Peculiarities of marketing software to large groups in the public and private sectors

Posted on February 16, 2012 by Ira Michael Blonder

A radically different computing era was ushered in around 1985 with the advent of the so-called personal computer. Pertinent to this post is the observation that the personal computing era was characterized by a shift from cloud computing resources (in the form of distributed mainframe computing and share computing via mini computers marketed by Digital Equipment Corporation, Tandem, etc) to the desk top where increasingly more powerful computing devices were brought to market, the use of which proliferated throughout Fortune 1000 and large public sector business workspaces.

Today, as Forrester Research has recently pointed out, market interest in computing resources appears to be shifting back to cloud based offerings, or at least the hype would have one think so. Regardless, software technology innovators marketing software to large computing workspaces need to speak to

present day realities
public message topics of discussion
and, finally, assumptions as to where markets are headed

Our bet at IMB Enterprises, Inc. is that the safest assumption is that enterprise class business and public sector buyers will very carefully scrutinize any purchase requests that pop up over the next 3 years as the result of pervasively unsuccessful efforts to capture value from software purchased and already implemented.

This dearth of success on the trail of value does not necessarily spell terminal bad news for software technology innovators looking to establish a toe hold in large workplaces. Rather, the lack of success compels businesses committed to marketing software to frame marketing communications around the best obtainable set of financial information about specific, verifiable, cost savings to be realized from the implementation of specific pieces of software by enterprise business customers. The more specific the better. In all cases the bottom line needs to be, clearly, specific amounts of money that will be saved as the result of purchasing and implementing software. Hype just won’t do. If a year or two is required to genuinely collaborate with the marketplace to determine the specific costs that can be saved, then so be it. Make sure that the resources are at hand to support the business through the fact finding period without pushing the market to accelerate the pace.

We have excellent recent experience working with software technology innovators committed to global business markets. We welcome opportunities to elaborate on our experience. Please call Ira Michael Blonder, IMB Enterprises, Inc at +1 631-673-2929 to discuss your product and your near term market plans.

Producing Valuable Leads for IT Sales to Global Business Is Challenging but ROI is Very High

Posted on February 2, 2012 by Ira Michael Blonder

The process of selling IT products and services to global businesses and other large organizations, with overwhelming frequency, devolves at an alarming rate into highly competitive situations where factors are clearly at the disadvantage of IT marketers. These factors include:

Important roles within opportunities to engage with prospects change. Prospects assume a dominant position, changing direction as they see fit. IT marketers may be left high and dry at will
Telling signs of commodity purchasing scenarios rear their heads. For example, prospects cut back on engagement opportunities with IT marketers. Pricing discussions proliferate. The task of researching needs as well as methods of satisfying these needs becomes entirely relegated to prospects. IT marketers have little to no opportunity to speak up.

It is imperative for IT marketers, even those with products and services offerings entirely relegated to specific product platforms that lie out of their control (I include in this category offerings from Microsoft Managed Partners, Oracle Partners, SAP Partners, etc) to build fine tuned lead generation programs to ensure as completely as possible that precious scant face time and ear time be spent with the right prospects. IT marketers must be sufficiently capitalized to ensure that these opportunities to engage include no unnatural imperative for prospects to move forward, prematurely, at all. Better to take two years with the right prospect to land a lucrative order than to utilize artificial means to hasten the purchasing process. In fact, it may be necessary to authentically partner with decision-makers within prospect businesses who have a useful view of realities while incorrect decisions, already on the table for purchasing discussions, are dismantled.

Broadly speaking, in order to produce useful, promising sales leads for complex IT products and services to global business prospects, it is imperative that methods emphasize telephone contact to ensure that a meaningful set of potential advocates, information-gathering resources, decision-makers, etc within prospect businesses can be gathered in an efficient manner over manageable time frames. It is quite simply not possible to “touch” enough contacts within prospect businesses, neither via opportunities for face to face meetings, nor from conference attendee lists, or even email marketing outreach programs. Further, the mode of this telephone contact method must be firmly limited to teleprospecting activities, at least at the outset of campaigns, prior to identification of useful decision-makers, etc.

IMB Enterprises, Inc. has considerable recent experience implementing lead generation programs for complex sales of IT products and services to global business. Please telephone us at +1 631-673-2929 to discuss your products and needs. We are particularly interested in technology products–software or hardware–as most of our experience has been garnered from working with software and computer hardware manufacturers.

