Tag Archives: Trade

Do You Need a Formal Marketing Function? Four Points

Situation: A small company serves a specialized, targeted group of customers. The founder/CEO seeks advice from the group on whether it is time for the company to create and staff a formal marketing function or can this be outsourced. Do you need a formal marketing function?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • The company services a specialized and targeted group of customers. However, they target the high end of this market, so the target market is smaller.
    • A highly targeted promotional and marketing strategy will work best.
  • There are two principal functions within marketing: providing direction to guide product development efforts and creating awareness of the company’s products through promotions and advertisements.
    • To serve a narrow market, the information and insight gathered from trade shows, technical meetings, the company’s sales and design engineers may be sufficient to drive product development efforts.
    • It may not be necessary to do more than this unless the company is planning for substantial growth and wishes to diversify the product offering in a short period of time.
  • To handle promotions and advertising there are two options: hire an individual to do this or utilize the resources of an outside agency.
    • The marketing plan should be refreshed and updated on a regular basis – at least annually.
    • A good task for the company’s marketing committee is to become aware of local resources that could help.
    • Identify marketing themes to guide advertising in specialty magazines, supported by trade shows, technical conferences, and on-site training session for key customers.
    • Create and maintain a calendar of marketing activities and assure that that messaging is consistent across promotional events.
  • If the strategic plan calls for substantially increasing the revenue base or broadening the product offering, consider a merger with a competitor that already has the ability and resources to meet these needs.
    • Just the planning exercise for a merger will help the company to evaluate the issues involved in market expansion.

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How Do You Position the Company for Growth? Four Key Points

Situation: A company is completing the design of a new line of equipment which is expected to drive future growth. An important distributor for a company’s principal product – a consumable – also distributes equipment. The CEO is concerned that this distributor may perceive his new line of equipment as competing with their existing line. How should the CEO handle this? How do you position the company for growth?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Meet with the CEO of the distributor and ask two questions:
    • Can they sell the company’s new line of equipment, as well?
    • Do they have any other source for the company’s consumable product?
    • If the distributor must rely on the company for the consumable, whether they decide to distribute the new equipment line or not, there should not be any risk.
  • The company has a wonderful opportunity to start doing business in a new way.
    • The company has a proprietary consumable and chemistry/formulation knowledge that will be difficult for others to copy.
    • The company now has knowledge of how to design equipment that utilizes the consumable.
    • Proprietary trade secrets may be more valuable than patents, presuming that the company can keep a lid on these secrets. Coca Cola and 3M have never sought patents on their key products. In a well-managed environment, trade secrets have a much longer life than patents.
  • Think about the sales mix in a new way, one that would address concerns about the annuity vs. capital equipment mix as well as improve overall profitability.
    • Focus on turn-key solutions. Use Hewlett Packard as a model. HP makes the most money selling paper and ink cartridges – annuity products; not from selling printers which sell less frequently than the cartridges. A busy office will spend far more on ink cartridges and paper per year than they spend on printers – and at a better margin for HP.
  • Combine the two prior points to leverage the new model.
    • Lease or provide the equipment at just above cost, in exchange for a contract commitment to purchase the consumable for a defined period.
    • Triple the cost of the consumable over time!
    • This should provide a more profitable and sustainable model. Adjust the cost of the ink upwards so that it pays. On a per-piece basis, the consumable at 3x or 4x current cost will still be a miniscule part of overall product cost. Further, the buyer won’t have to amortize the cost of the equipment over their production, making this an attractive option.
    • Concentrate on equipment design and outsource the manufacturing on a modular basis while keeping control of the one or two most critical components.

