Tag: #B2BStrategicMarketing
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Brand vs. Differentiation: The Real Key to Winning in B2B Markets
“When are you going to talk about branding?” We have had more than one participant ask us that during a break in one of our Grassroots Strategy Workshops. Their observation is based on the fact that we are discussing “Strategic Marketing” and yet do not have a session that speaks…
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An Unexpected Lesson in Change Management
If you were raised even modestly Christian, or know a little about art history, you probably recognize this image as a depiction of the Last Supper. However, if you look closely, you notice something unexpected – amidst the familiar wine and bread, in the center of the table, is a…
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Watt’s New? The Product AND The Business Model
The first sentence in the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s publication, “Electricity Explained” is, “Electricity is measured in units of measure called Watts, named to honor James Watt, the inventor of the steam engine”. Once again, we find ourselves having to dispel a myth. The truth is that James Watt did…
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Bottom-up is Not Enough
We are on record as strong believers that the best strategies start bottom-up – in fact, we called our book “Grassroots Strategy” for that reason. Our experience is that the best ideas come from the front lines, the people who work day-to-day with customers and/or technologies and can see creative…
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Quantum, Crypto, Crane Rental and Car Parts
As some of you may have guessed, the title of this post refers to some of the industries in which we have worked during the last year. That list could also include: capital planning and e-commerce software, injection molding, reclaimed refrigerants, aggregate, organic acids and radio signal processing. Yes, it…
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Does Strategic Pricing Stop Value Leakage to Optimize Profits?
Many times when we talk to clients about pricing, they say that they have already worked out pricing because consultant XYZ did a strategic pricing initiative for them. As we ask questions about what they actually did, we usually uncover that the initiative was really more of a transactional pricing…
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Segmentation Is Never Easy, It’s Iterative
When we conduct our Grassroots Strategy workshops, we are sometimes asked why we dive deep into customer value before we do segmentation. Isn’t value segment specific? Shouldn’t we define segments independent of what we offer today? We have come to believe that these questions reflect a common misunderstanding that segmentation…
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Five Requirements to Being a Value Pricing Champion
Value pricing is an elusive topic but when done properly it can lead to long periods of exceptional profitability. We often hear companies improperly refer to their pricing methods as “value pricing,” when they are far from it. Like anything else, just using the words does not improve results, you…
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Thinking like your Customers’ Buyers
We recently completed an adjacent-market strategy project for an automotive supplier looking to diversify beyond the cyclical and price-sensitive auto OEMS into adjacent markets with similar technology needs. For them, like many of us, the phrase “strategic sourcing” conjured up images of scowling purchasing managers at their automotive customers devising…
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Unlocking the Value Chain
When we conduct our Grassroots Strategy workshops, a task on day one is to draw your value chain – the steps your offering goes through before reaching an end-user. In the business-to-business world, value chains can include different distributors, specifiers, installers and value-added resellers, all of whom can influence what…
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5 Pitfalls to Avoid when Value Pricing Software
We had a client many years ago that was struggling with how to bring a new software offering to market, specifically how to price it. Their core product was equipment used in manufacturing processes and the associated parts and accessories. The equipment was a large capital purchase for their customers,…
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Reliving the Glory Days and Boomerang CEO’s
In case you missed it, Robert Iger returned to the helm as CEO of the Walt Disney Company in November, less than two years after “retiring” in 2021. This makes him the latest in a series of high profile ‘boomerang CEOs’ who return to their former posts after allegedly leaving…
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Business Travel…Can you really stay healthy?
Here it is March, and for most of us our New Year’s resolutions have faded in the rearview mirror. Yet as we adjust to a post-Covid world, many would like to avoid returning to old bad habits. In particular, as business travel rebounds to near historic levels, fellow road warriors…
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RACI: Love them or hate them, but used correctly, they can add value
After years of documenting key processes, re-writing job descriptions and automating org charts, many organizations still struggle to have clarity and alignment around roles, responsibilities, and authority. This impacts business processes, project execution and day to day decisions resulting in frustration, inefficiency and sometimes poor decision-making. We have seen this…
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The Adventures of 2023 Planning and Lessons From a Tumultuous 2022
By any measure, 2022 was a year of nearly unprecedented change and for many of us, one that we are not in a hurry to see repeated. While 2022 saw most of the covid-related restrictions lifted, experts are still debating the lessons and the long-term cost to things like education…
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So You Want to Be a Software Company?
