Raving Fans & The Single Target Market

expectations, Marketing, service quality, single target market

Raving Fans was a book written by Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles. A printed version is not available easily and I haven’t seen it on Kindle when I was searching for it a few years.

If you are fans of the The One Minute series like The One Minute Manager , The One Minute Sales Person etc. then you will know that Ken Blanchard writes books which are very short- just around 100 pages – but with a deep meaning. They are written in story format which ensures your interest in the book.

I was re-reading the book Raving Fans today. Being a short book, I started it in the morning and had finished it in a few hours. By its name Raving Fans is all about customer service. But if you get down to the underlying concepts that they write about, they are pure marketing.

One of the core concepts that they talk about in the book is about choosing the correct market where you can define the perfect experience and ensure you overdeliver on what you promise.

They also therefore talk about who you should NOT have as your customer because then you cannot make them Raving Fans.

Which brings me to what I keep talking about choosing the Single Target Market, because then you get to know your customer intimately and can give them an out of the world experience. In a B2B setting as I mention you also need to go down to the role, the level etc since there will be multiple people involved in any decision.

If you can get this book the Raving Fans, I would highly recommend you reading it. In today’s world where customers shift loyalty so fast, its a must read book.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Single Target Market – Who’s not your customer

B2B, Marketing, Marketing Stamina, Product Management, segmentation, single target market

I keep harping about the Single Target Market whenever you want to enter a new market. The Single Target Market helps you define your segmentation or niche very crisply, including the use case. Sometimes though its difficult to identify this easily because you believe your service is good for different people and you don’t want to miss any market.

When I am going no where with this discussion, I change track and ask the people, whom do you not want to do business with. So to use the analogy of the picture above you could start by eliminating the blue and orange soft toys.

So from a B2B perspective, we first identify which is the geography we would like to start with so that we immediately focus our energy on the most efficient geography, then we identify who would be the lousiest industries to work with – this could be because those industries don’t have the need or they don’t pay well or they haven’t reached the level of supporting infra for your product or service to work etc. This way we eliminate more than half of the universe that we could target.

So now we start moving forward. Out of the industries that we are left which are the top 2 in terms of spending in the area that we operate. You fish where the fish are, why make life difficult. With this you eliminate may be the remanning 30-40% of the market. What is left then is about 10-20 % of the market from where you started.

Now between these, which companies can you easily make an entry versus some extremely large companies where the hierarchies are so huge that you will never be able to make an entry. Then you would like to eliminate the companies who may not be able to afford what you have to offer.

So from the whole universe where you could market or sell your product or service you have now come down to less than 5% of the market that you started with.

From here it becomes a choice of selecting the kind of customer you want to do business with. Then you have to be relentless in your focus on these customers and have the marketing stamina for the next 2-3 years if you want to make any meaningful inroads.

This is a counter intuitive way to move forward but if we don’t narrow down our choices we will not be able to dominate the market.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

B2B – Single Target Market – Deep Analysis – 3

B2B, Marketing, prioritizing, single target market

We have in the last two posts, looked at the challenges of the B2B market, whether its the hierarchies involved or the dynamics between various roles.

There’s another two dynamics which are specific to the companies and the people in those specific companies.

Some companies are marketing driven, which means that generally they want to lead the market whether its in the use of new technologies, tools, new initiatives. They are willing to experiment to continue to be the leader in the market. Since these companies are willing to experiment, they are generally more receptive to new ideas. The culture in these companies is to experiment hence down the line every one is generally open to seek new ideas. People are generally not afraid to take decisions.

Then there are others which are finance driven and keep a very tight control on “accounting ” costs, audits etc. They are always wanting to ensure that they take steps once something is proven. They want to have proof before moving forward because they don’t want to be caught up in audits. People are always trying to ensure that their “backside” is protected. These companies are therefore slow in adopting new initiatives.

These are the two extremes. If you look at it as a continuum then most of the others fall in between. There’s nothing good or bad about either of these. It’s more important to map with you’re selling

If your product or service is ‘new’ with technology or process etc. then it makes sense to start with marketing oriented companies. On the other hand if your product or service is more a replacement or substitute for something where you can give cost benefits, then you should look at starting from the other end.

Once you have identified the Single Target Market, your next step will be to identify the companies and do more research on them to prioritize your efforts.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

B2B – Single Target Market – Deep Analysis – Part 2

B2B, ideal customer, Marketing, single target market

Yesterday we looked at the key challenges that you face in the B2B space because of the various hierarchies involved as well as the inertia because of the various stake holders and the dynamics / politics between them.

When you target the consumer market, in a lot of situations your prospective customer may be invisible (as Dean Jackson would put it). In the case of B2B customers at the industry, company and even to a certain extent on the person level, you may be able to identify the people but you may find it difficult to reach them to verify if they are actually the right people for your offering.

In case of the consumer market, if you have given an incentive or a cookie (again as Dean Jackson calls it) to make her identify herself, in case of the B2B market, a lot of times I have seen that the people just take the white paper or any other cookie just to gain knowledge whether its part of their job profile or not.

So while the B2B buyer is partially visible, getting her to qualify herself is a lot tougher in my opinion. That’s why identifying the Single Target Market makes the work a little easier.

But identifying the Single Target Market is a massive amount of work. It may require a lot of iterations to get to the exact definition with the right set of constraints defined including going down to the set of people you intend to target, their roles, hierarchies and the challenges at each level of the hierarchy. Here the concept of the Ideal customer profile goes down to the individual role. That’s critical.

Till next time then….happy identifying

Carpe Diem!!!