My natural reaction in writing an article about marketing is to speak of its utmost importance.

After all, sales and marketing people know that without us, there would be no need for engineers, installers, manufacturers' Of course, this is because there would be no one buying anything! (OK - so we can be a little arrogant.)

This arrogance, and, uh, ignorance, was recently highlighted during a recent business encounter. I was visiting with an electrical contracting firm based in southwest Michigan. It's an entity comprised of six separate companies, including controls, low-voltage cabling, electric motors, industrial testing, generators as well as electrical contracting.

This company did about $30 million in sales last year with very good profitability. Yet they employ no "true" sales people, and outsource their minimal "traditional" marketing efforts such as brochure creation. Obviously they've done a lot of things right, and successful marketing comes in many forms.

The (perhaps surprising) conclusion to this story thread will be picked up later in the article. But from what I've already outlined, it begs the question "what is marketing?" at least as it relates to systems contractors. Profound or not, here goes.

Marketing is distinction

"Marketing does not work for companies that have unrealistic expectations about the powers of marketing. Be clear in this. Marketing cannot create an instant influx of new customers, cause an immediate and dramatic increase in your profits, substitute for second-rate quality or service, solve all your cash flow problems, create a desire for unwanted products or services, or sell the right product to the wrong people, in the wrong place or at the wrong time." (Jay Conrad Levinson, Guerrilla Marketing Excellence)

Every business, whether a coat hanger manufacturer or an audio networking company, must offer something unique to the marketplace, something that differentiates it from the competition. Creating or identifying these separating factors and then using marketing tools to explain them to prospective customers is the basis of successful marketing. And at the same time, a company that isn't doing anything unique and doesn't work to make this distinction will likely be gone, marketing or no.

Marketing is delivery

Nothing - absolutely nothing - is worse than not delivering. In his book Raving Fans, Ken Blanchard talks about deliver plus one percent. He gives the illustration of a gas station that began offering the added service of windshield washing with every gas purchase.

However, the owner forbade employees from washing any other window than the windshield unless they were specifically asked by the customer to do so. This rule applied until every employee could provide a completely - perfectly - clean windshield, every time. Once this was accomplished, additional window services would then be offered.

Thus, this particular gas station offered a new service, unavailable anywhere. Yet in the beginning, customers had complaints, and one even drove off without paying, later explaining that if a clean windshield was indeed included in the price of his purchase, that windshield had better indeed be clean.

So when marketing, one must be sure that there is full delivery of what's promised. And better yet, deliver plus one percent. But not an attempt or promise of 100 percent, leading to almost certain failure.