Deluded Boss

[PAJ79]

Hi guys,

This is my first post and I hope I've come to the right place!

I work as a marketer for a small technology firm. I've been brought in as the owner, my boss, wants to move away from contract work to developing his own products. I was employed after months and months of work had already been put into the development and the products are nearly complete.

The problem is the products aren't particularly good, desirable or useful to any market. My boss doesn't see this. He has unwavering believe in the products and I have to market them, which I am finding impossible. Furthermore the company isn't making a lot of month and although I am being paid I have no budget to perform my marketing duties.

I have tried a subtle approach to telling the manager that as the products stand they are not ready to be sold, but my boss is very stubborn and as these have been pet projects he is very emotionally attached to them and doesn't react well to, well, to the truth.

Has anyone been in a situation where they have to deal with a stubborn boss with unrealistic expectations of their offering, that you have to try and market and if so how did you deal with the situation?

I feel I am way beyond being brutally honest as I've tried subtly mentioning more work could be done, or a specific market should be targeted which unfortunately wasn't decided before he began investing time and money into the projects.

Thank you in advance for any advice, or thoughts you can offer.

 

[winton50]

What a difficult position to be in.

How about suggesting a prospective customer forum? Maybe present the items, get the customers to use them and get feedback from them

If he won't believe you then maybe he'll believe his target market

 

[RedEvo]

Leave.

d

 

[leemason]

What made you take the job in the first place? I ask because there must have been some solid reasons why you took the post. Where products or features promised that have not been delivered? Did you have a chance to examine what you would be selling before starting? Is this just version 1 and are more features planned that you might be able to sell the initial version based on future features? Or are the products non-starters in your opinion? If so you have no choice but to leave and market something that you truly believe in. If they have some future potential then focus on that (assuming the business can last the course).

 

[ivebeenstiffed]

ignore. misread the post soz

 

[ivebeenstiffed]

I work as a marketer for a small technology firm. I've been brought in as the owner, my boss, wants to move away from contract work to developing his own products. I was employed after months and months of work had already been put into the development and the products are nearly complete.

How long has he been supplying the original product before he decided to make his own?

Was it successful when the original product was being supplied under contract?

If it was successful before and he has taken the time to develop a competitive product, what's different about?

The problem is the products aren't particularly good, desirable or useful to any market. My boss doesn't see this. He has unwavering believe in the products and I have to market them, which I am finding impossible. Furthermore the company isn't making a lot of month and although I am being paid I have no budget to perform my marketing duties.

I have tried a subtle approach to telling the manager that as the products stand they are not ready to be sold, but my boss is very stubborn and as these have been pet projects he is very emotionally attached to them and doesn't react well to, well, to the truth.

Has anyone been in a situation where they have to deal with a stubborn boss with unrealistic expectations of their offering, that you have to try and market and if so how did you deal with the situation?

I feel I am way beyond being brutally honest as I've tried subtly mentioning more work could be done, or a specific market should be targeted which unfortunately wasn't decided before he began investing time and money into the projects.

Thank you in advance for any advice, or thoughts you can offer.

Dangerous I know, but, reading between the lines your boss has put a lot of effort into this.

Im just curious if he was making money Before he built his own product? And if he thought he was going to improve the product and where it might have gone wrong.

Trev

 

[Jon236]

Been there, done that, had to leave.

 

[jelly3]

Leave.

d

Will you give the OP a job if they leave?

 

[ShortCouture]

It's always difficult to get past someone's emotional attachment. You can try - as has been suggested - user testing, give product to poss customers to try (field trials), take their feedback. Also do your homework. What does the research tell you? no market? no commercial advantage? more expensive? whatever it is - it's hard to argue with the stats - and the customer feedback.

If all off that is negative and he still won't listen then you really do need to explain to him that you don't want to be a part of him destroying the company that he worked so hard to build.

Sometimes this type of person will not take advice from their staff - only from peers or people that they admire - is there someone that you could approach?

 

[PAJ79]

sorry if this is a second reply from me, am replying from my phone and its rather footery to type using keys the size of nano particles!

thank you for the replies, and to the gent who suggested I "just leave", I don't normally bail at the first sign of trouble.
I should point out I am a recent graduate so for some time I was doubting my capabilities but I have sought advice from mature and established friend and colleagues in other businesses and they confirmed my methods are sound.

to answer other questions my boss made money by working freelance for other firms before. something he wad Damn good at I understand.

I believe this is a case of emotional attachment which I sympathise with but unfortunately I was brought in too late to do my research and maybe point him in right direction.

 

[ivebeenstiffed]

never too late.. especially when you are still being paid a salary

 

[Billmccallum]

Just to play devils advocate...

You say in a reply that you are a recent graduate, in what?

Do you have the skills and knowledge to say that the products are useless?

How have you arrived at your conclusion?

A marketing position is one where you are expected to provide a variety of marketing tools to allow the employer to bring the product to market...is it your job to tell him his work is crap?

You are expected to use marketing skills, so use them. If the products fail in the market then you will be justified in your point of view, until then you should do what you're paid for.

