The Operations Have to Keep Up With the Marketing
Good marketing makes a promise. Your operation either keeps it or breaks it, and now it breaks it in front of more people than ever.
Most owners think their problem is getting more customers. So they hire someone to fill the pipeline, and that someone is good at it. The phone rings. The calendar fills. Then the business that ran fine at forty customers a week starts dropping balls at eighty: the order comes out wrong, nobody calls back, the new hire never got trained, and the owner spends the day putting out fires instead of running the place.
Marketing buys you one first impression
Everything after that first impression is operations and leadership, and customers are not patient about it. In a PwC survey of 15,000 people, 32% said they would walk away from a brand they love after one bad experience. In the U.S., 59% said they would walk away after several.
Good marketing doesn't fix a weak operation. It puts the weak operation in front of more people, faster.
What has to be ready before the phone rings
Three things decide whether new demand turns into repeat business or bad reviews:
Systems. The work is written down, so it gets done the same way when you are not standing there.
Managers. Someone besides the owner can run a shift and make the call.
Follow-through. Commitments get tracked and measured every week; nobody relies on memory.
Grow the inside at the same pace as the outside
None of this means stop marketing. It means build the inside of the business at the same speed as the outside. If your marketing is good, your operation is about to be tested; better to find the cracks with ten new customers than with a hundred.
The marketing makes the promise. The operation keeps it.
How ready is your leadership for the growth you are paying for? Take the free Leadership Reputation Snapshot: twelve questions, a few minutes, and one thing to work on this week.
Steven Cochran is a leadership specialist and founder of Impression MGMT, working with business owners and companies across the Northshore and Greater New Orleans area of Louisiana through one-on-one coaching, custom workshops, and the twice-monthly Leadership In Business peer group.
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