Global Business Markets Require New Product Marketing Strategies in 2012

Posted on January 26, 2012 by Ira Michael Blonder

Technology innovators looking to build mission critical requirements within today’s global business markets must develop new product marketing strategies. Pervasive disappointing performance of big ticket technology purchases since the mid 1990s have graced technology buyers with a new tough skin — hard to penetrate and bullet proof just like rhino hide. Portfolio management is now a pervasive reality for IT departments at global businesses. Products without a cogent value proposition are not only unwelcome, they are ignored. Therefore, marketing teams must come up with new product marketing strategies to stimulate interest.

We think it’s helpful to characterize the global business market for technology as dysfunctional. Buyers pursue solutions to requirements that may vanish at any time as the result of dwindling technology budgets. As well, management may rethink needs, deciding that the pain of unmet needs will prove less expensive than a solution. With these assumptions in mind, the prospect of fabricating new product marketing strategies for complex products designed for global business markets takes on a more promising glow. Better get with the program, after all, February, 2012 is already just around the corner.

Collaboration ought to be the new mantra for technology vendors vying for global business markets. Maintaining a collaborative position with customers, prospects and the overall market means crafting opportunities to discuss requirements, objectives and long term planning with buyers as well as the important business managers that have been identified within prospect businesses. An ability to transpose the objectives of technology manufacturers into customer and prospect objectives is welcome. Successfully transposing objectives renders prospect discussions into a level playing field where all parties are after the same objective. As well, once all objectives are uniform and completely aligned, then prospects, customers and vendors take on similar roles that all parties (particularly buyers and business management) will look to perpetuate over the term during which relevant solutions are under discussion.

How to manage this transposition? It’s helpful to realize that the business objectives of vendors include placing products within solutions at global businesses. Buyers truly have the same objective, do they not? In fact, buyers are looking to implement solutions. They will maintain that objective as long as solutions appear viable and rich in value. Therefore, seeing matters clearly is the same as realizing that everyone at the table is after the same thing. With that understanding in place marketing and sales make more sense. Get it?

If you have a product or service that you think makes sense for global business markets, we’d like to hear about it. Please call Ira Michael Blonder directly at +1 631-673-2929 to further a discussion.

Wrong Turn at the Roundabout: Let’s Design It, After all the Customer doesn’t always know what she needs

Posted on November 15, 2011 by Ira Michael Blonder

Deborah Gage of The Wall Street Journal (http://www NULL.wsj NULL.com) published an article on the 2011 rationale for software companies to make the dubious effort of building enterprise “solutions without a problem” — FASTech: Businesses Need Smarter Software, Whether They Know It Or Not (http://blogs NULL.wsj NULL.com/venturecapital/2011/11/08/fastech-businesses-need-smarter-software-whether-they-know-it-or-not/).

Here’s the story line: [Software ISV VP of Sales] “We’ve gone down the path of the complex sale and yes, we fully agree with Jeff Thull (http://www NULL.primeresource NULL.com/) that lots of these deals end up in a “dry run” (to use Jeff Thull’s method of referring to sales that, for one reason or another, never happen). In fact, we find that when the customer reaches the conclusion that she doesn’t truly know what she’s looking for, or that the systems are not in place within her enterprise to support the implementation of ABC solution; that she will not buy our product.”

Here’s the punch line: [Software ISV VP of Sales, with VP of Product Marketing at his side] “Therefore, we decided to build a version of the product anyways. After all, who knows where the market will go next. Our [half baked] solution might be just the ticket next year.” This decision to build the product anyways ends up costing ISV buckets of money and lots of development time that would be better spent working on useful solutions that customers will ultimately ask for once the dust settles and thoughts coalesce into workable requirements.

Our C level managers of sales and product marketing have made a wrong turn at the roundabout. What they ought to have done, as Jeff Thull makes very clear, is to dropped the sales plan to book the order this year, but make the marketing commitment to partner with the customer through the potentially lengthy process of identifying flawed decisions, assumptions and plans, renovating same and, finally, planning for a reasonable, workable solution that our ISV will end up building for the customer. After all, in all likelihood few, if any competitors of our ISV will be willing to partner with the customer to work this process through to a successful conclusion.

