B2B Marketing

 When I was working in Enterprise Content Management space I can recall the proliferation of competitor offerings and didn't envy the poor organisational decision makers that had to go through a lengthy RFP and selection process to evaluate the most suitable vendor for their needs. If that wasn't and enough I remember how stressed the sales guys would get, burning the midnight oil answering a string of questions in time to meet the stringent submission deadlines.

I also remember when I started fresh in that sector and looked at the vendor in question and competitive offerings, how they all seemed to say very much the same thing. An example in sales pitches I saw from us and the competition was how all purported to be the strongest on the ‘ease of use' question. Look at your industry sector and look to your competitors. Ask yourself honestly, how convergent or similar are you to your next closest rival?

What I also saw was a long list of benefits created that was very similar across the industry competitors. It was as if someone had determined the attributes that were necessary to appeal to a particular segment and everyone jumped on the same bandwagon in the fear that they might get left behind. It's why an overzealous focus on the competition, whilst taking your eye of the ball and not concentrating on your customers enough, can actually be a little dangerous and you could end up another ‘me too' proposition which buyers will find hard differentiating from the competitive stack. What typically ends up happening in such scenarios is that sales people end up negotiating on price to win the deal, rather than demonstrating differentiating value relative to the next best competitor.

So what's an alternative way? A really useful book called Value Merchants by Anderson, Kumar and Narus, not only walks through a comprehensive definition of value, but how to create it, how to differentiate with it and more importantly, how to quantify it.

Here's a great quote from the back cover that sums up the book quite nicely: "In business markets, facing price pressure is a constant reality. Value Merchants provides an approach for the sales force o demonstrate superior value to customers, avoiding the commodity trap" - Markus Akermann, CEO, Holcim, Switzerland