Author: animeshjmathur

Selling in B2B versus consumer sales

B2B, Business, client management, Sales, Trust

Most books in sales that you get int he market are written by people who have sold houses, or FMCG products with cater to the psychology of the end consumer. So they have tricks to handle objections and ways to close the sale. The advantage for the consumer sales person is that the market is generally huge. So if you can find a pattern with a few sales, then you are on to big commissions. The other side of the coin is that the consumer market is grossly populated with so many brands already, that it takes an enormous amount of energy to break into the market.

On the other hand the B2B customer is difficult to enter because companies have massive processes to enrol a new vendor and there is a huge amount of inertia to go through the process to get a new vendor. Since I have been involved in doing B2B sales for all my career, I have had so many situations, where, inspite of spending multiple years on trying to break into an account, we were not able to enter the customer. This is especially true for large companies. With SMB, it is relatively easier but still a process.

The key reason for this inertia is the fact that no one wants to have a “failed project” with a new vendor. There’s a lot of peer pressure in an organisation and people are looking at opportunities to ‘showcase a failure’.

It’s also very rare that you have a product or service which is very unique and you are the only provider of that service. Actually if you are the only person in the market, then chances are that there is No Market for your product or service, otherwise someone would have found it. I have also gone into market with a unique technology and failed because customers weren’t willing to take the risk with a unique technology.

Geoffrey Moore had written a wonderful book and come out with a unique idea on “Crossing the chasm”. As per this it takes enormous amount of energy to propel a new technology from the “risk takers” to mass adopters. It’s similar to a rocket needing tremendous energy to get out of earth’s orbit and again needing enormous energy to enter the orbit of another planet. Most unique technology products fail because they don’t have the energy to cross the chasm.

But having said that, once you enter into a B2B customer and you successfully execute the first couple of orders, then it will be very difficult to dislodge you. It’s the same logic that I had mentioned earlier, now being used to your advantage. Since managers don’t want a failure and you have successfully showcased that you can be relied upon and trusted, they will want to keep working with you.

You may have some hiccups with some new managers coming in or the organisation getting resized or re-engineered, but if you have built relationships across different functions, then these things can generally be managed more easily.

The other advantage in B2B is that most of your competitors are known and you figure out how they will react to what situation. This allows you to choose your sweet spot in the market and then just stick to it.

If you have any queries on B2B sales/marketing – do drop in your question and I would love to se if I can be of help.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Reporting back

Uncategorized

It’s been a few months since I last posted anything. I had been tied up with closing some old, family issues with banks and local authorities and then my back problem erupted again so I was on bed for a few months. All-in-all a pretty eventful period.

A few learnings along the way – some things got re-iterated and some are new .

Persistent follow-up – I am usually not every good with doing follow-ups – but with government officials and with your employees, its a very good idea to ensure you are following up regularly on commitments, pending items etc. And a good mechanism for follow-ups is having a checklist on which you keep striking-off things which are cleared out.

Delegating – I have always been a very strong advocate for delegating tasks – but by delegating to the right person, you can actually improve your productivity tremendously, while the other person gets an opportunity to improve her skills. Over the last few months we did a lot of hiring. Hiring is a time consuming job, but if you can get to only interview shortlisted candidates, then it makes life easy. There is off-course a downside. if you were involved in the shortlisting yourself, you may have hit upon a raw diamond which you can cut and polish. But mining diamonds is a costly and time consuming activity so you might as well depend on someone else to handle the job of scouting through the dust.

Most people in the world are good folks – this is a belief I have carried all through my life till now – during these follow-ups with bank officials and agreement signing etc. I found in most places, people are generally cooperative and helpful. If you tell them the constraints that you face, they actually suggest possible solutions as well. If you actually ask someone for help, people go out of the way to figure out ways to help.

Life is short – Live it – Enjoy it now – This realisation actually started from the onset of the pandemic and the multiple waves that it got. I used to love going to different places with the family. But over the last 3+ years I have actually got scared of travelling to new places because of the uncertainty of the different variants of Covid which keep popping-up and also the medical facilities available in the country that I go to. Due to this, so many places, that were on my bucket list, to visit, I have to hold. Due to that there is a feeling of regret. I don’t like having regrets. If I had travelled earlier, I may have covered a lot of the places on my bucket list. I am hoping to get out of my fear for Covid and restart travelling – let’s see.

Identifying the right elephant to ride – this has been one of my pet theories for getting into the market. I am even more convinced about this theory today. Not all elephants are friendly and agreeing to take you along, on the ride, to where they are going. If you can identify the right elephant, you can rapidly cover a long distance. The assumption of course is that you want to go in the same direction as the elephant.

I would love to hear back from you and hope to post regularly again

Till then.

Carpe Diem!!!

