joe polish

Become a vending machine for your customer & own the ecosystem

Marketing, Marketing Ecosystem, Positioning, Product Management

Today I was taking the Breakthrough DNA training for Profit Activator number 5&6. This is a training run by Dean Jackson. I have written about Dean multiple times earlier also and highly recommend his podcast “morecheeselesswhiskers “.

Dean has systematized the marketing process into a 8 step process called Breakthrough DNA.

While doing the training I had an epiphany on how a technology services company could utilize the concepts being taught in the training .

I have been talking about the”infrastructure” that needs to be available to make any technology useful. So if you don’t have telecom bandwidth then SaaS based solutions cannot be successful.

But if you look at it another way, if you could become a vending machine (another idea from Dean Jackson and Joe Polish) for your customer .

If you identify what comes before, what comes after and what comes during the usage of your service and you become the supplier of that service through your partners, then not only will you be able to grow your business more rapidly, you will also reduce the resistance points for the customer.

Even if your product or service is not the center of the universe in your ecosystem, by following this strategy you can move the ecosystem in your direction.

Let’s say you sell “backup” software. You could sell the tape drives and tape libraries. You could provide multi layer backup via cloud and sell the customer the cloud service and so on. This way your business grows rapidly and the customer has the comfort that since you are putting everything in place, it will work.

I will definitely think on this aspect more for my own areas, suggest you also think.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Time is not money…relationships are money

collaboration, Habits, Karma, relationships, Uncategorized

Yesterday I  heard the  amazing statement above, that I could not stop myself from sharing it with you.

All my life I  have heard that time is money because it is one resource which cannot be replenished so you should use it very wisely.

I have worked on improving my ability to utilize my time and am continuously looking for ways to leverage my time. I stopped driving my car for health reasons, but now I feel that driving a car is not the best use of my time and I take a cab so that I can make better use of my time.

I delegate tasks to my team members so that I can work on higher value tasks.

Yesterday during the training from Ilovemarketing mastery program,  I heard the coach from Strategic Coach talk about this. She explained this concept so well.

All time is not equal.  The time spent in building relationships pays many times over compared to any other time spent.

As a matter of fact Richard Koch in his books also talks about this in the 80/20 rule.  While I have read his books but this time the way this coach explained was so awesome that it hit me.

Being in marketing I have always prided myself for the relationships I have cultivated but I realized after this training that I could have achieved an even higher level of success if I had built even better relationships.

Most of my success in my career has been because of the people who supported me and believed in me and therefore gave us business. My own capabilities maybe limited but these relationships multiplied those so many times over

See how you can spend more time on building relationships by first giving because as Joe Polish says Life Gives to the Giver.

Till next time.

Carpe Diem!!!

Eradicating the Writer’s block

Affirmative action, confidence, Evolution, Habits, Human Brain

For all of you who have been reading my blog posts over the last two – three years,  you would have noticed that I used to disappear from writing for months on end.

I would keep contemplating forever for the perfect piece, for the perfect English,  for the perfect graphs.

Which ended up me not writing anything.  And I used to feel lousy also because I was not writing.

Today again I was feeling the same situation.  I  had a very long day in office and I was exhausted.

But then 2 things came to my mind which I have been following over the last 2-3 months.

These are 2 pieces of advice.

One is from Joe Polish who says being prolific is more important than being proficient.  If you will practice enough you will automatically become more proficient- something in line with the 10000 hour rule for mastering any skill.

The second piece of advice came from Russell Brunson in his book Traffic Secrets.  He quotes Gary Vaynerchuk in the book, on how he’s built such a huge following. What struck me as critical was his comment about “thinking like a reporter” who has to put just one news report everyday.

I have taken this to heart and started writing these quick posts which you can read while standing in a line at Starbucks or while your sandwich is getting ready at Subway.

How this has helped me is that it has eliminated the pressure on me to write the perfect piece. Instead now I write about whatever is going on with me during the day or on whatever I am working. Also because I am writing consistently, it has improved my confidence, my brain now resists less, and it is on the way to forming a habit.

I would suggest the same for any activity, be relentless, be prolific, do the small things continuously and they will become a habit.

Till next time

Carpe Diem!!!

Customer segmentation by usage – consumer example

differentiation, Marketing, mindset, Positioning, Product Management, Sales, segmentation

Yesterday we spoke about a specific usage scenario can create a niche for doing DR for ERP users in states where hurricanes are common.

Lets look at how on the consumer side you could use the same concept.

There are a lot of dry cleaners in every city. If you were to segment by just the demographics you may not be able to come up with a uniquely different niche.

But suppose, your demographic data threw up a lot of families with kids and you were to target parents of kids who play sports.

You create your operation in such a way that you can turn around a dry clean in less than 6 hours.

When my son was school going, there were so many times I wished if we had a dry cleaner who could get the blazer cleaned within a few hours.

Now if you can message to these parents about how you can get their sports stains completely removed within 6 hours, then you could remove one of the major hassles.

For doing this service you could be charging a premium. Once you have made the customer you could still offer the normal dry cleaning as well for all types of clothes but you will create the perception of being a specialist.

Where this strategy could fail is if there aren’t enough school going kids in the neighborhood or if someone is already giving 6 hour dry cleaning for all clothes at all times.

Marketing at the end of the day is also knowing about what your direct competitors are doing as well as what are the other methods for the customer to achieve the same outcome.

As I write these things, I also sometimes get a better understanding of how to solve a problem I am facing. As Joe Polish says – and I am paraphrasing it – the best way to learn anything, is when you are able to teach someone about it.

Till next time.

Carpe Diem!!!