There is a strong appeal to becoming a software company, but is it really the right answer for your business? As these two examples show, the answer is far from clear.
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Don’t Apply the B2C Customer Journey to B2B
Regular readers of our blog know that we have an instinctive negative reaction to consumer marketing concepts being applied in B2B. Ideas like personas and brand equity are critical in B2C marketing, but when inappropriately applied in B2B they can drive bad decisions based on customer preferences and personalities as…
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Bringing Your Strategy to Life
Many years ago we worked for a client in the commercial waste management business – they hauled garbage from commercial businesses and construction sites. We were called in because, despite having spent a large sum with a top-tier consulting firm for their strategy, they were stuck on how to implement…
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Why Won’t Those Stupid Customers Buy My Valuable Solution?
“We could grow faster if those stupid customers just understood the real value of our solution.” If we had a dollar for every time we have heard a client say some version of that, we would be rich. The problem with that line of thinking is that it is a…
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Taking the Customer’s Perspective?
OK, time for a quick test. If you were looking at this menu board, what would you expect to pay for a bottle of Piper Heidsick champagne? This is a real picture of the menu board that my wife and I were faced with on a recent Friday evening (I…
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Value Chain Economics: The Secret to Market Leadership
One of the first things we have our clients do in our Grassroots Strategy workshops is define the market or “opportunity” from their customer’s perspective. The primary question we ask is “what is the problem you solve for the customer?” Seems simple, right? Not always. Answering that question is predicated…
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Do You Know the Momentum of Your Business?
When we run strategy workshops with clients, we usually start with a discussion of the momentum of the business. Borrowing from the concept of momentum in physics, this is our attempt to capture the trajectory of the business – where it is likely headed in the absence of any change…
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Make Sure You Don’t End Up With a “Paper Strategy”
The last two years have been pretty crazy. Whether your business has been doing well or badly in this environment, much of the last two years have probably felt a lot like crisis management. Starting with the new year in 2022, it’s a good idea to refocus your efforts on…
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What Lessons Can We Take From This Turbulent Year?
The end of the year is always a time to take stock of where you are and think about how you might adjust your plans for the future. Even if you are normally not one to make new year’s resolutions, this past year certainly must have caused you to stop…
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Five Pointers to Avoid Being Stuck in a Segment
Grassroots Strategy is a powerful conceptual framework, it changes how many of our clients think and leads to exciting new ways for them to conceptualize their businesses. After having worked with our client teams to crack the code in applying key concepts like differentiation, customer value and market segmentation, it…
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Good Segmentation Schemes Often Start Out Sounding ‘Just Crazy Enough’
One of the benefits of having coached project teams through our needs-based segmentation process hundreds of times across dozens of industries is that we can spot patterns that are difficult to identify for even the seasoned industry practitioner who has typically developed a limited number of segmentation schemes, probably in…
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What can The Rolling Stones teach us about Voice of the Customer?
In a probably slightly twisted sort of way I often think of the Rolling Stones song “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” when I think about Voice of the Customer or VOC. It is almost a universal truth that if you ask customers what they want, they will respond…
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Don’t Wait for the Perfect Mission and Vision Statement to Create a Strategy
We often talk with companies who are waiting to work on their strategy because they are reworking their mission and vision statements. There are key differences between mission, vision and strategy and it is essential they all fit together to drive impact. Successful companies connect these three pieces together to…
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Do you Prefer Superhero Strategy Lessons from DC Comics or Marvel?
When we were kids (yes, we had cars and televisions back then), there was no doubt that the DC universe of superheroes was cooler than the Marvel Universe. DC had Batman and Superman, the two coolest crimefighters, plus we had the Justice League cartoons on Saturday mornings and Lynda Carter’s…
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In search of …… silver bullet strategy
Too often, companies believe that the purpose of strategic planning is to find some magical ‘silver bullet’ that will solve all their problems and guarantee a path to profitable growth. A frustrating conversation with a client we had a few years ago comes to mind: Amphora: What do you think…
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Strategies to Stand the Test of Time
Is your strategy precise or robust? Precise: “Exactly or sharply defined or stated” (Merriam Webster Dictionary) or “Marked by exactness and accuracy of expression or detail” (Oxford English Dictionary) Robust: “Capable of performing without failure under a wide range of conditions” (Merriam Webster Dictionary) or “Sturdy in Construction” (Oxford English…