The first requirement is identifying who your competitor really is: The company who sells a product that looks just like yours? The entrepreneur who’s busy inventing your replacement? Or all the other ways that your customers can spend their money that may have nothing to do with you?

Most people assume it’s the first definition – insurance guys immediately think of the agent down the street, plastics companies think of the other guy’s polyethylene – but …

The most common competition is all those other things you customers can choose to spend their money on. Individual or corporation, they all have attractive alternatives to what you want to sell – a weekend at the beach, for example, instead of the premium on a long term care insurance policy, or a fatter dividend to the shareholders instead of a new computer system for the accounting department.

The most dangerous competition is often the competition you don’t even know you have – the inventor who’s looking to make you obsolete. The very best buggy whip guy was headed for disaster in 1903, unless he foresaw and quickly adapted to the dramatically changing personal transportation market.

Researching and understanding the competitive landscape you face – in an ethical and honest way – is a key element in the foundation of your success.

“Great point Bob. I remember as a young agent at NE Financial they had a great program for Target Marketing. The key was to specialize in an area or industry, such as contractors, or veterinarians, or whatever. The point was to find out everything you could about that industry and the challenges that the business owner or professional had so you weren’t just a “product pusher”. You then put together a team of professionals (cpa, p&c broker, commercial banker who all specialized in those industries) and you quarterbacked the group. When done properly you became a real asset to that business owner instead of just another salesman. You will bury your competition once you achieve the role of Advisor.”

“Good points Bob, one time in my career I had to “sell” a product that cost several times the next best alternative, mission impossible, no. But as you pointed out understanding the customer want and I found a key component of what they want is what they value. They may want a chemical that gives high yields, but they value consistency, reliability of supply, and customer service, that may go a long way towards meeting the want of high yields. Normally to get high yields in a process you need consistency in raw materials, reliability of supply keeps them from starting and stopping and helps yields, and customer service is important so you can be responsive to problems and prevent yield issues. So your correct, customer needs are important ore with customers values the jewels I have found in the ore that let me jump the price hurdle and trounce the competitors offering. The real key is sometimes customers don’t know what they value, they will tell you their wants, but the values is what I have found unlocks the purchase order flow. You are so right selling is a process – learn your customer, learn your customer wants, then discover what your customer values, then make sure your offering meets the values which locks up the sale.”

That’s a question that anyone who is in business should think hard about from time to time. Understanding what your customers want and why they buy is the key to making your business more successful – whether you’re selling software to the Fortune 500, life insurance to the family down the street, building CNC milling machines, or offering your own handicrafts on E-Bay.

Regardless of what you’re selling, think of selling as a process, not a single event. It’s all about investing your time and energy to understand your customer – to see her problems, needs and hopes through her eyes – and about designing and presenting your offering in a way that makes her life better.

Especially if you’re selling a complex, expensive product/service, success takes a significant investment in your time. Here, the selling task is mostly about teaching your customer to see and appreciate how your offering will make her life better. To do that you need to intimately understand your customer’s problem from HER perspective.

Even if your product or service is so inexpensive that you can’t afford to invest your time in each and every individual customer, the principle still applies – KNOW YOUR CUSTOMER. For mass market items, segmentation is vital – What are the characteristics of the groups of people most likely to buy from you? What are their hot buttons? How best to get your message to them, in terms they’ll be most likely to respond to?

Whether you’re selling, investing the time to learn about what makes your customer tick – and connecting her concerns and aspirations to the solution you offer – is the road to success.

 1. TALENT – Whether it’s the ability to frame out a house or flawlessly install the plumbing, to lead a customer to decide on buying your insurance policy, to close the IPO, or twang a hot guitar lick, a level of competence at what you do is the price of admission to any job.  Develop your talent and expand your skills in ways that make you better and better at what you do.  No need to be discouraged if you’re not “the best” – there’s lots of room in every field for the “pretty good.”  And don’t be seduced by the thought that pure talent is enough to push you first across the finish line.  It always takes more … 

2. SHOWMANSHIP – Your job success probably doesn’t depend on using your musical talent to rivet the attention of a crowd intensely interested in the their next drink and the hottie at the next table, but ….  if your boss, your customers, your co-workers aren’t aware of what you can do, and eager for the value you can bring them, then you’ll never get the chance for your talents and your accomplishments grow to their full potential.

3. BUSINESS SENSE – Unless you’re an artist committed to starving, your success, in significant measure, means convincing an employer, a customer or an audience to pay you for your talent.  Why will they choose to spend their hard-earned money with you? Because, simply, you can bring them something of value – something they’re willing to pay you for.  The more effectively you can provide what’s important to your boss or your customer, the happier and more generous they will be in paying you.  Bottom line — understand and be responsive to the people who can make or break your success.

