Offensive strategy

The great mystery isn't that people do things badly but that they occasionally do a few things well. The only thing that is universal is incompetence. Strength is always specific! - Peter Drucker

Time . . . is less likely to bring favor to the victor than to the vanquished. . . An offensive war requires above all a quick, irresistible decision. .  Any kind of interruption, pause, or suspension of activity is inconsistent with the nature of offensive war."

War! There are two types… one is to defend when attacked and other to just conquer because you wanted to be bigger, stronger and greater and more powerful. It’s an age old strategy, followed by kings and queens who ruled. The new era is not far from that reality, every person who owns a business wants to rule, and in this case money is a matter too. Most of the times when a market is attacked unproved, aggression becomes the key word to wage the war. But is aggression sufficient? A clear strategy should accompany especially when the first move is being made to break smooth flowing stream.

This is a direct attack. There is no waiting involved here for an opponent to make a move. It is almost as good as inviting your defending firm to enter into a war rather than waiting for a reaction. There are multiple ways of planting an offensive strategy. It can be done by cutting off the rivals business from the market either by taking over their company on the whole or by taking over their market share to weaken their position. Sometimes companies keep a low and stealthy profile to hide and pounce and attack at the right moment.

Why should I use offensive strategy?

This strategy comes into play when the war footing needs to be strong and the main agenda is to acquire new and additional customers with a larger market share, and those customers having a bigger purchasing power. There has to be sufficient provision in this case for a more aggressive price war and promotional and advertising strategy. The strategy has a characteristic to attack direct defense and it requires strength and tactic to withstand the defense right from the beginning

Ignore the noise

It is often believed that to have an offensive strategy one needs to think out of the box. What is often a success strategy, and a tried and tested method needs to be counter attacked to bring down the opponent. Encouragement might not be one of the strongest backups for from your peers as it means directly challenging the successful and well established methods of your competitor who has done so well in the market. Hence innovation should be the name of the game to confuse opposition and weaken their foundation.

Example:

MS produced software for Altair the first personal computer. Intel which developed the chip for Altair believed that it’s impossible to produce basic language for it. However MS went ahead and developed a language in 8 weeks and took over its competitor IBMs market capitalization which was already 17 years into business when MS entered.

Don’t play a gentleman’s game

Aggression is the key word to define offensive marketing. The techniques involve pulling up opponent’s weakness mercilessly and highlighting your own strengths. It requires a certain amount of manipulation and explanation of customers to believe that your product is better. However the ground reality should in fact be that your product is better. The countermoves done by competition should be taken seriously and sometimes continuous blows and attacks are required to make the opposition to take a back foot

Example:

With the release of iPhone 5, its most fiercest competition Samsung, launched a full page ad in a lot of countries stating that Samsung galaxy is a lot better than the “FRUITY” ones latest offering and simply does not take a genius to know Samsung was the first to launch a revolutionary phone.

                       Define your target

 Most marketing technique generally is long term. It might take a months or years for one to develop a successful strategy.  However offensive marketing can have both long and short term objectives. In long term the objective might be to achieve something that has been to not look at immediate results but that needs time and gap for long term profitability. For short term goal companies need strong and tactical moves and executions. The turnaround of results needs to be immediate and there can be no room for reactions and counter moves. It’s a onetime act and needs to be undefeatable and very difficult to challenge.

Example:

As a long term plan Singapore airlines always focused on its strength of inflight service. When other competitors adapted to this as their USP as well Singapore airlines made embraced a quick and short term advances for highlighting positivity’s such as modern fleet, outstanding ground service, entertainment and comfort in first class cabins. Why is it short term? These comforts were not created by Singapore airlines suddenly. They always existed and only that it was portrayed in bright light when it was needed.

                          Judge your opponent

Assess and judge opponents strength and position. Every company has a strategy of its own. Identify and attack the strategy. Analyze your own strength against the competition and arrive at a conclusion on how to get there. If the gap between you and completion in terms of strength ramp up yours before the strategy is established. It would also be a good idea to identify the competitions strength weakness instead of just strength. It’s a decision between STRENGTH Vs. STRENGTH OT STRENGTH Vs. WEAKNESS. However the moral of story is know all about the enemy before planning an attack.

