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Here Today, Gone Tomorrow... the Problem with Storage Marketers

What Caused The High Churn Rate?

Although the study did not involve interviewing individuals, Lamont did offer an opinion on the findings and what they mean. One of the factors that affected marketing executives over the last couple of years relates to the bubble bursting in the storage industry, particularly with venture-funded firms.

"Employees on the sales side of the house have to carry quotas," he says. "All of these companies went to their venture capital firms with tremendous growth plans. They were going to go from zero to a billion dollars in a very short period of time. I think they based those estimates on some of the Internet success stories they heard. They also based their funding requests on those plans. Unfortunately for the marketing and sales executives, their jobs are tied to those plans."

Of course, when the bubble burst and the plans became worthless, heads had to roll. Looking back now, the plans were probably unrealistic from the start, with many sales and marketing guys carrying quotas that were simply unattainable. When the lofty projections do not turn into sales, companies cannot go back to their venture capitalists and say they have to cut their plan in half. Instead they find themselves a new executive and set a new quota. Unfortunately, a lot of executives did find themselves caught in that exact position. They signed off on the quota agreements so as not to be the only troublemaker stating the business plan would not fly.

The Marketing Function Has Changed "There is definitely a learning curve for people involved in the technology market," states Lamont. "A couple of years ago, when resources were flowing, it made a lot of sense for sales and marketing and sales executives to hire reasonably large teams to do all of the marketing. There were large marketing communication teams, channel specialists, and product marketers. We saw a lot of smaller companies that were behaving like large companies in the way they put resources into marketing."

That situation has changed as companies have become far more pragmatic. Many are now looking at the structure they have in place and asking hard questions: They certainly have to perform all of the marketing functions, but do they really have to hire someone to do that for them? Is it a full-time job that will last a year or more, or is it something that will last three to six months and then have to be scaled back?

Many marketing activities require skills and resources, but do not have to be full time positions. When launching a product, companies will go through three to six months of intense marketing activity, and will then transition into sustaining mode. If that is the case, then why hire someone and pay them $100,000 per year when they will soon be doing only low value work?

But certainly there is not all gloom and doom for marketing execs. The war is over, an economic rebound seems to be just around the corner, and new start-ups are popping up almost every week. The future may just now be looking good for marketing and sales professionals. We expect to see even more appointment announcements going forward.

...Jobstor.com profile