When many people think of marketing, they think of either selling or advertising. Selling has a bad rep – you might be reminded of that pushy ‘used car salesman’ or that annoying telemarketer that interrupted your dinner last night. You might think selling means pushing a product or service upon someone who has no interest in it and trying to convince them to buy. Advertising doesn’t usually fair much better. People think of advertising as expensive, impersonal, and often ineffective. Some even consider it manipulative.
While these are the two most well known areas of marketing, there’s good news! Marketing encompasses far more than that. You can increase your business without these hard tactics by taking a more strategic approach.
In a nutshell, marketing is everything you do from the time you conceive of a product or service to the time someone buys it from you. This involves activities like:
- Consumer Research – This involves finding out if people like your offering enough to pay you a premium for it. It means segmenting your market so you can get to know who your customers and prospects are, learn what motivates them, and tailor your offering to their needs. After all, if you are solving a problem for them in a faster/better/cheaper way than they are currently doing it, they’ll be happy to pay for your product/services.
- Industry Research This involves looking at your competition to see what they offer and how it differs from you. I want to stress – everyone has competition. Maybe it is indirect competition – someone will do it themselves rather than pay you. Maybe it is potential substitution for another product/service in a different industry. For example, Coca Cola is in the soft drink industry and their main competitor is Pepsi. However, milk would be a substitute beverage. Or most likely, it’s another company that advertises a similar offering to yours.
- Company Analysis – This involves looking internally at your company to pick out and emphasize your company’s strengths. This means asking yourself and your employees why you and they believe in your company and your offering. It means looking at not only your strengths, but also your weaknesses and making sure that what you are offering is something that you are good at. Using that information, you can emphasize the benefits of using your offering vs. another.
- Strategic Analysis – Once you’ve done extensive research – you can evaluate everything you’ve collected. You are looking for an overlap between what you offer, which people might buy, and how you can leverage that to find a niche that your competitors can’t easily copy.
- Marketing and Sales Strategy – Now that you have an idea of who would be interested in your offering, you need to tell them about it. You can do this via a variety of means – advertising, direct mail, networking, websites, promotions, email, etc – but the goal is to research only those prospects that will have an interest in buying your product. Start putting together a marketing plan that details a schedule of when and how you will reach your prospects each month. It usually takes at least 7 contacts over the course of 1-1.5 years before people start to recognize your company, so maintaining consistent marketing is crucial.
Your marketing strategy is more than just advertising or sales. It includes who you serve, how you differentiate yourself, and why prospects should buy from you. Getting the word out about your products and services is only a small part of marketing.
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Hello there..
I found couple of real good marketing and sales related articles. What i felt is that they were more talking theories and not the practical scenarios. dont get me wrong, but here is what i am looking for.
I want to generate 40,000 USD business every month. My company is into IT services domain (S/W development, web development, app management, ERP SAP etc..). What will be my strategy for following tow scenario. and what process i shall follow, what team structure i shall have etc.
Scenario 1) i have a pipeline in hand i have to make sure that i generate 40K per month.
scenario 2) I do not have any leads, but still i want to generate 40K per month.
How shall i go about it .
if you help me on that ..this would be of great help…
regards,
Raj.
Raj, Sorry you feel that strategy is too theoretical for you, but with the information you’ve given me, there’s no way I can answer your question. It sounds like you don’t have a business – you have an idea for one. You want to generate 40K/month – congrats – but I still have no idea what you sell, who you sell it to, or why I should hire you over other service providers. You name lots of buzzwords, but don’t provide any specifics:
1) Who are your target audience? What are their key concerns, fears and motivations? You will never be successful until you can define these people and get inside their heads.
2) What, specifically, do you offer? (Note: that’s a much different question from what “can” you offer.) Specifically, what services will you provide that addresses your target audience’s key concerns? You’re in business to serve customers, so you have to know what they want and tailor your solutions to those key problems. You name web development, app management, ERP, SAP, etc – great – are you targeting mid-size companies? Large companies? In what industry? What are their demographics? How do you price your services? Is it just you or do you have a team? Do you want to work on location, remotely, or overseas? How much do the services cost and how many will you have to sell in order to break 40K/month? What value do you provide that’s worth 40K/month? Is it an hourly fee? Is it based on the value/revenue the business will generate from your services?
3) Why should companies hire you rather than the many other companies out there? What makes you unique to handle their IT concerns? What experience do you have? Expertise? Proof you can do what you say?
4) How does your target audience buy? Is that something that one person in the organization can approve or do you need buy in from numerous people in different departments? If so, who, specifically is involved with the purchases? How will you meet these people to introduce your service?
Until you can answer these questions cold, you’re going to keep spinning your wheels. Sorry, that’s not theoretical. That’s sitting down and working out the logistics of how you will actually make 40K/month. You can’t market yourself until you know what, exactly, you offer and why prospects will value that solution to their problem. If you have no leads, no contacts and are basically starting from scratch with your business, it’s going to be very difficult to hit that mark.
