The Conference Board, a prestigious group of world leaders in business information, recently assembled an outstanding group of sales and marketing gurus to present their views of the critical factors that will shape the marketplace in the 1990s.

The superbly organized event, titled The 1989 Marketing Conference, drew over 800 participants during the two-day session last Oct. 31 and Nov. 1 at New York’s famed Waldorf Astoria Hotel. Although the 53 speakers evoked a multitude of sales and marketing challenges, six major themes consistently reappeared. Here are the most notable key ideas relating to these themes:

Global Marketing – Selling in a Shrinking World

A recent ad for Solomon Brothers features the headline, “We do business in only one place.” The headline was placed under a picture of the globe. The ad is just one small illustration that more and more companies expand their marketing efforts far beyond the United States. Global competition was one of the key themes evoked by many marketing experts. Arnold G. Langbo, President of Kellog International, defined the new playing field: “No longer is it productive to ponder the distinction between domestic and international marketing. All of us are competing globally…whether our distribution boundaries be truly worldwide, international or ‘just’ domestic where we compete with foreign imports and foreign ownership.”

Citicorp’s Vice President for Strategic Planning and Finance, Richard Braddock, outlined some of the major forces influencing the world market-place: Growing inter-country trade, entry of more foreign firms into the U.S., Europe 1992, the Canadian Trade Pact, and the growing Japanese influence. Global communications are shifting demand, creating new markets and encouraging greater worldwide competition.

Richard C. Alberding, Executive Vice President, Marketing with Hewlett-Packard, sees 1990 as “a highly competitive, global marketplace where things happen quickly, where the cost of indecision is high.” Advances in technology compress time and reduce distances, making it possible to produce in one country, assemble products in another country and market the finished product in every country in the world.

If You Really Want to Win – Move Faster!

In the search for a new competitive edge, marketing managers have found speedier service to be their best ally for achieving greater market share. Marketing leaders like Federal Express, Domino’s Pizza or Sir Speedy Printing are living proofs that faster service rings up higher sales. Richard Winger, Vice President of The Boston Consulting Group, offered a new formula for corporate success explaining, “The traditional paradigm was: Provide the most value for the least cost. The new paradigm is: Provide the most value, for the lowest cost, in the least elapsed time.”

In the ’90s, customers expect and demand quick and responsive service. Several marketing managers cited numerous examples where faster service led to significantly higher sales. Winger told about Citibank’s entry into the mortgage business. Initially, the mortgage approval process averaged 45 days. Over a period of five years, Citibank shortened the process to a matter of a few days. Last year, Citibank announced that it would offer a fifteen minute approval process for residential mortgages based on four faxed documents. As a result, mortgage business went from almost nothing to a four percent market share in 1988 with mortgage rates that were well above average. The new watchword of the ’90s is time-based competition. The one who bridges the gap between need and satisfaction faster is bound to move up in market share.

Improved Quality – The Surest Way to Higher Profits!

Several Conference Board seminar speakers shared specific ideas on how to make quality a strategic weapon in the ’90s. Xerox Corporation, the recipient of the 1989 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, was represented by Norman E. Rickard, Corporate Vice President for Quality, who reviewed his company’s extensive efforts for ongoing quality improvement. The company’s objective is: “To improve all our work processes that impact customer satisfaction so that we achieve our goal of being #1…” Rickard explained how his company collects, studies and acts on extensive data needed for the quality improvement process. Xerox performs periodic customer surveys, independent surveys of Xerox competitors, post installation and cancellation customer surveys, customer query and complaint data analysis, customer panels, user groups, customer focus groups and much more. These are just the external quality measurements. In addition, the company polls employees, schedules roundtable discussions and performs extensive quality tests with the sole purpose of achieving continuous improvement of products, procedures and customer services. Xerox will continue its ongoing quality improvement plan in the ’90s and is bound to shine in an area that is full of promises and in need of action.

A panelist cited a recent study performed by AT&T Network Systems indicating that quality is a concept laden with emotion for Americans, relating strongly to personal feelings of success, failure, self-esteem and meeting others expectations. The research also showed that “quality improvement” stimulates powerful positive feelings when it is associated with change, innovation, new possibilities, opportunity and break-through.

Quality improvement is also an ongoing preoccupation at Metropolitan Life. John J. Falzon, Senior Vice President of Quality and Planning, extended the call for quality improvement to the employees of the company. Falzon explained, “We constructed a set of personal attributes that we constantly associated with high-quality performance. These attributes are at the core of our new employee communications program which we call, ‘Achieving Personal Quality.’ The program establishes a model for every Met employee to emulate. People who achieve high quality enrich not only their business lives, but their personal lives as well. So people are not only encouraged to seek higher levels of job performance, but also to use the personal quality program as a stepladder to improving other aspects of their lives.”

Quality products, services and people make for a powerful marketing force to meet the competitive challenges of the ’90s.

