I had written two posts on my practical experience the other day on how not getting one packet out of the two I had ordered….made me feel bad while getting a complementary gift from the company which was roughly 8 times more in terms of value did not cause me as much joy.

This has a lot of implications for us marketing folks, whether you’re in product management or brand management etc.

Once people have experienced your product or service, then they would not like to try another brand. This is especially true for high value items. Since most B2B procurement tends to be high value, there’s an even bigger inertia to change. No one wants to feel or be seen as a fool who took a wrong decision.

Since our brain feels the loss more acutely, if something goes wrong with a decision to take a new vendor, the manager who took the decision will lose face. They may have taken a lot of right decisions but one wrong decision will keep haunting them. So they would rather go with the tried and tested vendor even if the technology they have is old or product is not as good as yours.

As a product manager , you need to figure out how you will find those companies who have a management which is willing to take risks with your new offerings, if you are coming for the first time in the market. On the other hand if you already have customers, you should always take your new offerings to them to try out. Since they know you they might be willing to experiment with your new offerings.

We will continue on this topic further in tomorrow’s post.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!