By SCSC Member, Jeff Ballard, CEO Satellite Marketing

With all of the positive signs lately, it looks like the market is going to rebound this year. Are you going to be a part of it? Are you doing the things now to ensure your company will still be in the consideration mix with your prospects? Or are you still waiting to see if the rebound is real? The market leaders are taking appropriate action so as not to not lose any ground and will probably be among the first to gain from the economic rebound. Are you going to keep up?

With all of the economic uncertainty and downturn in technology purchases, many tech companies have spent the last year downsizing, restructuring and just waiting to see what happens. But as we face the prospects of a better new year, it's time to get back to marketing. As we put 2001 behind us and prepare for the coming year I am reminded of an old southern expression that is appropriate for every marketer -"If you can't run with the big dogs, then stay on the porch with the puppies."

You can no longer sit on the sidelines and wait to see what is going to happen, or if the rebound is real, or what the competition is doing. You have to get in the game. And the sooner you do it the better chances you have of beating your competition.

If your first response is "we don't have the budget to keep up with the big boys" then you need to step back and take a look at your entire marketing effort. Not just the ads, press releases, trade shows, Web sites and e-mails. But, take a look how you engage with prospects when they call in to inquire about your product or service. How you represent yourself in the channel. How you treat customers when they are a looking for help. Marketing, in its truest sense, is the end-to-end process of identifying, recruiting and retaining customers.

To make sure you have covered every aspect of the marketing process, follow the Customer Development Cycleä and evaluate your efforts at each stage. The Customer Development Cycle outlines the six stages of a target audience moving from prospect to becoming a supported, satisfied customer, including identify, reach, persuade, sell, fulfill, and support. Understanding these stages and doing the right things in each will help to ensure that you can maintain a market presence right along side the big dogs.

Many of my previous columns talked about how an Engineered Marketingä methodology addresses the four phases of the marketing process - developing the strategy, building your plan, implementing the plan and monitoring the results. But for systems and methodologies to work optimally, there needs to be a foundation upon which to use it. Understanding the Customer Development Cycle can provide this foundation.

CUSTOMER DEVELOPMENT CYCLE
The very first thing to understand is that 'marketing' is not limited to the 'marketing department'. Your entire company has to be involved in a focused, unified effort to present the company in the right light and serve your customers' needs, ultimately fulfilling your promise to provide the customer with a business solution. It starts long before you ever make contact with a target audience and continues long after the customer has purchased the product. In fact, it will continue for as long as the customer is using any of your products.

Identify
The first step in this cycle is to explicitly understand the key aspects of your business. These include who will most benefit from your product or service, who are your competitors, and why are you uniquely qualified to deliver this solution. You might have some ideas on these things already, but do you know it better than your competitors do? Are you being honest with what you can deliver? Do you really know what your customers want? Is your view of the competition shared by your prospects? How do you know what you know is accurate, valid and detailed enough? In short, how can you be sure? The answer is easy - research. The action can be the hard part as it takes time. You have to be diligent in getting market intelligence.

As you dig in, though, make sure to get as detailed as possible. Learn everything about those you need to know about. For targeted prospects, get a good idea of who he is, what he is responsible for, what his business day looks like, what products he is using, etc. For competitors, understand the experience of the management team. Read the press releases for clues about where they are taking their business.

How ever you go about it, learn everything about your market - and yourself - better than your competitors and customers do. You will need to know the strengths and weakness of all of your prospects' options in order to keep up with the big boys. And you will need to have all of this before you can effectively move on to the next stage.

Reach
This is where the usual thoughts of marketing begin. It is also where all the questions usually get posed. Does advertising work? Are trade shows worthwhile? Is direct mail or e-mail better? Quite often these questions are answered with personal biases. Whether from internal personnel or external vendors, there are many points and counterpoints to what works and what doesn't. Who do you listen to? Simple. Your target audience.

Only once you clearly understand who your customer is can you figure out how to really reach him or her. You need to understand who are the influencers - both internal and external - that impact the decision making process for your target audience. Press, analysts, supervisors, technology experts and enthusiasts can all be in the mix. You will have to dig around and find out who holds the keys to your target buyer.

Aside from influencers, where does your intended audience get his news relative to your product? Does he regularly read particular trade publication? Does he visit or subscribe to an industry Web site? Does he attend trade shows or seminars? Does he read the materials in the store? Where ever it is your prospect gets his news, you need to have a consistent presence.

What about other channels of information? Do they listen to morning radio on their commute in to work? Do they read the local paper or USA Today? Do they listen to educational tapes or CDs in their car or on the train? Do they watch training videos? If you can get your message heard in some alternate channels, it may get through better.

With so many ways to get information, you need to find out which channels of communication will actually get through to your prospect. Don't stick with the tried and true just because it is what you have always done. Take a look at everything - magazines, newspapers, Web, radio, television, billboards. If you truly want to keep up with the big dogs, you will have to find creative ways to ensure your messages get through to - and reach - your intended buyer.

Persuade
You have clearly identified everything about your prospect in the first stage. You figured out how to reach him in the second stage. Now what do you say to him to get him to take appropriate action - call, visit your Web site, visit your reseller partner, etc.