Bottom line: Customer driven product management still makes the only sense for innovative businesses with high expectations about market penetration. Wasting time building gadget software will not pay off over the long haul. Worse yet, decisions to build gadgets are indicative of a lack of patience with markets, the kind of character flaw that can threaten to deep six the best of plans.

Use White Label or OEM Products to Turbo Charge Sales Into Enterprise Business Targets

Posted on August 13, 2011 by Ira Michael Blonder

Consider offering a white label or Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) version of your tangible or intangible product or solution to create an entirely separate dimension to your enterprise sales efforts for large corporate prospects.

With regard to intangibles, as long as your intangible product has been branded, and your product marketing strategy has been clearly defined, it is entirely appropriate to consider distribution via white label or OEM channels. It is also appropriate to avail of these channels for businesses with market visibility and, as well, for businesses that have opted to operate under the radar of the marketplace.

In fact, availing of White Label or OEM channels is especially useful when a business is operating under the radar. Indirect sales channels (inclusive of white label and OEM) equip a business with powerful tools to test the receptivity of markets in many ways; for just one example, to test market readiness to a scalable offering that presents different feature sets for different portions market segments. Further, if your white label or OEM customers are larger than you and speak with a more authoritative voice within the market (quite often this relationship will be the case as, in my experience, it is larger businesses with an established market position that will spend the time to reconnoiter the periphery and unearth companies, like your under the radar effort, to protect their market positions) then you can establish inroads to prospects that promise rich streams of repeat buy potential by riding on the backs of their success and established procurement relationships.

I have considerable experience working with a business that spent the necessary time building products into scalable offerings. Consider that the objective of building scalable products, in this case (specifically, a computer hardware solution for sharing computer peripherals), was not only to empower white label and OEM partners to penetrate different portions of the market, but also to open an opportunity to attack the same market via a direct sales force which was properly segmented (via features and discernable market segment strategy) to permit coexistence with healthy indirect channels, all addressing the same customers and prospects.

Of course, it is critically important that the boundaries of permitted activity for indirect white label and OEM partners be clearly defined through your partnership agreements. Better to carefully structure these agreements before commencing negotiations than to rudely discover loopholes after the fact.

Google+ Brings Social Media To a New Level of Usefulness for Marketing Complex Products & Solutions

Posted on July 26, 2011 by Ira Michael Blonder

With Google+ complex product marketing finally has an online vehicle that works. This step forward in the refinement of the “one to one” marketing capabilities of web 1.0 and the “one to my select many” marketing capabilities of early-stage web 2.0/social media includes a number of features that will deliver significant returns to complex product marketing for the enterprise:

Group your contacts in “Circles” to selectively inform and promote
Share news, notions, etc to stimulate dialogue with prospects, stakeholders, etc
Embed videos, Product slide shows, etc to readily present groups of prospects with the message you need them to get without the danger of excessive mass market exposure via YouTube
Visually meet, remotely, with multiple prospects with “Hangout”

In my opinion, with Google+ there is no longer any reason for complex product marketers to avoid online venues for promotion and branding. Conferencing, news, networking and intelligence-gathering (via shared discussions) can all be effected from within the confines of a Google+ page.

While many of the features of Google+ have been available elsewhere (for example, on FaceBook) the branding and extreme type-casting of many social media venues as spots for “friends,” game play grounds, etc. diminished the appeal of social media for complex product marketers who need to be entirely focused on enterprise business prospects and their unique needs. The sole exception to this rule has been LinkedIn. Admittedly, Google is not making a big push right now for Google+ as a strong online medium for business, but the features built into this website will deliver wonderfully for business applications.

A quick comparison with LinkedIn reveals a much richer interactive experience for the Google+ Share feature. For some reason participants feel more comfortable posting comments. Therefore, the discussion is richer, wider ranging, and includes more participants who, in turn can opt to dialogue among themselves and build new connections. In my opinion, LinkedIn is too formal and too recruitment-centric to deliver the type of results that I need for my marketing plans for complex products & solutions.

With interested participants, low return web 1.0 efforts like email blasts can be relegated to the circular file while “shared” news, etc can be posted with significant positive effect. As well, and with regard to online video calls as offered by Skype, Google Chat, etc. there is a new option with Google+. All told I must say that I find Google+ to be a very promising online medium, one which I intend to explore and exploit, as appropriate, for my clients.

