“True marketing starts out with the customer, his demographics, his realities, his needs, his values. It does not ask, ‘What do we want to sell?’ It asks, ‘What does the customer want to buy?’ It does not say, ‘This is what our product or service does.’ It says, ‘These are the satisfactions the customer looks for, values, and needs’.”

--Peter Drucker

It happens all the time, to smart companies and smart people. They come to see their worlds through their own biases and filters. The result is distorted analysis, myopic thinking, missed opportunities.

Many B2B companies see marketing as only the “output jack” of a company. Market leaders recognize it’s an input jack as well. Market research is the way to systematically answer crucial questions like, “How does this market segment? What are the customer’s buying habits? What’s our image? Does the customer even care about this new product or add-on? How do we stack up against the competition?”

A failure to validate their ideas and market realities is one of the biggest mistakes B2B companies make. Measure twice, cut once, and you’ll save yourself time, money and grief.
 

Market segmentation & opportunity analysis

How attractive are your myriad market opportunities? That is, how big are they? How fast are they growing? How well insulated? Who’s well suited to extract value from those markets? You? We can help you find out. Don’t leave opportunity to chance.
 

How well does your team truly know your various customers, their requirements, and their preferences? When is the last time your company measured customer satisfaction? Your customer retention ratio? The expected lifetime value of your customer groups? Or how they define value?

One of the biggest mistakes B2B companies make is seeing themselves in the technology or product business selling to customers, instead of being in the customer business selling technology or products.

How successful could your company be if it were known as the provider that understood customer value better than anyone else in your category? We can help you get there. We offer a sophisticated set of tools for systematically understanding anything from buying triggers to the customer’s experience through the purchase and use of your product.
 

“We have only two sources of competitive advantage: One, the ability to learn more about our customer faster than the competition. And two, the ability to turn that learning into action faster than the competition.”

--Jack Welch

Defining relevant solutions to your target customer problems is a great starting point, but if you can’t demonstrate superiority on some meaningful dimension, you’ll never stand out in the customer’s mind. And your market share will surely follow. The better you know your competition, the better you can deliver superior value, garner a leading market share, and command a premium price.
 

Customer value models are the starting point for making your value proposition tangible. These methods were developed at some of the country’s top business schools, and we have experience putting them into use to demonstrate and document the ROI of your products or services. We’ve even written a textbook chapter on the subject, as well as numerous journal articles.

If you’re struggling to turn a fuzzy value proposition into something concrete—“gray dollars into green dollars”—customer value modeling is the way to start.
 

Take this test: Ask your executive team to write your company’s growth strategy in 50 words or less. Then compare them. How much similarity do you see?

Every member of your executive and management teams should know your growth strategy cold. What is it? To enter new markets? Create new products? Develop new channels?

We can bring clear-headed thinking to the task. Whether it’s facilitating a strategy retreat or helping you uncover your options through analytical support, we can help your company focus its strategy and align behind it. Without that alignment, you’ll undoubtedly squander the efforts of your key team members, and a lot of your shareholders’ money.
 

Brand strategy, positioning, & message development

B2B companies often mistakenly view branding as a cosmetic exercise. Nothing could be further from the truth. Your brand is your value proposition made vivid in every customer interaction with your products, people and processes. Your brand strategy begins with your defining specifically and exactly what you want to stand for in your markets. And then building everything around that, from your messaging to the customer’s use experience with your product to how you address customer input or complaints. Every customer interaction is a moment of truth, to either reinforce your brand or diminish it. Brand is as brand does.

Your marketing team can communicate your brand explicitly. But your engineering, sales, and customer service people have a lot more influence on your brand. They’re the ones who truly have the greatest impact at those critical customer touch points.

Owning a vivid position in B2B markets is critical to establishing brand preference and standing above the competitive noise. And it doesn’t mean spending an arm and a leg on advertising or sponsorships. In fact, we’ve seen great brands that did no advertising. You don’t need the marketing budget of Caterpillar, Siemens, IBM, or Intel to build a vivid market position around strong core ideas. But you do need to make some decisions, about who you are and who you are not.

Your name, what you stand for, and what your customers think and feel about you directly feeds your bottom line, through higher preference, greater ease extending into new markets or products, stronger customer loyalty, and premium pricing.