When you are just starting out, you have a credibility issue – your prospects see you as a risky. How will you convince people you can do what you say when you have little experience/proof you can do it? (Going back to point 2 – why should people hire you over all the many other IT providers out there who have years of experience?)
I suggest you pick up a book or two on writing a business plan to tackle these core issues, then maybe Jeff Thull’s Mastering the Complex Sale or Jill Konrath’s Selling to Big Companies to learn how to get your foot in the door with larger purchasers. There are also a ton of books on selling IT services you might want to read – like Rick Freedman’s The IT Consultant.
Dear Krista.
Thank you so much for your brief reply. Your article was pretty good and it really helped understanding many things. By theoritical i did not mean that it was a bad attempt, but i just thought that you could have given some real time/real life based examples (may be some of yours own experiences dealing with clients and getting closures). any ways never mind.
First of all, neither i am a company nor i am going to start a company. The question i asked was for a company of a mid size, with around 50-100 employee providing custom software development. they are into offshore and outsourcing business and they will have their client base in usa, canada and uk. Till date USA maintains the first choice for Indian IT offshore outsourcing company for business development, though there are some signs of slow downs. The sole purpose is to give a presentation on how to generate 40K P.M. business and what will be my strategy. Strategy can be anything, i can setup a team, define certain processes, define customer demographics etc. No one is going to provide me with all these, but i myself will have to chalk out.
I will try to answer your questions one by one …
1) Who are your target audience? What are their key concerns, fears and
motivations?
ANS: Target region will mainly be USA & Canada. Clients can vary from S/W companies to hospitals to banks to a single individual. Any one who is seeking custom software development or any type of IT service. IT companies who might outsource their work to India, Individual free lancers, Individual Consultants who might have a good contacts with IT companies in USA and Canada and can do sales for us in the targeted market and get us business, VCs, Government Institutes, Health care people, Finance People, Retail People. The market is pretty wide open and we have to decide what is going to be the best demographic for us. key concerns is that, there are already more than 100K IT shops in India eying your client and would offer a rate way below your base price and something which you will never afford to do. Motivation is of course to become the best IT company in our regional area.
2) What, specifically, do you offer? (Note: that’s a much different question
from what “can” you offer.) Specifically, what services will you provide
that addresses your target audience’s key concerns?
We have a highly tenanted team of technical people who can provide best solution in the industry and we have certain projects already delivered, which can be shown to the client in order to win their confidence. Target audience is seeking IT services and we are best at that, in Time, best in quality and a model where client is a part of the project team and is in continuous interaction with the project team.
You’re in business to
serve customers, so you have to know what they want and tailor your
solutions to those key problems. You name web development, app management,
ERP, SAP, etc – great – are you targeting mid-size companies? Large
companies? In what industry? What are their demographics?
Target companies or client can vary in size. We are open to get a 3000 USD project as well a 300K project. We have the infrastructure and enough resources to deal with any size of projects. Industry is again IT industry as we will offer IT services, any one who seek IT services can be our target. The main goal would be to generate 40K PM. I am not aiming to generate 40K straight away from the very first month. I know its always difficult to achieve the target from the start. The average generated business of one year should be 40K per month. IF we can generate 40K in first month itself, nothing better then that , but if we can not then the target would be to average our total business of one year to 40K per month.
How do you price
your services?
Price can vary from small clients to large clients and based on the complexity of the solution required. In most cases the price would be between 15 USD to 25 USD Per Hour. Models can be three, Fixed price, Time and Material and a Mix of both.
Is it just you or do you have a team?
A Company with 50-100 employees.
Do you want to work on
location, remotely, or overseas?
Its an offshore company. so all the development work will be done in India and we can have one sales office in USA so that our sales person can meet the client in personal.
How much do the services cost and how many
will you have to sell in order to break 40K/month? What value do you
provide that’s worth 40K/month? Is it an hourly fee? Is it based on the
value/revenue the business will generate from your services?
40K is not necessarily the billing amount that we receive in our bank accounts but it is the amount of business generated in that month and we expect the client to pay in chunks as we keep on delivering the parts of the project.
We will like to close 4 projects each worth 10K instead of doing 20 projects each worth 2K. So we would be targeting small medium size projects varying from 3 to 6 months and not very small projects.
3) Why should companies hire you rather than the many other companies out
there? What makes you unique to handle their IT concerns? What experience do
you have? Expertise? Proof you can do what you say?
We have a team of 50-100 people with state-of-art infrastructure, client can have a walk through of it and can even visit our offices. We can provide testimonials, CVs of our employees, client can also interview our technical team, we can do demonstration of our past work.
Our goal would be to immediately deliver something to the client at the end of the day and get his feedback and improve things next day. that way we would make sure that we never go far from what they require, instead they will pull us back. That will make us different from other IT companies.
4) How does your target audience buy?
They always have 100 options to choose from. They will receive 15 calls each day from different IT companies and its always difficult to break the gatekeeper and talk to the concern person and then to convince him. Once they talk with you, they would be interested in your past work, may be your companies website, client testimonial and most importantly they will straight away tell you a problem statement and would ask you on the first call, how much would it cost. Sometimes they get convinced for a second call so that the technical team can estimate it and sometime they just want to know the price at first go.
