TRUST & FEAR in B2B

B2B, Fear, Marketing, Product Management, Sales, Trust

In every relationship TRUST is a very big factor.

In a B2B situation , its an even bigger issue ,because the person who’s going to be your sponsor for whatever your product or service that you sell, cannot afford to fail.

The fear of failure in B2B environments is even bigger than when you deal with consumers. Any B2B environment whether corporate, government or semi government, all have multiple hierarchies involved.

So the person you deal with can’t afford to fail in front of her peers, in front of her boss and her boss can’t fail in front of her (the boss’) peers. The larger the organization the bigger the problem.

That’s one key reason why there’s so much inertia in making decisions in organizations. This inertia causes large organizations to fail in the long run, which is another story.

For a product manager or marketing manager or sales person, its not about how good your product or service is, its more about how much does the prospect TRUST you. Fear falls only when Trust increases.

If you can’t build the Trust, the prospect will go with the incumbent vendor or technology or partner because then at least people will not directly blame her for failure. There used to be a saying in IT circles ” No CIO got fired for choosing IBM” . IBM was the default standard at one time for information technology. They were more expensive than most, but still picked up business because they were trusted.

As a product or marketing person, your primary responsibility therefore is to figure out, how you can build trust around what you “sell”, that will ease the process of getting traction in the market. If you see some of my earlier posts, I have spoken about how education is one of the best forms of building trust.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Marketing versus Sales

B2B, Marketing, Sales, Trust

In a lot of companies there’s always a tug-of-war between sales and marketing. They are considered to be two independent functions.

My way of looking at it, is a little different. I have always considered marketing and sales as one consolidated function. Maybe this has to do with my predominant background in B2B rather than consumer.

As I look at it , the job of both the functions is to get a client for whatever you make. If that be the case, then a sales person’s job is to sell face to face and close a deal. Are you still with me. However a sales person has limited bandwidth.

Whenever you’re entering a new account, that customer will do business with you only when they trust you.

This where marketing comes in. It helps you build trust and creates the environment, so that the sales person is able to close more deals faster. So its like “canning” whatever the sales person does on a mass scale, without getting in front of the customer.

With marketing the advantage you get is that you can automate a lot of the tasks, which would not be possible with sales. This allows you to create non-linear growth for your company.

Now I am not sure, if large companies would look at it this way or consumer focused companies would look at it like this. However if you’re an emerging company in the B2B space, this kind of a model will give you both efficiency and effectiveness.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Being Relentless – a Marketing discipline

Affirmative action, Marketing, persistence, Sales

Relentless is an adjective.

Synonyms – Persistent, Non-Stop, Continuous…

An adjective qualifies the noun – grade 5 English grammar course. In this case, the noun is going to be a person. A relentless person a persistent person is how this will be used.

So what is the significance of this English grammar lesson for today’s post.

The other day in one of the posts I mentioned about the I love marketing podcast episode with Chris Voss and I explained why I admired him because of his usage of of words.

With a background in hostage negotiation you have to be careful with your words and the words should have the the exact Nuance of what is being thought by the speaker. That is one of the reasons why his vocabulary is so good.

During the podcast, one of the questions asked to him was on the launch of his book, in 2017 I think, and how he went about promoting it.

One word that he mentioned which immediately stuck in my head was the fact that he was RELENTLESS in ensuring that he was on two interviews a week at the minimum, to promote his book which he is doing to this day.

While the book – Never Split the Difference – is very good, but if people don’t come to know about the book they will not go and buy it. It’s a terrific lesson in marketing from a hostage negotiator. If you keep yourself aware you can get marketing lessons even from the small kiosk on the kerb.

We may have a terrific product or a terrific service but if people do not come to know about it then people will not buy it.

In one word Chris had put out such a big strategy for marketing

Everyone knows about Coke. But they relentlessly advertise about their product so that when you visit the shop or restaurant and you are thirsty the first word which comes out of your mouth is a Coke.

Everyday in marketing and I include sales as part of marketing, if you are not somehow reaching more and more customers everyday , by some mechanism , you will not be able to build a sustainable pipeline and a predictable business.

You need not be brilliant, you need not be teriffic , but if you want to succeed you have to be relentless, persistent et al.

Till next time

Carpe Diem!!!

Marketing Stamina & the Single Target Market – 3

B2B, budget, Marketing, Marketing Stamina, single target market

While consumer marketing is very tough, once you reach the right person, the decision making is generally quicker / simpler because there are fewer people involved. The other point is that within the consumer segment, there are few internal personal dynamics / hidden agendas in play.

In case of the B2B segment, even after you have reached the right people , you are unsure when the priorities change or a new person comes into a role and she scuttles the whole deal. A typical situation which has happened to me multiple times is that we are working with the department which will use our services. Multiple people from that department are involved – from gatekeepers to decision makers. Over the years, we have realised the fact that procurement and finance, do need to get involved, so we check with the users when those departments will take part in the discussion.

A lot of times even the legal gets involved, so we push our prospect to even get these folks checked out. So we have put a check mark on most of these points. By being focussed on the Single Target Market we understand most of the issues and processes and have fine-tuned our approach accordingly.

Now comes the surprise – while we have checked out all the departments and we have crossed all the “t’s” and dotted all the “I’s” with everyone, we suddenly find a new face who has recently joined the company in a new role and he is asked to attend the meeting in which we are discussing the final aspects.

Suddenly this person opens her mouth on some aspect and now, everyone is in doubt.

Now you have to ensure that all the doubts that have been raised get sorted. Until then the deal does not come your way.

If you don’t account for these kind of delays, which happen all the time, your budgets can go haywire. This is where having enough marketing stamina, helps keep you afloat and hunt for new customers while deals close.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!