Author: animeshjmathur

Larger the choices – less is the chance for for success

differentiation, Marketing, messaging, Product Management, segmentation

When you have multiple choices on how your product/service can be used , the lesser the chance of you being able to dominate the market. Its like when my wife went to a food store in Toronto, she was overwhelmed with the number of choices for just cornflakes from just one brand. She couldn’t make a decision and she came back without buying anything. Sometimes less choices help the customer.

When you try to target multiple markets – which is different types of customers – at the same time, your messaging becomes blurred. Its like saying I sell condos, farmhouses and also industrial plots. This way you cannot be considered an expert on anything. If you are not considered an expert or a specialist, you are A Commodity. The only way to differentiate a commodity would be price.

So if you do have multiple choices to target a given market – go after them one by one. Segment the market into as fine a piece as possible. Dominate one segment and move to the other but be seen as an expert in each.

Companies like P&G, Unilever etc do this best. They have soaps which are targeted for white clothes and then they have variants within this. Then they have soaps for specialising in stain removal and they create variants within that.

If these multi-billion dollar organsiations who have so many choices of going to the market, still choose one market at a time, then for small companies its absolutely imperative that you only choose a single market first and then move into other categories.

Till next time.

Carpe Diem!!!

Relationships in business

Business, relationships

A few posts back I wrote about Why time is not money and not all time is created equal.

In that part I had spoken about how time invested in building relationships can pay you multiple times over the time invested.

In every relationship and especially in business there are two things which I think are critical

  • You should first learn to give…..if its about only “you” then you won’t be able to build long lasting relationships
  • You need to be able to connect with your top 20-25 relationships every quarter so that you are in front of them as well as you can see how you can help them.

As Robert Cialdini talks I his book on Persuasion…..in human relationships “reciprocity” plays a very big role.

Most decent people are always looking to pay back when you have done something good for them.

Not to say that you won’t find people who are selfish. Those you will be able to make out and you don’t need to be “sucker” in such situations.

However in most cases once you do something for someone first, it automatically builds trust. In today’s world there’s a major Trust Deficit. So then by building trust you are automatically ahead of your competitors by leaps and bounds.

If you keep following this logic of always giving in advance and keeping in touch, you will build deep relationships which will help you in business over the long term

Till next time, keep giving.

Carpe Diem!!!

Competition is good – Part II

competition, differentiation, Marketing, Positioning, Product Management, segmentation, value proposition

Yesterday I spoke about why competition is good for you.

Today we will look at what you need to be aware of in your competition.

In the technology space if you’re competing with a big player, you need to first of all be aware that they have a large customer base and they an ecosystem already in place. This could be the software developers, the reseller partners etc.

Due to this you get to know what is the surrounding “infrastructure ” that needs to fall in place, to make your product/service successful.

However going head-on into competition is never a good idea.

Each competitor would also have multiple areas of the market that they neglect because they’re not big enough for them to invest in.

Look at some of those and create segments and value proposition for dominating those before you decide to get into something else. Always get into the niche with an agenda to Dominate.

From a customer perspective also, since customers prefer to avoid taking risks, don’t try to initially target the same type of customers who have made your competitors successful because they will use you to get discounts from the leaders.

Competition is a very good learning experience and gets you prepared to Not do the same mistakes which the competitors have made.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Competition is a good thing

competition, Marketing, Positioning, scaling, Technology

In marketing if someone tells you they don’t have competition – then either there is no market or our person does not know where to play.

In the technology field you may have a window of opportunity of say a few months or maybe a year with your new product, but if you don’t see competition even on the horizon then you could be in the wrong market and that’s the scariest piece for a product management person in the technology field.

Most technology products or services are not born out of a specific need in the market. Most of the times companies keep tinkering and integrating various sub-modules to create a new product which the Product Management people are supposed to take to the market and convince their sales people to sell.

When you compete, a few things happen

  1. It means that there’s a definable market. You can choose a niche within that market where you may have less competition or where you define the niche. Your positioning improves because someone has already taken one slot in the market.
  2. It also means that you can aspire to pick up a larger piece of the market at a later date, so its not a FAD which will disappear as it came
  3. Competition also helps you fine tune your product or service better. Since you see the challenges the competition is facing in providing the same product or service, you can account for it already
  4. When you fight against a better competition you also hone your skills

I always get scared when I don’t see competition, even if its coming from a technology which is “n-1” from what we have, because then we know that there’s a market for the “n-1” at least. We just need to find enough people who have got disillusioned with it.

On the other hand I always admire how big companies like say P&G, Unilever or IBM etc. like to look at picking up a bigger piece of the market. They have such systematised methods to scale. I get to learn so much when they are in competition or when we join hands with one large company and compete against another large company. Its the best place to see how manager’s react , how decisions get made.

As they say, when you play a game against a better competitor you come out the winner either way – if you win, you win, but even when you lose you learn of the multiple things that you didn’t know off.

So always welcome competition.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!