Archive for the ‘Implications of C'Level Engagements’ Category

The Emperor’s clothes – Selling through Social Media – Why should you care?

There is a dichotomy occurring in sales where our customers are driving commoditization of our products and services and vendors trying to position themselves as unique.

Understanding this and leveraging the right Social Media tactics is truly a case of the Emperor’s clothes as customers have changed from 5yrs ago and we can’t employ the same tactics.

Customers do this through trying to decrease differentiation, introduction of new technologies, introducing competition, and being more demanding. The traditional approach to attack this by suppliers is to define new products/services, encompass value added services to the product/service, attempt to bundle offerings, and provisioning of customized options.

The arguments I have heard from many sales organizations are:

• Customers are getting tougher to deal with
• Treat you more like a commodity
• But they also demand more expertise and support than ever before
• They are using new purchasing techniques to force greater concessions from their suppliers Read the rest of this entry »