Sales & Marketing------Strategies( THE COLA WAR)

Dear Friends,

 I guess we discussed enough about Sales and Marketing last time. You should be able to say by now that the photo opposite is wrong, if the intention behind posting it was only for Sales &Marketing! Nah, I just got carried over as these guys really look cute in those superhero costumes.

The Error in the Picture
              The thing that is wrong with the photograph is that a couple of more of Marketing's sub-ordinates are not here. And one among them whom you just can't ignore, leaving sales aside,as he is really really indispensable. Monsieur "Strategy" is the one I refer to. 
In our profession,ladies and gentleman, costing is okay but she is no ogre. What is important is how and with what strategy, the approach is made. This is much more important  than the price in Selling of High-Value Equipment.

     In certain  Sales blogs,you often come across Lao's "The Art of War"but as I have said before, I prefer to read Clausewitz's book "On War"which reflects on history's famous wars to underscore the points in his book. Great rivalries today see the market leader take themselves up as the competition. The best defense is not to lack the courage to attack yourself says Clausewitz. If Coke had launched an own variant with a 'youth' target, Pepsi would have had no niche to operate.

[Karl Von Clausewitz was a 
General in the Prussian Army who wrote the  book in 1852 after retirement].

Clausewitz tells us at length about how the strengths of the enemy can often be converted to weaknesses.One of the best examples of this (says Ries and Trout)is how Pepsi Cola of New York socked one to Atlanta's Coca-Cola. In 1915,Coke was sold at a price of 10c for an unique capacity of its bottle which was 6 1/2 oz. Coke had no real competitors, which led to complacence.

MARKETING WITH SALES AND THE REST OF THE GANG

HOUSE OF CARDS

Hi Friends,

So-how are you and how's life been treating lately..Me? Its been a lousy few days.

As you must be knowing by now about my addiction with the net,I was on a high the other day when I saw a blog post. My eyes stuck to the title which said " Now shove this paper on sales face-Marketing". not those exact words, but I'm sure you get the drift. 

I stared at it open-mouthed in surprise and tried to know more about the author. But no information was available except for his name. Then it struck me that holy shit! this guy does not know the difference between sales and marketing as yet. Just think of a hypothetical situation where you are walking along with a werewolf expert in a deserted countryside. Suddenly a werewolf sees you both and gives chase, and your friend asks you " Who's that guy?" ..Eeeps!!! And you were counting on this dude to protect you!!! 
So, this post is gonna be about Marketing and Sales-the much misunderstood dynamic duo-so that the werewolf doesn't get you............

      The entire act of fulfilling a need of a section or few people by allowing them to purchase whatever it is they want is called marketing. Marketing is not one thing-it is a process where different activities come together and start from checking the need an entity has, devise way to fulfill that need, and sell it to the person who is wiling to pay the highest amount of revenue. We have our needs implanted biologically and later psychologically inside us since we are born. In the womb, all its needs were catered to automatically but after birth, the baby say feels odd and therefore bawls. It wants milk which he got every time he wanted it. So it now bawls and presto it gets it. This is the process of breast-milk marketing.  In subsequent posts, we are going to visit a man named Maslow, who will a important cog in this learning process.

We will learn about the need, how to fulfill it, how to position it, the importance of advertising, where to target it,how to give it, how to fix the costing etc. Look at the illustration above guys,  the cards here are the different functions, the card house is marketing. Some of the cards are more important like the one at the bottom-those are card (sale); card (need); card (costing). The cards above are slightly less important maybe. It all depends upon the application.

Rahul Bajaj and Bajaj Auto Ltd.

REST IN PEACE.

Rest in Peace, Friend

The Demise of the Cold Call  

(From Hi-Value Capital Equipment Selling)

    

               In life, everything changes. From processes to organisms, there is nothing  absolute.  It is a fortunate fact that most of these changes take place very slowly, as otherwise, we would not have had our laws of academic fields (collectively called philosophy, here after) by which we try to understand, the things which happen all around us.        

               Some wits are of the opinion that science breeds ignorance. Their logic is that for every question science answers, two questions prop up. Therefore, science can never answer all questions because at any one time the number of questions is bound to be double or exponentially more then the number of answers. The thinking is I admit, original but the conclusions are in error. I ‘ll dispute this statement with a single sentence which is “do automobile designers start their design from the wheel?” No indeed! They do not.   
          

                  

           Similarly, capital equipment selling has also changed, in the sense that “cold calling” has become old and died. Let me define it still further, the cold call hasoutlived its usefulness just as the steam engine had given way to more modern locomotives. Cold calling was indispensable at one point of time for all selling, like the steam powered train. But in high value machinery and capital equipment selling, we do not design cars from the wheel.    However in volumetric selling, it’s still very much there-sales of hardware, valves, electrodes, machine oil mainly consumables etc. all depend upon cold calling.

                What is a high value sale? I’ll define it Anything from twenty grand and up. Earlier we did not have access to all that is happening in the world instantly. Hence, there were good chances that unless you shared the same watering hole with your competitors, you wouldn’t know who required your product. As competition grew more and more intense, watering holes became redundant and cold calling started. You dropped on potential customers and got introduced, got leads, got inquiries too if you were lucky. This is cold calling.

       

                But today with the modern technology you have at their disposal, that same information can be obtained from the internet in more details. Now let us  suppose you are an entrepreneur and you are purchasing filtration machines, of whatever type suits your purpose best, which is to filter and recover the mined coal particles and recover them. Say a  salesperson from a company comes along and makes a request to meet you. You meet him and he says they make filtration machines and he thought he would enquire if they have any requirement. You have plenty of things to do then to recite your requirement (you had met the man for the solution) so you direct him to an engineer, who tells him what he wants to know.  Say, if the proposal develops then  the person will want to meet you, but will you want to meet him?