How Hip Is Your Business?

If you want to find out how leading-edge your organization is, take this little quiz. It’s made up of key questions that should help you grade your ability to succeed in the wild world of marketing. Respond “yes” or “no” to each question – cheating with a “maybe” will get you nowhere.

1. Does your business come from “demand creation,” facilitated by “efficient supply?”

2. Can you see your business status pretty much real-time – i.e., with an “instrument panel” reporting revenues, share, margins, trends?

3. Do you view FSIs as a tool for rewarding current users that should be used sparingly?

4. When you go out on the road, do you detour to interesting retail venues?

5. Does your vice president of marketing know several key retailers by name and meet with them often?

6. Does your organization attend any Management Ventures retailer seminars?

7. Is your trade deal structure based on performance, and is it flexible (not fixed windows, but fixed deals, on fixed brands and sizes only)?

8. Do you have an effective way to get extra money for extra retailer opportunities based on ROI (or does Sales have to fax a request to headquarters)?

9. Do marketers in your organization get compensated based on business results?

10. Do you know where Bentonville is?

11. Has your chief executive officer attended consumer focus groups within the past six months?

12. Is your most potent marketing tool something other than temporary price reductions?

13. Does Marketing co-develop programs with Sales and share in their success and/or failure (or is it a hand-off and prayer)?

14. Was your last successful new product introduction within the past 18 months?

15. Do you manage your business beyond just IRI or Nielsen only?

16. Is internal competition in your organization less intense than external competition?

17. Do you treat your agencies as partners?

18. Does this year’s marketing plan look significantly better than last year’s?

19. Is your team accountable for planning and implementation (or do they move along too quickly)?

20. Are you excited driving to work and sad to leave at the end of the day (or vice versa)?

21. Is your organization’s vocabulary more “yes” than “no”?

22. Do you spend less than one-third of your total work hours in meetings?

23. Is your organization’s consulting budget less than five percent of the marketing budget?

24. Are you embracing new technology as it comes along?

25. Do you put off-line programs online as an integrated part of your marketing plan?

26. Is your first response to a new idea, “Let’s see how we can make this work” (or is it, “That’ll never work”)?

27. Do you keep an eye on the competition?

28. Have you compared your industry/category/aisle with another completely different industry/category/aisle within the last year?

29. Does an integrated management team run your organization (or is one function really in charge)?

Scoring: If you answered “yes” to all questions, please call me, because I’d like to buy some of your stock. If you answered “yes” to more than half the questions, you should be in Fortune (and on the cover of promo, of course). If you answered “yes” to at least eight questions, you’re still better than average (really) and should be gaining share.

Fewer than eight? Join the crowd – but start figuring out how to improve your score.