QQBP - Competition Analysis

Most innovative solutions born never reached the needy customers successfully due to ignorance on how to overcome various forms of competition. A decade ago competition was found only between organizations, they had to mostly compete with quality and quantity but the route to customer was always unique, it was always unanimously through distributors and retailers. But today’s online world created competition even on the route to customers through online retails. This revolutionary change brings lot of changes in the traditional way of selling.  To add to it, innovation and technology is itself becoming competition to any business. For example Smart phones, Tablets, Social Media, Cloud were all trend setting innovations but if you closely watch they are becoming a tool for competition, making them a compelling business strategy to adapt to stay relevant in business. No businesses ever thought online or mobile or cloud will become a separate industry but the reality is they left no choice but to adapt them for survival.

So the competition here can be divided into two

•  Business to business competition
• Competition created by adapting to innovation

Business to business competition:

Mostly business that offer similar products or service become competition to each other. This competition can be easily overcome by creating a "unique value proposition" to customers. Unique Value Proposition can be in any of the following Quality, Quantity, Benefits and Price.

Quality: Most Technology companies use quality as a value proposition to customers. Use of Quality materials, expertise skills and advanced  futuristic technology in production.

Example: Apple v/s Samsung

Quantity: Retail companies use quantity as a value proposition to customers. Two products at the cost of one (One + One offer)

For Example: Target v/s Walmart

Benefits: Mobile companies use benefits as a value proposition to customers.  Google store (or) Microsoft Market place for applications

For Example:Microsoft play store v/s Google play store

Price:  Most online companies use Price as a value proposition to customers.

For Example: Online retails v/s Retails

It is very critical for any company to understand the competition. Scoring and realizing your own organization with competition will prepare yourself to overcome competition.

Sales person in every organization should be made aware the above. One who has the knowledge on the QQBP analysis win over the competition easily

This exercise will not only help you to realize your competition but also gives the luxury to choose your competition

	Customer Reviews and Market
Company Name	Quality (/5)	Quantity	Benefits (/5)	Price
Apple i-phone	5	1	4	100$
Competitor-1 Samsung	4	1	4	70$
Competitor-2 Micromax	3	1	4	30$

Positioning your ideas towards customer pain points

No idea (or) business can become successful unless you know what your customer pain points are. Once you start visualizing your idea as business, you must prepare a road map on how to start a business. This will help you build strong confidence about you own your idea and how to position it as a business. The biggest challenge is always, it doesn’t matter how strong your idea/solution is, it only matters how good you are at positioning it to your customers.

The art of positioning is the most creative art in selling and this is exactly the kind of skill you should look at any sales person. Now, as an owner of your idea/solution/business, the responsibility lies with you. Positioning needs to create a strong impact unless it creates impact, you are least known or accepted by your customers. Here is where the pain points play a main role.

The easiest way to get any customers attention is to talk about their problem and then position your solution against their problem. If you are able to successfully do this well, then you have covered most part of the sales negotiations. If you could define their pain points into bullet points and if you could keep your solution short and precise, you are almost done with successful selling. This needs an enormous amount of research. Understanding of your own business well will help to ease this research.

Most business fails because the business owners were not able to create faith in customer towards a clear understanding about their problems. When you have a clear understanding about your business, you will be able to easily chart down the benefits, and how can it address the pain points and when the same solution qualify to address many customers pain points, then it becomes a successful business

Let me quote one of the most revolutionary examples, the Amazon Kindle, and idea which then turned into one of the most successful business solving the pain points of million customers

• What is your idea (or) business? 

Answer: The idea is a digital book (or) digital paper which saves paper made of trees

• What are the benefits of your idea?

Answer: Easy to carry, easy to handle and easy access to huge number of news, papers, books, blogs and articles available in the internet, anytime and anywhere access and E-library

• How does it help your customers?

Answer: Kindle is a paper feel digital device. Customers get access to millions of e-books, through e-library, so accessing and maintain your e-books become so easy and you can choose your likes from millions of choices.

I know there are still lots of benefits but let me focus on examples of arriving at pain points. When your idea has benefits then it is easy to list out the pain points. There is no solution without pain. For the given example, the few of the pain points that I can easily think of are:

1.      Accessing and maintaining library becomes time consuming and non-affordable, huge investment required for space, furniture, and maintenance
2.      Too difficult to find the choices of likes and interest, very limited book retail outlets available
3.      Stock management and cost is additional risk and headache

If one could articulate the below three questions well, then the chances of winning any deal become very easy.

1.      What is your idea?
2.      What are the customer pain points that your solution addresses?
3.      How does it help your customers?

But if you think this is it, then you are wrong. When you think your ideas as an individual solution, then may be yes, but when you visualize your idea as a business to address multiple customers, then you have expand your understanding from market and competition perspective.

