Tag Archives: Capabilities

How Well Do You Know Your Target Audience? Five Points

Situation: A CEO and her team manage a growing and profitable company. She is interested in what others have done to expand their market presence and penetration. In discussion, other CEOs have been curious about her company’s marketing capabilities, and how well her team knows their customer base. The essential question that they ask is “How well do you know your target audience?”

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Become a thought leader:
    • This is Inexpensive because the company is already a leader in its field.
    • Marketing through thought leadership allows the company to get its message out with fewer resources than push marketing efforts.
    • Thought leadership adds credibility and educates the customer.
  • Qualify the need and/or the perception of the need. If there is no need, there is no sale.
    • It’s perfectly acceptable to ask clients about their challenges and needs.
    • Ask them to measure the need on a 1-10 scale.
    • Ask the client to play out the scenario without an adequate solution.
    • Ask the prospect how they have worked with others offering similar services to your company’s and how did that go?
  • Ask your customers to help.
    • Develop a Customer Advisory Board to test a new product or concept – a “Blue Ribbon Panel”.
    • Write a paper together with them to highlight the findings.
  • Use common sense, but:
    • Set measurable goals and listen to enough people to get more directed feedback.
  • The company’s internal staff is also a target audience.
    • Integrate departmental cultures to assure that they don’t clash.
    • Conduct collaborative off-sites to encourage cooperation and support.
    • Create processes for all departments and staff.

[like]

How Do You Interview for New Hires and Promotions? Part 1, Three Points

Situation: A CEO seeks advice on interviewing both for new hires and promotions. What advice and guidelines do others suggest to improve interviews? How do you interview for new hires and promotions?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Preparation before hiring or promotion is critical.
    • Preparation means having a road map – for what will be accomplished in the new position and for how the company selects and hires or awards promotions.
    • Discipline: have the patience to do it well.
    • Be aware of and watch for possible legal issues. This has become increasingly important under DEI.
  • Raise the bar. Each new addition or promotion should enhance the company’s capabilities instead of just filling a slot.
    • Hire individuals with skills that complement areas of your own or the organization’s weaknesses.
    • Be creative in developing sources or new hires.
  • Ask open-ended questions and follow-up with additional open-ended questions to clarify areas that the response opens.
    • Focus interview questions and processes to identify demonstrated values and habits.
    • Insert pregnant pauses into the interview. How does the interviewee respond?
    • Listen for what is NOT said as much as what is said.

[like]

How Do You Minimize Hiring while Launching a New Market? Five Points

Situation: A company is planning to expand operations into a new geography. The CEO wants to avoid hiring a new sales person out of the main office as they make this move because he wants the expansion to fund itself. How do you minimize hiring while launching a new market?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Start by profiling the ideal customer for the new geography.
    • The definition should include business sector, company size, current capabilities in terms of the service provided by the company, and openness to working with outside service providers.
  • Consider a satellite office or franchise option. The two key employees to staff the office will be an engineer and a principal manager for the office. The principal manager will be the sales person.
  • Target initial clients that meet the profile of the existing business but in the new geography.
  • Use what has been learned over the years in the principal location to build an effective culture in the new location. Select key people for the new location that would fit well into the current location.
  • How can the principal manager network in the new location to attract clients?
    • Clubs
    • Organizations
    • White Papers
    • Advertising and Mass Mailing
    • Author a book or be featured in a chapter of someone else’s book
    • Generate partnerships or affiliations for business development

[like]

How Do You Move from Informal to Formal Processes? Five Keys

Situation: A company is growing its sales capabilities and adding staff. The CEO wants to improve the company’s ability to generate new business. To date they have relied on informal channels to generate referrals. How do move from informal to formal processes?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Establish as standard practice that all personnel ask for referrals in normal communications with:
    • Clients
    • Sales associates of partner firms
    • Individuals who are trusted advisors of potential clients – lawyers, CPAs, financial advisors.
  • Different groups – CPAs, lawyers, financial advisors, etc. – have different interests and potential fears about making referrals. In conversations with individuals from each group, ask why they make referrals, how they are serving their own clients, and what potentially concerns them the most about making a referral.
    • Once this data has been collected, develop proof statements for each audience that address their needs and concerns. These may be different between different audiences.
  • Do the same with new clients, as they become clients. Ask why they chose your firm, and what most appealed to them about the firm. Make this part of the initial client services interview. Collect this data and create proof statements about company performance that will appeal to other potential clients.
    • Note that the responses from brand new clients may be significantly different from those of clients who have been with the company for a year or more. The latter group knows the company, and this will color their vision. Responses of new clients will be more germane to the needs of prospects.
  • Create a system to track frequency of contact with key referral sources. This system will identify, among other things:
    • Contact name, contact information
    • Contact history (contacts to the individual by the firm)
    • Referrals received from the contact
  • After contacting an individual who has been referred, always communicate promptly back to the referrer that the company has made the contact and the results. Always say thanks. Provide the referrer comfort that they will not be shut out.

