Look Who’s Talking – Markets are Conversations

Markets are Conversations. First said by the authors of “The Cluetrain Manifesto” in 1999, this is really a truth that goes back to the barter marketplaces of old, to the trading pits of the CBOE, to today’s electronic marketplaces. But if markets are truly conversations, who’s doing the talking, and what are they all talking about?

Markets exists to facilitate the exchange of value between buyers and sellers. Value is measured in the amount of currency, whether traditional fiat currencies or new-fangled electronic ones, that the buyer is willing to exchange for the goods or services that they buyer is offering. So, it’s pretty clear that buyers and sellers are doing at least some of the talking, and they must be talking about value, whether that is in the form of price, features and benefits, or other tangible and intangible things that can be exchanged.

If that were the end of our story, it would be a relatively short one, though still complex and multi-layer. The problem is, like kids at the dinner table, there are quite a few others who want to butt-in and have their say too. I call them “Interlopers”. Interlopers may be distributors or resellers who come between buyers and sellers mostly in the role of facilitation, ie market makers, or they may be be advisors and consultants and others, who we can call as a group market helpers, and a whole slew of others like reviewers and even celebrities, who economist would generically call “agents”. This wide variety of interlopers are not shy, most of them love to talk, and talk a lot, to both buyers and sellers.

So now, when we add in a 3 participant, our conversations look something like this:

But what do interlopers talk about with buyers? Primarily, they talk about recommendations. For example, they might recommend a seller, a product, a price range, a set of competitors to consider. And as many of these recommendations carry a lot of weight in buyer’s decisions, this is CLEARLY a very important part of the Market Conversations that happen.

Buyers then, realize the importance of interlopers and love to talk to them also. Because their to get a recommendation, they must stand out to the Interlopers. So, when these two get together, they talk about STATUS. So our simple model of the Market Conversation now looks like this:

 

But there still a bit more to add.   Because each of these three groups also talk to each other. When buyers talk to each other they talk about EXPERIENCE. When sellers talk to each other they talk about market SIGNALS and when interlopers talk to each other, they talk about a mish mash of market GOSSIP.

Now our Conversation Market Model looks like this, three participants; buyers, sellers and interlopers, three primary topics of conversation: Value, status and recommendation, and three side topics, EXPERIENCE, SIGNALS and GOSSIP

Think about the market you play in. How would you describe the buyers, the sellers and the interlopers. Simply by understanding what topic you are talking about when, you can accelerate your go to market success. BUT by gaining a deeper understanding of the dynamic and noisy nature of these conversations, with the cacophony of voices, topics and objectives, you can harness the power of conversation to better shape, influence and gain from the markets you are part of, regardless of whether you are a buyer, a seller or an influencer.

Nimsoft – Unified Monitoring, From the Data Center to the Cloud

Nimsoft - Unified Monitoring, from the Data Center to the Cloud

Client Success Story
broadcom.com

Challenge:

Ken engaged with Nimsoft from 2009 to 2011 in a variety of projects. The initial project was a rapid assessment of Nimsoft’s position in the marketplace. Out of that, Ken identified a need to reposition the company in order to break out from a flat revenue scenario.

Project:

Working with the Founder / CEO, the EVP of Sales, and the team, Ken built out the Unified Monitoring messaging platform, with the tagline – “From the Data Center to the Cloud.” In addition, the project led to the launch of Nimsoft’s first SaaS based solution, Nimsoft On Demand.

Results:

Nimsoft’s business went from flat to 50%+ growth in the first year after repositioning. In March of 2010, Nimsoft was acquired by CA for $350M, an over 10x multiple of trailing sales, and an outstanding return on less than $20M of invested capital.

 

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What Problem Do You Solve? – Why Can’t We Answer this Simple Question?

When I do workshops with clients to build their compelling go to market story, we always start the pre-session survey with what seems like a simple question : “What are the 1 or 2 big picture problems you help customers solve?”

