Lead generation challenges for small IT B2B businesses – Part 2

In the last post I spoke about how, by identifying a Single Target Market, Small B2B technology businesses can become better at generating leads. I even spoke about how marketing and sales have to incorporate psychology more than plain analysis to attract the desired audiences.

So in this part, we will look at how we can help get our message better addressed to our audience , so that they connect with us, respond to us etc.

There are typically two methods for getting leads – the “pull” method or the “push” method. By its very nature, the word push means that you are pushing something against a resistance. While in the pull method, the person is being “pulled’ or “attracted” with what you say or do and wants to interact with you and therefore responds to you. There is now right or wrong method. Both have to be used to get leads. However with the “pull” method or also called the marketing driven leads, the advantage is that the prospect has shown interest in what you offer and therefore has reached out to you.

For marketing however, the biggest challenge is to be able to convince someone, with the messaging, so that they can comprehend the message and then respond back with an inquiry.

But even before you can convince someone, you have to be able to reach that person. This is where by targeting a “Single Target Market” ,at a time (which we covered in our earlier posts, can be seen here), you reach a focused audience.

The analytical aspects of reaching out and convincing are related to the number of people being targeted, the number of mails that reached, the CTR, etc.

Now come to the psychological aspect of marketing and how you can utilise this aspect.

Humans have 5 senses – smell, see, feel, hear and taste. If you use one medium – say email with text, then the other side will only read it. So they will only use one of their senses – viz “see”. On a podcast, they can only “hear”. In a video or film , they can hear and see. By utilising the 2 senses together, your message can have a better impact.

As per Cisco, by the year 2022, more than 82% of all Internet traffic would account for with video. People recognise the power of audio+visual since ages. Films have impacted us so much – whether it was Ben-Hur or Star Wars . This does not mean that there won’t be people who would like to read or would like to listen. Different people have different preferences, but as a marketer, when you are trying to make an impact video/films have a larger impact because they utilise the power of the human brain.

Watch the video here

When you use videos to showcase how you have helped others, how you have solved problems for others, similar to themselves, then it creates more trust. Since the brain comprehends better with the use of two senses, if the customer is facing a problem, similar to what you have solved, then they are able to immediately apply it to their scenario and think – “we should check them out”. That gets them to reach out to you – a “pull” lead. The more “pain” in the problem that you show in the video and it is relatable to others in the same industry, the higher the chance that you will be able to get someone to say “tell me more”. This is where the psychology comes into play.

Even though the customer has replied back to you of his own volition, it doesn’t mean that he is ready to buy from you. In most B2B scenarios, there is an elongated buying cycle which starts with someone being told to first do the research on different options, then figure the budget etc. This cycle doesn’t apply in case there is a disaster and someone needs something “right now”. As an example, if you have had your roof destroyed in a cyclone or tornado, you need to figure out a solution now and will not go through your usual buying process. Similarly in organisations if say there is flooding in a data centre, then they need to figure out, how to keep the systems running, NOW.

Other than the disaster scenarios, B2B buying is process driven and you need to nurture the lead over the process. We will take this up in the coming posts.

Till then .

Carpe Diem!!!

The biggest competition for you is Inertia of the customer

B2B, competition, Customers, Decisions, niche, Sales

One of Newton’s laws of Motion is – Law of Inertia – Nothing moves unless a force is applied on it.

As a sales person, for you the biggest competition you will face, is with the customer, not wanting to change the status quo. The customer always has a choice

Buy from you
Buy from your direct competition
Buy something else which can solve the problem – albeit not the same way – but solve it does
Remain with the status quo

It’s very nice when the customer buys from you. All the hardwork put up by you and your team, during the sales cycle, pays off for you and your company. In case of the second situation, where your direct competition is involved, you can take steps to pre-empt the competition, from taking away the sale. But to be fair to them, they may actually be better than you, in some cases. Either their solution is more apt for the customer or the sales person involved understands the customer better or she has a better relationship with the customer.

If the customer solves the problem with a different method, then you could be caught off-track. When I was involved in selling single and dual loop process controllers, a lot of times , after, SCADA systems became more affordable in India, I found, customers thought it better to go in for the complete SCADA system, rather than buying a controller for 2 processes. In other example, a person may prefer to travel by road instead of taking a flight. So the airline company lost the deal while the petrol/gas companies and hotel companies got business. In either of these situations the customer did go for a solution, it may not have been the solution which was being sold by you.

The worse situation is when after putting in months of effort, you realise that the customer is not willing to change. This is more painful in case of high value B2B sales, where multiple teams have to be involved to create a solution for the customer.

In B2B situations, the easiest situation for the customer is to not change anything. If it ain’t broke, why change. Change can mean that the new product/service will not work. If it doesn’t work, the peer level pressure that the manager will face will be enormous. It will be the manager’s failure, which will be highlighted to her forever, until and unless she works in an organisation which likes to try new things to succeed.