[like]

How Do You Delegate Challenging Tasks? Three Suggestions

Situation: A company is creating new capabilities which require engineers to think beyond the limits of current capacity. Some are hesitant to take on these tasks, which are critical to the company’s maintaining its competitive edge. How do you create the tools or capacities to make these technical leaps? How do you delegate challenging tasks?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Encourage the engineers to expand their conceptual “boxes”. Encourage them to
    • Utilize web-based searches of existing research on technical boundaries;
    • Explore their own creative capabilities – encourage them to connect to science UseNets for solutions to technical challenges;
    • As solutions are developed using outside resources, have engineers document progress so that intellectual property rights can be preserved. Line up legal resources to assist.
    • Encourage them to use their unconscious processes to enhance the “Eureka” factor. Allow them to work on multiple related tasks that can spark creative solutions within the team.
  • Consider this challenge as part of the process – acknowledge the “point of despair” that is often encountered with new technical challenges. Encourage them to use their creative capabilities to move beyond their perceived limitations.
    • Understand that this will involve the use of scarce resources and that mistakes will be made in the learning process.
    • Be patient and treat these as the cost of progress.
  • Other options to consider:
    • Investigate resources at nearby universities. Faculty and students appreciate the opportunity to be involved in cutting-edge projects. Protect the company by signing intellectual property agreements with the individuals and institutions.
    • Invest in and expand the library of cutting-edge resources for engineers to use as tools to develop solutions.

[like]

How Do You Focus on Doing Things Right? Seven Recommendations

Situation: A CEO is concerned that her company is not as efficient or effective as it could be. Of the key activities where the company is focused, few have any obvious connection to the customer or the customers’ needs. How do you focus on doing things right?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Create a set of cost graphs to parallel the company’s revenue graphs. If these are put side by side, does it indicate that the company is doing some things that add relatively low value and profit? What happens if resources are shifted away from less valuable activity?
  • Concentrate resources on doing one profitable thing well. Become best in class at this one thing. This may both increase the value of the firm and help to focus future development.
  • Bring in a senior level marketing research person or marketing manager with marketing research experience to determine what the customer wants, how should the company compete, and what current customers may be willing to pay for its software.
  • Strengthen the primary product – it represents 90% of sales. This is where the company has the best understanding of both its customers and the market. Look at what it takes to become enterprise wide with the company’s largest customers. Expand vertical capabilities and build $1 million accounts to $5 million a year.
  • The company already has a diverse group of clients, many of whom are huge.
    • How deep is the company in each of these clients? It may be easier and less expensive from a sales standpoint to go deeper into these clients than to bring on new clients.
    • Look for ways to make current $1 million clients $5 million clients by selling what the company currently sell to more of their divisions and locations.
    • The key to executing this strategy is to listen closely to what clients’ needs are and adjust or customize the offering to better meet their needs.
  • Focus on solutions and reduce the cost of solution implementation. Consider becoming more vertical in one key implementation and become the best at that.
  • Create a relevant framework for the company’s strategy. For what purpose is it necessary to do the right thing? If the purpose is to exit in 2 to 3 years, this yields a very different strategy than if the objective to dominate the company’s market in a 5 to10 year period.

[like]

How Do You Quickly Shift Your Marketing Position? Five Points

Situation: A company wants to shift their marketing position quickly and effectively toward a new focus. The new focus is the result of breakthroughs that they have developed that have opened new product and service opportunities. How do you quickly shift your marketing position?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Hire a strategic marketing consultant to help analyze the market, identify unmet needs and unaddressed segments of the market where the company can establish a strategic advantage.
  • Pick an area where the company is known or can be known as the best. Create differentiation by specializing in this segment.
  • Add both sales and marketing positions to guide the refocus.
    • Marketing is more than just collateral. It is strategic positioning, understanding changing customer needs, and thinking creatively about how to leverage those needs and the company’s capabilities to maximum advantage to support the sales efforts.
    • A good marketing platform provides salespeople the structure within which to operate.
    • How do you find good candidates? Talk to editors and publishers of trade journals. They know marketing contacts and who is good.
  • As the company shifts the model, look for ways to reduce utilization and down-time for engineers and other staff.
    • Maximize the value of this down time.
    • Develop case studies or materials to support the sales effort.
    • Create new concepts or capabilities to add to the offering.
  • Several other CEOs noted that with the quality of the projects that the company has completed for current clients, the company already has both the capabilities and proof of delivery that many sales and marketing people would love to have. Use these as assets and leverage them.

