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Business leaders realize that everyone must help marketing and sales in any way you can in order to succeed.
            Let’s face it.  Without marketing and sales we’re all a bunch of really smart people sitting around in really nice offices with nothing to do.  If you as a manager can work with the marketing and sales department and show them what you’re capable of, they’ll be able to sell it. 
            The marketing department cannot possibly market something they don’t understand.  It would be a stroke of luck for them even to market to the correct audience without the information you can provide.  Further more, sales is a very difficult job.  When a salesperson either lacks a thorough understanding of the product or service, or lacks the confidence that the company behind him can actually pull it off, he’s not going to be nearly as successful as he could be. 
            There are only two ways to make money that don’t involve marketing and sales.  The first is to get a government job; the second is to collect a welfare check.  Everything else requires marketing and sales.  It is the driving force of your business.  Shouldn’t you make every effort possible to insure that it succeeds?
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The nuts and bolts side of helping marketing and sales is rather easy.  It’s getting your people to go along with it that’s tough.  I’ve always stressed this in my staff.  I want them to help out with sales.  I’ve had engineers come to me and state emphatically they will do anything they can to help this company grow, but they will not sell.

            Let’s start with the nuts and bolts and get the easy part out of the way.  In most situations where you don’t know the answer the first thing to do is ask.  Asked the marketing people how you can help, then ask the sales people.  In a big company the marketing people may not know but the salespeople will.

            What the marketing people need is the why.  They may understand what the product or service is that we want them to market.  What they may not understand is why anyone would want it.  Let me give you two examples of specific companies that do it right, and two examples where it’s done poorly.

            The first example is Microsoft.  They’re marketing is outstanding.  You’ll hear people say that it’s the marketing that is the sole reason for their success but that’s just not true.  They make very good products, and they tell you why you should by them.  They don’t just tell the end user why he should buy it, they also tell the engineers and the sales people precisely why it’s such a great product.  Their server operating system for a long time was Windows NT 4.  It was a solid operating system that was easy to install and administer in small companies.  Relatively easy to support, and had a wide base of applications developed for it.  It was also scalable enough to fill the bill for many larger companies.  Then they came out with a new server operating system.  Windows Server 2000.  The biggest feature of this was something called the Active Directory.  If Microsoft had introduced this product with a sales effort that said new and improved, without any specifics on how it was new and improved people would not have bought it.  Instead, they went to their solution provider partners and told us why we should sell it.  Our customers would be able to move users more easily from department to department.  It’s much easier to administer (add and create users, grant access to specific files and applications, integrate with other software etc.).  The list went on and on.  The companies that sell Microsoft Server 2000 knew it would benefit their customers and they knew how.  We also were given tools to identify customers who could use the product to gain an immediate benefit by upgrading.  We hit the ground with a solid understanding of the product’s capabilities and a confidence that it would work extremely well.

            Now let’s contrast that with Novell NetWare.  Their server software has had many of the benefits of Active Directory for years.  But Microsoft kills them in server sales and has even in the past even with a product that was not nearly as robust.  The reason for this couldn’t be simpler.  Novell doesn’t have near the marketing savvy that Microsoft does.  When they finally got around to doing some marketing on television it was a picture of a fishbowl with different fish jumping around touting the great integration capabilities of their products.  It’s a nice commercial but big deal.  It doesn’t give a manager an incentive to go out and change his entire server infrastructure to their platform.  What they should have done is talk to the people who work with both products.  They would have ended up with a commercial that showed a bunch of people sitting around working on a plethora of servers and operating systems, doing upgrades and recovering from crashes etc.  In the corner would have sat an old dusty computer with the power light on and no one paying attention to it.  Some big shot comes in to check on the progress, looks at the old box in the corner and says, “Why isn’t anyone working on that one?” 
            The technicians turn around and laugh.  “Oh that’s the Novell server.  It never needs anything.”

            This is an actual experience I had with a Novell server.  And among computer people it’s kind of an on going joke.  Novell is the great little server no one ever heard of.  Fast forward a couple of years and Microsoft has caught up in capabilities, surpassed Novell in the number of people that can support their systems (which lowers the cost to the end user) and you’ve got a company that’s fighting to catch back up to a level they rightly owned in the first place. 
            Had Novell pushed marketing and sales to work with field engineers this would probably not have happened.  They would have understood first hand what the strengths of their products were in the eyes of those who make the decision to buy. 

