Thinking long term

B2B, competition, execution, Marketing Stamina, persistence

One of the key things to be successful is to have the stamina to play for the long term

If you can just be in the game for a long enough period of time, a lot of your competition will just fall by the way side.

The reason for that is that most people on play for the sport term and if they don’t become successful fast enough then they quit. Some others quit because they don’t have the wherewithal to last long enough.

Yesterday I was having a discussion , with my colleagues, about engaging with partners . One of the points that came out was that it takes almost a year before the partners actually start trusting you to talk about opportunities.

This is for a specific case of services where we were looking for partners. But the important point is that if we don’t have a long term plan to stay in the game we will give up this market.

When you plan your business for the long term, then you next figure out the Financials accordingly. Based on that you work on the kind of mediums you can use to do your marketing. You can decide the best possible market for you to focus such that you can play for the long term.

You will win the war if you just have the ability to fight a lot of battles. This is true for a physical war as well as in marketing.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Understanding your competition-Part 2

B2B, Business, competition

In my first post on this topic, a few days back, I wrote about how you need to understand the competition.

The big challenge with competition, in the technology industry is that, in a lot of cases you don’t recognize where the disruption can come from.

In addition you can’t envisage all the ways your customers’ business is getting impacted. Based on the impact in their environment they may take decisions which can impact you.

I have had many situations over the years where we did not anticipate the customer’s business environment change, whether it was related to government policy or the change with people moving from Capex to Opex. In all these situations the customer’s demands suddenly changed and we had to rethink our strategy, delivery mechanisms etc. Trust me, its not a good position to be in.

The key advantage of doing business in B2B is that if you do a decent job, then you stay with the customer a long long time. There are very few impulsive decisions taken until you really mess up.

On the other hand you need to be aware of how the environment has changed over the last few years for the customer, so that you are not caught unaware.

This is competition for you because now you need to rethink your pricing , your technology and your delivery mechanism. Your customer expects you to provide a solution to fit their new circumstances or they will go somewhere else. And there’s no name to this competition so it’s more dangerous.

Till next time then….keep an eye for competition from different avenues.

Carpe Diem!!!

Asking the right questions in the market

B2B, Marketing, Questions, segmentation, Testing, value proposition

Understanding which questions to ask is an art. It was said that Socrates had a great method to ask questions which got him to the bottom of a problem.

I have actually been very weak in asking questions. It takes me a lot of understanding to get down to the bottom of things.

I have used frameworks like the 5 Why or 7 Why model to figure things. I have used things like the 80/20 rule to try to identify the small causes for repeatable/fractal patterns.

In most areas in life asking the right questions makes a lot of difference to your success.

In marketing its all the more important because you are dealing with different types of people. In B2B marketing where there are even more players involved at the customer level, understanding the different drivers for each player becomes critical.

If you ask a question about “why is the customer not wanting to buy from me” versus “what could be the compulsions for the customer to not look at my solution ” you could get completely different answers.

Those questions will totally change the way you address the issues in the market. You may be able to figure out a completely different value proposition from what you were thinking about. Your niche or segmentation could completely change.

The other thing about marketing that I have learnt over the years is that there are no absolute truths in the market. The market and its participants have a mind of their own and their perception is their Reality. Once a perception has been created it becomes very difficult to change.

So the bottom line is to think of questions from different vantage points to get to different possibilities and then Test them.

I am still learning this art and working to improve myself. How about you?

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Account Based Marketing

ideal customer, Marketing, Methodologies, single target market

In the B2B space , especially technology related , you will hear about ABM a lot. I was introduced to this term by the consulting firm Gartner about 5 years back. Since then along with other buzz words like intent data and AI I have been watching the progress in these technologies and methodologies.

I have generally refrained from using buzz words in my blogs. Today however I was going through some articles on how the B2B space has changed in terms of marketing. What are the trends that are taking place and found ABM is occupying a lot of mind space.

Getting large scale leads to fill the funnel has always been a challenge in B2B compared to B2C. In addition there are multiple people who take a decision, which adds to the inertia of decision making. Due to this people don’t like to change an incumbent until its absolutely necessary in B2B.

In technology marketing the other issue, with customers, is also the decision whether a technology should be adopted or wait and watch.

When you start with a single niche and choose a bunch of a 100 or thousand accounts (you can read my earlier post on identifying the economics ) to target you automatically learn the challenges of the customers over a period of time.

In ABM also look at an Ideal customer profile in a specific niche. What I found different and useful about ABM is that you first get into an account or customer and then spread your wings within the account so that more people know you and you can sell more value within an account.

What I still need to figure out, and I will let you know once I do, if there’s a size or type of company where this will work better or if there’s a type of offering for which this is not suited.

If you have used ABM , I would love to hear your experience

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

ANIMESHJMATHUR

Author: animeshjmathur

Thinking long term

Understanding your competition-Part 2

Asking the right questions in the market

Account Based Marketing