Quickly Landing pricing and sales strategies for worldwide audiences when footprints are as numerous as 200 plus local markets. And a happy 2015 to everyone.
As 2014 closes today, I find that I am fortunate enough to work in a company (Microsoft) that has a massive worldwide footprint. This allows me to learn how complex international audiences respond to changes in corporate pricing and sale strategies. "Landing" a pricing or sales strategy worldwide requires patience, diplomacy, great negotiation skills, and impact modeling, in that order. If your global footprint is quite huge, like it is in my firm, landing periods could be as long as 3 years depending upon the complexity of the pricing strategies. One way to speed up landing strategies is to deploy intelligently automated tool sets that accelerate landing and feedback loops so sales and pricing strategies can be tweaked dynamically based on local market feedback. But automation is not the be all and end all.
It is one thing to sit in corporate head quarters and price out a service and it is quite another thing to systematically field test the acceptability of the price in a local market. This another thing's feedback loop of field testing gets compounded exponentially when you consider that our global footprint spans across at least 200 local markets. and it becomes quite impossible to land a desired pricing or sales strategy change, let's say, within one calendar quarter.
What then are some of the things that can help you land a pricing or sales strategy quickly? Here are a few tips:
- Begin using well designed index where a baseline pricing or sales strategy number can be extended internationally fairly quickly via automation rather than through a process of negotiating with each local market. For example, try using OECD's PPP Index when a baseline price or some other sales strategy number has to be adjusted for affordability worldwide
- Use intelligent, automated catalogs with well defined business rules around discounting and list price adjustments in local markets. Automate the rules and audit trails for when and who made changes in local markets.
- Create compliance reports such as Net Price or Quota Attainment Reports and regularly publish the report by local markets and by business owners. You will find that such transparent publications can get errant markets to fall in line fairly quickly or at least trigger conversations about why the local market deviated from established corp HQ norms.
- Constitute a customer panel for regular feedback directly from your customers in various markets. Use the panels as a way to create brand affinity with your customers. Incentivize customers to participate by using the carrot of "you've earned it being our great customers" mantra. Direct market feedback rather than through your sales or service delivery teams scores much higher on the feedback relevancy leader board. Make sure you run these panels at least a quarter for worldwide feedback.
- Create structured frameworks that are repeatable and stepped in quantitative portfolio analysis to show financial and marketing RoI impact. Do not hesitate to advance these numerical frameworks in internal field advisory council meetings. For instance, in every offer design meeting, you should be asking what types of buyers (value, price, loyal, convenience etc.) the sales force is targeting and what is the likely numerical mix of these buyer types. Similarly you should try and estimate in quantitative terms the market's ability to view the services designed and sold as essential to their cause or as value-adding to their cause. Each mix requires different pricing and sales strategies. Also, try and assess again with a numerical mix, where in the services life cycle maturity the offers are slotted into - for instance, 10% in the incubation stage, 40% in the growth stage, 30% in the maturity stage, and 20% in the decline stage etc...Quantification of portfolio mix is important. Since it is tough to do portfolio analysis across 200 local markets, group these markets into market similarity based groupings such as developed markets, emerging growth markets, Government procurement dominated markets etc...and then create these portfolio mixes for each grouping. Capture these portfolio maps in a systematic manner and show changes over time. Automate the mapping process within a BI platform of convenience.
- Finally, create meaningful localized sales and landing incentives with well-defined campaign metrics that will drive the desired landing behavior - be it for speed of landing, or for buyer qualifications, or for product qualifications, or for assessing market mixes and life cycle trajectories. Resort to innovations here as much as possible. But, first design the target portfolio mixes for aggregated market groupings, as mentioned in the prior paragraph. Without an end goal in mind, it will be difficult to rank the success of the incentive campaigns.
With the above tips you may be able to land some changes as quickly as within a quarter. But be cognizant that despite best efforts, complex strategies will still take multiple quarters to achieve. So, it is important to realize what P&L impact business executives are visualizing when structuring a sales or pricing strategy landing motion and communicate upfront the time period of impact.
