Retaining Customer's Attention for During Prospecting

Customer meetings require significant level of prior preparation and thoughtful engagement to achieve a desired outcome. Not every meeting achieves the level of success you wish of that meeting. One needs to do certain things before and during the meeting to achieve the objectives set for that meeting. Ravichander Rao

A B2B customer meeting differs significantly from B2C because of the number of decision makers involved, value of the deal and the level of engagement between two parties. The goal of a prospecting meeting is to:

a) Identify a problem

b) Validate the impact of problem and whether the customer is willing to make a change to fix the problem

c) Understand the way he would measure whether problem is fixed with the solution

If you open up the meeting to pitch all the good stuff your product has until your presentation is over or your customer nods his head or becomes completely silent, then it is not effective. You won't be able to understand the customer's problem by following this approach.Similarly, presenting contents full of solutions will equally turns off the customer. The solutions, relevant to one customer may or may not be applicable to another. Every customer always a variation of the problem that another customer faced, and the context around the problem makes it most of time unique. So, one must leave a significant portion of the time of the meeting to let the customer speak about this problem, situation and what he is trying to accomplish. 

If you are meeting the customer for the first time, then it is quite difficult to structure what exactly you prepare for the meeting. However, some background research helps you to gauge roughly two or three big problems a customer would face under such a scenario. Use this to organize your meeting time. Roughly, 10% of time to talk about your company and its relevant offerings, 20% of time about the product you are presenting, 10% of time to talk about the typical problems that a customer in a similar situation faces and its implication, 30% of time for solutions that have be used by other customers and the benefits that the customers have realized, 30% of time for the customer to talk about his problems, situation, etc. A customer may still not open up about his problem, if you do not have enough credibility with his especially when you meet him for the first time. When this happens, accept the fact, stay calm and do not try to force the customer. Schedule another follow up meeting to build this relationship. 

The most important question is to find what problem needs to solved. Typically, no customer will tell this to you upfront, unless you have been engaged with them for long enough and have high credibility. As you are in the path of building the credibility while trying to help to solve their problem, the way to ask this will be - structure the question by giving the current context which includes the current business environment and the phase in the discussion you are in with the customer, and ask a short question that tries to find what he is looking for in the offering that he believes will solve the problem. This allows customer time to think and provide a contextual response than a generic response. Since you may still not understand the problem and its impact completely, you should follow up with additional questions to understand the situation better and get a guidance on the impact. 

Once the problem is established and well understood, try to understand whether he is interested to solve it and how urgently. A problem that is not urgent enough, will not lead to a product sale. It is also unproductive for you and your customer to spend time discussing about this. So, one should uncover whether there any other problems that are worth solving. If there is no problem, worth solving for, then take a pause and acknowledge that there may not be an urgency to solve a problem and whether you should share the solutions at this point or come back at a later time. On the other hand, if the problem is urgent enough, focus on the solutions that are relevant to the customer, and provide information on impact on different metrics - functional, economical and emotional collateral that customers can take away with them to consider further. These metrics should be explained from a perspective of the role they are playing in their organization. You cannot expect a purchaser to appreciate the metrics that are relevant for a process engineer. Your metrics may still not be relevant, however it does serve an anchor point for further discussions. Use this to find more information about, how the customer would like to evaluate a solution to determine whether it is meeting his requirements or not. 

Once this information is available, go back and structure you offering so that it meets the customer's requirements and have follow up the configuration you have put together and use the meeting to refine the configuration. 

Being An Effective Manager

Responsibility of an Effective Manager, Management, Manager vs. Leader, Manager as a Leader, Why Manager as a Leader Fail, Ravichander Rao


Leadership is required to inspire and to give direction to the followers in order to achieve what seems impossible. But that should not negate the roles of managers in a company. Ever since the penchant for leadership has increased, manager has become an antonym for leadership. Yet, most of the companies have official titles of managers and not of leaders.



Most of the managers, in their aspiration to be seen as a leader, use empowerment and challenge as a facade to delegate the work, when the work should not be delegated. As a result, the friction between employee and manager increases and the effectiveness of the manager in that position reduces. Purpose of a manager in a company is to make profit for the company by deploying the right resources, or empowering the resources by providing the training to meet the skills requirement, and , by staying within the framework of the company values and processes to deliver the commitments. If all the managers start to act like a leader on every occasion and start disrupting the processes or empower employees to make decisions where they do not have right experience, then there will be a chaos and company will fail to make profit. This is foolhardines and it needs to be stopped! What is the required of the managers is that they understand when to be a leader, when to be a manager and when to be a follower. If everyone in the company becomes leader for the same work, then who follows through? So there has to be only one leader per task or critical project and the rest need to follow.