Always Take the Time to Complete Product Development for Intangibles Before Going to Market

Posted on July 2, 2011 by Ira Michael Blonder

I have worked with some clients who, for one reason or another, need to start selling intangible products that are still in development. A couple of these reasons for entering a market without a finished product are obvious:

To raise cash and/or
To enter markets where an opportunity is time-sensitive and delaying entry will wipe out the opportunity

Each of these reasons may appear to be valid, but I never recommend proceeding on either one of them, especially if the planned product is complex and targeted to enterprise business.

Consider that an unsuccessful engagement, repeated several times with poorly chosen “pioneer” customers (such as top players in targeted markets) can precipitate an early demise for an entire business. Never forget that the old adage about bad news traveling fast always holds true. In the thin air of the small world of top targets the same faces pop up. From time to time employers may change, but individual experiences will not.

The only exception to this rule is to be found where the task of product development is actually a product renovation or some type of repackaging for a different market. If you are renovating or otherwise repackaging an existing intangible product, and you need to raise cash from sales, then there is no problem, whatsoever, as long as you merely continue sales of the existing product. Be prepared to put up with any revenue shortfalls through other methods as you will not have an opportunity to reprice the product until you complete the task of renovating and repackaging what you’ve got into “new clothes.”

If you need to sample market reaction as you experiment within the process of renovating, repackaging and repositioning, then be absolutely sure to target appropriate prospects where risks to your reputation and brand can be carefully controlled. Prospects are appropriate targets if they are far from the top of an industry vertical, but offer the culture and business realities that will be consistent once you finally enter markets with your finished product.

Selling a product that is ill suited for a new market will not work if you need to enter the new market before opportunity evaporates. In this case the only viable strategy is to acquire a competitor. Of course this route will be costly, so it will always be better to make the effort to precisely time entry than to start work in the first place.

Control Lead Generation Quality to Control Sales Results

Posted on May 30, 2011 by Ira Michael Blonder

The quality of leads generated through a business’ promotional efforts (including sales leads delivered from staff efforts) is very important to the actual results of sales efforts. Save a lot of time and a lot of money: make certain that the leads you receive are the leads that you can close and want to close for your business. This point may seem obvious, but it is surprising how often CEOs of emerging businesses (and especially for emerging businesses with complex products targeted at enterprise business customers) miss this point, or try to broadly hit the point with imprecise promotional marketing techniques. Finally, craft your marketing and sales compensation programs to fairly reward each piece of the respective functions to ensure that personnel are sufficiently motivated to deliver. Eschew the typical approach that rewards sales with great commissions, but lead generation marketing staff are left to approach their role as something transitional, a stepping stone to sales, rather than a career that can, itself, be quite rewarding. The planning time spent building promotional activities within marketing that will precisely attract the interest of the right prospects for sales will pay off handsomely.

Of course, in order to craft an effective lead generation program with a technique like teleprospecting, your marketing function must have completely understood and even digested the product the business is selling, like food, to the point that your product is running, like blood, through everyone’s veins. Nothing short of this completely correct understanding of the product will do. As I have written earlier in this blog, a big part of gaining this understanding is knowing how your customers are using your product; therefore, if your business is just starting, without customers, marketing’s job is that much harder, but nonetheless still absolutely essential.

If the promotional efforts include telemarketing (or teleprospecting), then marketing must subsequently publish a complete list of the qualifications of the targeted prospect business, all the way from revenue size, to geographical location, to type of business, and inclusive of all financial realities, external factors and more. Further, the staff role within the prospect business must be defined and contact lists must be developed. Underlining all of this qualification, like the foundation of a house, is marketing’s identification of the stage within the chronology of product implementation (otherwise known as product maturity) that is required for the right prospects to fit into your sales plan. As the CEO, you must have the option of selecting where, in the implementation process for the solution (or piece of the solution) that your product delivers, you establish contact with the right prospects for sales. This point of contact may be where the prospect “needs” something like your product, or earlier in the maturity cycle, where the prospect is contemplating the solution, or perhaps later, where the prospect has tried the solution and is now rethinking his or her decision and looking to renovate. There are advantages to choosing any one of these three points of entry.

With a thorough product plan and prospect qualification lead generation staff can then play their very valuable role delivering rich and promising prospects to sales who are then left to their best activities, selling to customers.

