Design thinking
· Collaborative
· Holistic
· Creative
· Insightful
· Innovative
· Iterative
· Customer centered
· Outcome oriented
Every business is affected by its micro and macro-environments. The macro-environment of a business includes all those societal forces which affect the micro-environment of the business for example the economic and the political environment. In the political environment, a government can pass some rules and regulations which may affect a business profoundly. For example, recently Ottawa has shot down a ruling by Canada's telecoms regulator, opening the door for a fourth national mobile-phone operator to roll out its service in Canada. This decision will increase competition in the telecom sector and it may adversely affect the structural attractiveness of the sector. Check out this article relating to this move by Canada and do give feedback.
Many factors affect the consumer buying behavior such as the cultural, social, personal and psychological factors. In personal factors, the economic situation of the country holds great importance in the world of today. If there is a boom going on, people spend a lot. However, if there is a recession, people may cut back on their spending as it is happening this Christmas in America. American consumers are looking out for good bargains and they are planning their shopping budgets more than ever before because of the recession in America. American businesses have also responded to the price sensitiveness of the consumers by cutting their prices and by offering good bargains to the consumers. Thus, in the long run only those businesses will prosper which will satisfy the needs and wants of the consumers. Guys, check out this article about Christmas sales in America and do give feedback.
As we all know that department stores are those which have a wide product line and each product line is operated like a different department. However, in recent years, these department store have been hit hard by the discount stores which offer merchandise at lower prices. Now, the department stores have finally come up with a strategy in order to counter the threat of the discount stores. After Christmas, these department stores like Macy's and JC Penney are going to start a promotion campaign in which they will offer big discounts in order to increase their sales and their market share too. Check out this article about how will these department stores will implement their strategy and do give feedback.
Every business tries to capture as many customers it can. It can do this providing the customer with a greater value which may be in the form of lower prices or higher quality of the product etc. Similarly, in variety seeking buying behavior, businesses also try to persuade the consumer to try a new product. If the product is found suitable to the consumer, he/she may adopt the product. This is also the case with business to business marketers. Businesses selling goods or services to other businesses may also try to convince their customers that they are offering the better deal compared to their customers. Businesses may also choose those partners which may enhance the competitive advantage of the business. For example, there are news coming in the media that Japan Airlines Corp. is likely to choose Delta Air Lines as its overseas partner, ending its ties with American Airline and the Oneworld alliance group. Japan Airlines, Asia's largest airline by revenue, has decided that moving to the Delta Airlines would come with more benefits for its restructuring and future growth prospects. In short, in order to create the maximum value for their customers, businesses partner with those businesses which may allow them to satisfy the wants of their customers in a better compared to their competitors. Guys, check out this article about Japan Airlines and do give feedback.
Types of Marketing
This is an excerpt from the paper... There are two broad types of markets in the marketing environment·consumer markets and organizational markets. Consumer markets are those wherein the products and services sold are consumed by the purchasers. Organizational markets are those wherein the products and services sold are resold to consumers, processed in the creation of other products and services, or consumed by the purchaser as a part of the process of serving a consumer clientele.
Within the organizational markets classification, there are industrial markets, institutional markets, reseller markets, and government markets. With respect to business-to-business marketing, the relevant sub-classifications in the organizational markets classification are the industrial market and the reseller market. The industrial market is that in which the products and services sold are used by the buyers in the creation of other products and services, while the reseller market is that in which the buyers of products and services resell those products and services to other buyers.
In the reseller market, retailers resell the products and services directly to consumers, while wholesalers and distributors resell the products and services to either retailers or to firms in the industrial market. Wholesalers and distributors are a part of the business-to-business market. The industrial market is also a part of the business-to-business market.