Sometimes it is easy to find out if your solution is moving forward or not. At other times you have to question the assumptions at different levels of the company’s hierarchy to identify if there’s any chance that your solution will be held back to maintain status-quo. It sometimes happens that you may have a sponsor at the lower level of the organisation, who wants to adapt your solution, but her manager may disapprove because she is scared of failure.

It may also happen that the benefits that you believe your solution will bring to the customer, is not what the customer believes. In that case it is your responsibility to showcase the benefits. On the other hand if the benefits are only going to “move the needle” marginally, then the customer may not be interested in moving forward and taking the risk.

The best way I have found, though not always successful 100% of the time, is to question the customer(s) on why they want to go in for the solution. What is the benefit they are assuming the solution will bring for them and why is the benefit(s) important to them. And then check this same thing at different levels of the hierarchy. If at any time you notice a dilemma or a “Re Flag”, you need to get cautious and keep digging till you find out.

If you focus on any niche in the market, then this becomes a lot easier to handle, because 80% of the issues that companies have will be similar and you can learn to unearth the issues in advance.

Till next time then ….. identify if your customer has any inertia holding them back.

Carpe Diem!!!

Entering a new technology based B2B business – Part IV

B2B, differentiation, Marketing, niche, segmentation, Technology

Identifying the addressable market

In marketing there is a statement that is thrown around a lot – “find a niche in the market”

This is a very powerful statement. It clearly helps to identify a piece of the market , that you can “own”, if you are successful. It’s always better to own a small pond than to be a small fish in the ocean. Even P&G which has multiple billion dollar brands in its stable, has clearly identified niches for each of its products. So the statement is absolutely current.

I will just like to put a small caveat to the statement and make the statement read – Find a niche in the market and also find if there is a market in the niche.

Let me explain this with a real life experience. When I had just joined a company, fresh out of University, I was given a product which was basically about selling process control equipment . It was a very sophisticated product for its time. We created a solution using this product which we executed on a couple of sugar plants, very successfully. So I was given the responsibility to go out in my territory and target all the sugar plants and sell this solution, because we had found a “niche” in the market, which others were not targeting.

The solution which we had executed, was done on a very large sugar plant, while most of the sugar plants in my territory were small capacity plants. In addition these plants didn’t even have electric panels in the boiler room, so how would they even install such a sophisticated process control equipment. (This led me to create a Maxim for myself – if there’s no road in the town that you are going to sell, you don’t try to sell a luxury car.)

Coming back to the topic at hand – what I realised was that we had a niche in the market which none of the other process control companies, at that time, were targeting, but the market was just made up of 10 odd companies that we could sell to. No one else could afford us. So eventually we wasted a lot of energy and eventually got out of the market.

So now whenever we talk about identifying a niche in the market- in which we want to target our product or service – I want to always check how much is the addressable market. Combined with the questions that I raised in the first 3 parts of this series, if you don’t find an answer to this question correctly then you will waste a lot of time and money.

In the technology based businesses, especially if you are getting in a new technology, you also need to identify if there are enough companies who are using the earlier version of the technology or if there’s requisite infrastructure to incorporate your new technology. To give an example of this, if you are bringing in a SaaS product, one of the pertinent things to check out is – do they get enough network bandwidth across all their offices, so that they can utilise a SaaS based model. If you are trying to sell this product where network bandwidth infrastructure itself doesn’t exist, then even if you have identified a niche in the market for your SaaS product, you won’t be able to succeed because there aren’t enough companies who have the bandwidth to utilise the product.

This is a critical piece in planning your marketing activities. Let me know how you go about identifying the addressable market.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

P.S: In case you would like to get my checklist for launching a new technology based product or service in the B2B market, drop me a message.

The actual nuance of identifying a Single Target Market – 2

Marketing, messaging, niche, segmentation, single target market

When you do the exercise of narrowing down a segment based on different attributes or use cases, as I listed in the previous post on this topic, you keep eliminating a lot of the other areas which could divert your attention.

Then once you have been able to come down to the narrowest market (single target market) and figured out the economics of reaching out to that market, you can start working on the messaging.

Messaging is a very complex topic and by just reading a few lines here will not show you the gravity of the work that needs to be done to work it out. However by narrowing down, you can now put yourself in the shoes of the person whom you could be talking to. Once you are in her shoes, you can start thinking about what would go on in their mind related to what you are offering. Since you have too only think for this one person, life becomes much easier and you can create more targeted messages.

Sometimes the things you sell, don’t directly feature in the mind of the person, so you need to go one stage upstream and then create the messaging. Like no one, would think of outdoor – wedding – catering, until there’s a marriage that is taking place in the family. So in such cases your message will need to be focused on how it will get moulded with the marriage discussion going on in the mind of. the person you are targeting and then place the idea of an outdoor wedding. Since if they won’t think of an outdoor wedding, they can’t think of an outdoor – wedding – catering.

You cannot create powerful messaging without entering the mind of the prospect. And the best way in my opinion is to get down to a single target market.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!