            I’ll give you another example outside the computer market that gets me every time.  Home Depot’s advertising.  They don’t just say by this wood floor for this amount of money.  They tell you that it’s easy to install, will make your house look great, and is inexpensive.  When you go to Home Depot to check it out, the aisle with wood floors has all of the tools you need right there next to the flooring.  There are also videotapes you can buy to show you step by step how to install the wood floor.  That’s fantastic marketing.  And someone had to work with the marketing team to show him or her what was needed to install the floor, and why people should buy it. 
            Does your business do these things?  Really all it took was for the marketing people to sit down with the product experts and explain the capabilities.  An even better approach is to have the people that designed the product or service meet with marketing and sales.  These people have a real passion about the product because they created it.
            Much of the same process goes into helping the sales staff.  The only thing I add to the mix asking my staff to go out on occasional sales meetings as a backup to the sales person.  That way if a technical issue comes up that the sales person can’t answer he turns to the expert and asks.  It looks great in front of the customer, strokes the ego of the non-sales person, and helps to build a working relationship between sales and production.

            After the technicians, engineers, or other production staff have been on a few of these meetings many actually start to enjoy it.  They’re not doing any cold calling, it’s a break from their normal routine, and they’re helping to grow the business. 
            When I get an employee who does a really good job helping to close sales I’ll give him a small part of the commission on the new business.  I’ve ended up with several field technicians that become extensions of the sales department.  It becomes part of their job to go out and fix a problem, then look for other opportunities to help the customer and add a little more work and money for themselves.  A few of them I’ve actually had to slow down.  They became very aggressive salespeople and were trying to sell things the customer didn’t even need.  Over aggressiveness in sales looks good on paper but customers are hard to get and if you oversell you won’t have them for long, but it is a nice problem to have to deal with.
            Now that we’ve drastically boosted the productivity of our staff, increased the productivity of marketing and sales, we’re really starting to bring in the bucks.  But we’re not finished yet.  We still need to cut costs.  Every company incorporates cost cutting from time to time.  Many bigger companies have a constant effort aimed at cutting costs.  This is probably not a bad idea but things do tend to get out of hand.  I suspect some companies spend more money trying to cut costs than they actually save.
            The quickest way to cut costs is to trim payrolls, and reduce benefits.  This is also the lazy mans way.  The problem is that it always works great in the short term.  When cutting costs you need to make sure first and foremost that you’re cutting real fat.  Across the board staff reductions based on seniority logically cuts fat and muscle.   An overall reduction in benefits will reduce costs but also has a correlative effect on productivity.  Large scale cost cutting initiatives may be necessary but they also send the message to the company’s employees that things are not going well.
            Of course now that we’re all thinking like entrepreneurs we know better than to attempt such foolishness!

            If you need to perform a department or company wide cost cutting initiative start out with increasing efficiency associated with red tape, or other non-production related costs.  I do this once a year.  It’s a good time to evaluate things like cell phone bills (where you can perhaps change plans to save a little money), paperwork reduction (if your employees spend an hour a week filling out time sheets, vacation request forms, and any other endless pieces of paper they’re not being productive), furniture and office supplies, maintenance agreements, and any other things you can think not directly related to production.  I usually end up leaving most things the way they are.  Occasionally you’ll find something that can save quite a bit of money.

            If you’re going to cut costs by trimming staff, make sure you trim at the bottom.  Why so many companies trim based on seniority or make across the board reductions in each department is a mystery to me.  It’s such an obvious affront to common sense that the people who make these decisions have to understand it’s not smart.  I suppose some people just want to be nice and take the easy way out.  When you cut staff like this all that you do is make the job tougher for your best people.  I’ve seen even small companies make this mistake and it’s just baffling to me.  Six months later they seem to wonder why they’re still having problems and they do it again! 
“Gee whiz mister CEO, maybe it’s because you fired ten percent of your staff, and ten percent of those that got the axe were top producers.  To further exacerbate the problem the top producers you have left are burned out from trying to cover the slack.”
The real irony is that if the cuts were necessary (and sometimes they are) the company could have probably cut fifteen percent of the deadweight and actually increased both profits and productivity.