But it ends up really smart teams, whether product teams, technical founders, marketers and even sales execs are really bad at answering this question. In fact, across dozens of engagements and hundreds of answers, I’d give my clients a collective grade of about C-!  And that’s mostly because they simply don’t answer the question.  So before we think about why they do so poorly, let’s take a look at the typical (poor or wrong) answers that we get, and there are three…

#1 – They confuse what they do with why they do it.   Answers like – “We deliver a network based solution that protects this or that with this or that feature.”  Or  “We give them a xyz with perfect precision”, as if an optician’s answer would be “we give them glasses with the correct prescription”

#2 – They aim too high or too low – They can’t find that sweet spot between not-credible and not-meaningful.  Either they say, “We solve world hunger” or “We sweep crumbs off the table”.  With one you won’t be believed, with the other no one will care

#3 – They simply don’t know – Answers like a list of features, or a jargon filled ramble or a technical dissertation.  While less common, this is often the case.

I think 2 things are going on here.  First, they simply lack a structure that helps them formulate the problem statement.  Here’s what I use.  For WHO, who needs to SOLVE/DO WHAT.

And second and more telling, especially at start-ups, they simply are obsessed with their product.  They know the features and benefits, and they know the how, but they don’t spend enough time thinking about the why.

Recently, I partnered with Unusual Ventures as an instructor at their start-up Academy, which is now taking applications.  Jyoti Bansal, the founder of App Dynamics and Unusual was quoted last month in Entrepreneur Magazine as saying,

“A lot of people have good ideas — but it’s often those with the best stories who are able to set themselves apart. Turning your idea into a story — one that identifies the need, why it’s imminently important to solve it, why you have the winning solution and why you’re the person to bet on, is key to setting your company up for success.”

But before you can tell your story, the first step is to identify and state the problem you solve. Once you do that, a whole world of possibility opens up to you and your solution.

My problem statement is simple, “I help B2B companies who need to dramatically improve sales and marketing breakthrough and effectiveness in order to capture and grow market leadership.”  That’s it. I’d love to help you to find yours, and then spin your story around it.  To be a market leader, they first thing you need to do is get an A+ in defining the problem you solve for your customer.  C- just won’t cut it.

B2B Revenue Acceleration Podcast Live

A great conversation with Operatix CEO and Co-Founder Aurelien Mottier talking about Storytelling and Persuasion  Global markets are shaped and won through conversation.  Marketers, salesfolk,  buyers and leaders need to accel at and understand small talk, persuasion and storytelling to become masterful. TheConversationEconomy  Click here or on button below to listen!

Weblife.IO Makes a Quick Turn on Employee Access, GDPR and Web Isolation

Weblife.IO Makes A Quick Turn On Employee Access, GDPR And Web Isolation

Client Success Story
proofpoint.com

Challenge:

Early on the team at Weblife.IO knew they were on to something.  But in a crowded space of “Web Isolation” with mixed results, the challenge was telling a story that both stood out and captured the excitement in the early customers they had acquired. And with GDPR looming, the time was ripe now.

Project:

Ken worked with the founding product and executive team to build the story for Weblife.IO. Turning around a story in just a few weeks, the project focused in on not just security and threat protection, but on both empowering employees while reducing the organization’s attack surface and risk. Targeting companies who were forward thinking on employee access and privacy allowed Weblife to tell a story that was both differentiated and valuable.

Results:

Weblife’s revenue and success continued to accelerate.  So much so that they were acquired by Proofpoint just 2 years after seed funding, and just 6 months after the project.  Crunchbase reports the acquisition to have been $60M on $6.5M of capital invested. Not bad!

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Make Your B2B Messaging an 8 Layer Cake!

I recently read an article in the Harvard Business Review called “The B2B Elements of Value” by Almquist, Cleghorn and Sherer, 3 Bain and Company consultants from San Francisco.  It’s a long somewhat complex article with one big take away for me, B2B buyers are people too, and they need to see PERSONAL value to their purchases.   That might seem obvious, but all too often I think it’s forgotten.  When I do value based messaging work with clients, I always push them to include one more emotional and personal statement in their key value messages, but this is often a tough sell.


