ADVISORY/Experts Available To Discuss Survey on Average Tenure for Chief Marketing Officers.

Business Editors

ADVISORY...

--(BUSINESS WIRE)

TOPIC: A survey conducted by executive recruiter Spencer Stuart found the average tenure for a chief marketing officer (CMO) is 23.6 months, according to an article by Advertising Age. Experts say frequent turnover can lead to a decline in company sales and can hinder branding efforts. Turnover can also negatively affect the representing agency. The article says when a CMO is replaced most agencies must start from scratch, basically treating the situation as if they are a brand new client.

EXPERTS: ExpertSource can offer several highly qualified experts to comment on this story:

Louise Anderson, president and CEO of Anderson Performance Improvement Company, believes one of the few ways sales and marketing executives can produce a quick numbers boost, without sacrificing long-term strategy, is to improve the performance of the sales team. Anderson can provide tips on how to do this. For example, she can discuss research on the bottom-line effectiveness of sales incentives, which varies depending on what is awarded and how. For every contest you announce, the same top people win, more or less. The result? Every quarter, the top people have to jump a little higher to win the prizes, while the mass of steady but unremarkable performers -- the middle 80% -- aren't affected much at all. It's hardly a formula for dramatic gains. Anderson asks: What if companies focused not on the finish line, but on the behaviors it took to get there fastest? Managers could identify their top performers' techniques for success, teach those techniques to the "80 percent club," and move the needle not just a little, but 20, 40 or 60 percent. Her approach not only gets great bottom-line results -- it also reduces turnover and raises morale. Louise is a 20-year veteran of the performance incentives industry. She can provide lively, example-filled commentary on how companies can motivate and energize people to achieve more through effective use of performance incentives and address questions like: What's the best -- and the worst -- incentive to motivate better performance? Why is it less effective to give people a well-defined goal -- "improve sales of our new product by 15%" -- than to reward specific actions -- "ask an open-ended question in every sales call"? Her firm works with Fortune 1000 companies to improve performance in sales, customer service, and other areas, and guarantees 200% ROI on every project. 651-438-9825 [e-mail]

As CEO of Deploy Solutions, Nicole Stata drives the company's strategic direction and spearheads its efforts to become the global leader in workforce management solutions. Stata brings a unique combination of human resources, systems engineering, technical management and customer support expertise to Deploy. Stata gained early insight into the promise of the Web as a powerful foundation for strategic workforce management, which led to her founding Deploy Solutions in 1997. A graduate of the University of Vermont, and alumni business advisor to students at the University, Stata is a member of The International Association for Human Resource Information Management (IHRIM), The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), The Northeast Human Resource Association (NEHRA) and the Center for Quality of Management. Stata also serves as an Advisory Board Member for Human Capital Strategies & News Magazine. Ms. Stata has spoken at many of the industry's leading conferences including DCI's Human Capital Management Conference, IHRIM's Spring Conference and the Technologic Partners' Enterprise Outlook Conference. PR Contact: John Ponte 781-461-9024 x216 [e-mail]

Jeffrey Pfeffer is the Thomas D. Dee Professor of Organizational Behavior in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. He is the author or co-author of nine books: The External Control of Organizations: A Resource Dependence Perspective, Organizational Design, Power in Organizations, Organizations and Organization Theory, Managing with Power: Politics and Influence in Organizations (translated into German, Dutch, Chinese, Spanish and Portuguese), Competitive Advantage Through People: Unleashing the Power of the Work Force (translated into Portuguese, Korean, Dutch, Spanish, and Turkish), New Directions for Organization Theory: Problems and Prospects, The Human Equation: Building Profits by Putting People First (translated into Spanish and Japanese), and The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge Into Action (due out October, 1999). Dr. Pfeffer has served on the faculties of the business schools at the University of Illinois and the University of California at Berkeley. Dr. Pfeffer received his B.S. in Administration and Management Science and his M.S. in Industrial Administration from Carnegie-Mellon University. He obtained his Ph.D. in Business Administration from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. 650-723-2915 650-723-2300 (University PR Phone)

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