Expert's Panel

A collection of timely and important topics posed to our panel of experts.

What are the major causes of failure of a marketing plan?

 (ep10119)
1. The key causes of failure are a lack of soft (qualitative) data; not understanding the capabilities of your own organization; and a proper assessment of management’s commitment to the plan. If senior management doesn’t get behind a product it is going to die, every single time.
2. Not having some sort of a contextual relationship in which to operate with your customer. You build a customer relationship because you have chosen that customer for the long-term, meaning the investment of resources, time, and money. The more you work with that customer, the better the soft data. In such a relationship you get to a place where your customer really wants you to succeed and the customer will get helpful information to you because it is helpful to him.
3. My biggest failure was because we did not change. We had a plan and a program for a product. The company’s development team fell behind, like they always do, and we stuck stubbornly to the original plan and strategy, which was good when we created it. However, because of the delay, the market and the competition had moved beyond it. The obsolete plan and strategy cost the company its existence. We did review the product plan continually, but we should have gone back and re-evaluated the plan with an open mind in light of the new circumstances. We should have killed the product.
4. You have to have a good MRS (Market Requirement Statement) or the plan will ultimately fail.