Making it worthwhile for your partner to partner with you

B2B, Marketing, Marketing Ecosystem, Partners

I have been speaking about using partners to help you break into the B@B ecosystem of the customer, faster.

But why should the partner want to do business with you. What’s in it for her? for any partnership that’s a key question that you need to be aware of and have a worthwhile answer.

When the partner is willing to take you into their customer base, they have a risk that if you mess up, then they will end up losing the customer forever. Another fear is that you may end up taking over their customer and pushing you out of that account.

Since most companies have fewer customers than they can handle they are always scared of losing a customer. Even if someone did have enough customers, they wouldn’t want to lose any.

So its imperative that you need to assuage all these fears that the customer may have by first “giving” from your side. It could be in terms of either getting customers or getting leads to give to the partner. That will help build trust. Once the trust comes then things become easier.

So while I do mention that entering an ecosystem is always better when you have a partner, building trust with the partner also takes time. If the partner is a large MNC company then the layers of people you have to manage is immense. The inertia of dealing with MNCs can leave you frustrated.

While you identify who else already sells to your customer, avoid very large companies for that role.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Finding out “where” to meet your B2B buyer

B2B, ideal customer, Marketing, Marketing Ecosystem, messaging, single target market

In the consumer space its generally possible to identify which places your audience visits physically and on the web. It is possible if they visit discount stores or if they visit the high end malls.

With B2B buyers the biggest challenge is in identifying the role different people play during different phases of evaluation of a solution.

Since most people do the evaluation using the web even before connecting to a sales person from one of the companies on their shortlist, its a major challenge if you don’t make it to the shortlist.

One way to handle this is with companies who give you “intent” data. I have used some of these companies for their services. What is challenging is we don’t know the method of how these companies run their algorithm and with what data points. So I have personally not had too much success though a lot of people do think this kind of service helps.

Since B2B buying is not impulsive, its easier to identify the things a customer will do before they use your technology and after they use your technology.

If you can have some kind of a marketing partnership with the companies on both the before and after, you can automatically identify the set of people you need to reach much earlier in the buying cycle and be in front of them consistently and build your BRAND in their minds .

I would love to hear your comments if you have successfully used “intent ” data or if you have tried another successful method.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

B2B Buyer’s and the ecosystem

B2B, Marketing, Marketing Ecosystem, Positioning, Product Management, segmentation

I have written earlier about the “infrastructure” that needs to be in place before you can place a new technology solution in the customer environment. This infrastructure also akin to the ecosystem which exists in nature which helps everyone survive and grow better

If that be the case, then who would the customer contact for a new technology that she’s hearing about.

If you have niched your market well, then you would know most of the market participants.

If you have niche your market well then you might be able to anticipate the questions that will come in the mind of your prospect.

If you can anticipate these you may also then be able to anticipate who would be the existing vendor/partner that the customer may want to talk to. Can you think of building a partnership with this company to get a quicker entry into the ecosystem.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Becoming a vending machine for your customer…..Part-II

Marketing Ecosystem, Product Management

Taking the analogy of a vending machine – where you put in the money and choose the item you want and it is delivered to you. If you were to offer all the things which are needed – before, during and after your product or service is deployed – by your customer , then you could become the center of the universe for the technology product or service that you are marketing.

I was thinking of taking this analogy a little further.

Suppose you were to think in terms of who else would be selling to the same customer to whom I am wanting to sell my product or service. I have written about how you can use this method to get a quicker access into the market.

Now however I am going reverse.

Lets say you are in city A and you have a customer in city A for your products or services. You want to get into city B. You have identified a company who has customers to whom you want to sell. You want to partner with this company.

Now in the spirit of giving first that I keep ranting about, you could bring this company to sell its services to your customers in city A. This way you become a reliable supplier to your existing customers.

You now emphasize the same logic to this partner for city B where she takes you to their customers. You could take this further jointly into other cities.

There are so many possibilities to take this vending machine concept and grow your business rapidly. As a matter of fact all the biggest IT OEMs like IBM, Oracle etc. have the concept of eco-systems precisely for this reason so that they get quicker access to the markets as well as to the latest technologies.

While we do partnerships in our company, I think this concept of a vending machine is something which I have to work deeper.

Till next time.

Carpe Diem!!!