Habits – Path Dependence – 2

competition, differentiation, differentiation, ideal customer, Marketing, segmentation, single target market

In my earlier post I wrote about why Path Dependence can be a big barrier to success. The reason this is important when we look at Marketing and Product Marketing is that the market and the competitors are always changing. The customers change, the way they like to interact with suppliers changes, their priorities change. The way your competition reacts to these changes with their offerings and how you react all need to keep up with these changes

So the solutions which helped you become successful previously may not make you successful now. It happens to me all the time. Whenever I keep trying to use the same old data points, the same old methods and things don’t work I have to start going down to basics.

Habits are good , as I have said multiple times before, because they help cut out the energy requirements from our life , but the same habits become a baggage when you have to change to meet new scenarios. Habits work on path dependence.

While the basics of targeting a single target market, differentiation , segmentation, all remain as is, what changes is the way you address a customer. There was a time when you reached out on the phone to people. Then people. got Caller id phones and if they didn’t recognise your number you got diverted to voice mail. Then came email. But if you were still stuck on phone as primary method of prospecting and didn’t adapt to email prospecting you would be long gone.

So while habits are good, energy & time efficient, sometimes when things are not working out you need to look at another path to see if it can take you to your destination.

If you look at India’s history as an analogy, one of the reasons that they were able to conquer our country and rule it for almost 150 years was because they came with guns, while the Indian kings at that time, still had their armies using swords and spears.

In marketing if you don’t carry the ability to go back to basics to figure out what is causing your team to fail, then you won’t last long. Sometimes you have to change the teams just for this reason, because if they are not willing to change, you have just two options – either die a slow death or change the team and live to fight another day.

Till next time then, don’t let path dependence stop. you from exploring new solutions.

Carpe Diem!!!

Competition is a good thing – Part 3

B2B, competition, differentiation, Marketing, Product Management, Sales, single target market

I had written 2 posts on this topic in March this year. I got a lot of likes for those posts.

For all those of you who are in marketing and sales, you can look at competition in a slightly negative way because they they take your deals away or they feed all the negative news about your company and you.

The first aspect that you need to be clear about is who is your direct competition and who is your indirect competition. For a computer seller who is selling a spreadsheet program in the market – Microsoft and Google resellers could be competition directly. But a paper register and a calculator can be an indirect competition. Depending on the size of the transactions that are done, a paper register can be used to note the transactions and a calculator can be used to do the addition, multiplication etc.

So why is this important. You need to see from a customer perspective – what is the outcome you get for the customer. What are the various ways that a customer can achieve the same outcome using your competition.

So taking the example above you know that you cannot provide value to a customer who can achieve his transactions on a paper register. So that segment of the market gets eliminated.

Now lets look at the other end of your competition which is direct. For example purposes we said its Microsoft and Google. So if you are in marketing , product management or sales, your first agenda will need to be to identify the specs on how your product performs on non-Microsoft platforms. Put another way, you would like to enhance the qualities of the product on non-Microsoft platforms.

Which makes your target market segment that much more well defined.

Its always better to dominate a small segment of the market than to be a nobody in a very large market.

Whenever you are entering a market, I have always maintained, you have to start with only a well defined Single Target Market only. Only after you dominate that, should you look to expand.

Till next time then…..keep looking out for competition from all directions.

Carpe Diem!!!

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!!!