The Hidden Problem of Innovation Marketing… or You Can’t Solve A Problem Until You Create One
Let's just say you landed a job as the new CMO at a really great growth company. And not just ANY company. You just snagged a role at a really hot start-up. Pre-IPO stock options. In-house chef. The works. But wait - there's more! Your product (or service) is not an "also-ran" entry in an undifferentiated commodity market with nothing to talk about. No, you're marketing a true leading-edge product with demonstrable superiority. A product (or service), they say, that practically "sells itself". You nailed it!
Use your Company’s Top Problem to Power its Transformation
As you start this year, you have a surprising asset to make this a great year: your greatest weakness. That’s right. Your biggest pain could be your biggest gain. This is no pep talk. This is no self-help psycho-babble. This is an objective, historical observation. I’ve got the stories to prove it. I’m going to share just one famous example. But contact us – we’ve got more. First, the bad news Years ago (in a galaxy far, far away) I had the good fortune to be part of a team that turned around an old stogy relic of the past into a cutting-edge pioneer of e-business. That company was IBM.
B2B Prospecting Is Not What You Think. It’s Personal.
During a research interview on behalf of a highly innovative tech manufacturer, I asked a customer, what this company’s greatest strength is. The answer-my sales rep. B2B Prospecting Is Personal It’s a tenet of my marketing belief system and a strong competitive differentiator. The better we understand our prospects and customers as people, the better we can communicate with them about their goals and challenges. Are We Making B2B Marketing More Personal or Making More Marketing?
Great product, great promotion, and… great problems
Instigation: Applied Biosystems develops and manufactures the range of scientific instrumentation used by DNA researchers. One of their lower-priced devices to read DNA, the 2400, was used primarily in university research labs. Its features and reliability outpace all competitors, yet it was steadily, and inexplicably, losing marketshare. To resuscitate sales, AB decided on a promotion. They would bundle the 2400 with AB’s new line of popular chemical reagents. The promotional price would be less than the sum of its parts and labs would be getting the best instrument and reagents on the market. With great expectations, the salesforce began to call their customers that afternoon.
Shifting Focus from Products to PROSPECTS
Instigation: This ‘challenger’ mining company in Africa was up against major suppliers around the world. Their core product was a low-margin commodity, and they were losing economies of scale to larger producers. They were looking to build their volume to gain scale as well as expand into new areas... that had even stronger competition! Internally there was no agreement on direction, or even what the problem was. Typical of engineering firms, the focus was on the product, putting the marketing team in the position of “finding buyers” for what they produced.
Creative Questions Energize a Quiet Commodity Industry
Instigation: This long-established supplier of office products to small businesses had just been acquired. The newly merged company was anxious to explore options to increase growth within the current customer base, particularly in its top vertical segments, but years of prior attempts by Deluxe to increase volume through new products and services or new marketing methods had borne no results. The client was looking to us to tap undiscovered or overlooked opportunities, but their small business clients (wearing many hats) spent very little time thinking about this low-involvement category.
Being Right Can Be So Wrong
Instigation: Asigra has been quietly providing data backup and recovery software for decades. Positioned as the “cloud backup expert”, Asigra serves more than 550,000 sites throughout the world with single-minded devotion. Content to devote all their energy to supporting their channel partners, they are one of the most accomplished companies you’ve never heard of. By focusing solely on backup and recovery, Asigra developed a string of product innovations that led to industry analysts including them among preferred enterprise-grade backup solutions. The good news was that this opened a long-sought opportunity -- to expand from SMB to the enterprise. The bad news was that the enterprise marketplace is home to the well-known and well-entrenched 500 lb. gorillas of technology. Asigra needed a positioning that enabled them to get meetings with senior decision-makers at the corporate level.
The Power of Product, Process, and … People
Instigation: Once a dominant manufacturer of those ubiquitous hospital IV pumps, Baxter was steadily losing market share to competitors with more advanced products. To reverse their fortunes, they developed a competitive new line but, being late with the new technology, they knew they had to get the marketing exactly right or their opportunity to reestablish leadership would be lost. In addition, the marketing team needed compelling prospect insights to help align other internal groups around a cohesive go-to-market plan.
Tradeshift
Instigation: Tradeshift is a B2B start-up offering a free invoicing platform and a growing web-based business network. Like many start-ups, its vision was grander than its reality. It quickly found itself in a sea of small companies offering commoditized e-invoicing services. Frustrating to employee and founder alike was the challenge of navigating between here and where they want to be. Their marketing had become muddled. As the new CMO John Eng observed, “Our vision was so big it was hard to communicate. Our messaging had to speak to a range of small to large companies. The challenge was that we’d never really codified a company-wide story or the messaging that conveyed that story.”
The Network Of Me And What It Can Do For You
Come, take a walk with me and let’s talk about sales. In fact, I’d like us to put on our prospect hats because the experience is unique. It’s really important to our discussion.