Your role in a company as a leader or manager depends on the task that needs to be accomplished. If you are an expert or experienced at a task, it is required that you step and lead the team in the right direction regardless of whether you are a manager or not. If you are a manager of the task, then you are expected to deliver the commitments within in the agreed time frame with the agreed quality. You need to step up as a leader at certain times when things are going wrong and you need to make tough decisions including disrupting current practices, taking risks, inspiring the team to go beyond the commitments, etc. This is the time when manager needs to act like a leader. But most of the time, you need to focus on the management - standard processes, reduce conflicts, reduce risks, enforce plans, etc. so that there is a clear visibility and follow through.

Problem with the constant leadership mode is that, the managers are always in the empowerment mode - every task gets delegated, your employees need to do these - stretch goals or is good for their motivation, etc. However the organizations are matrix structured today, because of which the employee the at the bottom of the hierarchical pyramid suffer broken morale with such as an overdose of empowerment from different managers.





Responsibilities of an effective manager:

• focus on productivity and efficiency 
• do not create work to keep your employees busy. Give some free time to the employees so that they can explore new ideas and learn new thing

• do not ask your employee to justify why the need to do a certain task that you assigned them. It was you in the first place who assigned it.
• use project management skills while planning and deploying your resources. A poor management skill on your part would lead to missed deadlines or employees compensating for your lack of management skills.
• empower only when the employee has skills to deliver. Otherwise, train the employee first. 
• your job is not only to attend meetings and assign resources but also to assess, prioritize, say No, decide the timelines, assess resource requirements, gaps, etc. Any one can get into a meeting say Yes to all the commitments, and pass the buck forward. 
• give feedback that is constructive. It should not be based on the recency effect. If you cannot find anything to say on the improvements, do not say anything. 
• understand strengths of your employees and use where they can fit the best
• hire for ethics, attitude, train-ability and future potential
• facilitate your employees. An employee may be working on mutiple things, so you as a project / team manager need to make sure when a new employee moves in, the employee is able to deliver effectively and efficiently. 
• if you are putting together a new team, do not focus on putting together mini-mes. Diversity is a strength the team and decision making. 
• focus of providing a work-life balance. If someone is over-working, find out the reason.
• provide recognition and promote employees. 
• your team should recognize and value your original contribution without you having to say.
• do not send more than 3 emails to get an answer to 1 question. Call the person up. 
• your employees should know your authority, but you should use it only when it is needed. The rest of the time, your team should perform because they like what they do and they want to be a part of your team. 
• set up process so that your team produces quality work that others use as a benchmark
• you need to make decision, specially those that are difficult to make. Employees look up to you for direction. Remember, you need to lead as well!
• communicate clearly and straight-forward, and do not be a sugar candy. 
• do not be an agent for grapevine. Your responsibility is to keep the secrets as well. 
• do not hide information unnecessarily. Employees need to know the direction and what management is thinking.
• protect and groom your team. 

Always remember, your team is your first customer. If they do not produce any output, your end customer does not get anything and the company makes a loss. A proud team is a byproduct of a great manager. 

Marketing from the mouth of a Marketeer

Marketing, Marketing Types, Marketing In a Nutshell, Dew Drops, Ravichander Rao

This post is about marketing, as per a practitioner who is in this field.

There are different categories of marketing - product marketing, service marketing, B2B marketing, B2C marketing, digital marketing, content marketing, etc. Fundamentally, they are all the same - Marketing. They have been segmented into different categories so that others can relate to the area where marketing is targeted. Of course, a generalist gets paid less in the market, so to differentiate oneself from the other marketeers, so the labels.

Now the basics - the purpose of marketing is to create excitement around a new, increase adoption and penetration of the existing, and plan the phase out of the older the product and services. While marketing improves the differentiation, consequently the gross margins, the sales is about generating the revenue by trading, consequently preserving the gross margin. That's why these two functions are often talked about in the same breadth. Now, any service that cannot be productized and combined into an offering cannot be sold in the market. So, anything that needs to be sold should have a boundary of its own that defines what to expect out it. For instance, teaching is a service. No one will be able to avail teaching as a service unless it has been productized by placing a boundary - what subject, for long, where, etc. Defining a boundary makes its a product that one can trade.