A business-to-business marketing organization's external environment has
. . .r smaller families, and a growing preoccupation with personal health and fitness both created and ended strategic opportunities for some marketing organizations. Shifting societal attitudes toward work also affects strategic planning. The list of such factors is extensive, as are the changes in the significance of the factors over time. The very uncertainty of such factors causes many managers to attempt to ignore them in the strategic marketing planning process. Such managers tend to have little tolerance for ambiguity, and, thus, they often do not appreciate the necessity to deal with uncertainty in the strategic marketing planning for their organizations. A marketing organization's external environment, thus, is composed of an incredibly complex and diverse array of factors. These factors are generally related to (1) the economy, (2) governments, (3) markets, (4) technology, (5) geography, and (6) society. Unfortunately, all of these factors have a dynamic characteristic. The one thing that strategic planners can usually count on is that the inputs on which they rely will not likely remain stable for very long; over the short-term, perhaps, but over the long-term, probably not. There are several different concepts up . . .
REFERENCE:http://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1696477.html
MY Opinion: Types of Marketing
There are two types of markets in the marketing environment consumer markets (where the products and services sold are consumed by the buyer) and organizational markets.(wherein the products and services sold are resold to consumers, or they are used in production process as raw material)
Organizational markets have been further classified as industrial markets, (in which the products and services sold are used by the buyers as raw material in producing other good & services), institutional markets, reseller markets,(in which the buyers of products and services resell those products and services to other buyers) in this type of market retailers resell the products and services directly to consumers. While wholesalers and distributors resell the products and services to either retailers or to firms in the industrial market. and government markets. A marketing organization's external environment is composed of following factors (1) the economy, (2) governments, (3) markets, (4) technology, (5) geography, and (6) society.
Following are the 9 important catalysts to enhance sales.
1.Strategic Hiring
2. Presentation and Training
3. Consultative Selling
4. Tracking and Evaluation
5. Compensation Alignment
6. Return on Investment
7. Resizing Sales Force
8. Drive Management
9. Negotiation
Strategic Hiring
Our first question we would ask a firms CEO was about the firms hiring process. Time and time again we would hear from the CEO with a smile, "I just know a good sales person when I meet them." Our next question was of the last five sales hires how many of them are still with the company? The CEO would typically blush and sometimes say one, other times say two and even more often say zero. Firms that had a well defined hiring process typically fared much better in terms of lower turnover and therefore were less afraid to hire additional sales people. This is the compounding effect of a poor hiring process, a firm needs more sales people to grow, yet every sales person the firm hires ends up begin a "dud". Of the 30 firms surveyed all firms that had averaged greater than 10% sales growth over the past 3 years had a well defined hiring process. One firm had adopted the hiring strategy of only stealing its competitors top sales people. This firm did achieve a growth rate of 10% for each of the previous three years. So we do give some merit to this strategy if a strategic hiring process is not going to be laid out in detail, this is the second most effective strategy we encountered.
Presentation and Training
Most firms would have a very detailed training program of a multitude of positions with their company. But when it came to training their sales people it was "trial by fire." Sales people would enter the field with substandard product knowledge, an inability to ask or answer question, and no formalized sales presentation at all. Organizations without at least two weeks of training and a formalized sales presentation "one that tells a story" had low sales growth rates. Occasionally we would run into organizations that had hired a consultant to provide a week long session of expensive training. These organization fared no better than their counterparts who had none. The firm must have its own formalized training process in place, with lists of questions that must be asked to every prospect to determine problems they are having and then this must be followed up with a compelling story that solves these needs. Firms that understood this had lower learning curves for their sales force and had explosive growth rates. Those with out formalized training and presentations always grew at marginal rates.
Consultative Selling
Consultative Selling and Presentation go hand in hand. Companies that had high growth rates train their people to solve problems. Not to sell a product that is not needed by the firm. The sales people would do this by always asking questions so that they could tailor their products to their customers needs. Features and Benefits selling is "dead." Effective sales people are problem solvers period. This problem solving process originates with having and understanding of the potential need of each individual client and not spewing product knowledge.
