The chicken or the egg, marketing or the product?

2 Comments

Comment by Yona on April 7, 2008 at 11:24am

Or Tal,

I found your post very interesting, however as a marketing consultant a little disturbing. I specialize in marketing startups and I am all too familiar with your comments about “total disregard for marketing, or the opposite, “know-it-all” approach”, as well as the “creative” approach when it comes to payment (hourly basis, deferred payment, etc.).

For me to really help a company I need to get into the “guts” of the place, understand the various players and how they work, what they want to achieve and why they are really different (as opposed to the classic Israeli “we have no competition”). I must do my own “marketing due diligence” in order to bring the best suggestions, identify the real differentiators, and open up the creative resources needed for marketing. No good consultant (including myself) is able to develop a really powerful slogan, or marketing POA if they are checking the clock, or if my customer sees me as an outsider or even worse, a “necessary evil”.

Regarding the length of the partnership, I agree, no need to “marry” the consultant. However, a plan is only as good as it’s implementation, and very often, without the consultant being there to support the implementation process, it all goes to waste.

No-one can be everything. That is why we focus on what we do best, and delegate to the rest of our team, or the consultants we hire to do a good job. Once you’ve chosen the consultant, you must allow yourself to trust them, and let them to do their job (although a good consultant will be involving and reporting to you every step of the way). The results and experience can improve your approach to the investor and to the market a hundredfold.

Comment by Or-Tal Kiriati on April 7, 2008 at 11:48am

Hi Yona and thanks for your comment.
Of course you need to get “into” the business and study it well before you can do any sort of consulting. Nobody claims otherwise. The length of the project depends on the project, there is no single requirement as the projects and the clients are different. I cannot stipulate that if a startup wants my help they have to “trust me”, in a way that will translate to long term relationship. Of course that’s what I want, and that’s the best way to work, for the client as well as for the consultant. When I recommend a strategy, I want to be there for the implementation and experience the results. But, sometimes, when the clients resources are limited, it is needed to find the golden path between the ideal situation and the real world. My experience proves that if a plan was well prepared you can delegate the implementation or some of it. Creating a dependency of the client is not a good idea, the way I see it.

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