4. MAKE YOUR OWN LUCK – Face it, there’s nothing like meeting someone who knows someone.  There’s a large element of luck in that – being in the right place at the right time – but there’s a lot you can do to improve your chances.  Work hard at getting to know the people in your business – what makes them tick, what’s important to them and what’s not.  Make sure they know what you do, and what you can do for them.  Then use what you learn to to make yourself better, more visible, and more valuable.

Obviously, paying attention to these four aspects of your work life won’t guarantee you’ll be the next Springsteen, Bill Gates, or the next superstar of your particular field.  But investing some of your time and energy to strengthen your talents, increase your visibility, and make yourself more valuable to the people who matter can make you more successful in whatever you do.

But … I’ve learned that, deep down, the fundamentals of marketing and selling are just that – fundamental – regardless of the product or service you’re selling. Using my Four Fundamentals to guide your marketing and selling plans can pay big dividends, whether you’re selling insurance or plastics, cars or machine tools or houses, dental care or home remodelling. What are those fundamentals?

1. Know WHO your potential customers are and WHAT makes them tick, then FOCUS on the segments that fit you best
“You can’t be all things to all people” is especially true in business. Focus your attention and resources on the people who are most likely to appreciate and pay for what you offer. Make sure you understand what turns them on and turns them off, where they go to find offerings like yours, and who they listen to when they make decisions about your product / service.

2. UNDERSTAND the problems and opportunities your customers face (especially the ones they’re unaware of)
Few of your potential customers (even the most experienced and astute) really understand how their life or business situation could be better. It’s up to you to know the ins-and-outs of their situation so well that you can paint a convincing picture of the better future they could have if they choose you.

3. DESIGN YOUR OFFERING (your product or service plus all the other ways your customers interact with you) to best help them address the opportunity or problem
These days, the ‘better mousetrap’ is often not the mousetrap itself but the training, services, support and friendly accessibility that surround the steel springs and trigger device itself. The more effectively your offering solves yohavur customers’ problem, the easier it is for them to understand the ways you will make their life better – and the easier it is for them to find and do business with you – the more successful you’ll be.

4. Make sure you STAND OUT from your competitors, in ways that make a difference to the people who’s buying decisions determine your success
Not long after your customers start to prefer your new and improved mousetrap, your competitors will too. Don’t waste energy complaining about copycats, but focus instead on making sure your customers have good reasons to spend their $$$ with you instead of the competiton. (Just please, please, please resist the temptation to start down the seductive but often dead-end road of a price war.

I’ve grown to expect one or the other of these reactions —
“Holy smoley! It’s too much! How can you expect me to ever know and do all that?”
— or —
“I’ve been doing this all my life, so I know all I need to know about my customers and competitors.”

Truth is that both of these reactions are wrong. The market knowledge and the actions that underlie my Four Fundaments are within the reach and resources of any business – large, small, individual. And even the oldest and most experienced business dog can learn some valuable new tricks by taking a fresh, unbiased look at their marketplace.

Wondering how to get started? A great way is to engage a consultant, for example:
www.market-intel.com

As with the marketing side of the coin, there’s not an easy answer for the technology seeker. Information is the only antidote to the uncertainty and risk of trying out a new and unproven product, but reliable information about new technologies is often in short supply.

The internet, of course, is a convenient starting point … but who of us hasn’t sat bewildered before our monitor while trying to make some sense of a seeming infinity of GOOGLE hits? Which are real and which are clever scams? Is this fantastic invention really just a thinly disguised perpetual motion machines? Which great idea is ready for the marketplace and which is just a theoretical gleam in some scientist’s eye?

In the end, you’ll have to make the GO – NO GO decision based on less than complete information – based on assessments by an expert you know and trust. The expert may be yourself or someone on your staff, or maybe a hired consultant. (A shameless plug here for independent consultants, like www.market-intel.com and www.smallbusinessstrategies.org) Either way, your expert must develop intimate and objective understanding of both sides of your new products equation:

1. What are the key elements of the problem you face, and how would potential solutions impact you?
2. What are the potential solutions, how well do they work, and how could they be implemented?

The expert’s vital role, then, is to synthesize a solution that works for your particular situation from the assessments of your problem and the potential solutions.

