Category Archives: Sales & Marketing

How Do You Reach High-end Users? Three Thoughts

Situation: A company has developed a disrupting technology that will allow OEMs to produce high-end circuits at a fraction of their current cost. A non-exclusive OEM partner is using this technology but doesn’t have a channel to high-end users, and the company is too small to reach these customers themselves.  How do you reach high-end users?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Your dilemma is having a disrupting technology in a market with a strong division between OEMs servicing the low/medium-end market and those servicing the high-end market.
    • Your technology collapses the division between the low/medium and the high-end markets and OEMs and proposes a full-scale technical shift.
    • This shift disrupts the current business models of either group of OEMs, as well as their technology development plans. This is why you are finding resistance.
  • Therefore, you need a channel partner that is either:
    • A low/medium-end OEM who is just as much a disrupter as you are – highly promising but not yet well-established – and who is capability of developing a high-end sales and marketing effort; or
    • A high-end OEM that knows the market but is collapsing under their current strategy and needs an entirely different solution to revive their prospects.
  • Your near-term task is to simply gain market capability – both manufacturing and marketing/sales – and to use this capability to gain early market acceptance.
    • Your investors want to see early “Blue Chip” partners, but given market realities, this may not be the wisest strategy.
    • If, over the next 12 months, you can begin to impact the market shares of the high-end OEMs, this is the surest way to gain their attention. Once you start to gain share, a likely outcome is that one of the high-end OEMs will buy you to lock up your IP.
    • Another company recently used a similar strategy entering a new market by collaborating with a high-visibility partner.
      • In one year, they took 30% market share from the market leader.
      • The next year the market leader bought them because “it was less expensive to buy you than to spend the marketing dollars that we would have had to spend to compete against you.”

 

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What Leading Sales Indicators Are Effective? Four Suggestions

Situation: A company has experienced low sales early in its peak season due to bad weather. The CEO wants to develop additional leading indicators that will help predict whether sales will recover prior to the end of the peak season. What leading indicators have you found effective in predicting seasonal sales?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Access to benchmarked research can be helpful, especially industry reports that cite growth indicators. Some industry report producers can generate drill-down reports of their base data for a fee. This allows you to tailor your own study based on their data.
  • Depending upon whether you set revenue projections by brand or product line, look for indicators within brands or lines that will provide you with clarity on sales projections. An example is product reviews in relevant newsletters, provided that these have effectively benchmarked to sales results in the past.
  • In addition to new leading indicators for existing products, there are a number of ways that you can reduce the impact of seasonality on your cash flow. These include: investments that will lead to future income streams; new product placements to compliment or extend current lines; new key customers or outlets through which you can expand your market; and increasing sales calls to create new demand. Also, use the current season to establish additional benchmarks that will be useful in future years.
  • Other tactics include evaluating in-house versus contract production of your products to improve your margins, and strategies to improve up-sales from medium to premium products where margins are better. You can also focus on smaller independent outlets rather than national chains which are dominated by national brands, and also regional explore private label opportunities.

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How Can You Ramp Sales With Limited Dollars? Six Suggestions

Situation: A company survived the recession by cutting back and using cash reserves. Business is now on the upswing with significant new opportunities. However, the company has limited resources to invest landing new opportunities. How do you ramp up sales and business development on a constrained budget?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Identify and focus on your niche market, and invest your limited resources closing qualified clients. This is a rifle shot approach, not shotgun. While seeing new business, make sure that you have sufficient production capacity to handle new business. You want your clients to be satisfied so that they will refer others to you
  • Cash is the most critical resource. Spend carefully and get the most from your investment in business development.
  • While marketing materials are important, they may not be essential if you have and can leverage excellent referral sources. Word of mouth and referrals from trusted clients are your top assets.
  • Leverage Linkedin as a free or low cost resource to identify key contacts in your top 100 customer prospects.
  • You can also use Linked-in.com to recruit additional sales resources who may be amenable to a pure commission sale. This can help you to augment your efforts so that you only pay for success.
  • Your most important current unused resource is leads and referrals from existing satisfied customers. Let them know that you are looking to grow and ask whether they know of contacts in other companies who could use your product. It is surprising how frequently they will share their contacts with you. Ask whether they would call the contact and provide a personal introduction.