Hi guys,

This is my first post and I hope I've come to the right place!

I work as a marketer for a small technology firm. I've been brought in as the owner, my boss, wants to move away from contract work to developing his own products. I was employed after months and months of work had already been put into the development and the products are nearly complete.

The problem is the products aren't particularly good, desirable or useful to any market. My boss doesn't see this. He has unwavering believe in the products and I have to market them, which I am finding impossible. Furthermore the company isn't making a lot of month and although I am being paid I have no budget to perform my marketing duties.

I have tried a subtle approach to telling the manager that as the products stand they are not ready to be sold, but my boss is very stubborn and as these have been pet projects he is very emotionally attached to them and doesn't react well to, well, to the truth.

Has anyone been in a situation where they have to deal with a stubborn boss with unrealistic expectations of their offering, that you have to try and market and if so how did you deal with the situation?

I feel I am way beyond being brutally honest as I've tried subtly mentioning more work could be done, or a specific market should be targeted which unfortunately wasn't decided before he began investing time and money into the projects.

Thank you in advance for any advice, or thoughts you can offer.

 

[PAJ79]

Hi Bill

I am a graduate in marketing. My skills and knowledge are sound, although I've not had much experience in this case the evidence to support my conclusions is rather obvious. I've done competitor analysis, bench-marketing, I've studied matrices to identify potential markets, studied the products strengths and weaknesses, and done preliminary research by conducting small focus groups and speaking to peers (unfortunately the almost complete lack of marketing resources has meant I've been unable to conduct as much research as possible), I've done secondary research, found data that shows other organisations trialing very similar products and scraping them due to zero success. Sadly all findings point to the products being ****. I have of course presented as much of this data as possible, however, blind faith in his baby has meant that he will find fault with the supporting research and convince himself that somehow his product differs enough to succeed where others have failed.

I do very much understand that soon enough regardless of the effort I put in he will see this but my job depends on the products this business sells and therefore I want them to work but I don't want to take the hit and be blamed for the failure of these ventures due to me not marketing them properly. Furthermore with being supplied with insufficient funding and resource it will be all the more likely this will happen.

It is my job to tell him his product is crap. I have been brought in to market something he has produced, this involves researching this company's offering, researching target markets, selecting the most attractive target market, identifying consumers within this segment, providing recommendations on how his product should best meet the needs of this segment etc etc, you know marketing stuff. But if there is no attractive market segment, or if consumers don't see a perceived value then he needs to know this. For his sake, my sake and that of the other employees who will be out of a job if all efforts are focused on pursuing a delusion.

 

[Billmccallum]

PAJ79

Your reference to evidence is interesting in that competitor research cannot convey the quality of the product which you are expected to sell, bench-marketing is where you choose which sets of benchmark data you choose to use in your marketing, again this does not convey the product quality.

The best way to demonstrate the quality of any product is to offer it to the consumer, they will decide if its any good.

Hi Bill

I am a graduate in marketing. My skills and knowledge are sound, although I've not had much experience in this case the evidence to support my conclusions is rather obvious. I've done competitor analysis, bench-marketing, I've studied matrices to identify potential markets, studied the products strengths and weaknesses, and done preliminary research by conducting small focus groups and speaking to peers (unfortunately the almost complete lack of marketing resources has meant I've been unable to conduct as much research as possible), I've done secondary research, found data that shows other organisations trialing very similar products and scraping them due to zero success. Sadly all findings point to the products being ****. I have of course presented as much of this data as possible, however, blind faith in his baby has meant that he will find fault with the supporting research and convince himself that somehow his product differs enough to succeed where others have failed.

I do very much understand that soon enough regardless of the effort I put in he will see this but my job depends on the products this business sells and therefore I want them to work but I don't want to take the hit and be blamed for the failure of these ventures due to me not marketing them properly. Furthermore with being supplied with insufficient funding and resource it will be all the more likely this will happen.

It is my job to tell him his product is crap. I have been brought in to market something he has produced, this involves researching this company's offering, researching target markets, selecting the most attractive target market, identifying consumers within this segment, providing recommendations on how his product should best meet the needs of this segment etc etc, you know marketing stuff. But if there is no attractive market segment, or if consumers don't see a perceived value then he needs to know this. For his sake, my sake and that of the other employees who will be out of a job if all efforts are focused on pursuing a delusion.

 

[OldWelshGuy]

in sales and marketing there is one golden truth, and that is that you cannot successfully sell something that you do not believe in. So the position really is clear here.

HE will not admit that the product is non viable.

YOU believe the product to be non viable.

So the only option really is to leave. You ahve tried to convince the guy that the product is flawed, you BELIEVE the product is flawed, and regardless of what you think, he is NOT paying you to tell him his baby is ugly, he is paying you to MARKET his baby, and unless you can get behind marketing his ugly baby, you really should leave.

