Change Now and Reap Rewards – Part 2 of 3: Five P's of Marketing – Plus Seven!

“That is, the firm must become a hotbed of tests of the unconventional. It must become an experimenting (and learning), adaptive, change-seeking organization.”

Source: Dr.Tom Peters, Thriving on Chaos, 1987


In the 1960’s a marketing paradigm was created and later became the foundation of many major industrial corporations. They built their approaches to Sales and Marketing on this concept. That was known as the Five P‘s of Marketing. To this day many of these identified elements are still being utilized [albeit in metamorphosed monikers]. Those elements originally included:

1. Product - the product or service that is offered to the customer
2. Price - pricing strategies with the goal of meeting a desired profit margin or costing structure
3. Place (think distribution) – availability and convenience of the product/service to your target market
4. Promotion - communication and endorsement of your product/service to a customer
5. People - service marketing and the level of customer service you provide to your customer


So in today’s world economy, are you adapting, learning to improve and seek new opportunities in a changing marketplace? Are your customer strategies focused on change, improvement or transformation of your business model? Do you really know your customers? Here are a few questions to consider that could modify your awareness of your customer base:

1. Do you have a process that introduces innovation? That can be refined and improved to produce higher results, such as efficiency, profitability, performance or productivity?
2. Do you have a product profile that reflects features, characteristics or value added features that your customer base would want and do they repeat their experience with your product or your competitiors?
3. Have you designed a proof of concept to flush out the marketing and production costs, realization of enhanced features and characteristics, positioning against the competition, and estimation of potential sales volume?
4. Are you servicing your customers in a timely manner? What regions are served better than others and why?
5. Do you treat your customers like numbers or do you have relationships established to promote growth and customer satisfaction?
6. Are credit issues decreasing your sales? If so, have you reviewed your credit policy or considered alternatives to existing procedures [i.e., discounts for cash purchases, extending your DSO targets, evaluated your pricing structure, do you have a high price strategy vs low cost, do you know your margin thresholds on those strategies, etc.]?
7. Have you actually quantified these product and customer parameters to better determine your strengths as well as your weaknesses?

If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, perhaps you need to explore the “Five Plus” elements to improved customer awareness, improve profitability, and impact your performance. JBS provides five additional areas that help refine your Sales and Marketing processes that interact with your customer base.

Next Blog: Let’s focus on your internal support of your customers. Remember, their perceptions of product value and services provide the success to your organization, continued survivability.

Source: Jarvis Business Solutions, LLC, © 2009, www.jbshq.com