Five Keys to a Successful Marketing Team

David Gordon, principal of the Channel Marketing Group (www.channelmkt.com), has coined the term "entrepreneurism" to describe the reason for a company's initial success.

But too often, he says, that spirit is abandoned when companies become complacent.

Gordon offers five characteristics necessary for reclaiming "entrepreneurism":

1. Focused: Understand your company's vision and where opportunities lie.
2. Cheap: Seek the highest value at the lowest cost and ensure that you are your market's low-cost provider.
3. Competitive: Know your competition. Identify trends and understand how your customers and suppliers perceive you versus your competitors.
4. Imaginative: Create teams to stimulate new ideas. Being imaginative involves a four-letter word: work.
5. Tolerant of risk: Seek new markets, be the first in your market to offer a new service, point your company in a new direction and listen to others (customers, suppliers, customers' customers).

Gordon says most builders are focused and competitive, but he contends there is critical underperformance industrywide in his three other areas.