François M. Jacques

When I became head of marketing at Lafarge’s cement division in late 2001, old-timers used to tell me that there were only two types of customers: those who liked golf and those who liked fishing. Welcome to the front lines of your typical cement company—a hardscrabble world peopled by grizzled salesmen whose pitches were aimed at making friends rather than demonstrating that their products were better than the competition’s.

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Reprint: R0705G
When Fran&#231;ois Jacques became head of marketing at Lafarge&#8217;s cement division in late 2001, old-timers told him that there were only two types of customers: those who liked golf and those who liked fishing. Welcome to the front lines of your typical cement company, a hardscrabble world peopled by grizzled salesmen whose pitches are about making friends rather than demonstrating that their products are better than the competition&#8217;s.
It isn&#8217;t easy to establish a marketing function in a company that doesn&#8217;t think it needs one. From the start, Jacques tackled the challenge on a number of fronts. First, he formed a three-person steering committee with both his strongest ally and his most vociferous foe in the executive ranks. Then he set right to work applying marketing&#8217;s most basic and powerful tools&#8212;segmentation and pricing strategy&#8212;to four carefully chosen pilot projects. To make the value of those efforts quickly apparent, he measured their effectiveness with readily understood metrics. He shared the ongoing results as widely as possible by establishing regional networks of marketing and sales executives. He wove marketing into Lafarge&#8217;s mainstream management processes by becoming a fixture at the company&#8217;s strategic-planning, performance, and budgeting discussions.
Step by step, over the next four years, Jacques and his team of first temporary, and then permanent, marketers fundamentally transformed Lafarge&#8217;s commodity mind-set. Segmenting customers allowed people to see that they were selling to different groups that required different products, which in many cases could be sold for higher-than-commodity prices. Customer satisfaction surveys led them to improve supply chain execution and, ultimately, to change what they sold, so that their offerings were suited to a range of customer requirements, increasing value both for them and for the division.
Many firms have a marketing function in name only. These lessons can serve as a model for such companies looking to escape the commodity trap.

Even Commodities Have Customers

Reprint: R0705G When François Jacques became head of marketing at Lafarge’s cement division in late 2001, old-timers told him that there were only two types of customers: those who liked golf and those who liked fishing. Welcome to the front lines of your typical cement company, a hardscrabble world peopled by grizzled salesmen whose pitches are about making friends rather than demonstrating that their products are better than the competition’s. It isn’t easy to establish a marketing function in a company that doesn’t think it needs one. From the start, Jacques tackled the challenge on a number of fronts. First, he formed a three-person steering committee with both his strongest ally and his most vociferous foe in the executive ranks. Then he set right to work applying marketing’s most basic and powerful tools—segmentation and pricing strategy—to four carefully chosen pilot projects. To make the value of those efforts quickly apparent, he measured their effectiveness with readily understood metrics. He shared the ongoing results as widely as possible by establishing regional networks of marketing and sales executives. He wove marketing into Lafarge’s mainstream management processes by becoming a fixture at the company’s strategic-planning, performance, and budgeting discussions. Step by step, over the next four years, Jacques and his team of first temporary, and then permanent, marketers fundamentally transformed Lafarge’s commodity mind-set. Segmenting customers allowed people to see that they were selling to different groups that required different products, which in many cases could be sold for higher-than-commodity prices. Customer satisfaction surveys led them to improve supply chain execution and, ultimately, to change what they sold, so that their offerings were suited to a range of customer requirements, increasing value both for them and for the division. Many firms have a marketing function in name only. These lessons can serve as a model for such companies looking to escape the commodity trap.

Even Commodities Have Customers

Summary.

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