Showing posts with label Business Software Marketing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Business Software Marketing. Show all posts

Are You Selling or Facilitating Buying for Customers?

We all know when we’re being sold to – whether it’s a straightforward advertisement, or a clever marketing campaign, or a salesperson going through their shtick.  How do you like being on the receiving end of this process?  Most of us dislike the process, but we have to play the game in order to get the information we need to ultimately make a decision that is right for us.

It’s not that we don’t want to buy, in too many instances it’s that we don’t want to buy in the manner we’re being sold to.  We’ve all experienced this frustration and possible annoyance as a consumer or business buyer.  But why do so many marketers and salespeople, especially in B2B and Information Technology, still persist with this selling oriented approach?

Ask most marketers how they approach marketing to prospective customers and you’ll hear a lot about market segmentation, demographics, value propositions, campaigns, lead tracking, lead qualification, etc.  Ask most salespeople how they approach selling to prospective customers and you’ll inevitably hear about the various stages of the sales cycle and all the predefined processes to move the buyer through each stage to closure and purchase.

Now ask a prospective customer how they want to approach buying and you’ll hear about their reasons, specific requirements, expected results, risk, trust, proof, competitiveness, etc.  Prospective buyers have their own buying cycle of what they need to accomplish in order to make a purchase decision.

So we start with an inherent conflict of interests and processes:

  • Prospective buyers have an approach and buying cycle they need to get through before making a decision
  • Marketing has an approach and process of finding possible buyers and converting them into leads for Sales
  • Sales have a selling cycle and predefined processes to take a lead and convert them into a buying customer.
And we wonder why B2B and IT sales cycles take so long.  Consider all the wasted time, effort and resources on both sides because the selling process is not aligned with the buying process.

Marketers may point out that there are specific buyer-oriented value propositions in their marketing campaigns.  That may be true, but the pitch and process is still mostly focused around the seller and driving leads and statistics through their marketing processes.

Salespeople may point out that they find out what problems and pains a specific prospect wants resolved and then align the sales process accordingly.  That may be so, but from I’ve seen, more often than not it’s more like a “show me your nail and I’ll show you how our hammer will do the job better for you” approach.

“He who buys had need have 100 Eyes, but one's enough for him that sells the Stuff.” ~ Benjamin Franklin

How are you marketing and selling to customers?  How and why do prospective customers want to buy from you?  Consider how you can move from a vendor selling approach and rather facilitate prospective customers to buy from you.

Your comments are always welcome.
Copyright © 2010 The Marketing Mélange and Ingistics LLC. http://marketing.infocat.com

SaaS Solutions – Are You Marketing for Leads or Sales?

Traditionally, Business Software vendor marketing has primarily focused on generating leads for sales to follow-up and engage with prospects.  This was predicated on the complexity and duration of the sales, delivery, deployment and implementation processes for traditional On-premises solutions.

Software as a Service (SaaS) radically changes the delivery, deployment and implementation processes for business solutions.  This creates opportunities to rethink the sales and marketing approach and processes for the SaaS solution model.

Business software vendors that started life in the SaaS world, primarily focus their marketing campaign strategies, materials and website on:

  • Demonstrating the real product online, on-demand
  • Offering a free trial to sign-up online right now to use the full product for a limited time period and subsequently convert to a paying customer
  • Pricing and other specific information about subscribing to the solution
  • Providing relevant information for prospective buyers in their context with multimedia materials
  • Engaging with their audience using online marketing and sales methods to expediently make the sale online with or without salesperson involvement
  • Alternatively, collecting contact information for generating leads for subsequent follow-up by a salesperson.
The intent for new generation SaaS vendor marketing is to firstly attempt to make the sale or part of it online and secondly to capture contact information for the lead generation process.

In contrast, On-premises business software vendors that also offer SaaS versions of their solutions, seem to be continuing their traditional marketing approach:
  • Providing general information about products, solutions, industry applicability, etc.
  • Focus on harvesting contact information for their lead generation process at every opportunity such as registration to read a whitepaper, view a video clip, etc.
  • Limited or no information about subscription costs and terms
  • Creating the need for a prospective buyer to provide their contact details to get additional information and details they need for a buying decision.
Even though SaaS creates new opportunities to reorient marketing to actually sell solutions or initiate the sales process online, most traditional On-premises vendors that offer SaaS versions of their products are still primarily focused on generating leads for SaaS solutions like they have done for On-premises solutions in the past.

Some SaaS solutions such as CRM, Expense Management, eCommerce, etc. have a proven track record of selling online in a customer self-service mode with little or no live salesperson assistance.  Prospective buyers may not be ready to buy all SaaS solutions, especially more complex or higher value solutions, in an online self-service mode.  However, there are proven methods for opportunities to redirect the focus from marketing for leads to marketing for sales.

“I am the world's worst salesman, therefore, I must make it easy for people to buy.” ~ F. W. Woolworth

The ultimate objective is to make a sale – SaaS provides the opportunity to directly market for the sale, rather than market for leads for the sales process.

