Translating strategy into tactics is challenging. It’s all about ensuring that segmentation, go-to-market and value propositions are being translated into useful instructions for field marketing and account plans for local sales reps.
During our last webinar practical tools and real cases to understand how IVC helps Tech vendors with the following aspects were shared:
Identifying and sizing priority customer segments up to building the actual databases
Being agile when confirming hypotheses with the market through real prospects
Adapting verticals and messages to segment-specific challenges
Setting realistic sales objectives over time
Implementing successful enterprise’s customer acquisition programs
Smart Segmentation and Rapid Sales Protoyping
Smart segmentation has proven to be a simple and efficient tool to select most interesting target customers segments, dimensioning the opportunity and defining successful vertical messages. The “art” mainly consists of defining the right target sectors to be evaluated and simultaneously look for the market drivers that determine the level of attractiveness of a customer segment. At the same time drivers have to be chosen carefully, in the sense that the information is publicly available.
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Build winning sales tactics
After having identified the most attractive customer segments, Rapid Sales Prototyping immediately reaches out into the market in order to confirm and eventually adjust the findings from Smart Segmentation. The process is straightforward:
Select a sample of e.g. 20 companies based on the segmentation and arrange commercial visits
Prepare your sales pitch and adapt to verticals and segment specific challenges and pains you identified
While presenting your value proposition, take advantage of asking “discovery questions” which help you to confirm your hypothesis. A typical questionnaire would try to find out:
Installed base/current solution
Level of interest & plans
Concrete problems & level of pain
Motivation of interest, both technical and strategic
Feedback on value proposition
Decision making process & duration
Critical success factors
Average deal size
Competitor intelligence
This feedback, carefully analysed, will confirm and set the basis for fine-experttuning our sales approach and make sure that our effort is focussed on the “juicy” part of the market, using the right messages.
Having completed this, the campaign is ready to be rolled out for the complete database of priority customers. Marketing and sales resources are assigned with the right level of know how and target sector affinity; challenging but realistic objectives are set.
Based on IVC’s experience of multiple projects for Tech-Vendors, this process can be completed in less than four months and avoids frustrating trial and error approaches. These tools are applicable across all sectors and even highly recommendable for very immature/emerging markets.
Good luck! and do reach out to me, should you need some expert assistance, via email: marketing@ivc.es.
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