register for free 45-minute webinar on July 29 at 2:30 EDT. This webinar is being presented by MathMarketing, a thought-leader in the area of sales and marketing alignment. (I am associated with Math Marketing as a Funnel Coach in North America).

Here’s what will be covered:

1. The 4 most common reasons Marketing fails to deliver accountable results
2. 3 proven steps to get Marketing and Sales on the same, revenue-accountable track

If moving Marketing closer to revenue is important to you I suggest you register today.

This article has been republished with permission from The Sales Funnel Fanatic.

Redefining What Marketing Stands For

Years of misuse by companies has given marketing a slightly negative connotation. We often think of marketing as interruptions that we have to put up with in return for quality content, or as persuasive tactics companies use to convince us to buy things we don’t need. However, as Greg Verdino points out in this post, marketing may have originated as a service that the seller provides to serve the customer and it may be time to revert back to marketing that puts customers first.

Complete this sentence:

I work in marketing for _________.

Unless you’re a smart ass and thought something like “I work in marketing for the money and the honeys,” you probably filled the blank with the name of your company, the brand you represent or the category your product falls into.

I’d wager you didn’t fill the blank with “customers.”

You should have.

Of course you work for a company (or for yourself, if you’re a consultant.) And of course your boss expects you to deliver results.  But if you still think in terms of delivering your services for the benefit of your company rather than for the benefit of your customer (or prospective customer), you’re missing the point.  Smart marketers look at the transaction not as the thing itself, but as the by-product of the thing — as the benefit gained as the result of a well-built win/win relationship.

I know.  You read lots of blog-like-objects and heed the advice of social media gurus (LOL); you’ve heard this before.  Marketing isn’t about buying reach, it’s about building relationships.  In the age of social marketing, companies need to think less about delivering messages and more about delivering value.  Massive TV buys be damned; you can rarely buy your way into people’s hearts.

But here’s the twist. Maybe it was supposed to be this way all along.  What if marketing (as a concept and maybe even as a profession) actually started out as a service that was provided for consumers rather than a service that aimed to target them? What if this thing that we have called “marketing” for the past 50 years or so has been nothing more than an ill-advised detour.

Everything old is new again, people.  Everything old is new… Read on:

A couple of years ago, a super smart friend who had studied linguistics at university (and generally seemed to know a lot about a lot of things) told me that, in an early usage of the word, “marketing” referred to a service that one person performed for another.  For all I know, this friend was full of crap (quite possible, since he is also the creative director of a large digital agency) — but the notion stuck with me and, if you think about it, is a pretty powerful one.  It kinda implies that marketing as we know it is just a big misunderstanding.

By this definition, marketing was not a service that people performed for the companies that employed them.  Marketing referred to a service that people (or companies, I suppose) performed for other regular people.  An offer to “market for you” would have been akin to saying to a friend, “I’m running out to the store.  Do you need me to pick up anything for you?” If you were a particularly enterprising lad or lady you might have even found a way to earn your livelihood by marketing for others.  Run out to the marketplace, pick up a few things for a few people, earn a pocketful of pence and — voila — you, my good sir, were a marketer.

So you see?  Marketing was the act of procurement.  Not the act of promotion. Did products get bought and sold because of this service?  Yes. Did ‘marketers’ match needs or wants with products that satisfied those needs or wants.  You bet.  Did the companies that provided those products, and the intermediaries who procured them on behalf of other individuals, profit from the transaction?  Presumably so.  But at the heart of the transaction, was a simple service provided for the benefit of an individual consumer, not the overly complicated service most of us provide for the benefit of the corporate entity that hands us our paychecks.

If we go along with its early definition, marketing wasn’t about helping your company sell.  It was about helping people buy. Is that how you think about your job? Are you helping people buy?  Or are you just foisting your wares upon a bunch of unsuspecting people, in the hopes that you might sell a few.

So let’s take another stab at filling in that blank.  Then get out there and market for people.

This article was originally posted at GregVerdino.com and is licensed under the Creative Commons 3.0 license.

Photo by wwworks

Don’t Fear the Competition

by Paul Travis, Interim Marketing Executive

Most businesses shudder to hear their customers mention a competitor’s name. From a marketing perspective, it is good to keep tabs on them and see whether “the bar” is being set by us or them!

Lately I’ve come upon a couple of choice examples of companies that go against the grain of fearing the competition. That is, they boldly acknowledge to their customers who the competitors are, so it is clear that they know consumers have choices.

www.SurveyMonkey.com is a web-based survey system that challenges customers to compare, and even gives them a comprehensive list of businesses to check out (34 in all!)

www.Progressive.com is an automobile insurance company that has been “bending the rules” for some time now. You may have seen their TV advertisements to this effect; this snapshot is from a moving marquis on their home page.

In this case, they demonstrate competitive pricing — but not all ways! What becomes clear is that customers are not always seeking the bargain basement. They just want to know that they are being treated fairly (more to the point, that they aren’t being gouged).

I find it refreshing, and believe these companies of very different size have created differentiation in the customers’ eyes with their approach. Now while this may not be the silver bullet for every business, is there anything your organization can learn from inviting the competition into the conversation?

Paul Travis is an interim marketing executive at OneAccord. Mr. Travis is based out of Seattle with 25 years of experience in high technology, marketing, and consulting. He can be reached at Paul.Travis(at)oneaccordpartners.com and at 206-910-2222.