Value Proposition


	Basic Premises There are a huge number of big market issues that most high tech firms are facing in 2001 including: Market space competitive pressures Globalization Downward Pricing Pressures Narrowing Product Life Cycles Short Windows of Opportunity It is getting harder and harder to reach, and retain customers who have: Rising Quality & Customer SAT Expectations Desire for ‘One Stop Shopping’ Limited Loyalty to Vendors There are also signficant pressure on margins and SG&A that aren't helped by (until very recently a tight labor market with lack of available skill sets. And finally, many firms are understanding the concept of ‘whole products’ and ‘value chains’ and are using them as competitive weapons in their product and marketing activities. Management Issues and Dilemmas Being Raised Sales Management everywhere are asking many of the following types of questions: Where and how to automate the sales process? How to reduce and/or manage more effectively the cost of sales? How to balance investment in new customer acquisition vs retention? How to more tightly couple sales with overall market intelligence gathering processes, customer service and satisfaction? How to view costs of sales activities as an integral part of the ‘whole product’? How to effectively segment markets to retain competitive advantage? How to turn market intelligence into effective business logic How to apply JIT/ERP models to the sales process? How to transform a product/technology centered organizational model to a customer/distribution driven one? At the organizational level there are an even more important set of strategic questions that need to be answered and reanswered periodically. Where have we been successful and why? Where have we been unsuccessful and why? What strategic assumptions are we making about our business? How should we now position ourselves in the marketplace and re-shape the competitive jungle? What are our critical core competencies and the source of our competitive advantage? What new strengths do we need to develop? Where should we be focusing our efforts? (short and long term) What critical actions do we need to take? Answering these questions effectively resulting in a number of serious tactical dilemmas including: Measuring the value of market and customer intelligence systems and processes Identifying the appropriateness and balance of strategic sales models Market segmentation vs product/packaging vs delivery method Sorting out a number of sales management execution challenges such as: Territory management and productivity Lead management and qualification processes Automation processes definition and Implementation Issues/actions tracking & management Performance management and hiring practices Compensation strategy implementation There are also a number of organization impacts that need to be taken into consideration. For example: sales effectiveness and strategy should be a Board level issue. Management needs to clearly understand that strategic management of customer acquisition and retention makes significant contribution to the bottom line. Finally, management needs to understand that the ability to efficiently convert raw market intelligence into effective business logic creates significant competitive advantage. The Sales and Marketing Problem Traditional sales and marketing models often are bifurcated, which means that they are usually independently developed and run in parallel with little or no effective interorganizational linkages. In most organizations, the sales and marketing management processes don’t acknowledge the interdependency between the two organizations. Sales organizations tends to be reactive to their markets rather than proactive with much duplication of effort. Often the territory management process is isolated from distribution channel management. Most sales architectures tend to focus only on incremental revenue gain not retention.Sales gets fixed through the use of superficial sales productivity improvements by increasing quotas per rep, increasing territory scope or reducing compensation.Most marketing models in high tech tend to be product not solution focused (at least in the early days. This does seem to change as firms get bigger and engage in better market segmentation strategies). Most marketing organizations have a terrible time measure their own efficiency and effectiveness
	The Solution - Executing a Sales Value Chain Just like other value chains, even in sales and marketing the way in which one activity is performed affects the costs and/or effectiveness of other activities. High tech firms can enhance their revenue performance and improve sales and marketing productivity exponentially by focusing on three key elements of the sales value chain. Globalinkage has had good success in helping high tech firms think through the missing elements of their sales value chain. Sales ValueChain Components Sales ValueChain - Product Delivery Elements By integrating product, channel and segment models firms can create higher customer satisfaction, reduce channel conflict and facilitate more effective target marketing Sales ValueChain - Cross Functional Interplay Elements By implementing customer centric value chains firms can remove walls between organizations, improve efficiency of product delivery chain, support uniform business rules (e.g. discounts, teaming), foster team communication, integrate market intelligence into core business logic and ensure consistency to customer Sales ValueChain - Operations Infrastructure Elements By treating sales and marketing as an operational whole provides significant opportunity for productivity improvement. Lead management is more directly tied to market intelligence and territory management. Compensation, hiring and training practices become aligned to territory and markets served. Channel and customer management become aligned to customer and partner need. Sales force automation becomes integrated with the needs of the ‘whole’ customer facing operation. Globalinkage projects have spanned the entire range of Sales ValueChain components including infrastructure assessments, sales tool kit design and creation, sales value proposition definition, and 'Return on Investment' analysis amongst other areas. For more detail see the Track Record Section.