Example:

 Coke VS. Pepsi. They have fought from one century to another. There was one particular war strategy adopted by Pepsi which helped them win hands down for a period. The bottle of coke has always been a symbol of its brand with the right size, shape and fit into the hand with a perfect price. Pepsi introduced a larger bottle with a lesser price. Coke could do nothing to increase the size keeping the shape intact. Further the dispensing machines of coke were designed only for nickels and hence price could not be changed. PEPSI HIT THE NAIL TO SEEK THE WEAKNESS ON COKES BIGGEST STRENGTH

Draw your boundaries

Offensive strategy maintains a very thin line between being successful and ending up with a law suit. It is extremely important to discover loop holes before announcing something in the market about competition. What might come up as denial and legal attack from competition must be preempted. However it is best not to give companies an opportunity to sue you in the first place and fine you up with additional expenses and lose time and money rather than gain the same which was the goal to begin with

  

Example: IBM won a law suit against Hitachi on the grounds that they stole IBM software. Ultimately Hitachi had to rewrite all the old programs and develop new ones, so that they did not interfere with IBM intellectual property rights.

What are Offensive and Defensive Strategies ??

“Best defense is a good offense”

War or game this saying applies perfectly. Sales or marketing choose your term, its sometimes a war sometimes a game. Imagine a world where no one but you rules! Everything that you touch turns into gold. There is no one but you who can do what you can do. It’s an ideal situation. But in real world there are no ideal situations. Starting from home where you compete with your siblings, to school with your fellow students to work with colleagues to a market with competitors one has to compete everywhere.

The start of competition occurs when companies experience threat and pressure in the market because of other companies and this always results in a counter move. Competition can be programmed either by creating new markets or attacking existing markets. An alternative to this is entering a new market, repositioning or increasing a market share. Hence to keep competition at bay companies adopt new strategies to safeguard their status. One such method in discussion is offensive and defensive strategy.

 

Defensive Strategy

Defensive strategy is a reactive strategy. It is a developed to protect market share, position and profitability. It is a strategy that can be used to keep up top position in local and existing market. An example for this could be if a company highlights its USP and advantages of its products and services to prove its better than competition. This is also done by introducing new products and services in the market which is better than what competition has to offer.

This strategy is predominantly useful for a market which is well established in the market but is merely looking at pushing competition away to hold top position or monopoly in some situations as the case might be. This strategy will never include attracting customer attention for the first time. It is to keep the reputation intact which has been built in the market. This methodology is most successful to keep up the customer’s confidence which no new competitor can disturb.

HOW IS DEFENSIVE STRATEGY USEFUL ?

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction

Newton’s law of motion applies perfectly well in the situation of defensive marketing strategy. Marketing in general is seen as a reaction to particular situation in most cases, and more commonly in defensive marketing. Companies are not threatened until a new product comes into competition in the market. Defensive strategy can be used to weaken competition by using techniques that will capture customer interest.  This strategy comes to life only where there is existence of competition.

Example: A company uses advertising techniques to highlight a specific feature of its product, by doing which the competitor’s product will seem inferior in comparison. One of the best in this category was the MAC vs. PC campaign by apple which highlighted its own features in comparisons to other PCs of DELL and IBM, which obviously put down competition and created a success factor.

Guard your Fort

 

Defensive strategy can be used protect the territory of a market acquired by competitions product. Companies constantly come up with new effects to hold up their position and ward of competition. By using defensive strategy it is possible to stop competition from eating into your market share. Companies often safeguard their boundaries by dropping prices or exceptionally improving product feature which competition can’t provide.

Example:

A typical example of this was the price war between Wal-Mart and Amazon. Wal-Mart marked down the price of its best sellers books. Instantly amazon matched its price followed by Wal-Mart dropping prices once again and every time amazon matched the price Wal-Mart dropped it further

Sharpen your vision

This can be done keeping a constant vigil on what in your own market. This will include a thorough research on the competition capabilities and assumption on how far their efforts can get them.  Keeping a constant tab on competitor’s innovations is a good point of view. Companies place products in competition to what has newly been introduced in the market to slash down other from becoming stronger. This counter move will also require faster flow of information and efficiency to build superior features or technology which would be more professional.

Example:

Companies like apple and Samsung continuously upgrade product technology to keep up their market share so that it is not taken away by competition and each time there is an upgrade more customer buy the upgraded version

Attack, analyze and improves

Companies constantly challenge themselves to analyze their position and rebuild on their strength. This can be done with techniques such as market surveys and deep analysis on why the competitor’s product might be more successful. The drop and increase of sale often leads to a situation where companies start analyzing their position and competitor’s product strength. As a defense plan companies establish something that makes them strongest to revise the situations

Example:

A classic and well noticed example to this was in when Tylenol (Johnson and Johnson product) faced threats from other products in the market for pain relief. Tylenol revamped its entire marketing strategy and pulled up the focus to its best USP which is mildness of the medicine and recaptured its position in the market to a very large extent

Define you empire

Defensive strategy is useful to define your empire exactly to an extent where you can create walls which are unreachable to competition. One should exactly know strength and market position and define strategy in such a way that no competitor can mimic it. A good way to do this would be create patents, copyrights. This will protect the power statement of the product and remain with the company with no possibilities of buy in

Example:

The most common use of this method is found among the biotechnology companies, which offers breakthrough innovations in high demand categories so that competition does not replicate the product.

