Author: animeshjmathur

Identifying the dissonance for engaging a B2B customer

B2B, Business, competition, Marketing, Marketing Stamina, messaging, persistence, segmentation, single target market

With B2B customers, as I have mentioned earlier in my earlier posts, its difficult to get instantaneous decisions because of various reasons. These could vary from inertia to customers having to do cross functional team decisions, budgets and the works.

In most cases until the dissonance with the existing supplier is so large and repeated that the customer can no longer bear it, they don’t change. However in a bundle of 1000 prospects, the Dean Jackson “inevitability principle” eventually kicks in and some incumbents falter and that’s when you get a chance to stake your claim.

Now you need to be in front of the customer to stake your claim. In addition you should, on a consistent basis keep highlighting the possible challenges the customer could be facing.

For this you need to know your competition well. Competition could be from a company or an alternative technology. You need to understand the places competition is weak and then work your messaging to highlight the challenges the customer could be facing because of the those issues. These messages need to be about “rubbing salt over their wound” so that the pain gets even more highlighted.

Its not always possible to know all the challenges until you ask the customer and then hypothesize for others – since you have already focused on a narrow segment of the market. So if you get in front of a customer on the phone or in person or via web you need to check if they value the benefits that you offer versus what the incumbent does not have. You will then realize for yourself if those benefits matter to a decent set of your audience.

Once you have done that then the the key is to be persistent because we don’t know when the customer will decide to change. Also since customers do more than 60% of their research in the sales cycle even before they call the vendors, if you are not in front of them when they are doing the research, you won’t even get considered.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

You cannot have financial freedom – without financial discipline

Affirmative action, compounding, Financial Independence, Human Brain

A few days back I had written a post on why you need discipline and not money to get financial freedom.

I have been sharing with you that I am reading the book The Road Less Stupid by Keith Cunningham. I was introduced to this book by Joe Polish. I had heard him speak a lot about this author in multiple podcasts. So I searched and found an interview where Joe is interviewing Keith.

I liked the ideas that he spoke about in the book and therefore ended up buying it. The ideas and especially the thinking questions are worth pondering on. Today I spent close to about 4 hours on the 3 questions I had listed yesterday in my blog post and did get somewhere with the answers that I got.

Coming back to the headline, while reading the book I had happened to chance on this sentence. It struck me immediately because I continuously keep harping about the need for discipline to reach financial freedom.

This discipline is not possible if you base it on will power. Will power is something which get exhausted very fast on a daily basis. Your brain gets exhausted so fast that the more decisions it has to make the faster the energy depletes. With energy gone you cannot exercise will power.

So you need to put in systems which take the decision making away from you. That’s possible only when you automate the investment process with things like Systematic Investment Plans (SIPs) or the equivalents in your country. You could go with ETFs or Mutual Funds or direct stocks. The item is not important. What is important is to get into automating the process so that there is no concept of using will power. Then let the power of compounding work for you.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Product Marketing questions I am pondering on

Marketing, Product Management, Questions, single target market

I have been reading the book The Road Less Stupid…… by Keith Cunnigham.

One chapter which has had me thinking extremely seriously is on Simplifying Growth. The reason it has got me thinking so much is that it is very closely related to product management and marketing.

It has all the related dimensions that I keep talking about how you need to go about marketing, yet when it comes from a third party and you read it, the significance of what is being written becomes even more striking.

Some of the questions which are given in this chapter which I am pondering about are

  1. What has to happen for the customer to cause them to buy from me
  2. What must happen to keep them coming back
  3. What could happen to cause them to not buy

These are extremely deep for a product manager to look at. If you can get a crystal clear answer on these you can build your product marketing strategy very well.

If you choose a broad market then answering the above questions will be very tough if you are releasing a new product in the market. If you choose a very fine niche in the market then you can clearly answer them and build a much better plan.

Test it out and let me know in the comments below.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Execution is everything – or is the idea important

execution, ideas

I am generally a big picture guy. I don’t have the discipline for continuously looking at the details or working on the day to day activities.

However for any team to operate you need to have a daily rhythm of ensuring that the team performs. That’s where the discipline of execution comes in. Ensuring that the right things get done and are done continuously is a big job and I admire companies who have grown so big and still continue to surpass the results every day. Its the sheer execution that their managers are taught to do.

On the other hand the people with ideas – like me – think that executing on a bad idea will not get you anywhere. So you may have the best execution skills but if you don’t have a good idea it won’t get you anywhere.

The ideal situation is if you can complement whatever your skill is with someone who has the other skill. If you are a big picture guy and hire another big picture guy then your company is doomed. On the other hand if you are a good execution guy and take the other person also from execution then how will you get new ideas to for the Next thing.

But inspite of all the arguments which both sides give, I think if you have a team or a company, then you need really really strong execution. Someone needs to watch on how things are happening on an hourly basis otherwise very soon things go out of control.

Execution has a lot to do with follow-up. Due to my ability to drift away from targets I have found 2 things useful. One when I have team meetings, I want someone to make a “What-Who-When” list of the things that were discussed. What is the item that needs to be done, Who is responsible for getting it done and by When do they need to get it done. The other thing which I have found useful is to put a task on my calendar on my phone. Then when I have performed the task and I need to follow-up with someone on it, instead of closing the task I just change the date on the task for a future date and save it. So automatically the task shows up again till I have closed it. I am still trying to find even more effective methods.

What’s your view? let me know in the comments section below.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!