[like]

How Do You Boost Awareness of Your Products and Services? Seven Suggestions

Situation: A CEO wants to increase awareness of company products and services. They have a strong customer list and a long history of successful projects. How to they increase awareness among potential customer decision-makers? How do you boost awareness of your products and services?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • There are three stages to a good awareness strategy:
    • Visibility
    • Credibility
    • Profitability
  • The company already has great products and services. Hire a quality PR Firm and have them highlight this for company trade shows, blogs, YouTube, etc.
  • The objective is not broad awareness but getting to specific decision-makers – what will get to them?
    • Generate broad awareness of company capabilities through entertaining videos to excite the team members of prospect companies who report to the decision makers.
    • This is a complex strategic sell. If recommenders think that the company’s stuff is cool they will pass the word – create a campaign to encourage this.
  • The priority is to close more business. Why not brand or co-brand and promote the company’s products? This may ease reaching the target decision makers.
  • The PR advice is good – but how will this play to the crowd that’s writing the check?
    • What makes current customers comfortable working with the company? Is it repeatability?  Credibility? Creativity? Referenceability? Decide which it is and highlight it.
    • Everything that the company is doing on the “cool” side falls under the marketing strategy. Efforts in PR and sales must support this marketing strategy.
  • Consider a campaign on YouTube – How do the parts of “Sally” work? How did we design it?  This attracts a smaller audience, but it may be the right audience.
  • Within company capabilities, there are two distinctions to clarify – both are important but require different emphasis:
    • Innovating the product
    • Innovating the process – making it happen

[like]

How Do You Create a Chinese Wall Around a Product? Three Points

Situation: A company has a technology that was developed by but not of interest to a major corporation. The company continues to have significant business ties with the corporation, but the corporation wants to be assured that they are never connected to the technology in question. How do you create a Chinese wall around a product?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • The challenge facing the company is this: representatives of the large corporation don’t and can’t sell the services offered by the company, however exclusive clients of the corporation represent 25% of the available market for the services provided by the company. To date the large corporation has been unwilling either to reward the company for selling to these clients or to assist them in the sales process.
    • A solution: show the large corporation that the company provides a higher value or potential value to them than they receive on their existing products.
    • Show them the potential financial value to them of a symbiotic relationship.
  • Does the company develop the capabilities and value of the technology on their own, or do they partner with client companies in the market?
    • Many the potential clients in the market appreciate the technology and want to work with the company in some form so a partnership is possible.
    • The issue is that an open partnership might offend the large corporation who may then perceive the company as taking advantage of their clients.
  • How does the company establish a Chinese wall so that neither the large corporation nor the clients who purchase the company’s product are concerned about any activity that the company undertakes in the market?
    • Set up a separate entity and license the technology to this entity. The company would be an investor and would do some of the work but through a client/service relationship with the separate entity.
    • Get independent M&A advice on how to structure this entity.
    • Investigate other companies that have set up similar structures. Determine how they have addressed concerns such as conflict of interest, and what structures they have set up to avoid this.

[like]

How Do You Expand into New Markets? Three Perspectives

Situation: A CEO is evaluating a horizontal market development opportunity to markets related to their current market. There may be branding implications. The new opportunity focused on a different sector and can add business unrelated to current customers. However, the new opportunity will stretch current resources and potentially impact current business and service delivery. How do you expand into new markets?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Pros:
    • Because the new opportunity utilizes known capabilities the company should be able to segue into the new market relatively easily.
    • Because the company is already familiar with security and other issues relevant to the new market, compliance should present no challenge.
  • Cons:
    • Consider the impact on company time and resources. Building any new business will challenge current priorities and will require a careful balancing of efforts to assure that both current and new customers’ needs are being met.
    • Build workload and service schedules for both existing customers and the effort that it will take to develop the new opportunity including the time needed to create and build new customer relationships. Take your best estimate of resource utilization for the new effort and double it, then ask whether your current staff and capacity can handle both markets. If the answer is positive, then you can be more comfortable with the decision to expand into new markets.
  • As you evaluate the new market opportunity, look at both anticipated and unanticipated but predictable challenges that customers may face over the next five years.
    • For example, is there misalignment between future challenges likely to be faced and the current expertise and skill sets of managers who will be tasked with addressing these challenges? If so, tailor the sales pitch for new capacities to address these challenges.
    • Are there existing mismatches between products and services currently offered in the new markets, and do proposed solutions help to address these mismatches? If so, there may be significant opportunities in addressing these mismatches across multiple customers within the affected markets.

 

[like]