Benefits of defense strategy:

1.   Retention of market share

2.   Prevention of entry for new opponents

3.   Long term contracts

4.   Intact reputation

5.   Market Leadership

 

Value selling model

What is Value Selling ?

                    

                      How many of us have the following problems ??

1.       Our sales people cannot connect with the senior level people in companies

2.       They have neither enough leads nor constant business

3.       They are unable to forecast their sale.

4.       The product knowledge or industry knowledge is incomplete

5.       No consistent methodology

6.       Underselling of product

7.       No confidence to win price wars

8.        Too many product in the market and don’t know how to differentiate your from others

                   How do we fix this? Ever heard of value selling?

Value selling is a concept or a technique which promotes a product by exhibiting its inbuilt advantage or additional value it may provide by using a product or a service. It is an aggregate of techniques used for different set of customers and not applicable for any single customer. It’s a stage of selling where a customer transitions from a superficial view of the product to a radical view.

                                      Why should I use Value selling?

In today’s world of cut throat market customers often as us a question “ I have a  vendor or a service provider who gives me great service and his pricing is one of the best in the market. Why should I use your product or service?” With so many competitors out there in the market, we have to identify those elements that earmark our product from others.

Value selling is a chain that links the path from learning how to differentiate your product highlighting your own current benefit using fresh ideas to adding quantified value to the customers’ business without meddling with the price.

How should I use value selling?

1.       Treat selling as a consultation:

Do not sell a product on the lines of how customer will benefit on the basis of price. Selling has to be consultative to the extent where customer gains mileage on other aspects which helps his business grow over all and helps him save his overall cost.

For example: if you are logistics service provider, managing a customer’s warehouse, designing a software for him on warehouse Management system (WMS) will be great idea. Though you might charge the customer on this, it will definitely bring down his manpower cost eventually over a longer period of time.

2.       Know your business:

To be honest to the customer and making him believe what you tell him, one should believe his own product. To have trust in the product comes with complete knowledge about the product which is the back bone of good sales technique. Being completely trained in the product, refreshing it and also allowing your on-job training to sink in is imperative to promote a product positively.

3.       Learning to differentiate:

Knowing your product is a mandate, and just as important, is to know your competitors product. Demarcated selling always gives your customers a clear sense of understanding on why they should use your product as against the customer’s product. But what one really needs to keep in mind is that is that it not necessary to show the negative aspects of your competitors product, its more important to show the positive aspects of your

4.       Be ahead of the game:

What interest’s person mostly in senior level management is mostly what runs in the market and how that is going to have a changing effect on their business? A conversation over the tea on with them on what is changing their industry and yours, will give them a boost of confidence in your abilities to take care of your business when there is a chaos in the market and economy

5.       Give it to them on a platter:

What attracts us to a food plate that contains more than one variety? It’s the goodness of getting best of both worlds or as many as is offered to us. Giving value, price and service is not only well combined package but the one which is covered in colorful packages and wrapped with a ribbon. As the customer unwarps every layer small or big he will have a  sense having achieved value for money. It is not necessary to provide Freebies in every case but just necessary to highlight the very inherent quality of your product which values more than money.

6.       Analyze your customer’s needs:

Sometimes we tend to give customer what they don’t need. The fact that customers do not reject what is offered them is not a proof of necessity for it. a detailed analysis of what the customer requires will help us design our product/service better in such a way that it covers all of the customers requirement. It would be a great idea to request your customer to provide a score card so that it can give you periodical reviews on their levels of satisfaction and needs of customer.

7.       Work on consolidated selling:

No sale can be successful without team effort. To provide value to customer is very important for him to understand that in all circumstances a complete team is backing you up manage his account, like the customer service, operations, accounting, technical or an upper management team. This also leads to accountability being shared and chances for increase in success. This is turn will lead to an organic improvement in current process.

8.       Nail the deal:

The sales pitch for value selling should be to close the deal and not to request for opportunity to consider you. The proposal should be strong enough to make the customer understand that the product is a bundle of value adds and there is no going back as it does not get better this and neither can he get anything better than yours in the market. And for this going back to basics of knowing your customer thoroughly is very important.

