Riding the elephant – using the power of relationships part 3

Marketing, Partners, relationships, route to market, Symbiotic relationship

The best use of this symbiotic relationship is when the customer does not know your company. Due to the relationship that the OEM has either directly or because of the brand association, you get a free ride into the customer.

I remember there was a Japanese consumer electronics giant in India. When I tried talking to them, they were very clear that they did not deal with Indian companies. They would only deal with the OEM with whom they had the global relationship.

When this global OEM however introduced us into the account as the only specialists in that product, they ended up having to do business with us.

Now comes the real story. Once they started doing business, they realised the benefits we offered. So instead of doing business direct with the OEM which was their preferred method earlier, they started routing all the business through us.For almost 5 years till we were in that line of business the customer every year was giving us more than Rs 50 million of business on various products and services.

For the OEM also it was a better deal, because we were taking over all the challenges related to delivery and support across the country, they also preferred that the customer, route the business through us.

In another instance a customer had bought one OEM’s product, but the partner who had sold it, messed up on the implementation of the product. Being a very prestigious customer, the OEM had to get us in to clean up. The result was an amazing long lasting relationship with the end customer.

Since these OEMs are looking at growing very fast to create a dominant position, they put in a lot of sales bandwidth to penetrate the market. As a small company you will never be able to garner this bandwidth. But because of your relationship, wherever the elephant goes, you will automatically reach there.

Consider this as a very critical market penetration strategy to gather a large portion of the market.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Leverage

Leverage, Marketing, Marketing Ecosystem, relationships, Sales, Uncategorized

When you think of the word leverage it generally ends up with a negative image intended mind. It sounds like being in debt.

In financial terms, leverage can have some negative connotation but today I am going to talk about the positive effects of leverage.

Archimedes is supposed to have said “give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it and I shall move the world.” The biggest advantage of leverage that with very small effort you can achieve massive results. Little hinges swing large doors.

Moving in your car versus walking is leverage, automating a factory is leverage and all these help tremendously

In marketing (and sales also as part of marketing ) there are tremendous processes where we can leverage on things like automation etc.

But my favorite kind of leverage is relationships. These could be relationships with customers, relationships with vendors or your network. If you have enough good relationships in place, as Archimedes mentioned in a different context, you can grow your business dramatically.

However in any relationship is always better to give, before you get. That way the principle of reciprocity comes into play. Otherwise the person will feel exploited or used.

Other than relationships good sales people are tremendous leverage. A successful advertisement / message in one market can be leverage to get into other markets faster.

A CRM can help the new salesperson on speed faster to the accounts that she needs to target because all the historical information about the prospect is available.

A family of aspirational products and brands are also leverage for the company.

I would love to hear what is your favorite leverage in marketing or sales.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Personal differentiation

B2B, differentiation, Marketing, Positioning, relationships

This post was actually starting with nothing to write about. Suddenly a thought flashed across my mind.

I keep talking about continually marketing to your prospects and customers in the B2B space. It can be with your own products or with your partners’. But be in touch always.

But you need not always be making offers to your prospects or giving them more information.

Sometimes just a hand written thank you makes a more personal statement. In B2B selling, in most cases still, you need to have a relationship in place before you can sell anything.

As Mark McCormack used to say – all things being equal people buy from friends . If you have not read his book What they don’t teach at Harvard Business School and its sequel….they are gems. So much wisdom in such small reads

Which brings me to another thing which I have found useful to give, is a non-standard gift. Copies of paintings, books etc.

Sometimes your product has differentiation which is very unique. In most cases in technology marketing its rare. You create your personal differentiation in front of the customer by doing these small things

Some organizations do have a amount on the value of gifts that are considered inappropriate. You need to be cognizant to that. But within that you can be creative and give gifts which have a high recall value….sometimes much much higher than what your marketing webinar would give.

In B2B especially and otherwise also relationships matter. So keep working on that.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Relationships in business

Business, relationships

A few posts back I wrote about Why time is not money and not all time is created equal.

In that part I had spoken about how time invested in building relationships can pay you multiple times over the time invested.

In every relationship and especially in business there are two things which I think are critical

You should first learn to give…..if its about only “you” then you won’t be able to build long lasting relationships
You need to be able to connect with your top 20-25 relationships every quarter so that you are in front of them as well as you can see how you can help them.

As Robert Cialdini talks I his book on Persuasion…..in human relationships “reciprocity” plays a very big role.

Most decent people are always looking to pay back when you have done something good for them.

Not to say that you won’t find people who are selfish. Those you will be able to make out and you don’t need to be “sucker” in such situations.

However in most cases once you do something for someone first, it automatically builds trust. In today’s world there’s a major Trust Deficit. So then by building trust you are automatically ahead of your competitors by leaps and bounds.

If you keep following this logic of always giving in advance and keeping in touch, you will build deep relationships which will help you in business over the long term

Till next time, keep giving.

Carpe Diem!!!