Diego Marino
Product Management
September 12, 2012
Karen Twilmann
Microsoft Canada Case
The Microsoft Canada: Sales & Product Management working together case, exemplifies in an excellent manner what usually happens in an organization: the clash between the sales and marketing areas. The case introduces the different points of views of the Sales Manager (Doug Taylor) and the Group Product Manager (Barry Zeidenberg) regarding the launch of a new product. The new product under consideration, a Zeidenberg’s idea, is a consumer education website that according to him would be essential to build long term customer awareness. The maintenance of the new product was estimated at $1 million per year, which signified 10 percent of annual sales and marketing combined budget.
Doug Taylor and Barry Zeidenberg have worked in consumer packaged goods companies (Coca-Cola and Unilever) before their entrance to Microsoft. Both of them have had experience in both, selling and marketing departments. In reference to the introduction of the new website they have encountered opinions. The first thought of Taylor about the launch of the “Microsoft Home Magazine” is that the money would be better invested in sales channels because this would generate an increase of sales revenue. In contrast, Zeidenberg strongly believes that this investment is completely necessary in order to maintain and gain customers in the long term.
Zeidenberg’s main objective is to create a need in customer’s minds that in the long term will achieve the objective of increasing sales, customer awareness, and could create a competitive advantage. He wants to focus in the customer lifetime’s value, “the amount of profit a customer delivers to your company for as long as the customer is buying from you” (Customer Lifetime Value). Thus, from Zeidenberg’s point of view, investing in the initiative would help to