Weekend Reading

 From 7 Rules of Power: Surprising — but True — Advice on How to Get Things Done and Advance Your Career. His seven rules are: 

• get out of your own way — that is, 
• speak with confidence and do not undersell yourself, 
• break the rules — do the unexpected, 
• show up in powerful fashion — with conscious body language and actual language, 
• create a powerful brand, network relentlessly, 
• use your power — do not be afraid to wield power once you have it, 
• and finally, remember that “success excuses (almost) everything” — the powerful attract and retain support.” 

 

Why Buyers chose your Customer 

When buyers were asked to select their top 5 reasons for choosing the winning vendor over other vendors they considered, the top response was that the winner demonstrated a stronger knowledge of the buyer’s company and its needs (68%). (In fact, lack of knowledge of a company and its needs has separately been cited by buyers as their top deal-killer.) 

Focus on Outcomes 

Growing faster than the market - what questions the C-Suite Should ask 

Where is my growth going to come from? 

How do I grow now and tomorrow? 

How do I set up my growth engine? 

17 Common Virtual Selling Mistakes to Avoid

Weekend Reading

Weekend Reading: 

How to kickstart and scale a consumer business: 

 Here’s what’s in store: Step 1: INSIGHT: Come up with your idea ← This post Step 2: AUDIENCE: Identify your super-specific who Step 3: HOOK: Craft your pitch Step 4: REACH: Find your early adopters by doing things that don’t scale Step 5: RETAIN: Iterate until enough people stick around Step 6: SCALE: Build your growth engine

 
Marc Andersen on Technology and Web3, Crypto 

I think this is a foundational technology change, a new architecture for building an entirely new generation of computing systems. We have become convinced that Web3/blockchain/crypto is foundational. It’s a big hill. It’s as foundational an architecture shift as the ones from mainframes to PCs, from PCs to web, from web to mobile, or from traditional software to AI. It’s a fundamental shift and building this out is a 25- to 30-year process.

 
How Companies can build In-House Consulting 

“Management consulting is expensive. The median billing range for India-bred consulting firms and the Big Four is 0.7-1 million per consultant-month. For international firms like Accenture, this range can be 1.5-2 million. For MBB (McKinsey, BCG, Bain,) the range is 2.5 million plus, and can cross 5 million per consultant-month (Indian arms of MNCs often pay global rates.) This translates to gross margins of more than 50%. Given this increasing need for consulting services and the high costs, many companies attempt to build consulting teams in-house. At its core, management consulting requires three things: One, top talent. Two, access to information sources such as research reports and expert networks (e.g., GLG—Gerson Lehrman Group.) Three, the institutional knowledge on domains and problem-solving methods.”

 
Align Sales and Marketing for Revenue Growth 

Strategy Alignment: Both Marketing and Sales functions must dramatically change their revenue strategies to better align with the new buyer. The Marketing strategy of brand awareness and demand generation, and Sales strategy of opportunity management and closing, is no longer adequate. Marketing strategies and Sales strategies must be integrated into a common, comprehensive revenue strategy that focuses on shortening the entire buyer journey, both online and offline. 

Process Alignment: Both Marketing and Sales groups must dramatically change their revenue processes to better align with the empowered buyer team. The marketing process (aka funnel) and the sales process (aka pipeline) no longer aligns with the customer’s purchasing process. The separate Marketing processes and Sales processes must be integrated into a common comprehensive revenue process that focuses on moving every buyer team member through each stage of their purchasing process resulting in a decision to purchase. 

Execution Alignment & Empowered Collaboration: Both Marketing specialists and Sales specialists must dramatically change how they design and execute revenue campaigns. They must leverage their unique professional skills, experience, and technologies to collaborate on designing and executing an integrated marketing and sales campaigns that accelerate the buyer to the next stage of their purchasing process.

 
What’s Standing in the Way of B2B Companies Providing A Great Customer Experience?

Weekend Reading

 My predictions on Macro Economic View of Australia FY23

How Humans and AI are Collaborating 

The B2B Lead Gen Stumbling Blocks and How to Overcome Them

Given the complex nature of B2B lead generation, it goes without saying that there are plenty of stumbling blocks that can hinder lead gen efforts. With this in mind, we’re diving into the common pain points marketers experience when filling the funnel while offering solutions that lead to better marketing results.
1. Marketing Without a Cohesive Lead Generation Strategy 

2. Marketers are Focusing on Lead Quantity Instead of Quality 

3. There are Gaps in Content Marketing Efforts 

4. Content Marketing Isn’t Aligned with the B2B Buyer Journey 

5. Marketing Efforts Aren’t Consistently Optimised 

B2B buyers Transparency make Vendor Purchase Easier

Research has shown that nearly two-thirds (65%) of B2B buyers felt vendors placed more emphasis on selling than they did on listening to their needs. Because of this, buyers are turning to other non-vendor-controlled sources such as user reviews, free trials and product demos to investigate the cons before making a purchase. To get ahead of this, vendors should be more forthcoming and listen to what their buyers are telling them. By highlighting their weaknesses, they may actually start to make more sales.