Information Management -The Promising Trail To New Opportunity

How we manage information in the ’90s will either strengthen or atrophy our sales and marketing muscle. Richard Alberding, Executive Vice President Marketing with Hewlett-Packard, reported, “Opportunities come and go, orders are won or lost on the basis of who has the right information at the right time and at the right place.” To meet the increasing demands for fast information management, HP developed a private, global electronic mail network that serves 78,000 users. The system moves 9.5 billion characters of data per day. Alberding also pointed out that 50 percent of today’s workforce is made up of what professionals call information or knowledge workers – people whose primary job is to use or manage information. More information workers and more computing power is rapidly increasing the demand for more useful information. For example, the ability to positively track a Federal Express package from pickup to delivery prompts many customers to demand a report on the delivery status.

In many instances, companies become information utilities to their customers – a clever marketing strategy designed to stimulate new sales. Richard Braddock, Sector Executive at Citicorp, surprised the audience by saying that Citicorp’s solution to meeting the complexity of the new marketplace is to “think of our business not as consumer banking, but as an information business.” The theory is that banks keep track of money. “Money is the medium,” Braddock explained, “but information is the means by which our customers’ needs are satisfied. Thus, we see our job as not only providing that information, but also add-ing value to it.”

To satisfy the customer’s need for more and better information, Citicorp will soon introduce a special telephone system called ET inside the bank, short for Enhanced Telephone. It will have a full terminal keyboard as well as a screen between handset and phone pad. “This phone,” said Braddock, “shows you detailed account information, but also pays your bills. It gives stock quotes, allows you to manage your portfolio, buy and sell mutual funds and other financial instruments.” The new trends in information management demand that marketers aggressively exploit new technology that leads to better service and creates new sales opportunities.

Let Your Customers Design Your Next Product!

A familiar battle cry heard in the hallway discussions at the Marketing Conference: “Get closer to your customers!”

A speech written by Joseph Brilando, Vice President, Corporate Marketing at Ashton-Tate Corporation, warned against the classic mistakes of designing new products by committees, or focusing on sales feature lists instead of creating effective solutions to customer problems. Brilando also pointed to the wasted efforts caused by our fascination with new toys. According to this savvy marketing expert, success in the ’90s demands that we integrate customer information at every level of a new product development process. In other words, let the customer lead you through every phase from start to finish. Just as a salesperson becomes the customer’s consultant before the purchase, the customer has to become the company’s consultant before the new product or service is put on the drawing board.

Donald Flamm, Vice President of Honeywell Residential Division described how his company developed a unique methodology for incorporating customer feedback throughout the design process of many of their new products. As a result, Honeywell’s division has gained a significant competitive edge and is able to anticipate consumer needs better.

The further we remove customers from the place where the decisions affecting their products are made, the fewer chances we’ll have for creating satisfied customers. Richard Winger reported a significant change at Toyota where they can now schedule, build and deliver a car within two days after a customer has placed the order. Says Winger, “They have accomplished this by merging their formerly separate sales and manufacturing companies into one and by introducing an internally developed computer system that ties salespeople directly into manufacturing scheduling. It really brings the customer on the shop floor and allows him to specify directly and exactly what he wants.”

These examples prove again that in order to grow bigger, we must act like a little company where the customer is directly involved in making the critical decisions that ultimately lead to customer satisfaction. The further we remove customers from the place where the decisions that affect their product are made, the fewer chances we’ll have for creating a satisfied customer.

Create, Encourage, Demand And Expect New Attitudes!

Napoleon once said that an army marches on its stomach. The marketers of the ’90s realize that sales and marketing armies march on their attitudes. Joseph L. Maher, Jr., Vice President, Industrial Sales at AMP, told the audience, “Salespeople need to be motivated to remain intense and competitive. They receive a lot of rejection in the marketplace.” AMP prefers to recruit people who are intelligent, intense and intimate. Maher explains, “We need intelligent people, so that we can teach them what we want to have done.” The new recruits should have competitive attitudes that are intense to the point that they think that their fair share of the market is all of it. By intimate, Maher means people who are intimate with numbers. “What is their profit contribution, who are their most profitable customers, what can they do to improve their profits?” AMP is big on training that builds profit awareness, on conducting sales meetings at night to increase the time available for selling in front of the customer and on rewarding salespeople who “Seize the Day.” (The highest award for several years of success.) Maher shared a little secret for building positive sales attitudes at AMP, “When a salesperson comes in the home office, for almost any reason, he is identified with a carnation. This tells people in the home office that the person is a salesperson and very important to our organization.”

Many sales and marketing managers have recognized how the power of expectation from top management impacts sales and marketing attitudes and how it translates into market performance. Many managers demand “top down” involvement and ask their CEOs to lead the way in developing new attitudes. Wolfgang R. Schmitt, Executive Vice President of Rubbermaid Inc., explained his rule of thumb for profit oriented marketing: “The organizational structure must foster entrepreneurship and create an environment which fosters continual improvement and risk taking.”

Richard C. Alberding (Hewlett-Packard) perhaps put it best when he shared his secret to a winning attitude for the ’90s: “I think the real secret is to always think as a challenger versus an old champion. Challengers think of the world full of opportunities, they see new markets dominated by no one. They are masters at anticipating change. In fact, in many cases they provoke it.” In other words, as we move into the new frontier, we must again adopt the attitudes of the pioneer.