Since you have done your homework you are ready to start crafting messages that will cut through the deluge of messages your prospect hears in a day and get him to take the desired action. For your message to be most effective, use customer-oriented messages. What that means is talk in terms of your prospects' needs and interests, rather than yours. Your prospect is not looking to buy the speed you tout, he is looking to get a job done faster. She isn't looking for the processing power of your solution, she is looking to get more done. The best thing to keep in mind as you create your messages is that the technologists in your company love your product because that is their job. Your customer, though, is interested in the results your product can deliver, because that is his job.

While you set about crafting messages that address your target audience, make sure to be careful about using technical jargon and other terminology outside of your target audiences' experience. You want to communicate using language familiar to your prospect - and to the various influencers involved in the process. In fact, if you can use their terminology to position your product, you will go a long way to ensuring your success with them.

In addition to the messaging, take a look at your other tools of persuasion. Are your demonstrations and evaluations crafted to your prospects needs? And what about your packaging is it helping the sales process? Each of these elements, crafted correctly can assist in the purchasing process.

With your persuasion tools set, you are now ready to evaluate the next stage of the Customer Development Cycle - selling.

Sell
With the successful execution of the previous stage, you will now have prospects coming to you, thus beginning the selling cycle. This is the part of the process where marketing organizations typically stop, like there is some imaginary line that they cannot cross. With the intelligence gathered in this process, so far, though, it is imperative that there are no boundaries - real or imagined - between organizations. As I mentioned before, marketing is not restricted to the marketing department and this is a prime example of why that is so.

You need to leverage the knowledge you have gained about your prospect and competitors to create a competitive advantage for your sales efforts. This means making sure that you are selling through the sales channels preferred by, and that meet the needs and concerns of your customers. Does your prospect normally buy through a reseller or direct? Do they buy products like yours online or via a local sales rep? You need to provide all convenient and appropriate outlets for your prospect to buy your product. The only way to make sure that you are addressing the customers' needs is to apply the research that you learned in stage one.

You will also need to know their business models so that you can offer the appropriate terms for the transaction. Do your prospects purchase via credit card? P.O.? Check? These payment terms may not seem like much to you, but to your customer, they are an important part of the interactions with your company. They want to know that you understand and support their business.

Fulfill
Marketing doesn't stop once a prospect becomes a customer. In fact it is just the first step of a new relationship. What you deliver, how you deliver it, and how you support this customer are the first impressions you make in a newly created on-going relationship with your customer.

The key things to make sure of are that you are delivering the product in the most customer-friendly manner possible. If you are shipping a product, for example, take the lead of Amazon.com, Dell and a host of other companies that allow customers to track their shipments from the manufacturing floor all the way to their door.

Look beyond your delivery channel, though. How you are packaging your product? The hot trend right now is to skimp as much as possible on the box, manuals and any other documentation to save a few bucks. The thing to be leery of is cutting this vital support documentation too thin and alienating your customer. Make sure that online documentation works for your customer, rather than just cutting it because "no one ever reads the manual". Find out from your customer what support materials they need and make sure to deliver it to them.

Support
If you do everything right, this is where most of your relationship with a particular customer will be spent. And managed correctly, it will become an on-going relationship where you will be able to generate additional revenue through this customer. The key is to make sure that the full scope of your company's knowledge base is conveniently available to your customer. There has been a lot of progress in the last few years in this area. BBS's have given way to Web sites, which have spawned knowledge management tools like Customer Relationship Management solutions, Help Desk software, etc. And with the Internet, this knowledge base can be accessible 24/7, supporting the customer whenever, and wherever she may be.

But beyond these databases, is there an untapped knowledge set that could be of use to your customers? There probably is. Who, within your company, is an expert in your market? What are they doing to share their knowledge with your customers? Recently we worked with a security software vendor to help them launch a new product. Part of that effort was to leverage the tremendous experience and knowledge that sat inside the company to help the customers understand the issues and concerns as they looked to shore up the security of their own enterprise. White papers, newsletters, seminars, Webinars and special support websites are great ways of going above and beyond the basic client technical support. And demonstrating your expertise can go along way to positioning your company right along side the big dogs in the market.

A MESSAGE FROM THE TOP BIG DOG
So what are the big dogs doing? Well, Warren Buffet (can't get much bigger than that) head of Berkshire Hathaway, sent a memo to his managers last fall telling them to stay the course - even in light of the September 11th tragedy and worsening market conditions. More than stay the course, he told them, "Widen the moat, build enduring competitive advantage, delight your customers, and relentlessly fight costs." Sounds like some darn good big dog advice.

Written by Jeff Ballard, President, Satellite Marketing
ãSatellite Marketing, January 2002.

Free Engineered Marketing Offer!
To make sure that you have the marketing development resources to build an effective end-to-end program, we have been providing SCSC members with a series of Engineered Marketing tools. As part of this on-going effort, we are offering a FREE Customer Development Cycle Guide to use as you analyze your own marketing initiatives. This guide illustrates the issues in each stage, as well as outlines some potential activities for each stage. To get your Customer Development Cycle Guide simply e-mail me at jb@satellitemarketing.com.

If you have any questions about the Customer Development Cycle, or about building and implementing an Engineered Marketing process for your organization, feel free to contact me via phone at 949/833-3503, ext 12, or via e-mail at jb@satellitemarketing.com.