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How Do You Rapidly Ramp Sales? Three Tactics

Situation: A company’s key marketing partner has excelled at analyzing key potential customers, the right decision makers within those customers, and completing sales to them at a premium price. The CEO wants advice on what more they can do with this partner to leverage and boost sales. How do you rapidly ramp sales?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • The company’s current strategy is to start a customer on the company’s product to add additional functionality. Once the customer learns to use the product, they work to extend the customer to other products from the company.
  • It is difficult to win with a “push” sales strategy. The situation described is like that of Linux competing with Microsoft. Everyone knows how to use MSFT, and for most of what they do MSFT is good enough. It takes a particular level of pain or need to justify the pain of transitioning to something different.
    • The only alternative is to show a significant pay-back for the pain that the customer must endure in order to convert, large scale, to another solution.
  • The company’s target customer will be the key manager who will shut down the line because they don’t have the company’s solution. This forces the purchase decision above the manager’s boss to the executive suite. The company’s solution then becomes the alternative that saves the day.
    • Seek a forum or trade show that will put the company’s solution in front of these key managers. Through this venue, create buzz that will make the company’s the booth to visit.
    • It is critical to have a compelling story for potential users when they respond to this gambit and visit the company’s booth.
  • The solution to this dilemma is the same as the solution to the company’s overall strategy.
    • The company’s offering, at this point, is just another alternative available to the customer. While the company has a compelling product, it is not world changing and the company lacks the market presence to make its solutions first to adoption.
    • The solution is to focus. Stop what the company is currently doing and take the time to develop a technology strategy.
    • Once this strategy has been defined, focus efforts on developing the killer application that becomes the reason that people must come to the company to satisfy their need.
    • Once this killer application has been developed, positioning and gaining traction with the customer will become easier.

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How Do You Plan for Patent Expiration? Six Suggestions

Situation: A company is facing the expiration of the principal patent for its main product. There are subsidiary patents which still have life. Currently, there are no competing products, but several companies understand the technology. How do you plan for patent expiration?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Think of this as a two-step process:
    • Step 1 – Step back and look at what the company has:
      • Patents – including the claims that have been awarded on all company patents.
      • Facilities – capable of manufacturing current products, but also additional products, perhaps with a minimum of additional equipment.
      • People – competent staff running manufacturing operations, and tight office operations.
    • Step 2 – Loot at where the company could go and evaluate the markets where the existing technology is applicable:
      • Work with outside, imaginative people who can take a fresh look at the options.
  • Looks carefully at the claims in all the company’s patents.
    • What do they cover?
    • Is there an opportunity to extend current claims through process patents?
    • Caveat: a company can file for a process patent on anything that has been for sale on the market for less than a year. However, if they have been selling a product covered by this application for more than a year, they cannot.
  • Look at other markets – companies that could license the company’s technology, or with whom the company could partner to provide new consumer-oriented products:
    • Is there inexpensive, affordable equipment that would enable the company to produce additional products in the current location?
  • Think outside the box: what business is the company in? Think more broadly than the current market about where high value opportunities exist. These can be low to medium volume, high price/margin or high-volume lower price/margin.
  • Patents are not the only protection – trade secrets also work. 3M’s primary IP strategy, particularly on their adhesives, etc. is through trade secret – both for low and high-volume products.
  • “Product” patent extensions have limited utility. They are easy to design around. “Process” patents have more utility. These can be licensed at low cost per application in high volume applications and provide a nice royalty reserve stream.

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What is Your 3-Year Plan? Six Suggestions

Situation: A founding CEO wants to cut back to 1-2 days per week with someone else overseeing day-to-day operations. Her timeline to accomplish this is 3 years. Currently she splits her time between engineering and sales support, managing operations, overseeing the CFO and managing the company. How do you accomplish this transition? What is your 3-year plan?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Advertise for and hire a General Manager/engineer who can understand the company’s applications and develop unique solutions.
  • Advertise for and hire an understudy for the sales person. This could be someone in their 40s who is experienced, and who can act both as the sales person’s back-up and develop additional accounts to diversify the business.
  • As the company continues to grow it will take more time and effort to manage all the activities. Plan the company’s organization chart and infrastructure to account for this.
    • Be careful not create an infrastructure during good times that is unsustainable during down times.
  • As the new GM gains familiarity with the company, this individual will and should start to take control. This automatically means that the founding CEO will have to agree to release some of her control. Prepare for this.
  • Consider several alternatives for the GM:
    • Super President – $400K.
    • GM with engineering talent – perhaps a consulting or engineering sales background. Hire at $150-200K and develop into the President.
    • Given the 3-year lead time this individual could be a Technical Lead or Project Engineer. The objective will be to develop a very talented person into the GM or President. This alternative opens a larger pool of talent, at lower initial cost.
  • Where are these people found?
    • Trade association contacts.
    • A high-quality engineer that another CEO won’t be hiring over the coming months. Talk to friends and industry contacts.