The power of Silence for Focusing on your business

Focus, Marketing, peak Performance, Productivity, single target market, Uncategorized

For a lot of people who follow Buddhism , today is an auspicious occasion since it Lord Buddha’s birthday. One of the things linked to Buddhism and the overall philosophy of religions that originated in the Indian Sub-Continent is the practice of “Dhyan” and Yoga. While there are a lot of people who follow and practice Yoga across the world “Dhyan” is something that is missing in our lives. “Dhyan” involves sitting in pin drop silence and just focusing all your energy to think.

We all (me included) are so busy running after deadlines all day that we don’t give our brains the bandwidth to actually do what it can do best – which is THINK. When you get into the “Dhyan” stage you are able to connect a lot of the dots which otherwise seem impossible to connect.

I have many times earlier, mentioned a practice by Dean Jackson called the focus finder. Its a very practical way to do a brain dump and then get on to the activity of Thinking.

Today I was a little frustrated that I was not being able to figure out a solution for identifying a Single Target Market. I keep giving you folks a lot of inputs on why you should go about identifying the Single Target Market and the incredible benefits it can have in your marketing.

But today I had a mind block and I was not able to think through on what would be my STM. After lazing around mindlessly and watching un-necessary web series for about an hour, I decided to just sit down with my notebook and pencil and started jotting down thoughts as they came to me about my “bullseye ” (the STM)

While doing this my brain also kept throwing up additional items that I could include. But I had to make my STM as sharply defined as possible. So I kept listing down, all the people whom I would not be able to help.

Automatically I ended up putting a lot of AND statements to ensure that there were as little possibilities as possible for some additional markets creeping in.

Once this was done I went two steps further, I even identified the the markets, one variable away and two variables away. This would help me, in case, the STM I have defined is not viable economically and I have to expand it a little bit.

While I spent close to 2 hours dilly – dalling, I was able to achieve all this in a matter of about 45 minutes, when there was pin drop silence and I was only focusing on this activity. These 45 minutes were more precious because of the immense productivity I got.

If feasible I would suggest everyone to regularly do these focus exercises, they can increase productivity levels dramatically and because you take out everything from your brain and put it on paper, there’s no chance of missing things.

Till next then.

Carpe Diem!!!

The Zeigarnik effect – it messes up achieving goals

Breathing, Goals, Human Brain, Worry

I have written multiple posts earlier also, on the Zeigarnik effect. There’s a lot of research on the internet with various people citing the validity as well as the invalidity of this. I will not go into the technical aspects of its validity or otherwise. I will take it as given.

That being said, what happens with this effect broadly is that, your brain keeps alerting you of the tasks that have not been closed. Which means that anything which the brain things is important, or which you inform the brain as in being important , it will keep reminding you.

My mother used to say, “if you want to get up early at a specific time, inform the pillow before you go to sleep and it will wake you up”. For most parts, this was true, and I would get up early in the morning until and unless I was extremely exhausted.

Now that I know why this happens, I don’t tell my pillow, I just think when I have to get up the next day and almost without an alarm clock I get up at the right time . Now this is the positive side of the Zeigarnik effect. In a lot of restaurants you will see some of the experienced servers just take the order without writing down and still deliver the right dish to the right person. This is another positive use of this effect.

On the other hand, this same effect , makes me feel guilty when a task is not finished. It keeps reminding me about it, because of which I am not able to concentrate on the task which I am presently doing. A lot of times, I take a day-off to close some specific items. But at the back of mind there’s some task which has not been closed and my brain keeps sending signals about what could go wrong if I don’t finish the task. After all the brain is designed to protect me, first and therefore creates all the “doomsday” scenarios and the Zeigarnik effect has a major role in it.

That is also one of the reasons why psychologists say that when you take a vacation, it should be for a minimum of 14 days, because the brain takes about 5-7 days to realise that it can wind down. That’s also one of the reasons why you come back relaxed after a vacation. Since the brain does not have to be on alert anymore with your daily tasks, it lets you explore things and those experiences stay with you.

But coming back on everyday tasks, till you close the unfinished tasks, the brain will keep hounding you. One way is to complete a task before moving to the next. But this is easier said than done, especially if you work in an organisation and there’s a dependency on others completing their role before you can again get involved with it.

Now that is something I have not been able to solve and due to that, I keep getting anxious from time to time about unfinished tasks and deadlines. One of the things that I do every once in a while is sit down for about 50 minutes and just list out all the things going on in my brain and dump them on paper. Once there you can then strike them out as you keep closing them.

The biggest advantage of this method is that your brain gets slightly pacified that you acknowledge that there’s unfinished tasks that need to be addressed.

Some people say, with meditation, the brain can be calmed down. I have not tried meditation in its truest sense though with some of the breathing exercises that I do, I have some semblance of order. With the order comes the ability to achieve a higher number of tasks, which in are directed towards your goals can help you achieve a lot in life.

For me the Zeignernik effect has created a lot of havoc, where I have lost track of my goals because my brain was constantly creating fear in my mind of the unfinished tasks.

Let me know your views in the comments below so I know if there are others like me and how you have solved this challenge.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!