I saw this happen once at a very large company.  This manager of a design engineering department had to fire three people out of about forty.  One of them had only worked there for three years and he got the boot.  This guy was a working machine.  He was an excellent engineer and had exceptional Unix skills he used to help the rest of the department.  The manager’s hair was all messed up and he was stressing about it and groaning to everyone who would listen, except his boss.  I thought,  “Sheesh buddy, pull up your pants, have a little backbone and tell your boss you’ll lay off two other guys to compensate for the one year keeping, but your not firing your heavy hitter.”
The bottom line is, if you’re going to reduce staff do it in a way that strengthens the company for the near term and the long haul.  Use it as an opportunity to get rid of some dead weight and reward hard work.
You should also evaluate your vendor relationships one every year or so.  While you don’t want to lose a great vendor for a couple of dollars you can make significant savings by shopping for new suppliers, and keeping pressure on your existing suppliers.  Small businesses in particular often have a problem with cost creep.  A vendor will get your business with a low ball price and the gradually increase the price over a period of time.

Price your products and services in relation to the amount of business and headaches you get from the customer.  If you have 500 customers there is nothing at all wrong with having 500 different price points.  That can be a little tough to manage but the point is you don’t have to charge everyone the same price.   We have customers that use our services once a week.  We give them a very good rate but not quite to the level of a customer that wants our services three times a week.
Frequency isn’t the only determining factor in setting price.  We have two customers in particular that use our service perhaps once every month or two.  They are always late in paying their bill and they are always looking for something for free.  We charge them a rate that’s actually hire than what we specify as our top rate.  We do this to make sure that if it’s going to be a headache dealing with them, and if they’re not going to pay their bills on time, at least we can still make money. 
Occasionally we’ll go so far as to drop a customer.  Now I wouldn’t drop GE as a customer if they shot the tires out of my car every time I showed up, but some business just isn’t worth having.  If a customer is a resource hog, complains constantly, and doesn’t pay well, you might want to evaluate whether or not they’re actually contributing to the bottom line.  New customers are difficult to find but not all of them are worth keeping.  If you’ve got one that you suspect is actually costing you money, take a closer look and see if your hunch might not be right.  If it turns out they really don’t make you that much money, or in some cases cost you money, don’t be afraid to raise the price to a level you know will return a handsome profit. 

As a flip side to dropping a customer you might want to pick up some smaller customers at a much lower rate.  This is a strategy I and a few other entrepreneurs I’ve worked with have used to great success.  These are generally smaller customers looking to buy on price and price alone.  I offer them a great rate with the understanding that the level of service is not going to be immediate response.  It’s a fantastic way to backfill down time.  The margin on the specific customer may not be great, but it beats taking a loss on idle production time.  The end result is that you can dramatically increase your profits by scheduling these price only customers at your convenience. 
The last piece of advise I’ll give you is to be honest with your employees.  When I was going to night school and working in a factory I’d hear people all the time saying things like, “All this company cares about is making a profit.”  As if that’s somehow a bad thing.  Tell your people that you want to make your department, your division, or your company as profitable as is humanly possible.  And to do that you have to make sure they remain happy and productive.  I’d remind them also that working for a company that’s making a healthy profit is much more enjoyable than working for a company that’s scrounging around trying to pay the bills every month.  And it’s surely a lot more fun that working for a company that’s losing money. 

Making a profit of forty percent may be next to impossible for your company.  Making some of the changes I’ve outlined above may also be next to impossible in very large companies where the purchasing department, and human resources make decisions handed down in directives from people four hundred miles away.  The point of fact is that every company has the ability to get better and become more profitable.  No company is run perfectly.  That being the case set a very high goal and do your best to get there.  If your company is making a five percent profit now, set the goal for twenty percent.  If you only make it to ten percent you’ve still doubled the profits.  All of us are measured ultimately on the bottom line.  There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s the way you probably measure yourself.  If you increase your department’s bottom line you can rest assured your bottom line will increase as well.

I’d like to close with a little warning.  This pertains mostly to very young managers on their first management job.  Never ever sacrifice your character or integrity, or that of the company to make money.  Just about every movie you watch, and most television shows, have a businessman as the bad guy.  The news media seem to be delivering a constant stream of stories about corrupt businessmen.  I know these things are happening but it’s very much the exception and not the rule.  There are of course sleezy business people and some of them manage to get to the top of very large corporations.  Usually for just a short time.  Most of what you’re seeing on the news however is just a sampling of an admittedly liberal sprinkling of fools who’ve gotten themselves into positions they’re just not qualified to handle.   Instead of bowing out gracefully and admitting they’re not up to the job, they fudge the numbers, make a few shady deals, and try to buy themselves some time.  But in the end, every house of cards eventually collapses.  If you make money by lying, cheating people, or accepting illegal or unethical kickbacks you’ve really accomplished nothing that a third rate drug dealer can’t accomplish Small business sales is hard work, but the reward is a worth it.