Three by four marketing equation for success.

Three by four marketing equation for success.

Mar 2, 2016 | Communication, Customers, Marketing, Strategy

How do you win business in a competitive world?

I know for sure it is not  getting any easier, but the advice on how to do, and stories of how to be rich in 15 minutes a day seem to abound.

Perhaps I don’t take advice well?

It is pretty clear to me, after 40 years of working with this stuff that the more we complicate things, the more difficult seeing the wood for the trees becomes, so here is a really simple tool that you can use today.

To get business, any business, although the context and circumstances vary enormously, the potential customer needs to:

  • Know you
  • Like you
  • Trust that you can solve their problem/add value to their lives.

Pretty simple really.

The other side of the equation of course is the challenge of creating the circumstances where a potential customer has the opportunity to get to know, like and trust you.

Marketers can spend huge amounts of money, much of it wasted, on chasing this outcome, often failing simply because they complicate the hell out of it and confuse themselves.

I like to think of it in human terms. The building of a marketing relationship is no different to any other type of human relationship, it evolves in stages that are pretty simple:

  • You need to be where they are. This is so blindingly obvious it is often missed.
  • You need to get their attention.
  • You need to make a connection
  • You need them to take action.

marketing matrix for successBreak all the complicated cliché ridden & expensive recommendations  you get from those with a pig in the race into this simple matrix and reap the benefits.

Beware though, as Steve Jobs said, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication” so this stuff is deceptively hard, but now you have a tool to make it easier.

The 6 ways to benefit from losing a tender

The 6 ways to benefit from losing a tender

Feb 29, 2016 | Change, Sales

Most of the businesses I work with are medium sized, at best. Most have a significant functional capability that can deliver great value, but they often do not have the ‘grunt’ in other areas to get over the line with large customers.

Many of them are in businesses where competitive tenders are a fact of life, it is a characteristic of many B2B markets, and whilst it is breaking down, the bias towards ‘The big guy’ remains. As they say in corporations,  ‘You do not  get fired for buying from IBM’ which is just a way of expressing the risk aversion of those in many large businesses where making a mistake is career-toxic.

So, why celebrate when you lose?

Here are 6 reasons:

  1. You did well to get on the radar. A key component of B2B marketing is getting on the radar of those in your ideal customers who have some influence, if not always decision making power. Being included in a tender list is evidence that you have succeeded crossing that first hurdle.
  2. Customer intelligence. The information in a tender necessary for tenderers to adequately meet the specifications can tell you a lot about the business. What are its priorities, their capabilities in your areas of competence, their budgeting and  buying rhythm,  and how the buying process works. All great information. It is also extremely useful to assess weather or not they are someone you want to do business with. Selling is a transaction, a 2 way process, as the seller, it is your choice to work with a potential customer or not, so do not be afraid to work only with those who will not only pay you, but value what you bring to the table.
  3. Know the personnel & process. People buy from people, not corporations, the better they know, like and trust you, the greater the chance you have. Getting to know like and trust is a human process, it happens over time, face to face. Preparing and submitting a tender while painful when you lose, is a great way to create other opportunities during the process. Even after you have lost, don’t waste the opportunity to reinforce the relationships that will serve you the next time.
  4. Follow up intelligence. Keeping in touch with a project you have missed out on can tell you a lot about the client, and also a lot about the winning tenderer.  Knowing your competitor better than they know you is always an advantage.
  5. Other opportunities. If the tender you lost was the first tender you did for the customer, you should not be surprised that you lost. Change is hard, and risky, those managing tenders like a simple easy life, so they tend to stay with what they know. However, it is also in their interests to have options, so being around and interested, making yourself an option, might open up  other small opportunities that would just normally get missed. Getting a foot in the door with a small job and doing it really well is the best way I know of to get on the next big tender list.
  6. You get to know where you are not wanted. Sometimes there are opaque barriers to success. Try as you might, make the tenders truly great, and you still do not win, or even get any useful feedback, get the message. Our time combined with our expertise is the most valuable resource we have, don’t waste it where it is not valued, or where there is some invisible barrier to success. Move on.

Remember as well that those awarding tenders are just people, they like to he liked and valued. They like to think that they are awarding business to those who really want it, and are determined to do a great job. So, be persistent and committed, although never ‘needy’, seek to assist them in ways not necessarily associated with a tender, it will help keep you on the radar, and build a relationship.

