Customer Reviews

High Performance Marketing: Bringing Method to the Madness of Marketing

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As businesses fail and the economy shrinks, many organizations are keeping a watchful eye on their marketing departments. Since many marketing departments are responsible for customer satisfaction, advertising, sales, and above all, results, marketers often become the victims of downsizing as a result of the company's overall performance. In Naras Eechambadi's new book "High Performance Marketing," the author gives sound advice on how marketers can perform at a higher level to achieve success.

"High Performance Marketing" explains the reasons and methods for metrics in detail, the importance of aligning the marketing department with the company's strategic goals, the importance of aligning the marketing department with the IT department, and much more. For instance on the subject of financial metrics, the author observes:

"Financial metrics offer a retrospective view of results; they do not indicate what actions we must take to drive results. However, these are the results most often reported to the financial marketplace and the investors who have the last word on shareholder value."

Not only is the book filled with sound advice from a strategic level but it also gives important tactical level advice on how to perform marketing tactics better. Eechambadi, the founder and CEO of Quaero, also provides real-world case studies from well-known companies over various industries to bring the message home. All in all, "High Performance Marketing" will please many marketing professionals who are looking for new and exciting ways to be effective in sales, marketing, and customer satisfaction.

Marketing is in crisis, and Naras Eechambadi has revealed one of the main reasons: There's a wealth of marketing information out there, but not enough managers qualified - or willing - to use it.

Yes, sixty years after the wide acceptance of the "marketing principle," that is, that companies succeed by selling customers what customers want, we see more unhappy consumers than ever before. Because of globalization and Enron-type scandals, finance has again risen to top priority in corporate boardrooms, at the expense of marketing. In other words, marketers can't even market marketing! And ironically, the financial bean-counters are leaving money on the table by driving customers away.

As a business educator, I accept some blame for this. I'm glad to see Eechambadi put forth these good remedies.

This book is a great resource for anyone who wonders what C-level executives REALLY think of Marketing - and more importantly what they want Marketing to deliver.

Naras Eechambadi's prescriptions and models provide a useful roadmap for marketers at all levels seeking the route to success - and he uses case studies and examples extensively to illustrate his points.

A very worthwhile read for anyone - at any level - struggling to express and deliver on the true value of Marketing.

There's no doubt that marketing is under pressure to perform better and perform with proof. Naras Eechambadi does not indulge in the standard marketer's whine about being underappreciated and underfunded. Instead, he provides a very comprehensive description of marketing's challenges along with evidence of early accomplishments in the form of case studies from Samsung, Gillette, Harrah's, Royal Bank of Canada, Starbucks, Bank of America and more.

His commitment to marketing evolution--through assessment to strategy to discipline, all the way to greater organizational investment--is not overenthusiastic but grounded in the potential inherent in current marketing metrics. Loyalty and retention efforts need to be translated into the financial terms of reduced service cost and increased profitability, and presented with requests for marketing budgets, for example. Use High Performance Marketing as your primer to the New Marketing.

I had the pleasure of hearing Naras speak earlier this year and was very interested in his explanation of Marketing today. High Performance Marketing sets the pace of marketing initiatives today and is a must read not only for marketing executives but for senior executives who must be involved for a marketing program to be successful.

Naras walks you through the process of today's marketing landscape and brings clarity to the realistic expectations, execution and marketing success. Marketing is an art and High Performance Marketing is a great handbook to guide you through with best practices case studies and metrics.

Great book that clearly explains how to define and use appropriate and impactful marketing measures. A must read for those tasked with developing marketing measurements.

High Performance Marketing provides compelling thought leadership and offers sound tactical advice for marketers and CRM practitioners.

Naras draws from both his professional experience and academic research which makes this book a must have for marketers and CRM practitioners.

Dr. Eechambadi, true to his form, has truly captured Marketing from the necessary angles of a) both strategic and tactical perspectives, b) people/process/technology and c) cross-functional alignment.

The struggle between the sales and marketing organizations is something that all of us have experienced. Unfortunately, once entrenched within an organization this becomes almost taboo to address. In High Performance Marketing you'll see a candid discussion on this alignment topic, not only from a sales and marketing perspective, but from an overall organizational perspetive.

Dr. Eechambadi gives a plethora of real-life examples ... this book is more practical than theoretical ... exactly what I needed.