Someone asked me yesterday how I can be comfortable marketing such a wide range of products. Over my career, I have marketed semiconductors to the data networking, telecom, and storage markets; telecom equipment to the carriers; branding consulting services to various companies; project software to small and medium businesses; and now LED light fixtures for residential and commercial applications.
I thought about it for a bit and concluded that it's because I'm a marketing fundamentalist. What does that mean? It means that the fundamentals of marketing apply no matter what the product, service, or market. The fundamentals are the things we learned in business school, like the three Cs and the four Ps, and Porter's five forces. If you can really understand those fundamentals and can intelligently apply them, then you can really market anything, and that's what I try to do with any product or in any market. I know that if I get the fundamentals right, I'll do well.
What I am not is a market visionary. These are the people that can see the future, that can anticipate customers' needs before the customers do, that can extrapolate from where things were, through where they are now, to where they will or won't be. I love working with people like that, because I complement them well. They envision, I execute.
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