Competition is a good thing – Part 3

B2B, competition, differentiation, Marketing, Product Management, Sales, single target market

I had written 2 posts on this topic in March this year. I got a lot of likes for those posts.

For all those of you who are in marketing and sales, you can look at competition in a slightly negative way because they they take your deals away or they feed all the negative news about your company and you.

The first aspect that you need to be clear about is who is your direct competition and who is your indirect competition. For a computer seller who is selling a spreadsheet program in the market – Microsoft and Google resellers could be competition directly. But a paper register and a calculator can be an indirect competition. Depending on the size of the transactions that are done, a paper register can be used to note the transactions and a calculator can be used to do the addition, multiplication etc.

So why is this important. You need to see from a customer perspective – what is the outcome you get for the customer. What are the various ways that a customer can achieve the same outcome using your competition.

So taking the example above you know that you cannot provide value to a customer who can achieve his transactions on a paper register. So that segment of the market gets eliminated.

Now lets look at the other end of your competition which is direct. For example purposes we said its Microsoft and Google. So if you are in marketing , product management or sales, your first agenda will need to be to identify the specs on how your product performs on non-Microsoft platforms. Put another way, you would like to enhance the qualities of the product on non-Microsoft platforms.

Which makes your target market segment that much more well defined.

Its always better to dominate a small segment of the market than to be a nobody in a very large market.

Whenever you are entering a market, I have always maintained, you have to start with only a well defined Single Target Market only. Only after you dominate that, should you look to expand.

Till next time then…..keep looking out for competition from all directions.

Carpe Diem!!!

Possibility thinking

Affirmative action, Human Brain, Labelling, Marketing, possibility thinking, Sales, Thinking

A lot of times I get stuck in my thinking. This especially happens in stressful situations where I ascribe an intention without the facts. To all of us, a person not picking up the phone – seems like the person is trying to avoid us, then our mind goes in frenzy identifying all the reasons that the person could be avoiding us and our mind takes us back into some random situation and we feel all bad and low.

We end up putting labels on the person, that he/she is bad, deliberately doing this to us etc. etc.

Its quite possible that the person’s phone was on silent and she didn’t notice. She may end up calling you when she sees your call and then you realise you have ended up wasting so much time.

So generally what I have started doing when I feel that something is not okay, I take the initiative in trying to check out first if everything’s okay. A lot of times I have come to realise that the person was going through some personal challenges of his own and could not have been in a position to talk with me.

But more than that I realize that there was nothing personal that this person had against me.

Now why did I give you all this story. Because a lot of times when a prospect stops responding to you, we end up ascribing all kinds of motives. When a product that you were so passionate about is not picked up in the market, then also we start ascribing all kinds of ideas.

With possibility thinking you try to look at – is there something else, is there something which I am not noticing, is there something which is absolutely unrelated to us because of which the prospect has stopped talking to us.

In sales this happens most when suddenly the prospects stop responding to your mails. More often than not I have observed that the manager gives another responsibility to the person you were interacting with and he puts your proposal on the back burner. Nothing personal with you.

One of best ways to get someone to open up in such situations is to write an “apology mail for bothering her and asking if there’s something we could have done better to not have put her off” In most situations an apology mail like this gets the person to respond with the exact situation because most people want to be fair and they don’t want you apologising for something you didn’t do.

On the other hand you could also have competition which you never thought of , suddenly appear and suddenly sabotage your sale by targeting the boss of the person you were interacting with.

With possibility thinking you like to keep asking questions without getting negative about the situation, and then getting it clarified. Time is the most important thing for a sales or marketing person. Spending that time , rueing about and ascribing all kinds of ideas to the person is a waste of time. its better to keep eliminating negative possibilities and identifying more positive possibilities.

This is not about positive thinking, about a glass being half empty or full. This is about being constructive in your usage of the limited resource that you have – called time.

Till next time then. Keep thinking in terms of possibilities.

Carpe Diem!!!

Prioritizing the top 2-3 in sales

B2B, ideal customer, Methodologies, prioritizing, Sales

The 80/20 rule works even in sales. As I have said before the best thing about this rule is that its fractal, which means there’s always an 80/20 within the 80/20 also.

So within all your customers 80% of the complaints about you or your product or your service would come from 20% of the customers. However you could go one step further and identify 4% of the customers who are actually responsible for 64% of the problems. If you eliminated these 4% your life would be much more easier.

Similarly there will be few customers who would be responsible for more than 64% of your business. You need to ensure that you are constantly doing everything possible to not only keep these customers happy but to also ensure that you are growing your business with them.

As a sales person you also need to analyze which 20% of the products get you 80% of your incentives or commissions and then analyze which 20% of your customers account for 80% of the sales of those products. That will give you a clear indication of where you have to spend your time and prioritize your day.

While you’re supposed to sell all the products that are assigned to you, by following this mechanism to prioritize your day, you will also hit your financial goals faster. The only constraint for a sales person is time. If you can focus 80%of your time on these 20% customers you would get a massive boost to your achievements.

Its always how you can leverage your time for the most productive use. After all small hinges move big doors.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Personal differentiation- what’s the Value, You get to the table

differentiation, differentiation, Habits, Positioning, Sales

In any relationship and more so in sales, it’s the value that you bring to the other side which makes people want to be connected to you.

When you are doing marketing, the agenda is to create a relationship between the company’s product and the customer. But when you are in sales, it is all about the personal brand of YOU.

That brand of You gets created with the Value you bring to the table specifically. If the prospect does not find you knowledgeable on different aspects of his business and requirements, he will consider you a waste of time. So even though you may have the best product or service in the market, they will not buy from You.

As a sales person today, its table stakes to get to know about the person you’re meeting, about their business, industry challenges, regulations etc.

You also need to be able to challenge the assumptions that the customer is making and showcase the same to them. Most professional customers today like to interact with equals. When you create a differentiation with Value, you become the trusted advisor. That’s how you also improve your personal “positioning” in the market.

Gone are the days when salesmen could just wing a conversation about the weather, the photo frame in the customer’s office etc.

Its getting more and more difficult to get an appointment with a customer for a meeting these days. Get better prepared, figure out Why should the customer even talk to you. That “Why” will then help you create your Value.

Till next time then, create your own differentiation with the Value you bring to the table.

Carpe Diem!!