Don't Mistake Responsiveness for Strategy
Posted by Katherine Canipelli on Thu, Mar 05, 2009 @ 12:04 PM
It was a perfectly reasonable question from today's LinkedIn questions:
During the current economic crisis, have you and your organisation actively reviewed your sales strategy or are you simply responding tactically?
And my well-reasoned answer was totally wrong. My first thought was, yes, our clients have hunkered down and made certain adjustments and sacrifices. (Read my full LinkedIn Answer here.) They're focused on getting marketing and sales priorities aligned, and have narrowed target market initiatives to the essential value propositions that help prospects/customers save money, save money, or stretch existing resources most. While Marketing still invests in long term brand awareness, there's much greater emphasis on pipeline filling lead generation programs. Sales is concentrating on near term new business deals and doing whatever it takes to retain existing customer relationships. They are doing what comes naturally, working more collaboratively and with a new urgency of disciplined purpose and process.
But then, I thought, these are all just tactical responses, aren't they? Sure are.
What strategic responses would address what may be a lingering global economic malaise?
- Prove the value of trusted relationships; assemble the best insights and ideas for improvement and bring them to the customer now
- Innovate new products quickly, to fill the gaps exposed by market weakness; get trusted customers involved in beta iterations
- Look beyond the organizational boundaries and find ways to collaborate now with supply chain partners (and even competitors)
Tactics feel productive. Strategy is painful. Collaboration, in particular, has potential to drive new value and new opportunities with both short term and long term impact. Our research in late 2008 probing how executives make decisions on B2B outsourcing found that industry execs want specialist providers to work in concert and fashion solutions, not just provide quality in their distinct realms. And this goes way beyond operations, by the way. Market intelligence consortiums. Multi-client systems or process management. Multi-company national account sales teams, cooperating with firms that you partner with but don't directly compete with. This isn't an updated version of "synergy", it's an entirely different way of thinking about commercial strategy.
The momentum of change has started, by economic force majeur, if not by design. We'll see whether B2B leaders have the capacity, creativity and commitment to use it productively. Now.