It is the duty of every successful business person to know, if there are similar solutions available in the market, are you a pioneer? Are there any competitors? And if yes, how are you different from your competitions. SWOT Analysis and QQBPI - Competition Analysis will help you to identify your Strength, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats and to win over the competition

IVGVI Analysis

I-V-G-V-I Analysis:

The I-V-G-V-I Analysis will help you to understand and position your business well. This analysis will help any business to build a sound business strategy. This analysis will help businesses to understand how to relate the idea or the business into market standards

This analysis is usually performed by owner of the idea (or) entrepreneurs (or) the head of sales, business development and business strategy

Industry: The term Industry refers to the line of business or categorization of business. For example: Healthcare, Retail, Manufacturing, High-Tech, Information Technology and etc are the different industry categories. It is very much important to understand to which Industry does your business belongs to, this is very critical exercise.

Vertical: The term Vertical here refers to the Industry sub-set. Most businesses share the shadow of other industries, it is very important to clearly understand what their parent industry and their subset. For example: Med Plus is a medical retail outlet, it is very important to understand the parent industry and the subset here. Since the business is retail, the parent industry is Retail and the subset is Healthcare because of its nature.

Again understanding your own business is very important at-least to communicate others what your business is

Geography: The term Geography here refers to the location of business. The manufacturing location has lot of strategic reasons. Multiple factors should be kept under consideration before identifying the right geographic location that includes resources, skills, infrastructure and etc. For example: Most car manufacturers manufacture cars in India and supply it to other Asian countries.

Vision: The above three analysis would give you enough idea on what and where to start your business. Now it is time to articulate to yourself on the vision of your idea. The term vision here refers to the difference between your current situation and your future. How would you like your business to grow in the next one year? The growth can be either qualitative (or) Quantitative. It can be anything like size, revenue, goodwill, infrastructure and etc. For example: Facebook had a vision on X number of users before they got into revenue model. Most start-ups would prefer to have short term vision; it can be either Half-yearly (or) Yearly.  The vision statement would help you to evaluate on the right investment figures.

Investment: The term Investment here refers to investment for manufacturing or production or to start the business. With the above 4 analysis, you will be able to evaluate the cost of investment considering the industry, vertical, geography and vision

This exercise is very important because this helps you to

1. Deeper understanding of your own business
2. Creates the ability to confidently communicate others about your business
3. Helps you to easily relate your business to the market standards
4. Helps everybody to map what you do
5. And very importantly helps you to identify your customers

You may easily find more references on SWOT analysis in Google, I will cover the SWOT Analysis for business in my next blog.

How to convert an Idea into Business

If an idea that helps to solve your problem and if you have confidence that the same idea can qualify to solve others problem then it has enough reasons to become a successful business. Most successful businesses were once an idea that helped to solve one’s problem then it became a successful organization helping solve other problems. The idea can be anything, a product, process or even a service but it should create a need for its quality.

Even a very small idea has a capacity to grow as a mountain. The elevation is depended on the vision of the owner who had the idea. For example: a toffee in retail is a very small business but Cadburys as a company is a living example where an idea of toffee can elevate. Once the idea is turned into business, then they are like a flowing river; they will flow according to the needs and demands of the customer. They may sometimes digress from what they are to meet the customer demands.  For example: Cadburys also sell Chocolates to meet the customer demand. So the most important responsibility is to identify the core strength (or) an expertise area to establish a brand. Once the brand is established, then the most of the rest will be taken care by business and customer demand by itself.

So, if you find potential in your idea, then develop the confidence to grow it as a business. To do that, you have to understand idea as a business and that becomes foremost important role for any idea to grow bigger as a business.

1. Develop the ability to understand idea as a business
2. Develop the ability to communicate your idea as a business
3. Develop the ability create confidence in customers

 There are several techniques like IVGR Analysis and SWOT Analysis to develop the ability to see your idea as business and QQBP (Quality, Quantity, Benefits and Price) to develop the ability to communicate and create confidence in customers

I will cover the IVGR analysis, SWOT Analysis and QQBP Analysis in my next blogs

How to Penetrate India, Russia and Middle East Markets

I would like to share my experience on working with different markets and regions. India is globally approved as the IT Hub or the next Silicon Valley for software and software related services. With its vast experience, India has a very well matured process that cans serve global markets. For its experience most of Europe and US are well covered. With thousands of Software companies registering in India every day, the job becomes really tougher for bigger companies to penetrate existing markets further.

Thus, the Fast Growth Markets gets a key focus agenda for any software company. But it is not as easy as what we speak and think, because the matured processes that we have created may meet global requirements but matured process alone will not help to tap business. It took years to build confidence in US and Europe, similarly we have to repeat the same for Fast Growth Markets

Each Fast Growth Markets are different by itself.

India: has huge accessibility for skills & resources but demands a tagline from American or European market. Domestic products (or) service to meet domestic requirements are very less encouraging. Even, if recognized the pricing become a tough task. By nature Indians would like to negotiate a lot. It doesn’t matter what, even if negotiation wins one rupee, it is considered a great deal. Most likely, doing business with Indians and Americans are quite similar. You can open the discussion with anyone. Like Americans, Indians are most likely to explore, get educated, and to advertise their requirements but the decision will always be in favor of American or European tagline, experience, brand and also a very well negotiated deal.

