A few weeks back I had written a post on entering the US market. It was very gratifying to see the response from so many of you on that post. So following the lead of that article, here is another one. In this post I talk about some of the basic things Indian companies can do to improve their probability of success in the US. If these come across as simplistic, its because they are not hard to...
In this blog post, we discuss ways and means to reach out to prospective clients, position the product, license and price it. However, the question that founders must ask and answer convincingly to themselves is the one posed above. When doing this, they must think like a buyer and question every assumption about the product’s value. There are actually three parts to the question: Who is that...
Arrogance is a flaw, and for a marketer or salesperson, this assumes greater significance. Unfortunately, marketers tend to fall prey to the glamour of signing on a big name client, while giving the cold shoulder to a category that shows, in my opinion, greater promise of developing a long-term relationship. Yes, SMEs and start-ups might not have the budget or the inclination to provide you with...
As many of you know, Avinash Raghava is a persuasive individual. So when he approached me first to write for Product Nation, after some hemming and hawing, I agreed. On a recent call, he told me that nice though my writings have been so far, he was hoping I could help our readers with specific issues related to entering the US market. He is absolutely right and I will start looking to him for...
The last three business books I read were seemingly all different. “Wired to Care” by Dev Patnaik, “Nanovation” by Kevin and Jackie Freiberg and “Customer Centric Selling” by Michael Bosworth. The first was how humans are genetically designed to care for others, the second was the story behind how the Tata Nano was launched and the third was a book on more effective selling. But there was a...
“Not meeting desired sales target?” is perhaps the most important question in any of senior management meetings. But how do most companies react? Answer: “Re”setting the targets,“Re”structuring marketing campaigns and finally “Re”placing sales team (starting from executives ending up replacing sales director) and what will happen by doing several “Re’s” together…absolutely nothing. On the...
#PNMeetup on Selling your product Gangnam Style was the topic at the recently concluded Meetup(Podcast link). We had over 45-50 people across products and the services who came out to gain an insight into the Enigma of Gangnam Style Sales, with their eyes wide open and all ears the speakers Mr. Sanjay Agarwala MD of Eastern Software, Ketan Kapoor Co-Founder and CEO of Mettl and Vishal Jain Chief...
Get this right and you have taken the first step towards success in your software product venture, whether on the web or on-premise. As a corollary, if this is not clear, then no matter how sophisticated your product is, it will always be a struggle. As many entrepreneurs are aware, the success of a product depends on the product itself, the pricing, the promotion and the physical distribution as...
The buyer had told you that they were in the market for exactly what you were selling, and the timing couldn’t be better. The pricing was right and your solution met all the buyer’s needs but lo and behold the sale did not happen. Has this ever happened to you? If you are like me and many others, you have been in this situation before. Why does this happen? I had thought long and hard about it...
Buying vs usage: I read a mention of usage rather than just purchase and it is a very valuable distinction. Let’s focus on that and go deeper in it. Buying does not necessarily lead to usage and I’m being generic here, spanning genres of products. Let’s look at a simple and very common example of a purchase that seldom leads to usage. It is the vacuum cleaner at residences. All of us have a...
