Understanding your competition

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

If you can’t think what your competitors can do you will be someone’s lunch soon.

In my earlier posts I have written about why it’s important to have competition. For one it shows there’s a market. That’s a very critical point.

Second if the competitor has entered the market before you then you can learn from their mistakes. Third it helps you define your niche even better.

But competition is a very dynamic thing. The horse carriage people did not think Automotive would make them a relic.

Especially when you are doing product management in a technology industry you need to look out where the next competition will come from. Generally it never comes from your known competitors.

Did Nokia realize that Apple will totally decimate them. Or for that matter Kodak even though Kodak itself had built the first digital camera.

One of the best ways to understand where you competitors could hurt you is by placing yourself in your competitor’s shoes. Knowing the weaknesses that exist in your existing product or service or technology identify where could some other company come and displace you.

This may not always alert you to the company who could hurt you but it could help identify trends in the market which could go against you.

Which brings me to the other aspect of product management. Be out there in the market, in the store or with a customers, consistently trying to understand why customers are looking at something else instead of buying from you. It’s most often not only about price.

Till next time then….keep watching for your competitors.

Carpe Diem!!!

Product Marketing questions I am pondering on

Marketing, Product Management, Questions, single target market

I have been reading the book The Road Less Stupid…… by Keith Cunnigham.

One chapter which has had me thinking extremely seriously is on Simplifying Growth. The reason it has got me thinking so much is that it is very closely related to product management and marketing.

It has all the related dimensions that I keep talking about how you need to go about marketing, yet when it comes from a third party and you read it, the significance of what is being written becomes even more striking.

Some of the questions which are given in this chapter which I am pondering about are

What has to happen for the customer to cause them to buy from me
What must happen to keep them coming back
What could happen to cause them to not buy

These are extremely deep for a product manager to look at. If you can get a crystal clear answer on these you can build your product marketing strategy very well.

If you choose a broad market then answering the above questions will be very tough if you are releasing a new product in the market. If you choose a very fine niche in the market then you can clearly answer them and build a much better plan.

Test it out and let me know in the comments below.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Integrated Product Management

differentiation, Marketing, Marketing Ecosystem, Positioning, Product Management, single target market

I learnt a very important concept yesterday while watching a video of Brendon Burchard from the ilovemarketing mastery program by Joe Polish.

He was explaining about how he strategizes a book launch. A book launch is another form of a product launch with the product over here being a book.

I have been in Product Management for quite a long time and some of the concepts that he spoke about were standard.

However one thing which got me thinking and which you also need to understand if you are into Product Management is differentiating between ancillary products / services versus next set of products / services which are higher up in aspiration but are however part of a common ecosystem.

As per Brendon an ear phone, phone cover are ancillary while the iPhone, the iPad and the Mac all part of the integrated product set which Apple sell all the 3 items to their customer base all the time.

So even though Android is there with the so called “open” environment with a huge ecosystem, with full fledged interoperability and there are so many companies who sell more phones than Apple but no company makes as much money whether its with phones, tablets and computers.

This got me thinking. If you look at other companies who are really have ruled a lot of industries – the integrated product suite does come to mind.

IBM had their set of products and services which were generally all integrated. That was the biggest value to large customers who did not want the hassle of integrating products from different vendors. Customers could easily buy another set of products with a clear knowledge that they were safe because it was IBM. So even though a lot of companies came out with so called “open-systems” and individual discreet products, IBM had their clientele clearly defined and have been making a lot of money.

This has got me thinking. While we do think in terms of the next set of products/services that we should have in our suite, to clearly have an integrated suite where the customer has the comfort as well as the aspiration to take the next product from us needs to be thought off. We also need to clearly differentiate between ancillaries and next level of products so that we have 2 sets of revenue streams.

Pls tell me if you have had success with this kind of an integrated product suite. I would like to know your inputs in the comments section below.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Who’s not your customer – Part 2

B2B, Business, ideal customer, Marketing, Positioning, Product Management, segmentation, single target market, Technology

Yesterday I spoke about why having a “Whos’s not your customer” can help put a check from you getting de-focussed from your Ideal Customer / segment / niche.

Who’s not your customer can be seen from different angles – lets explore that in a little more detail.

If you are in the technology space in B2B then it could be – all customers who still use physical IVRs cannot be my customers or all customers where the CIO reports into the CFO cannot be my customers or all customers who don’t use “cloud” cannot be my customer.

Inspite of being in the technology domain you could have non-technology disqualifiers as well – like the CIO reporting to the CFO or if the customer does not have a specialised program for diversity companies. Another disqualifier could be all companies who ask for a credit period of more than 30 days. Depending on the kind of business you are in you can choose the people you don’t want to work with.

Depending on the business you are in these , these disqualifiers help you fine tune your company’s ICP even more. So suppose you are a small company in IT services. As part of the the ICP you realise that you would like to work with multi billion dollar enterprises. However these companies might have payment terms which are 90 days credit. Now even if you were able to get this kind of a customer you may realise that you cannot sustain that kind of credit terms and your business suffers.

In this case it would be a better idea to identify multi billion dollar companies who have payment terms of less than 30 days only as your ideal customer. This way you don’t waste your energy.

As I mentioned yesterday – sometimes when looking at just the positive side of the ICP can defocus you. By identifying the people whom you cannot do business with, whether based on technical or non-technical criteria can dramatically improve your chances of success.

I would like to see your comments if this idea helps you as well.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!