I don’t know how to break this to you - - after all we’ve been friends for so long. But because you asked me to be your mentor some time ago, I feel a certain license to speak up.
There is no polite way to say this: it seems you are just drifting through your business life. You seem to get good job reviews; you earn more every year; and you have more responsibility and more people to manage. But I have to ask, are you making a difference? We’re supposed to, you know. We talked about this years ago, but it seems to have gotten lost.
As the head of marketing for your company, have you made a difference in the marketplace? Is your market share growing? Are you getting the best return on investment for the marketing dollars you’re spending in branding and lead generation?
Are you making a difference to the employees who look to you for leadership? Are they learning and growing? Are they satisfied in their jobs and the work they do for you? Are they making a difference?
Tom Brokaw said, “It's easy to make a buck.
It's a lot tougher to make a difference.”
The answer is that you won’t make a difference until you decide to stop being self-centered and reticent, and realize that you have enormous talent. The trick is making a decision to use the talent given you for something other than immediate self-satisfaction.
People seem to like working for you. You’re a great writer. You have a good family. Children follow you like the Pied Piper. Singing in the choir is a real talent. And you have a natural talent for marketing, but can you do more? You generate millions of dollars in potential business for your company by generating leads. You are making a difference.
Let me tell you a real story.
Early in my career I was a VP of Marketing for a medical device company. We made the decision to import new models of electrocardiographs (ECGs) for doctors’ offices that could diagnose if a patient had or was having a heart attack. It didn’t just provide a graph that the doctor couldn’t read, and which subsequently had to be sent to a cardiologist; it gave a printed diagnosis. Until that time, ECG diagnoses were essentially only available at hospitals and cardiology offices. Now, instead of sending the graph to the cardiologist and waiting a few days for the result, the results were printed on the chart. The average GP could immediately see the patient’s condition.
Did this make a difference to doctors, insurance companies and the patient? You bet. It helped millions of people. My company president at the time just wanted to make money, and so did I, but I also had the opportunity to make a difference. When I brought it up one day, he muttered, “Ok Jim. Do it your way, but just do it.” I created enough demand to place many thousands of these instruments into doctor’s offices across the United States. It totally changed the marketplace and how doctors could serve patients with heart conditions. The company went from fifteen to forty salespeople in 18 months. I felt I was making a difference. But enough about me.
Your company did not hire you to manage people! The company hired you to make a difference.
Only you can decide if you’re just bumping though life, or making a difference. Certainly one way to make a difference in your company is to manage the prospects you have found (mange the leads) to the best of your ability. Inquiries and leads decline in value month after month. Spending the company’s money wisely, finding the most prospects, exposing them to your great products, helps your salespeople make quota. After all, the company did not hire you to manage people or to spend their money; they hired you to make a difference and that is what you’re supposed to do. Seems like a simple chore doesn’t it?
The last time we talked about this you said, “If it’s so simple, why do so few people do it well?” I can say from experience that those who do it well are making a difference.
I’ll close out this brief letter with some advice from the famous runner and Olympic athlete, Steve Perfontaine, who said, “To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.”