Key Message: Co-selling of best brand is a good way to start

Russia: This is a closed market. Middle East and Russia are relatively similar. The demand here never meets supply, because of this, there are always opportunity for software and related services. For software and services market, Russia could be another US or Europe story because most huge industries deserves digitalization but the resources who could understand this transition are very minimal. The only problem with Russia is language and conservative market. They do not encourage foreign solutions; they highly encourage and approve local solutions. Most business deals are likely to happen through community, seller and buyer are very well connected. Like negotiation for India, Security becomes the key focus for any business deals in Russia. They always expect a secured deal with the very well know neighbor rather outsourcing to a stranger. They are ready to wait instead to deal with the stranger. You have to be local and get local

Key Message:  Register locally and employ locally, focus on skill development

Middle East: Middle East is half western and half Russian. Most recommending authorities are either outsourced or resourced from India, US or Europe because of which they are ready to explore opportunities but the decision making is conservative. More than security, the trust, relationship and experience play a key role. In simple terms, Middle East is a reference market. Even for a job, you need to be referred. Your colorful presentations and innovative solutions will be heard but to convert them as a deal, a strong local recommendation is must

Key Message: Explore opportunities to work with domestic companies.

Tips to improve the performance of sales team

In the era of innovation, I see a need for maturity in sales team which is more important than anything because in today’s situation most of the potential sales opportunities are facing lot of hurdles and are forcibly pushed to be called as a dead lead without even understanding the size of an opportunity.

1)     Stingy investment in sales team:

It always takes some time to see return on Investment in sales because sales is always connected to decision making which is based on the industry standard sales lifecycle. The anxiety and restlessness makes the stingy investor even stingier. A poor performance starts with poor investment and this will continue to affect each and every part of the sales team. A poor investment is equal to poor confidence at own cost.

2)     Duplication of sales efforts:

The processes become more important when growth becomes evident. No matter what, all organizations will be compelled to invent or follow some process into system. The structure of the process is always dependent on the size and demands of your business. Inability to choose the right processes that business demands is the key concern in today’s business environment. I see most of the prospects were somehow contacted twice from the same organization to achieve same results and this is even worse when they are customers.   

3)     Lack of customer exposure and product knowledge:

The key skill expected out of an inside sales team is to open the customer gates towards opportunity. Imagine a situation, when an inside sales agent got through a CIO of a billion dollar company on a cold call but not able to explain the purpose of the call (or) answer his questions and still trying to fix an appointment with his sales head to meet his weekly targets. If this sounds scary, then this is the reality which most companies face today. Most of the sales calls are being dropped before even understanding the opportunity and sometimes they are weighed small before understanding the actual opportunity size

4)     Lack of communication - inability to position the company services in-front of the customers:

Technology connects the world – Accepted!! But communication always plays a key role in leveraging the technology. In most successful businesses, 2 hours of call opened the gates for billion dollar deals which created lakhs of employment opportunities. The same is the reason for failure. In most companies, the agents were not able to properly communicate the actual potential of their services but still the need pushes the customer for a second level discussion. Here, in this discussion, the opportunity was not understood properly and the same was communicated to sales head. The sales head focusses only on the small opportunity that was already identified and somehow closes the deal. Here only a small portion of the opportunity was achieved and the rest is always open!

You can see the above 4 hurdles are well handled in most successful companies.

Passion makes sales job interesting

Let me take you through the different phases of the sales person world

A subject matter expert:

In my experience, this is the toughest and important phase of any sales person’s life. No matter what, to every customer, a sales person is “The subject matter expert”, so without invitation he is forced to learn the complete dynamics of the organization and this includes the product knowledge, process knowledge, operating knowledge, profit and loss, market trend, competition and sometimes even the history of technology, world and earth. In short he is expected to be up-to-date. Most of the times sales person are left with the least two options 1) he talks the subject where he is a master 2) he masters to pretend as a subject matter expert for unfamiliar subjects. This cycle will follow him in every organization he is employed. Now you know why most sales person are talkative

A meticulous workaholic:

This is the frightening phase of any sales person career. Every organization expects a sales person to be the most organized and the most punctual person. Organized in maintaining the follow-ups and punctual in meeting the customers because these two qualities decide the profit and loss of most company’s balance sheet. And this is a really a haunting phase of any sales person because nothing could fear them like missing a meeting. A missed meeting is a missed business.

A Dramatic Hero:

It does not matter, if an organization is giving a due respect to this brand ambassador or not, he needs to dream himself always as a hero or an achiever. This hope and passion is what keeps him running successful throughout the life. This is exactly what makes him presentable, well read, well informed, up-to-date and finally a meticulous workaholic.

In short, he needs to be well connected from the production team till customers, keen to learn technology, process, operations and much more, focused to achieve targets while being chased by pressure. Throughout his life, he needs to stay connected with all his contacts personally and professionally because this becomes the only proof for his experience and success.

After every successful sale, he refreshes himself to be prepared for another sale. Like every movie, every customer is different and their story is different.