The 4 Business Layers

I’ve been writing and talking lot about the 4 layers of Breakthrough Messaging, what I call Mythos to Method. In general, this framework applies to the business story and benefits, not the personal ones.  Here’s a quick overview complete with reference links for more on each layer.

 

TO LEAD YOUR MARKET, you need 4 “layers” to your message – they start at Method (How) move to Money (Business Value/What) and then to Magic (Transformative Story/Why) then to Mythos (Shared Aspiration).

My new LinkedIn Learning Course covers Method and Money.  This is the HOW your product works, and the BUSINESS VALUE delivered, the foundational and motivational layers of your business message.  You can watch the 1 hr course here –  you’ll need to be a subscriber or get a 30 day free trial on Lynda or LinkedIn Learning

My in-person workshops cover Magic and Mythos.  This helps you build your customer’s Hero’s Journey, or how your product magically transforms the business outcomes of your customer. This is the WHY CARE and the shared PURPOSE, the transformational and aspriational layers of your business message.  You can see a “lightening” version of this in my Silicon Valley Product Camp 2018 presentation on YouTube here.

My book, Launching to Leading, covers all four layers of framework, you can buy it here on Amazon or anywhere books are sold.


Making It Personal – Another 4 Layers to Add

But, what about the other 4 layers, the personal.  It ends up, these layers are just the buyer’s personal version of the other 4.  Instead of asking “what’s in it for the business”, we shift our perspective to “what’s in in PERSONALLY for the buyer” at each of these levels.  What’s the foundational value of our product?  The How.  For example, the new agentless endpoint let’s you do updates instantaneously without bothering users.  What’s the Motivational Value to the buyer – You are PERSONALLY done with the update in minutes versus weeks, and there are NO mistakes due to out of date agents, the MONEY.   What’s the Transformational value, the magic, you are now invisible to users and highly efficient in the eyes of your boss. And the Aspirational destination, a place with protection without disruption, created by YOU.

The Bain study found up to a 6x improvement on NPS score and a 60% improvement on likelihood to repurchase on customers of vendors who communicate both business and persoanl value in their messaging.  So, while 8 layers of message may seem like a lot, it can really make a beautiful cake.

Ken

 

Blog Classic – Positioning from Strength (or, Maximizing your Valuation!)

(NOTE: I was chatting about valuation and messaging with my great friend Susan Thomas and was reminded of this blog I  wrote back in 2008 about my very first consulting client Nimsoft.  With Cybersecurity, Cloud and other  valuations skyrocketing, it’s a really important topic, if you want to get picked up for a big multiple – Ken)

Friday, April 16, 2010

Positioning from Strength

Often I observe that when business is good, positioning gets stale. However, no one cares. As one of my good CFO friends once told me “Top line growth covers a lot of rocks”. I think this is a shame, and a real missed opportunity. Positioning from Strength is a HIGHLY leveragable activity, one that has the potential to accelerate both business and valuation.

Take my client Nimsoft, recently acquired by CA for $350M on a very healthy multiple. When I arrived to work with the CEO, Gary Read and his exec team, business was going great. Nimsoft had (and still has) a tremendous product, great sales momentum and was an execution machine. However, to Gary’s credit, he was open and receptive to a discussion of positioning, vision and go forward marketing strategy, in a way that was highly unusual for a business going so well.

I think Gary saw that Nimsoft was sitting at the apex of an opportunity to reposition from strength, and to use that strength to build a platform and vision that was forward looking and unique. That’s exactly what we did when we launched and implemented the Nimsoft Unified Monitoring strategy, architecture, alliance and .com portal.

The results, well they speak for themselves, great going forward positioning, coupled with continued amazing execution led to continued growth and the CA transaction. But we are not done yet, and this week took the next step with the launch of Nimsoft On Demand, a SaaS delivery of Nimsoft Unified Monitoring. Look for more great things to come from the Nimsoft business now that it is part of CA, this is only the beginning.