Is that something that one person in the organization can approve or do you need buy in from numerous people in
different departments? If so, who, specifically is involved with the
purchases? How will you meet these people to introduce your service?
Sometimes one person can approve (Project Manager) when the project size is smaller. 5000K-10K and if it is more then 10K then there will be two three technical guys involved in it to find out the cost. But this process should not take more than 2 days. if it is 100K project then we would ask the client to go for a SRS (system requirement specification) phase where in we would put one or two technical resource to work on the requirement and finalize the scope of the project, time and cost. SRS Phase will come with a cost.
So this can be a process and a company structure. Hope you got a little idea about what i was asking.
let me know if you still have any questions. and if you can tel me what can be the strategies to achieve the target?
Raj,
To be honest with you, you’re well outside my area of expertise. I’ve never worked with an international company to help them break into the US market. I also don’t usually work with companies of 50-100 people – my clients tend to be much smaller.
That said, here’s what I’d say. What you wrote sounds a lot like “we can do anything for anyone” – which prospects usually hear “we are so desperate for work – hire us and we’ll underbid the competition.” As a general rule of thumb, strategy, by nature, means you must narrow your focus and exclude projects so you can become a specialist.
David Maister really drives this home in his excellent book, Strategy and the Fat Smoker, where he says, you won’t gain a competitive advantage by doing things “reasonably well, most of the time.” You will gain a competitive advantage by doing a few things exceptionally well.
If I were you and was researching this project (you obviously know far more about the details than I do), here are my thoughts/what I might do:
1) Your company must be doing something right if they were able to grow it to 50 people. Companies generally start small and grow to 50 people – they don’t start at that number off the bat – so how did they get there? Can they leverage any past relationships to find more work? Past clients and referrals are generally good sources of repeat revenue.
2) I’d compile the most successful projects the company has done and analyze them to death – who did you do them for? how did you find that client? where was the client’s biggest pain? how did you help fix that pain? what benefits did your client get from working with you? how did those benefits translate into saving the company time/money/quality/efficiency?
3) Consider specializing in 1-3 areas where you have those most successful projects. I’d focus on one initially, but you’ll need to analyze each of the industries/markets to see which has the greatest opportunity. When you specialize, you’re no longer competing on price because you have the expertise to help a certain type of client solve a certain type of problems. People want to do business with specialists who have experience in their problem area.
4) I’d work to “productize” my services. I’d want to have at least a two-tiered structure to projects, so that the company would refuse any work less than a certain amount of money. They’d then have “front end” lead generating activities that would allow them to work with companies short term and get big successes immediately with the intention on selling larger projects on the “back end”. If the company doesn’t see a smaller project having potential to morph into a larger one, they should probably pass up the job. Again, these “solutions” would be based on your target audience and it’s problems.
5) Read business magazines that talk about IT outsourcing from a business perspective – for instance, CIO Magazine, to learn what business people think their biggest challenges are. IT guys need to be able to speak the language of business since most people glaze over and tune out when technical details are mentioned. CIO Mag provides numerous case studies. I’d look to find case studies that most closely match what your company did for its most successful projects. Then I’d research everything I could about both companies (the client and the outsourcing house) to learn how they met, what the project initially looked like, the many layers of politics that went on to pull the project through, etc. I’d model the successful qualities when putting together a strategy.
6) Once I knew how prospects look at the problems, I’d probably put together a number of lead generators – education-based marketing materials like case studies, white papers addressing things like how to know if an offshore house is credible, the best ways to manage the relationship, what to do if things go wrong, etc – basically the stuff you’ll read in CIO tailored to your specific industries. Then, I’d do everything in my power to get it into the hands of the people who make outsourcing decisions (you won’t know who they are until you’ve done considerable research). I generally think cold calling is much less effective than lots of other sales strategies out there, but it all depends – perhaps you can add these lead generators into your calling process. If you’re calling with a reason, you might have a better chance of getting through the gatekeepers.
7) I’d also look at ways to meet US companies to form partnerships. Lots of the bigger companies have offshore arms/partners – I’d research how they got started and what it took to get a deal together. I’d probably put at least one person in charge of business development who was really good at making connections with execs, then send them out to speak at conferences, visit trade shows, and network with the types of people who you want to get work from. (Again, this requires that you’re really specific about the types of people you’ll do business with and you actively seek out those people. For instance, you can seek out competitors of past clients and say “We did this for X and it resulted in … Want to talk about what we might be able to help you do?”
Again, these are “off the top of my head” strategies, for how I’d try to tackle the problem at hand. I could be completely off-base here since, as I said, you’re well outside my area of expertise and I know very little about your company, clients, or market. I’d also say that you can’t plan a successful strategy without looking at all your options and weighing in the opportunity costs – I’ll stress again that it takes time and considerable research.
I hope that’s at least somewhat helpful, though.
Hi again,
Thank you again for the reply..
I shall reply you back in a day or two..
will get back to you soon..
take care..