BOOKLETS

// Excerpt from "22 Steps to Optimizing Your International Marketing Communications", by Bengt Anderson

Communication is your most profitable business.

Today, many chief executives in industry still believe that marketing communication and advertising are strictly for companies that sell to home consumers. Yet for many industrial companies, the best opportunities for rapid profit improvement lie in communicating more effectively, both internally and externally. This brochure suggests some ways to take advantage of such opportunities.

These observations refer exclusively to business marketing (i.e., to situations where customers are companies, government agencies or other organizations). While they relate primarily to international communications, most of them also apply to companies operating in only one country.

1. Your employees must live your strategy.
Often there's a wide gap what top management says and what employees actually hear and act on.

According to one study, eight of ten chief executives believe their strategies are clearly formulated and clearly understood by their employees. But only three of ten middle-management executives say they know what their companies' strategies really are. So you can imagine the proportion for rank-and-file employees.

Many companies believe they have a strategy when all they really have is verbiage – words that few of their employees comprehend and fewer act on. Words alone simply don't make strategy. To become strategy they must be translated into action.

Your company's strategy can only be effective if everybody in your company, at home and abroad, is aware of it and knows what to do to put it into action.

The best opportunity for many companies to rapidly improve their earnings is to make their corporate strategy intelligible, accessible and familiar to all their employees by optimizing internal communications. ( Order the booklet "22 Steps to Optimizing Your International Marketing Communications")