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Do You Expand Production Locally or Internationally? Five Points

Situation: A company has built a very successful specialty manufacturing business in the US. Their manufacturing operations are labor intensive, with manufacturing practices optimized using motion studies and sharing best practices developed on the production floor. The CEO is evaluating whether it makes more sense to expand production in the US or to explore international options. Do you produce domestically or internationally?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • There are trade-offs between domestic and international production. Quality labor is available internationally at lower costs than in the US. However, risks include potential loss of quality control and higher levels of waste.
  • While investigating international production options, focus first on less critical operations where savings from lower labor costs outweigh the potential cost of wasted material.
  • Do not try to move highly controlled operations. These will include critical operations which require both an elevated level of operator skill and close supervision.
  • Before evaluating international options, break down the steps of manufacturing or processing to identify specific subcomponents or subprocesses that could be outsourced at reasonable risk.
    • For example, look at high volume parts where quality and variation in tolerances is less critical. These will be the best candidates for production in a lower cost, potentially lower quality environment.
  • How critical are trade secrets or patented IP to production? In the US and Europe there are strong protections for IP. However, these protections are not as strong in all countries. If production is outsourced to countries with poor IP protection, this may enable IP theft and create future low-cost competition.

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How do You Manage a Key Partner Relationship? Five Points

Situation: A company was created from IP originally developed by the founder at a large corporation that was not interested in commercializing it. The new company has now become successful and visible, with the large corporation as an important partner. The CEO wants to make sure that she has all bases covered to secure the future of the new company. How do you manage a key partner relationship?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • There must be clear agreement between the company and partner on ownership of the original IP – a legal document signed by both parties. You can bet that should a conflict arise, the lawyers representing the larger company will argue that their client owns the IP. Once this is secured, focus on developing and licensing software that you clearly own.
  • Develop contingency plans should the key partner decide to exit the business on which your relationship is based. Identify what other companies could replace lost revenue. Start to build these relationships.
  • If the partner helps to fund current development, take the money that you save and develop your own IP, independent of the partner relationship. As an alternative, at least develop critical components of the software as your own IP, without using the partner’s funding.
    • This will free you to develop other customer segments to broaden your business base.
  • What concerns does the partner have? Strategically, large corporations can be uncomfortable if they feel dependent upon a much smaller company. There are two things that you do:
    • Makes a concerted effort to assure that you are essential to the large corporation’s overall business.
    • Make change as painful as possible.
  • How would you get paid if the large partner exited the relationship?
    • Negotiate a contract with a 2-year window to any change that partner wants to make. This will provide you with the room to develop new clientele should the partner exit.
    • Have contingency plans to rebuild capabilities that might be lost and sell it to other clients.
    • Customize your software by client. In the process, you will develop new methods to keep your edge over competitors.
    • Keep critical parts of your processes “manual” so that they are essentially trade secrets and not easily replicable if the partner were to try to take over the IP.

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How Do You Create The Best Buzz? Five Suggestions

Situation: A company has an opportunity to use equipment supplied by a partner to create a demonstration project that will highlight their capabilities. They want to create the best buzz possible through this effort. One idea is to work with local service agencies to create a demonstration that will be highly appealing to news outlets. How do you create the best buzz?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • In addition to working with local agencies in your target localities to create publicity and awareness, work with the local newspaper reporters who write about the areas served by these agencies. City reporters are always looking for fresh stories, and will help you to generate instant news that may be picked up by other local and possibly national media. This form of building awareness virally is much more effective than traditional advertising campaigns.
  • Use industry trade shows of potential partners as demo venues by collaborating with the trade show organizers for a live demonstration that benefits the organizers. Let technical trade publications know about your demos. Stories that catch the attention of technical publications can also get the attention of national media and give you visibility far beyond the trade shows.
  • Use YouTube to highlight use and the impact of your service. Assure that your YouTube videos are interesting and attention gathering. This will help generate viral awareness.
  • Look at how Google helped to make Mountain View, CA a wireless city. They worked with the city and created great excitement both locally and nationally.
  • Consider using actors to stage demonstrations, followed by actual demonstrations.

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