So, I think this shows very strongly the value of positioning from strength. CEOs and BODs, don’t wait for the crisis, IF YOUR BUSINESS IS GOING GREAT, and you haven’t examined your GTM positioning and messaging within the last 12-18 months, there’s never been a better time than right now…(Need help, well, I know someone who’s pretty good at this :))…

Frankenstein or Benevolent Helper – Sorting Out the Future of AI and Marketing – Panel

The Go To Market Dojo was HOPPING as standing room crowd of about 60 NIs (Natural Intelligence-s) gathered over pizza, beer and networking to discuss the future if AI and Marketing Careers.  Panelists Atri Chatterjee , Mehul Shah and Frederic Mathieu brought three very different perspectives to the conversation.

Atri lamented that he’d be well retired before AI obsoleted marketers, while Frederic thought this is so far off that it’s not a worry.  Mehul added the framework, borrowed from Autonomous driving, of 4 levels of AI (five if you include none), from cruise control to fully autonomous driving, or in the marketing case, from analytical insight into your data to fully autonomous management and optimization of the entire customer journey.  Frederic viewed AI as the “helper” not the owner, able to solve for all the hard work and automate pain away!  All the panelist agree that we are a LONG way from level 4.  The audience, including me, felt a palpable sense of relief and job security :).

An interesting discussion started around how data was really the fuel of AI, and that the first task for marketers was to get their data understood, organized and managed.  Big topic onto itself and we barely scratched the surface.   But there was a broad consensus that marketers need to have high levels of Data Literacy to stay and remain relevant.  Learning the basics of AI and Data Literacy are a key knowledge foundation for marketers of the future.  The panelist encouraged us all to get smart on these topics and mentioned many online courses on Udemy, Coursera, the Intel AI Academy as sources for this content.

The second key skill identified by the panel was story-telling.  It’s one thing to see the data, it’s another to tell a compelling story with it.

Will marketer’s become obsolete?  No was the overall consensus.  Intuition, forming the right hypothesis and leveraging AI strategically are best done today, and for the foreseeable future by people and leaders, not AIs.  So, it also became clear that creativity is a third skill marketers need to build.

After some great Q and A, the panel wrapped with this question; What’s the #1 thing you’d recommend that marketers do to be ready and take advantage of AI.  With apologies to the panel, here’s my paraphrases answers –

– Mehul :  Understand and get control of your data

– Frederic: Remember WHY you are doing marketing, if it’s to delight customer’s your job will get better and more interesting but if it’s to do analysis and be a spreadsheet jockey, well might be time to rethink that

– Atri: Training, Training, Training.  Lead your team by giving them the opportunity to get and stay smart on Data, AI and other emerging tech and trends.

This just scratched the surface of our panel discussion, and we all left more informed, a bit relieved and ready to hop onto our Data Literacy online courses…which is where I’ll be heading next!  – Hope to see you all at our RSA Pre-Fresher in San Francisco – Ken

Mythos, Magic, Money and Method – Layering Your #B2B Messaging

Here’s a simple way to think about layering your messaging from brand to product.  Think of messaging in 4 layers, brand, story product and differentiation and answering 4 WHYs;

  • Why WE exist
  • Why YOU should care
  • Why YOU should buy
  • Why WE are different than the competition

So, what are the answers to these questions?

Why we exist is the world of brand and MYTHOS.   Our mission, vision, the mark we want to make on the world.

Why you should care is the world of MAGIC.  Make your solution the magic in your Customer’s Hero’s Journey.  Who doesn’t want a little magic.

Why you should buy is the world of MONEY.  What’s the business value of your solution…

Why we are different is our METHOD or our HOW.  It’s our unique capabilities and features.

Sounds easy?  Not really.   But I started my practice to change the way marketers communicated with their markets after realizing that our old approaches were broken (MYTHOS)  And get them focused on story and context to help them transform their brands to market leaders (MAGIC) and get a 6x improvement in Leads to Revenue in 6 months (MONEY)  And my METHOD is what I call the Viewpoint Story wheel, my Value Messaging Framework and the like (METHOD).

So, to breakthrough and win, remember you need MYTHOS, MAGIC, MONEY and METHOD to tell a compelling story in the market.