Wim GE De Vos

Small businesses with a BIG impact

Samsung The Wall 📺🤑💨 go-to-market strategy

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Over a year ago Samsung asked to come up with a strategy on how to market their new “half a million USD TV” called “The Wall”. (Emoticons would describe the product concept at that stage as 📺 🤑 💨)

Samsung admitted to have no clue re. luxury markets, did not understand the dynamics of the custom install industry and for sure did not share the importance of long-term channel partners and influencers, …

The briefing I came up with was summarised to a large extent in the first pages of my report “The subtle art of entering the luxury yacht/home market as a technology company (In Europe)“. Download the report for free here.

Then exactly 1 year ago in the midst of my holidays – Samsung flew me over to their “LED experience centre” in Frankfurt. The meeting with Samsungs management lasted about 1 hour. Until it became clear to me that there was no point…

Why, you may ask? Well, the answer is higher up in the blog post 😉.

In the mean time, my fellow technology architects: let´s make WOW 🍾😲 the standard together 🤝.

Note: later meetings with other LED manufacturers (Barco, Hansen, Leyard, and now also Philips) have brought a series of challenges & opportunities to light that will positively impact large screen displays in the home.

 

sunk costs…🛶

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What you have done in the past does not – by itself – become a criterion for what you should do in the future.

Investing your time and passion today and the next todays is about possible future outcomes. Not about what you did in the past.

a simple example…: “I’ve already watched an hour of this horrible movie, I should probably just finish it”

“Sunk costs” is not simply a financial concept, but a highly personal one too.

#thefuturestartsnow

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Challenger sales – a key🔑 to success ?!

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The Challenger Sale is based on one of the largest sales studies ever conducted. One key finding was that 53% of customer loyalty is driven by the sales experience – not brand, price, service, or even the product. This experience is largely dictated by a customer’s interaction with the sales person and company overall.

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According to this research, every B2B sales person falls into five different profiles that define the skills and behaviours they use when interacting with customers. These profiles describe a rep’s natural mode of interacting with a prospect, and are not mutually exclusive –

  • The Hard Worker
  • The Lone Wolf
  • The Relationship Builder
  • The Challenger
  • The Problem Solver

what about success…? 🚀  Perfect for complex sales in a B2B environment

40% of high sales performers primarily used a Challenger style – as opposed to one of the other four sales styles the book identified. • High performers were more than 2x likely to use a Challenger approach than any other approach. • More than 50% of all star performers fit the challenger profile in complex sales. • Only 7% of top performers took a relationshipbuilding approach – the worst performing profile.

BUT: … not for everyone… Sales strategy needs a tailored approach.

As sales complexity increases, so does the success rate of the challenger approach. However, this Challenger approach only worked better among high performers. Among average performers, all profiles were roughly as successful as one another. This is a disruptive finding, as most sales training and sales teams today are geared towards creating and encouraging the Relationship Builder, the least effective of the five profiles.

Small changes in strategy that can create a huge impact…💥

May the salesforce be with you.

The reason we build networks…🔗

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Clayton Christensen in The Innovator´s Dilemma concludes:

As companies gain experience within a given network, we are likely to develop capabilities, organizational structures, and cultures tailored to our value network´s distinctive requirements.

Successful companies therefore develop business practices that conform to a particular customer need.

Example: If Harley-Davidson bikers 🏍 want their motorbikes to be big and powerful 💪🏻, than Harley distributors want the same, as do their suppliers, as does Harley-Davidson itself. Harley willl therefore hire people who like their bikes that way, they will develop a culture that prefers ideas that are based on bikes remaining that way.

For Genesis Technologies the idea is to simplifying things from start to finish.

For Sixtino Design Labs it is to beautify spaces.

For ICE cinema the goal is to deliver the suspension of disbelief.

And this is how our partner networks are built and developped.

So what is your reason (think values) to build your network?

 

 

Remarkable

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As I am finishing Seth Godins´ truly remarkable Purple Cow for the third time, the following ideas spring to mind…

There are not too many unexplored areas of innovation – just unexplored combinations 🧩🧩. And in making these combinations go where the competition is not 🚁.

The farther the better. Pick your niche. And rock 🎸 it.

Take phone companies 📞 as an example: Do they hire annoying people or just train them to be that way? How many times have you been deeply frustrated 🥵 in dealing with telecom companies?

Sometimes it may be worth to simply invest in exceptionally nice people 😃 as a way of being remarkable… The simplicity of the business model is striking. Customer centricity 🎯 to the max.

Small decisions that have a BIG impact 🚀 indeed.