Don’t leave your brand to chance, or worse yet to your competition to define. We can bring an objective, outside eye—and some candor—to looking carefully at your brand promise and how well you deliver on it.
 

Does your team lack the expertise or time to develop business or marketing plans that your organization can rally around? Or do you need to inject some new life into your planning process? If so, we can help. We’ve developed plans that have secured significant venture funding, as well as plans that have set the foundation for record business growth.

For a complimentary review of your existing business or marketing plan, and suggestions for how you might improve upon it, contact us.
 

Even the best business plan needs a go-to-market strategy to bring it to life. Which channels align with your product and market? How will you price your offering? What sort of promotional campaigns will work in your category? Do social media matter to your buyers? What pricing strategy will give you the best return?

We can help you define the strategy, and then also manage your execution, whether it’s launching a new business, new service, or new product.
 

“Because its purpose is to create a customer, the business has two basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation
produce results; all the rest are costs."
- Peter Drucker

New products are the lifeblood of every company. Yet many miss their mark when launched, and many others simply fail commercially.

We can help you define or refine a product idea, by systematically working with you and your target buyers, users, and influencers. And we can help you validate a product with your target market before it goes into production, to minimize your risk of commercial failure. Numerous methods exist to facilitate this type of inquiry, including focus groups, private interviews, simulations, and value-in-use analysis.

Once a great product is defined, much work remains to be done. We can support you in planning for product line extensions, and evaluating options for engineering, pricing, promoting, servicing, and distributing it.
 

Go direct? Through distributors? Agents? Value-added resellers? Online?

Which channel provides the greatest ease of buying for your target customers? Which channel best complements your brand? How can you use channels of distribution to build competitive advantage?

We can assist you with these strategic questions, with defining your optimal channel mix, and with planning ahead to minimize channel conflict.
 

Buying cycle – sales tool alignment

At each stage of the buying cycle your prospects have different information needs. Are your sales tools aligned with those needs? Are they attuned to the shifts from rational to emotional considerations throughout the buying cycle?

We have a rigorous model for diagnosing the customer buying cycle, and evaluating the information requirements that prospects have at each point. Let us walk through it with you to see if your sales tools match what your prospects and customers are looking for.
 

It's one thing to generate sales leads, but quite another to get the most out of them. The vast majority of B2B companies do not come close to realizing the full value of the sales leads they generate. The problem is so common it has a name—lead leakage.

Sales leads are often poorly qualified, resulting in a backlog that account managers can’t keep up with. As a result, sales managers spend precious time trying desperately to separate the good from the bad, while engaged in a level of activity better suited to a back-office function. As well, countless qualified prospects are never contacted, and potential revenue is either sitting on your floor, or in your competitors’ bank accounts.

Let us help you define a new lead management process that gives your account managers sales leads when they are qualified--and gives your marketing department the data to evaluate their investments.
 

When is the last time you took an objective look at why you win and lose sales? Is it because of your company's reputation? Follow-up service? Product performance?

When you lose to any given competitor, do you know why? What does it really mean when your account manager tells you, “It was a political decision”? We can bring an objective third-party analysis to helping you understand why you're winning and why you’re losing, and then work with you on a strategy for turning that insight into more profitable moves.
 

You’re looking at making a strategic acquisition. It's a significant bet for your company. What are the marketing capabilities of the company you’re targeting? How will they fit with your own? What gaps need to be filled?

Most acquisitions fail to deliver their expected value. Don't let an inadequate understanding of your target company’s marketing capabilities be a stumbling block to your success. We can help you know what you are buying and what you’re not.
 

How do you measure your marketing team's performance? What are the key metrics that you track within your business? Market awareness? Perceived brand attributes? Lead volume? Lead conversion ratios? Market share?

Brilliant marketing is as much a science as an art. We can help you establish a more scientific method for evaluating your marketing performance. Whether you're a startup or a company with hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, you cannot afford to waste money on ineffective marketing. Get started now on establishing a performance measurement system for measuring the return on your marketing investment.
 

What's working and not working in your company when it comes to marketing? Do your management and marketing teams have in place the appropriate capabilities when it cones to brand management, messaging, or lead generation systems? Are your marketing resources being spent as effectively as they could be?

We have developed a rigorous set of tools for auditing marketing organizations. Let us show how we can help you get a better understanding of what's clicking or not within your company.