How will your business grow?
For lasting success in new business development and growth, vendor propositions must be consistently aligned to market needs, and then there must be in place an effective demand creation and conversion process. Paul Downey works with B2B clients in creating such essential processes - addressing the following key business questions:
Market needs
What are the key challenges, drivers and opportunities within your target markets?
Value proposition
How does your proposition provide benefits and solutions for your focus customers?
Demand creation
How do you effectively promote your USPs to attract and convert the right audience?
3 essential pillars for market-driven growth
Markets
Proposition
Demand
Needs
Drivers
Opportunities
Value
Benefits
Differentiation
Reach
Engagement
Conversion
A fundamental element of any business development strategy is the alignment of market insights, value propositions, and creation and conversion of demand. This seems to be an obvious statement, but in practice as organisations grow, the core proposition within individual functions and teams can sometimes become siloed, and this essential integrated link then becomes effectively disconnected.
The result can be products or services which are missing clear positioning, or do not deliver to real customer needs; or a communication platform which is not delivering differentiated proposals to the target audience.
Therefore, ensuring that this connectivity and alignment is in place becomes the place to start - whether the business development objective is a single focused project, or part of an overall organisation growth strategy.
Making it happen
Paul Downey works with B2B clients on a variety of business development programs - whether it be for a specific market focus or product launch, through to overall company growth strategy. In each case, the fundamental project flow is based on a dedicated program called pdb2b.
Essentially, this program is focused on effective business development results for B2B organisations, and it is applicable to any size or type of project or campaign. In all projects it follows the outlined sequence of aligning Market > Proposition > Demand.
pdb2b - Stages of the program
Markets
Stage 1 - Market Insights
Understanding the needs and opportunities with target customers and markets
Program activity includes target market drivers; customer personas; pain points and resulting proposed solutions; how and where to differentiate.
Key success factors
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Continuously scan the business horizon
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Understand the business landscape and ‘eco-system’
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Stakeholders & influencers
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Competition, your positioning
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Insight also needing to be Foresight
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Mega drivers of sector trends
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Customer buying cycles
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Importance of collaboration
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Understand customer Pyramid of value
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Emerging technologies
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Legislation
Stage 2 - Develop Propositions
Developing differentiated products, services and messaging aligned to user needs
Leading on from market insights, the program develops necessary positioning and USPs for products, services and solutions.
Key success factors
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Functionality - products, services
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Movement to Solutions
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Value-adding internal capabilities
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Positioning
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TAM, SAM, SOM
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Application knowledge
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Internal value streams and processes
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Focus on Customer experience
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Effective product launches
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Pricing & TCO strategy
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Value-selling model
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Quality
Stage 3 - Create Demand
Marketing and Sales processes for creating demand and conversion with target audience
Proposition is then taken to market via marketing tools, including digital media. Effectiveness is continuously tuned to ensure conversion and ROI.
Key success factors
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Brand development
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Lead generation
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New Customer acquisition
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Customer retention
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Personas of target audience
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Sales & support assets and material
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Content planning and development
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Digital strategy
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Combined Sales & Marketing pipeline
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Awareness, Inspiration, Interest, Action
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Reach, Engagement, Results
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ROI