There is always a consumer for every product that you can conceive. The profitablity of the product decides whether it will exist in the long run or not. The profitability is dependent on the ability of the marketeer to create an excitement around the product that stirs up the demand for the product. The demand indicates the whether your pitch on the value - cost vs. benefit that the product delivers is desired by the purchaser or not. A product is as much dependent on the marketeer for its is success, as much as a marketeer is dependent on the product for his own success. Hence, the marketeer owns the customer surveys to decide roadmap to create the product pipeline that meets the current demands and positioned to meet the near future demands. If a product has a demand, there will always be a competition in a matter of short time. The competition tends to reduce the exclusivity around the product. The more the exclusivity is eroded, the more the product becomes a common thing or a commodity. The role of the marketeer is to maintain the exclusivity or the differentiation of his product vs. the competing products. This is achieved by product enhancements in direct competition or target segment refinement in an direct competition to create a niche application for the product and make the competition less relevant in that segment.

If the product has already moved towards the becoming a commodity, the marketeer will work on creating a differentiation through branding. Branding is perceived image enhancement of the consumer through association with the product. For instance, there are so many beauty products available, most of them are just alike (as long as they are not made from the skin allergy causing substances). They compete with each other in the small retail space. In a blindfold test, you would hardly be able to recognize which product belongs to whom.  In such scenarios, the marketeers work on building a brand around the product that sends out a message of exclusivity when you consume that product. The intention of the building a brand is to be able to charge premium for a product. So, to make the product attractive, it is always associated with the something that sends the message that it is consumed by the high end or exclusive group.

If the product has not yet moved towards the commodity, then the marketeer has to focus on the demand creation. For instance, the demand for iPhone watch is not high enough yet. In order to make it profitable in the long run, the marketeer has to identify where and how he should go campaign the product so that he can get more potential buyers. The where could be the groups who like to keep themselves abreast of the latest technology or the group that is keen on maintaining their exclusivity or the group that likes to keep themselves hooked onto the gadgets, etc. How is the mode of engagement - trade shows, promotion online, limited time bundled offer, etc. at the place where these groups are found in higher concentration.

The job of the marketeer continues beyond the sales of the product. A sale, either leads to a satisfied customer or unsatisfied customer. Depending on the levels, they will tend to work for you without added cost to you. A dissatisfied customer will spread negative campaign likewise a satisfied customer will spread positive campaign. Dissatisfaction coming from the cost wears out over a period of time, however dissatisfaction from the product performance sticks for much longer. So, bottomline - never market a product that will fail to deliver on the expectations and never over market. A role of the marketeer is also monitor the product performance and perception so that the customer satisfaction continues to be positive. Hence, the customer surveys are done. If the market is still growing, the focus may not be on the customer satisfaction, as it is assumed that the demand is an indicator of the customer satisfaction. The surveys are more common in the mature and saturated markets.

During the survey of the market, multiple related questions are asked and the responses are gauged to check the demand for the product. It is essential for a marketeer to understand which factors are causation and which are the bi-products. A focus on the bi-product, leads to stagnation and drop in the gross margin. However, the focus on the causation leads to the growth and higher gross margins. Which factors are causation changes from the market to market. However, meeting the requirement, reliability, and partnering to meet to unmet demands are most common causation factors and applicable across all the domains. There are different ways and terms to measure the customer satisfaction - brand loyalty, net promoter score, customer's wallet share, market share, etc. These are all the after effects, and one hopes that these help to predict how your customers will respond to your next set of offering or it is helps to check the switching of the customers to the competitors. In practice, what is the important is understand - "what makes your product still relevant to your customer and what will make him buy your offering or does your value proposition resonate with your customer?". In matured market for the existing product, market share cannot be grown be unless you can add new customers. This is done by causing the customer to switch loyalties or add customers from a newer segment. To achieve this, promotions are done. There are different ways to measure the success rate of the promotion - brand awareness, brand recognition, trial rates, etc. Generally, in a commodity market, making the customers to switch is difficult, as they tend to stick. Hence, the marketeer often spends a considerable portion of the marketing budget to sustain the marketing campaigns.

End of the day, sales of a product boils down to its pricing. Is your product is priced right for the customers? If you price it higher your profitability increases, but the selling becomes difficult. If you price it lower, then profitability reduces but selling becomes easier. So, a marketeer has to use a framework as shown below to decide on what is the right price - Value Price for the product so that it can be realized to improve the profitability of the company.

Since the best marketeer is a best communicator and advocate for his product, it is essential that the marketeer maintains his integrity. He is in a position of influence, which comes with the responsibility of leading the customers in the right direction.