Here is the risk though. 1a number of things could happen:-

1. you leave and someone else makes it work
2. you stay it fails
3. you lstay, it fails, some else makes it work
4. You leave, it fails, someone else tries and fails

The choice you and only you have to make is which of the above does a newly graduated marketing guy want on his Cv?

 

[PAJ79]

PAJ79

Your reference to evidence is interesting in that competitor research cannot convey the quality of the product which you are expected to sell, bench-marketing is where you choose which sets of benchmark data you choose to use in your marketing, again this does not convey the product quality.

The best way to demonstrate the quality of any product is to offer it to the consumer, they will decide if its any good.

But competitor analysis can convey the quality of a product. If you see that other people have developed similar systems which do all the same things as the one my business is developing, plus more, and it looks better and functions better then I would say that gives you a pretty strong indication.

I don't mean financial benchmarketing, I mean the benchmark of accepted and already products within the market that this company's offering is competing.

You did mention playing devils advocate but I now feel that you have moved in the direction of critiquing of my abilities, which are not in question. I have done enough analysis, spoke to enough people and researched enough markets to have come to the conclusion that the expectations of this product are unrealistic and most likely to be unprofitable in its current state of development. I simply sought advice on how to deal with such a situation, not to determine whether or not I was doing my job properly.

I do thank you for your feedback, but I feel based on the advice given I'm in a situation where I either need to keep going through the motions and waiting for the inevitable or simply move on.

 

[PAJ79]

in sales and marketing there is one golden truth, and that is that you cannot successfully sell something that you do not believe in. So the position really is clear here.

HE will not admit that the product is non viable.

YOU believe the product to be non viable.

So the only option really is to leave. You ahve tried to convince the guy that the product is flawed, you BELIEVE the product is flawed, and regardless of what you think, he is NOT paying you to tell him his baby is ugly, he is paying you to MARKET his baby, and unless you can get behind marketing his ugly baby, you really should leave.

Here is the risk though. 1a number of things could happen:-

1. you leave and someone else makes it work
2. you stay it fails
3. you lstay, it fails, some else makes it work
4. You leave, it fails, someone else tries and fails

The choice you and only you have to make is which of the above does a newly graduated marketing guy want on his Cv?

Thank you for this, you are probably right. I don't mean to sound defensive, if you could all see exactly what I'm charged with doing then the difficulty of my situation would be very very clear. Unfortunately I'm not going to go into the details for fear of dropping myself in it at a later date.

The CV issue is at the forefront of my mind. I am starting out my career and I don't want a bad reference due to a falling out with my employer over this. I simply want to make the best of a bad situation and perhaps stay in work for a while.

 

[OldWelshGuy]

but I feel based on the advice given I'm in a situation where I either need to keep going through the motions and waiting for the inevitable or simply move on.

And there it rests, as per my post before yours

 

[sysops]

But competitor analysis can convey the quality of a product. If you see that other people have developed similar systems which do all the same things as the one my business is developing, plus more, and it looks better and functions better then I would say that gives you a pretty strong indication.

But you need to be sufficiently qualified to make that comparison. If this is a technical product, how can you be confident that you are assessing it correctly?

 

[maxine]

I don't envy you as I have been in similar positions a number of times regards straight forward telemarketing.

If it helps I have a policy now where I don't have opinions anymore

I have to be open minded and objective about things. You can still be passionate about your job and the results and the return on investment without being too emotionally charged about the product. Gathering feedback at every stage and activity and presenting the feedback with analysis in a way that helps people to draw their own conclusions can help.

Everything I do has objective feedback... good and bad, which can then be evaluated to make decisions and do financial forecasts.

The thing is that this is a live product for you... it's not an idea or concept on a flip chart. Therefore real life feedback speaks volumes. There may be 99 people not interested and 1 that is, what makes this commercially attractive is the profit that the 1% can bring. I don't know whether in your role of marketing whether you have an insight into the financial model. Don't mean to sound like I am saying anything that you don't know but what I mean is sometimes it can be very draining and damaging to focus on the negatives of a product. Sometimes you just have to accept the lack of appeal to the masses and work on the teeny percentage that will appeal and bring in the profit.

Some owners/managers can be scared at the prospect of trying to understand "competitor analysis" and "benchmarking" and "market segmentation analysis" as they simply don't understand it and their gut feeling over-rides any of this information. The only way I feel you can overcome some of this is with real life, objective information that you can present in a constructive way.

Hopefully this will be your only job where you have market a product to make a silk purse out of a sows ear But if not, then don't worry about your CV as anyone interviewing you will be able to see how you responded to a challenge

Good luck

 

[Rob S]

If it helps I have a policy now where I don't have opinions anymore

This ^^^^^

Sounds like you have my old job. My boss was passionate about his product - even though it wouldn't work. I did "buy" into it and we did get some new customers - which were lost when it was realised that there was a major design fault with the product and six months of re-engineering was required (at which point I was made redundant).

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but this will be a repeating theme throughout your career as a marketeer. Sometimes you will have to promote a product that doesn't make sense or fit with your life ethos.

Just make the right noises and take the salary while it is offered. These are hard times.