It is, unfortunately, a labor and research intensive process. (Just how much you should invest, of course, depends upon how severely you’ll impacted if you get the decision wrong!) Some companies handle this systematically, with internal resources explicitly assigned to keeping up with new developments in critical areas. More often, however, they rely serendipitously on interested individuals within the organization, or on ad hoc approach to high profile problems.

http://market-intel.com/blog/2009/07/08/marketing-green-technologies-part-2-for-technology-seekers/

For the inventor —
Having been there for most of my working life, I know that marketing even the best new product to industry isn’t easy. Most manufacturing companies are inherently conservative and cautious about adopting new products and new designs. And well they should be! Their caution is certainly understandable when viewed against the company’s responsibility for the safety of workers and the community and the efficient operation of million or hundreds of millions of plant investment.

Wearing my marketing hat, I often emphasize the emotional, non-rational side of b2b sales. However, in the case of new and unproven manufacturing products, it is vital to give the design engineer or maintenance leader confidence – built on hard data and credible experience – that your product won’t fail. In many cases, the cost of a failure (to the company and to the individual career) so far outweighs the potential and uncertain benefits that they just won’t take a chance.

That being said, companies are always happy to find ‘better and cheaper’. But in my experience, few are able to invest people resources to systematically monitor and assess new products. More typically, engineers will look for solutions to problems as they arise. Thus, it is vital to be visible (or memorable) when the engineer encounters the problem.

Bottom line – Being in ‘the right place at the right time’ means being in many places – print ads, internet, trades shows, customer visits – most of the time.

Too often, people look across the left brain – right brain divide and see the enemy – or at least a suspicious and unfathomable alien. A listing of some of the key left brain – right brain characteristics suggest why each side has such a difficult time understanding the other:
LEFT BRAIN: Logical, Sequential, Rational, Analytical, Synthesizing, Objective, Looks at Parts
RIGHT BRAIN: Intuitive, Randon, Holistic, Synthesizing, Subjective, Looks at Whole
Source: www.funderstanding.com

All but the most entrenched left-brainer or right-brainer would concede, however, that there are certainly useful traits on the other side of the divide.

It’s not so surprising – human nature being what it is – that the left brains and the right brains of society or of an organization often disagree. What is surprising is that so few organizations recognize or take advantage of the complementary strengths of left and right hemispheres.

How about sharing some uplifting examples of organizations taking advantage of left brain – right brain synergies? Some particularly egregious examples of squashing one side or the other?

AN ADVANCED DEGREE IS VALUABLE (Not surprising, since it seems most responders have at least one!), BUT….
“[E]xperience is worth the most in this market…. [U]nless you can get into a top B school … it really isn’t worth it. B school is all about the networking and Alumni network.”

FOR A BUSINESS / MARKETING CAREER, BREADTH of KNOWLEDGE TRUMPS DEPTH
“My MBA has broadened my career opportunities and earning potential. The rigor learned in my engineering training has definitely translated well to the business world.”
“With 2 technical degrees the technical advancement path may be enhanced, while the business community may not be convinced the person has business chops; with a BS and MBA, the business community will probably be more accepting.”
“The issue is really the difficulty in crossing the technical / business barrier [especially] in the large multinationals.”
“To understand the business best, start in a technical role, then shift to the business. It is very difficult to do the reverse.”
“Those who are technically trained can learn business management issues … Someone who has a business background cannot easily learn the chemstry/engineering/technology in a similar manner.”

WHATEVER THE DEGREE, ATTITUDE, APTITUDE and EXPERIENCE COUNT
“In all cases, creativity, attitude, team building, ethic and results amount for far more than advanced degree specifics.”
“I have both – MBA from Rutgers BS and MS in Physics. I would say that nothing can jumpstart your career, these are just tools.”
“With a technical undergrad degree, the advanced degree [MS, MBA] is ultimately less important than the would-be marketer’s curiosity, openness to new ideas and new approaches to business, and sensitivity to the motivations and intentions of key players in the marketplace.”

Some Linked-In Groups I’ve found especially useful: MARKETING INTELLIGENCE PROFESSIONALS, MARKET RESEARCH BULLETIN, and MANAGEMENT CONSULTING JOBS.

Here’s text of all the comments.

from MARKETING INTELLIGENCE PROFESSIONALS
In my limited experience I’d go for an MBA, but more than anything it seems experience is worth the most in this market. Because marketing is often not a direct revenue generator, it has the most to prove with often the least amount of resources. Hopefully your reader has weighed 2 years of experience and income vs. 2 years of school and expense.

My experience and intuition suggest that, with a technical undergrad degree, the advanced degree is ultimately less important than the would-be marketer’s curiosity, openness to new ideas and new approaches to business, and sensitivity to the motivations and intentions of key players in the marketplace.