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How Many Web Sites Should One Company Have? Three Thoughts

Situation: A company has two businesses in different locations serving different sets of customers in two separate markets. The CEO is evaluating whether it makes more sense to have one umbrella web site with pages for each of the two businesses, or to create two complete web sites with different URLs. How many web sites should a small business have, and why?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • The first question is whether you call both businesses the same or different names. Many small companies have separate businesses at different sites, and just differentiate the businesses through division names. Moreover, because you use the same company name for both businesses, you want to make it easy for customers to find your web sites. This argues for at least a single splash page, listed under your current company URL.
  • There are many corporations with diverse, unrelated businesses. Generally, these corporations don’t have any problem having a general web site, with separate links to the individual division web sites where customers and partners can drill down to detail specific to each division. The advantage to this strategy is that by having one corporate site, the larger entity strengthens its own market presence.
  • Given that the advice of the group is to have a single splash page how do you construct it?
    • You want to prominently feature your company name on the splash page, but not to include much detail. Maybe just an overall positioning message that expresses your core values or a distinctive visual that shows what you do.
    • On the splash page, create two links with distinctive pictures and names that enable your customer to easily go to the side of your business that interests them.

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How Has Sales Evolved In The Last Four Years?

Interview with Michael Griego, CEO, MXL Partners

Situation: Sales technique is constantly evolving. Based on research completed by the Sales Executive Council, this evolution has accelerated since 2008. The implications for selecting, training and retaining top sales reps are significant. How has sales evolved in the last four years?

Advice from Michael Griego:

  • A 2009 study by the Sales Executive Council (SEC) – Replicating the New High Performer– studied 6,000 international sales representatives from 90 companies comparing top sales performers with core sales reps across 44 attributes.
    • The study found that Challenger sales reps represented the largest cohort (39%) of the most successful sales reps, followed by Lone Wolf (25%), Hard Worker (17%), Reaction Problem Solver (12%), and Relationship Builder (7%) sales reps.
    • The Challenger sales rep is best suited for a complex sales environment, while the Hard Worker is best for less complex enterprise sales or sales of off-the shelf products.
  • Identify the characteristics required for your sale. In addition, identify the mix of sales people currently on your team – from young, eager people just out of school to seasoned vets who can be realigned to current methodologies.
  • Selection should focus on the prior experience of the candidate. What have they have sold in the past? Ask for details of sales situations. How do they usually open a sales conversation? How did they adjust their sales pitch to different audiences? Were they hunters or farmers? Top talent reps can deftly go both ways.
  • Training involves reinforcing sales fundamentals plus the modern application of provocative consultative selling where salespeople provide true insight and challenge customers well beyond feature/function/benefit selling.
    • SEC study results indicate that if you are involved in a complex sale you need to identify the challenges, acknowledge what is happening in your client’s market and the challenges that they face, quantify the implications, and position potential solutions for exploration; all of this occurs BEFORE you start selling your specific solution.
  • Retaining the best sales reps fundamentally takes good sales management.
    • Pay special attention to top performers, while attending to all your reps and treating them fairly.
    • Challenge them to be better in areas that will enhance their success.
    • Recognition is a great motivator. Make them an internal mentoring resource for the rest of the team.
    • Identify your core (average) players and train them to act like your top players.
    • If you do these things they won’t be attracted to the shiny objects dangled by head hunters.

You can contact Michael Griego at mike@mxlpartners.com.

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How Do You Introduce a New Solution Without Asking for a Change in Behavior? An Approach

Interview with Kiran Kundargi, CEO, Apsora

Situation: A company seeks the best way to introduce a novel health monitoring solution. The challenge is that people don’t want to change their routines. If you can creatively fit into existing routines with minimal behavior change this facilitates adoption. How have you introduced a new solution without asking for a change in behavior?

