As your organization evolves towards a marketing-oriented entity, you may have or will encounter many hurdles. Phillip Kotler, marketing professor and guru, identifies at least three hurdles:

Organizational Resistance

Some other departments within your organization may feel that a stronger marketing function threatens their power. Such resistance is especially strong in industries where marketing is being introduced or has had a historically weak role, such as hospitals, colleges, law offices and government agencies.

Slow Learning

In spite of resistance, many organizations manage to introduce some marketing. Company presidents establish a marketing department, marketing or industry talent is hired, the marketing budget is substantially increased, and marketing planning and control systems are introduced. Even with all these steps, many times when seeking talent the emphasis is placed on industry experience rather than on marketing experience, and the learning of marketing and healthy marketing practices is slow.

Fast Forgetting

Even after marketing has been installed, management must fight a common tendency to forget basic marketing principles and even more importantly, healthy marketing principles, especially in the wake of marketing success.