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Preface


Like many things in life, I've found that in business,
and in marketing, things seem to happen in groups of
three. For example, according to Dean Kring,
director of the Entrepreneurial Development Center
in Houston, successful businesses are:

       *     1/3 product or service
       *     1/3 administration
       *     1/3 marketing and sales

What this means is that time, resources, personal
etc. should be divided up at approximately these
ratios. The sharp manager or CEO will overcome his
nature favoritism and inclination toward one of the
three and see that all get equal attention.


Picture any business as a three sided pyramid. Each
corner is one of those three business parts.
Forming the top of pyramid is the CEO. Within the
pyramid are an infinite number of points that
include various proportions of each of the three
parts, plus anything else that is part of the
business structure. Businesses rarely operate from
the corners, that's why any real life business tool
must deal with all the parts, no matter what they
are or how they are defined. I wish I could break
marketing out of the larger context, but
unfortunately it can't be done. That's one of the
primary reasons my 8-POINT AUDIT and 5-POINT
PLANNING approaches grew into so many points.


I also would have liked to combine the market
auditing and market planning into a single entity.
Again, it wasn't possible. That's why all the
marketing books I've collected and read turn out to
be either auditing workbooks or planning workbooks.
Therefore, while I couldn't combine them into a
single entity, I included both in this book, albeit as
separate sections. This seems to be something of a
first in the field of marketing books. While my
actions may have broken some hidden taboo, my goal
was to give you the best and most comprehensive
book available.


So, what exactly is marketing? It's everything you
say or do. It's the color of your product, the color
of your office building, the color of your tie and
how you comb your hair. It's what the outside world
thinks of you and what you think of them. It's even
what your workers think of your product or service
and how you interact and motivate those workers.
It's the essence of business and of life! You can
choose to be indifferent to it, or your can become a
skillful manipulator of it. Yet no matter how you
perceive it or decide to exploit it, you can't escape
from it....


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How To Use This Book


This book has four main sections: 1) 8-Point
Marketing Audit; 2) 5-Point Market Planning; 3)
Reference Guide; and 4) Meeting PROTEC. It was tough
deciding if auditing or planning should come first. If
you're starting from scratch, then planning comes
first. However, from there forward the procedure is
to conduct an audit first. This is followed by
planning to correct any deficiencies discovered
during the audit. Marketing audits need to be done
on an ongoing basis. Corrections, or planning fixes,
must be applied as needed.


Section three, the reference section, exists
because there is more to marketing than filling in
blank lines and asking yourself a lot of questions.
Section four might be called Marketing Examples, but
the truth is that it's more of a marketing plug for
the author's own services...

Begin with whatever section makes logical sense to
you and HAPPY MARKETING!


       SECTION I - 8-Point Marketing Audit

Evaluate your entire marketing from 8 key
perspectives


       SECTION II - 5-Point Market Planning

How to get a complete marketing program up and
running (a 5-POINT PLANNING PROGRAM)


       SECTION III - Reference Guide

Short essays, articles, and tips & tricks that
provides an eclectic cross section of insights and
information as well as some fun reading


       SECTION IV - Meeting PROTEC

See some actual marketing materials and become a
part of the author's own hidden agenda

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