Advice from Kiran Kundargi:

  • As the population ages health care costs rise. A solution that can reduce healthcare costs while allowing more seniors to remain in their homes this can significantly reduce health care costs. The sticky part is making this solution a part of the elder’s and their family-caregiver’s daily routine.
  • Our solution is to seek the low hanging fruit – post-hospital discharge recovery at home. Seniors who have been discharged from the hospital following treatment or surgery often receive strict instructions to take their medication, adjust their diets and engage in regular exercise. This requires changes in the senior’s routine, and non-compliance is a leading cause of readmission.
    • Effective October 2012, Medicare will stop paying hospitals for readmissions that it deems avoidable. This forces hospitals to take a more active role in follow-up care following discharge. Our online health monitoring service, Nclaves, provides a low cost solution.
    • Nclaves facilitates communication between the elder and his or her children and grandchildren using Internet and hand-held technology. This enables family to help their senior comply with post-hospital instructions.
  • We approach this opportunity in four phases.
    • We start by using the Internet. We have made our solution easy for physicians and hospitals to find. Internet activity is supplemented with presentations to monthly meetings in hospitals. By acting as an information resource on the change in Medicare regulations, we can introduce our solution to those who will suggest it to patients. Early adopters will enable us to build case studies demonstrating both technical viability of our solution, benefit provided to patients, and impact on readmission rates and cost of care.
    • Next, we will approach large employers. Employers understand that increases in hospital costs will adversely affect the cost of insurance benefits for their employees. We want them to include Nclaves as part of their employee health and wellness programs.
    • The third step is insurance companies. These companies have the leverage to specify and suggest options to both patients and providers.
    • Our final step is broad market acceptance. Once both payers and providers are on-board, we will be ready to work through alliances, the Internet and broader public relations and advertising campaigns to build market acceptance.

You can contact Kiran Kundargi at kkundargi@nclaves.net

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How Do You Revamp Your Lead Generation Process? Three Keys

Interview with Mari Anne Vanella, CEO, The Vanella Group

Situation:  High tech companies need a more effective, higher level approach to prospect accounts. This means capturing sales intelligence more meaningfully, and aligning marketing approaches with customer needs based on prospects’ experience. Traditional transactional lead generation methods must be replaced by a deeper methodology that enables salespeople to speak to the personality of the business buyer. If all of this is true, how do you revamp your lead generation process?

Advice from Mari Anne Vanella:

  • Executives are so busy that their schedules are overloaded. If you want to reach them, you must engage them at a meaningful, more situationally fluent level.
    • Executives aren’t disinterested in new vendors and opportunities to gain efficiency or save money; they’re just hard to reach. Therefore, it is critical to develop sufficient knowledge prior to initial contact so that you can quickly engage the prospect, and equally quickly re-engage them on follow-up calls as they progress through your sales pipeline.
  • Companies must mature beyond volume-based marketing and sales. The traditional model calls for up to three or so telemarketing center contact attempts to a large number of leads.
    • Current research indicates that 80% of leads are matured into prospects after 5 or more contact attempts. More effective approaches call for 7 to 10+ contact attempts to reach busy executives and managers. This requires greater skill and persistence than the traditional approach.
  • Re-engineer the process through which you contact leads and follow-up on prospects. Most deals fall out of the pipeline through mismanagement.
    • The focus of sales and marketing transformation should be on new metrics to boost success rates, as well as communication skills and pipeline management.
    • It is critical to understand the individual buyer’s purchase process. Sales close at varying rates. This requires listening closely to the prospect’s timeline and the next steps in his or her consideration process. If you agree on a follow-up date, honor it. Attend to the smallest details.
    • A lost deal calls for a deeper de-brief than a simple note of “sale lost” or “lack of prospect interest.” Marketing needs to understand why deals don’t happen to optimize processes.
  • The implication of these observations is broad. Most sales and marketing teams are held strictly to results, expressed as numbers that can be taken to management and the Board. This serves a function, but if it dominates sales and marketing processes it may undermine results. Understanding the realities facing prospects calls for a more technical marketing organization and an empathetic customer approach based on an intense understanding of the prospect and their needs.

You can contact Mari Anne Vanella at marianne@vanellagroup.com

Key Words: High Tech, Customer, Intelligence, Methodology, Revamp, Lead, Generation, Prospect, Volume-based, Telemarketing, Pipeline, Follow-up

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How Do You Engage People in a New Platform? Three Strategies

Interview with Luosheng Peng, CEO & President, GageIn

Situation: A fast-growing company is working to engage new users on their platform. They are leveraging ease of use, demonstrated ROI, and fit within an existing ecosystem as their levers to attract and engage new users. What have you found effective to attract and engage new users in a new platform or service?

