Just Ask ….you never know – Part 4

ego, Fear, Marketing, Product Management, Questions

This topic has, I think been one of the longest, I have pondered on.

Yesterday I wrote about why it was critical for the marketing / product management / sales folks to be asking questions and how it impacts the ability to succeed in the market.

So why don’t most of the sales / marketing / product management folks do it. One of course is vanity / ego….we know all the reasons why someone does not buy, after all we have been doing this for “xxx” years. The other bigger one is fear because most of us are not prepared to listen to the truth, we don’t know how the prospect will react, we may realise we are the actual cause of the problem.

We would rather end up being busy sending emails, doing “busy” work, attend a lot of internal meetings, rather than go out into the market. These are things we know to do so we do them rather than go and check out the unknown.

Ozan Varol in his book – Think Like a Rocket Scientist has a very nice story – and I paraphrasing it here to get the point out – of your boss asking you to get a monkey to stand on a pedestal and recite from Shakespeare. You break down the problem into different stages – building a pedestal, identifying a monkey and making it learn Shakespeare. What would you do first here.

Most people would first think of building the pedestal first – why because that’s the easiest to do and you will be able to show progress to your boss. If you were to first go to identify a monkey which can speak English, you will never be able to show progress to your boss.

Similarly its easier to show that you have done some activity by telling your boss that you sent a mail, than it is to get to identifying why some one is not buying your product.

This is one of the biggest frustrations I face in trying to get my teams to figure out why people are not buying something from us. If you can master this art of just asking – you can’t imagine what all you will learn.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Just Ask …. you never know – Part 3

differentiation, education, ego, Fear, Marketing, Product Management, single target market

Today we will come down to the exact reason, why this idea is critical for anyone in marketing, product management or sales. This quality is absolutely critical to know and understand why someone is not buying from you, or why someone is not referring customers to you etc.

Marketing and product management teams have to ensure that their product / service sells in the market. That there’s a demand for their product or service on a continuous basis.

If the product is not moving then it becomes imperative to check out the prospects on why they aren’t buying from you. Is the category itself not moving or only your product within the category.

A lot of time guys in the field assume it’s price. That’s the first statement you will always hear if your product is not moving with respect to the competition in the same category. It’s very rare that people get out, in the field to ask questions to the prospects.

Like I mentioned in the first two posts , most of the times, it is our ego and our fear , which stops us from asking the questions. Asking the right questions in the market is key to getting your marketing right. If inspite of all the systematic planning you do, with identifying the single target market and identifying the differentiators and also educating your prospects, then its critical that you get down into the market and systematically ask a large cross section of the market, on what is the hinderance in wanting to buy your product.

A lot of times its just the perception, that is causing people to resist what you have to sell. Sometimes its lack of knowledge. But you will not be able to address these things if you don’t ask. Curiosity is not always a bad thing. And curiosity to know why the product that you are selling is not moving is absolutely essential for your business.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Just Ask – you never know….

Affirmative action, Marketing, Product Management, Questions

There are lot of times when we can save a lot of time, effort, energy and eventual success, happiness if we were to Just Ask.

Somehow , we humans have – an ego – which causes us to feel that if the person whom we are asking refuses, then we will lose face or somehow people will make fun of us….etc. Since the human brain was designed to protect us, it ascribes all kinds of meanings to even small things. While I am preaching this, there are a lot of times, when I myself don’t follow this advice and then later wonder, what if I had just checked out.

I will give some real life examples of how by just asking – the persons got what they never thought was possible.

My colleague and I were coming back from Mumbai. Its a 2 hour flight to Delhi. You have to generally arrive at the airport about 3 hours before departure. We were travelling in a full fare airline, so they were providing us with snacks, coffee etc. Since were travelling in economy class however we were only getting a limited set of options in the food and drinks.

Both of us were in aisle seats, in the same row. The stewardess asked me for coffee / tea and I took my coffee. However my colleague did not take anything. After the stewardess had moved away from our row, he asked me if they didn’t serve juice. I was not sure so I told him “why don’t you just ask and you will come to know”. The good thing about this colleague of mine is that he generally takes my advice. So he asked the stewardess when she passed by him again.

And guess what – she said they don’t have it in economy class, but she will check in the first class and come back. In ten minutes my colleague was sipping fruit juice enjoying himself. But he would have not got it if he hadn’t asked.

In another situation my technical team mentioned that they had seen multiple options and the cost of taking licenses of a specific software were close to $14000/- for annual purchase. But we only needed to test our software so spending that kind of money didn’t make sense. So I asked on the minimum duration that would help them if I were to somehow get the licenses – so they said 2 weeks.

I then asked my colleague who handles the relationship with this software partner , to fix a short call with their product leader. Incidentally she had already set up contact with this person earlier and I had noticed that he was a helpful person. Luckily this person was available , he immediately responded back and we met on Zoom and I asked him if he could help.

Once more – we got the license to test our application with their software free of cost for a full month. The key thing about humans – is if you are kind to people and ask them in a pleasing way, most people will like to help.

My mother used to say the two most important phrases in the English language are “thank you sir/ma’am” and “if you can please”. It does not mean that your requests will always be accepted, but if you don’t ask, anyway it will not be accepted. By asking you are giving yourself a chance to play and find out.

We will look at the implications of this for marketing / product management

Till next time then….just ask….and you never know….

carpe Diem!!!

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!!!