A MARKETING EDUCATION
When we begin the process of educating our marketing teams, where do we focus our formal education programs?

I say the answer is: On product. Product overviews. Product demonstrations. Product usage labs.

We do a good job turning our marketers into product experts.

Now: how much formal education do they get on markets and customers?

In most of the companies I know or work with . . . the answer is none.

We do a poor job turning our marketers into customer experts.

CUSTOMER CUSTOMER CUSTOMER CUSTOMER CUSTOMER
Those who have read my opinions know that I'm laser-focused on the importance of thinking about customer, not product. As marketers, we care about the customer and the marketplace--product is the way we solve their needs, but their needs are what we focus on.

So I look at the fact that we teach our marketing teams about our products and don't teach them about our customers--and say "something's wrong with this picture."

It's my opinion that corporate learning programs focused on product are of limited value for marketers unless and until they understand the customer--until they understand why that product exists.

Are you helping your marketers reach this knowledge? Ask yourself a few questions:

	How much of your formal employee education program is devoted to customer as opposed to product?
	How many members of your marketing team have met and spent significant time with your customers?
	How many have gone on a representative set of sales calls to meet prospects and understand their buying cycle?
	How many have accompanied your customer reps to status and review meetings with the customers?
	How many have listened to and participated in responding to customer complaints

If we're to go by the companies I know well, the answer is "not very many at all."

Learning about the customer is a very informal, catch-as-catch-can process. Maybe it's through surveys and focus groups, conducted by research organizations. Perhaps it's through briefings with the executive team, who share their insights. Sometimes it's informally and anecdotally--listening to the sales force share its own experiences.

All of these have a place and a value. But that place and value are limited. What your marketing team learns from all this is not what your customers think or want or do. What they learn from it is what somebody else thinks about your customers. Listening to a sales rep share war stories teaches you more about the sales rep than about the customers. Reading surveys teaches you more about how well your customers take tests than it does about the customers themselves. Reading case studies--typically written to be collateral--teaches you more about selected results than it does about the customers.

The most powerful knowledge is first-hand knowledge. That's where innovative thinking springs from.

A REFOCUSED EDUCATION
What this means is that marketing organizations must redefine the primary outcome of their marketing education programs. Companies need to teach their marketers who their customer is. What she thinks. What she needs. How she buys. How she operates within her enterprise. How she interacts with other organizations. What political and other internal obstacles she faces. Who else within the organization she must satisfy to successfully complete a purchase.

This calls for innovative education programs. For instance:

	Send the people in your marketing department on sales calls--as an observer--with your sales force. If you do only one thing, do this.
	Use eLearning technologies to create useful simulation and scenario based education programs that can put your marketers "inside the customer's mind."
	Find customers willing to allow you to visit--maybe without an incentive, maybe with--and let your team see how they use the product, listen to what they go through when they buy, learn what they like and don't like about how the product solves their needs, learn about other needs they wish the product could solve.
	Develop detailed competitive analysis exercises. Turn your marketers into secret shoppers . . . calling the competition and behaving like a customer, getting answers to questions, receiving collateral, querying them subtly on their own customers.

And a ton of others that my promise to be brief in these articles forbids me to list.

Only after your marketing team goes through this kind of process--only after they know your customer--are they ready to learn your product. Only when they have a solid understanding of the customer in all his facets, will your product make sense to them.

(And this is not a program that applies only to companies with big formal education budgets. Little companies--tiny companies--need to--and can--do this as well, within the limits of their size and budget.)

Today, we hear CEOs all over the world chanting the "know thy customer" mantra. And then they fall right back into discussions of new surveys and focus groups and so on. The sentiment is dead-on (and has always been so--from the agoras of Greece to Sam Drucker's General Store in Hooterville).

But it will end up the way of all marketing trends--this year's "marketplace of one"--unless we learn to execute it correctly.

That's what we think. Click here to tell us what you think.

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