Author: animeshjmathur

Product Management in technology markets

differentiation, Marketing, Positioning, Product Management, segmentation

I have written and emphasized so much on segmentation and nicking.  On starting with a single market only.

The very nature of the technology industry is very dynamic.  Which means when you have built a product using some components, you have a use case which you think is where it can be utilized.  However when you take it to your existing customers for their feedback – these are also called beta sites – you realize massive adoption problems.

However the same product in a different segment gets adopted very fast. This is where segmenting by usage becomes very useful.

If you can list the possible usage in different industries then take one, do a survey and then if you find resistance move to the next, till you find the industry where your services can go into production.

Then target to dominate that industry as you continue to  identify the next industry where you can utilize the same service.

For a product management person this is a critical factor in the technology sector.  In the consumer segment adaptation of the same product may or may not happen.  But for the technology segment,  where a lot of investment goes in building new products and the window of opportunity is very small, the product management person has to really push for various use cases fast

With small changes you can make the product or service specific to a given industry and then capture it.

But you always have to start small, fail fast, learn fast, adapt and move to the next segment. 

Since marketing is more applied psychology,  the faster you learn, the higher is the possibility of success in technology marketing.

Till next time.

Carpe Diem!!!

B2B Messaging – getting the message delivered

differentiation, Marketing, messaging, Positioning, Product Management, Sales, segmentation

We do a lot of testing continuously on the messaging that we send and we have observed that more that 90% of the times the messaging does not get a response the first time.

We have to continuously keep making changes and do iterations to figure out “what’s working”

If you however analyze the key things whenever you don’t get a response even after sending a sequence of mails, it would boil down to the following :

  1. We have not identified the pain point of the customer and therefore the messages are not resonating
  2. We have not identified the right person
  3. Our mails are not reaching the right person

For each of these one of the key thing is to segment the market so well to begin with, such that you can identify all the possible pain points and then test them.

Similarly if you have segmented the market well and niched it by usage as well, then you should generally be able to hone in on the function which is impacted by your services, quite well. However sometimes in B2B scenarios the challenge is also there because roles may be ill defined or there might be shadow responsibilities. So while there might be a CISO in a company and they may be the public face, the decisions are taken by the CIO or CFO. If you have selected aa small segment then these kind of patterns start coming up and you try to verify the data in advance or send to all the possible functions.

The third is on the deliverability issue if you have the mail id of the right person. I have mentioned this in my posts earlier also. The spam filters block anything which even smells like a spam message or will stamp it with a “marketing mail” stamp. So your message needs to reflect the pain in the least amount of words so that the spam filters think of it as a genuine conversation.

Lastly while email is the lowest cost mechanism to connect, it also has the least efficiency. Due to Covid a lot of the methods to send direct mail like letters and post cards has become tougher to deliver with so many people operating from home. On Linkedin, people may accept your connection request, but if they find that you are trying to sell them anything then they withdraw. So we are stuck with only using email.

If you’ll have come across any better delivery medium for your message, please share.

Till next time.

Carpe Diem!!!

B2B Messaging – sequences – Part II

differentiation, messaging, Positioning, Product Management, segmentation

In my last post on this topic,  I had written why its important to follow a multi sequence strategy in B2B messaging because of the inertia that people have because of the organizational structures they work in.

I had also spoken about how to put a wedge of dissonance and work on that.

In the technology area which I specialize in,  the other reasons for inertia are because people don’t know if the technology is just a passing fad or is it going to stay. So people want to see evidence that the technology you are talking about is getting adopted.

In addition to the above the next item is related to things on the “infrastructure ”  a term popularized by Regis Mckenna in his book relationship marketing.  This is quite an old book, so some of the technologies listed would seem obsolete,  but if you are involved in technology marketing then the concepts listed are very worthwhile.

The “infrastructure ” would relate to things like do we have the skills and capabilities, will we be able to adapt it in our environment. 

None of these things will change in a few messages that you send. You will need to keep driving the wedge deeper and deeper,  you will need to share success stories to help reduce the fear and figure out ways to be in front of them when either something goes wrong or there’s a new boss who arrives and wants change to take place.

However because you are relentless in reaching out,  you also become a fixture in their mind. I remember a customer who gave us a managed services order after more than a year of follow-up,  telling me that she had got so used to seeing my letters on her table every month that she had to call me when they thought of outsourcing.

That’s when you take your opportunity and strike and do a fabulous job. As I mentioned in my last post also, it could take you sometimes more than a year to make things happen.

Needless to say,  you can’t do this if you’re broad based in the beginning,  because the economics and bandwidth both will be an issue.  If you have identified a niche and then you do this, then its feasible otherwise its not viable.

Till next time.

Carpe Diem!!!

How to be a billionaire

Affirmative action, compounding, Financial Independence

I DON’T KNOW

Now with that out of the way, let me tell you what I do know.

I do know that compounding does work and INR 2000 put into an investment in 1995 today gave me a dividend of INR8500 this year and the value of my investment today is more than INR150000/-.

You will get a lot of sites both serious ones and satirical ones who talk about showing you a path to becoming a billionaire. But when you look at where you are starting from and what you need to invest to achieve that kind of number, the amount is so huge that you never get started.

This was a case with me also for a long time. I always got around to starting my investment journey, but never did till 2013. Each time I had to let my brain take a decision on making an investment, I always procrastinated, so I put in automatic systematic investment plans, which deducted money from my bank account.

The issue is never about whether you will become a billionaire, the question is always about whether you will take action to get there. If you will take action consistently and let the magic of compounding work then you will at least reach the skies, if not the stars.

My suggestion and advice to all the young folks is always start with just a small amount which is not more than 10% of your income, but let it get deducted out of your bank account directly before you can touch it. Once you do that and not think about it, you will be surprised at what you will see after 25 – 50 years. As an example the average return on the S&P 500 has been more than 10%. Suppose you have $500 invested for 50 years in an ETF which only works on the S&P500 the number you could potential be looking at is close to $58K. So if you can avoid about 100 coffees & a doughtnut at your local coffee shop, you could be at more than 50K in 50 years. If you were to avoid it for only one year( $5*365) and invest that for 50 years you would be at about $214K. Can you save $25 in a day. Most people can. You could potentially be a millionaire, and that too just investing for 1 year.

The key point here is that you are investing – not saving. For the difference between the 2 please see my earlier blog posts.

The earlier you start out on your investment journey, the higher will your corpus become. If you notice even Warren Buffet’s meteoric rise in becoming the richest man has been in the making for more than 60 years. Its the last 15 odd years where the compounding has created such an explosive growth in his wealth.

Start somewhere, start at the earliest, start with the smallest and let it compound.

Till next time.

Carpe Diem!!!