Marketing Skills Development

The current and emerging competitive business environment and the challenges from globalised economy make it difficult for anybody to start and sustain a business venture without sound knowledge and skills on how to start and grow the business. This goes hand in hand with proper marketing and selling skills to win and retain customers who are becoming more sophisticated and demanding. Most successful business ventures invest strategically in marketing and selling of their products and services. With proliferation of marketing communication channels, each venture has to make strategic choice of which ones to use to make the most value addition in line with its organizational goal. Marketing plays a crucial role not only in developing, producing, and selling products or services but also in expansion and guiding recruiting efforts as well as raising capital for business growth. 

More often than not the important questions asked by investors in early stage of ventures, or decision makers in larger business enterprises, are strategic marketing questions like: Who is the customer? What problem do you solve for him? How big is the market? How quickly is it growing? How would you make your products and services available to the customer? Who are the competitors? What is your sustainable competitive advantage? etc. A mistake in preventive marketing and unfocused marketing effort as business runs might cost the company badly. Given the strategic role of marketing in the success of any organization, capacity building in a form of training cannot be overemphasized. Marketing staff must continuously update their knowledge and skills to strive under the ever-changing business environment.