What is your customer's Unique Value Story

Supercharging the executive summary 

The most important part of any sales proposal is, of course, the executive summary. It’s likely to be read by stakeholders with the significant decision or approval authority who won’t go into all the detail. And some of those stakeholders may not have been involved in the previous discussions. Some may even be questioning “why do we need to do this at all?”
This is where an executive summary that deals with your customer’s three critical questions: why change, why you and why now? can be such a powerful selling tool. Summarising the customer’s unique value story in your executive summary not only promotes your organisation, it also promotes the need for change and reinforces the benefits of urgent action.

Pricing Strategy - Mistakes to Avoid

 

Persona Mapping - Sellers from Mars and Buyers from Venus - Elements of Nature Meet B2B Sales

Excerpt from my upcoming book at amazon.com - "Sellers from Mars and Buyers from Venus - Elements of Nature Meet B2B Sales" 

How a Sponsoring Executive of Action Centric (Fire) Persona and Calm and Stable Persona (Earth) will engage with others. 

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Sponsoring Executive

An executive sponsor is a person in the management or an executive team responsible for driving the outcome of a proposed solution to resolve a business problem. In business-to-business sales, an executive sponsor can be on either side, at the buyer's or the seller's end. 

At the buyer's end, it is primarily someone who has a keen interest in resolving a business problem or is a decision-maker and strongly influences the outcome of a sales transaction. 

At the seller's end, it is primarily someone keen on growing the business by investing capital and resources.

  

Following are the key responsibilities of an executive sponsor at the buyer's end:

• Prepare and own the business case

• Engage and work with other sponsors and stakeholders in positioning and selling the business case internally and externally with suppliers

• Recommend or assist in the go-to-market approach

• Govern the communication with stakeholders

• Govern the risks and the outcome of the business case 

Let us explore how a sponsoring executive at the buyer's end engages with the internal and external stakeholders by applying the elemental attributes learned in previous sections.

Fire – Action 

Sponsoring Executive

• Business Case Preparation

o they are seeking a futuristic and innovative roadmap or a solution, preferably for short and mid-term 

o a lot of data points are provided for analysis and problem definition

o budget allocation will be generous and is eager to allocate work   

• Go to Market Approach 

o fond of an audience and connecting with higher authorities means they employ a top-down strategy

o being time-consuming, a mechanism like RFP is least appealing 

o they reach out to innovative and agile (swift in delivery) suppliers, or internal teams for selling the business case

    

• Positioning 

o growth-oriented – being passionate for innovation and driven by future trends with the intent of growing the business, their initiatives are positioned as growth-oriented

• Engagement

o being open and honest, they interact with honesty and transparency, loses cool if the opposite side is not transparent

o the sharpness of fire is reflected in their sharpshooting style of conversation, and they have no hidden agenda

o they are competitive and use charm to impress upon stakeholders 

• Communication  

o timely, quick and action-oriented

o they lack depth in conversation, like to take control of the conversation 

o they use data-driven insights and visuals to communicate  

• Governance   

o they exert pressure on stakeholders by repeatedly chasing activity progress 

o they seek action and quick wins 

o they are tolerant and considerate but will have failures or lapses in execution provided the information for the root cause is shared transparently

The book is on promotion for a limited time only.

Market Your Way to Growth

Template for driving growth.

• Grow by Building Market Share 
• Grow through Developing Committed Customers and Stakeholders 
• Grow by Developing a Powerful Brand 
• Grow by Innovating New Products, Services, and Experiences 
• Grow by International Expansion 
• Grow by Mergers, Acquisitions, Alliances, and Joint Ventures 
• Grow by Building an Outstanding Reputation for Social Responsibility 
• Grow by Partnering with Government and NGOs

Source: Market Your Way to Growth by Philip and Milton Kotler

How to make Marketing Platforms as Profit Centres

Source:  How to build Profit Centric Marketing 

• What businesses need is a framework for profit-centric marketing, with profit creators
• This can only come from existing customers using 5R – 
• combining retention, 
• repetition, 
• referrals, 
• reactivation (as opposed to reacquisition) 
• and replenishment (targeted new acquisition) 
•  This 5R focus needs the 4P framework: 
•  pipes, 
•  partitioning, 
•  properties, 
•  and prospecting

This transformation will need the third generation of martech platforms: the first generation was about point solutions and the second generation was about full-stack platforms. The third generation will be about platforms that are Web3 powered and enable the tokenisation that marketers need to make XR (and therefore profit-centric marketing) a reality.

Weekend Reading

 Bridging the gap: How and why product management differs from company to company

Companies, like many in New York, that are introducing solutions to mature industries tend to be sales-driven, so product teams are informed by what customers will readily buy and are measured based on output and revenue. Companies, like many in the Bay Area, that are creating new categories are generally vision-driven, so product teams are more cross-functional and iterative, and are measured based on validated learnings and outcomes. The two models on each end of the spectrum manage risk differently and, with regard to startups, offer a varied range of results. Predicated on introducing solutions to previously unarticulated problems (e.g. Snapchat), Bay Area startups and product managers are tasked with launching moonshots. Failure is more frequent and expensive but success is exponential in size.