What fly fishing can teach us about lead generation

What fly fishing can teach us about lead generation

Feb 22, 2016 | Marketing, Small business, Strategy

 

When I can, I fish for trout with a dry fly in mountain streams. It can be cold, obviously very wet, frustrating, but oh the joy of the feel of a fighting trout on the end of a 2kg breaking stain line, and a light rod.

Often you sneak up a stream all day and see nothing, but sometimes, occasionally in unexpected places, you get  a rise, with luck and skill hook them, and with more luck and a lot of skill and experience, can bring some of them into the net.

So what has this got to do with lead generation?

Well, a lot actually.

Fish where the fish are.

There are places in a river where the trout are more likely to be, at the tail of runs, behind an exposed rock, under the banks, protected by overhanging trees. You can spend a lot of time fishing every inch of a stream, but if you need a feed for lunch, best spend your time going to where the best odds lie.

Patience

You rarely get lucky quickly, it takes time, perseverance and patience, as well as skill, and better yet, local knowledge.

Use the right bait

Trout are fussy feeders. In the really clear streams, you will sometimes see a trout come up ‘for a look’ and pass on the fly. When that happens, it sometimes pays to give a it a few minutes, and change the fly to an alternative. You know there is a fish there, you know it can be tempted, so trying an alternative fly sometimes pays dividends.

Blend into the ecosystem.

Being obvious ensures failure. Colorful shirts, noise, creating any disturbance in the surroundings puts trout off. They are timid, easily scared, and have very good senses that pick up anomalies. Alarm them even slightly, and you have no hope of tempting them to a fly.

Learn to stalk

When you find an ideal spot, and you know there is a trout there somewhere, spend some time watching, noting the nuances of the stream, observing the sort of food that is around, and how it behaves in the water , and particularly if and when your target comes up for a look or rises to take something. Then you have the knowledge to tempt them onto your fly.

The conditions have to be right

Trout are very sensitive to conditions. They will not rise if there is a storm coming, they feel the pressure differences, so they hunker down. Similarly, they rarely rise in the rain. Surprising really, a bit of extra water should not make a difference, but it does. Best times are early morning, when the sun has been up for an hour or so, and still evenings around dusk.

Luck plays a role.

J.P. Getty was once asked how he became so successful. His response  was ‘rise early, work hard, strike oil’.

Sometimes you just get lucky but if you are not in the river at the right time, with the right fly, and doing all the right things, by definition you cannot be lucky. Luck comes with hard work, engagement and commitment.

None of this is any different with Lead generation, it is remarkably like fly fishing. Every lesson I learnt a my old dads knees, hiking through the bush to find the right spots, wading up steams, learning the knots and skills of the sport is applicable to  commercial ‘sport’, where lead generation is an absolutely essential skill for most businesses, certainly all B2B businesses.

As we fly fishers say ‘tight lines’ .

Why many small businesses fail with digital marketing.

Why many small businesses fail with digital marketing.

Feb 16, 2016 | Marketing, Small business

Imagine you discover a compound in your kitchen that will cure cancer.

You know it works because it cured your mother.

That would be a really amazing feeling, to be able to make a huge difference to peoples lives, and find instant wealth at the same time.

Imagine further that you did  not tell anybody.

Your Mum knows, as do your siblings and a few others close to you, the old family doctor is sceptical, and your neighbour who goes to church a lot is downright dismissive, because it is clearly a miracle that has brought the cure, not a chemical.

The barrier between you and success is twofold:

  1. Lack of credibility
  2. Lack of an audience.

So it is with  marketing.

The newest iteration of marketing, digital, is not a cure-all for an ordinary product, non competitive price, lack of distribution underdone value proposition, or anything else that normally leads to failure in the market place, it is just an additional set of options to understand and manage.

You still need both the product customers want and the audience that knows about it.

One without the other is not of much value.

Most small businesses fail one if not both the tests.

No matter how great their product, how responsive their service, without an audience, people who know about what you do and care enough not just to shower praise, but to go out and buy it, and encourage others to do the same, they will fail.

Success with digital marketing is not easy, despite the nonsense to the contrary, but it is a capability now as basic as having a good phone manner was 20 years ago.

 

 

 

 

Why did Thomas Dux really fail?

Why did Thomas Dux really fail?

