“The purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer. There can be no corporate strategy that is not in some fundamental fashion a marketing strategy.” –Theodore Leavitt, Harvard Business School

A resource
that can be
tailored to fit the needs of …

Food for thought…
What IT consultants such as Accenture, EDS, and
Greenbrier & Russel do for IT productivity Keith Bates does for marketing productivity.

Since 1970 we’ve performed our marcom magic to stimulate the growth of more than 150 software/services vendors, delivering over $100 million worth of consulting services during this time frame.

Food for reading…
Click here to visit our
Resource Library consisting of roughly 300 books and growing, categorized by the following:

• Viral/Influentials Marketing;
• Advertising / Promotion/PR
• Biographical
• Business Management
• Creativity
• Marketing--including
Direct Response, High Tech and Traditional
• Motivational
• Sales/Customer Service
• Investing

Solutions

Keith Bates, mentor and marcom trouble shooter

CEOs...
Keith Bates is not a management consultant. Nor does he aspire to be one. His forte is “ideas” to accelerate the growth and business development of technology companies. And he has the credentials to do this having spent 30 years in the executive suites of 150+ software companies … plus the founding of five corporations as a direct result of his entrepreneurial inclinations. He has frequently been asked to fill the role (temporarily) of Virtual VP Marketing.

His mentoring has been primarily focused on software/services startups and small to medium sized companies. He has written innumerable business plans with particular focus on the Executive Summary and can help with the communications issues required for taking your business strategy to market. He is familiar with both Geoffrey Moore’s Chasm Strategy and the Technology Adoption Life Cycle.

Marketing Execs...
To quote my friend Mark Cavender of the Chasm Institute, “Marketing is often the last to get the credit for success and the first to get the blame for failure.” Marketing begins with an assessment of the business plan, then to marketing, sales, and communications. Employing our Marcom Engine process we can help with the situation analysis, development (redevelopment) of strategy, build a creative repository, design and produce the Marcom arsenal, plan the media strategy and deployment and then execute, assisting with tracking and ROI measurement.

A recent CMO survey of 800 senior marketing and C-level execs reveal that only 7% felt that sales and marketing work together effectively. Our Unify Sales & Marketing, program delivered in conjunction with alliance partner Patrick Rooney and his Expand Communications Group, offers a solution to this common problem.

Sales Execs...
The power struggle between sales and marketing is legendary. As both a sales exec and a marketing exec for over 30 years Bates has managed this problem for not only his own companies but for many clients as well.

Last summer Bates’ good friend Don Schultz, professor of integrated marketing at Northwestern University, commented at a BMA luncheon on the topic of sales vs. marketing that marketers are being challenged to overcome their lack or credibility with the sales force…and vice versa.

The effects of true collaboration do wonderful things for your bottom line. Bates can act as facilitator, arbitrator or both as he has lived on both sides of the fence. The concept of CMM (Customer Message Management) is rapidly taking hold and already is available as formal training. Our Unify Sales & Marketing program addresses this issue.

Venture Capitalists...
A problem sometimes encountered by angels and VCs is the lack of sales and marketing experience required to perform true due diligence -- which is well beyond the review of business plans. Throwing money at poorly marketed products has never worked. And never will!

Growth capital should be reserved for those companies that exhibit a potential for growth. And that means going beyond the business plan, the market analysis, and the growth projections. It means getting deep inside sales and marketing and the people who are going to make it happen. Keith Bates can perform marketing due diligence for startup interests as well as for those companies already invested in who are not showing the anticipated growth.