How Marketing can assist in Maximising Growth

Fortunately, there's a good rule of thumb called the "70-20-10 rule" that business leaders can use to address the current vs. future aspect of the resource allocation challenge. The 70-20-10 rule has been used for a variety of business purposes. For example, Google has reportedly used it to manage the innovation process, and Coca Cola has reportedly used a version of the rule to guide marketing investment decisions. The marketing version of the 70-20-10 rule says that about 70% of your marketing resources should be devoted to capabilities and programs with a proven track record of acceptable performance. These will include marketing channels, techniques, and technologies that your company is currently using successfully. The 70-20-10 rule does not mean that companies should simply "keep on doing what we're already doing." It means that marketers should evaluate how well their "bread and butter" programs are performing and continue to invest in those that are delivering acceptable results.

Why your customers want to buy is as important as what they want to buy

In complex, discretionary B2B buying environments it’s just as important - often more important - to understand why your prospective customer has embarked on their buying journey. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that no matter how perfect your salespeople’s understanding of their prospect’s needs is, and no matter how good a job your salespeople have done in influencing those needs in your favour, if you don’t understand why your customers are buying, you’re flying blind.

Replacing the Sales Funnel with the Sales Flywheel

One of my favorite business school professors used to say, “If you want to build a great company, your product has got to be ten times better than the competition.” Today, that advice feels out of date. If you want to build a great company in 2018, your customer experience has to be ten times lighter than the competition. It used to be what you sell that really matters, now it’s how you sell that really matters Unlike some changes in business philosophy, the flywheel is not an all-or-nothing proposition, Any tactical change to reduce friction, or organizational alignment of forces that optimize for customer delight, will have a measurable impact on customer experience. Early successes will breed increasing support for a full flywheel approach.

10 Commandments for Marketing and Product in a Software Startup Artificial Intelligence Strategy: 7

 Things to Consider Before Getting Onboard What B2B Sales Enablement “Visionaries” Are Doing

Weekend Reading

 

• B2B Suppliers need to upgrade their Channels for Ease of Sales 
• Leadership Mantra
• The salesperson who drives you crazy
• How to be professional in Virtual meetings
• Aligning Sales and Marketing

Weekend Reading

• Will DAOs Replace Corporations
• Story of Indian Economy
• 86% of B2B Content Consumption Takes Place Outside the C-Suite
• Best Continuous Discovery Teams
• How to move faster in marketing
• Build your insight capabilities to leapfrog the competition
• Russia and Ukraine - Security Service Providers Must Be Ready  

Early B2B Deciders

 Persona of B2B Early Deciders are following:

• Younger millennials, with more responsibility. 
•  Employed in larger, enterprise-scale companies that are growing fast. 
•  Technophiles who spend more on IT. 
•  Decisive, authoritative, and deliberate. 
•  Promoters of customer experience (CX), innovation, and brand.

Source: Forrester Blog

Weekend Reading

• Ways to Connect with your Audience
• Managing when the future is unclear
• Build your brand as a leader
• B2B companies fail at Content and Marketing
• Collaboration needs to change from Mind to Marketplace

Weekend Reading

 

• Technology Crossing the Chasm
• How to Identify Growth Opportunities
• How to Price SAAS Product
• Strategy for Startups
• The Shift in the Future of B2B Pricing

Weekend Reading

Weekend Reading

• Facebook has changed its name (context: Metaverse) 
• Leaders need to cultivate complementary strengths
• Increase Business Referrals
• New rules of marketing
• Buyers Journey is becoming more like a quest

Weekend Reading

 Weekend Reading 

• Atomic Rewards: The Solution to Attention Recession (Part 3)
• Entrepreneurs need me time
• Common biases in boardroom culture
• Four ways Jobs will respond to automation
• Four signs of founder market fit
• Successful selling - intelligent choices over data

Sellers From Mars and Buyers From Venus - Highlights

Highlights and Excerpts from my book, "Sellers From Mars and Buyers From Venus, Elements of Nature Meet B2B Sales" are published. 

This gives a view of what is inside the book.

 

Weekend Reading

 

• Sales is broken?
• How to get feedback from your team
• Why Buyers are disrupting the sales process
• Who is your customer
• CMO and CIO partnership in Digital Transformation
• Tips for scaling product
• Apples decade of Success

“No CEO in history has created as much total shareholder value as Mr Cook. When he took over the company had a market value of $349bn. Today it is worth $2.5trn, more than any other listed firm ever. Under his aegis annual sales surged from $108bn in 2011 to $274bn last year. Net profit more than doubled to $57bn, overtaking Saudi Aramco’s oil-fuelled earnings and turning Apple into the world’s most profitable company. Less widely noticed, during his tenure the “Apple economy”—its annual revenue plus everything other companies make on one of its platforms—has grown sevenfold to more than $1trn.

Seven Sins of Pricing