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When Clyde Fessler attended his first Harley Davidson motorcycle rally, he didn’t expect to be accosted by a large, leather-clad biker. It was only after being thrown aside – literally – by the aforementioned Harley customer that Fessler realized that his new sales and marketing position wasn’t exactly what he had expected.
“That’s when I really started to understand that you have to know who your talking to,” said Fessler, former vice president of business development for Harley Davidson, Milwaukee, Wis. “You have to know your customers – that’s the most important rule in business.”
In his keynote address “Strategic Marketing in Anxious Times,” presented to the American Landscape Contractors Association (ALCA) at GIE on Nov.6, Fessler explained to several hundred attendees that business success comes from identifying items in three specific categories: 1) the company’s strengths and weaknesses; 2) the company’s target customers and 3) the customers needs and expectations. Additioanlly, Fessler identified the five Ps of marketing that can help companies accomplish those tasks and profit from them.
The Five Ps of Marketing
1. Product. When Harley Davidson started losing money after a merger in the 1980s, one weakness they identified about their company was that their motorcycles were of a lower quality than those from more successful Japanese companies like Honda and Kawasaki. To recover customer support, the Harley Davidson went back to the drawing board to clean up oil leaks and other common problems with machines and create a product that matched up to their competitors’ quality.
2. Pricing. Of course, better materials and better bikes meant higher prices for consumers, and Harley Davidson’s prices were already higher than those of their competitors. However, with redesigned, higher quality motorcycles to sell, Fessler and other Harley Davidson sales representatives were challenged to sell customers on the products’ other highlights: value, tradition and American engineering.
3. Promotion. With the right sales tools for a great product, Harley Davidson moved on to the third P of promoting their company. “We started celebrating anniversaries to drive a wedge between us and our competition,” Fessler said. Illustrated by photos of Harley-filled parking lots, he shared the success of Harley Davidson’s 90th anniversary party in 1993 – one of many anniversaries, rallies and customer events the company throws every year.
4. Place. “Part of showcasing the company’s products and offerings meant showing our customers that a Harley Davidson dealer is a friendly place and individualizing those places depending on the area of the country,” Fessler explained. From an art deco-style dealership in Miami, Fla., to a sleek and modern showroom in Denmark, the company began highlighting the uniqueness of each dealership’s area, making customers feel more welcome. Additionally, Harley Davidson began to push their line of “motorclothes” in company boutiques around the world. With the help of that brand recognition, Harley Davidson sold 77,000 motorcycles and 7,000,000 garments in the same year.
5. People. “People are the most important ingredient in any business because they’re your mainstay,” Fessler said. By requiring employees at the corporate office to complete at least 40 hours of additional business instruction and giving dealers the training to do their jobs well, Harley Davidson ensures that as their employees grow, so does the company. Moreover, the company highlights their own employees – from executives to assembly line technicians – by using them as legitimate Harley Davidson models in Motorclothes ads.
Overall, Fessler explained that the five Ps of marketing can help any company succeed and that improving even one area of company operations can make a sizeable difference. In words of solid Harley Davidson wisdom, Fessler said: “If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.”
The author is Assistant Editor of Lawn & Landscape magazine and can be reached at lspiers@lawnandlandscape.com.