Posted by Katherine Canipelli on Wed, Apr 29, 2009 @ 10:05 AM
Poetry may not always be commercially successful, but here's one poem that will help you succeed in commerce. This sage verse caught my eye when first published in 2008 by Jill Konrath, author of Selling to Big Companies and chief sales officer of the sales training firm of the same name. I share it with you now in honor of National Poetry Month, which rolls around every April.
The Buyer's Lament
By Jill Konrath
Don't waste my time, please go away.
I will not talk with you today.
You call me up, you want to sell.
But all you do is tell, tell, tell.
I do not want to hear your spiel.
I will not play let's make a deal.
So listen up, take my advice.
Discover how you can entice.
If you aspire to earn my trust,
Research is an absolute must.
Know my goals, the issues I face.
Use this to build your business case.
What have you done for firms like mine?
How have you helped their bottom line?
Can you cut my costs or help me grow?
Now that's the info I want to know.
If you can help me solve my plight,
I'm wide open to fresh insight.
I need to find new perspectives
So I can reach my objectives.
Want me to remember your name?
Launch an account entry campaign.
Ten contacts is what it may take,
When there's so much business at stake.
Just think of this next time you phone
And you'll get past my no-entry zone,
Once you get your foot in the door,
I guarantee you'll sell lots more!
NEED HELP?
If your customers know more about the value you provide than you do, marketingFOLIO can help. We'll provide the independent research to verify direct and indirect benefits by market segment, validate buying processes and personas, and produce case studies that will help your sales force deliver the information that serious prospects want to know.
>> Contact us for a FREE consultation.
Posted by Katherine Canipelli on Tue, Apr 07, 2009 @ 09:35 PM
Launching a blog, I’ve learned, is like trying out for American Idol.
You walk in thinking you’re the next great pop star and then—ephiphany!—you find that your destiny is to be the next great opera diva (a bit like the French soprano’s Natalie Dessay’s story). It takes getting up on stage to find the right voice.
The Power of Authenticity.
This is to say that, after some reflection (and target market feedback), we’re shifting the style a bit. Less dense, more sporty. The Industrious Marketer’s goal is to add some insight on all things B2B marketing, but not necessarily to break new ground with every post. And, for the blogger, a little less pressure and a lot more fun!
More Chapters Yet To Come.
There remains a place for the serious, instructive, analytic, white papery content. Allow me to introduce the new marketingFOLIO B2B Point of View Series. The first article, “Ten Tips for B2B Market Research”, was modified from a 2006 client memo I wrote about the value of targeted research, input to a new strategic market segmentation initiative. (We got the gig, which combined web-based “customer” surveys and in-depth industry executive interviews to capture full spectrum data.)
Readings to Share.
After revamping the piece this week, I was happy to find two good articles that discuss trends in B2B market research. The first came from eMarketer CEO Geoff Ramsey ("Why Now is Not a Good Time to Slash Your Market Research Budget") citing three recent studies (AdMedia Partners, Duke Univ/AMA, MarketResearchCareers) that suggest that B2B companies may actually use the current economic situation to advantage by investing more in research. The second was a BtoB article ("Online Market Research Takes Off—Internet surveys combined with traditional research methods are becoming the norm") that echo’d my contention that support for B2B research suffers unnecessarily due to fear of small sample sizes.
Other than budget constraints, another pushback against research is “inside information”. Not the SEC kind; I refer to senior executives who strictly rely on personal experience to guide strategy decisions. I’m always a bit shocked to find this, despite years of experience working for engineer-oriented, operations-focused, sales-driven companies that should have inured me to the insularity of it all. Being customer-centric may be a stretch for some businesses, but to be customer deaf is a problem. Especially now, as market norms are shape-shifting as we watch.
As the saying goes, knowledge is power.
Posted by Katherine Canipelli on Mon, Feb 16, 2009 @ 09:23 AM
"Owing to this struggle for life, any variation, however slight and from
whatever cause proceeding, if it be in any degree profitable to an
individual of any species, in its infinitely complex relations to other
organic beings and to external nature, will tend to the preservation of
that individual, and will generally be inherited by its offspring.... I
have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful,
is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection, in order to mark its
relation to man's power of selection." Charles Darwin
Origin of the Species, Chapter III
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Having just marked the 150th anniversary of publication of Darwin's Origin of the Species, I was struck by this line in John Mariotti's latest comments in his e-newsletter "The Enterprise":
"Innovation is the only true path to profitable growth."
Origin of Innovation
A former manufacturing industry executive and author of The Complexity Crisis (2008), John offers tough love for businesses struggling with the dismal economy. Companies, he says, are trapped by complexity: too many products, too many layers of management, too many markets. And complexity steals attention from what's really important: a laser focus on understanding markets and producing what customers value. As he points out, if you really analyze profitability by product and account, most of the economic value comes from the top quartile--while the bottom 25% is "almost all losers,
destroying value and consuming valuable resources."
To survive this recessionary challenge, John says, you must dump the bottom, refocus and innovate. Don't forget, he chides, "profitability is the goal, not just
sales for growth sake." In other words, Natural Selection, business style:
- do the math and dump your marginal sales
- reduce complexity and free up your time to innovate
- rethink what you offer and where the real value lurks--and consider new technology factors
- get help, if you need it!
Manage Your Own Selection
Whether you're a large enterprise or a small business, here are three things you can get started quickly to adapt to the new opportunities:
Analyze your profitability by account and by offering. If you haven't done this already, do it now. Get enough insight to take action. You can iterate later.
Know your value to your customers. Not your margin--dig into the economic value they derive, directly and indirectly. Expore it, quantify it, verify it and share it externally (sales presentations, case studies) and internally.
Build a simple segmentation model, a visual map of your ideal customer by offering. Pick segmentation variables that will help you assess competitive market opportunity: Is it real? Is it worth it? Can we win?