Advice from Luosheng Peng:

  • The most important factors to attract new users are ease of use and a demonstrable ROI. It is important to address a complex value proposition simply and easily.
    • You must know, ahead of time, the single most important value for your target user. Your examples must be clearly tied to your target user’s most important need.
    • Quick, simple, visual and verbal illustrations are effective. For example, we used short and fun videos like Tracker the dog to explain our products.
  • You must demonstrate a clear ROI and increased productivity. Your ROI must be real if you want to gain users attention – particularly if you want to gain viral levels of attention.
    • In business intelligence, finding information is not a problem. The challenge is finding the right information, filling the gaps in information from standard sources, and delivering it at the right time. We spent a great deal of development time getting this part of our product right.
    • To improve understanding of your ROI, engage early adopters and get their feedback on your current features and how to improve your platform. Early adopters are more analytical and passionate than other users. They want to be acknowledged so be responsive to them.
    • Offer a freemium model so that new users can try you out and test your value proposition. If they like what they experience, offer a low cost limited premium model with incrementally scaled pricing for additional features or functionality.
  • Manage your ecosystem. Building a new ecosystem takes a lot of effort and expense. Most small ventures will want to compliment or fit into an existing ecosystem.
    • Existing ecosystems may already be crowded. Small companies have to be able to break through the crowd and be seen. We completed major integrations with Yammer’s Enterprise Social Network and Salesforce.com’s CRM. Your platform will have the most success if you address a gap or unmet need within the existing ecosystem.

You can contact Luosheng Peng at lpeng@gagein.com.

Key Words: Platform, New, User, Ease of Use, ROI, Ecosystem, Business Intelligence, Value, Proposition, Audience, Example, Freemium, Early Adopter, Yammer, Salesforce.com

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How Do You Transition from Product to Business Development? Three Thoughts

Interview with Trevor Shanski, Founder, eWORDofMOUTH, Inc.

Situation: A company with a new lead generation solution is ahead of the curve for their market segment, and ready to transition from a product development focus to a full-scale business development focus. This means developing new capabilities on a limited budget. How have you made the transition from product development to business development?

Advice from Trevor Shanski:

  • The reality of early stage companies is that they live on scarce resources. Founders and early executives have to be able to work for lean base salaries during the learning curve. They will be individuals who have selective characteristics.
    • They will be able to accept conservative salaries near-term, as well as during financial bumps in the road. Their focus will be growing the company’s value and their incentive will be having a material stake in the company.
    • They will have limited outside demands on their time and attention so that they can work long hours.
    • They will appreciate the challenge of heavily performance-based compensation, with the potential to win big if they can deliver.
    • They will have a network of connections and relationships upon whom they can call to gain early business traction.
  • Characteristics for successful early stage executives include the ability to work intimately with the founding team. Early stage companies are idea and capability incubators where things change quickly. Players must be able to get the job done with little support.
  • It is critical to have a clearly defined set of expectations for the first few months as you bring on new executives. Early foci will include:
    • Immersion in understanding the product capability and possibilities.
    • Sitting down with a white board and openly looking at fresh thoughts for how the market should be approached. Founders frequently suffer from tunnel vision after a long period of development and need a fresh outside perspective on the market and messaging. What partnerships could accelerate market development? What knowledgeable experts should be leveraged to build awareness? What potential is out there that the founders are not seeing?
    • After these factors are defined, the next step is to develop an action plan and milestones to guide plan execution, plus a budget and alternatives under different resource scenarios.
    • Once the plan is in place, the focus will be to gain early feedback on the company’s product and capabilities, and then iterate quickly to find the right message to target significant segments of the market.
  • The focus of early stage companies has to be on quickly developing plans, and then executing.

You can contact Trevor Shanski at tshanski@ewordofmouth.com

Key Words: Product, Business, Development, Limited, Budget, Transition, Resource, Scarce, Incentive, Focus, Compensation, Performance, Network, Expectations, Action Plan, Execution

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