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).