Have you shifted or considered shifting your marketing focus from leads to sales and what have you experienced?  Your comments are always welcome.
Copyright © 2009 The Marketing Mélange and Ingistics LLC. http://marketing.infocat.com

Marketing & Selling the Service Differentiation in SaaS Solutions

My previous post ‘Are there Differences for Marketing SaaS versus On-Premises Solutions?’ proffered that customers need to make 2 buying decisions with the increasing availability of mainstream SaaS alternatives to traditional On-premises solutions:

  1. Which solution best fits their business needs
  2. Which acquisition / deployment option best fits their IT strategy.
The second buying decision means that prospective buyers will want information and comparisons to help them make the best decision for their business.  This creates a need and opportunity for marketing and sales to establish additional differentiation for their solution based on the Service aspect of Software as a Service.  It may help to consider the following three questions more broadly to develop your Service differentiation for marketing and selling your SaaS solution:

Who are you competing against?
In the first buying decision of solution fit you are primarily competing against other vendor solutions.  In the second buying decision of acquisition / deployment options you are competing on multiple fronts such as:
  • Other vendors on service costs, terms and delivery
  • Other vendors on the delivery platform – is it just a SaaS solution or are there Platform as a Service (PaaS) and/or Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud computing differentiators?
  • Customer’s internal IT organization’s perspective on SaaS solutions
  • Other vendors and customer’s internal IT on service delivery – Service Level Agreement (SLA), operational controls, security, SAS 70 compliance certification and whether it’s Type I or II, etc.
  • Financial – operational expenditure versus capital expenditure considerations
  • Total Cost of Ownership – there’s a lot of spin from both On-premises and SaaS marketing and sales pitches about which model costs more over three, five or more years
  • Inertia – some buyers and/or companies may be reluctant or even resistant to having their business systems run in a data center they don’t control.
Considering all the possible competitive points will help formulate your best competitive differentiation.

What are customers buying?
Although a customer needs to make 2 decisions during the buying cycle, once they decide on going with a SaaS solution, they are buying one inseparable solution comprising of the application functionality, acquisition method, services, deployment, provisioning and other elements to make it work.  In a previous post I suggested a bifurcated marketing approach to attack the market from two positions to find prospective buyers on either decision track.  However, the overall marketing and selling strategy should be on the goodness of the complete SaaS solution, because that’s what customers are buying.

What are you really selling?
The bottom line is that you’re selling trust – that the customer trusts your company, product and the representative people they’ve dealt with to provide the solution to satisfy their core buying motivations of solving business problems, developing new opportunities, improving performance, increasing profitability, etc.  This isn’t different for SaaS versus On-premises solutions, but SaaS adds another major dimension of trust in the Service aspect.  With the continuing commoditization of business software and minimal functional differentiation between products in the same category, Service is the operative word for differentiation of Software as a Service solutions.  Marketing and selling the Service differentiation will attract and engage prospective buyers, and trust in your company’s ability to deliver the Service will make the sale.

Do you have additional suggestions and ideas for marketing and selling the Service differentiation in SaaS solutions?  Your comments are always welcome.
Copyright © 2009 The Marketing Mélange and Ingistics LLC. http://marketing.infocat.com

Are there Differences for Marketing SaaS versus On-Premises Solutions?

From a customer perspective Software as a Service (SaaS) and On-premises business software solutions have the same objectives of creating business value by providing applications and functionality for improving business processes and performance.  The customer buying motivations are the same – solve business problems, develop new opportunities, improve performance, increase profitability, etc.

Marketing SaaS and On-premises business software solutions have the same objectives of developing a credible market presence, creating awareness, generating leads and enabling sales to efficiently sign up new customers.  The marketing tactics are the same – using a familiar mix of webinars, events, collateral, PR, SEO, web content, analyst reviews, email marketing, videos, social media, etc.

When SaaS solutions first emerged as viable alternatives to the traditional On-premises approach, the marketing focus was primarily on the different acquisition and deployment characteristics of SaaS.  More recently the marketing focus for SaaS solutions has shifted to the application functionality and business value for customers as more SaaS and On-premises vendors compete for the same customers in target markets.

So what’s different?  The real difference is that customers now need to make 2 buying decisions:

  1. Which solution best fits their business needs
  2. Which acquisition / deployment option best fits their IT strategy.

Customers can take two different paths to making the buying the decision:
  1. First develop a short list of best fit solutions and then decide on available acquisition / deployment choices as part of the final decision process.  While SaaS versus On-premises may not be the initial primary decision driver, it could be a key final decision factor.
  2. First decide which acquisition / deployment option they want and then find the best fit solution that meets the selected acquisition / deployment criteria.  SaaS versus On-premises is the initial primary driver, but functional fit between qualifying solutions will be the final decision factor.

This has implications for marketing both SaaS and On-premises solutions for positioning and differentiating according to each decision choice and path in the customer buying process.  It also has implications for sales to determine how to engage with prospective buyers depending on which decision path they are following.

Given that customers need to make 2 buying decisions and usually take two different paths to reach a decision, business software vendors may want to consider a bifurcated marketing strategy for positioning and differentiation:
  1. Traditional functional fit solution marketing approach emphasizing business benefits and applicability of the solution functional capabilities.
  2. Acquisition and deployment marketing emphasizing the business and IT benefits of each available acquisition / deployment option.

“If you're attacking your market from multiple positions and your competition isn't, you have all the advantage and it will show up in your increased success and income." – Jay Abraham


I’ll explore the differentiating and positioning possibilities in future blog articles.

Have you faced this situation and how are you approaching it?  Your comments are always welcome.
Copyright © 2009 The Marketing Mélange and Ingistics LLC. http://marketing.infocat.com