Marketers are not perfect. We just have great PR. The fact is that no marketing plan is bullet proof. Even a great go-to-market strategy will eventually become useless as markets and competitors change. Yet some marketers stubbornly adhere to their plans right down to the last nickel from company coffers. But by that time, it is too late. Marketing Stall Horns My friend Ray Zinn, the longest serving CEO in Silicon Valley, talks often about CEOs needing financial stall horns. Like those in airplanes, stall horns alert dozing pilots about impending crashes. Marketing executives need stall horns as well, but not all CMOs bother. They do rely on periodic reporting, but rarely engineer triggers to alert them when a trend on a metric is sinking and not showing signs of recovery. The constant question is what metrics matters? The answer is that they all do, but for different reasons in … Continue reading →