Feb 10, 2016 | Branding, Marketing, retail

There is a whole lot of discussion around the progressive closure of Thomas Dux stores by owner Woolworths, and the assumption that it will be closed down if a trade sale does not evolve.

Maybe there is a plan to save it, but I cannot see it, and having bought some rubbish grapes at an inflated price in the Lane Cove store during the week,  I do not know what it might be.

Not a lot of the discussion actually addresses the strategic failure that is the foundation of the commercial failure, just its superficial symptoms.

Strategic failure seems to have found its way into Woolies DNA over the past 15 years or so. They became so financially dominant in supermarkets that they forgot that they still have consumers to keep loyal, suppliers to keep in business, and competitors very keen to eat their lunch. They have done OK in petrol, well in liquor, absolutely bombed in hardware, poorly in general merchandise , and missed office supplies, electrical and furnishings completely, and are fiddling around with odd things like pet health insurance. Not a lot of logic in that mix.

I have watched Dux closely since the launch,  had a number of clients products listed, and visited all the Sydney stores multiple times since the first Lane Cove store opened. Until a short while ago, I really thought they would defy the corporate odds, and make it work.

The apparent failure is a sad day for the specialty end of the Australian food manufacturing industry, what is left of it, one less way to reach consumers.

So, with the clarity of (almost) hindsight, where did they go wrong?

 

Confused business model.

Whilst Dux had separate management, they operated out of the Woolworths warehouse, using the WW back office systems and presumably KPI’s which are all focussed on mass merchandise, stock turn and margin. This makes sense to the accountants who seek efficiencies but in the end forces the big brother behaviour on the upstart sibling who needs to do things differently to survive and prosper.

They forgot their “Why“.

Perhaps they never had it beyond a kneejerk response to an upstart competitor. The slogan “Inspiring your passion for food” is at least a half way decent one, until you see packets of mass market products available in the Woolies and Coles stores next door at lower prices. As a consumer, going into Dux , the presence of such items is inconsistent and diminishes any claim to a differentiated and valuable consumer value proposition.

Value delivery.

Consumers are not stupid, there is a limit to the price they will pay for something with a fancy name, fuzzy claim and benefit, and not much else. Pushing the prices beyond that limit in order to boost the GM% is pretty silly, because you do not bank percentages, just dollars. It is a fine line, but by observation, they got it wrong as much as they got it right, which is not enough.

Discounters are not the competition.

Giving in to the accepted wisdom that discounters are winning and that Dux is competing for the same consumer dollar is nonsense.  Consumers are looking for an experience, for specialist products not available in mass retailers.  They started well with their “foodies”, in store chefs available to give advice and recommendations, but the enthusiasm for this potentially differentiating strategy seems to have waned over time. Behaving like a discounter in some Sku’s but like a high end, fancy pants deli in others just confuses consumers, and I suspect their own staff.

What you will not do.

Strategy is, amongst other things, about what you will not do, as much as it is about what you will do. Thomas Dux seems to have forgotten this lesson and succumbed to the temptation to stock SKU’s that did not add to the positioning of Dux as a retailer on whom you could rely on to deliver quality and differentiated specialist food products along with a level of service well beyond the usual expectation. This confuses and devalues the brand. Thomas Dux is like any other brand in a development phase, it requires absolute focus on what makes you different and better. So why can I buy Kelloggs Corn flakes and Blend 43 coffee there?

It takes time.

Dux has been around for a while now, perhaps 10 years? That should have been enough time to establish a defensible place in consumers minds when it is clear there is a segment looking for an alternative to the mass market supermarkets. I suspect that the financial pressure has increased markedly over the last few years as Woolies excursion into hardware drained group profitability. The net result was that the quarterly numbers mattered more than the long term, so savings were made by management, the sort of savings that delivered me the rubbish grapes the other day. If the grapes were not good enough to justify the price, they should not have been on the shelf. That sort of challenging culture requires time and continual effort to reinforce, and a reversion to a quarterly focus removes the management incentive to not sell grapes this week because they are not good enough, they need the margin today at the expense of tomorrow.

 

Meanwhile  Harris Farm, the original target of Dux appears to be powering along. Perhaps Woolies will rue the day they did not buy Harris Farm when they were still young and vulnerable. I understand they tried, but were given the finger by the venerable Mr Harris.  Perhaps they should have tried again, it would have been less costly to both their coffers and their reputation.

What do you think?