Rectify your mistakes ! A must in sales to become successful.

 “Great services are not canceled by one act or by one single error”.Even more safe is to predict errors and to control them.

Today’s blog is about rectifying the mistakes identified as those commonly made by sales people.

  Inefficient or insufficient database:

Database is like gold mine. Gathering one is as difficult as retaining it. The source of database can be historical data, data with market information or those which can be purchased from a reliable data source. The best place to start looking own book, laptop or computer

            Overdependence on internet:

Use internet effectively as the first step to data collection. Any data taken from internet needs to be validated or vetted with a phone call or a detailed meeting. It would be wise not to make  a proposal on the basis of data from internet and one can never gain complete knowledge from it. However before visiting a prospective client especially if they happen to be big it’s a great idea to collect details which provide information about their nature of business, not suggestions on your nature of business and how effective it would be.

    Improper questioning:

Probing is the key to a successful proposal. To have a meeting that ends with having collected most of the require information a questionnaire will always be helpful. This helps in not missing out any important information. A lot of people carry profile sheets so that all data about a customer can be recorded and all of the customers’ needs are taken care of.

               Narrow Minded approach:

 Probing is not a part of initialization it is the start of a sales process.  To set an exercise to question customer even if they are not of immediate importance will be helpful for reference in a future circumstance, because what is a just an information today may be a opportunity tomorrow. Target should be to know at least 70%-80% about the customer in the first meeting and rest over the course of time

  Discontinued follow up:

Follow up is the only way to convert prospect into an opportunity and further into a successful business. No business can ever survive with only one customer or one part of a customer’s business. Follow up provides us the opportunity to be at the right time at the right place. It makes us the top of the mind recall for the customer.

              Poor after sales service:

It’s important to be there for the customer when he needs us rather than be there for him when we need him. Incremental business is as important as new business. Keeping in regular touch with then customer after initial sales always brings in more business and this can be done by scheduling meetings with customers on a in a planned manner so that these customer are never forgotten.

               Competitive industry data:

Every customer with good potential has a seller/ service provider attached to them. Similarly every competitor has a top customer. What is important is to find a source that provides information about the competitor. Once you know the source it is important to use the source to keep constant tab on the competitions foot hold.

    Competition strength analysis:

Market intelligence offers a competitive edge that one cannot achieve in its absence. The source of market intelligence can be a internet or a from a mode that makes it its job to provide that data. However the most accessible form of data would be where you ask your potential customer on what is it that makes your competitor better than you in certain areas.

  Wild goose chase:

The best way to not to waste time on a customer is to understand is to understand what is required to win a business  and set timelines. Once all necessities have been taken care of its mandatory to see what stops the customer from giving us an opportunity. Sometimes it might be useful to step up a level to a decision maker. However when you start going over and beyond timelines its necessary to draw out a strategy.

 Forget the missing:

Going through ones list of customer and pipeline helps identify lost and down trading customers. Keeping in touch with them over a mail or a phone call keep their memory refreshed about you and also reiterates that you are still interested in their business. This can lead you back into the doors of a lost customer at any time

10 sales mistakes you may identify as your own !

“To err is human.” But can we be lucky enough to prevent ourselves from making those errors. In most cases we might not know where we go wrong, but the mistakes we make in sales can be seen as those commonly made, and those that are repetitive in nature. Thus like any normal or abnormal situation, when we identify the problems, solutions follow one way or the other. Today’s topic speaks about the 10 commonly made sales mistakes and how we can deal with them.

Inefficient or insufficient database:

Working with database is a great method to know your prospects in an easy manner. Working with an insufficient database often leaves us looking for more and some of us spend a lot of time make a database rather than spend that time qualitatively in front of the customer. An inefficient database is however moist dangerous than not having one or not having enough. Most people spend time and energy on chasing those customers who either don’t have a potential we are looking for or their business does not suit yours. Wrong data can be acquired because of too much reliance on historical data or acquiring data from unreliable sources.