It has been a great 2014 for me and my company. And I know that it will continue into 2015 as well as we rapidly make progress toward institutionalizing an intelligently automated landing process. Good luck in your 2015 endeavors too, and hope you will take these tips to heart and utilize them for your own organization's success. Full steam ahead, then!
Happy 2015 everyone and wishing everyone a stellar year of health, success, joy, and work-life balance.
It is one thing to sit in corporate head quarters and price out a service and it is quite another thing to systematically field test the acceptability of the price in a local market. This another thing's feedback loop of field testing gets compounded exponentially when you consider that our global footprint spans across at least 200 local markets. and it becomes quite impossible to land a desired pricing or sales strategy change, let's say, within one calendar quarter.
What then are some of the things that can help you land a pricing or sales strategy quickly? Here are a few tips:
- Begin using well designed index where a baseline pricing or sales strategy number can be extended internationally fairly quickly via automation rather than through a process of negotiating with each local market. For example, try using OECD's PPP Index when a baseline price or some other sales strategy number has to be adjusted for affordability worldwide
- Use intelligent, automated catalogs with well defined business rules around discounting and list price adjustments in local markets. Automate the rules and audit trails for when and who made changes in local markets.
- Create compliance reports such as Net Price or Quota Attainment Reports and regularly publish the report by local markets and by business owners. You will find that such transparent publications can get errant markets to fall in line fairly quickly or at least trigger conversations about why the local market deviated from established corp HQ norms.
- Constitute a customer panel for regular feedback directly from your customers in various markets. Use the panels as a way to create brand affinity with your customers. Incentivize customers to participate by using the carrot of "you've earned it being our great customers" mantra. Direct market feedback rather than through your sales or service delivery teams scores much higher on the feedback relevancy leader board. Make sure you run these panels at least a quarter for worldwide feedback.
- Create structured frameworks that are repeatable and stepped in quantitative portfolio analysis to show financial and marketing RoI impact. Do not hesitate to advance these numerical frameworks in internal field advisory council meetings. For instance, in every offer design meeting, you should be asking what types of buyers (value, price, loyal, convenience etc.) the sales force is targeting and what is the likely numerical mix of these buyer types. Similarly you should try and estimate in quantitative terms the market's ability to view the services designed and sold as essential to their cause or as value-adding to their cause. Each mix requires different pricing and sales strategies. Also, try and assess again with a numerical mix, where in the services life cycle maturity the offers are slotted into - for instance, 10% in the incubation stage, 40% in the growth stage, 30% in the maturity stage, and 20% in the decline stage etc...Quantification of portfolio mix is important. Since it is tough to do portfolio analysis across 200 local markets, group these markets into market similarity based groupings such as developed markets, emerging growth markets, Government procurement dominated markets etc...and then create these portfolio mixes for each grouping. Capture these portfolio maps in a systematic manner and show changes over time. Automate the mapping process within a BI platform of convenience.
- Finally, create meaningful localized sales and landing incentives with well-defined campaign metrics that will drive the desired landing behavior - be it for speed of landing, or for buyer qualifications, or for product qualifications, or for assessing market mixes and life cycle trajectories. Resort to innovations here as much as possible. But, first design the target portfolio mixes for aggregated market groupings, as mentioned in the prior paragraph. Without an end goal in mind, it will be difficult to rank the success of the incentive campaigns.
With the above tips you may be able to land some changes as quickly as within a quarter. But be cognizant that despite best efforts, complex strategies will still take multiple quarters to achieve. So, it is important to realize what P&L impact business executives are visualizing when structuring a sales or pricing strategy landing motion and communicate upfront the time period of impact.
It has been a great 2014 for me and my company. And I know that it will continue into 2015 as well as we rapidly make progress toward institutionalizing an intelligently automated landing process. Good luck in your 2015 endeavors too, and hope you will take these tips to heart and utilize them for your own organization's success. Full steam ahead, then!
Happy 2015 everyone and wishing everyone a stellar year of health, success, joy, and work-life balance.
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