Best Practices: Outbound Teleprospecting for Complex Products Post #2 — Where Time Matters

Posted on May 22, 2011 by Ira Michael Blonder

When time matters (for a company with a complex product for enterprise customers), and capital is limited, the lead generation strategy should be built, at least in part, around outbound teleprospecting, but without an effort to survey prospects. I am not going to treat interactive tactics to augment outbound teleprospecting in this post, but will shortly write a series of posts describing the use of one set of interactive tactics–social media–within a powerful and comprehensive lead generation strategy. Rather, in this post I want to talk about variations on the survey approach to teleprospecting to hasten along the sales cycle.

The most obvious means of hastening a sales cycle is to focus sales efforts only on prospects with clear needs. Selling efforts should only be made on those leads where indisputable, confirmed decision-makers have been identified within companies. Further, these decision-makers must be managing funded projects that are scheduled for completion over the next near term (the actual length of the “near term” will vary depending upon the “typical” sales cycle for the product). For the record, the drawback implicit to this approach is that it eliminates the group of prospects who do not know what they need as well as those who think they need the wrong thing. But a company pressed for time and running on limited means must make some sacrifice in order to achieve sales goals. An additional drawback is that some of the projects identified through this process will be mature and at a level where the prospect is “shopping” a specific solution, meaning a commodity in the market.

Nevertheless, the hook for generating most of these leads will be discussions about well known solutions (effectively the highest quality commodities in a particular market) with interested parties. These discussions are not an optimum basis for a conversation, but at least a workable technique. Determining a reliable ratio between telephone calls and discussions will vary; however, as a rule, each set of 100 calls should result in at least 15 discussions. Further, 2 or more sales calls should result from 15 teleprospecting discussions at some point in the sales cycle. If actual efforts do not deliver results in keeping with these assumptions, then the lead contact list must be evaluated to ensure that the right contacts have been included.

Typically, utilizing this approach, a teleprospecting team will have to plan on at least one additional discussion with a prospect prior to passing along a useful lead to sales than would be the case for a focus on securing surveys with the same prospects. The script for this additional discussion will include questions to determine important information about a prospect and his/her company prior to scheduling a meeting with a subject matter expert. The result will be a considerably enhanced, and substantially narrower selling effort. This combination may provide a CEO with a viable solution to limited time and budget. Of course, the dialogue with the prospect may, over time, reveal opportunities to widen the lens and chase more lucrative opportunities based on what a prospect doesn’t know.

Go “Under the Radar” to Test New Markets

Posted on May 15, 2011 by Ira Michael Blonder

As I’ve just written in a previous post, in my experience, the principal reason to market and sell complex products to enterprise customers “under the radar”, meaning in “stealth mode”, is to delay the entry of competitors into a market while establishing one’s business in first position. The importance and value of first position in an enterprise market is well known and needs no further explanation here. I will simply say that first position in an enterprise market is a powerful placement where even competitors with better offerings will be hard pressed to unseat you. Therefore, the effort of operating “under the radar” makes sense as long as your product is either new, or of unclear value to enterprise customers.

There is another formidable reason to market and sell enterprise customers “under the radar:” If your business has established a brand name for other products, then be sure to insulate your established brand as you attempt to modify the market perception of what your business is about. Nothing could be worse than to undermine your core business as you branch out into new and untested markets. If you restrict your marketing and sales efforts to highly targeted prospects to whom you have disclosed your interest in entering new markets, you can always cease efforts should your efforts fail.

A key point here is to share with your prospects the truth that you’re making efforts to test new markets. Once prospects understand your tactics, then you will be able to realize the benefits as you will be perceived, in the market, as expanding and growing your presence beyond your initial product offerings rather than supplanting them with a new product. Therefore, the perfect tactic for product promotion/marketing communications within this “stealth mode” of operation is the survey which, once again, is familiar ground for teleprospecting.

Telephone surveys (and online surveys completed by registered web site visitors) will result in lots of useful information that can be leveraged should you decide to proceed with new, complex enterprise products.

If, on the other hand, you opt not to share the truth of your efforts with your prospects, you may add some further insulation to your core business, but at what cost? Whomever you contact as you test the case for new products will see you as less than honest, a negative impression that you will be hard pressed to dispel as you go forward.

Marketing, Promotion & Sales Consulting for Business

IMB Enterprises, Inc., Huntington, NY 11746 +1 (631) 673-2929, imblonder@imbenterprises.com

Category Archives: Enterprise Business