Workleaf

Update (Jan 05 2007) – Apparently, the link mentioned in my post is incorrect. Please find the blog here – http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/04/the_120_day_won.html

Thanks to Dian, the editor of Sourcingmag.com, for pointing that out. If you are interested in outsourcing inn general, I highly recommend www.sourcingmag.com. It also has an active discussion forum, where some very good people answer questions posted on various subjects related to Outsourcing.

———————————————–

The last few days of 2006. I was taking a break from reading all the (already) cliched predictions for 2007 & beyond in the blogosphere when I ran into a blog authored by the one and only Guy Kawasaki of Garage Ventures (I did not know that he had a blog!). And what do you know… he has a list of his most read posts!

So, here I was, pondering about the launch messaging campaign that has been planned for sometime in January and how to market the message over blogosphere, and I see this blog. This is a great piece for people starting to blog, especially for start-ups that are focussing on blog-based launch marketing. You can find the entry HERE, a great post on how to market your blog.

P.S. – Yes. We have finally figured out what ‘exactly’ we will start doing! You can expect to hear about it in January, ss soon as we settle some of our logistics & administrative issues.

I was talking to Jason yesterday. We were discussing different ways to move forward with the Alef Platform. During the conversation, Jason talked about the primary challanges in any sales process, irrespective of what you are trying to sell. I found it good enough to become blog fodder, so here it is -

1. No Need – The customer does not have or does not feel the need for the product/service. Here, the sales person should focus on making the prospective customer realize the need for the product or service
2. No Money – The customer’s current budget is already committed to other initiatives and hence, there is no money to spend on this product/service. Here, the sales person to devise ways to make the payment part easily fit into the customer’s budget and spending plans.

3. No Urgency – The customer realizes the need but the need is not urgent. The sale gets postponed indefinitely. Here, the sales person should focus on “quick wins” that the product/service will generate for the customer, hence making him/her realize the urgency of the need.

4. No Time – The customer does not have the time to evaluate the product/service to assess if he/she needs it or not. In other words, the prospect does have time to listen to the sales pitch. Here is where a sales person should focus on relationship building and get a time from the customer to make the sales pitch.

Have you faced some (or all) of these challenges during your sales process? Are there more? Do let me know.

Thanks to my brother Arjun, a new logo for Alef Solutions was born yesterday. How does it look?

I have been reading a whole bunch of technology marketing related stuff recently. A common thread has been the challenges in marketing technology solutions to the SMB market. Its a common contention that this segment is highly fragmented, and hence, unattractive for organizations with a sales model tuned to service large scale enterprises. Assuming that each sales personnel is expected to generate uto 7 times of his/her cost to the company, as topline for the firm, it is obvious to see why this sales force cannot be employed to service the SMB segment.

According to some of the reports, 50% of IT spending in US (in 2005) happened in this segment. But it has its caveats – Reluctant buyers, predominantly non-IT decision makers and wanting more for less. Moreover, affinity for non-customized solutions and an attitude that stresses more on post-sales service establishes a scenario where the cost side of the equation remains the same, but the revenue side decreases significantly.

In such scenarios, shouldn’t start-ups take advantage of this situation by building a low-cost sales model upfront? Doesn’t it make sense to build a sales & distribution model that works on a customer “pull” basis, rather than pushing the offerings?

The primary challenges that I see here are -

1. Predictability – If I were to build a sales model that attempts to pull the customer to the product/service, rather than pushing the product/service to the customer, how can I predict or forecast the number of customers that will get pulled and eventually buy the product? Hence, traditional frameworks of sales and revenue forecasts become invalid.

2. Accountability – If I put a sales person in-charge of bringing in 5 new customers each month and if that does not happen, then I can hold the sales person accountable. In the pull model, who is accountable if the customer does not get pulled in sufficient number (heck… if he doesn’t get pulled at all!!)?

It would be interesting to hear your comments on this one. To pull SMB customers towards your technology offerings, what is be most predictable and effective way? Or is the whole hypothesis lop-sided? Are there other ways to get to the SMB market?