Oi, switch on that Radar!

It’s true that my inner nerd is in love with the graphtastic experience of indulgently immersing yourself in economic indicators and industry statistics. But the practical benefits of knowing what the future may hold are, I find, significant.

A key role of a decent marketing team should be to be the business ‘radar’, always looking at the horizon for indications of future storms or Indian summers, keeping a close eye on competitive activity, and regularly taking the temperature of the market. Sadly, in Our Great Industry, many marketing teams aren’t particularly decent, and are relegated to colouring-in activities.

Perhaps to illustrate this, there was just one Marketing Director at the conference, despite the fact that over half the delegates were Directors of some sort.

Now, there could be two reasons for that, first, that there are no Marketing Directors in Construction – perhaps they’ve all been made redundant in the early part of the recession? The second reason is more likely – they just don’t do that kind of thing. Some of course will have sent their underlings, which is fair enough, but others clearly don’t recognise gathering and interpreting business intelligence as part of their role.

It seems obvious (or should do) that being able to see what’s ahead is a useful knack. Headlights were invented so driving cars at night wouldn’t be quite so hazardous. Do you have a good picture of what’s likely to happen in your key markets? If you don’t, then how are you going to plan?

But blindly following forecasts can be hazardous. At the conference, Wolseley Sales & Marketing Director Richard Marchbank explained how they’d followed the 2005 predictions that the construction sector would continue its steady growth and added capacity accordingly. Sadly the economy failed to follow the predicted graph and they were left with too many staff and too many branches, and forced into a severe round of cuts.

Industry forecasts like the Construction Products Association’s one (which is arguably the best) are one part of the early warning system any company needs. It can be supplemented by other data – ONS statistics, Glenigan trends work, even government department data can be helpful. Then there’s your own internal information – sales data for example – and your customers’ and suppliers’. Try getting together with all your supply chain neighbours and see what they’re thinking. If they’re all gearing up for growth, chances are you might want to think about it.

Ross Sturley is a member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing Construction Industry Group (CIMCIG) organising committee, a Construction News blogger, and has endured ‘death by powerpoint’ on many occasions.Presenters – look at the audience, not at your slides! Anyone planning to think ahead in the way described heremay be interested in CIMCIG’s December Conference – Strategy 2010– designed to help you plan for the comingyear.