Overdependence on internet:

Internet is a great source for data that might commonly not be available with other sources of data search. The shortcoming however with the data available from the internet is that it is over exaggerated or underexploited in most cases. People use data from internet without knowing if it appropriate and it fulfills the need of the hour. Internet data should never be used for in-depth data knowledge. It should merely satisfy the details that outline of the data would provide and this needs further efforts and time for validation

Improper question:

How much of data is sufficient data. It’s a question we ask ourselves every time we make our first sales with a customer. Agreed that complete data is always collected during the course of the consecutive sales calls.  However the date collected in the first sales calls counts the most since it forms the most important part of information required to make a proposal. Sales people often lose focus and deviate from asking the right questions. This results in making an improper move towards customer leading to longer gestation periods to win a business

Narrow Minded approach:

It’s common to look for bigger gains in smaller time frames which leads to a small scale approach towards the customers’ business. Customers often need things that might have a smaller advantage in the sales point of view but might be a lot easier to gain. This small job might be an entry to a larger part of the business. It’s important to get a 360 degree view of the business so as to achieve complete understanding of customers total potential

Discontinued follow up:

 “Finish what you have started”. This is possible something most humans listen to ever since childhood from a variety of people to. It’s easy to lose focus on things either because they are not interesting or its too tough to continue with. Same applies to sales where we often give up customers because it takes a longer time to win a business it’s too uninteresting to fulfill the demands of a difficult customer. This would lead to a situation where one would always have a set of customers, which are very difficult to revisit, because it has been discontinued at a stage where customer might have needed us the most.

Poor after sales service:

Most sales are repetitive in nature. A sale where a customer does not return is an incomplete sale. What makes a customer return or stick? Sales in most cases happen because of the sales person who is the face of the company. However some of us give up responsibilities post sales. Handing over a customer to CS or a technical team is an easier way out but never the solution to retain a customer. Retention happens because of frequent revisits and repeated face to face interactions to check what a customer needs.

Competitive industry data:

Is stalking bad? Apparently not when it comes to your competition. People always try to occupy the left out shares of a strong competition. If a stronger competitor holds 30% of the market, sales people tend to aim at the remaining 70% market share. This might be the easy way but the smart way to look at it is as if 100% of the market is available. Strategy to perform better than competition is would be possible only when one has complete knowledge on what kind of customers competition holds and what they do to keep their customers happy

Competition strength analysis:

It’s good to keep your friends close. It’s great to keep your rivals closer. People underestimate their rivals or do not know their strength as a result of which one cannot offer the right bid. SWOT analysis of the market strengthens the company’s competitive edge. This in turn leads to the discovery of simple things one can do perform better than the competition.  

Wild goose chase:

This is the exactly opposite of improper follow-up. Sometimes people attach emotional values of time and effort on certain accounts / customer in spite of knowing it might not be successful. We often get into a mode of not being able to give up on a customer because we have worked too hard on it in the past. What we do not realize is the time and energy spent on a non-convertible customer can be spent elsewhere finding a new one.

Forget the missing:

It’s bad enough to lose a customer, what could be even more disappointing are to lose them forever.

People are either embarrassed to go back and apologize or they are scared to be rejected. This leads to ignoring a large amount of database of existing customers which we are used to working with and whose needs we understand. It’s a great idea to go back to angry customer and give them the confidence that we care for their business rather than try to compensate that with an entirely new customer which could have been an additional customer and not a replacement.

Try Hard To Never Lose: Know Your Mistakes

The last blog concluded with the note that one has to make his own mistake to learn from them. But are we equipped enough to understand the mistakes we make, and if we knew the mistakes do we know how to rectify them. It’s largely noticed as a problem that every effort made towards winning a business sometimes goes futile. It’s extremely important to know your mistakes before discarding a prospect as a non-convertible account

As Albert Einstein rightly mentioned “one who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new”. Learn to make a new innovation every time you make a mistake and innovate new ways to identify your mistakes. Don’t be over cautious to not make a mistake, be cautious enough to know them when you make one

Have you done it all? Have you closed every loop to the win the business that would change everything? Every unsuccessful attempt to win a business always has a reasoning and an explanation which eventually comes out with an expression of “wish I’d known this before”. Smarter way to handle problems is to magnify the potholes periodically to anticipate what might block your path. Ask different questions or the same questions differently to know what your customer needs rather than assume what he needs.

         MEASURE YOUR EFFORTS

Sometimes the right amount of effort is never enough; something’s require that little bit of an extra effort. Efforts need to be channelized on every aspect that needs it rather than everything that might not need it. A customer expecting a lower price range might not know the advantages of your product or service in comparison to someone that has offered a lower price than you. Efforts in such cased need to be directed towards making him understand value and cost benefit rather than reduce one’s own cost.

BRAINSTORM YOUR PERFORMANCE

The angle your neighbor sitting opposite to you could be the side that will never be visible to you. Sometimes we turn our backs to our mistakes unintentionally but it can be noticed by someone who has seen that side before. It’s a great idea to brainstorm your activities to know what you have missed, as that could be the exact same thing someone else has done right. Be it your boss or a colleague, always discuss for a different point of view.

Make your own mistakes, identify them, understand them and you will always find a way to rectify them