"The general or marketing manager often knows quite well what he or she wishes to get done strategically, but often has trouble making strategy work. Business school training, it seems, has bred too much of an armchair general's skill at commanding an army from the safety of the rear lines and too little of the master sergeant's ability to take a platoon up a hill under heavy fire."
Thomas V. Bonoma
In this eminently practical book, Harvard professor Thomas V. Bonoma explains why good marketing strategies do not always get results, and offers managers sound advice about what they can do to make certain that their strategies achieve corporate goals. He opens with a clear analysis of the relationship that exists between marketing strategy and implementation, and shows how an understanding of this relationship can improve performance. Bonoma offers specific, down-to-earth guidelines for managing all four levels of marketing practice within the firm: actions (pricing, distribution, promotion, etc.); programs (coordinating actions to maximize market penetration); systems (formal methods of budgeting, sales reporting, and operations control); and policies (the directives that frame the firm's identity and basic thrust). Throughout, Bonoma skillfully attacks the different problems that marketing managers face and shares his firsthand knowledge of more than twenty-five firms -- including AT&T, Alcan, Frito-Lay, Gillette, Hertz, and Merrill Lynch -- whose managers' experiences uncover the common traps that beset the best-laid plans, as well as pointing a path to good practice.
Bonoma also spells out the critical personal and managerial skills the marketing manager must have to overcome typical obstacles to top performance. These skills enable managers to deal efficiently with practical problems ranging from handling advertising agencies to revamping the entire sales force for a new product entry.
In a field that has been strong on strategy but short on implementation, The Marketing Edge offers "Monday-morning" dividends. It takes managers past the tidy realm of theory and gives them the tools and skills they need to make marketing strategies work in the real world.