Tracking and Evaluation
All firms tracked some form of data on a weekly basis during a weekly call as most sales mangers would prescribe. The next question we would ask is "what do you do with this data?" The answer in over 90% of the time was "well nothing?" Tracking sales activity is essential to improving the performance of any sales organization. If sales behavior is not being tracked and compared to the performance of the given sales person at your organization it is highly unlikely your sales organization even in the best of time would ever achieve double digit growth. Organizations that took the information from weekly meetings such as number of dials or meeting a sales person had each week and compared these results long-term to performance were able to find deficiencies in their sales people as well as track down more importantly "Why were their top producers, their top producers? What were these people doing differently?" During our interviews it was discovered this was focal to the learning process.
Compensation Alignment
Sales forces that had properly aligned compensation structures fared much better than those without. One firm who struggled in all other areas took pain staking efforts to convert all sales people over to 100% commission based pay after the first year. This company even though all other areas of sales management had large problems was able to grow at 11% per year over a five year period. The top performing company had starting base salaries for sales people at $100,000 per. These sales people were making an additional $200,000 per year in commission. The CEO's rational was "I want to view every top candidate in the marketplace, and I want every candidate in the marketplace willing to jump ship to work at my firm." This type of pay structure only works well when the CEO is confident all other processes are in place, such as strategic hiring and training. When you are paying for the best you had better be getting the best. But the results are incredible when all of the pieces come together.
Return on Investment
Top sales management viewed sales people based upon new business that the sales person delivered to the company that year. Accounts were valued based upon harvest period of the account, and discounted back to net present value. Sales people that rested upon repeat business from prior years were quickly reduced to commission only and the base salary was eliminated. We asked one top performing CEO how base salary should be viewed? His response was "Base Salary is what the sales person gets for bringing new business to the table, commission are what sales people make for retaining accounts."
Resizing Sales Force
Firms that analyze or develop ways to self monitor their territory typically are able to achieve additional revenue by properly allocating their people resulting in more revenue. Only the highest growing firm had a program in place for resizing its sales territories on an annual basis. All other 29 did not have a resizing program in place and looked confused when this question was posed.
Drive
Drive
Negotiation
The top three sales organizations spent a large amount of time on teaching negotiation and providing parameters in which a sales person could negotiate with clients. These organizations appeared to have a better understanding of their cost model as well as having developed the means to share this information with the sales force. The sales manager would also provide incentives with the commission structure to maximize firm value in deals obtained by the sales force. Training people how to negotiate and giving them parameters to do so in short creates value. "We make money when our sales people make money." one CEO said, "this is the only way to align our interests and maximize profits."
reference;ezinearticles.com
Positioning is undoubtedly one of the simplest and most useful tools to marketers. After segmenting a market and then targeting a consumer, you would proceed to position a product within that market.
Remember this important point. Positioning is all about 'perception'. As perception differs from person to person, so do the results of positioning differ in my perception.
Products or services are 'mapped' together on a 'positioning map'. This allows them to be compared and contrasted in relation to each other. This is the main strength of this tool. Marketers decide upon a competitive position which enables them to distinguish their own products from the offerings of their competition (hence the term positioning strategy).
The marketer would draw out the map and decide upon a label for each axis. They could be price (variable one) and quality (variable two), or Comfort (variable one) and price (variable two). The individual products are then mapped out next to each other Any gaps could be regarded as possible areas for new products.
The term 'positioning' refers to the consumer's perception of a product or service in relation to its competitors. You need to ask yourself, what is the position of the product in the mind of the consumer?
Trout and Ries suggest a six-step question framework for successful positioning:
1. What position do you currently own?
2. What position do you want to own?
3. Whom you have to defeat to own the position you want.
4. Do you have the resources to do it?
5. Can you persist until you get there?
6. Are your tactics supporting the positioning objective you set?
Product: Ferrari, BMW, Kia, Range Rover, Saab, Hyundai.
Reference: www.markettingteacher.com
